#since he thought it would be necessary for them esp in the future

[lulu-the-bugaboo]

Seeing how neat Ace's handwriting is as a child (especially compared to Luffy lol) just makes me imagine how patient Sabo must have been with teaching him

He probably had to correct him several times, and when Ace eventually got frustrated and lost his patience, he would encourage him and compliment his progress

They make so soft

[antianakin]

Absolutely hating the "have a child to remember him by/he never got to meet his kid" trope aside, I think the problem there is trying to make us more sad/feel the tragedy of Cassian dying in Rogue One, when as you've sad, it was already tragic. All of the Rogue One crew dies never knowing if anyone actually receives the plans, let alone manages to break away from the fight to get the plans back to the Alliance. Then actually manage to destroy it. They sacrificed everything for a slim hope. I thought that's where Andor, esp S2 would go with the theme, really following up on Luthen's "I burn my deceny (life) for a future I won't get to see". Especially with deaths like the heist crew, especially Nemik, or all the prisoners who fought back and escaped on a slim hope they'd make it to shore. With Andor going to the main rebellion in s2, I would have liked to see more of the every day rebels and all the things Cassian references having to do that he wasn't proud of, all to pass the torch.

(and this isn't as big a thing, but with how much Cassian hammered in he's had to do things he didn't like/were morally gray just to help the rebellion survive in Rogue One, I expected...more from s2 Andor, of the hard choices he had to make. Besides the young soldier he kills off screen for seeing too much and leaving the Ghormans, people he admitted were doomed to fail, he doesn't really do much that either wasn't necessary for self defense or attacking hostile imperial troops. I guess that's another big downside in jumping the years so much.)

Yeah, the baby feels like it just isn't necessary to get across ANY of the things it's meant to get across. We didn't need the baby for the story to feel like it had hope and people to remember it after Cassian dies. We didn't need the baby to make the story any more tragic, either, it's already plenty tragic on its own. And we didn't need the baby to know that Bix was happy or healing or had moved on, especially since at no point had we ever heard Bix talk about wanting a family or anything like that (the one thing she states that she wants more than anything else is to WIN). So instead of feeling like this really beautifully emotional moment, it just ends up feeling both redundant and blatantly manipulative, as if that baby on its own is meant to bring up those emotions regardless of whether it was adequately set up for this character (or Cassian's) or not.

You could've maybe emphasized the idea of someone who has to survive to remember them with someone like Kleya, who is already a survivor when she didn't want to be, or Mon Mothma who is the single character on this entire show that we know is guaranteed to see the Empire fall and so the burden of remembering EVERYONE HERE might actually end up on her shoulders. That this is her burden. Cassian isn't the only messenger here, she is too.

And yes, I think that there were some missed steps in Cassian's development this season. Unlike some fans, I don't feel like the Cassian we see in Andor is so wildly different from the Cassian in Rogue One that they may as well be two different characters. I think there's a LOT of obvious similarities between the characters, and the fact that Cassian had some different motivations in season 1 wasn't an issue because that is a very necessary thing to do in order to allow the character to GROW, especially when said character already has a pre-established end characterization that the story has to get to (you can see this happen in the Kenobi show as well where he's acting wildly out of character at the beginning in order to allow him space to grow into the wiser character we know from A New Hope; it's also not dissimilar to intentionally making Anakin in TPM be a sweet young boy and not a little antichrist devil child).

But once you've established where the character has started, you then have to make sure you get them BACK to the character everyone is expecting them to become. In Cassian's case, we need to emphasize his commitment to the rebellion and just how much he's been willing to do for this cause, but also his growing ability to see some of the cracks in the organization (or that he's always known the rebellion is flawed but it just doesn't matter because the cause is more important than those flaws).

And not only do we not really get to see all of the terrible things he is willing to do for the rebellion (he is said to have killed a young soldier but he justifies it with protecting BIX, not the cause; then he abandons the mission on Ghorman because he doesn't want to be a part of helping oppress them for the cause; then he goes to assassinate Dedra and doesn't actually manage to complete that task), but he's constantly refusing orders both from Luthen and the other rebel leaders later, which makes his decisions regarding Galen and Jyn have less weight. The whole thing with him choosing to disregard orders about killing Galen because he cares about Jyn and doesn't want to kill her father is that this is UNUSUAL for him, this is a major choice he is making because he CARES about what the consequences of killing someone might be. In this moment, he is choosing Jyn over the cause, and that's supposed to be really big for Cassian. The same is true with the gathering of the volunteers for the Scarif mission because he knows the rebellion isn't going to believe her, but he DOES, he trusts her, and he's willing to let her take the lead this time. This isn't development for his character if you establish that Cassian barely follows orders anyway.

So, yeah, we missed out on Cassian's building commitment to the cause and to the rebellion, on how much he's willing to sacrifice and give up in order to do what's necessary to take out the Empire, regardless of whether he likes the order or not.

And the baby thing fits into this, too! Because this would've been a PERFECT place to really set up how committed Cassian is to this rebellion. Instead of Cassian trying to convince Bix into leaving with him and then Bix "choosing the rebellion for both of them" and just leaving him behind to go have her baby by herself because Cassian has a destiny or whatever, switch those roles. Have Bix realize she's pregnant and that's what finally convinces her that she can stay anymore and she tries to convince Cassian to leave because she can see how much he hates the things he's being asked to do and how he keeps giving up more and more pieces of himself each time it happens and she tries to tell him that she's pregnant in order to convince him and you can SEE just how much it hurts him to hear that and know that he still has to say no.

Because this is the choice he's making, this is a choice he has arguably already made but it's a choice he has to keep making every day of his life now. And the baby makes it harder, but he still chooses the rebellion because he'll ALWAYS choose the rebellion, that's who he is now, it's who he's chosen to be. The person who would have left with Bix probably died on Narkina 5. The person he is now can't go with her. Either the Empire dies or he does now.

So when you see Bix and the baby at the end, it's not this "oh man it's so tragic because Cassian never even knew and now that baby is his legacy or his hope for the future personified despite him never even knowing it existed." It's "This is so tragic because THIS WAS HIS CHOICE TO MAKE, and he dies for the cause knowing that Bix and his child are out there somewhere and he has to hope that this is enough, that giving his life to get the plans off of Scarif will be enough to help bring about the end of the Empire and make them safe." It's not impossible to fit the pregnancy into a better character arc for both Cassian AND Bix, they just... didn't do that.

[thevikingwoman]

👄👁️👂

mery/tansui saladspinning thoughts pls?

OKAY HI thank you Meg

Currently I'm working on some writing pieces that will lead them to actually agree on a defined relationship (instead of Is This A Fling Or More), so I have some thoughts on how, esp Tansui feels about it, but also how things may go now & in the future.

One of the things i keep coming back to is that Tansui's life has been - pretty stable? He (wiki info 😔) left his home as a child and joined the confederacy (and I do have - a whole additional head canon here but it's mostly just spinning him) and he's been with them ever since. I count 25-30 years?

Pre-invasion, occupied, freed Doma - it's technically all the same to him and the Confederacy. they tax the boats, they live their life. Hingashi's non-interventionalism did stabilize the region I think, regardless of what we (the scions) think of it.

The idea of helping Doma is - more or less Rasho's, in the msq Tansui gives him the ability to pull back too

So regardless of romantic entanglements (which i'm getting to, in a min!) with the whole helping the scions, the Confederacy's life is somewhat changed - though it was probably necessary. But they keep helping Hien in the SB patches, including Hien's baby Eastern Alliance.

add to this that Tansui's - kinda girlfriend is, well, the warrior of light? She has places to be, things to do (disregarding if she wants to do them or not). he has to relate to Everything Is Now Different.

there's a line somewhere, where the Confederates are say - once you join you have to be loyal, even if you have to work with former enemies and lovers etc. So I think, well, he's used to maybe having relations with other Confederates and not someone so far outside his world? He can't (and won't) leave, and he's unprepared to be longing for someone. I also think he's protective (for background reasons too) and he can't protect Meryta. So he has to come to terms with this.

and she has to figure out her desire to turn to him, and how she feels about having to leave- but frankly i think she's better equipped to deal that he is. She's younger (by quite a bit) and in constant change and motion anyway.

anyway this was all a very very long rambling on right now my thoughts on Tansui is that he's struggling with 'how do I love this person' and it would be - easier if he didn't? But he does love her, and it's terrible and scary and very different.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

Hi again! I come to you today with a question that may simply be a continuity error, but I'm still interested in your thoughts! In the main story, le Comte *knows* it was MC that came through the door behind him. Yet in Comte's "One Night, Beneath the Crescent Moon" POV story, he said he "...had no idea of what would happen next... That she would end up using the same door and end up stuck on the other side." What's your take on it? Thanks in advance! 💛

Hiya! First off I wanna apologize for how long it took to reply oTL I had originally drafted a response and then lost it when I accidentally closed the tab, and whenever that happens I always have to like sufficiently mourn the words I lost 😂😂😂

But to answer your question! If I’m entirely honest, I can’t remember what it was Comte said exactly in the Main Story in regards to her entering the door. There could be a lot of explanations for him saying he “knew”: continuity error, him wanting to put her at ease by seeming “in control” of the situation (while he’s screaming internally), or maybe even him wanting to cast some doubt as to whether or not he’s a person that can be trusted (aka the whole like “MC nooooooo don’t trust me I’m a vampire very bad very scary run away” kind of like Leonardo). 

All that being said, given the evidence we have and the stories I’ve read from his POV--esp that Crescent Moon one you referenced--I’m most inclined to believe that he had no idea she would follow him that day at the Louvre. If anything I really don’t think he ever anticipated any human person could follow him through the door? Because remember Sebastian (and the suitors for that matter) only manage because Comte is their escort. Sure their will to live on was strong enough that he could hear them, but they had no capacity to approach or find a door on their own as far as we currently know. The door was closed when MC found it; this suggests that Comte fully closed off that avenue to make sure nobody wayward stepped in by accident. He did the responsible thing and he left long before he could ascertain her safe journey through time, but she still managed to make it across somehow.

That’s why I think MC’s mere existence is earth-shattering to Comte. I mean we have all the good basics: a lovely lady, sweet and hard-working, means well and does her best. And these attributes all do matter, for sure. But the door is perhaps a greater catalyst in their romance than we might have first anticipated.

There will be some semi-hefty JPN rt spoilers below the cut for Dazai and Comte, so I’m just going to keep it under wraps just in case there are people who want to remained 100% unspoiled:

TW: Mentions of suicide in Dazai’s rt

The reason I say this is twofold, based on information provided by Dazai and Comte’s Main Story route. In Dazai’s route, remember that the focal point of the story is that Dazai wants to go back in time to kill himself as a baby so that he can never grow up to write his books or cause anyone pain in the near future--essentially, suicidal ideation to a frightening extreme. One of the main reasons that he fails (though MC plays a significant role in stopping him, too) is that Dazai’s will to kill himself is too weak. In simpler terms, this means that--no matter how much he insisted he wanted to die, the truth of his heart was revealed in his constant hesitating and difficulty going through with it. This is very often a reaction from people who need sizable psychological assistance to overcome trauma; they don’t usually want to die, it’s more that the pain of surviving their experiences is outweighing any possible joy they can find in living. 

But back to the most important part in bold. When Dazai asks about being able to use the door to travel through time, Charles confirms that it’s possible to travel without a pureblood escort. HOWEVER. This type of travel is very, very difficult unless you have an intense sense of willpower. I imagine the implication here is that you have to have an overwhelming desire and firmly believe it’s where you want to be in order for the travel attempt to succeed at all. (I don’t think the tethering point necessarily matters, but there is a suggestion that strong bonds between people--whether platonic or romantic--can serve as powerful guideposts when the door is distorted.) In other words, the reason Dazai relies on Charles’ moral bankruptcy is because Dazai knows he doesn’t feel strongly enough to go through with the suicide. He needs someone else who has the sheer determination and unbending will to see it through when the door opens. 

This is why Dazai is forced to ask Charles to accompany him, even though Charles doesn’t necessarily want to kill him. For Charles, this is less about a desperation to kill Dazai and more about his intense obsession-love for MC, and his willingness to do anything to receive her love/attention in return. In Charles’ view, since MC is ostensibly in love with Dazai, removing Dazai from the picture permanently is ideal. While Charles’ judgement is clouded and a little horrific, he is nonetheless rock steady in comparison to Dazai’s nonstop wavering. Dazai knows that he’s fickle on a personal level; one moment he wants to die, another he’s too afraid to let go of what he does care about or upset anyone. He’s at a point where he doesn’t know what’s right or true anymore and he’s floundering, which is honestly fairly common among those who share his lamentable condition. (Most people don’t have a death wish--it’s more a combination of circumstantial problems and healing that has remained in stasis that constitutes the extremity of that behavior.)

Moving right along, Comte’s route also features a similar testament to willpower, believe it or not. This happens in the last few chapters of the main story. Basically, Shakespeare dumps MC on Vlad’s doorstep and she’s more or less suffering the latter’s monologuing for a good while. Not long after that Comte appears and nearly shoots Vlad in the head, the bullet just grazing his cheek. Comte demands that he let MC go, and Vlad--in a classic sadistic act of compliance--wrenches open the door and just tosses MC into the freefall of distorted spacetime.

Now this is dangerous to MC’s life in and of itself, but there’s a key element there: distorted spacetime. In this main story the door never returns to its normal state after that first month period. Rather, the expanse of the door is too dangerous to be traveled even by a pureblood, let alone a human being. The chances MC will ever be able to escape in order to survive are closer to zero than any other number. Remember that Comte is immortal. If he gets stuck on his own, he can’t die and the damage to his body is always more than able to heal when he’s back to safety. (He even warns Leonardo in Leo’s MS that the danger of getting stuck in some kind of pocket in spacetime is still too significant to be ignored, though I can’t be sure if that’s due to Leonardo’s inexperience with time travel/requirement for an escort, or just an inevitable risk you juggle anytime you travel through the door.)

Of course Comte leaps in after her to try to save her, but presumably their entry point is long gone now (Vlad shut the door), so they’re just kind of floating in amorphous time. They do and don’t exist. Comte is understandably distraught because MC’s life hangs in the balance; if they don’t find a way out, she is almost certainly going to die. Comte admits that--while he hates the fact that his very existence is a danger to her, he still doesn’t regret finding her by any extension. MC protests, naturally, that there’s nothing to regret. Circumstances be what they may, she loves him. 

