#not enough time given to non-plot development

[lilacxquartz]

THE LIFE YOU LIVED

kenjaku x future vessel f!reader

plot: being the daughter of an important public figure, you were already used to unwanted attention. however, nothing could have prepared you for this.

themes: yandere, unrequited feelings, angst, some horror, reader is not a sorcerer, pre-canon — a/n: so, this isn’t with geto as a vessel but it isn’t kaori either, think of it as an in between time.

part 1 of 7 • next chapter • chapter directory • masterlist • on ao3

Chapter 1: First Impressions

For Kenjaku, being involved with politics was either a prospect that he thrived in or one that he couldn’t wait to get out of, but for the most part, he simply disliked the interactions he had to endure. Unless something exciting was happening from the result of his meddling, he seldom cared, let alone invested himself in the trivial aspects of the ordinary world.

Having to dive into such an affair soon, though, there was a certain degree of apprehension that he felt. In his recent years, any attempt to dissolve the next holder of the six-eyes technique had failed, so he had to maintain his distance from the Gojo clan to avoid being found out a second time—while at the same time keeping close enough to remain vigilant of any significant developments.

This meant straying away from the tight-knit circle of Jujutsu for a while and instead seeking out an alternative means, such as infiltrating the clan from a distance, through the cover of a non-sorcerer.

The current holder of the six-eyes technique was still young, just a mere boy. From his current knowledge of the fact, the kid was strong enough to understand the basics of his technique, but not enough to fully grasp it. If he could therefore infiltrate the clan by phasing through a series of intricate connections, then that’s the route he would take.

This was where you come in.

You were the first step into accomplishing such a feat, and also quite possibly, the easiest role that he had to assume. From the surface, you were just another trust-fund socialite to him, likely spoiled too. He could probably have all sorts of fun in your body when he got his hands on it, since being both loaded and favoured in the eyes of the media meant that he could get away with a great deal of trouble before people started to point their fingers.

An amusing thought, indeed.

His primary target in mind was technically someone close to the current Prime Minister. On paper, this man’s role was purely ceremonial, though, but important enough that just knowing him would open up all sorts of doors. Kenjaku had it in mind, therefore, to infiltrate that clan and steadily gain access to the investors directly involved with the Gojo clan, because that was the easiest way in if from a non-sorcerer standpoint.

Kenjaku already had his eyes on you, too. You were flicking through the pages of some glossy magazine that had your face on the cover, with your brow furrowed at something written inside. You supposedly ‘worked’ in this building, but he had yet to see you do anything at all beyond lounging around, which to him painted an easily accessible front in his mind.

You were somewhere in your twenties, but he wasn’t entirely sure just how old you actually were. Surprisingly, the media coverage on your personal life was lacking. He supposed that if you were wealthy enough to consider what most thought to be a break as ‘working’, then you had the means to wipe clean any sort of database that might store any information on you—or at least make it difficult to find. He had you pinned at maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, given that you had graduated from university not too long ago. He remembered some coverage a while ago concerning a gap year, but he didn’t care enough to investigate further than he had to. That much wasn’t necessary just yet.

The only problem with his whole plan was, however, that it was surely risky to transfer his brain over to a non-sorcerer. For one, the margin for error was much higher, and any retaining techniques aside from his innate one had a risk of not passing through. The gravity technique that he adopted from Kaori would be significant to lose. He would mourn that. His reverse cursed technique, too, would be a hefty loss. He liked having that one, if only just for pain management and sealing away the scar quicker.

Those thoughts aside, Kenjaku grew somewhat impatient from watching you. All that he realistically had to do today was to gain an audience with you and make his first impression count. He considered what he knew about you before approaching you, forming a script in his mind. To just about everyone, your father was the frontman for Kabutocho—or as those overseas knew it better—Japan’s Wall Street. He was one of the most famous names who frequented the headlines for any such news relating to it.

Had the man in question been a couple of decades younger, he would have gone for that body instead, but at sixty-odd years old, he didn’t quite trust his chances in a body that was beginning to decline. It was always simpler to assimilate someone in their prime, such as someone in their twenties, thirties, or even forties.

Meanwhile, on your end, it didn’t take too long for you to notice the pair of eyes that were staring directly towards you, but you didn’t pay the guy any mind. It was somehow still a better deal than what awaited you up in the higher floors, where someone that you truly detested lurked. Indeed, you hated this place, secretly loathing having to keep up such a pristine appearance to the prying eyes of the world all so that your father could get away with the shit that he continiously pulled. God. Everything was so exhausting, and now, you had a potential not-so-secret admirer on top of everything else.

You wondered if you could get away with calling out his insistent staring, or if you would receive an earful from something so petty later on. You were caught up in something that was beyond complicated, after all, what with having to uphold the role of a pushover. You couldn’t stand a single second more of it. The pretending was draining; all of those dinners you had to endure with people twice your age who were always a little too handsy as they pretended to find you interesting.

You supposed that this made you sound ungrateful, or perhaps more brattier than you would have liked, because on the surface of everything, your luxurious life wasn’t all too bad. It was just that sometimes you wished that you could swap it around for something simpler—something normal—something private. It was never your choice, after all, to grow up under the prying lens of the camera just because your father involved himself in every venture he could.

So, you simply went with the flow for now, quietly keeping your opinions contained, even if you thought that they were entirely valid. Indeed, you begrudgingly succumbed to playing the part, attending all of those extravagant galas, shaking the hands of all of the old creeps in power just to keep your father happy. You did your part. You posed and smiled for the camera, you attended those daytime shows, and you laughed on the screen, maintaining a semblance of that happy-go-lucky woman you were forced to play the role of.

Kenjaku continued to watch you from that carefully measured distance all the while, completely unaware that you had long ago caught onto his staring. He let his mind wander already, ultimately deciding that you were the shortcut he needed to take to infiltrate the world he needed to get into. Or perhaps, if you weren’t a shortcut, then you were more so a decisive path of sorts. Power existed in all forms, after all, so social influence could be just as good; your face could get him into all of the right places.

For that to be be a success, however, just all those many times before—he had to be patient and remember to back off on occasion, to let you breathe if you needed to. Maybe he fumbled that much already, given that you were glaring daggers at him. Shit. Had you noticed him? He supposed that he wasn’t being exactly suble. Deciding to roll with it, he slipped on the mask of sweetness, eager to exploit the sheltered and spoiled—to utilise you for all that you were worth.

Indeed, he’d slip into your life as someone new but not unknown. His current cover was a a rising financier, though, perhaps not a successful one. He jumped the guy a couple of years ago under the allure of Kaori when she was making her way out of Jin’s life and back into the open. He didn’t mind playing the role of this guy; his face was forgettable enough which gave him the perfect opportunity to slip in between the cracks if need be.

“Reading anything interesting?” Kenjaku tried to open with, taking note that you seemed bored at what the page was open to. In his mind, you were looking for gossip about yourself which struck him as a little vein. He could likely play his cards right and flatter you if needed. Given that he was in the lobby without an issue, you should recognise him as someone who belonged.

You stiffened up slightly at the approach of the mystery man, already dreading the confrontation. You just knew that he was going to try and talk to you eventually—you had a sixth sense for people like that. You didn’t even look up, turning the page as you replied to him in a flat tone. “Let me stop you right there,” you said, not bothering sweetening up your voice in your place of work, “I don’t know who you are and how you got in here, but I’m not interested.”

Kenjaku blinked, momentarily stunned into silence. He expected you to greet him with the predetermined response that he had already scripted into his head. You were supposed to be lively and outgoing, or at the very least feign interest. Had he misread you? He supposed that it was a possibility; sometimes people presented as one thing but were very different in reality. Just like him—ah. So it might have been like that. He wasn’t the only one wearing a mask.

“What are you, really?” you continued. “An undercover reporter? Someone after my father’s money? Maybe you just want to get laid? Whatever it is you’re on, take a number like everyone else. The time I spare isn’t free.”

“You’re making an awful lot of assumptions for someone you’ve just met,” Kenjaku replied, quickly regaining his composure once more. You caught him off guard, sure, but he had his ways of recovering. “What if I’m someone important?”

“Then I’d say you’re delusional,” you scoffed, taking a sip of your coffee and scrunching up your nose at the drink now being cold. “If you were someone important, then I would have known about you before you even got here.”

Kenjaku bit back a laugh, letting a half-smile curl on his lips instead. So he got his initial assessment on your personality wrong, but he fully understood it now, he really did. The world of both business and politics, especially combined, were a ruthless affair and you were a young woman who was caught up in the middle of it. No wonder you adopted the personality you did behind the closed doors of the public eye. Hell, he even respected it.

“Fair enough,” he shrugged, relaxing his shoulders. “Would you say that my presence is bothering you then?” he asked with a smile that came across as more creepy than curious.

You didn’t reply to him right away but you packed up your things quickly, shoving everything back into your bag. You then sat up and swung your purse strap over your shoulders, ready to leave. “Well, I’m not sticking around to talk to a time waster – does that answer your question?”

He laughed audibly that time. Ah, and here he thought that this would be easy, but it seemed that he had you all wrong. You weren’t as approachable as he thought, you weren’t the polite ‘princess of the stock market’ as you were nicknamed to be in the news. It was refreshing, if he had to be honest and now that you weren’t as easily accessible as he thought, he found himself utterly intrigued.

So much, that he found himself slipping up and staring again, undoubtedly likely triggering the defensive barrier of your creep radar the longer the seconds ticked by. Judging by the slight grimace you wore on your face, it was clear that you didn’t appreciate his company at all and before he could process what just happened, he found himself suddenly drenched in cold coffee, too. A small price to pay, he supposed, because now he could later snake his way back into your life in the future as that one asshole who you threw your drink on—which hopefully for his sake, didn’t happen too often—he had to stand out somehow.

Kenjaku watched as you stormed away, allowing a much more sinister smile to wash over his face. He stood there, drenched but thrilled, before excusing himself out of the crowded prying eyes of everyone else to go wash up and then he would do some digging on you.

God, though. You surprised him with the way you were; it was so rare for people to catch his eye, because after a while, everyone isn’t too different from one another.

But you were.

And now, he couldn’t help but want to know more.

this has been part 5 of lilac’s jjk yandere nightmares

[beifong-brainrot]

Everytime I hear these "The Krew were weak/ the Krew were bums" takes I lose a year of my lifespan.

Like this style of take that I've seen almost everywhere?

Im fucking tired, and I don't think it's a good way to defend Korra either. Like, ok, it's shifting the 'blame' from Korra's supposed weakness through the show onto other characters.

Like, I'm sorry but Asami's hand to hand combat skills, even without her glove, are at least on the level of a Kyoshi warrior. And she can do that shit in heels too.

Like she's hella flexible and smart about her combat, usually using her opponents momentum or weapons against them. She thinks well on the fly, and is highly adaptable, which is crucial for a nonbender going up against benders.

This is without even getting into how smart she is with engineering/tech and how she seems to be able to pilot literally any machine somehow.

Mako is also, just a ridiculously talented firebender, especially for someone raised on the streets. He can genrate lighting, something even Zuko was unable to. He's one of the precious few, and only non waterbender/bloodbendee or Avatar to break a bloodbendinh hold.

Like Amon himself spoke about how it was almost a shame to remove the bending of someone so talented. Mako has also been shown multuple times to be able to almost completely halt explosions in their track, even injured.

And Bolin. BOLIN.

I'm sorry but if you think Bolin isn't a fucking killing machine held back from mass murder by onky his golden retriever personality, you watched the show with horse blinders on.

Like the lavabending itself is so op thay the writers will actively nerf him by making him only use his lava disk, when, realistically, he should be yeeting lava around.

