#takes a lot of things abt his character that were most impactful in canon and just kinda throws them out

[goldenageofwireless]

thinking about . Soul again . i think our current interp of him is further from canon than we'd like but we love him soooo much . might just adopt him and make him an oc honestly

[curiosity-killed]

Lang Qianqiu deserves more love goddammit: a post, unfortunately

This brought to you by the wonderful @veliseraptor & @/yuer on Twitter but also mostly out of spite and the fact that it’s preventing me from writing a very dumb poke-the-bear post abt the entire weird social media culture around The Minors

As always ✨SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE✨

So first off: when I hit the scene where lqq confronts xl and screams “I will never be like you” I sat up in bed, did a little shimmy of delight, and hissed “fuck yes” at like 2 AM so. Now you have a preview of wtf this train wreck will be

1 ) lqq is a good character

We don’t get a ton of time with lqq because tgcf is 87 side characters running across stage with The Most Interesting Concept constantly one-upping each other before vanishing. But what we do get is, I think, enough to make a pretty compelling story: Lang Qianqiu is a kind and generous prince who is also the sole survivor of the bloody massacre of his entire family, committed by the people dearest to him (both in his belief that Gusohi Fangxin did it and in the reality of An Le’s involvement), who goes on to peacefully lead his fractious nation into a peaceful reign before he ascends as a powerful enough (aka beloved and worshipped enough) god to be ranked among the top heavenly generals. That’s like. Pretty fucking classic protagonist vibes right there.

And, as usual with mxtx’s characters, we get a lot more than this lovely little backstory. In his interactions in canon, lqq is capable of great grief and anger; he is willing to sacrifice himself if it means avenging his murdered family; and he simultaneously holds both great hatred and great respect for his old teacher. And, of course, he winds up raising and taking care of his enemy’s son which shows a remarkable depth of compassion and emotional messiness that I find terribly compelling. He struggles with a simplistic view of justice that is supported by lies told to “protect” him and that is uprooted by the truth and forces him to try to make sense of the world without the guardrails that others installed around him (looking at you mister fangxin sir).

Also I’m stealing my own tweets bc I’m Right but:

*pulls up single barstool to lqq is a good character table* I think it’s interesting & Says Things abt the continued relationship btwn lqq & xl that lqq *didn’t* recognize xl, implying that he left fangxin’s mask in place even when he went to kill him

Like here is the man who killed his family & best friend, who left him abandoned in bloodshed on his 17th bday—& here is also the man who saved his life, who taught him, who lqq looked up to & wanted to be like

Even when lqq *does* recognize xl, he still has so much respect for him paired with that hatred that it’s honestly rlly tragic? Like man. There’s so much grief in lqq’s repeated demands for a duel & insisting it’s fine if xl kills him as long as he doesn’t hold back

*pats lqq pompom* this bb is so sad. And so much more like his teacher than either of them seem to realize or necessarily want

Despite being a pretty minor character, lqq gets a lot of complexity and nuance! Look at this child trying to be grown up while desperately turning to his old master for guidance and “the truth”! Look at him! Be sad!!

2 ) lqq is an excellent parallel to xl

Okay stealing my own tweet again don’t look at me I yell the same shit everywhere

Xl didn’t want lqq to become like him (self-sacrificing, vengeful, alone) but lqq not only became alone, chasing vengeance, & willing to sacrifice himself for revenge—he also became kind, open-minded, & remorseful!! & he still clearly respects xl @ novel end 🙃🙃

We all know hc’s “they’re not very alike at all” and yeah sure baby go support your man but narratively, there’s a lot of importance given to cycles, parallels, and foils in mxtx’s writing and most explicitly (compared to mdzs, haven’t read svss) in tgcf. For example, *gestures at beefleaf, gestures at Xianle Trio vs Wuyogn Crew, gestures at Xie Lian & Jun Wu’s whole uh. Deal.* And while I’d argue xl and lqq are part of a triumvirate rather than a pair, we’re not including mister three-face in this conversation so just looking at xl and lqq:

Both adored and sheltered crown princes

Both taught by a guoshi who was seeking to prevent the repetition of their own tragedies and in their efforts, lied/omitted information and failed to protect their charge from tragedy

Both were betrayed* by their closest friends

Both are the last living members of their respective royal families

Both caught the interest of supernatural beings from a young age

Etc etc I’m getting v bored and distracted writing this so moving on

Most importantly to me, we have their betrayal by a very close and adored mentor and how they react. The confrontation I mention at the start of this shitshow is really imo one of the most important scenes in the novel because it a) illustrates the differences in xl and Jun Wu and b) sort of gives you a preview of how xl ultimately wins

So a) Jun Wu and Xie Lian both take a talented, marked-for ascension young prince under their wing. Jun Wu sees himself in the boy and obsesses over shaping him into Jun Wu’s own image in the belief that this will make him the perfect heir. Jun Wu pushes his chosen heir into situations where Xie Lian is repeatedly harmed in an effort to show that the common people are fickle and cruel and don’t deserve his compassion and care.

Meanwhile, Xie Lian is reluctantly roped into mentoring his prince due to his inability to stand aside when he feels he could do something to prevent hurt or injustice befalling another (simultaneously his great strength and great weakness! God I love him). Xie Lian tries to teach his student to believe in and care for the common people and not to sacrifice himself (see: flashback convo re:taking the force of the sword strike into his own body).

When Xie Lian refuses to bend in the shape Jun Wu demands, Jun Wu bashes his head into the wall. When Lang Qianqiu cries “I will never be like you!”, Xie Lian laughs and says “Good!”.

B) this of course feeds directly into foreshadowing! Like Lang Qianqiu’s bold words, xl ultimately refuses to become like his mentor and remains defiant even when it would stop him from being hurt. Xl beats lqq and says so what if I tricked you, so what if I lied, I still won. Naturally, xl beats Jun Wu not through standard swordplay but by using a trick he learned while forced to busk and wander the earth alone and unlucky for centuries.

…okay so I have fully forgotten what I was actually saying here! Anyway!

Like Xie Lian, Lang Qianqiu spends a time consumed with the need for vengeance, hunting his enemy and rejecting the heavens. And like Xie Lian, he winds up caring for his enemy’s “son” and trying to both comfort him and maintain what’s left of Qi Rong’s life force despite having previously been hellbent on destroying him—bc he sees the impact it has on another person. In the end, he even gives a gift to Xie Lian—his mentor, his role model, and the one who killed his father—that was once given to him as a symbol of unexpected kindness. Sound familiar?