Now, here is the key. While Comte is trying to think of a way out, MC is thinking hard about wanting to return to the mansion. Her mind reflects an acute, intense desire to return home to the place where they both belong. And wouldn’t you know it? They both suddenly tumble out of the door in the mansion and onto the carpeted floor, whole and alive, sputtering in disbelief. Comte is baffled at first but it can only give way to immense relief that she’s safe, and he just immediately breaks down.

The only reason the two make it out unscathed is because of--I can only assume--MC’s overwhelming will to live on with Comte and return to the mansion. While it would have been natural for her to be overcome by fear to the point where she could make no productive decision, or even humor the concept of focusing on their home, she does it all the same with immediate success. That’s also part of why I think Comte just 100% caves into both of their feelings in the next chapter. He saw firsthand that, not only does MC keep a level head under duress, but she also has the overpowering will necessary to survive amongst vampires. And it was perhaps this unshakeable will in the first place that landed her in the late 19th century all those weeks ago.

It’s interesting because, honestly? Her entry through the door is more or less a hinge point for their romance. While it obviously isn’t the only reason he cares about her, it definitely is one of the bigger reasons he even feels safe enough to court her in earnest in the aftermath. It is literally only after this event that he confesses everything. Why he created the mansion and the men. How he’s really felt about her and himself all this time. What Vlad showed her and the implications of Vlad’s existence. And finally the truth about what he wants. He wants a relationship with her, but he keeps being held back by the fear that he’s too much. That the demand of being by his side will outweigh any happiness she might find choosing him. (Granted MC and I find that preposterous given how attentive and considerate he is, but you know). But after seeing her pull off surviving Vlad and traveling through the door by her own willpower again? I think it sufficiently lessens his doubts as to whether she could handle a future with him. It gives him the courage to just ask her: Do you want a future with me? Can you handle the demands of a vampire that cannot accept a mere human lifetime to be in love? 

And so this is why I have unceasing Comte brainworms ladies and gentlethem. I need to go lie down before I start crying again, I love him oTL

[frogtanii]

this is literally just a random scenario that popped into my head and i thought i should share. i even took it upon myself to write it out? but imagine this: atsumu coming to check up on you after the interviews knowing that you were upset, and it ends up with him forcing you to dance with him to the song "Love My Way" by the Psychedelic Furs.

warning: this might be complete garbage. also!!!!! i tried to make this as gender neutral as possible and if there are any mistakes please correct me!!!

________

it was safe to say that ever since the start of the interviews that each member of the house was required to attend, your mood had drastically declined. you usually considered yourself a strong person, but with the resurfacing of old and unwanted memories, at this very point in time, you were at your most vulnerable. the walls that you had built around your heart began to crumble under the immense pressure you were being put under.

its not that you didn't trust the boys, although that isn't to say that you fully trusted them yet, but you couldn't trust your own ability to fully contain your emotions at the moment. mainly because there had been one thought that would constantly plague your mind at all hours:

they're only being kind because they feel guilty.

no part of you truly wanted to believe that, but if there was any chance it was true and you happened to run into one of the boys, you would never be able to meet their eyes again.

so, you sought out refuge in between the sheets of your bed. both the pillows that swallowed up your tears and held your head up when you couldn't do it on your own and the warm sheets that held you in its arms, provided the comfort that you couldn't receive from another.

you could express yourself freely when you were here. all the insecurities and fears that you were forced to bottle up when you were with the others, could spill into this little sanctuary of yours, and no one would be there to judge you. but peace doesn't last, not forever.

knock, knock.

deep down you hoped that it was Yachi who had decided to disrupt your peace, because truth be told, you weren't ready to interact with the boys yet. holding grudges wasn't your cup of tea, but the damage had already been done and if there truly was a possibility that the boys were only being nice out of guilt, you wanted to be strong enough to handle that. but right now, you weren't.

your suspicions stood true as you opened the door to be met with floppy yellow hair with big, warm eyes staring right into your own.

"Hiya, angel." His voice came out breathy as if he were making sure not to scare you off or rattle you.

Miya Atsumu. the one boy who, despite the rest, never demanded too much from you or had ever been harsh to you. it was ironic, the fact that he called you angel, when in reality, he was the true angel here.

you greeted him back with a small smile, feeling too tired to use your voice. but atsumu being atsumu, he didn't let the fact that your smile never quite reached your eyes go unnoticed. stepping aside, you let him fully enter your room before closing the door. not completely, letting a sliver of light peek through the cracks, as you always did when atsumu came by.

after closing the door, you decided to make you way back to your bed, but not before a larger hand wrapped itself around your wrist. halting in your tracks, you turned back to look at atsumu who wore something that faintly resembled a frown.

"c'mon angel, did ya really think that I would let you keep moping around and sleeping all day?"

unfortunately for him, that was actually what you were thinking. the bed looked too good and your feet were starting to get cold, so going back to sleep sounded a lot better at the moment.

when you hadn't answered, atsumu decided to speak up once more, "you did, didn't you? you really are something, ya know that angel?"

completely turning his back to you, atsumu rummaged around your desk for a few seconds before turning around to face you again. you stood there confused for a few seconds until you heard a familiar beat of "Love My Way" fill up the walls of your room and two large hands grasped your soft ones.

(i would suggest playing it now!!!!!)

There's an army on the dance floor,

It's a fashion with a gun, my love.

In a room without a door,

A kiss is not enough in...

a small smile washed over your lips before you were being pulled into the middle of your floor. atsumu's feet had started to shuffle ever so slightly in order to match the beat of the beginning of the song. pulling your arms side to side, bank and forth, atsumu attempted to make you dance. you were simply giggling at his antics and bouncing your head ever so slightly, but this only gave atsumu more motivation to keep pushing you.

Love my way, it's a new road

I follow where my mind goes

slowly but surely, you were warming up and even starting to move you feet. giggle kept slipping out here and there as you watched atsumu jump around you in circles in a poor attempt to actually dance. but as you were laughing at him, with a small spark present in your eyes, something warm spread through atsumu's entire body.

...There's dust in all their hearts,

They just want to steal us all and take us all apart...

staring down at your face, atsumu took a mental image of the way your eyes crinkled when you laughed and just how wide your smile was able to go. his eyes scanned over your cheeks that were now colored a light pink as the angelic sounds of your laughter bounced on the walls. atsumu was never one to miss any small detail, no matter how clueless he could act at certain times, and when it came to you, nothing could ever be missed by him. in literal terms, you were truly all he ever saw.

But in,

Love my way, it's a new road

I follow where my mind goes. (x3)

Unbeknownst to atsumu, you were watching him just as closely. despite not being able to fully believe that the others were as kind as they were because they actually cared, but because they were guilty, you could never have any doubts about atsumu. his heart was true and he was one of the few that you were truly able to confide in. so, then and there, you made a decision. in this moment, you were going to choose a different path. the sheets that once wrapped you in their warmth were no longer necessary, and the pillows that once held your head up when you couldn't, were no longer needed.

So swallow all your tears, my love

And put on your new face.

You can never win or lose,

If you don't run the race.

you decided to walk a different path, to let go, even if it was just for a second. just for this second. even if the others weren't true to their word, it would no longer mattered. because as the song slowed and astumu's arms crept around your waist, with yours around his neck, things felt secure. you felt free and you felt safe.

you could walk this new road as long as you had him. as long as he had you.

- abel

--------

This extremely long I am SOSOSOSO sorry, please feel free to ignore this LOL

I might write more in the future if thats ok with you? so I decided to give myself a fake name because chai anon really inspired me!

Anyways, I absolutely loved today's chapter! Make sure to take proper breaks and drink water! <33333

how,,, could u say,,, this was bad?????? BESTIE M SCREECHINF THIS IS SO GOOD i am so down bad for tsumu esp after this i can’t :sobs:

[helbertinelli]

Anon from before, I think I would have had less of an issue if Ahsoka wasn't so similar to Anakin, if he got a Padwan at all. I think it would have worked better if they both /tried/ to understand each other but fundamentally didn't. It would make her seem.. cold comparatively but I think it would be easy to rationalize her/the jedi opinion on thing and provide more evidence that the Jedi were broken (that everyone still somehow misses). cont

I think it would have been great if maybe they JUST started understanding each other when she dies in something basic like a firefight. Something that the Jedi see as a noble scarifice but Anakin knows was avoidable (not even planned by Palps just.. Bad Luck). Like finally a Jedi (esp a temple raised youngling who he never thought he'd have anything in common with) that Anakin could potentially connect to (had influenced) that could possibly be part.. and possibly be a family (in addition to Obi Wan but.. warmer)... which lead to him wanting to do better with his own kids later on with Padme, adding to the whole tragic story even further. Because Anakin definitely always wanted to be a dad. I would have loved a conversation about that, and them waiting until after the war. I'm not saying Padme would have put her career over having kids but I feel like its something they definitely discussed about their future/dreams about it. /end

I would have liked for Anakin to have a Padawan that is similar to him, but probably not between AOTC and ROTS. Like it would have been really cool to see him train Leia or someone else who was very similar to him. I feel like he would have been challenged by having to guide someone so similar because while it’s easy for him to deal with himself and to be wrong about what’s the best thing for him, it would have been way harder to do the wrong thing or to not be perfect when trying to deal with someone else’s life.

It’s odd for Anakin to have a Padawan when he’s barely a Knight himself, but if he absolutely had to have one, it would have been nice to give him someone similar to who you’ve described.

I think Ahsoka in Rebels is more similar to the old Jedi Order than she is with Anakin. She keeps telling Ezra and Hera to let Kanan go and is kinda preachy on the no attachments rule. Like the Order is gone, just stop, Ahsoka... It kinda makes no sense for her to act this way either, since she left the Order because she disliked them and saw how unfair they are. And all of a sudden she becomes Yoda 2.0 in Rebels? I liked Ahsoka more in TCW, but I hated her 100% in Rebels. She just acts too detached and too much like a Jedi for someone who had more years of no Jedi training than she did Jedi training (I think she’s only with Anakin for like 1-2 years). And then she’s basically a Jedi Master when we next see her because of reasons? Like she’s on par with Vader (who’s still stupid powerful despite losing a lot of his power) that’s how powerful she is, with only like 2 years of Jedi training.... Mary Sue much?

But I digress... I feel like it would have been best if Anakin didn’t get a Padawan between AOTC and ROTS. It wasn’t really necessary for his development and it kinda contradicts his relationship with the Council and the Order if he’s entrusted with a Padawan. Because you can’t think Skywalker is dangerous and will be the end of you and then trust him to train another Jedi.

Also, I personally like that Padme got pregnant unexpectedly. It just makes the story even more fairytale like that they didn’t have a discussion on when to have kids and they kinda just happened, and as Anakin said, they were a blessing to both Ani and Padme and to the rest of the universe (except Sheev and his empire). I also like the unexpected pregnancy because we see that despite how in control Padme and Anakin were when it came to being a Senator and being a Jedi, they were completely lost in each other and out of control around each other, in private. It’s like they were responsible in their jobs, but they were able to let loose and not worry about anything or any consequences when they were together. I know it’s an irresponsible approach, but there’s some beauty to it as it relates to Anakin and Padme.

[acotar-shit-thoughts]

MY RE-WRITING PARTS OF THE ACOTAR SERIES

*some acosf spoilers thrown in because i realize that SJM is writing a story so far removed from what i thought the story should go*

*a bit rant-y but i think this would have made the story more compelling*

i still think elain should have died in the cauldron back in ACOMAF and in my logic this would set of a story that will definitely heal and see powerful women who didn’t have power before be able to weld and rise up.

- nesta and feyre is over protective of elain and would do anything for her (and quite frankly elain’s personality is almost none existent. nesta and feyre are fantastic juxtapositions of one another and can carry themselves well)

- killing elain in the cauldron would up the stakes for both feyre and nesta (instead of making the only thing interesting about elain being likeable, gardening, azriel/lucien ships, pretty and agreeable, and bouncing back and forth between sisters)

- therefore forcing them to work together; push aside their personal bad blood for one another in the name of avenging elain

- through that process of strategizing and learning about fae and their own abilities (feyre’s high lord powers and nesta’s power she stole from the cauldron) they learn to appreciate one another. (and since this is a love story, nesta can still train with cassian but it would be BECAUSE SHE ASKED TO BE TRAINED instead of being forced to)

- they would eventually HAVE to confront their deep personal relationship to one another and move pass their old pains (INSTEAD OF MAKING FEYRE ALMOST DIE FROM SOMETHING THAT SHOULDN’T BE AN ISSUE OR ANY OF THE SPITEFUL SHIT THAT HAPPENS IN ACOSF)

- we learn about their family and their dynamics and how they can agree that their father is trash and even talk about the pain their mother gave (where BOTH SISTERS WILL HAVE AN APPRECIATION OF EACH OTHER AND MAKE SURE WHEN THEY HAVE FAMILIES OF THEIR OWN THEY WON’T TREAT THEIR KIDS THE SAME WAY AND EVEN HELPING HUMAN FAMILIES WHO STRUGGLED LIKE THEM)

- no locking anyone up!!!! the self sabotage of nesta won’t happen because she will put her energy into avenging elain; thus fighting for a bigger cause than herself and make her actually use the power she stole. SHE WOULD HAVE AGENCY. NO RELYING ON THE DRINKING/SEX BECAUSE OF PAIN TROPE. NO RHYSAND BEING A FUCKEN DICK AND EVERYONE SHIT TALKING TO NESTA. they can still have that disagreeable dynamic, whatever but rhysand being over protective and everyone else ganging up on her was disgusting and she did not deserve that.

- WE WILL SEE THEM BECOME LEADERS -- they will lead the strategy along w the IC; we will see them lead with the other high lords, we will see them convince the humans. we got glimpses of that in ACOWAR! SJM writes girlbosses which is just *rolls eyes*. lets let these ladies actually LEAD. let them actually have power instead of writing lip service for that. or taking their fucken power away for the drama. (WTF WAS THE FEYRE CAN’T HEAL BULLSHIT?? WHY STIFLE FEYRE WHEN SJM BUILT HER UP IN THE LAST FOUR FUCKEN BOOKS TO BE THIS POWERFUL FIGURE BUT LIKE GIVING BIRTH, A NATURAL THING THAT FEMALES CAN DO, IS GONNA KILL HER AND MAKE HER THE MOST VULNERABLE SHES EVER BEEN AND MAKE RHYSAND LOOK LIKE A SHIT PARTNER CUZ HE REFUSE TO TELL HER ABOUT HER RISKS. JUST FOR THE DRAMA I GUESS???)