But Bolin is also insanely agile for an earthbender, literally going up against earth's steady and grounded movements. But, I'd say Bolin's earthbending resembles firebending in how he moves, particularly the speed and power.

Like, controversial opinion? Bolin at the end of tlok, could probably beat Toph at the end of atla. Or at least be evenly matched enough for me to not see a clear winner. Maybe he can even hold his own and beat out old lady Toph too, if he locks in.

Like I'm sorry. He's Fucking goated.

And honestly, it took me a while to figure out why this idea that the Krew were weak is so persistent, and I think I have a theory.

See, in atla, whenever a character achieves a new skillset, its a momentous moment, or we linger on it. Katara had a whole storyline around becoming a master waterbender, and she is given the accolades she rightfully deserves for it. The Blue Spirit was, essentially the "oh, look, Zuko's a super cool ninja too" episode. Sokka gets a whole episode to add swordsmanship to his skill tree. Toph's moment of discovering metalbending is incredibly framed and focused on, with it being a huge gamechanger against the Fire Nation. And of course, Aang mastering the elements is a centerpiece of the show.

In contrast, due to its faster pacing and bigger focus on plot, tlok has to kinda gloss over the big moments the characters have. They have to learn their skills quickly and without fanfare, and so we don't get the feeling of achievement or awe when they do display some exciting feat.

For example, let's contrast the moment Toph developed metalbending, to the moment Bolin discovered he was a lavabender.

Toph's discovery of metalbending is well prefaced with her storyline that episode being entwined with Aang's and Guru Pathik's lessons, taunts from her aggressors, deep family drama, the resolution of a b plot that has been going on since basically her introduction, as well as atrong focus on her mastering and understanding the technique.

After she gains the ability, she is boisterous and triumphant, singing her own accolades. Its a very compelling an uplifting moment that we can empathise with, and we're often reminded of it with how other characters (specifically Sokka) will often be "so glad they added her to the group".

In comparison, Bolin had a few little moments diplaying his personal issues surrounding metalbending, and some nice forshadowing with Wei's "trial by fire" comment, but it's nothing you will linger on, or get attached to as you would with Toph's storyline. You don't have time to get acquainted with this particular issue of Bolin's, so you don't exactly feel vindincated when he does prove himself by learning lavabending.

There is also no weight to the actual discovery. Sure, there's the lingering shot on his face, the implication that he's throwing himself into the inferno for only a sliver of hope of dabing his brother and friends. But when he does successfully become the third non Avatar lavabender known to history, he only gets a little joke to mark his status. Then the group immediately jumps into action, as the plot has to keep going again.

It's... depressing? And once again reminds me of what tlok could've maybe been if the show weren't so fucked over runtime wise. Because the building blocks are there. We just have to skim over them, and if you're expecting your characters' 'powerlevel' to be quantified into easily tangible storylines, weighty moments and character dialogue, you're not really gonna find anything remarkable.

Though I really wish we didn't put down characters just to elevate a broadly hated character. There is, in my opinion, very little rhyme or reason to the overwhelming wave of hate Korra gets. Trying to disperse it by blaming her supposed 'failures' on other characters won't work, because they are here fo hate Korra. They're just looking for an excuse to do so.

[rachelzeglertruther]

Why You're Wrong About Rachel Zegler

This is a long post, but there's a lot of context missing from the Rachel Zegler "discourse" that I thought I could add with my history of watching this unfold from the beginning.

The Snow White Thing

You probably know this part. There's a curated video of Rachel going viral, framed to make her seem like she's never seen Snow White, she hates the story, she hates the character, she's ungrateful, and single-handedly ruined Disney's brand. The clips from these videos are not new— they were released nearly a year ago in September 2022 and nobody cared about them at the time. Why? Because all the full interviews she did that day at the Disney Exo in 2022 showed a young, charming woman who was excited and proud to be cast in an iconic role. The interviews were very well received and it was a non story. Now that it's been edited down and cut together in a malicious way, and the people sharing them are purposefully misquoting her, they've twisted the context. Normally, this would be a non controversy. Even if that video wasn't taken out of context and spliced together to make her seem like she hates the film, most people wouldn't care. The issue is the response to the video.

Let's get this out of the way: Rachel Zegler doesn't hate Snow White. She relayed that she was afraid of the forest scene as a child and didn't revisit it again until after she was cast in the role. She has since then watched it several times and has expressed for YEARS before that interview came out that she was incredibly honored and grateful to be playing such an iconic Disney princess. If you watch the full videos that those clips came from, this comes across immediately to anyone with their own mind. If you hate someone for being scared of something as a child, I don't know what to tell you. If the role was being given to the biggest Snow White fan, you would be correct that she doesn't deserve it. Unfortunately for you, this role requires talent and Rachel has the Golden Globe and critical acclaim from people who matter within the industry (her peers and critics).

You know who does hate their beloved characters in beloved franchises but the general public still applauds them? Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Daniel Craig, and Robert Pattinson. They've all expressed outright contempt for the roles and the films they were part of, but nobody cared. People had fun with their quotes but they still respected them. Rachel said nothing even closely resembling their remarks, but she's being torn to shreds. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Rachel never said a single bad thing about the character or the animated film— she said that it was outdated and that set people over the edge, foaming at the mouth to have her burned at the stake. If you think it would be perfectly fine to have a movie about an abused 14 year old girl run away to play housemaid for a bunch of men, get kissed in her sleep/death by an adult man, and then wake up to fall into his arms in 2024, that's certainly a hot take. If you're against remakes, direct your ire at Disney. But if you truly think that plot would work with young girls today, you're the one who's out of touch. It would do far more harm than good to portray a young woman in that light.

She also never said that there was anything wrong with romance or love. She said that the new Snow White wasn't only dreaming of that. I can't stress enough that this wasn't her decision… she was describing the plot of the new film that was written by Greta Gerwig and approved by Disney. There's a prince in the film and he will also have a more developed personality and storyline. If you have a problem with the writing, wait until it comes out so you can write your strongly worded letter to Greta. If you have a problem with the concept in general, take it up with Disney. There's no need for you to be defensive over hurting the legacy of a multi-billion dollar company or a 87 year old cartoon written by a proud racist antisemite. This is the most confusing part of the hate campaign to me because it wasn't even her opinion— she was literally describing the plot of the film she had nothing to do with. It also isn't a new thing. Disney actors have been promoting their newer films this way for years.

It's perfectly okay to like things that are problematic. It's becoming an issue that we refuse to acknowledge that maybe some things we love are harmful. What we can't do is justify why it's not problematic, and in fact everyone who calls it out is the problem and NOT their precious cartoon. The 1937 Snow White was an amazing feat of animation. It's a classic for a reason. But it was also Hitler's favorite film and was directed by a white supremacist (the one who is "rolling in his grave" due to Rachel's existence, according to his son). Things don't exist in a vacuum and we can't ignore the bad parts.

How We Got Here:

The thing that everyone is missing is the source of this campaign. This started in September of 2020 when transphobic actor Gina Carano made fun of trans people by changing her pronouns to beep/bop.boop. Rachel indirectly called her out by coming to the defense of the trans community.

She never called out Gina by name (though she rightfully could have). Mind you, Rachel's first film hadn't come out yet. Nobody knew who she was outside of those of us who were anticipating West Side Story and were fans of her covers on YouTube. She was a "nobody" in the industry. Take this part with a grain of salt because I can't confirm it, but Gina and her fans directly blame Rachel for her being banned from Twitter. Again, I really don't think that matters as she's harmful to the trans community and shouldn't have a platform. What does matter is that fans of Gina (which, let's be real, are just fans of transphobia) have been stalking Rachel's every move since then. Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much they could use against her other than to call her woke and #snowbrown when she was cast a year later as the Disney princess. The noise has always been there, but unless you were a fan of hers, you probably didn't hear about it. It wasn't until two years after this that they had something else against her.

If you've recently seen a video of Rachel crying circulating that claims to be her reaction to the recent Snow White backlash, it's an old video. It's from a vlog from her youtube channel posted in June 2022. It was in response to these exact same transphobic anti-woke conservatives who thought that they had something when she did an interview on the red carpet of the Shazam premiere. When asked why she joined the DC universe, she responded "I needed a job." It was generally well received by most people who thought it was cute and funny, but those who were waiting in the shadows latched onto it as an excuse to send her death threats.

The video was also about a month after she was invited to present at the 2022 Oscars and was made to seem like she bullied the Academy (as a no name newcomer, mind you) into letting her attend. In reality, a fan left a comment on her Instagram asking what she was wearing to the event. She responded that she wasn't invited but would be rooting for everyone from her couch in her boyfriend's pajamas. It was the public who demanded she get an invite and the Oscar's must have agreed that it was very odd that the lead actress of a film that was nominated for Best Film wouldn't get an invite. Whether it was an oversight on their part or a scheduling issue with Rachel's filming, I truly think there was no malicious intent from either party. Keep in mind, she used to be very active with her fans (she's a huge fangirl of things herself and has always had a strong relationship with her fans) and she wasn't used to her comments becoming articles and national tv segments. This was the first time it happened to her. It appears she learned that she's not just a girl who posts on YouTube anymore and she's going to be put under a microscope for every move she makes. She has since shut down her Instagram comments and rarely interacts with fans outside of liking comments these days because of this.

I know this is long, but I need people to understand where this is all coming from. It didn't just happen out of nowhere. It's an orchestrated campaign built by violent conservatives, and thousands of women who saw Barbie this summer are hopping on the bandwagon to beat another woman into submission because they have a lot of internalized misogyny to deal with. She's not smug, you just hate women. It's okay to find people annoying, but it's valuable to look into why you think that. If you see a confident young woman expressing views that don't actually harm anyone and you think she needs to be "humbled" and "put in her place" by the entire internet dogpiling her, you've lost your mind. Using "body language experts" (fake job) to diagnose her as a psychopath is so vile. Everytime someone mentions her name online, the comments beneath it are full of the most violent, misogynistic, racist things I've ever seen. If you're contributing to that, you've chosen your side. Reevaluate or seek help.

I'm tired of seeing this happen to young women. We let this happen to Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larson, Millie Bobby Brown, Halle Bailey, and Jenna Ortega. It's one thing to call out celebrities and hold them accountable when they're doing something actively harmful, but that's not what this is about. That's never been what this is about. We pick these girls to pieces and examine them and pull them apart to justify our hatred of young women who rise to success too quickly for our liking. We dogpile and try to stamp out the flame before they burn too bright. Barbie is still in theaters and you all loved it, yet you're demanding that a bright girl with a big future be small and submissive and humbled because you have issues. That's not feminism. You're just the girls who would have bullied Weird Barbie for using her hands too much when she talks.

[darkstarofchaos]

Having seen some frankly irritating opinions from both sides of the aisle, I think some of y'all need to chill about the way the Decepticons were handled in EarthSpark.

Decepticon fans are allowed to be upset that the faction's depth and potential for development was tossed aside in favor of "Decepticons are just evil".

However, depth and potential doesn't mean the Decepticons have to be buddy-buddy with the Autobots. Depth is amoral, you can be a villain who resists "redemption" and still be a well-rounded character.

My issues with S2 vs S1 are as follows:

The lack of good explanation for why the sides are fighting again. I am not upset that the Cons are villains again. They have no reason to like or trust any human or Autobot, and gratitude for having your life saved only goes so far. My issue is that S2 literally opens by saying the Cons started the fight again just because that's what Cons do. Obviously the story is from the perspective of the main cast, and there are hints that they could be intentionally unreliable narrators (Starscream refers to them as oppressors, Breakdown challenges Bumblebee about giving up on Cybertron), but we aren't given enough time with the Cons to draw a solid conclusion about the intentions here.