But, importantly, and contradictory to what I have been yelling abt but whatever it’s 12:30 am, Lang Qianqiu is not a direct mirror of Xie Lian but a closing of a vital loop in the story. Lqq is very similar to xl (I will die on this hill!! Only I won’t bc I’m stronger than y’all and will keep swinging these pots and pans) but bc xl tries to do better and keep lqq from suffering the way xl has, lqq is able to have a gentler and more optimistic path forward. He’s proof that even a small act of kindness or even kindness to only one person still matters and has a ripple effect that can’t be seen when you’re in the middle of it—a thread started with xl giving the coral pearl to Lang Ying and closed with Lang Qianqiu returning the pearl to Xie Lian.

So I have no idea if any of this is coherent or compelling but I meant to be asleep two hours ago and the points are:

A) Lang Qianqiu is good actually

B) parallels!!!

C) look ive already started another wip about Lang Qianqiu and Xie Lian and I didn’t want this but no one else wrote it so now I have to so pls just accept this as a warning

*sort of air quotes around this for Xie Lian bc frankly Mu Qing was right & Xie Lian kicked feng xin out BUT on the other hand, it was experienced as a betrayal and we also again have all of Jun Wu’s shit so it evens out

[hamphobicbasil]

Could u elaborate about the dsmp story being bad? Not a rabid/brain dead fan, just genuinely curious and I enjoy reading people's rants lolol

oh you dont know the floodgates you just opened

a few things:

1. despite not liking the creators of the dsmp anymore, I don't actually hate most of them. [the ones that are particularly unsavory fall outside of this of course] so all that I'm saying i truly mean in a critical sense towards the story, its also just all purely my opinion as someone who enjoys fictional and fantasy stories and who like criticizing works to see what it does well and what it doesn't do well

2. for clarification I'm going to use the c![name] to indicate when I'm talking about the characters. Don't get me wrong, I think its annoying too but its the only way I'm gonna be able to write this thing without getting something across the wrong way yknow?

3. I stopped watching the streams after November 16th, [save for one Techno one but I closed out after a particularly bad story beat lol] and so all information coming afterward is all second hand from either me seeing people on twt talk abt it or people dming me. All i really know is up to dream's imprisonment and some stuff past that.

4. This is mostly aimed towards the "main" story, so stuff abt the badlands, eggpire, and whatnot are briefly mentioned.

anyways uh, i'll try to be brief but also include enough information to get why i feel the way i do on some stuff across

A. Performances Alright obviously these people are all streamers, so obviously they might not be the best actors, and hell no one is even asking that of them. However, when you're telling a story that's based on the audio with the visuals kinda coming to a second, it's gotta be pretty strong. I will say, some of the best actors in my opinion are Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. I would include Ranboo but I never watched any of his story bits or story streams so I can't say much. Wilbur and Tommy are excellent in selling their character's emotions and feelings, when I watch the stream I don't feel like I'm watching an rp but an actual thought-out story yknow? And one of my favorite Tubbo examples was in the Hog Hunt video whenever Techno attacked him, he sounded genuinely afraid and I believed everything his character was feeling.

However, unfortunately, not everyone is gonna be that good. And I'm gonna say it; Dream and Techno have to be the worst out of the entire cast. I understand Techno's whole character is this monotoned badass, however, when really emotional moments hit I feel like he never lets that fall, and a lot of intense moments just ring hollow. And I'm sorry but Dream's attempts at being intimidating leave me laughing whenever I watch them. It feels like he watched that one scene from The Marriage with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson and said "Oh this is what good acting looks like! Just yelling." His whole "I don't give a FUCK about Spirit!" speech isn't as great as people keep making it out to be. And whenever he tries to act coy when being a villain it feels like a guy reading the script for the first time, a bit like he's trying too hard. I have more problems with his character but his portrayal certainly doesn't help.

Everyone else is fine, and I don't feel strongly either way about a lot of them.

B. The "Lore" Okay first off, I can't be the only one who thinks it's silly that people are calling the dsmp's story "lore" when it's not, it's the fucking story. Lore indicates backstory to either the world or the characters, which a lot of the streams don't really pertain to. This is a really petty section but god it's a weird pet peeve of mine.

Other than the misusage of "lore" vs "story", the actual lore and world-building of the world are so lackluster that new elements can be introduced whenever and it often feels cluttered or not well thought out at all. And here's the thing, I feel like if the writers sat down just for a few minutes to establish world rules and general history, a lot of this could be solved! but so much is made up on the spot that it starts to feel like they're grabbing at straws to keep people invested, trying to reach that next high and intense story beat without actually earning it.

C. The Egg / Eggpire This is a pretty minor note since I was only invested in the Egg storyline for a little bit, but god it's so underused that it's almost embarrassing. Bad has provided this super interesting antagonistic force that's infecting the SMP, can control people, and who one of our main character is immune to, and it's just never used or even talked about again? Now I understand if he wanted to keep it to a side storyline only, however, to introduce this borderline eldritch creature and force within the world and then never have it dealt with is so weird.

D. The Writing Oh boy this is. kinda a big one. Now I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty obvious I have a bias for the Wilbur writing over the current team [that consisting of Dream, Quackity, and Tommy mostly]. I don't this his writing is perfect by any means, the characters constantly bringing up traitors got obnoxious after a while, and writing Hamilton but in Minecraft really isn't the modern Shakespeare or anything. However, I think his exploration of characters and plot progression was a lot more thought out and well planned, like he actually had two brain cells behind the story yknow? The current team I think fails to be as emotional or even impactful, things happened too fast and my god was everything drowned in angst for so long.

Don't get me wrong, you gotta have your characters face hardships to make them reach their goal believable, but some of the shit they put the characters through just felt like too much. From c!Tubbo's constant comparison to c!Schlatt [who btw, fucking ordered his death and kept him from his friends in a nation he felt trapped in] and on a side note, i kinda really fucking dislike the "c!Schlatt dad!!" au's or the au's where c!Tubbo inherits some of Schlatt's features, it would be like c!Tommy getting a c!Dream mask after his exile, it's feels so weird yet people eat that shit up for some reason.

But god, did c!Tommy get the brunt of it all and in retrospect after his final death, it kinda feels really fucking gross. Now obviously, I'm not trusting any of these people to write decent mental health representation, but c!Tommy's PTSD and how it was explored was just degrading. [Specifically the scene in that one Techno stream where he saw the final control room from the first war, and had a flashback / panic attack where he started calling out for c!Dream. I understand this is an actual thing people with PTSD will experience, but it felt so fucking stereotypical it got on my nerves. I actually had to close out of the stream because it made me feel sick, fiction shouldn't leave you feeling that way.] And don't get me started on how they basically reused the formula from the previous arc. [Problem introduced -> Tensions rise as things start to fall apart -> Big confrontation -> Exile -> Return from Exile -> Blowing up L'Manberg, again.]