- when war is fought and lost; we see them stand together to become the new leaders of the new world. the wall is gone and hybern is killed. again, we got a glimpse of that in ACOWAR at the end. there should have been a moment when fayre confronts tamlin and TALK to him. they seemed so poised to be LEADERS. new leadership because the old high lords are garbage and they fucked up so many times. introduce new policies, introduce new trade deals, beef up economies (esp since this is hyberns main reason to high up prythian), etcetc.

- feyre can work on leading night court as a high lady along with leading the rebuild of spring court (since she fucken wrecked it, displaced all the citizens, and took it from tamlin. feyre also knows about spring court’s rebuilding effort and how the tilthe isn’t it. she even said that tamlin should not make ppl bring useless things because they have so many things. the water folks dont have fish and that tamlin should have helped them hunt for fish or whatever instead of punishing them) and the new laws and policies for humans (can be intigration?? rhys and feyre talked about human refugees??? where did that talk go??). we can actually see feyre be a HIGH lady instead of her spending her days shopping and decorating and breeding (WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT WOULD HAPPEN WITH TAMLIN and we saw that as a bad thing!!! why spend 600 goddamn pages talking about not being that to turn 180 and be exactly that????)

- feyre’s reason for fighting has also been to the benefit of the human realm. the fact that she kind of said fuck it as the books progressed to where nesta or elain are the ambassador to the human realm felt so wrong because being human once was what was special about feyre. that was her north star. her whole heartedly identifying fae is wrong (maybe this is my theory about ACOTAR being a tragedy comes in).

- nesta would finally be an actual queen. you can’t tell me with all the mentions of nesta having queen energy is gonna translate to whatever the fuck it was in ACOSF??? nesta would get leadership experience. she would have purpose! she might even be able to envision of brighter future and fight to not let something like hybern happen again. protect those who can’t be protected? protect those who see the light in the world the way elain did?? maybe even her power can protect the cauldron and she could be a guardian or something??

- this is where i venture off; after the war, feyre leads the rebuild in prythian. nesta can lead the effort in hybern (AGAIN NO LOCKING UP!!! NO TAKING TIPS FROM TAMLIN’S HANDBOOK. NO FORCING HER AGAINST HER WILL!!!). she could rebuild it in a new name and face. her book could focus on her learning about her power; learning about how to please the hybern folks who dont like her (and i like that nesta isnt a likeable person from the start unless you are someone like meeeee). imagine seeing her ACTUALLY make her own friends and have her own inner circle??? imagine her making new friends and helping others. imagine her ruling??? making policys and laws?? imagine her going to different courts to do economic trades and deals?? she would channel her energy into something HELPFUL AND IMPACTFUL. she can still dance and do the big ball stuff. she can host she can feel like shes in control and maybe even channeling her guilt into something that is systematically helpful.

- along w this, cassian would be able to leave night court. he has been side line for so long. hes a buffer between mor and az and thats unfair to him. hes his own person and shouldnt be deligated to that task. he would have to actively choose nesta, which he wasn’t doing throughout the original trilogy. he would have to be placed in an environment outside his comfort! cassian is so much more than a goof ball and buffer. besides his skills might be necessary to handle hybern’s war-happy citizens

- we can see more of this world. hybern is sitting empty and the problems from the start still exists. im just so disappointed that SJM drops hints of scocio-economic problems that exists in the fae world and dont deliver. why deliver something so complicated to ignore??? its such ashame this world is so rich and beautiful and the characters are so fun to read about and for it to be turn out...so....trope-y (IN A BAD WAY). the original stories are fine too i guess, but it doesn’t feel planned out. it feels like SJM writes on a whim and just changes things as she sees it fit the relationship of characters.

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia! I'm a huge fan of your work and deeply enjoying FFS rn, it really shows the love and care you've put into this world and characters and it's an amazing read 🥰🧡

Idk if you've actually answered this question before or if it's a bit too much? So feel free to skip it. Do you have any advice on how to write a therapist and sessions with them? And to go along with that, a therapist&patient relationship that doesn't feel inauthentic but that's a healthy one?

I've had to visit both psychiatrists and psychologists a couple of times along my life, which has almost always been a positive experience to me, but when I get down to business and want to write a character going to therapy, I fall into a bunch of the psychoanalytic clichés US films have hammered us down with, even if I'm not from an Anglophile country!

Thanks a bunch in advance!! Ilu, have a nice start of the year🧡✨

Hiya anon!

I have a few thoughts about writing therapy sessions so I’m just going to put them down in no particular order.

Firstly, I don’t actually think it’s always a good idea to write therapy in stories, and a lot of the time I avoid writing it even when a character is actively seeing a therapist. This is particularly true in The Wind that Cuts the Night where all we see of Alex and his therapist are snippets, and nothing more than that, because therapy sessions would slow down the pacing, focus and value of the story.

Where possible, characters don’t see therapists, but talk to people in a way that is therapeutic, usually with love interests or members of the ensemble cast (Augus and Fenwrel in The Court of Five Thrones, Jack and Eva in The Golden Age that Never Was, Jack and North in From the Darkness We Rise/Into Shadows We Fall, Cullen and Cassandra, Cullen and Bull in Stuck on the Puzzle). All of those characters need therapy, but writing therapy sessions tends to slow down the pace of a fic pretty dramatically, and even I had misgivings about writing Efnisien’s sessions with Dr Gary at first because I’m acutely aware of the fact that:

1. Therapy sessions can be draggy and boring 2. They often take away important emotional realisations from other characters, ruining potential hurt/comfort and character relationship development moments with your actual cast / love interests 3. Fiction is meant to be fiction, not reality. 4. A lot of therapy sessions are actually not that interesting to sit in or write or observe, which is why writers do often find themselves falling into certain cliches while writing them to make them more interesting. Even I cut out huge chunks of sessions to get to the more interesting parts, lol. 5. You can write a character going to therapy without writing the therapy. You can just choose to have the character remember bits and pieces of the session later as it’s relevant to their life. 6. Therapy is different for everyone, and some readers (myself included) don’t enjoy reading it when the therapy is a kind that doesn’t resonate or feel right.

So you really need to ask yourself why you want to write therapy specifically, because a lot of the time it gets boring or - as you point out - falls into cliched territory. Writing a character going to a doctor a lot in detail for regular injections is boring. Writing them thinking about how they have to do this in brief while their love interest is sympathetic to them getting those injections is more interesting. Writing a character suffering from an illness that they need regular injections for, with their love interest comforting them? Interesting.

Falling Falling Stars is a unique fic in that Efnisien has no one before he meets Arden, except for Dr Gary and Gwyn. If you’re writing an FFS style fic, writing therapy sessions might be appropriate. It might be worth really thinking about the kind of fics you want to write, why you want to write therapy, how that will affect your pacing, etc.

If you’re still dead set on writing therapy sessions, then I have some suggestions re: writing more realistic/healthy therapy and how to find that knowledge yourself, and I don’t really know how to shorthand some of it:

1. Get books on therapy that are designed for the therapist. These are often expensive, but sometimes libraries stock them - and university libraries in particular will often have photocopy abilities (or you can just photograph the pages you need) because these books look at how sessions should be structured. Books with case studies are ideal, since they often show dialogue chains between the client and therapist. Books that obviously deal with the mental illnesses you’re planning on writing about are the most ideal.

2. With a view to this, learn about different therapeutic modalities (for example are you trying to write psychology or psychoanalysis or both? Are you writing social work? Are you writing cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behavioural therapy, expressive therapies, narrative therapy, transcendental therapy?) Be aware that different modalities have different session structures and learn what they are. Wikipedia is your friend, but your closest friend will be actually acquiring textbooks on the subject. This is a pretty significant financial barrier at times, I’ve been collecting books like this on psychology since like 1997.

3. Learn about your character’s mental instabilities that require them to go to a therapist and then look up the most recommended forms of therapy for your character’s specific issues. Will they suit your character? Why/why not? Will they have a therapist who realises and switches modality if it doesn’t suit? Or will they be lucky and find someone who helps them straight away?

4. All therapy sessions have a structure to them. And therapy often has a narrative arc through the course of therapy over many sessions. They should generally have the attempt at a beginning (greeting / setting up the problem to be discussed), middle (highlighting the source of conflict or inner conflict) and end (helping the client to focus on less stressful things, possible homework assigned, and potentially talking about future work/sessions). Learn this structure. Even if you’re not writing the whole session, you need to know where in the session you’re writing, beginning/middle/end will be different tonally. Structures will be different per therapeutic modality, and a therapist that knows many different modalities (like Dr Gary) will often be using slightly different structures each time depending on the character’s mood/issue.

5. In a healthy therapist/client relationship there will be the ability to discuss boundaries, grievances and the therapist won’t be revealing much about their personal life at all (unless anecdotally it’s super relevant and even then it will be deliberately vague). This is one of those things that will - in many cases - make for more boring sessions on the page, depending on the ‘client.’ For example, if you’re writing someone seeing a therapist for the first time, it might realistically take months or years before they start showing progress or trust. That’s not interesting (there’s a reason ‘therapy fiction’ isn’t a genre), so of course it’s tempting to shortcut into more dramatic moments.

*

I would say if you’re finding yourself leaning towards more cliched or dramatic forms of writing re: therapy, your writing brain may sense that the entire scene/s may not be suited to the story, and is trying to find a way to make them more interesting to yourself and the reader. If that’s not the case, then a lot more research is needed! It’s time to sink many hours into actually understanding what you’re trying to write. This doesn’t matter as much if you’re writing unrealistic or unhealthy therapy, but it’s 100% necessary when you’re trying to write healthier therapy depictions.***

Also a couple of sessions of experience is a start, but you might want to watch or find a way to watch more therapy sessions, because you’ve missed out on experiencing longer arcs, different modalities etc. (This is where my hands on experience with 19 therapists since 1995 is actually really helpful, lmao - I’ve had close to like 800~ sessions by now, with good and bad therapists; I cannot pretend that hasn’t given me a knowledge base that most people don’t share). You can still learn that stuff via research, MedCircle on Youtube is a good place to start, since it offers 30 minute snapshots on what CBT and DBT sessions will look like etc. and has some great playlists.

Most fics I’ve read don’t do a great job of depicting therapy, but the Babes!verse series by @rynfinity has probably some of the most realistic and still really interesting sessions I’ve read as an ongoing arc. The series is long, because it needs to be re: what it’s dealing with, but it’s great, and I definitely recommend looking at another example of how an author tackles these sorts of scenes. Out of the Mouths of Babes / The March of the Damned are the two intertwined series.

I apologise if this sounds discouraging overall, or daunting, but I just want to stress there’s a reason that I’m often not writing therapy in my writing, as anything more than the occasional scene with a non-therapist, or snapshots that are reflected on and that’s it. Falling Falling Stars is the exception to the rule, and unless you’re writing an exception to the rule as well, it’s really worth reflecting on the first six points I wrote - it’ll save you a fuckton of time and research. And if you go ahead with it, I wish you well! :D

*** Also disclaimer: But I still am writing very indulgent therapy that is not beholden to being either a 100% healthy or 100% realistic depiction. The fact is, real therapy sessions are pretty boring for observers except for maybe ten or twenty minutes in the middle at times.

(ETA: It’s just occurred to me that therapy fiction does exist, esp. in the mass media, but that it is - afaik - all unrealistic, dramatised or unhealthy. But if you want to watch a great show - I highly recommend In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne, just by aware that it is depicting, for the most part, unhealthy dynamics which are more character studies than anything).

[alextriestowritestuff]

Mark of Athena Re-read

Hey guys! If you’ve been keeping up with my last couple of posts, you’ll know I’ve been re-reading the Heroes of Olympus (HoO) series by Rick Riordan, starting with the Son of Neptune. If you want to my thoughts on it (spoilers included) and my background with the series, click here. I made a little bit of rant post about my feelings about the HoO series overall so far and you can find that here! This post will be about the Mark of Athena (MoA) and as always, spoilers abound.

Soooo y’all...I think this book is worse than the Lost Hero. I feel so bad for saying that bc I hated tLH (Like I’d give that book 2 stars) but god, this was so bad. No wonder I forgot what happened when I originally read it. Before I get into it, I will say I’m usually not negative in my ‘reviews’-I’ll give credit where it’s due (I did that in tSoN with Hazel and Frank who weren’t really my fav characters to start with) but this book has very little redeemable aspects imo. So I’ll start with the thing I was most irritated about: Piper.

Piper...Piper...Piper. Gods, none of her chapters ever passed the Bechdel test. I DESPISE her and I hated every single one of her chapters. With characters like Frank, I admitted that sometimes his chapters were a bit boring but I never hated the guy’s narration. Piper, however, is an insecure hypocrite. Let me show you.

So at one point, Annabeth, Piper, and Hazel meet up with Aphrodite. The POV is Annabeth’s and while Aphrodite is talking to them, it seems like Piper is just embarrassed to have her around. 

“Mother!” Piper said. “You’re embarrassing me.” “Well, I don’t see why,” the goddess said. “Just because you don’t appreciate my fashion tips, Piper, doesn’t mean the others won’t. I could do a quick makeover for Annabeth and Hazel, perhaps silk ball gowns like mine—” “Mother!” 

And a few lines later she says again “ ‘Mother, Piper said, “is there a reason you’re here?’” (30). 

Okay so someone tell me why this girl says 10 pages later “But also, Piper was secretly hurt not to have her mother to herself. Aphrodite had barely looked at her. She hadn’t said a word about Jason. She hadn’t bothered explaining her conversation with Reyna at all. It was almost as if Aphrodite no longer found Piper interesting. Piper had gotten her guy. Now it was up to her to make things work, and Aphrodite had moved on to newer gossip as easily as she might toss out an old copy of a tabloid magazine” (40). LIKE GIRL MAKE UP YOUR MIND. Do you want your mom’s attention or not? But I’m highkey interested in what Aphrodite said to Reyna tho.