The way the heroes treat Spitfire, i.e. a literal newborn. She was 100% in the right when she said that she didn't know the moral rules she was being expected to follow. But because she wasn't born with morals and an understanding of mortality preinstalled, the heroes condemned her instead of trying to de-escalate and take responsibility for their part in the situation (granted, Megatron was the only flight-capable adult present and he argued against de-escalation. Which tracks because he's Megatron. But someone should have pushed for a peaceful resolution).

How much depth do individual Decepticons still have? Who knows, Starscream, Shockwave, and Breakdown are the only ones with any focus. The others are only seen fighting, causing trouble for fun, or just standing around growling. Twitch - i.e. one of our main characters - literally spends an entire episode in the Con camp and we still manage to see nothing of Decepticon life when they're just hanging out. And yes, I know that the more characters you have in a scene, the harder it is to show their personalities. You can still show them playing cards or arm-wrestling or something. Anything to show that they're actually people and not just a hive mind that exists to fight.

Starscream. Specifically the last 20 minutes of the S2 finale, because everything else in his characterization fit S1 until that point. He literally calls the Autobots oppressors, so of course he's going to fight them. He wants Aftermath kept out of the way (that's a child, so that's perfectly reasonable) and he's frankly patient with Twitch-as-Spitfire, in spite of Skywarp's incredulity that he lets her "get away" with causing trouble (again, that is a child. Patience is the correct response). He even seems to like Spitfire after meeting the real her. The only issue I had with Starscream leading up to the second half of the finale was that his motivations didn't seem to be much deeper than "I want power" (I could be misremembering that point - there may have been an "Earth is going to be our home, let's make it better to live on" when he and Shockwave discussed Cybertron). And then the last 20 minutes happened and I can't see any logical extrapolation from S1 to that. It was just a generic "Starscream goes mad with power", and it came completely out of left field. Not even any remorse about what he "needed" to do or any attempt to justify himself, it was just, "Yeah, I'm worse than the people I called out for being oppressors, isn't it great?"

If there is some big plot twist where it turns out the heroes were unreliable narrators all along, some of my issues will actually be fixed. However, I find that extremely unlikely, for one major reason: all of the non-Decepticon characters who disagree with the heroes are either villains or they "come around". The Quintessons felt betrayed by Quintus? Nah, Quintus was a great guy, you can tell because he tortured a kid for wishing she had never been chosen by him. Prowl doesn't like the Autobots' reliance on children? Silly Prowl, those kids are special, we want them to fight. The narrative never, at any point, entertains the idea that those dissenting voices might have a point. Which means we're probably meant to take the heroes at face value on most, if not all things.

TL;DR: the Decepticons being villains makes perfect sense, even with the context of S1; it's the heroes acting like they're only fighting for power after we had several episodes about second chances and not all Decepticons being the same that makes it feel like a cop-out. And Decepticon fans are allowed to be upset that some of their favorite characters had interesting stuff going on only to be functionally relegated to Voiceless Grunt Number 3 (and yes, several Autobots have also been relegated to Voiceless Grunts. If one of your favorite characters has fallen victim to this affliction, regardless of faction, you have my sympathies).

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Demo — Feedback gathering!

Hello everyone!

Here we are today with a quite long post about the feedback we have received since our demo became available this past Wednesday. First of all, we want to thank you all for more than 700 downloads on itch, and more than 1000 on Steam. That's crazy! 💜

82 of you have completed our demo survey, helping this feedback gathering be way easier! We'll start with the non-spoiler stuff, and move to spoiler territory so those of you who have not been able to try out the demo yet can rest easy!

Before we start, however—

THE DEMO *HAS* 7 CGS!

If you are missing one, then it means you can obtain it by playing once more! We'll make sure to highlight this note everywhere, as some people have been confused about Amon/Envy not having a CG, or not having a scene to shine, which they do! We apologize for not making this super clear, as it's noted on our itch.io page, but under "Features", when it should have been everywhere and in big bold letters!

✦ THE GATHERED FEEDBACK WILL BE IMPLEMENTED IN OUR EXTENDED FREE DEMO

As of now, no major changes will be done to our first demo, sadly because there's no time. We are focusing on getting our Kickstarter out there and on creating high-quality content that may help us fund the full game. The first thing we'll work on if our Kickstarter is successful is the Extended Free Demo, which will see all the feedback you've given us implemented!

✦ OVERALL ENJOYMENT OF THE DEMO

More than 96% of players who did our survey enjoyed (or greatly enjoyed!) our demo, which is fantastic! We have to take this with a grain of salt, because those who didn't have a good time probably didn't finish playing it. Those who didn't enjoy the demo that much left their personal feedback, so we are super grateful for the effort of sharing their thoughts even if they didn't have fun.

✦ PACING OF THE DEMO

Most players thought the pacing was good! Some noted that the demo starts off slow (which we kind of knew—more on that below!), while others thought the demo rushes a bit to show all the love interests.

Me, the writer, and our editor Allie, knew this, so it doesn't come up as a surprise. Just to give you all some insight, as surely not all of you have been following us since we started posting about LiL; our original demo was way longer than what it ended up being. We ended up rewriting and scrapping a lot of that because it was too much work for the four of us. There were a lot more sprites and backgrounds to work on, and we decided we wanted to focus on the love interests (as they are the thing that will decide whether players want to support us or not) even if that meant the pacing wasn't perfect.

We didn't want the demo development to last another year, so we had to give a bit of story context in our actual demo without info-dumping absolutely everything, and we had to get to the love interests "fast" enough for people not to get bored while not going "fast" enough for it to feel too rushed.

Whether we did a good job or not is up to the players, and of course this feedback will help us to improve the pacing in our Extended Demo. I can only hope we have the chance to work on it to show our real vision of the demo and prologue and implement the feedback given to us when it comes to the writing / pacing, without the pressure of getting ourselves out there as soon as possible to find out if we'll be able to support ourselves and our work or not!

✦ THE TONE

The vast majority of players enjoyed the way the demo stablishes the tone of the game! Those who didn't thought the serious tone being mixed with the funny / quirky moments wasn't well done, which is completely valid!

✦ THE PLOT

93% of surveyed players thought the plot was well stablished! Luckily, there's no "I understood nothing", so that's a good sign so far! Some players noted that they felt lost but that feeling lost was the point (which it was!).

One player suggested to have the definition of important words somewhere, which will be the purpose of the Compendium in the full game! If you have played Alaris' , Crescence has a similar feature where you can place your mouse on top of a highlighted word and get an explanation of it! That's something we want to implement for the full game.

✦ ASPECTS PEOPLE LIKED ABOUT THE DEMO, AND WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED

Players generally liked the art, the story, and the characters, which is great!

People seemed to agree on wanting MORE CHOICES, and we were given advice on some parts of the current demo that would benefit of an extra choice or a choice to begin with.

We'll keep this in mind for the Extended Demo, which should give you all more time to enjoy the flavor choices and other aspects of our choice systems. Also, some of you wished for a button to turn off timed choices, which...

...Is something we decided we wanted way before starting to code the demo. Our UI artist, Alice, implemented this in our configuration screen mock-up, but I ended up being unable to program this feature. I didn't know how to do it, and with my newbie abilities it seemed impossible to achieve, so we decided to wait for the Extended demo so I had time to ask around, read, and grasp the best way to do this. I'm sorry T_T.

✦ AS FOR THE CHARACTERS (MC included)...

And this is spoiler territory!

Some people disliked Amon's southern accent (which he's very sad about), some people felt really betrayed by Gael (poor thing), and some wanted to push Envy down a set of stairs (completely valid).

Some didn't like Pride because he's "an old fart" (he's the God of Old Farts, in fact), some wanted for the MC to be able to be more aggressive towards characters like Raeya, and some thought Ara was too nice, Xal too goofy, and that took away the seriousness of the situation.

These are not the majority (everyone had their favorite and their least liked, but you all seemed happy with our cast!) but these opinions are completely valid and we wanted to highlight them.

River was liked enough for a 3~ hour demo, which we are happy about.

The majority of players thought they were relatable and liked the fact that they had a personality outside of choices; others thought there should've been more choices to really differentiate the possible personalities you can choose for the MC, and others noted it was hard to self-insert.

River is not written to be a completely blank slate, which is something we note in our Tumblr Masterpost but that should've been added to the itch page. We apologize for the confusion this may have generated. We wanted (and want) to create a balance between River being a proper character and for it to still allow some kind of self-insert and personalization. We know this will be difficult, but it's something we want to work on and we are confident we can achive a correct balance.

In the Extended Demo and full game, you'll have a chance to personalize some of River's tastes to match your own MC or your self-insert. For example, River plays the guitar, but you'll be able to select whether they're good at it, if they took classes, if they.....suck at it, or if they play another instrument.

This will, of course, only happen in the "flavor" and "personality" choices. Sadly, you won't be able to choose to a T what the MC does at any given time.

And that's all for now! I hope this post has been informative, and please don't hesitate to direct more feedback our way to help us improve. We are still reading your asks, gathering info and feedback from players and other devs, and thinking about the best way to bring those suggestions to life.

Thank you all so so much for the incredible support; for gifting us your time with reviews, feedback, or encouraging words. We hope we can keep working hard and bringing Lost in Limbo's demo to its full potential!

[arminthada]

I’m enjoying spare me your mercy and love JJ and Tor but I wish the series was 12 eps instead of 8 eps so there’s more time for the plot and to develop their relationship haha. Their relationship development feels slightly rushed now

Hi nonnie 😭😭😭😭😭😭

sighs. loudly sighs again... i get you anon, really i do. i'm really just here constantly mourning about how condensed they've made this series out to be when the source material they're trying to adapt is so long. i think @waitmyturtles 's latest post about smym ep 4 sums up well what some non-novel reader audience will feel about kantew's relationship.

detailed discussions with novel spoilers under the cut, read at your own risk 😭

since it's probably no longer a spoiler since the series has adjusted to change the culprit, i can probably discuss spoilers from the first novel in this post for comparison sake.

so at the end of book 1, Dr. Somsak is revealed to be the murderer for most of the deaths presented but he also knows that Kan has been euthanising patients -> They get into a gun fight -> Dr. Somsak gets fatally shot but isn't dead and got sent to the hospital -> Kan kills Somsak (his first intentional murder) before he could testify in court but the case is closed because all the deaths were indeed caused by Somsak.

I think in this sense, Book 1 made more sense because this was all happening while Kan and Tew were in an established relationship, henceforth in the latter half of Book 1 when evidences were starting to point at Kan, it paid off well to see Tew so distressed and hurt because he didn't like being lied to and he couldn't believe his lover who's he been fucking is a serial murderer (even though he isn't).

The betrayal comes around again in Book 2 when Tew finds out he's been lied to AGAIN. And you could tell the angst hits harder is because we SEE them together as a couple, as boyfriends in a budding established relationship, not as people who have only been seeing each other for a few weeks.

I understand the need to adjust and cover the big plot points but yea I feel the same way anon... their source material was more than enough to be covered in 12-16 eps as opposed to 8 eps. or alternatively as @waitmyturtles suggested in her comment here, it would have been much better to present kantew as an established couple from the beginning and flashback to the past before starting to unravel their relationship.

sighs.... i think Tor and JJ are killing it with the material they're given though. Carrying this type of script is just hard though because sometimes chemistry and acting skills alone isn't enough for a convincing romance narrative.

loudest sighs... lord i wish we got more KanTew scenes before they killed Dr. Somsak off to move tbe story along like pleaseeeee. I was robbed.

I wish I could be mad at Lux but then again they've been able to really incorporate a lot of debates on Euthanasia which Book 1 severely lacked into these first four episodes (something @lurkingshan has also noted here) I can't be entirely mad because you can't say there aren't good adjustments...