And speaking of characters-

E. Character Arcs, or the lack of them In my genuine opinion, some of these characters' arcs are so disappointing. Especially c!Tommy's. I'm not one to believe that he was a "selfish" character or anything, however, his goals were simply set on his discs and maybe c!Tubbo, he didn't have much outside that. However, L'Manberg gave him something to care about, he gave up his discs for it and he fought for it tooth and nail, I think it taught him to open up to others and trust more. It was a great character arc for him to have, seeing him still fight even after his first exile alongside c!Wilbur, to return safely to the nation that he and his found family had built.

But then his second exile happened, and I feel like all of that was undone.

c!Tommy's exile genuinely pisses me off for so many reasons. It's not that characters can't have their low points after reaching a major change or feeling like they've "completed" their arcs or anything, but it's more of the fact that it seems like he's never going to heal that feels like a spit in the face, especially to people who might have had setbacks like that before. Progress isn't linear, sometimes things happen and you get knocked back down, it can take a while to get back up, but I don't think c!Tommy's character is ever going to be allowed to get back up. From c!Dream, who pretty much was a constant abuser in his life, killing him then reviving him, and his still fractured relationship with c!Tubbo, which by the way I have a had time believing they would still be friends after all that happened, it feels like he can never get a win and it's generally kinda a shit way to treat your characters who have been abused. Of course, not all abused characters are going to get happy endings, I'm not trying to dictate that they all should, but c!Tommy deserves one and the fact that it's so obscure feels shitty.

Side note: we still don't have a canon reason to give a shit abt the discs. Like I'm sorry but without some sorta connection to the MacGuffin why should we give a shit about him getting them other than "he wants them lol". Like hell, I would even accept the classic "they were the last gifts from his parents" or something, but we still don't have a reason.

c!Tubbo also lacks a fulfilling arc as well, from someone who started out as a yes man, he has progressed a bit into having his own interests first, but besides that sometimes his character makes me so. depressed. He's easily one of the most pushed around and hated characters within the story, all for being a kid who didn't know what to do and he's in the same vein as c!Tommy; these kids can't get a break. Also, his anti-violence beliefs morphing into the "lets kill c!Techno lol!" bit was so out of place and without proper build-up it was like. what. And now he's building nukes?? god c!Tubbo makes me so sad because he's kicked around constantly and never given a chance to grow.

Another small note, I also don't really enjoy c!Techno at all. Besides the previously stated reasons of lack of emotions when they're really needed, I find his character to be weirdly pretentious. He talks as if he's constantly been betrayed and hurt but I personally, don't see it? Like, I think one of the main examples was the Pogtopia vs. Manberg war, yknow he wanted to end the government but they just reinstated it after they won = c!Techno upset. But this doesn't make sense to me because why did he think otherwise? The entire time c!Tommy had talked about taking back their nation and starting again, so the fact that c!Techno suddenly thought there would be a sudden change is, to put it bluntly, kinda fucking stupid. I don't want to say that he "plays the victim" or anything because that feels a bit harsh, but his character feels so far up his own ass that I can't enjoy him.

I have a major grip with c!Dream as well, but that's getting it's own fucking section.

F. L'Manberg This is a quick note before we get into the, forgive me for this, endgame, of this entire rant, since the next two sections are tied together. But god, L'Manberg makes me upset because it feels like they gave up on it.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that it is supposed to be c!Wilbur's "unfinished symphony", the thing that destroyed a once charismatic and widely loved man, his attempt at power that utterly ruined him. But the fact that it just got blown up in the end after everything and left to rot felt like such a waste of time. From the first war, to Pogtopia, to even c!Tommy's exile, it all felt fucking worthless in the end, and the story is actively closer to how it was when it started now more than ever. I wished it was actually allowed to exist and continue to be a peaceful place in what is a chaotic world, but no it was just snuffed out because why dedicate to this concept of finding others you can band together with and feel safe. fuck that noise apparently?

G. The Villains Now villain-wise, I'm only talking about c!Dream [during the first war], c!Schlatt, and c!Wilbur. And believe it or not, this is actually mostly positive.

Now I'm not gonna lie, c!Dream as a staring antagonist wasn't bad actually, he posed a genuine and threatening opposition to L'Manberg, even if we didn't know his real intentions or motivations as to why he was against it. He's lucky in this sense because he didn't have to be good, he had to be passable. If anything, he felt more like an anti-hero than a tyrant or traditional villain, and my god do I wish he kept this theme going forward.

Now quick disclaimer, I don't like JSchlatt as much as the next guy, he's an adult man who should know better than to joke about some sensitive topics and act the way that he does. But the one thing I'll ever give him is that damn, was he a good actor for his character.

Now here's the thing, c!Schlatt wasn't particularly deep at all. He had no real motivations behind his exile of c!Wilbur and c!Tommy other than getting competition out of the way, had no reason to act the way that he did and yknow? that's fine. The reason why he worked was from his performance alone, he was actually intimidating. When he came onto the stream and was doing his typical bad guy stuff, it was actually intense to see what he would do. Whenever he would almost catch c!Tommy back in Manberg, whenever he would begin to pressure c!Tubbo, it put you on the edge of your seat and it felt like everything would change at the drop of a pen. He's a villain to be a villain, and this works out because he's just charismatic and well put together enough to make it interesting, even without the backstory or motives.

c!Wilbur however, is much more tragic, and the best villain of the story. He essentially was the "mentor turned evil" trope and it felt terrible watching him descend into madness, unable to trust barely anyone except for c!Techno and c!Tommy. Hell, in the end I think he still cared about them both, despite losing everything. Sure, he blew up L'Manberg, but there was still a smidge of the old c!Wilbur in there made everything he did feel melancholic. His death at the hands of his father after achieving his final wish was chilling, and something I still think about.

Until yknow, Ghostbur came back way too soon to let people feel his loss as a character within that world. And then he got revived, pretty much-undoing everything that moment meant for his character lol.

And then there's the worst one:

H. Dream. I'm going to be completely honest, c!Dream is one of the main reasons why I dislike the current dsmp stuff so much. Outside of his actions as a person, the way Dream decided to write his character as this overpowered madman of the dsmp really just. destroyed any intrigue that he could've had. Perhaps this is from my growing dislike towards him, manifesting into a bias towards his character, but god I cannot fathom why people try to insist he's interesting when he has as much depth as a fucking puddle.

And here's the thing, I'm not even entirely against c!Dream being a villain, hell I think he would've been great as an anti-hero if anything. Make him sympathetic but not through c!George to get your precious "DNF" points or anything, but show him actually caring about the people within the dsmp, including c!Tommy and c!Tubbo. This would make his rival status with them just a bit more complicated, sure they're enemies, however, he doesn't want to hurt or kill them, and there's still a level of friendship there that keeps them bonded when things get super bad. This could've been super interesting to see, the first villain of the story receiving a sorta redemption arc then descending into madness as he started to fixate on being a god. This is all how I feel personally, but god do I feel like it would've been better than his current character, and hell would've worked with how he was during the Pogtopia arc, before the war that is. I'm not trying to tell Dream how to write his own character, but there are so many other ways he could've done the madman seeking to become god rather then. whatever the hell we got.