Let’s talk about Reyna for a second. First off, I feel so bad for her?? Percy turned her down-fine, he has a gf. Then I thought Jason had feelings for her but he says this in MoA, page 19: “It’s just…I never felt that way toward Reyna,” Jason said, “so I didn’t think about its making you uncomfortable. You’ve got nothing to worry about, Pipes”. Like damn can Reyna get any love?? I get that he doesn’t like her anymore since he met Piper but to have never liked her? That’s rough. And notice how this quote is from page 19, but again on p. 40, Piper is still so insecure in their relationship. I don’t she’s listened to a word he said at all. Then towards the end of the book, she says oh I love you but she literally didn’t know the man’s age prior to that. Like what?? Did they even kiss this book? I think like once lmao. Also speaking of the birthday thing, Piper says this while she waits for Jason to blow out his birthday candles.

“Well?” she urged. “Blow out the candles.”

Jason did. Piper wondered if he’d made a wish—hopefully that he and Piper would survive this quest and stay together forever. She decided not to ask him. She didn’t want to jinx that wish, and she definitely didn’t want to find out that he’d wished for something different. 

Me @ Jason: This your girl? Come get her. Because Imma hurt her feelings. What do you mean you want him to wish to stay together forever? He should wish for Gaea to you know die so everyone can be safe. If I ever met Piper in person, I’d fight her. ON SIGHT. 

In a related note, I’ve got nothing to say about Jason. He was fine. He passed out alot during this book, didn’t do much for how hyped his powers are supposed to be. I will say when he and Percy were possessed and they fought each other, Percy totally won that fight. He knocked Jason the hell out and was about to end his whole career until Piper got Blackjack to knock him out. But overall, I think Jason’s rather bland and him and Piper have NO chemistry. But I don’t think he deserves insecure Piper as a girlfriend. She’s a whole ass child of Aphrodite and she’s worried about her relationship...let me move on.

My main issue with the book lies in the structure and plot. The previous two books had 3 narrators and each set of trio had a specific prophecy assigned to them-i.e: Percy, Hazel and Frank had to free death, retrieve the eagle. The prophecies are a catalyst to get them to go on the quest. And then obviously, we have the overarching prophecy of the seven that will come to fruition in small chunks until the last book of the series. That’s fine. So the issue with MoA is that now Rick is handling seven characters + Coach Hedge (like why was he necessary??). He has 4 POVs which threw me the hell off bc we had 3 in the previous two books and honestly, I think we could’ve gone without one of them (Percy’s actually). As a writer, it’s hard to balance multiple characters in the same setting constantly. If they have a conversation, one or two of them will have less lines because other characters have already said them. Therefore to give everyone adequate ‘screen time’, Rick had to separate them by keeping groups of three or two on their own side quest. As a result, however, reading the book felt like I was being brake checked constantly. Ex-We follow Percy, Frank, and Hedge to an Aquarium then we follow Annabeth, Hazel, and Piper to meet Aphrodite, then they encounter the Romans, then Piper and Jason meet Hercules and get the horn and so on. Like they’re constantly shifting and doing stuff but not going as a group so it feels like I’m constantly trying to catch up. There’s too many pit stops for my liking. And I deadass have no idea what most of it had to with the MoA prophecy. 

This disjointed-ness is what makes me rate it lower than tLH. Because while I didn’t like Piper or Jason in that book, it was still cohesive. There was a plot and it was followed. Another reason I might feel this way toward MoA is because Rick has a formula and it’s starting to be predictable. Think about the original Greek myths-there’s one main demigod like Hercules, there’s a quest, there’s godly interference so it makes sense the the PJO/HoO characters have the same thing. But all this talking to gods (esp gods we’ve already met like Aphrodite) is taking up so much space and slowing the plot. It also didn’t help that the minor villians in this book are all unlikeable?? All they did was talk. Otis and Ephialtes. Porchy and Keto. Arachane. All they did was talk. Here’s how to defeat a PJO/HoO villain: con them to help you/let you go or fight them. That’s it. 

This book is where I started to really regret reading the series. Like I was just over it. The plot was somehow slow and all over the place at the same time. The last couple of chapters were good because I was like finally, something relevant to the prophecy is happening. 

Let me leave you guys with some positives about this book though:

1. Annabeth’s POV. What a gal. When she faces Arachane, Annabeth mentions that she doesn’t have an active power like the other Seven but she has her intelligence. And I’m like yes girl, you are brave and everything I want to be. I would read the PJO series from her POV over this series.

2. Percabeth. They kept promising to come back to each other and my heart melted. Percy was so worried about letting her go follow the Mark but he knew it’s what she had to do and he let her go. And ugh, them falling got me all over again. And like just their chemistry is off the charts. Piper and Jason could never. 

3.  Percy’s comments about Luke. Percy realizes that he’s around Luke’s age when Luke went all ‘Gods are bad, their children are pawns’ and like I get chills from reading that passage because you can tell Percy’s tired. He can’t have a life because of these quests, he’s constantly moments away from dying. He never really got a chance to be a teenager. And I get he wants to help people and keep the world from being taken over by bad guys but he’s also human. He’s seen demigods die...he’s traumatized. Like Percy, I really understand Luke better now (right idea, wrong execution) and l see how tired Percy is. 

4. The Leo/Hazel/Frank disaster of a love triangle. Like I’ve mentioned before, I want Hazel, a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD child, to be left the hell alone when it comes to romance. But because Uncle Rick insists on pairing up everyone, I have to oblige. So here I am. The amount of times I cackled at Frank and Leo’s digs at each other is astronomical. Like shots were fired, no one held back. I was like is this even MG/lower end of YA anymore with all this salt?? Over the years I’ve been spoiled about the series so I know that Leo somehow ends up with Calypso so I know nothing will come out of the love triangle (and it seems to be wrapping up bc Leo and Frank complimented each other’s abilities toward the end there) but passive aggressive-ness was peak. 

5. Every single conversation between Reyna and Annabeth. Like two powerhouses talking about wanting to save their camps and the world. I loved it. Hands down. I hope they can be friends when this is all over. 

6. And lastly, the reunion of Percabeth. The Judo flip. The fact that Percy talked about having a future with her. 

Thanks for reading if you made it down here and I’ll see you guys in a couple of days with my House of Hades update. This book and the one after it I’m reading for the first time ever so I’m going in semi blind (like I said, I know some spoilers). I’m currently on chapter 2 or 3 of that and ermm, it was a weak intro but I’ll keep going :) rooting for Percabeth to make it through. 

[queenofthefaces]

For character headcanons, Steven from SU?

1) sexuality hc: you know I’ve never really thought abt steven’s sexual/romantic identity, and I think it’s jus bc in terms of SU I focus a lot more on other characters with shipping, prob bc Steven and Connie is a ship I support and it’s essentially already canon, and I prefer shipping scenarios where I can explore a non-canon ship falling in love? I have very few ships where they’re already canon, even fewer where I engage in fan content w the ship if it’s canon :0

But with Steven, I think....well, maybe he’d be pan? I imagine Steven as someone who never really needed to think about his attraction, it just *was* and he just let it be/let it happen, so he wouldn’t necessarily label it hyper specifically if he labeled it at all. He’s attracted to he ends up being attracted to and doesn’t really think abt it. (Which is why I go w pan, bc for me at least a way to interpret pansexuality is jus like. Who are u attracted to? ¯\_(ツ)_/ whoever I’m attracted to)

2) otp: connverse!! The way those two are handled in the show is really wonderful ;;o;; I love how they’re close friends first, and the romantic stuff doesn’t feel like it stresses them out bc it’s smth they’re exploring together. Instead of having the pressure and fear of a crush on a friend, it’s this mutual, slowly blooming relationship of two ppl who care abt each other a lot and just want to be together in whatever way works for them

I can’t super see other ships w Steven, mostly bc his dynamic w other gems doesn’t really feel like they’re equals? Like I think I’ve seen Steven be shipped w peridot and spinel, and it feels like they’re unequal bc Steven was the one kind of....”fixing” them or he had the emotional upperhand, but with Connie they were both equals the entire time bc of how their relationship was founded (when they were both younger and just as lost/confused as each other)

(Plus I prefer those characters w other ppl lol)

And I also don’t think the show has enough development with Steven and someone like Peedee for me to think it’s believable as a ship, I just don’t know enough about peedee or his friendship with Steven, and considering how much I know abt Steven it again feels uneven—it feels odd to me for someone so uninvolved in steven’s journey to be the person I’d ship him with?

Though I can see the potential for an interesting ship in both cases, I just think connverse is the stronger contender bc of how well they were set up and developed :0

3) brotp: the relationship between Steven and amethyst developed really wonderfully and shows how much Steven has grown up ;;o;; in early seasons it felt like Steven was a little kid w a rambunctious sister who’s about a decade or two older than him—they goofed around but it wasn’t really a serious relationship between equals

And then as Steven grew older and developed further his relationship with all the gems matured—but his relationship with amethyst was recontextualized so that they’re both the underdogs together , and I love the concept that as Steven grew and learned to use his powers, he still looked to amethyst for guidance and support, which makes her feel important bc they can both support each other

Their friendship just means a lot to me ;;o;; 💕💕💕

4) notp: uh idk prob shipping Steven with garnet or pearl. With amethyst or some of the other gems (like the aforementioned spinel and peri) I can see someone having a dynamic of adult Steven + the gem and it being fine. It’s not my ship and I don’t really like shipping Steven with the gems but I can see it. But him with garnet or pearl feels really squicky to me, mostly bc those two felt much more parental in their relationship (esp with garnet) but also bc of their hangoups over home world/rose just would make a romantic relationship feel too messy for me. I personally hc garnet as aromantic, and I prefer pearl w amethyst bc I love a potential development between them where ame was someone pearl never idol worshipped and they could grow as equals

(Can u tell I love ships where the characters are equals/on the same level in terms of emotions or power? Yeah)

5) first hc I think of: hm, again this one is kinda tough bc I don’t really engage in su the same way I do other fandoms and I think it’s jus bc of how story driven it is? So, hm. It’s hard to come up with a hc that isn’t me speculating on smth that I want to come up in the future episodes or that’s already accepted canon; and I think a big reason is bc Steven has a specific identify related character arc that’s ongoing rn, if we didn’t have su future I could prob have an easier time w this but yanno

Anyways I think one hc I have is the idea that Stevens like, never been to a traditional schooling system, and he was mostly taught by Greg and Pearl. I like to imagine he wouldn’t ever really need a formal education and wouldn’t ever get one, but maybe in the future he’d get his GED online bc of legal stuff esp w his relationship to Connie (marriage, buying a home, children etc) like it would jus make things easier but I don’t think it’s necessary

Or hc that there’s weird parts of his biology he’s jus never thought of? Like he doesn’t particularly need to brush his teeth bc he’s never had a cavity and can’t actually get cavities? Or his wounds healing too quickly, esp internal injuries—like Steven who’s had internal bleeding that just goes away in five minutes w/o him noticing. And on that regard, Steven having a literally inhuman pain tolerance

6) one way I relate to this character: I don’t think I’ve really related to Steven on a personal level, except for maybe the idea of “the loved ones you looked up to aren’t perfect and your relationship with them can shift bc of that” HAJSKDKFLG

7) thing that gives me secondhand embarrassment abt him: uhhhh....,I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve really gotten secondhand embarrassment from Steven since early early seasons where he was really young and naive and a little dumb. Now I’m just.....wincing in sympathy for him bc he desperately needs to talk to someone. Boy needs therapy BADLY

8) cinnamon roll or problematic fave: he’s a PURE CINNAMON ROLL. As in, he’s definitely got flaws, of course, but I think in interacting w him it’s more along the lines of “he’s a good person with a lot of issues and flaws to work through eventually”

I think I take this question as like, how do I prefer to portray him? And how tough am I on him w characterization and stuff.

(Send me a character and I’ll fill out one of these hc questionnaires)

[doedipus]

I finally finished moyashimon

it’s honestly one of my favorite anime/manga that I’ve read in a long, long time. there are definitely some aspects of the work that frustrate me, but it’s not quite enough to sour the work as a whole in my eyes. if you’re in the mood for a really chill slice of life series with a lot of well-developed and respectfully portrayed female and queer characters, definitely give it a shot.

first of all, to anyone who’s only seen the anime adaptation, definitely, definitely, definitely look into the manga. some of the best parts in the series happen after the anime ends, esp. the craft beer adventure in volume 8 and american road trip in volume 10. plus, if you’re like me and are mostly drawn to the work because of kei, her involvement in the story only starts ramping up immediately after the anime ends, and she’s essentially the main character of the last 3 volumes. Plus, ishikawa and his team have a lot of fun with the medium that doesn’t always translate into animation.

All in all, picking up the manga is 100% worth your time if you’re even vaguely intrigued by the premise

more detailed thoughts and a handful of good reaction images under the break

I think overall the beer, france, and america arcs are the high points of the series.

The beer arc sticks out to me mostly because of stuff happening in real life during the time I was reading it. Basically, some of my friends talked me into taking a beer tasting class at uni with them. I’d never really liked beer very much beforehand, but it turns out I was just drinking the wrong kinds of beer. I’ll put my life on the line for a good IPA now that I know what that even is.

The beer section of moyashimon has mutou go through a similar process- she starts out by going on a huge tirade about how craft beer sucks and it’s only appealing to pretentious weirdos, and then over the course of the volume, they go over what different kinds of beer are like, how they’re made, etc. It ended up giving me a good idea of what to look out for in the beer class, and it was fun being able to compare what I was sampling to what the fermentation lab crew talked about.

There’s also a pretty cute gender-affirming moment for kei in there, where the gang gives her a women’s costume for the faux oktoberfest celebration the book culminates in. it’s a small plot point, but I liked it a lot.

The france and america arcs are pretty similar and I like them for basically the same reasons. Essentially it boils down to them tying really dynamic plotlines in with the usual culinary intrigue. There’s a real sense of tension to what’s happening in the story, and the food stuff is more directly related to what’s happening in the story than it usually is. In a lot of the other plotlines, the writers have a tendency to frontload all the technical stuff into one or two extended dialogue scenes, which can be kind of hard to get through in comparison

I also found ishikawa’s assessment of american food pretty fun to read through, and a lot of his comments make me want to try out some western restaurants in japan if I ever end up going there. For instance, he has the characters talk a lot about how burgers and stuff are much sweeter than they’re used to them being in japan, and it’d be neat to have a point of comparison for that.