But it just so happens that Spare Me Your Mercy has ended up more of a series about clashing opinions on Euthanasia than a crime investigation/romance/suspense series... but the actors have promoted it to be the former rather than the latter so I've really only got myself to blame for expecting more on the relationship development 😭😭😭😭😭

also my apologies nonnie for dumping all this on you... smym is shaping up to be my no. 1 series of the year (because of all the euthanasia debates) but not at all for the reason i expected it to be (for the romance between the cunty and charming doctor and the dorky righteous gullible cop)

[thelastspeecher]

McGucket (Alien) Abduction III

Eventually, I'll come up with a different style of title. But I'm going through it and this is what I've got for y'all.

This was able to be posted sooner after the last one because I already had most of it written up. Just had to write the first scene and then rewrite the second one a bit to better fit the first. Anyways, enjoy a Big Plot Point happening.

Part I Part II

———————————————————————————————————–

              Angie was unconscious, limp in Stan's arms, by the time they burst through the main doors of the hospital.

              “Where's the emergency room?” Fiddleford gasped. The sprint to the building had thoroughly winded him. Stan looked at him in confusion but didn't say anything. He ran up to the closest doctor, distinguished from non-medical staff by a tool belt with various, presumably medical, devices in it. The doctor, chubby and brown-furred, looked at Angie in shock.

              “What's wrong with it?” he asked.

              “Allergic reaction,” Fiddleford said, having caught up to Stan. He made a mental note to tell someone at the hospital Angie's correct pronoun. Most non-Heaters were referred to as “it” as a default, including humans. The doctor stared at Fiddleford in horror.

              “Allergic reaction?”

              “Please tell me you know what that is,” Fiddleford moaned. The doctor took what looked like a pen from his belt. He twisted it a few times, then stuck it into Angie's neck. Angie gasped. Color began to flood her face again, though her eyes remained closed.

              “Of course I know what it is! I'm just surprised to see it on this planet. Allergies have been eradicated for generations here.”

              “Well, we're from Earth,” Fiddleford snapped. The doctor didn’t seem perturbed by his tone.

              “Most humans are.” The doctor began to look Angie over, lifting her eyelids to shine a light into her eyes, feeling her neck and hands. “All offspring born on this planet are given a treatment at birth that removes any current allergies and prevents new ones from developing. The number of times I've seen someone have an allergic reaction, well, it's now twice. Though this was far more severe than the slight rash that I saw before.”

              “Is she gonna be all right?” Stan asked. The doctor stopped messing with Angie and stepped back.

              “Yes. I gave her epinephrine.”

              “She has an EpiPen on Earth, but it wasn't on her when we were abducted,” Fiddleford said. The doctor raised an eyebrow at him.

              “From that, I'm guessing she has this sort of reaction frequently?”

              “Uh, she didn't used to. On Earth, she's just got one thing what she's dangerously allergic to; that's why she has the EpiPen. She gets seasonal allergies, but they ain’t too bad most years.” Fiddleford looked at Angie. “Since we were abducted, though, she's been havin’ minor reactions to a lot of things. She switched to bein’ vegetarian, and that stopped it for the most part.” Stan abruptly looked down, his expression guilty.

              “Hmm. In her case, I'd recommend we give her the same treatment we give those born on this planet,” the doctor said.

              “The one what gets rid of allergies?” Fiddleford asked.  The doctor nodded.  “Is it...safe? Has it been tested on humans?”

              “It's been used on various Heater hybrids, including Heater-Human,” the doctor said. Fiddleford tapped his foot anxiously. “I think it's a better option than taking her off-planet.”

              “Wh- why would we take her off-planet?” Fiddleford asked.

              “You said she's had this sort of reaction before,” the doctor said. Fiddleford nodded. “Then you know just the shot of epinephrine isn't enough. She needs further treatment. The only thing we can do for her here is give her the allergy treatment we've been discussing. Otherwise, she'll have to go to a facility off-planet to finish treatment for this particular reaction.”

              “I- I-”

              “Am I correct that you are her blood relative?” the doctor asked. Fiddleford nodded. “Then you have to make the decision.” Fiddleford's blood ran cold.

              “Can't we just wait fer her to wake up?”

              “Hospital policy dictates she'll stay unconscious until treatment is complete,” the doctor said. “Heaters make for poor patients.”

              “But she's not a Heater! You can wake her up, she'll behave!”

              “I wish the policy allowed for some nuance like that, but it doesn't,” the doctor said, his tone apologetic. Fiddleford closed his eyes to think.

              “What would happen if we took her off-planet?”

              “She might destabilize en route to the other medical facility.”

              “And you might get picked up by poachers again,” Stan pointed out. “It hasn't been long enough for them to stop looking for you.”

              “Oh, son of a gun,” Fiddleford whispered under his breath. He sighed and opened his eyes. “You sure the thing you've got here won't hurt her?”

              “Positive.” The doctor grinned. “I actually specialize in Exotics like you two. You were lucky to find me so fast.”

              “Fine. Give her the treatment.”

              “We'll admit her right away,” the doctor said. He pulled what looked like a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. Soon, orderlies came by with a bed for Angie. Stan carefully laid her on it.  “We’ll get you once she’s settled in her room.”  Fiddleford watched them wheel his sister away. He looked at Stan.

              “Think I did the right thing?” he asked quietly. Stan frowned thoughtfully. After a moment, he responded.

              “I think you did the only thing you could.”

-----

              Fiddleford waited while Shermie spoke with the doctors about how Angie was doing.

              “I still can’t believe Angie’s goin’ to be rid of her allergies fer good,” he said, shaking his head.  “She’s goin’ to be thrilled.”  Shermie came back over to them, looking concerned.  “Is she awake?  Can we see her?”

              “No to the first question, yes to the second,” Shermie said.  Fiddleford frowned.

              “She’s still asleep?  But they said they’d let her wake up, since the treatment was done.”

              “The doctor is keeping her asleep for the time being,” Shermie explained.  “Some side effects from the treatment emerged overnight.  He wants to keep her sedated to avoid any pain or stress from them.”

              “Well, if they think keepin’ her under is the right move, I s’ppose I’ll trust ‘em,” Fiddleford mumbled.  Shermie smiled and patted Fiddleford’s shoulder.

              “She’ll be fine.  Let’s go see her, okay?” he said gently.  Fiddleford nodded.

              Fiddleford and Stan followed Shermie through the alien hospital, past rooms of strange beings getting examinations and signage in an alphabet Fiddleford didn’t know.  When they got to Angie’s room, Shermie paused in front of the door.

              “Just as a warning, the doctor said that the side effects were very visible.  Angie will probably look a bit different,” Shermie said.  Fiddleford stared at him.

              “What kind of side effects does she have?!” he demanded, his voice squeaking.  Shermie sighed.

              “I don’t know.  The doctor was being incredibly vague.”

“All right, I don’t wanna stand around talking all day,” Stan snapped impatiently.  He pushed open the hospital room door.  “Is it normal for human hair color to change?”

              “To a certain extent,” Fiddleford said.  “But not overnight.”

              “I think I figured out what side effect the doctor was talking about, then,” Stan said.  He walked into the hospital room.  Fiddleford and Shermie followed.  Fiddleford froze.  The sleeping young woman in the hospital bed had vivid red hair with bright pink streaks.

              “Yeah,” Fiddleford croaked.  “That’s not normal fer a human.”  He walked over to Angie’s bed.  Her face was relaxed, calm.  Fiddleford stroked her cheek.  As he did so, he felt his heart do a somersault.  Angie’s skin was typically soft, thanks to the moisturizers she used.  But it wasn’t ever fuzzy.  Fiddleford crouched slightly to get a closer look at her face.  “Sweet sarsaparilla.”

              “What?” Stan asked.  Fiddleford stared at the thin layer of light, felt-like fur over Angie’s skin.  “Fiddleford, what’s going on?  Why are you acting weird?”

              “I think I found another side effect,” Fiddleford managed weakly.  Stan walked over to join him in looking at Angie’s skin.

              “She didn’t have fur before?”

              “No!”

              “Huh.”  Stan straightened.  He looked at Angie’s newly vibrant hair.  “Look, I’ve heard of some weird side effects to things before, but this is…”

              “The doctor said that he was worried the treatment being designed for our species might be causing the side effects,” Shermie said quietly.  “After all, it is a form of gene therapy.  It’s possible some genetic material from our species is getting mixed up with hers.”

              “She’s turning into one of us?” Stan asked.  There was a strange, almost eager note in his voice.  Fiddleford shot him a glare, which he didn’t notice.  Shermie shrugged.

              “I doubt it, but I’m not a doctor.  We’d have to ask.”

              “She better not be,” Fiddleford muttered.  Shermie and Stan looked at him.  “Nothin’ against yer species, o’ course!  I just…”  Fiddleford ran his fingers through Angie’s hair, now a color that reminded him of their older sister Violynn’s.  Angie smiled faintly in her sleep.  Fiddleford felt tears prick the corners of his eyes.  “I want to be able to bring her home.”

-----

              There was a slight commotion in the “Exotics” wing of the hospital, where non-native species were tended to, when Fiddleford and Stan arrived the next day.  Stan frowned, his ears turning back and forth to listen to conversations as they headed for Angie’s room.

              “Okay, just as a heads up, there’s a lot of people talking about the human,” he said to Fiddleford.  “I’m guessing that she got some more side effects.”  Fiddleford groaned.  They got to Angie’s hospital room.  The door was open.  Fiddleford poked his head in.  His heart sank.  Three Heater doctors were clustered around Angie’s bed, having an intense conversation.

              “Um.  Excuse me,” he managed in a wavering voice.  The doctors looked over.

              “Ah!  Fiddleford,” said Angie’s doctor.  “Please, come in.  We have some things to tell you.”  He turned to the other doctors.  “This is her brother.  Any decisions regarding her care, he has the authority to make.”

              Fiddleford’s stomach did a backflip.

              I don’t want to make any more medical decisions fer Angie.  I’m still regrettin’ the last one I made.

              “So, um, what- how- how is she doin’?” Fiddleford asked as he entered the room.  He felt Stan put a hand on his shoulder in a reassuring manner.

              “First, I want you to know that she’s completely healthy,” Angie’s doctor said.  Fiddleford swallowed.  “She has no lingering symptoms of her allergic reaction and tests are coming back negative for allergies towards anything.”

              “Okay.  But what-” Fiddleford started.  He cut himself off as he reached Angie’s bed.  Angie’s hair was spread around her head like a red and pink halo, leaving her ears completely visible.  Ears that resembled those of a cat’s more than a human’s.

              Fiddleford felt dizzy.  He swayed slightly.  Stan grabbed him, holding him upright.

              “Uh-uh,” Stan said firmly.  “You don’t get to pass out.”  Fiddleford swallowed.

              “Yer right,” he mumbled.  He forced himself to look at Angie’s ears again.  They were covered in cream-colored fur and large, shaped like those of a fennec fox but with a pointy tuft of fur on top like a lynx.  “What…what happened?”

              “Your sister’s body is continuing to change from the treatment,” the doctor said.  Fiddleford stared at him.

              “Yer still givin’ her the medicine?”

              “I should have phrased that better,” the doctor said.  “No, the treatment is a one-time injection.  But it appears that not all of the ways her DNA changed are manifesting at once.  During the shift change, a nurse noticed her ears and notified the doctor on call.  She did an examination at the time that found…”  The doctor looked down at the clipboard in his hands.  “Her ears have changed, and her hearing likely with it, though we won’t know for sure until she wakes up.  The fur on some parts of her body has thickened, but is still thinner than that of a Heater’s.  Her tongue is rougher-”

              “I’m sorry, her tongue?” Fiddleford interjected.

              “Heaters have rough tongues,” Stan said.  “Females more than males.”  The doctor nodded.