Because instead, we got this power-mad asshole who does things... because he can? And that's one of my major issues: he tries to surround his character in mystery to make him "intriguing" but it's kinda like c!Techno, it comes off as pretentious. Not only that, but you cannot keep waving around this mystery of a backstory without ever actually revealing it. I know the story isn't over, but c!Dream is effectively at his lowest point, now would be the time to reveal his backstory. But no just keep it in the dark and keep everyone guessing, that's totally fun and not at all tiring and annoying. (sarcasm, if anyone needs it)

And back to his performance, he doesn't sell this aloof, cynical and strategic warrior that has perfected the blade or some shit, he comes off as some angry guy yelling on reddit. which i don't need to tell you, isn't intimidating. It feels like he's trying to have c!Schlatt's intimidation combined with c!Wilbur's depth, but instead he's like a little brother who's trying to hard to mimic his older brother and is kinda embarrassing himself.

but other then that i dont feel too strongly abt the dsmp lol

but seriously, these are the main complaints I have abt the story tbh, I could probably talk about more but I wont because man. this is probably gonna get me in trouble if any of the hyper-dsmp fans actually read it.

[quidfree]

I agree with everything you said about the finale of Stranger Things 4. The ending is rushed and kinda lacks of emotional impact (really annoying bc it could have been so much better, like El and Hopper reuniting).

I kinda think the Duffers want to keep everything vague as much as possible for, like they said, "the big reveal in ss5", "everything comes full circle",... there's been discussions and analysises where ss5 will go down but it's just based on small hints and subtexts. It's like the main role of ss4 is a set-up for ss5, like an 'open-ending' where every scenario is possible, which is hella confusing tbh.

I have to admit that I was rooting for Will and Mike in vol1, but Vol2 makes me realise that Michael Wheeler is really in need of character development (pls give my boy Will the protangonist era back)

Sorry for my rambling, but i do want to know your take on the character dynamics and what are your most favorite scenes?

ah anon sorry for not answering for like a week, i conflated this w my other stranger things ask and deluded myself into thinking i had

i agree w your finale thoughts- i don’t follow the media circus around the show much but i do get the impression s4 is meant to be set-up for s5, which is very annoying to me because if you’re a good writer set-up should not negate storytelling… there are many shows which use a season to set something up but still tell a compelling standalone story in that season!

re mike and will, i’m fairly neutral abt it, the same way i feel abt all the canon ships in stranger things- the kid ships are all sweet enough, although this season mike and el have been kind of tiring for me (in part because mike did p much nothing this season except be el’s kind of dumbass boyfriend). in any event i think will and mike both could do w a return to early season protag focus and that will deserves an actual coming out and general arc in s5. also you can do better, will!

response to your qs on dynamics and scenes beneath the cut :)

looove steve and his kids obviously- steve and dustin are a no-brainer, but i do wish the others got a couple of real moments with him too (as may be obvious bc i literally wrote that).

steve and robin are very fun. the whole older teen group was great this season, since their personalities were a nice mix- i have to say eddie and steve were really enjoyable together. their dual older brother energy to dustin was very cute. as was eddie’s flirting. or whatever that was meant to be.

on siblings- wish we got some mike and nancy interaction ever. glad lucas and erica got brief moments this season. jonathan and will bonding was very good if brief and a missed opportunity to talk abt the rainbow elephant in the room.

families except the bylers continue to be hilariously absent in the show. when can CPS be called on these people. mikes mom hugging him dramatically will not make me forget how bad of a parent they all are lol.

always enjoy the friendships between the kids- liked will and el a lot this season even tho it was tragically understated, loved mike and will seeing lucas again in hospital, and max’s memories of the group in dear billy. mike and will’s conversations were also admittedly good, despite the unrequited love of it all- they had a relationship core to the show once, so it still holds some weight. i do like lucas and max a lot but i wish lucas wasnt spent so much on Being There For Max hes forever sidelined for no good reason.

underwhelmed by the russia storyline in general- hopper grated on me in s3 and im always team joyce so kind of tired w her having to put up w him and murrays “oh you” vibes but i do enjoy their battle-readiness as a couple. didnt care much abt yuri or the other russian guy (dmitri?) bc it all felt so overdone.

fav scenes: obviously max escaping vecna to kate bush (deserving of her renaissance). the others are going to be random excerpts bc my mind is blanking. eddie telling steve “harrington will drive wontcha big boy” + steve telling nancy he has 6 kids already. the part in the finale where everyone jumps through to the upside down and then throws their weapons through too bc the montage was fun. el throwing the helicopter and then telling papa to choke. will singing neverending story. the ep 7 monologue where 1 reveals the whole plot to nancy (jamie campbell bower fun). the finale segment where everyone is kicking ass and nancy has a shotgun. the way will is like “what friends??” and el goes “stfu” in ep whatever it is. el and max’s reunion. etc.

[nicollekidman]

Hi the same anon again. Sorry for the repeat messaging but I refuse to actively engage in this batshit fandom and you’re actually managing to be normal about stuff, and I’ve been thinking about contrasting interpretations of Alina. Because in my initial read through I accepted her ending, and felt that it fit her character. And I always see people say that it’d have fit her character to remain in power. And I honestly think that dissonance ultimately comes down to the weakness (or strengeth depending on how you want to look at it) of Alina as a defined character in the books. Like she definitely has some sort of personality but her motivations feel all over the place. Because if you go in with the understanding that the Darkling and Nikolai and the people of ravka were all putting pressure on her to be good and pure and saintly and a font of power and an equal in every measure except in will and a figurehead and so on and so forth and the belief that by crossing the line and perverting her power by using merzost, they became a burden, it makes Sense that she’d give up her powers and quietly run an orphanage with Mal because Mal was the only one to see her through all of it and stick around (even if he was a bit of an ass abt it sometimes) and that she’d leave behind her name because the people of Ravka Did need their sun saint and it’d be cruel to rip their faith from them like that. But if you go in with the understanding that wanted this power and that the Darkling was offering her a way (abort twisted way) to more and that she could’ve done it her own, much better way, it becomes a different story

i really should be working instead of answering this skdfjgh but i think it's kind of like...... are you looking at alina through the lens of what all these men are offering her/see her as, or are you more into her POV about these relationships. and really it's exactly what deah said, that you "ship" her with who would fit what you want alina to be, because so much of her is left unfulfilled in Possibilities. but i also think i felt like she was a pretty consistent and interesting character for me from the drop, the only complaint i had was how much she and mal mooned over each other but that made sense to me!