Also the america arc is where kei and marie probably do gay things, which I am very down for

ultimately, I think upwards of 90% of people who stumble upon this series now, 5 years after the last chapter and last episode were released, are here specifically for kei. she’s the strong bad to sawaki’s homestar: you might not know it yet, but she’s the reason you’re here. if you’re impatient and wanna speedrun straight to the part where she transitions/goes full time/whatever, it’s halfway through volume 4 of the manga and episode 10 of the first season of anime. there’s a lot of fun plotlines that happen before that point that really deserve attention on their own merit, though.

I’m a big fan of kei’s characterization. she’s possibly my favorite trans (or trans-adjacent josou danshi, post-colonialism ho!) character I can think of, and certainly the best I’ve seen written by a cis author. being manga, there’s some dumb missteps that happen, but they seem to be mostly a result of the creators not knowing better rather than them just putting her in to gawk at like a lot of other creative teams tend to do. plus, I think a lot of it boils down to localization error. for instance, the scanslation I read consistently has characters and margin notes refer to her as “he,” but like, japanese doesn’t really use gendered language the way english does, so it’s more representative of the scan team’s biases than the writers’.

One of the things I really like about Kei’s depiction is that the author doesn’t try to make excuses for her behavior. There’s no throwaway line in her backstory about how her parents saw three crows and a capybara on the way home from the hospital and decided to raise her as a girl. She’s clearly attracted to Sawaki, but that’s never framed as her primary motive for transition. She just flatly explains that she thought about it real hard and decided that this was best for her. To me, that’s a much more compelling narrative than one where it’s something either foisted upon the character or something they just sort of haphazardly stumble into.

Another thing that sticks out to me about Kei is that she exists in a series that doesn’t construct its cast as a harem around a singular main character or the reader, which gives her much more room for personal motivations and interests. Like, even though I love Luka from steins;gate to pieces, she and the rest of the female cast in that series really only exist in order to be Okabe’s, and by extension, the viewers’ romantic interests. This ends up sort of limiting their ability for character growth because at the end of the day, they all have to remain available and receptive to Okabe’s advances. As a result, Luka can never really call Okabe out for mistreating her because the writers won’t risk making her route or subplot unappealing. The same goes for plenty of other series trans characters find themselves in, and it shows. So many of them are either smug tricksters there to tease viewers or utterly submissive waifs, and often lack development beyond what’s necessary to get otaku motors running.

Since Moyashimon doesn’t use that kind of restrictive casting structure, the author is able to untie Kei’s sense of self-worth from how Sawaki feels about her and allow the romance subplot to take a back seat while the cast works on their various projects. As a result, she ends up being more independent than most other trans characters and her self-confidence is more genuine. She’s designed from the ground up to be a more complete character, and it makes her inclusion in the main story as well as her subplot with Sawaki feel organic.

on the other hand, as punlich​ pointed out in their post, the series does take a couple passes at introducing characters that seem to be designed with the intent of giving the reader an outlet to vent their sexual frustration around kei, particularly marie and madoka. the former is frequently referenced within the work as being a cis palette swap of kei, and madoka is another of itsuki’s proteges who begins insisting that she’s going to marry sawaki shortly after she’s introduced and receives little characterization beyond that. Marie ends up being a strong character in her own right, but the work probably would’ve been better off if they’d given her basically any other design.

at least in my reading of the work, neither is really taken seriously as a preferable alternative pairing to kei/sawaki, since marie ends up being more into kei than sawaki in the end, and madoka just makes sawaki uncomfortable more often than not. it’s a clear step up from works like steins;gate, re:zero, blend-s, or oregairu, where the trans or GNC character is the one who’s never taken seriously to the point of being a joke inclusion more than anything. still, it’s irritating that the creators would feel the need to include that sort of character, given how they’re usually pretty good about not harem-izing their cast.

uh, and speaking of that, fuck most of volume 11. the central plotline for that section is that the school holds a beauty pageant for the cast, which is, uh, wildly out of character for the series to say the least. it’s to the point where I’m inclined to suspect some form of executive meddling. like maybe they were gonna get dropped due to lack of readership and the brass told the creative team to do a dumb fanservice arc or something. they talk in a sidebar about how they changed editors around the start of this arc, so I have a hunch that has something to do with it?  I guess only they would know, though. it’s not like I can read any interviews or anything lol.

there’s still good content in there, and like I mentioned earlier, it’s when kei starts to really dominate a lot of the screen time, which is a big plus. it’s just dumb and out of place.

I also kind of found the conclusion to kei and sawaki’s “will they, won’t they” subplot really unfulfilling. namely, there really isn’t a conclusion to it at all. at the end, it’s clear that kei’s finally become comfortable with her attraction to sawaki, but sawaki is still kinda hesitant about going anywhere serious with someone he’s been friends with since forever. and like, I can get that, it’s sort of a natural aspect of where that arc would have to go, it’s just a frustrating note to end on. it seems likely that they would get together in the future, at least. (and that’s why you should read my fanfics!)

One thing I really liked about the ending section is sawaki comes up with some proactive uses for his superpower. for most of the series, it’s just a vehicle for ishikawa to exposit about his fascination with microbiology and fermented cuisine, which works great with the lower-key tone the series went for. still, the ways he uses it at the end are pretty clever, and it would’ve been neat to see him go on to use it in other ways. It’s frustrating that one of the uses he comes up with involves doing mouth-to-mouth with madoka, however.

I kind of get the feeling that the series got cut short because a lot of plot threads get addressed and tied up really quickly and sloppily in the last four or five chapters, while a ton of others just sit there. idk if it was a popularity thing, or if ishikawa decided to go all-in on maria the virgin witch, or some other factor, but I guess that’s kind of the nature of serial fiction. it just goes on as long as the creators and publishers are engaged with it, and then it’s over and they all move onto something else.

I’m being pretty hard on the ending portions of the series, but honestly pretty much everything not directly related to the beauty pageant or madoka is really solid. I’m just laying it all out there so nobody gets caught off-guard by the jankiness more than anything.

For one reason or another, moyashimon really struck a chord with me, and it’s kind of hard to put into words why. A big part of it is that kei is a character that I feel a sort of kinship with, which is a rare occurrence as a trans person. She feels like a real person that I’d meet through a message board or discord lobby. The rest of the cast has shades of that as well- the students feel like people I could have met in school, and itsuki harkens back to aspects of professors I’ve had, from his weird sense of humor to his rather alarming past working for the military. It’s easy for me to subconsciously insert myself into their fictional friend group. I guess it’s kind of like how people tend to engage with redlettermedia or ensemble let’s play channels like game grumps or super best friends play. Reading about the gang’s antics confers a sense of belonging that I’m perpetually starving for.

Another aspect of it is that it’s just fun to indulge in someone else’s hyperfixations for a while. It’s why sci-fi authors like heinlein and crichton are so influential, and why internet personalities like cgp grey or jon bois are so engaging: they’re really adept at articulating how utterly captivating some concept or ideology is to them at the moment. Somewhere between most and all of what ishikawa has to say about food and microbiology goes directly over my head, but the passion he has for those topics is readily apparent in every jargon-infested, chart-saturated debate he has his characters get into, and I love it. In that sidebar he goes on about his relationship to his editors, he mentions that the top boy editor chewed him out a couple times for basically trying to sneak a textbook into the magazine. It ends up being compelling based on passion alone, even if I only really internalized a fifth of what he actually had to say.

Is moyashimon for you? Ultimately I don’t think it’s really for anyone besides ishikawa himself. But if you’re at all like me, chances are you’ll fall in love with this bizarre and charming edutainment series anyway. If any of this sounds even remotely interesting to you, I can’t recommend checking it out highly enough.

[snkpolls]

SnK S3E1 Poll Results

The poll closed with 1,336 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

This is just a general warning for potential manga related spoilers in the comments! Tread carefully!

Rate the Episode

Overall, viewers were excited about the new episode and ranked it well. It seems everyone is fired up and ready for the anime to pick up where it left off. Bonus points for a short one year hiatus this time!

I'm really excited to see this new version of the Uprising arc unfold. This episode did a great job at highlighting the paranoia and "on the run" aspect better than the manga counterpart, with the safety net feeling well and truly gone. The tagline for volume 13 was "No Safe Place Left", but it's the anime that really made me feel that was the case.

Trust WIT studio to surprise even the manga readers with their content. Everything from the OP to the pacing was completely unexpected, but I love it!

GREAT start, a good way to hype both Manga readers and anime only fans into the start of the new season !  (putting it in the ‘was this a good start’ question)

Is it 7/29 yet?

Rate the OP

There have definitely been mixed reviews on the new opening. The majority of voters were happy or content with it, while about 22% of respondents could have thought better on it. Maybe it will grow on people as the anime continues!

For me the opening was a masterpiece. The melancholy and the foreshadowing for those who don’t read the manga is fantastic. As I am current with the manga it made me sad for the kids because I know how things are now and I was also excited to see them again in animated form.

I must admit, on my first listen, I was thoroughly disappointed by red swan and thus hated it with passion. But shockingly I LOVED it just on my very second listen (which was when I actually watched the episode)! I then understood that there was nothing wrong with that beautiful song nor the opening itself. It was all my personal expectations, biases and unwillingness to accept something new.

Something about the animation in the OP was weird and the still shots they included looked like someone else's fanart.

I'm disappointed with the opening. I just feel like it's not on bar with the previous ones. But I guess people are right about it being more suitable for an arc that's focused on character development, so I don't hate it as much now. I just hope that we get a second opening when the action kicks in (since they're covering up to the ocean) that makes the viewers more hyped. My problem with the current opening is that it doesn't feel like Attack on Titan anymore. I'm also not super happy with the drawings in general.

The opening really fits this part of the story because this is the part when shit gets real.

This OP is very different from the previous three. What is your favorite opening so far?

Shinzuo wo Sasageyo took the lead by a huge margin (including votes for our lovely typo version, “Shinzuo no Sasageyo”), managing to outdo the iconic first opening, Guren no Yumiya!

Bring Linked Horizon back.

Regarding Red Swan: While it is a departure from the bombastic hype we've had before, this is such a good OP for this arc. It takes the OP in the complete opposite tone, which is exactly what this arc does with the rest of the series. The visuals are stunning, and the song itself is an absolute tune. #RedSwanDefenceSquad

Also, regarding the OP, the song isn't bad, but it doesn't really fit the AOT style of epic openings. To me, it feels more like an ED, which have always been softer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a more epic second OP as we move into the RTS arc.

There was no ending theme this time. Will this become a consistent thing?

Respondents were confident that we’ll be getting an OP. Of course, as we’ve learned over the week, this is true! And surprise! It will be Linked Horizon!

Which of the below were your favorite moments?

It was close to a tie between “Kenny’s explosive entrance” and Levi’s “KENNYYYAHHH!” with the former barely taking the lead. Safe to say, the cliffhanger in this episode left us all impatiently awaiting episode 39! Other notable favorite moments were “Moblit ready to throwdown for Hange,” “Hange promising to torture Sannes,” and seeing Eren at the ocean.

Still salty about not seeing Eren build a house in his Titan form

I really enjoyed that they moved certain conversations like Eren and Historia to that particular part of the episode. It just fit so well! My kids. :')

Where is my jeankasa moments???

KEEENNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!1!!11

I am just glad to get to watch SnK again.

hanji hot

I liked the moments between Levi and Mikasa - she asked him about his wounded leg and she was really worrying about him. I'm glad that she shows some interest in other people (not just Eren and Armin).

What do you think of the new episode’s pacing?

The largest denominator are waiting to see how more of the season plays out before making a final judgement call, and many are confident that everything will be okay. Still, there is a small percentage who are concerned that they won’t get to see everything they hoped for.

Uprising is my least favourite arc, mainly due to the pacing issues. So I am very excited that they will be tackling those. I'm going to need a few more eps to correctly judge things, but I am hopeful.

I was kind of disappointed. I know they want to change the pacing and all, but I don't accept them sacrificing some important and necessary scenes for character development. I've yet to see how the rest of the season will unfold before judging it, but yeah, I really hope they won't rush things again, especially when it's my favorite arc!

I watched with an anime only and he was confused by the pacing, and how we got to the cabin from seeing the beast titan at the end of the last season. I hope they don't keep rushing through the manga chapters. I was not enthusiastic about the episode.

The pacing was really fast, but that's the price of having to condense such a complex manga into an anime, that probably had limited time/budget, as they all do. So I am happy to get what I can, and enjoy the hella beautiful animation, instead of complaining about all the scenes they cut out…

A lot of stuff really quickly, but it's understandable. This is my favorite arc and I love political intrigue, so I'm hoping we start to fill in some of the scenes we've already skipped past as we go along and the Anime-onlies are already hooked. I *really* hope we get to see the badass competence of our Vets - they deserve it!

Which main character got the best S3 glow up so far?

Levi is (unsurprisingly) the clear winner in this competition. We think his new bedhead hair is charming, too! In second place came Eren, followed by Mikasa and Historia.

i don't think there was any glow up this season. kenny's great tho, 10/10 would stan

The girls aren’t animated with lipstick anymore. Yay or nay?

The vast majority are either unphased or delighted by WIT moving away from the colored glossy lips of the girls. A small percentage of respondents are going to miss the look.

Don't actually care about the lipstick, it just makes sense that they won't put it during the whole action.

The characters are finally starting to look truer to their manga counterparts this season! How do you feel about it?

76% of respondents are thrilled about the anime starting to match the appearance of the characters’ manga counterparts.

The changes to animation and character styles were kind of weird but I got used to it eventually

How do you feel about Mikasa taking down Reeves and his cronies by herself?

46% are happy with the development and seeing Mikasa get a chance to shine on her own. Meanwhile, 18% are disappointed that Levi didn’t tackle Reeve’s cronies with her, while 14% are simply upset they didn’t get to see Levi do his iconic chokeslam at all. Let’s be hopeful WIT will make up for that in the future!

i proper wanted to see the Ackerman duo but watching Mikasa chokeslam some bitches made me pop a boner and i don’t even have a dick

I would have LOVED the duo action, but I anticipate to see that in the following episodes (or else Wit and I are gonna have some words). At least it's nice that Levi trusted Mikasa to handle this mission without his supervision!

Mikasa was great! A little sad they cut Jean being protective over her safety after Sasha shoots the arrow though.

It was alright but developing her personality and relationship with the other characters is more important than constantly just giving her ~badass~ scenes.