              “That’s correct.”  He looked at his clipboard again.  “As I was saying, her tongue is rougher and shows the spines we would expect to see in a female of our species.  The calluses on her feet are thicker; that’s a spot we’ll be watching, as it seems to be currently developing.”  The doctor looked up.  “And she has a small tail,” he finished.  Fiddleford’s jaw dropped.  Stan leaned in, interested.

              “Really?” he asked.  The doctor nodded.

              “As I understand it, all humans have tailbones.  It appears that hers grew slightly, and developed the thicker fur I mentioned earlier.  It’s nowhere near that of a Heater’s, but she will have to get used to the sensation of it.”

              “A tail,” Fiddleford mumbled.  He put his hand to his forehead and stumbled back a few paces.  “A tail…”

              “Son of a- no, don’t-” Stan said, reaching for him.  It was too late.  Darkness filled Fiddleford’s vision as he collapsed onto the hospital room floor.  “Great.”

-----

              Angie had been asleep in the hospital for five days.  Fiddleford sat outside her room, his head in his hands, as the doctor performed a physical exam on his comatose sister.  Today’s escort to visit Angie, Amelia, rubbed his back reassuringly.

              “Look, even if she were to turn into a full Heater, she can live a perfectly fine life on Earth,” Amelia said gently.  “Stan’s twin goes to school there.  He uses a hologram to appear human.”

              “But she couldn’t marry someone.”

              “Maybe not from Earth, but there are plenty of people around here who would like a mate as sweet as her,” Amelia said.  “And if she’s set on finding a human, well, you two aren’t the only ones that have ever been poached.  I’m sure I could set up a few blind dates for her.”  Fiddleford managed a watery smile at Amelia.

              “Yer awful kind.”

              “I’m a social worker.  I’m supposed to be.”  Amelia tousled Fiddleford’s hair.  “Trust me.  Angie can still go home.”  The door to Angie’s room opened.  Fiddleford jumped to his feet.

              “Come in,” Angie’s doctor said.  Fiddleford and Amelia entered the hospital room.  Once they were in, the doctor closed the door.  “I have some excellent news.”

              “Really?” Fiddleford murmured, looking at the inhuman person sleeping in Angie’s bed.

              “Yes.  She’s stabilized.”  Fiddleford whipped his head around to look at the doctor.  The doctor beamed at him.  “As far as we can tell, she hasn’t had any changes in a day and a half.”

              “She’s- she’s done changin’?” Fiddleford said weakly.  After four days of being told the different ways Angie’s body was slowly turning into that of a Heater’s, it seemed impossible that it would ever stop.

              “It appears so.  I’d estimate she’s roughly 20% Heater.”

              “One-fifth,” Fiddleford said quietly.  The doctor nodded.

              “Yes.  I’d like to keep her under for another day or two, just to be safe, as most of these changes would likely have caused her great pain while they were happening.”  Fiddleford snorted softly, thinking of how he’d come to the hospital on day three and was told she’d grown multiple inches overnight.

              “Once she wakes up, how soon can she come home?” Amelia asked.  The doctor shrugged.

              “It depends on how well she handles her changes.  We’ll want her to stay here for a few days to undergo therapy.  Mental therapy to help her come to terms with her new body, and physical therapy to help her get used to moving around in it.  We’ll also give her some instructions on how to take care of herself.  Heaters have a very different physiology from humans.”

              “She can’t come back even after she wakes up?” Fiddleford asked.  The doctor smiled kindly at him.

              “I understand, you’re eager to have your sister back.  But we need to keep her under observation to make sure she’s doing all right with her new circumstances.  Particularly given your family history of anxiety and low stress tolerance.”  Fiddleford nodded reluctantly.  “I suspect we should be able to send her home next week.”

              “Good,” Amelia said.

              “I’ll let you have some time together,” the doctor said.  He left the room.  Fiddleford walked over to Angie.  He stroked her cheek, feeling the felt-like fuzz that covered her body.

              Except in the spots where it’s actual fur.  He took a deep, steadying breath.  Stay optimistic.  She’s still mostly herself.  And she’s tougher ‘n she looks.  One of Angie’s ears twitched slightly.  Despite himself, Fiddleford smiled at the admittedly cute movement.  She’ll get through this.  She has to.

-----

              Fiddleford watched the Heater doctor mess with Angie’s IV drip.  After a moment, the doctor glanced at Angie on the bed.

              “She should be coming out of it soon,” he said.  “I’ll leave you alone so that she has some familiar faces when she wakes up.  Try to keep her calm about the changes.  Stress would be difficult on her after what she’s been through.”

              “Got it,” Fiddleford croaked.  As Angie’s sole relative present, he felt obligated to speak on her behalf, despite his own frayed nerves.  The doctor patted him reassuringly on the shoulder on his way out of the room.

              About five minutes passed before the figure on the hospital bed began to stir, groaning slightly.

              “Ugh…”  Angie opened her eyes.  Fiddleford sighed, relieved that they were the same as they had been when she collapsed from her allergic reaction.  After the last few days, there had been a genuine likelihood she’d no longer have the blue eyes she’d gotten from their Ma.  “What- okay…”  Angie slowly sat up in the hospital bed.  She rubbed her eyes.  “I have a lot of questions.  But I think I need somethin’ to drink.  My mouth feels weird.”  Fiddleford jumped from his seat and grabbed the cup of water they’d had ready for just this occasion.

              “Yer mouth in general?” Fiddleford asked.  He handed the cup to Angie.  She took it from him and thirstily downed it.  “Or a specific part of yer mouth?”  Angie handed back the now empty cup with a slight frown.

              “How’d ya know it was a specific part?” she asked warily.

              “What part?”

              “I get the feelin’ you know.”

              “Humor me, please.”

              “Fine,” Angie sighed.  “My tongue.”  Fiddleford stepped back and exchanged a look with Stan and Shermie.  That lined up with what the doctor claimed to have observed.  “What’s goin’ on?  What’s that look?”

              “I think you should see yourself,” Stan finally said.  He held out a mirror that they had decided to bring after discussing the best way to break the news to Angie.  Angie took it from him warily.  She held it up to her face.  There was a pause.

              “The only person here who would dye my hair while I’m in the hospital unconscious would be Stan.”  Angie set down the mirror on her lap to glare at Stan.  “So I won’t ask who, I’ll just ask why.”

              “She’s being a lot calmer than I thought she would,” Shermie remarked quietly to Fiddleford.  Fiddleford sighed.

              “She’s always been one to wake up slow.  Once she’s fully awake, then there’ll be fireworks.”

              “What do you mean, you didn’t dye my hair?” Angie demanded, drawing Shermie and Fiddleford’s attention.  “Last thing I ‘member, my hair sure as heck weren’t red ‘n pink!”  Her voice got louder, her accent thicker.  Fiddleford winced.

              “She’s wakin’ up now,” he said softly.  Shermie nodded grimly.

              “Look, it’s-”  Stan groaned loudly.  He whipped his head around to look at Shermie and Fiddleford.  “Step in anytime!” he growled.  Fiddleford stepped forward and sat on the edge of Angie’s hospital bed.  Angie stopped glaring at Stan and turned her gaze to Fiddleford.

              “What’s the last thing you ‘member?” Fiddleford asked carefully.  Angie yawned widely, showing a mouthful of thankfully still human teeth.

              “I had another one of my classic allergic reactions after eatin’ some weird sandwich.”  Angie shrugged.  “That’s it.”  Her eyes widened.  “How long have I been out?”

              “About a week.”

              “A week?!”

              “The doctors got ya stabilized from yer allergic reaction, but to fully heal ya, they had to give ya a special treatment.  Apparently, it removes all allergies.”

              “I’m not allergic to anything anymore?” Angie asked eagerly.  Fiddleford could see the hair covering her ears from view shift slightly, as though the ears themselves were moving.

              “Correct.  But, um.”  Fiddleford sighed.  “The treatment had some…side effects.  The doctors wanted to keep ya under until those settled down.”

              “I don’t like how ya just said ‘side effects’,” Angie said.

              “Pick up the mirror again,” Fiddleford said.  Angie did as she was told.  “Tuck yer hair behind yer ear.”

              “What-”

              “Just do it,” Stan said impatiently.  Angie hesitantly moved the hair obscuring her left ear.  The mirror in her hand quivered, then fell to the bed.  “Yeah.”

              “What- what-”  Angie clapped her hands over her ears, which now looked somewhere between her original ones and the large, furry ones of a Heater.  “Explain!  Now!” she squeaked.  As they had practiced, now was when Shermie spoke up.

              “The treatment to remove allergies is a form of gene therapy,” he said calmly.  “It turns off some genes and turns on others.  In some, it even adds a few.”  Angie stared at him in horror.  “As you might be able to guess, it’s a treatment only tested on my species.  Not yours.”

              “I- I-”  Angie hunched forward and retched, but thankfully didn’t vomit.  “The thing what got rid of my allergies rewrote my DNA?”

              “Partially, yes,” Shermie said.  Angie groaned loudly.  Fiddleford patted her leg, making what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

              “Yer still mostly you, though,” he said.  “The doctors say yer only a small portion Heater.”

              “That’s cold comfort when I have ears like this,” Angie snapped.  She dragged her hands down her face.  “The thing with my tongue, was that…?”

              “Yeah, our species has spiny tongues for grooming,” Stan said.  “Especially females.  Females have rougher, stronger tongues.  Doc says you got that.”  Angie groaned again.  “Look, it could be worse.”

              “How?” Angie demanded.

              “You could have fully turned into a Heater,” Fiddleford said softly.  Angie paled.

              “Really?”

              “The doctors weren’t sure how far you’d change.  It seemed like it was goin’ that way fer a bit.  But then you stopped changin’, and the doctors decided you were done with however you were goin’ to be now.”  Angie looked down at her still very human hands.

              “I don’t know if this is better than that,” she said quietly.  “To be stuck somewhere between two species?  It’s- it’s…”  She shook her head.  “Fidds…”  Tears welled up in her eyes.  “What am I goin’ to do?”  Fiddleford couldn’t hold back any longer.  He leaned forward, pulling his little sister into a tight embrace.  Her fuzz-covered body shook in his arms.

              “I don’t rightly know.  But believe you me.  We’ll figure it out.”

[bastiandawn]

rambling about my sebastian """redemption""" au lest it consume me alive before i get around to writing it properly: part 1 of ???, major plot differences

disclaimer: i don't like or pity sebastian as a person. he does compel me as a character, though, in his own twisted way, and that is why the au exists in the first place. many of the things sebastian has done in the books are unforgiveable (his attempted assault of clary is most obvious, and his killing of max lightwood), and this au is not attempting to """redeem""" that version of sebastian. this is a different world, where things are slightly better, for the world and the people in it, and as the late jonathan morgenstern once hoped, "if there are other worlds, then maybe there is one where i was a good brother and a good son." in the case of this au... well, redemption is in heavy quotes for a reason. this au is attempting to explore a sebastian who is, while not (yet) entirely remorseful for his actions, is aware that there is a path laid out for him, first by valentine and later lilith, that he doesn't particularly want to go down. this is also just my own personal playground/rewrite of how tsc handles its sociopolitics. and some of the characters. (other than sebastian, obviously)

CONTENT WARNING: brief discussion of incest (skip past part 1, point 3)

PART I: The Mortal Instruments

1. sebastian and the non-death of max lightwood

the first change that kicks off the timeline is that sebastian, for whatever reason, holds back when attacking max lightwood, and again when attacking isabelle, who is left only just conscious enough to give max a rune that, while it saves his life, leaves him in a feverish coma for weeks. if you've read shadowhunter academy, this would be a similar rune-rejection fevercoma that robert lightwood went through, though exacerbated given max's younger age.

i will elaborate on max's character later on/in another post, but his being alive does affect how much his family and clary are willing to eventually tolerate sebastian. some are still horrified at him attacking a child, but with a guy as messed up as sebastian, you have to take what you can get. their limits are incredibly stretched, though, when maxwell demands sebastian become his mentor in a "teach me everything you know, and then i'll take my revenge and kill you" way. as i said, i'll elaborate more later.