because personally for me as i was reading, her connection to mal feels very much like her connection to keramzin and childhood and simple times - she likes who she is around him (good, uncomplicated, half of a pair) but she also...... was starved and weak during her childhood and saw mal as shelter. PLUS what no one ever talks about (jk i only know three people who even blog about this) is that...... mal was an amplifier too!!!!! leigh brushes over that complication and what it means for their feelings/free will WAY too quick. i think mal sees in alina what he wants her to be and she thinks she should want that too. but if you see alina's journey as a girl who wants peace and belonging and stability, ending up powerless and married off in the forrest makes sense. but for me, mal feels like the past, and not the future.

i think the darkling sees more of alina's Self than he typically gets credit for, and that's where a lot of alina's fear comes from, PLUS i also do NOT buy the ending justification that the power was never hers to take and that giving it up for the good of the country was somehow not a complete devastating loss for her. for me, the darkling has a clear agenda in HOW she uses her power, but he does ultimately see alina in a way no one else is able or willing to do.... she is a grisha and her power makes her whole - she spends the whole trilogy pushing against the darkling as Villain while having a singular vision of exactly the same thing as he does (morozova, power, them together). neither of them have any use of the Sankta outside of how it helps their separate agendas, and both have valid reasons for staying away from each other, and neither can. i just think if you take an orphan who has been weak and appetiteless her whole life, then give her the power to summon the sun and a whole heap of desires she's never felt before, that's going to unleash a whole new path that deserves to be explored. and even if alina wanted to go back to her old life, the LOSS should've been felt.

once i finish soc i want to go into inej/the sol koroleva more because i think if the books had lingered past the final confrontation with the darkling, alina's position as saint would've been the number one most impactful element of her life, especially as she outlived everyone who knew her and thus became even more enshrined in mythos and belief.

ANYWAYS! i think i just view alina fundamentally as someone who willingly shut away a huge part of herself in the darkness for the majority of her life so she could be warm and protected and simple, and once she embraced the power, there was no going back for her. idk how you can look inside yourself and say "sorry i kept you waiting" and then give that all up and not feel the emptiness. i think canonically she would've been happiest dying with the darkling, but barring that, i think she'd always have a hunger and a desire for More, whether it be off on a ship exploring more of the maps she used to fill out, or ruling grisha and pushing her powers to see what could be done with small science (and merzost). i'm interested in the darkling as his own character and being outside of alina (which i can't say for any of the others) but if we're using different ships as a way to illustrate our ideal paths for alina.... i would just want her to look forward and not back, without having to burn part of herself away.

[rickriordanfandam]

opinions on riordanverse ; my edition

a lot of people have been doing this so i decided why not right. probably gna lose some followers or smth but anyways. pls respect my opinions! if u disagree, thats fine, but please be polite. unless any of my opinions strikes u as morally wrong then pls point it out to me respectfully. thanks!

- i actually liked drew. im so sorry to everyone who hates her but full offence, why. think about it this way ok, first of all drew became hc because silena died. silena was the traitor, the one who betrayed chb, yet after she died campers celebrated her as a hero? and then drew suddenly has to replace her and live up to idk that legacy she left behind,, when all of a sudden this girl named piper swoops in and takes her place. idk abt u but i wld be salty abt that too. not only that, but as an asian, the chances of drew having faced racism/bullying as a child is pretty high (she studies at brooklyn academy). which means that when she finds out shes a demigod, and arrives at chb where most of the campers are white (this is an assumption btw), she’d obviously be scared of being bullied for her skin color right?? so the first thing she wld do before the campers get to bully her is to bully them before they can do so. (sentence structure here is wack i apologize) ofc this might not even have happened, drew could have had a perfect childhood && was a b1tch for no reason, BUT EVEN THEN HER ROLE AS A BULLY WAS PRETTY VITAL BECAUSE THAT FURTHER SHOWED THE CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND PIPER,, HIGHLIGHTING PIPER AS A HERO//GOOD CHARACTER,, AND THEREFORE MAKING READERS LIKE PIPER MORE. anyway stop hating on drew please. ALSO WHY IS THIS SO LONGA SDFJHG

- jason isnt bland, the fandom just kinda erased his backstory (thanks to @pjohoo-memes for the phrasing lol)

- reynabeth wouldnt have lasted/would have broken up several times. idk i just see them as two extremely powerful characters who have firm opinions and will definitely clash at some point. in a platonic relationship,, i can see them as really good friends but as lovers? idk i just think theyll break up

- PIPABETH

- i dont really like jercy,, i see them as better friends than lovers. also idt jason and percy were that close..?

- the dam and not my type jokes are srsly cringey and were never funny. ik that seems hypocritical since my username literally makes use of the dam joke but honestly i dont actually like the joke. its not funny to me and has never been funny

- the seven were not best friends. they definitely argued,, and honestly probably werent as close as the fandom makes them seem. like ure dumped with 6 other people, out of which u only know a few. my introverted ass would have jumped off the argo 2 quicker than leo valdez could bomb camp jupiter up. also leo was a dick to frank. so what if frank is bigger sized?? thats not a valid reason to tease him

- the fandom needs to stop hating on octavian while worshipping luke. if u hate luke and u say u hate octavian too, then okay. but if u tell me ure a luke stan but u despise octavian?? imma disagree w u. luke was worse than octavian im sorry. first of all, octavian being a dick was kinda justified. hes been after the praetor position for so long, and everyone keeps saying to “wait for jason” when suddenly this dude, whos a son of NEPTUNE (neptune wasnt liked much by romans), and the camp decides to make him praetor?? dude i would be pissed off big time. and then afterwards, he finds out that greek demigods are real and the dude they made praetor is greek. AND THEN GREEK DEMIGODS COME TO CJ AND ONE OF THEM BOMB IT UP?? octavian has been told all his life that greeks are scum and this dude called leo valdez attacks cj. sure it was an accident, but did octavian know that? no. so it was honestly justified that he was such a salty prick im just saying. also some of yall be hating on octavian for cutting a teddy bear open and thats the funniest shit ive ever heard i swear 

- luke didnt go to elysium

- travis and connor stoll r way too underrated. the two have been head counselors of the hermes cabin since luke was revealed as a traitor, can u imagine the stress? luke, the person they probably looked up to as a brother, betrayed them. and they didnt even have time to process this when they were  thrown the roles of being hcs. that would have been so stressful and i would probably have broken down if i were them. the stoll brothers taking turns to wake up at ungodly hours because a new camper is crying and homesick and terrified, the stoll brothers having to comfort and take care of new campers, having to deal with the amount of people in that cramped space because not enough campers are being claimed fast enough. having to resolve issues between campers in the hermes cabin all the time. the stolls arent just comedic relief, and we need to stop treating them as such

- tratie shldve been canon idc idc

- demigods of the demeter cabin arent talked about enough and i love the fact that meg was demeters kid. like she isnt the child of one of the big three yet shes so powerful.