Considering that Levi had to be somewhere else, I'm fine with it since it's such a small scene. But I still want some Levi/Mikasa duo action

i liked it, but it was mikasa AND sasha

too OP

Manga readers, what best describes how you felt about seeing Eren at the ocean?

Nearly half of voters were surprised to see this animated so early, followed by 28% who were moved by the scene. A small percentage weren’t happy that WIT implied about the ocean so early.

I NEED MORE EREN WITH LONG HAIR!!!!!!!!!

It was a great decision to show it in the beginning. It sets the tone for the following episodes.

I'm already finding delight in the sense of dread anime-only watchers will have when things start going off the rails and they have Eren alone in this scene in the back of their minds.

It was the most beautiful "eye close-up" this anime could have ever done! Amazing scene - wonderfully colored, animated, and sad and touching. 10/10

Interesting choice, nice way to bring it all back at the end though

As a TV producer it's understandable. They would want to hook people early on, esp for anime only viewers

stop lowkey spoiling ffs

I watched the season premiere at the movie theatre and when that scene came up I could hear a discrete general gasp coming from the audience. I liked how everyone was shocked but still tried to contain their excitement for anime watchers.

Felt like they’re trying to make it seem like a dream sequence rather than a reality.

I felt it gave more mystery to how the plot will develop for anime-onlies. It was a great decision to show it at the beginning, especially Eren alone.

Anime only fans, what best describes how you felt about seeing Eren at the ocean?

An uncertain number of voters are most definitely certain they read the manga! Meanwhile. 37% of anime only viewers were really pumped by the implication of getting to see the ocean. A smaller percentage are confused but still here for the ride, while 18% don’t really feel anything about it either way.

My sister is anime only, and she said a mix of options - confused and shocked and excited - looking forward for the rest!

Anime Only, don't know how I feel. It was played out well so looking forward to it.

I was shocked yet I was amazed on that scene

shocked and excited - looking forward for the rest!

Your reaction to Kenny?

The overwhelming majority are #readyforkenny and excited to see him! We suspect that the 7.6% of voters who don’t know who he is are anime only viewers. We’re excited to see how you guys think of him in a few weeks!

I'm not sure how I feel about Kenny. I imagined him a bit differently. While reading a manga I saw him as harsh, cold, mysterious man with deep voice and scary looks. In the anime however he looks too young and his face is different.

Looks like WIT was really anxious to introduce Kenny. I didn't mind it overall, but I hope their shuffling scenes around doesn't become overwhelming.

Kenny: Omae wa mou shindeiru Nifa: Nani? *bangbang*

Rate Eren’s abs on a scale of 1-5

The majority of respondents are thirsty for Eren’s animated abs! 105 of voters will take a hard pass, however.

I was so scared they were gonna draw Eren with the body of a 12-year-old like so much of the official art back in the day did. Thank you WiT for keeping him manga-accurately ripped

Do you feel this episode was a strong start to the season?

While a fair number of voters are tentatively waiting for more of the season to make their judgement, the majority of respondents agree that the season started off with a bang and are looking forward to more.

GREAT start, a good way to hype both Manga readers and anime only fans into the start of the new season !

Which group are your favorite characters?

All of the characters are winners in this poll! 

Do you read the manga or do you only watch the anime?

The majority of respondents are loyal manga readers. We had 162 anime only respondents this week! 

Where do you primarily discuss the series?

Reddit takes the lead!

Additional thoughts on the chapter?

I miss Levi’s speech about how he’s ‘just being an asshole’ when eren can’t harden his titan 😰 it was cute

It really was just an extended trailer, everything included in the trailer was in the episode, it was very good and I enjoyed it nonetheless!

I'm so glad to be seeing my loves in animated action once again

I’m excited for the rest of the season!

The episode was definitely awesome for a first episode. I’m kinda disappointed that they skipped Historia’s explanation about her past, but I hope they will show it in a future episode. Also, the opening was stunning. Seeing my favorite characters as kids made me smile so much. Overall, this episode got me excited for the next episodes.

Amazing! Glad that it was not Eren centric and We'll be seeing Levi alot. I hope they show more of Mikasa and Levi moments. It was awesome. I first watched the episode at the cinema so I couldn't watch it with the opening. But I loved it!

Small Levi in the opening is so beautiful I want to cry !!

Where is abswin?! I have priorities, WIT, where are yours??

This is so good! I was at first worried that they will shove Levi down our throats (as much as I love him), but now I'm surprisingly confident in this new season! I trust Wit to make great changes in the pacing, because the anime version definitely need some improvement. The animation is stunning and Mikasa and Levi were amazing, they can slay me when they want.

Trust WIT studio to surprise even the manga readers with their content.

MANGA SPOILERS: I'm most curious to see how different the plot will be now that they seem to have skipped the whole SC/Reeves company collaboration. The OP was honestly a shock at first watch but now I can't stop listening to it. I think it's perfect, especially for us manga readers, because it really tugs at your heartstrings when you think of what's currently happening in the manga. Especially that scene with kid!Eren bumping into soldier Eren. I'm still crying. :( All in all, brilliant episode, can't wait for next week!

RIP to my bae Nifa

They cut out a shitload of little dialogue that isn't important to the plot between the characters I was hoping to see animated so that was pretty disappointing. I'm expecting that trend to continue. On the opening, I'm a manga reader, I get what they were going for and all the undertones and such but I still didn't like it much. I don't like how some of the characters got the shaft completely and how characters important to this season like Erwin, Levi and Historia and characters related to them barely got any parts in the opening.

Baby Erwin!!!

I can really now feel the connection of the anime and manga! Can't wait for the other episodes, it was spoiling some parts (if you read the manga) but either way if you watched or read or both Attack On Titan you'll still love and appreciate it

Thank you everyone who voted! We’ll see you back with episode 39!

[theclaravoyant]

what did you think about fitz' death not getting the weight/big moment it deserved? like i get it that coulson is "retiring" and everything but i felt so played when they revealed none of the honour/remembrance/plaque/feels were for fitz... like "we got a copy of him out there, lol, who cares about this one".... sorry to dump this negativity on you i just felt they played us so dirty...

I have kinda… mixed feelings about it tbh.

On the one hand, the scene with Mack was absolutely soul destroying. It was a little understated, which was nice esp as I felt a lot of the dialogue had really Grand Vibes this ep. I’m glad this scene didn’t. It was quiet and shaken and scared and there was a really powerful silence when Mack just sat with him. It was a really beautiful scene. I cried.

So, I’m kinda glad they didn’t drag it out? Aside from the very genuine, heartfelt emotional punch of that scene being quite poignant imo, and not really needing more (given that it’s a narrative, I would happily read 500 ‘jemma finds out’ ‘daisy finds out’ ‘let’s rip clara’s heart out some more’ fics), I felt like a lot of Coulson’s speech was very grand and sweeping and finale-esque, but it didn’t feel that genuine to me. It was similar to in the S4 finale when they sorta handwaved and were like “yeah we all did bad things in the Framework, it sucked” rather than acknowledging Fitz’s unique victimhood status in that case. So I’m sorta glad that didn’t end up being for him? Although I coulda done with the plaque in the cockpit of THE ZEPHYR. THE PLANE THAT HE BUILT. (i have a lot of zephyr feels okay). then again it probs would be hella weird for cryoFitz to come back and have a constant reminder of the fact that he’s like, dead.

We also imo didn’t need / did well without consecutive mourning scenes when they were going to reveal cryoFitz all along. Some people are already extremely pissed by the unnecessary death itself; showing and going through all that pain, from that perspective, for in the end ‘no reason’ is even more wasteful, unnecessary and cruel. Then again, it depends how you feel about the Fitz/CryoFitz thing. My feelings on that again are quite complex unfortunately but some thoughts on it include:

CryoFitz isn’t a clone of Fitz or something, he is actually Fitz. He’s not “not real Fitz” in any way shape or form, he’s literally Fitz, just further back in time (and not by much!). The main things he’s gonna miss out on are: a) a hell of a lot of bad/dark shit which at best, he could do without and at worst, was atrocious writing that never should have happened anyway and b) the FS marriage and proposal which in my opinion, weren’t really ideal anyway. I get why a lot of FS fans are pissed at this being erased, because they are often considered milestones in a relationship, and a lot of FS fans were understandably highly attached to them, but I just haven’t seen them this way in this particular case. Both the proposal and the wedding were stolen moments in the middle of a war-zone, which were sweet and served their purpose and all, but they didn’t move the actual contents/nature of the relationship forward (in my opinion), and I think it will be more meaningful to have the chance to do them again, to do them ‘right’, and to do them with the chance to follow through with the promises they made, like (even though I don’t love this, I’ll live) starting a family with each other. So I actually think that’s kinda a good thing in that regard.

What I’m more annoyed about than the lack of mourning and such per se are two things:

1) I’m annoyed that Fitz died in a freak accident - he’d already saved Mack and Polly when the roof fell in. The loop was already broken. I don’t really see why it was necessary. If they really wanted to kill (or ‘kill’) him, they could have done the exact same death scene with say, him pushing someone out of the way or something and directly having an impact on the future. This way it ended up being much more of a ‘because we could’ situation and that’s pissed a lot of people off, and the way the writers talked about it seems to be in line with that interpretation, with them basically saying “it was a way of giving you the full emotional impact of a death without actually giving you a death” which a) no it wasn’t because we had 1 mourning scene and then ‘it’s okay bc cryo Fitz’ which spoils that impact and b) FS separation #1135013613704 is not exactly inventive and I can see why lots of people are pissed at that.

2) I’m annoyed - and I freaking called this I called this so hard #disappointed-but-not-surprised - that this is a chance for them to erase and start over. They did redemption by death AND redemption by time travel both at once! There’s almost no way they’re going to give 5x14 any kind of resolution between Fitz and Daisy now, because that Fitz died and Fitz-now didn’t do it so it’s not fair to hold him to account. But that means Daisy has to forget her trauma. Plus, it’s been so long in the storyline since the Framework that I have a very strong feeling that isn’t going to get addressed either, even though cryoFitz is fresh outta 6 months of solitary outta the FW and not in a good place. To me this shows that they did all this to/with Fitz because they knew they could snap their fingers and get out of it later. That pisses me off. It also means that once again, they get to handwave others’ trauma based off things that Fitz and/or his face and/or brain was used for. That’s the more disrespectful element to me.

Plus, I guess to be brutally honest, the writers kinda killed “my Fitz” earlier this season. CryoFitz is closer to my Fitz than the Fitz that died. Not just because of his darker character development, I don’t want to just whinge about my Poor Baby Fitz going through things, but because of some decisions that I stand by were downright bad, insulting, ableist writing (*cough* 5x14 *cough*). One of the reasons I was so affected by Fitz’s death scene was because it was My Fitz that I saw dying. Shaken and scared, but trying to solve it, and trying to save the others, and trying to have hope. That is my Fitz and for a second it made me forget about all that’s happened with him this season because all I saw was My Fitz dying and needing his friend and it broke my heart in a way that was actually kinda cathartic. So I’m not really annoyed by how the death was handled, because I would actually be a huge fan of erasing most of S5 on Fitz’s behalf (and bc Iain and Henry forking killed it), but I am annoyed about how that will be used.

[leocheg]

Okay, harringrove hit me like a train, and now it’s just my naked bones rattling all over the railway.

I’m seriously so torn. I feel sick just thinking about watching season 3 for the very possible pain of it all, you know, Steve getting assigned a new gf, Billy getting killed off, all the antis shitposting under my sweet sweet otp’s tag...

On the other hand, I really want to believe the Duffers are trolling with all that “ohh a textbook enigmatic alt chickkkk! Billy’s just a dumb villainnnn, it’s gonna get worssssse! Everybody who you love from season 1 will DIEEEE!” Is this show really supposed to be that shallow? Does it really need that cheap hype? Frankly speaking, I don’t know what I expect from a Netflix tv pop show. I just hoped that the series made for geeks by geeks would somehow go deeper than “a human villain” esp since that “villain” is a 17 yo with daddy issues, and honestly making a piece of irredeemable trash out of a troubled teen (srsly he didn’t even have a knife or anything on him) is a total dick move on behalf of everyone responsible.

Now it’s time for me to explain why Billy isn’t deserving of all the crap he’s been given by the fandom. And okay, okay, I won’t put I JUST LOVE MAH BAYBEEEEHHHH all over the list.

First of all, I suggest to take a step back and take in the starting point. Billy’s a 17 yo guy, with an okay(ish?) step-mom, his actual mom being most probably dead (I’m not sure but I feel in the US it’s more common for women to get custody after divorce?) and a dad who gives Billy constant shit over the smallest things. Let’s not forget two more things: this 17 yo is supposed to be responsible for a 13 yo (dunno about you, I’d be super pissed off, because girls this age can give you HELL, boys give you HELL a bit later), and for whatever fuck up they both committed he’s exiled from his home place which means no memory of his mom apart from that little thing he always wears on that chain (is that just my hc tho?), no friends, no possible family like caring aunts-uncles-nanas-grandpas, no voice in the family. As I see the situation judging from those little snippets we gather from the conversations, Billy could have fucked up looking after Max, probably big time, probably it had smth to do with Susan’s ex and Max’s dad, so Neil had them packing and moving across the whole country. I just wonder how bad could that fuck up have been that Billy got guilt-tripped so badly he wasn’t able to say no and stay in Cali somehow? HE’S CRAZY LIKE THAT ANTIS HUH? It’s also not a thing a caring parent would do out of the blue, Billy had only a year before graduation. I believe Neil to love his son and care for his future, fight me. BUT. When you are a responsible parent with some skill for communication and actually understanding what you’re doing and that there’s an independent individual in front of you, not an abstract child like whatever that word even means apart from age, you don’t hit them, you don’t shout, you don’t impose. My point being that Neil is freaking out. He’s got two teens on his hands, you gotta be strict not to let them go crazy rebellious, right? He’s desperate to keep his son in line, denying everything he really is at the moment. What is he though? Well, a super lonely teen who wants his dad to be proud of him. I think he tries really hard to follow that “respect and responsibility” mantra: gives Max a lift no problem, tries to come to terms that they are family now, tries to protect her. Which brings me to the question of racism, and no, I don’t think he’s racist at all. I don’t think he cares, he’s got a lot going on already.What he cares about is agitated Max. Remember the way she left the arcade? All confused, angry, bewildered. Billy just was being protective the way his practically non-existent emotional intellect allowed him. Probably he knew there would be a shitstorm coming if Neil found out. I don’t think young girls are allowed bfs in his household. That’s the vibe I got there, fellas.