2. the fall of idris

this is not really related much directly to sebastian's character development as it is to the others, but definitely a large elephant in the room. for reasons i will figure out later on (that are definitely related to my exploration of shadowhunter systematic bigotry), valentine partially succeeds in destroying idris, which is now overtaken with demons. shadowhunters destabilized and decentralized, though a good many have relocated to the london institute for safety. also alec, isabelle, jace, and clary are somewhat excommunicated for reasons of clary's alliance rune and rallying downworlder aid.

3. jace and clary are not in a relationship

i wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the character changes, but given the entire tmi series revolves around these two and their weird, WEIRD romance with each other, i'm putting it here. yeah, not a jlary fan. the adopted son of your father is STILL your brother, and jace and clary acknowledge valentine's fatherhood multiple times.

HOWEVER (and this comes with an incredibly huge disclaimer) i am already attempting to explore some pretty heavy topics in this au, and incestuous feelings are one of these topics. while there will be no mutually-reciprocated incest in my au, the fact of the matter is that clary and jace did experience romantic and physical attraction for one another, and sebastian experienced physical attraction towards clary. the thing is that, especially on clary's end, the full psychological impact of these things is not fully addressed in my opinion. her first kiss turned out to be from her brother, and then her other brother kissed and assaulted her via deception.

clary deserves better than to just end up with jace for reasons i cannot fathom. she deserves to process her father being a fascist, her mother lying to her for her whole life, and the fact she can never return to being a normal girl. i'll speak more on what i'm doing with her character later on.

4. the ultimate bad guy of tmi is your own unchecked prejudice and bigotry (or rather, jace's)

a huge sticking point for me with tmi has always been the main characters's pretty blatant prejudice towards downworlders and "mundanes", without ever being properly called out or made to actually sit and think about what they've internalized. they were raised in a society that breeds bigotry like the circle, and the only reason the circle was considered dangerous was because they chose to attack the clave alongside downworlders. and jace was raised by their leader, and then by two of its high-ranking members, and is never called out for his treatment of especially simon. in this au, the demonic parabatai bond, while still favoring sebastian's autonomy, amplifies the similarities between two participants's darkest sides. because jace and sebastian are so fundamentally similar, raised by the same man to have similar values, jace becomes "evil" because those impulses, his arrogance, his unquestioned bigotry, his instinct for violence, are all made even stronger.

at the battle of the burren, jace is never stabbed by glorious, but lilith severs the bond at sebastian's request. (lilith strikes me as a mom who doesn't really understand her child; she thinks sebastian is just going through a phase, and humors him.) however, jace is still consumed by his worst impulses, taking the endarkened circle to idris with lilith's aid. there, clary and the others, alongside sebastian and a newly formed downworlder coalition, face down jace and stab him with glorious. afterwards, realizing all he's done, jace chooses to have his marks stripped from him in order to atone.

5. the formation of the downworlder-nephilim allianceale

alec's insistence of changing the system from within the system... annoys me, for the same reason people who say to reform instead of defund the police annoy me. when the system is so fundamentally broken it enables murderers and fascists, there is no salvaging it. when the barrel is filled with rotting apples, there is no "finding a good one" in it; even the most pristine-looking of the bunch will be tainted by its proximity to the others.

which is why this au is severely overhauling downworlder relations, to be a storyline less about "magic cops are actually the only thing keeping you alive so you need us" to actually empowering downworlders to take care of themselves and each other. there was a world without shadowhunters, there will be one after, and downworlders will continue to exist with or without them. after all, shadowhunters are just an organization at the end of the day.

forming the downworlder-nephilim alliance leads to the defeat of lilith, a victory won through collective community effort rather than just the actions of a handful of people like it was against sebastian. and it's the end of the circle, once and for all.

6. clary joins the praetor lupus

the praetor lupus really show up to stop luke from dying and then get wiped out. this is genuinely insane to me, considering they're the only organization formed by downworlders to help other downworlders, something which apparently has just never happened in all of a thousand or more years? there are so many avenues to go with something like the praetor, like having them help unite werewolves and vampires because of their work helping fledglings, or maybe even starting a vampire branch of the praetor lupus, or expanding across the country. there are characters like alec, who could reach out regarding a downworlder-nephilim alliance, or simon, who was directly helped by them.

but i choose clary because... well, clary is a very directionless character. she becomes a hero, sure, but that's less something she aspired to be and more something she became out of necessity. i don't think she makes many decisions that don't revolve around jace in specific, or another man in her life. i think clary should make a choice for herself, and if she's a hero, then she should aspire to help people, especially people who are marginalized and unsupported like she and simon once were. and yes, i know the praetor lupus only accept, well, lupus, but in my au, let's just say they're eventually convinced to expand their recruiting pool.

7. sebastian becomes tessa gray's apprentice

this might be the most self-indulgent part of the au, and this is literally the au where nobody dies and everyone is happy (well, almost). my biggest problem with the supposed cause of sebastian's evil being his demon blood corrupting him, and not him being raised by a fascist to be a remorseless child soldier, has always been the fact that... tessa and james and lucie exist. sebastian is quite literally not as special as he's been told his whole life, nor is he biologically incapable of anything but causing pain and destruction. i know that cassandra clare probably didn't write sebastian with full foresight of the gray-herondales, but with hindsight, it reveals a huge flaw in the narrative's logic. anyhow, all this to say that i believe tessa and jem could be a good influence on sebastian. also, if you haven't guessed by my url, this au's sebastian ends up something of a warlock.

PART II: The Eldest Curses

1. the morgenstern family european roadtrip

this part is probably going to be the shortest, given the last book of the trilogy won't release for another... 2 years, at the minimum. this isn't technically a change, as we are fully into au territory now, and how shinyun jung got the svefnthorn was (unfortunately) interrupted by magnus (i wish we'd gotten something about it. alas). to make it brief, clary, jace, and sebastian go on a (you guessed it) family roadtrip around europe, just to try and ease the weird and awkward tenseness between them whenever they were in the same building.

it doesn't go great: clary and jace fight over directions while she drives, sebastian starts going crazy hallucinating his father's voice, which leads them to a strange warlock woman looking for a sword sebastian is convinced he was meant to find. their other escapades include getting wine-drunk, becoming temporary babysitters of a very blue baby, meeting a second cousin they didn't know they had... and sebastian realizes whose voice he's been listening to the whole time.

2. sebastian's stepfather tries to recruit him into a doomsday cult

the lost book of the white had me hooked the moment ragnor mentioned sammael was looking for sebastian because lilith asked him to. it got me wondering how on earth that meeting would go, and especially since this sebastian is ostensibly trying not to destroy the world with the help of demonic forces. sebastian is sort of unable to fully refuse, though, but it does help that he's his mother's special little boy, and that sammael loves lilith very, very much.

i have yet to discover anything that would have to change, and therefore until further notice, nothing does, except the lost book of the white has sebastian creeping around in the background. not exactly a major change, i suppose, but better to mention it early than leave it oddly hanging. sebastian and ragnor could have a conversation regarding jocelyn, i suppose...

PART III: The Dark Artifices

1. i'm actually planning to turn this into a fic, so i don't think i can spoil anything in this post

exactly what it says on the tin. this fic is actually the main reason i'm posting on this blog. also this is far down the post enough that i can be more frank with you: i don't really want to have to rewrite city of fallen angels to heavenly fire just to get to the stuff that fascinates me the most, which is what this fic involves. to give you a sneak peek, sebastian joins a necromancy cult, comes to terms with being a father, and helps find the lost herondale; maxwell lightwood and livia blackthorn team up; and a war between the seelie and unseelie court brews in the distance...

[fasole-dulce]

I saw Thunderbolts last night and loved it. Gonna post some thoughts below the line so y’all can avoid spoilers

I loved the mental health theme and touching on loneliness (which seems to be a big problem nowadays). Yet, Red Guardian was funny as hell. Him driving up to them in the desert reminded me of uncle Buck picking up the teenager at school in his embarrassing car. They did taskmaster dirty though.

I usually think of spoilers as anything related to the plot or something that’s better as a surprise. But, I realize it can also be letting even the “non spoilery” stuff online can color your perception.

At the end of the movie, I was wishing there was more Bucky. But he had a lot of screen time. Was he the lead character? No, Yelena was, but I knew that going in. Florence had top billing so I was expecting it. And Bucky had a lot of screen time. But, I saw some bitching on here about how he wasn’t given enough development. I guess my point is if I hadn’t seen any of the negativity, would I have been happier with the amount of Bucky? I think so.

The thing is there are parts of the fandom that are never going to be happy. Marvel could give Bucky his own 10 season/20 episodes per season show and there would still be bitching.

I need to curate my online feed better for doomsday.

[spirit-meets-the-b0ne]

House of the Dragon was built to fail

Which the greatest shame of that is, I truly believe they got an incredible cast of talented actors, it's distressing to see them largely wasted. I've been an HBO fan (in a Stockholm kind of way) for the better part of two decades and even some of their usual pitfalls were accelerated here. While it's easy to just blame Ryan (5 spits for an enemy Condall) it still feels like there's more than just writing or directing so this post won't focus as much on the characterization follies but more on the story's infrastructure. While budgetary concerns with a show like this are obvious considering the dragons cost a great deal of time and money it is odd to me that this is a series rather than a mini-series. By that I mean, HBO for most of their big productions had seasons ranging from 10-15 episodes (Sopranos S1 13 episodes, True Blood S1 12 episodes, The Wire S1 13 episodes, etc) so this is exceptionally short of a season for House of the Dragon. Game of Thrones original run was largely a 10 episode format until the later seasons which were also notably shit.

This structure was never designed to give the characters or an audience time to breathe. While this is something that is continually brought up across the cinema/film community these days it seems especially important here. It also seems very easy for an audience to decide against investing time and energy into a series that only holds you for 8 weeks and then takes another 2-3 years of production. As most of the audience knows, it isn't like there is a shortage of materials for the show to incorporate. It's an active choice to not dive more into the lives and circumstances of these character and their relationships. Now, I'm not expecting Lost 2.0 where every character will get an episodic focal point and backstory. Still, you have plenty of non-dragon riding characters whom you could spend time with that don't require maxing out your VFX budget for. Because as of right now from the posts I've been seeing it's clear that most of the general audience at this point is more invested in the dragons than any human character in the show save for some Stans. I can't say I blame them. Most every character at this point is barely tolerable or straight up deeply unlikeable. That's a failure of the writers and directors explicitly. I think the actors are genuinely doing the best they could with the material they're given.

It's frustrating because while I was expecting this show to disappoint (both because of GoT's outcome and HBO's late game losing streak shout out to True Blood for getting so bad I never watched the final episodes) this production is hitting that wall way sooner than expected. If there was another 2-4 episodes to actually develop the characters and their relationships (even with piss poor writing) it might have helped tremendously but this structure is going to leave an audience wanting more and not in a good way. If there is a season 3 I can't imagine in 2 years that a lot of the current viewership would return. So even the "fix it" episode rewrites fans make don't seem like enough, to me you genuinely need more material, more for an audience to invest in or feel a part of. If this season was even 10 episodes there would have been so much room for improvement. The Last of Us was able to deliver a satisfying plot and character arcs with 9 episodes and there's a huge difference with the way that was received by audiences vs. HotD. The obvious difference is the amount of time they needed to tell that story vs. the amount of time you rightly needed to tell this one, which is case in point why HotD needed more time. So, while a short season can deliver satisfaction in some cases, I don’t believe as a rule it should all be common place to condense stories and characters. Especially considering HotD's compression is coming largely at the expense of the women in the show (Rhaena, Jeyne Arryn, Helaena, Nettles, Rhaenrya and Alicent's respective character assassination, etc). That's to say even if these character plots deviate from the canon they have the room to grow and develop a character completely to an audience. If you're going to change a character from the source material at least make them a well-developed different person.