- we need to hype clarisse up more her character arc was phucking amazing 

- rachel is overhated. sis found out greek gods exist and regularly come down to earth to fuck around and went “ok cool”. queen shit behavior methinks

- the floor 19 crew of mcga is srsly underrated. like do u even remember halfborn gunderson, mallory keen, tj, etc??? bc i feel like we only remember samirah, magnus, alex, and sometimes blitz and hearthstone

- sadie (tkc) was kinda annoying at first. i like her more now tho but i rmb not liking her for a phat while

- tkc and mcga need more love

- carter kane and jason grace arent boring. theyre just really sweet boys who are too good for this world and yes yes yes 

- hazel and frank (especially frank) need to be hyped up more. i hardly ever see anything about them. also yall seem to forget that frank was literally made praetor and that even hecate admired hazel and was willing to fight beside her because of how powerful she was

- frazels age gap is kinda sketch but i still think theyre really cute

- nico definitely had trauma from going to tartarus on his own

- GROVER IS PERCYS BEST FRIEND

- annabeth isnt smarter than leo but neither is leo smarter than annabeth. ive seen a lot of discussions about who is smarter and heres my hot take on it: neither. theyre equally smart, just in different ways. leos a genius mathematically speaking. he has no issues solving math problems meant for people much, much older than him. annabeth on the otherhand, is great at strategies etc. she can make an army of 1000 more powerful than the enemy, even if theyre outnumbered. so in my opinion, both are equally as smart//u cant compare their intelligence, because their talents lie in two different areas.

- while i do agree rick riordan isnt a god and that hes bound to make mistakes,, AND that hes given us a lot of representation,, if the representation offends the people its sposed to represent, then theres a problem. im talking about piper as a poc and wearing feathers in her hair. im not a poc, so i cant speak for them on whether or not its wrong, because i dont know either. HOWEVER, i have seen multiple posts BY pocs talking about how they didnt really like rick’s representation of piper, and thats an issue. pocs have been and are still oppressed and discriminated against by many. as a white cis man, we cant really blame him for not knowing (tho he could have done a research,, asked some pocs,, idk), but by representing pocs in that manner, hes influencing impressionable kids/teens into thinking “oh pocs wear feathers in their hair all the time” etc, which isnt true. the pjo/hoo series is extremely successful, and kids who read the books will probably start forming inaccurate opinions on pocs. the amount of fan art that depicts piper with feathers in her hair dont help either. “but rick said so in the books, so its canon” yeah well rick isnt a god and he can get some things wrong at times. im not saying we should cancel him, im saying we should start educating ourselves and not spread false info like pocs wearing feathers in their hair all the time. also that snake song shit where she sang Summertime was just- yeah. bc heres the thing you can be racist, and still include minorities, but portray them in a racist way. And even then, ignorance isn't a thing to admire. Getting those facts wrong still has a major impact. It continues to perpetuate racist stereotypes.

“ With the feather thing, I looked it up myself; it takes less than five minutes to figure out that Cherokees don't braid feathers into their hair. I didn't grow up in the country where my parents are from. I have many other first/second generation American friends who have also been through that, with a bit of a disconnect from their culture. But something that most of us have in common is that when we didn't know something, and when our parents weren't that big of a help, we looked it up. We sought out resources online and through other people from our culture to be able to connect more with where we came from. Some of that took a Google search. So I find it hard to believe that Piper, a girl who Rick's trying to portray as someone who is attempting to connect with her culture and is totally against racist stereotypes, wouldn't know that eagle feathers aren't supposed to be braided into your hair casually. She may be disconnected from her culture, but she's also shown to want to connect back to it. Piper wouldn't be casually braiding feathers into her hair while also telling off people for being racist. It makes no sense.” - reddit thread (down below) 

for those of yall who wanna know more please please read this, it has a lot of things i wanna add in here : https://www.reddit.com/r/camphalfblood/comments/gy3gl2/piper_mcleans_portrayal_is_innacurate/ 

as well as https://finding-my-culture.tumblr.com/post/189422373260/maxie-ratties-and-cattie-finding-my-culture 

i will be posting screenshots of these in future posts so if ure viewing this on ig and u dont have tumblr,, dont worry 

- the fact that most of the strong female characters in the series refuse to be “girly”, and ngl i dont really like that. just because ure girly doesnt mean u cant be strong. 

- piper would have been a great way for him to start making the strong characters act girlier, but instead he went with the “I’m not like other girls” trope which is quite obnoxious to hear constantly, and I don’t think it’s necessarily great for younger girls to read that idea growing up.  the closest we've ever had to a strong female character who was also into "girly" things was Silena. when I was younger I admired Piper's "I'm not like other girls" thing, but then I got older and realized that the whole mentality of "not like other girls" is super obnoxious, and a little bit toxic

i have a heck load more that i cant rmb rn but yeah feel free to add more 

[kae-karo]

For the character ask, Kazu (or Thoma just in case someone already asked for Kazu) ❤️

hello epi!!!!! 💜 i actually have not had anyone ask for kazoo yet!!

How I feel about this character:

from a gameplay perspective, he is honestly kinda op lmao i'm so glad i decided to pull for him. he's my main travel character like when i'm walking around, mostly cause his E is so good for...literally every kind of travel? like i used to have kaeya or childe even out most of the time but kazoo is just perfect for the first attack like gathering all the enemies together n stuff??? he's super great paired with bennett since his primary elemental absorption is pyro, but since benny doesn't have huge pyro application most of the time, i can steal kazoo's burst or E to get some solid pyro application. once i got that down from a mechanics perspective, it's like. supremely badass. kazoo also pairs well with childe since i can drag all the enemies together and then bap them with childe's Q?

from a design perspective, he is babie. i adore his hair and the maple leaf theme, he's very flowy and fits well with the anemo vibe even if he isn't blue/green (understandably lmao). i actually like the red tho it's a nice color scheme for him

from a character perspective, i adore him. i wish we'd gotten a proper story quest for him instead of just the pre-inazuma thing? he's such a fun balance between peaceful and lowkey a little unhinged lmao like YES give me haikus and then threaten to burn someone's face off or whatever u did ily bb. i also find his backstory super interesting with lots of places to expand on it either in canon or just in fanon lmao

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

TOMO 🥺🥺 that's definitely my primary (only?) kazoo ship

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

i realize now that this says 'otp' but i will continue to ignore it in favor of listing off all the chars i want to see them be friends with lmao. i think i said on the kaeya one that he and kaeya would be a fun friendship lmao. i also do adore kazoo beidou friendship!! i also think canon gorou's lil 'KAZUHA!' when he saw kazoo again was cute i'm here for their friendship for sure. i think he could get along well with xiao since they both sort of do the silent anemo wanderer thing lmao. good travel companions i think, if kazoo ever stayed in liyue. oh! i think he xingqiu and hu tao could be a riot in terms of their poetry too lmao