Why is Billy so lonely though? Just look at that guy, he’s got everything: the face, the ass, the style, the charm, the smile, the wit. He’s unapologetically confident and knows how to get what he wants, so being alone and not making any friends seems to be a choice of his own. Mainly because he’s super pissed about everything. I mean he really has no chill when it comes to emotions, they control him. Moreover, he doesn’t plan on staying longer than is absolutely necessary, so why try. As for a gf, he’s not that into girls, which could be for several reason (my hc is him being gay, no surprises here lol). I think he’s actually a virgin. We see him with a girl once, he didn’t seem nice or caring or at least a little bit amused, so probably that was out of sheer bore. Nothing to do other than date or keg-drink in a small town, huh, Billy boy? Third, and don’t hit me yet, he’s kind of a nerd himself. And here I have to say thanks to a very devoted lady who brought to my attention two details about Billy’s room one of them being a poster for the first Metallica album which only few ppl liked as much (nerds!), and another one being James Thurber’s autobiography Billy had on his table. How’s that for your typical basketball bully Cali boy reading? Nerd! So he’s a bit too picky about all this friends and connections thing. Also I’d like to point out that Max actually found her a whole party of friends, I think that could make Billy kinda jelous? Before that it felt they were in the same boat, sort of a team? In the first scene they appeared I honestly thought they were this cool bro-sis pair fully armed to take on Hawkins ready or not.

So. I feel for my boy. He’s just a lonely kid with daddy issues and zero anger control.

To be continued, cuz there’s also my precious mama teddy bear Steve.

[foodhx]

I havent written in a very long time. Im grateful i wrote previously and have something to look back on. So much has changed. S and i broke up. Its been more than a year, depending on how you count it, maybe 1.5 yrs.

Im not sure where im going with this, or in life. There were things i believed in before, had hope and ideals. I havent any hope now, i dont know what to hope in (apart from God). Its been like this for a while. What does it look like to hope in God now?

Ive ended up in a specialty i didnt plan on going into. What’s done is done. But the learning point is, it would have been better to take more time to rotate around before deciding, because it was an emotional, impulsive decision (felt way too rushed, i knew this even at the time of applying). It wasnt a peaceful decision, the way such “life-defining” decisions should be made. It was an emotional time - literally six days after S sent that message to break up with me, my boss texted to ask if i was still interested in applying. Im deeply grateful for the opportunity he gave me which i didn’t and don’t deserve. I should have a word with him at some point. On a side note, im deeply grateful that this dept and the people i work with now are mostly of incredible Godly character, a very unique and irreplaceable quality in a workplace.

So much has fallen apart. My career, and the relationship with the person who became my best friend over the course of 7-9 years. It felt unreal, standing there watching everything explode. I couldnt believe what was happening. I never expected things to explode this way. I never expected myself to leave, and i never expected him to leave. He didn’t mean to be cruel, but i experienced it as such, through the whole months of me begging. Especially at the point where he physically walked out on me and closed the door when i was crying hysterically - not to be overdramatic, but it felt like pure coldness to do that to my uncontrollably hemorrhaging heart (like watching that aorta spurting on cardiothoracics). He still thinks choosing not to carry on is right and directed by God, which i doubt. He declined reconciliation despite months of my sincere apologies, pleading with him and my attempts to remediate where i screwed up (he hasn’t made an effort to reconcile with me in 1.5 yrs, cos he’s lost faith in our relationship and, it seems, me, entirely. Unfair as it might feel, that’s the way he feels). All in all, the break up was devastating. I’m still disoriented and trying to find my feet.

Ive significantly lost respect for him, because of his choice not to carry on and to, well, give up on us. I feel that this was more an emotional decision than a decision based on a true seeking of God, true dying to self and true obedience, especially to certain biblical instructions (love your neighbour as yourself, in humility value others above yourself, the relationship as an expression of love for Christ “what you did to the least of these you did to me” rather than a competition for love for Him, 1cor13).

I feel his decision to give up, abandon and betray is not biblically based, even if it can be justifiable by a twist of verses (he justifies not carrying on as him “putting God first”). I feel his decision was driven more by his hurt that i broke up with him, over text, last feb, and my cheating on him in july, than a real, honest, self-challenging attempt to “put God first”. I feel the decision not to carry on came more from his hurt over what i did to him than a true excavation of what it means to obey God and seek Him first. Its not necessary to leave someone whom youve built up a relationship with in order to put God first. Its arguable that being there for one’s friends IS putting God first, rather than leaving them because you can’t deal with it emotionally (greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends).

E says that its never so simple as “i heard it from God”, its all a mix of (sometimes sinful) human emotions as well as right-minded intention to follow God. How much of this move is driven by God vs his own human uncontrollable emotions? I doubt he’s admitted the whole truth to himself or me.

But i think his hurt is valid. It definitely is. He says he still doesnt feel whole coming out of 2019 and how i broke things off with him over text in feb and how i cheated in july. I’m not sure what he feels because i cant identify, but he says he doesnt want to deal with the pain with me because it was caused by me, and he’s not ready to talk to me (“can’t deal with it”). He tried to forgive me at the time, attending counselling with me, but gave up after 2 sessions. So i guess i can believe there may be a part of him that could want to work towards a friendship at some point (tho this is thrown into doubt at times, because of our apparent fundamental and irreconciliable differences). On my end, I feel that ive given him the benefit of the doubt many times, and hes always disappointed me in this process, since the break up. He’s never showed up or been the bigger person.

I could give him time, or i could end things. I could give him time to process what he needs to, and give him the chance to potentially engage with me the right way at some time in the future.

Should i, though?

Well, yes and no. Part of me knows he will only ever disappoint me cos thats all hes ever done consistently. The other part of me wants to give him the benefit of the doubt and just let him process things in his own time because its destructive to operate with such cynicism. One is overly cynical, the other is overly hopeful, and both responses arent centred.

Overall i just dont want to think about this anymore. I just want this whole thing out of my mind.

But is that enough for me to cut him out completely and forever? When i ask him, he replies that he wants to be friends but doesn’t know how or when that could happen. He isn’t at all invested in this “friendship”, even if he says its what he wants. He thinks God needs to encourage it or something before he will put in the effort... its all so screwed up cos of his ridiculous view or way of hearing from God that’s so mystical and non-bible based. I honestly feel really disgusted by him. He has been asking me not to contact him for a long time, more than a year. I’ve agreed to honour that. Mainly out of an understanding that he’ll never change, and ive outgrown him and his cuckoo ideas about how to hear from God. I know even if we become friends in the future, he’s gonna be the exact same dud - and why would i want to go back to that? Even as a friend. My basic requirements for friendship are that i respect the person and they respect me back. He absolutely does not respect me, and i absolutely dont respect him. Even tho we pay lip service to each other in emails for the sake of appearing holy and peace loving, we each are 100% convinced we know better. I don’t see a friendship here. I see disgust. I see contempt. Its beyond repair. And theres no instruction from God to repair it. So it will lie unrepaired for life.

Thinking about him makes me get into unpleasant thoughts and feelings. I dont have the exact words to describe how i feel. Not quite just anger (im over the peak of that), not really sadness (i do feel its sad that i still care about him and think about him so much when he wants nothing to do with me and wants me to not contact him - i mean, i dont have a practice of asking people not to contact me indefinitely, i think its rude, unfair and cruel), not just superiority cos i do admit i dont know everything and God works in mysterious ways and He still establishes a relationship with S even tho there is likely disobedience and misguidedness in S that he may never ever come to realize in this life). Its not purely a sense of betrayal as i walked out first - i knew he wasnt what i wanted, cos he wasnt loving me, or kind, or Christlike in his countenance towards not just me but everyone around us. I shouldnt just have walked out i should have pointed us to God, but there you have it. I dont regret ending things cos i know if i had continued we would be in a worse place than we are in now, where im stuck in an unhappy relationship out of obligation and fear of being alone. Its better to not be in a relationship than to be in one where you arent respected or loved.

I would say this whole event has had an impact on my relationship with... effort and commitment? Knowing you can try your best and have everything still fail. I used to believe in the “power of my dreams”. That i could get anything i wanted if i wanted it enough. But ive learnt that where the outcome is dependent on things outside my control (eg other people, genetics, politics), just trying my best and bringing my best intentions isnt enough. Its something but it doesnt guarantee an outcome - nothing can. You can say God can guarantee an outcome, but i would be cautious to believe only what He’s given in the bible and some revelations that are consistent with that and have been confirmed by wiser believers than myself, and those who know me well.

I have to hope again. And i have to stop wallowing and being selfpitiful. No. I have to hold myself to a higher standard.

The between places.

To focus on the next right thing - passing anatomy and being punctual. Seeking God, esp in my work...

[spockandawe]

So you’ve heard Spock is the actual literal devil

Have you heard that I’m a terrible person? A plagiarist? Have you been told that I’m only into transformers at all because I wanted to make this one random guy unhappy? If you’ve been told that, you’ve probably also been told that a year and a half later, I’m still making fanworks just to upset him. You might have even heard that shhhh, don’t disagree with Spock on anything, or they’ll hunt you down and harass you.

Right, okay. This is one hell of a saga that I will attempt to tell in as compressed a form as possible. It’s a lot. Years ago, back in HS, there was this one guy who policed the hell out of one of the character tags. I’m going to call him C. He’d pressure people not to make the content they were making, decry the hateful people reading with a malicious eye who thought the character would ever do anything bad (the character was a creep). And because being obnoxious wasn’t bad enough, if you didn’t cave to his demands, he just might do things like start whisper campaigns about how you support rape, casually out you as a survivor, cute little things like that.

This is not a story about that guy.

This is a story about C’s one-time attack dog, eventual boyfriend, and current ex. We’ll go ahead and call him R. I’ve tried real hard to avoid namedropping on my blog before, but could people find him from this? Probably. Have I stopped caring? Absolutely.

TL;DR, unsubstantiated accusations of serial harassment are a little questionable when they’re coming from someone with a years-long, extensively documented history of serial harassment and a personal grudge against me.

Cut for length.

Edit 7/2/2017: R has posted that he regrets making these posts about me, and admits that he said things that were out of line. And he’s stated that he’s going to try to do better in the future. I genuinely, truly appreciate that. I’m leaving this post up because there have been lies about me floating around for a while and I reserve the right to defend myself, but I really do appreciate that.

Oh balls, none of this makes sense without backstory (I’m so sorry)

If you think I suck or my work sucks, that’s fine! You do you, go enjoy the things that make you happy.

If you think I’m the devil because this one guy told you about my evil, evil past and all my terrible misdeeds, without anything at all to back up his words? You can ask me. I don’t bite, and oh lordy do I have receipts.

To be clear, R is totally allowed to hate me! I don't care. I don't care if he hates my writing, I don't care if he hates me as a person. But now he's escalated to spreading lies about me, and people are believing him, and I’m not enough of a doormat to let that just stand.

And I’m going to cheat a little. Here’s a memo with the cliffs notes version (not the original memo, I made a copy with C’s urls cropped out since he hasn’t attacked anyone in a long while). Warning, digging any distance into this turns up violent fantasies, violent sexual fantasies, creepy interactions with a minor, and lots more, it’s all really, really unpleasant. Evidence is thoroughly documented, please tread with care.

You would not believe how truncated that is compared to the reality.

Now, the worst of this came via C. Who has calmed down a lot these days, and I’m really happy that’s the case. Good for him. I hope his life continues in a direction where he doesn’t find it necessary to do this stuff.

Lucky for me, R was standing by to pick up the slack.

It doesn’t show up as much in the memo, which is mostly C-focused, but R was standing by C this whole time, defending his right to spread around private information about someone’s abuse history, sending nasty messages on the other guy’s behalf, and much,much more. it’s long, it’s awful, it’s unpleasant. R personally hurt people in some significant ways that I don’t want to link directly, for their sake. He expressed deep remorse a few times, but it never stuck.

Here’s my personal favorite quote from R. He’s speaking to the CSA survivor that C casually outed (with information given to him in confidence), and who they’d been running a long, long whisper campaign against, and who was understandably a bit upset over the whole thing:

oh go wank to your own tears [name]

#and get your sympathizers to help #nasty fucking people #maybe if you cry enough youll be able to go into second grade in the fall #ooc

Said, again, to a CSA survivor they outed and harassed. That person is such a sweetheart, and this screencap still infuriates me.

The first time I saw C pick a fight he had lots of friends. Shockingly, as he did things like loudly fantasize about how he wants to mutilate people and rant about how autistic people should die, those friends mostly drifted away. I know one person had a friend even help them stage a faux relationship-ending fight, so they could be sure they’d be able to completely cut and run from C. R stuck with him, though. Eventually they even started dating.

‘Spock followed R into transformers to harass him and stalks his favorite characters just to harass him more’

Then, transformers. Here, let me show you the first post (by R) that ever brought MTMTE to my attention. I spent years being aggressively uninterested in transformers, but this caught my eye

and honestly, ppl (adults too!!!) shipping someone who has the mentality of a child and is quite glaringly lacking a world of experiences and general understanding of things outside of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with an adult, is just. very alarming and gross to me.

and honestly, the fact that there is a large portion of people who want him to become romantically (and sexually!!!) involved with either one of two fucking adults in canon, and hell, esp those defending it with ‘hes an adult too tho!!’ is really gross.

you can pretend all you want that hes ‘an adult’ because his body is, but theres no way jro didnt intent to code him as a child. stop fetishizing children lmao,

#pedophilia -/-/- #cygate -/-/- #if someone comes at me screaming ‘rule 38′ im gonna shove them in a locker

I didn’t know transformers, but I was pretty sure this was some straight-up bullshit.

(but don’t worry, he ships it now! no hypocrisy here, no sir)

It’s “really gross” to ship this adult with other adults. Mm. Given the reasonableness of the claims these guys have made in the past, and given their extensive history of harassing people over those claims, I hopped to the wiki to check it out. I read a bit about the comic and the plot, and all of it sounded so fascinating that I just had to give the comic a try.

Reader, I married it.

I shotgunned MTMTE 1-47 in two days, started doing fanworks right out of the gate, and I’ve never looked back. A lot of my art was cygate, because come on, the comic wants you to ship it so bad, my first readthrough ended with issue 47, and that was the first ship I’d ever read about for the series, even before I dove in.