[thehousepatron]

Some Drow Poisons and Their Effects

The link is here: http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/poison.htm

Velkyn Ogglin (“Invisible Foe”)

This rare poison is taken from the toxin sacs of the uncommon *dakhree* fish that swims in certain Underdark lakes. The brewer must remove the sacs with gloves on his hands if he wishes to avoid being poisoned himself. The sacs are located all over the fish's six-inch body, and are tiny, requiring a steady hand and delicacy to remove effectively, hence the rarity. The dakhree fish hunts by rubbing against its prey, releasing the toxin onto its victim. On most fish, the effect is instantaneous, though humanoids take longer. At the time of onset, the poison causes the victim to convulse as the potent substance attacks his nervous system. The victim begins grand mal seizures and suffers spinal damage, his back arching and twisting violently as his body jerks involuntarily.

(This poison is probably (definitely) based on ‘Nux Vomica’, more colloquially known as ‘Strychnine’.)

Khaless (“Trust”)

This is the famous sleep-poison of the drow, used on their crossbow bolts to immobilize an enemy so that he can be killed at leisure. The active ingredient comes from the spores of the oloth'arr mushroom. While the mushroom itself is fairly common, harvesting the spores is not an effortless chore. Still, it is common enough to be almost trademark. The poison attacks the central nervous system, causing the victim to fall asleep.

(Probably based on Opium Poppies)

Belbol d’Elghinn (“Gift of Death”)

This powerful poison, greatly prized by drow nobles for assasination, is also known as Elash Elghinn, "Silent Death", after the venomous water serpent of the same name. The venom takes effect immediatelty, causing damage to the victim's blood vessels and causing dramatic and extensive hemorrhaging. Within minutes, the victim will gush blood from his mouth, eyes, nose and ears. He will have time to develop bruises all over his body before he mercifully dies. Drow find death caused by this venom to be particularly entertaining. However, there are certain individuals who seem to be immune to Belbol d'Elghinn, and upon whom it has no effect at all. However, when it does work it causes a spectacular (if regrettably short) show.

(Definitely based on Boomslang venom. Also the practice of taking self-administered and non-lethal doses of poisons to build immunity is called Mithridatism.)

Orbb’st Ssrin (“Spider’s Kiss”)

This poison is brewed from venoms of five different spiders. As all spiders are sacred to Lolth, the venoms must be carefully harvested without killing the spiders. All of the spiders used are huge in size, allowing for more easy harvest of the venom. The collected venoms are then dried to a powder and added to a strongly-flavored food or drink, as it does have a slight sour taste. The poison causes chills, fever and prostration for several hours, and, if not halted by a neutralize poison spell, does permanent damage to the body's immune system. This makes the victim more susceptible to disease and poison in the future

(Gonna guess and say a combo of bites from a Brown Recluse, Noble False Widow, Hobo Spider (and two other non lethal but painful types). I haven’t included the Black Widow in the list or the Funnel Web because their bites would be much worse than just causing sepsis.)

Golhyrr del’Ilharess (“Trap of the Matron”)

This poison is the flesh of the rare krashyll mushroom. Successful administering of this poison to one's enemies is seen as quite a victory of cuel'a'cul (the drow ritual of slowly, over time, destroying one's enemy while remaining blameless). It must be given in six stages, its poison slowly building in the body, in doses no more than a two tendays apart. Since drow are a suspicious race, it is easy to see why success with this poison is greatly admired, worthy of the twisted, centuries-long plots of the Matron Mothers. It's name also suggests that it requires the power and subtlety of a Matron Mother to use effectively. After administering the sixth dose, death will strike its victim in half an hour, causing the throat to suddenly close up in massive anaphylactic shock. The victim dies of asphyxiation within minutes.

(The two best known cumulative poisons are mercury and lead. Others are PCBs (which can accumulate in fish fat and skin) and dioxins (which can be formed from burning wood, oil, fuel etc and can infect meat).)

Part 2 Coming Soon

[dramalets]

2024 watch list part 5

The Rebound - This is a fun pulp but not a lot more. It didn’t really seem to know what it wanted to be and suffered for that in the end. The ending is ass. 3/5

HIStory 4: Close to you - Trope city. I enjoyed the non brother husband pairing in this and also the friendship between the three elder leads was a lot of fun. This really comes with so many TWs though so be careful before you watch. 3/5 (13/8/24)

Ossan’s Love - You will like this or you won’t and I don’t think there’s an in between. Fortunately I loved this. It’s not a taxing watch but it does manage to pack character depth and heart into every inch of story. Haruta is a gentle soul with zero like skills and Maki is a mature but troubled younger counter. It’s very Japanese and you’ll like that or you won’t but I think it’s worth a go. 4/5 (14/8/24)

This love doesn’t have long beans - If you like Pon & Sailub then this is very enjoyable. But if you don’t know them then it’s mostly a paper thin plot and some sex. A good brain off fluff watch or if you’re looking for Mame style horny but without the trauma and rape. 3/5 (23/8/24)

We Best Love: Fighting Mr 2nd - Like with the first one I just found it fine. The chemistry of the leads is very good and they sell the show really. Zero idea what that nonsense with the second couple and their various MH disorders was. I’m really not a fan of slapping disorders onto characters in place of actually giving them development. 3/5 (26/8/24)

4Minutes - I was glued to this right from the start. It’s a BoC production so it’s beautiful to look at and the acting is high quality. This’ll be a fantastic binge watch for anyone looking for an excellently acted, well done sorta sci-fi. I’d have given this a five but I thought some stuff felt very rushed and we could have either done with a ten episode block or less time spent on one characters 4minute t/l. 4/5 (13/9/24)

The Trainee - Much like, another recent OffGun show, Cooking Crush this show was much more about its characters, and their personal development and progress, than it was about the romance of the two leads. For the most part I enjoyed this but it also felt like it didn’t quite stick the landing. I’m a big proponent of slice of life style stories this wasn’t really quite that but it also wasn’t a heavily plotted rom-com style story either. This was really just about community, self-esteem and personal growth. The cast in this were all round incredible and the intern friend group were absurdly easy to love. 3/5 (15/9/24)

Sunset X Vibes - Let’s be real; you watch this for MosBank and that’s exactly what you get. MosBank. This isn’t 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 as forgettable as Big Dragon but it’s close. The first half is fun and then it realises it’s run out of plot and just sort of doesn’t know where it’s going and adds some great kissing. The sub couples are sort of fun. But they were so sporadic in characterisation that they were sort of impossible to fully enjoy for anything but nice kissing. As with Big Dragon this was fine and I enjoyed it but I can’t really tell you anything much about it apart from MosBank. 2 ½/5 (15/9/24) (Also there’s heavily implied mpreg in the special episode. So that’ll be enough for this show to live on in fanfic.)

To My Star - I’m very hit or miss on KBL. Often it veers to melodramatic for me. This definitely is maudlin and a little depressing but it isn’t over dramatic so is a more tolerable kind of melo for me. Overall I did enjoy this, its leads were absorbing and enjoyable to watch. I do think a little more could have been done to establish them falling for one another as it did feel a little quick. 3 ½/5 (18/9/24)

Mr Mitsuya’s planned feeding - Just lovely. Couldn’t have come from anywhere but Japan and it’s beautiful for that. Carefully examines age, status and how hopes, dreams and wants shift as those things change. You’ll be okay with the age gap or you won’t, there isn’t anything predatory here it’s just a sweet age gap romance. 4/5 (22/9/24)

The On1y One - Absolutely perfect slow burn. Examines the fleeting nature of youth whilst serving us an achingly sweet, slow burn love between two young boys. Don’t watch this if you don’t enjoy slow but do watch this if you enjoy excellently crafted characters and beautiful cinematography. 4/5 (25/9/24)

You are my lover friend - This is a thirty episode het friends to lovers cdrama and I loved every bloody second. This wasn’t bogged down with stupid dramas,to stop ML & FL getting together, instead it was just a realistic look at all the reasons it’s very hard to go from very best friends to lovers. All the side cast were excellent there was a clear overarching plot weaved into the romance. I just loved it. 5/5 (6/10/24)

[dandylovesturtles]

Does the movie still happen in SideLines AU? \

Yes! Though it would be radically different and I haven't thought much about how exactly events would play out. Leo already got his character development, though, so someone else would be the driving force of the story. Probably Raph, or maybe Mikey?

Ooooo, actually, idea for a very Raph and Mikey centric movie plot: Mikey wants to prove himself but Raph keeps trying to protect him (because he has even more ptsd about not protecting his brothers with what happened to Leo) that they are the ones fighting in the beginning, and Raph's inability to trust Mikey is what leads to the key being stolen. And the way to win is for Raph and Mikey to reconcile their differences, with Raph acknowledging that Mikey is as strong as the rest of them and he needs to trust him, and Mikey acknowledging that his brother's help isn't meant to be a sleight but is there out of love.

I'd have to think about this a lot more to give you, like, a chain of events. I actually had a completely different answer ready for this and then thought of that while I was typing lol.

As for what I was going to say, while I'm not sure exactly how the movie events go down in Sidelined AU, I do have some idea of how it changes the bad future timeline.

By the point where the timelines diverge, Leo is recovered as fully as he ever will, able to walk around the lair most days and even go out on missions, provided he's careful and knows his limits. He still uses a range of mobility aids, given how he feels on any particular day, including the wheelchair for bad days or days where he knows he would be walking more than he could otherwise handle, but he's still relatively active.

The Krang invasion reverses a lot of this. As supplies dwindle, Leo starts suffering from malnutrition and a lack of sleep, and doesn't have access to medicine to help with the pain and fatigue, which takes a big toll on his body. Also, he really overdoes it and pushes himself too hard in the early days of the invasion, which accelerates his decline. By the time Casey is old enough to remember things, Leo is entirely wheelchair bound and doesn't often leave the base, only using his portals when he needs to to evacuate members of the resistance or help civilians.

He is still very much Master Leonardo - he's highly respected in the resistance, and anyone who wants to look down on him for his disability (or for being a turtle) either learns quickly or dies. However, he's not Casey's teacher in this timeline, instead leaving that to Raph and sometimes Donnie and Mikey. So Raph is Sensei now, and Leo is Master Leonardo or just Uncle Leo.

Leo takes over most of the care of Casey after his mom dies, since he's always at base, only sometimes sending Casey to Donnie or another adult when he's particularly busy (he's still the guy in the chair here, and also handles a lot of the day to day running of the resistance). Sometime early on, Donnie builds Leo a new chair that either hovers or has some other way of mitigating rough terrain (spider arms maybe?), and he frequently lets Casey ride on it. Even as Casey gets older, hanging off Leo's chair as they move around the base is second nature to him.

Casey was so used to Leo only being in his chair he was a little shocked on coming back to the past and seeing that Leo walks fairly frequently. He also grabbed onto Leo's chair sometimes out of habit, which made younger Leo tense up initially; something they eventually work through as they get closer.

Though all four turtles make it longer in the invasion than I usually headcanon (since I usually think of Raph as dying while CJ was too young to really remember him), they do still die, and Leo is the first to go. Casey is about 11 or 12 when this happens. When the Krang finds their base while the others are gone, Leo tells Casey he loves all of them and then portals him and the other non-combatants to safety, giving his all to hold the Krang back and give them a chance to escape. After that, Raph (who was already close to Casey anyway as his teacher and another of his uncle-dads) took over as the main adult looking out for him, and started taking him out on missions.