My unpopular opinion about this character:

hmm...again, i feel like i have very little in the way of unpopular opinions. maybe this is a stretch but i think (?) it's popular to view kazoo as the subby, delicate wifey type? and i really don't vibe writing him that way at least. don't mind reading it, but not really my thing to write it?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

TOMO INTERACTIONS i would've loved/would love a story quest that further explores what happened to tomo, where he came from, etc in the sense of like. maybe kazoo grieving? or smth? if i were writing it personally, i'm not sure how i'd go about it, but 1. i simply can't imagine kazoo really just. setting that vision there and leaving it (knowing that ppl want to steal it?) and 2. just fully letting tomo go (and the CAT the cAT) idk it feels like there could've been a bigger emotional impact if we'd had some more backround beyond just 'they were friends and then he DIED' like a full story quest centered around kazoo coming to terms with him truly being gone? idk that whole bit felt insufficient to me lmao. i would also like to see him...do some more wandering? like...not just on inazuma and in the crux fleet? he makes a big deal out of being a wanderer, i feel like it'd be fun to have him show up in other countries and stuff

my OTP:

tomo, without question lmao

my cross over ship:

hmm. is it cheating if i say todoroki again? (not as a romantic ship) lmao i think their senses of humor would align surprisingly well. plus red/white matchy matchy lmao. and a burn? it's all coming together....does this make dabi = tomo? i'll take a 'tomo didn't actually die but got kidnapped by the fatui on the brink of death and they turned him into a harbinger' 👀👀

a headcanon fact:

hmm....i mean aside from his past which is purportedly rather straightforward, i really don't know if i have much in the way of creative thoughts here lmao. is it a hc to say he and tomo were more than just besties?

send me genshin ships/chars to talk abt or rank!

[cherubchoirs]

tell us more abt the bad end akira and goro relationship after it all........

(this is a bit of newer ask but since i posted reformed bad end art tonight, i uhhh...figured i should answer!!)

SO the reformed path of my bad end au is...honestly...VERY self-indulgent and just out of my own curiosity. initially i thought it up because i don’t like character death and akira dying in my bad end au, while i considered it “canon”, bummed me out and i wanted to think about what his recovery would be like instead should the thieves be able to save him. HOWEVER...the events of the third semester in p5r along with the shuake dynamics it presents made me think a lot more on the idea and i wanted to pursue it more concretely in that context!! so!! 

MAJOR P5R SPOILERS UNDER THE READ MORE!!

things between akira and goro in this path of the au are...tense, strained, and generally complicated given their positions. akira has had his heart partially restored by the bonds he created with the thieves and by reuniting with arsene, but he isn’t who he once was. his memories are fractured, hazy, and still mostly absent, and while some of his mannerisms have returned, he’s still overly rigid and operates most comfortably in very defined parameters. he is, essentially, a being that is fused with the metaverse, with yaldabaoth, and so he still remains inhuman without hope of salvage, still impacted by cognitions and unable to survive in reality for any long period of time (he has taken up residence in the velvet room). he does experience an implicit trust of the thieves and his confidants and he is endlessly fascinated by humans and his own previous life as one, but stress can cause him to lapse into his ideals under yaldabaoth to almost totally forget himself until he can snap to again (and he’s always embarrassed by his behavior). 

this limbo state, a nonhuman that was once human and only really emotionally remembers his friends and loved ones, causes both akira and goro to feel oddly split from each other. goro is left with the burden of every memory, the rivalry that turned into something neither of them expected nor perhaps even wanted but ran to without reservation, how they fell in love when they were meant to destroy each other. akira has a sense of something special with goro, different than his other friends, but only goro remembers them competing at darts, only he remembers sharing a coffee or cake with him, only he remembers the promise they made to see who could be the very best between them. goro can recall every word, touch, and kiss exchanged between them after their games and their fights, but it’s all reduced to a curiosity to akira: human competition, human romance, it’s things he’s forgotten and looks at like an academic almost, sterile and without attachment. and yet...when goro speaks with him and closes his eyes to that blinding white that coats him now, he hears akira, the akira he knew and fell in love with. he’s surprising him again with his observations and witticisms, his whip-smart intelligence is back, his bizarre and off the wall sense of humor is even returning in shades. he plays with him, he says things he knows will push goro’s buttons or fire him up and he knows it full-well, but most importantly, his ideals are there again, flickering and faltering sometimes, but he corrects himself of his own accord when they do. he doesn’t remember so much, their history, he isn’t even human and there’s so much he can’t understand that goro knows was once instinct, and yet akira is there. 

and it hurts him so much that akira had so failed him, that he even let himself become this, that he was so weak he let himself become a puppet...but didn’t goro once do the same? it’s so painful to know akira could be as weak as him, the boy he so admired for being so free, so unfettered and so sure of himself, that even he could fall the same and let himself be tricked with such obvious manipulation. it shatters that perfect illusion, leaving akira more vulnerable than goro wanted to admit, and it both strengthens and softens that “hate” he had for him. he hates seeing him be so stupid and so pitiful, but it makes him less ideal, so much more like goro in so many ways. coupled with his lost memories, this is what drives goro’s complex feelings toward him now: he isn’t akira, not who he once was in reality and not who he once was in goro’s mind, but he is so unabashedly akira too, raw and real and not whole but flawed and carving his path forward again. goro sees him struggle, watches him suffer under this curse of his lost humanity, the loss of his memories and his own hatred for his choices...but he never excuses them. he owns what he did and presses forward in whatever he can achieve now, wanting to be human again even if he never can be, wanting to use his new position in whatever way he can to strive for better. his fire, his strength of character, and his resolve are all there, tempered by terrible mistakes to do better next time.

and for akira’s part, he recognizes he and goro had something different together, his trust of him is different. he’s still working on processing emotions and he doesn’t understand what he feels for goro, no memories to guide him and so used to feeling nothing but righteousness and occasional hysteria. but as a being of cognition, he knows goro feels erratic near him, toward him, emotions volatile and oscillating in a way that troubles akira to the point of feeling unstable himself. it makes him keep his distance for both of their sakes, still operating based more on logic than human emotion as yaldabaoth had instilled in him: if his presence causes distress, it is best they not meet as it will, without doubt, cause suffering for goro. but being apart from goro seems to cause suffering on his end...an emptiness that he struggles to define and one that goro feels as well despite his frustration at being in love with a ghost.