Now, both these characters punch me right in the heart, in some painfully personal ways. Tailgate’s the more relevant one here, but I don’t even know if I could do justice to the emotions both of them give me.

I’m still not a fan of how R’s lies about me have edged me into needing to say this in public, but okay. I’m developmentally delayed. It’s been a rough ride. And Tailgate hits me in some of those spots so hard it just takes my breath away. I’ve got a lot of baggage over not being a real adult, and not in the funny oh-no-how-do-taxes-work way, more like an extended months-long meltdown my first year of college because I can tell that my friends are years ahead of me and I don’t know how to even start catching up, and just existing, as myself, is humiliating.

All of my relationship milestones have come painfully, painfully late. The whole thing is still one awful emotional bruise. I hate it, and I hate how easy it is to convince myself that yeah, of course you don’t actually deserve to be treated as an adult and you never will. Just look at you. So then it is unbelievably important to me that I can see someone someone who is like me, being treated as a legitimate adult, and being able to have an adult relationship.

Hearing that shipping someone like me is essentially pedophilia is the opposite of that.

But he ships it now, so everything is fine :)

Yeah, you know what? Another fucking receipt.

uGHGH im so tired of all the rabid cy// /gat// //e fans like even cy’s giving em a look like ‘leave my fucking child alone’

#i just #im hoping jro has some taste tho and doesnt make an adult date a child #and if not im hoping the outcome blows over soon bc im so tired of seeing people defend pedophilia #pedophilia -/-/-

Parental.

This continued even after JRO explicitly confirmed Tailgate was an adult.

Bonus ableism: shipping Whirl (another character who hits me way too hard) isn’t okay either. Even though there isn’t the excuse of ‘but he only lived three years--’ No, at that point, you’re saying that an adult who fails to adult correctly does not count, and isn’t allowed to have romantic relationships. It makes my skin crawl, and it is an issue which is very personally and directly important to me.

So some of my cygate was porn from the start (it’s what I write. it’s what I draw.), and some of the porn was made because I was upset over discourse that says someone like me needs to be treated as a child. I played with cywhirlgate too, because omg how could I not, and some of that was porn as well. It was ages ago, so I don’t remember the details for every little thing I made. But when I saw someone saying that Cyclonus and Tailgate had a parental relationship, I’m sure that helped nudge me in that direction. Maybe R thinks I should have channeled my emotions by starting a whisper campaign to exclude him from fandom spaces. But I think my way of working through bad emotions might have been a little healthier than that.

So when R accuses me of making cygate content to spite him? Half true. Just true enough to be real fucking dishonest. R spent a nice long time insisting that cygate was pedophilia. I channeled my outrage over that ableism into fan creations.

I didn’t attack him. I talked about him some – on a private forum, with people who’d already been aware of him and had been watching him and C hurt people for years, plural. I haven’t told people on tumblr any real details about him until now. And R still is happy to talk about how it was his toxic ex’s right to post torture/rape/murder porn vent fic about actual people.

Tell me, how exactly am I in the wrong?

Bonus pettiness: I posted some cywhirlgate porn. The next day, R vaguely whined about robot pedophilia and turned around and wrote some obviously-a-response cywhirlgate. Where it was super platonic and the text explicitly said it was super platonic and it even had platonic thigh nuzzling. With two “children” involved. Of course I turned around and wrote more fic of my own, because jesus h christ that made my skin crawl. You want to play this game? I guarantee I can write faster than you, let’s do this. (he did not follow through on that)

I’d also like to say that forgetting inconvenient little details like this is a thing with R. Hard to call me terrible for writing spitefic when you write it yourself.

A history of Spock’s personal involvement

Let’s backtrack a tiny bit. You may notice I am up to my elbows in this nonsense for no clear reason.

I was friends with some of the people C was taking shots at, and I was unfortunate enough to believe his original smear campaign about that one artist (I’m still ashamed about that). I cared about a number of people C was trying to hurt. I think one or two fanworks of mine upset him, but he already had loads of targets. I kept tabs on him and R, because anxiety is the gift that just keeps giving.

Eventually, C fantasized about wanting to put my former datemate’s hand through a meat grinder (ey wrote a fic that portrayed his fave in a negative light). And R defended his right to do that.

The person he posted about is still feeling the effects of that incident. I’m still feeling the effects of that. And it wasn’t even directed at me, just someone I care deeply about.

R has recently posted that ‘oh my goodness, C sure was awful, remember when he posted this thing about a meat grinder and how unreasonable it was?’ Thanks buddy, glad you noticed, now just go ahead and keep on blaming me for the aftereffects of what your boyfriend did, and what you defended.

After that, it was months before I could properly look away from either of their blogs.

C posted extensively about trying to track down the street address of his ~enemies~ (including the one whose genitals he fantasized about mutilating). He posted about how autistics should die. He had skype chats about wanting to do amateur brain surgery on people. All while posting very often about finding real addresses.

Yeah, it’s more than a year later, and every so often I get a stab of anxiety and have to head off to double check on what these two are up to.

I will repeat that C has been pretty chill lately. He’s got a career he’s aiming for. Good for him, go find success, please don’t slip back into being an internet bully. It’s sad and upsetting to see R echoing some of the early patterns of his ex, and it’s so strange to see me labeled as his own personal enemy.

‘Spock will totally come harass you too’ and/or various accusations of ableism

So there are some things I did in the mix in this history that I regret. Occasionally, I went out and flipped through the blogs of C and R’s friends, seeing if maybe they’d had said something in their notes, did they have any vagueblogs C liked, did they post about— It got unreasonable. I admit that. Anxiety was at the root of it, but it absolutely got unreasonable. And also it is a massive time sink, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered with it. I enjoy life much more when anxiety and paranoia issues don’t have their claws in me. This hasn’t been an issue in a very long time.

I came down hard on some of the kinfeels and system stuff too, which I do walk back a bit. C’s approach was… hahaha. It was something. And he was my intro to the kin and system paradigms. I saw R talking about C’s approach being unreasonable too, pretty recently. So that was an unfortunate bit of poison in how I processed the next people I met who did that sort of thing. I don’t do kin stuff, but I get it. And DID may not strictly apply to all systems, by the formal diagnostic criteria, but I’ve learned there are plenty of other dissociative disorders out there. And I met people who were multiples and who did kin things that weren’t these two guys. Which helped a LOT.

But the big one, hmmm. C wrote a fic. The idea was interesting, but the execution frustrated me. Everyone but the main lead felt so… flat. Everyone was constantly cruel to the main, for no reason. I saw a way to riff on the original text while staying true to its shape, and writing my bad emotions out is also a major, major thing I do to cope. Now, my big thing is that I should have asked before I remixed. I’d been thinking in terms of, y’know, transformative fanworks. Even with authors like Anne McCaffrey and Anne Rice, who fought against fandom, people have still felt that it should be allowed, even against their wishes. So I wrote the remix. I gave full credit on ao3 in the ‘inspired by’ box, linked to the original with positive words, the whole shebang.

The guy was still furious, and… that’s fair. I thought I’d written a thing on self-sabotage that was pretty sympathetic and compelling, and the self-sabotage actually drew a lot on my own personal history. But I gave the main flaws he strongly disagreed with, and I didn’t ask for permission. I get why he was/is angry over it.

I’ve been a fixture on their shitlists ever since :P

It’s remarkable, even while R posts now about ‘oh my god, remember how C wrote the creepiest things?’, I’m still the one who’s the the actual worst, for being skeeved out by the creepy things and finding a constructive way to deal with it. R’s controlling ex gets full freedom when it comes to vent fic, even when it’s about wallowing in torturing, raping, and murdering an avatar for a real person (the original one they harassed!), or punching someone in the face until they agree to be your friend (another artist these guys targeted). But R’s position seems to be that only C is allowed to vent (even if it’s genital mutilation fantasies), and I’m definitely not.

Oh, and R has now expanded this remix into me totally having a consistent pattern of stealing ideas and plagiarism and so many remixes that are obviously done as revenge on anyone who pisses me off. So that’s nice.

So R hates your writing. Is that seriously why this post exists?

Ha, no. Let’s look at the concrete things R is saying. Here, let me post a little sampling of evidence.

These aren’t just things he’s shouting into the void, people have responded saying wow, I never knew that! These are lies that people are believing about me. And then yesterday, June 30, 2017, he warned a friend not to disagree with my meta, or I’d come harass them. A friend I’m aggressively leaving out of this, just as I’m leaving out other responses, because these people don’t deserve to be dragged into R’s bullshit.

Let’s have bullet points. Some of these are the silly spock-is-bad-at-writing complaints. Those are here because this whole mess is pretty fucking depressing and the ridiculous claims make me laugh, but these are all things he says.

Spock is evil – You know what, he’s not calling people pedophiles, which is a step up. I’ll take it.

Spock is a plagiarist – I remixed one fic with full credit, said only good things about the original, and linked to it in extra places so that people would have extra opportunities to click through and check it out. I arguably remixed inappropriately, but that’s not the same thing. Words have definitions. If I’m a plagiarist, so is everyone who’s ever written a fanfic.

Spock is something something mean when people disagree – I don’t even know, man. I’m actually shockingly conflict-averse. Is this because I make walls of text and explain why I hold opinions at great length? I enjoy talking about a thing I love. I’m autistic, I’m hyperverbal, and this is my special interest, so is it that I talk a lot? That’s the best I can do. I’ve talked about things I disagree with on a private forum, in which case mister pot has had a lot of fun in public on twitter, not only talking shit, but also spreading outright untruths. Maybe he wants to rethink this one.

Spock will come harass you if you disagree – You need to back the heck down, pal.

Spock’s meta/fic/characterization is bad and they should feel bad – Hahaha, fite me. He won’t, because I can articulately defend myself at significant length, and his criticisms seem to stop at ‘spock sucks’, but hey.

Spock used ableist language about Whirl - I... what? This one confuses me and makes me laugh so it stays here. Also, holy double standards, batman.

Spock is only into transformers to harass R – I checked out transformers because I was pretty sure R was being disgustingly ableist (he was). I stayed in transformers because I adore it. I had to adore it a lot to make me willing to share fandom space with these two. My god, I have better things to do with my life than spend all my time on something that bores me just to annoy one asshole on the other side of the internet. I’d ask if he thinks I spent dozens of painstaking hours cross-stitching Starscream just to bother him, but….. yep, pretty sure he does.

Spock goes after all of R’s favorite characters to upset him – R latches on to just about every interesting and/or sympathetic character that shows up. When he was dating C, they covered most of the cast between them. I don’t care who R likes best because I don’t agree with his opinions. I tend to stay away from his opinions because I don’t like reading things that bother me. This is asnine. I’m only allowed to like the characters R despises, I guess.

Spock makes fanworks for things R likes just to make him see them – Oh my god, I don’t caaaaaare. I write about things that interest me, unless I’m venting. Say, venting about the way R and his ex have deliberately hurt a shockingly high number of people I care about. ‘Spock made rodistar because I liked it--’ I made it because I wrote a thing about their parallels, and shipping was the obvious next step. R isn’t that important to me. Promise.

This is just exhausting, man. The anxiety bugs had been dying down, and it had been ages since I checked out this guy’s anything. C, who drove the whole initial blowup that led to this, has been quiet and chill on tumblr. But R has learned from his ex’s old example and has been having fun spreading lies about me.

In conclusion

Some fun history.

R was 18 when he told a CSA survivor upset about being outed and harassed to wank using their tears for lube.

He was older than that when he defended C’s right to post about wanting to mutilate someone’s genitals (for the crime of saying C’s logic didn’t make sense).

He was older than that when he complained about that person’s spouse being ‘vicious’ for reacting badly to C’s genital mutilation fantasy.

He was older than that when he nodded along as C called autistic people retards and said they should die.

He was older than that when he talked about being happy that someone he disliked was triggered, and nodded along when C fantasized about that person drinking bleach.

And he was older than that when he defended C, his twenty-something boyfriend, against the thirteen-year-old that C had been having incredibly inappropriate conversations with, despite skype log proof and everything.

And despite all this, I’m still the bad guy, because I didn’t think what they were doing was okay. I’m the bad guy for being upset by C's actions, even though... R is now upset by C’s actions. The ways I responded to C were inexcusable. My only motivation is to hurt people. Every thing I did that ever upset them still means I’m terrible, even though R is saying this while he’s busy posting about how awful C is. And this all means that he needs to warn his friends not to catch my attention, or I’ll come harass them.

So, I’m tired.

I’m very tired.

I’m glad he’s trying to grow past that history. Good. Maybe he can do that without making up a story about how I’m unrepentant villain who lives for villainy and who only takes joy in causing him pain. I’m sure it helps him, because it’s a story that brushes aside the shit he did that he regrets, and makes his past less painful to think about. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with him telling lies about me.

I don’t know why I’m the one boogeyman he has left (I kid, it’s because I’m in transformers, and because he thinks I’m popular. he harps on it a lot, and it’s weird for everyone). I mean, whatever. I’ve aggressively avoided publishing drama details on here for a very long time. But there are two blog tags, miscellaneous other untagged blog content, three forum threads, and hundreds of pages of skype logs with hard evidence of this bullshit.

I’m pretty sure that if he tries to defend himself, one, he’ll place some blame on his ex. That’s fair. C was pretty darn controlling and demanding. But R is still absolutely responsible for his own actions, and is especially responsible for the harm he personally caused. He’ll talk about how it’s bullshit to pull up all these receipts from so very long ago. In that case, his receipts for me (whatever he even has) are equally old, so aren’t they null and void? No, because Spock is the devil. And it’s not so much bullshit if he’s clearly learned nothing, and has gone back to spreading outright falsehoods about people.

To be clear, a lot of the lies he told about me were told a while back. Weeks to a few months to a year. I was letting it sit, because I’d really, really hoped this was over. Yesterday, June 30, 2017, he warned a friend not to publicly disagree with my meta or I’d come and harass them.

It’s been three years since I first saw him doing this. I’ve watched him hurt a lot of people, and I’ve watched him admit, multiple times, that he has hurt people. I thought he’d learned to stop following these toxic patterns. Apparently he has not.

Edit 7/2/2017: To repeat the edit up above, R has said he regrets posting these things about me, and that he's going to try to avoid slipping into this in the future. I very much appreciate that.