I'm not sure what happens next but I think it's Donnie who goes next, and then Raph and Mikey's deaths playing out the same way Leo and Mikey did in the movie. Especially since that goes with what I was saying above: Raph in the future comes to see and accept Mikey as an equal rather than someone to baby, foreshadowing what their relationship will become under happier circumstances.

Thanks for the ask!

[theknightlywolfe]

A few of my non-MCU following friends watched Thunderbolts and were talking about it and liked it, but also admitted they didn't know who most of the people were because they didn't watch MCU stuff after Endgame. And it just made me think again of the Taskmaster situation.

Cut for spoilers

I have seen multiple articles talking about how Taskmaster was meant to survive the movie and she and Ava would have moments together that developed each of them and a friendship. And then the decision was made to kill Taskmaster at the beginning to "shock the audiences".

But really, they failed at that.

The trailers pretty heavily indicated that she was not going to be around for the bulk of the movie. So it's not shocking because Marvel already told everyone before they walked in the theater. Shocks tend to need the element of surprise.

It also isn't shocking in the way killing Maria Hill was because anyone who didn't see Black Widow, and there are a lot of them, would have had no clue who she was, they wouldn't have even known she was Taskmaster when she walked on the screen if it hadn't been spelled out in the early advertising. There's no emotional punch from her death because even those of us who did watch Black Widow only know she is Dreykov's daughter and Clint and Nat blew her up so her dad made her robo fighter. Her death carried no more emotional weight than the death of the scientist Yelena fought in the opening.

"Oh, but it's like Scream when they killed off Drew's character to show you anyone can die!". Except then that would have meant killing Yelena. Most people who even recognize Olga know her from Bond and that was a long time ago, Florence is the star power that Drew was when Scream came out. Scream killed the person we opened the movie with, which in Thunderbolts was Yelena. We watch Yelena kill a whole bunch of people to open the movie so we know people are going to die. This isn't DC, dying happens all the time in these movies. And again, the trailers told us Taskmaster was going to be gone early.

It wasn't even shocking *to Yelena*. Yelena knows widows die, she'd seen it enough. The movie showed us over and over again where she causes one in training to die. It didn't even really further Yelena's motivation/story. Yelena was sad for Antonia dying but not sad about her dying. She was sad that that was their lives and wanted a fellow victim of the Red Room to have some of the respect in death they'd never had in life but that was it. And when that didn't happen she shrugged and moved on.

So Taskmaster was killed for nothing. She didn't even need to be there. Her dying didn't even affect the progression of the story or impact the plot. She was, for all intents and purposes, a random NPC. One of many random NPCs we watch die in Marvel movies.

Honestly, it is just getting to the point where it feels like Marvel just has a requirement where a production can't get made unless a named woman dies. Multiverse of Madness was Wanda, Secret Invasion was Hill, Guardians 3 was Rocket's friend Lylla, Eternals was Ajax, FatWS was Morgenthau, No Way Home was Aunt May, Wakanda Forever was Queen Ramonda, Ms Marvel was Najma, Love and Thunder was Jane, Agatha was all of them but one (but given Agatha's nature if any gets a pass it is this one), The Marvels it's Dar-Benn. Peggy Carter died on screen twice since Endgame. And now Taskmaster.

And even those who weren't killed we aren't going to see for years if ever again. Cassie has nothing on the horizon. Nor does Kate or America or Kamala. (And let's be honest, they are all, except one, underage and no way Disney would allow a child to die on screen.) Monica is trapped in another universe and not expected to be in Doomsday so who knows if we'll ever see her again. Danvers retired, Pepper is hiding in the woods, Sharon is hiding in Madripoor, Katy and Xu Xialing are who knows where. Invisible Woman we'll at least see twice because of back to back productions but probably not anything after. It's all just a big flashing red flag saying "we're back to just Black Widow baby!". I would be zero surprised if Ghost is killed in Doomsday to "shock" the viewers. We don't even get De Fontaine in Doomsday and I am 99% confident that Rebecca Romijn's appearance will be 75%+ flash back footage.

But hey, let's give an entire movie budget to Downey for him to come back. More than the entire rest of the cast and special effects crew combined. That's totally a better investment than just paying a script reviewer to point out obvious flaws or, y'know, make your chop jobs less damaging. Or, heavens forbid, to remove a female character out of the script if she's just going to be killed off for funsies or to inspire man pain. I mean, Marvel comics even made a whole deal of how stupid it is to kill off women for the sake of man pain, why is it Marvel Studio's go to for everything?

[markantonys]

a few more bridgerton thoughts! i've always been only a casual enjoyer who watches just for a few hours of fun and doesn't get super invested, but even so, i'm still feeling pretty underwhelmed by this season so far. i watched it in one sitting and enjoyed it while it was happening but just immediately forgot about it as soon as i was done. maybe all the memorable moments are going to be in the second half of the season, but for these first four episodes, i feel like it was all just kinda bland and forgettable (granted, of all the romance tropes in the world, m/f childhood-friends-to-lovers is just about the #1 most boring one to me, so this never would've been my favorite season regardless)

i adore romance and romcoms, always have, and am pretty happy to watch The Classic Marriage Plot play out a thousand times, yet i feel like bridgerton is maybe becoming TOO formulaic and repetitive. although, to be fair, i WAS giggling and kicking my feet during all the Classic Romance Scenes, but the problem was maybe just that there weren't enough of them, which brings me to my second point of too many subplots. too much padding and filler and not enough Classic Romance, which is what i'm here for.

8 hours is way more time than is needed to tell 1 love story, so to fill up the time they invent 17 random subplots that are ultimately pointless and have little relevance outside of the current season. i would way rather a season be only 4 episodes but tightly focused on the main love story, or that a season be about two siblings and two main love stories at a time, than have all this extra time they need to fill up with random unimportant shit. why have we had 3 seasons' worth of storylines about benedict having one-off non-endgame girlfriends that don't have a lasting impact on his character development? what's the point? he's been treading water for so long that i'm not even going to care about him anymore by the time he finally comes into the spotlight, and same with eloise. god, the thought of eloise's season potentially not being until like 2027 is insane. it's past time to start picking up the pace and doing 2 siblings per season!

and the kicker is that all these subplots, which were only invented to fill up the time, end up filling too MUCH time and taking away from the main love story, which is left feeling underbaked. this sort of happened last season, but it's way worse this season. penelope is an excellent character, but her back is breaking from trying to carry the season because colin is kinda giving us nothing due to lack of narrative attention given to him as an individual. he's supposed to be the co-lead, yet i couldn't tell you a single personality trait of his besides "vaguely nice" because he's just had no development and exists more as a prop for penelope to love than as a fleshed-out character in his own right. there was that whole scene where violet was talking about how he's a people pleaser who focuses on making others happy at the expense of his own wants and happiness, and i was just sitting there going "he is?" because i didn't feel i'd ever gotten to know him enough as a person to see this trait in him.

i also think the "dropping a season in 2 halves" model is just about the worst possible release model. if you drop 1 episode a week, that's constant engagement and allows for longer time to digest and appreciate each individual episode. if you drop the whole season at once, it's all over too fast but on the flipside you can experience the entire story at once without risking forgetting things or losing interest while waiting for new episodes. but dropping in two halves a month apart is the worst of both models (over too quickly yet also makes you wait too long to finish the story).

i do like some of the subplots, though. cressida getting to be more than just a mean girl caricature has been a particular highlight, the mondrich family going suddenly from working class to noble is interesting to see, and as a mega-introvert myself (and a music lover!) whose ideal partner would be someone who's happy to sit in silence with me, francesca and john's whole vibe is THE definition of romance to me and has me absolutely swooning (and it's a nice change of pace from all the loud dramatic romances on this show). violet potentially finding new love is also very sweet and i'm rooting hard for her! meanwhile i am not a fan of the featherington subplot; after s1 portraying regency girls' lack of sex education as a serious issue, it feels.........odd for the show to now be playing that very same thing for laughs this season and it just kinda makes me uncomfortable.

but otherwise there isn't much i dislike about the season, it's just kinda "meh" to me so far. the second half might turn things around if it's more memorable!

[athena5898]

Given the nature of my blog at this point, i tend to shy away from posting about media stuff. Buuuuut I think there are a lot of younger people experience this slightly "political" dude bro phenomenon so I kind of want to walk them through it. So Dawntrail the most recent ff14 expansion. Is actually pretty good. Now if you listen to some aspect of the community you are going to get some other........."perspectives" on that. Dawntrail is flawed, of course it is. This is the expansion that would have been in development during mid to post 2020 AND it's the expansion that needed to come around after Enwalker to build up the new story. Endwalker that spent YEARS building up to a climatic finish. What does this have to do with the first paragraph? Well, I'll tell you.

Dawntrail focuses on the story of a coming of age of a nontraditionally feminine woman lead Wuk Lamat (who is voiced by a trans voice actor) and we, the heroes of the world, are now going to help and take a back seat to this person. Who she and the entire expansion is based on Indigenous people from various parts of "America" so you know, they should be front a center and our out-of-town asses *should* take a seat in the back (some of you will read this and immediately go "oh that's why it's getting extra hate") If you do not know and was lucky enough to not be a woman or non cis het white male in the 90s trying to play video games or enjoy nerd culture....All of what I just stated is a big problem. Dude bros as I like to call them, (aka someone who you will always be curious if they were or would be part of Gamer Gate. Also please note a dude bro doesn't have to be a man...trust me on that) hate this kind of shit. They naturally feel threatened when the media's focus is not about them. So what do they do? They take legitimate criticism of something and BLOW IT THE FUCK UP. Suddenly that thing that was kinda annoying, is now just the fucking worst. A story beat drags on a little long? Worst media ever. A character has a minor plot hole? Worst media ever. dialogue a little blah at one point? Worst media ever. etc etc etc These are the same kinda people mind you who will write a 8 page essay how (insert average mid action movie here) is the most amazing masterpiece of a film. (which I don't really care about, but it shows that these people are not exactly the most objective purveyors of media arts as they like to claim to be when it's suddenly about their misogyny and white supremacy) I'm bringing this up cause I'll notice some well meaning people being confused saving things "well...I kinda get *this* part of the criticism but...not this other stuff. Why is it a big deal" or some version of this. They don't actually care that much, they just care that an Indegenous GNC cat woman is getting more screen time then their precious gods gift to Eorza WoL. If they had made this expansion about a white guy or our WoL and it wouldn't of gotten nearly the same level of backlash. People will disagree with me, but I'm sorry this is just a fact. And because this is the reading comprehension website, no it's not bad to dislike Dawntrail. No it isn't bad to think a character is annoying. But the patterns are there and the chances of this JUST being about the real issues is just fucking zero. You dont' spend that much time complaining about ONE character as the focus if it isn't about the bullshit dude bro gamer pride. Honestly given how fucking gay this game is I have no idea how these people play this game without burning up like a vampire touching sunlight ALSO...I'm a ex wow player who played that game for the story (I was 14, give me a break) from BC all the way up to 7.2. So I kinda know what i'm talking about when it comes to toxic dipshit gamer behavior *looks back at that last paragraph* god that's so fucking sad. Oh fun fact, according to Wuk Lamat's voice actor Sena Bryer, all voice acting for the new area in Dawntrail was given to Latino/Indigenous voice actors for every single character. (from this area of course) *edit* lol yeah anyone saying i'm wrong is just a fucking grifter or liar. Found this while looking something else up. You know it's bad when the god damn director has to step in and say "yo you little assholes cut it out" https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fantasy-xiv-a-realm-reborn/naoki-yoshida-wuk-lamat