all of this hesitation is put to the side, however, when something goes wrong with reality - akira begins getting nagging headaches that come with the distinct feeling of the metaverse returning. he’s rattled enough that the metaverse has survived yaldabaoth’s defeat, but possibly more worrying, to him, is the fact that he feels a sense of disconnect from mementos. he is fused with the metaverse and so should never feel as much, yet he feels severed from the cognitions of others and the very scenery of mementos which once existed as an extension of himself. he attempts to reach out to the thieves about it in their dreams via the velvet room, but none of them share his concern and even brush it off...without prompting, however, goro comes to him with similar concerns, the metanav back on his phone and demanding answers from akira. but when he sees akira is clearly shaken too, when akira claims without a single doubt this has nothing to do with himself or yaldabaoth, goro takes him along with him back to reality as a test based on his own suspicions. they find akira can exist just fine there, no exhaustion gripping him as it should when he tries to venture into reality, so goro already knows the metaverse must have fused with reality before akira can even confirm it. AND SO the last piece i drew of them was actually them on the train to odaiba, where akira’s headaches get increasingly worse until they reach the palace there. it’s appears very similar to a safe room to akira, where the palace and the stadium are vying for the same place in space while goro and sumi see the palace’s hazy form. they know they have to investigate, and it’s there that they meet with maruki, of course, who akira feels immediate pity for given how similar his position seems to be to what akira’s own once was. however, maruki says they only reject his reality because he’s still working on their dreams...they’re just a little more difficult to manage, but don’t worry - they’ll be saved too

[loverfighter]

well. i think i’ve finally pinpointed the Thing abt chapter 2 that really digs under my skin / makes me uncomfortable to look at too closely (not the character execution of half the losers which is major and probably reason numero uno why chapter 2 does not live up to the book nor first movie and i Will go on abt later but i’m waiting to finish my reread to do so) and it’s essentially that eddie and richie are almost.... forced apart for a lot of it. in chapter 1 we have so many moments, countless looks and gestures and dialogue to point at and say look! there! that’s why they’re in love! where the impact these characters have on each other holds weight and they’re so deeply intertwined to the degree of siamese twins, one never without the other, never farther than a thought or heartbeat away (physically touching in one way or another anytime they can, a beacon through the walks of hell). it’s clear, on both ends, that whatever love they hold for each other is profound and heavy and embedded six feet deep into each other’s souls, transversing across memory, distance, time. even in the background of a scene in which the main focus is ten feet away, highlighted in red and grasping at your attention, you can spot eddieandrichie⏤together, inseparable, linked. 

with chapter 2, this dynamic is hinted upon, and given to us through flashes, but never through scenes alone (prior to neibolt) or actual context. in fact, the scenes we Do have in which their magnetic pull towards each other is allowed narrative (hammock, eddie taking off the shower cap, eddie looking away smiling after richie’s “what the fuck does that mean”, going into the photo booth separated from the rest + eddie pulling richie in, eduardo! andale, them expressing constant agreement w each other through gestures, all of the jade of the orient stuff, etc) was courtesy of the actors and not the script or (likely) direction. bill even said that He was the one who had to push the clarity of richie’s sexuality, to clearly express that he’s gay (“““movie canon”””), while andy and the rest thought vague would be the best route to go in fear of audience reaction. and even then! it’s not as forward as it should’ve or could’ve been (considering they pulled eddie’s canon death scene w the love confession + more emotional moments between them in that setting + the supposed kiss), and oh! not to mention stripping eddie of his own homosexuality and giving richie the bowers storyline, which was the scene that cemented his sexuality in the movie, making it clear that the crew knew the dynamic and context of the interactions between eddie and bowers. 

the point remains that all of the “official” reddie scenes are... kinda out of nowhere? we are given spare information, but lacking any context, leaving the general audience with no way to complete the puzzle with a dozen missing pieces. during the flashback, we see richie carving r+e on the kissing bridge, set after the events of the arcade, and obviously the e stands for eddie, but that’s it! nothing before or during that flashback gives the average watcher any information besides that, and the ones of us who are invested have little satisfaction from that moment alone, when we’ve been building it up and expecting an actual storyline, rather than 5 secs in a minute long flashback clip (that is to say, the r+e is one of my fav reddie scenes, but maybe they shouldn’t have teased it in the trailers if that was all it was gonna be?). 

richie is the one to calm eddie down, snatch away his inhaler bc it’s meaningless physically and damaging psychologically, and tell him “you’re braver than you think.” but why is it that richie is able to get through to him when no one else can or bothers to, why richie, why does he understand what eddie needs to hear, why does eddie listen and take it to heart, especially when richie is the one emphasized to have a crush on eddie and not vice versa? they’re important to each other (on a deeper level than they individually are with the rest of the losers), it’s clear based on that scene, but that’s what it’s left at, with no scenes or dialogue previous to that moment propping it up, other than the r+e, which doesn’t account for eddie’s reaction. and then, they’re together when they face the doors, parallel to benverly who are shouting their love at each other. again, this is telling us something, which is less surprising based off of the inhaler scene 5 mins prior, but then it swiftly plummets to eddie essentially sacrificing himself / saving richie. again: why? 

to me, it’s obvious. to y’all, it’s obvious. we all know well enough, right. but susan in the seat next to me doesn’t, nor do her two friends, or even my friends (getting new ones) or the majority of people who came out of that theatre. they walked out of there and didn’t understand the relationship as requited bc they weren’t given the context and love and soul of reddie. and i think what upsets me most about that is that i can’t just brush it off as them not understanding the nuance or depth of a stupid clown film (if it was the stupid clown book, sure, or even the first stupid clown film but) bc it was done on purpose. they were afraid of negative responses to the lgbt storyline (and god forbid there’d be two of them in their precious big studio film), and so they strangled the heart out of reddie. and because reddie became canon (or richie’s crush became canon), they had to tone down the “gayness” of their relationship, because now the audience would have a new perception of what they were to one another, and no longer have the cushion to brush it off as a “brotherly relationship” (sorry finn). take bill and mike for example! objectively, they were probably “gayer” than reddie, because they were allowed to touch, to show affection, to say i love you. but of course they can’t be gay, bc bill has a wife and they don’t see mike as enough of a person to give him anything good. 

it’s like. what they (production) Have given us is flashes of moments that they are barely responsible for and bury ur gays (fantastic rep), wherein the sexuality of the character that actually dies is kept vague so that the record breaking number of people that went to see their film (who frankly don’t even care) won’t think the film is too gay. like. LMFAO it’s so dumb and frustrating bc on one hand we’re valid for clocking reddie but on the other we’re Too Wild for thinking that it’s a requited love story. like yes, i’m grateful that richie’s sexuality (re his attraction to men; i think he’s bi, movie canon leans toward gay but whatever) is canon, that the wretched grief he felt at losing the love of his life was Shown if only to paint how deep the emotion he felt went, that r+e is forever carved into history. but that’s hand in hand w me being upset over eddie’s character and sexuality being sidelined, at the graphic depiction of gay men being murdered with no full circle moment as it Should Have Been, at having to defend reddie as canon bc some cowards in the editing room couldn’t handle the negative reviews of a few bigots at the expense of their invested and loyal and passionate audience who care abt this story and the characters within it. 

idk. anyway. this is the result of me going crazy so don’t pay it much mind but. imagine how fucking tired i am

[bi-dazai]

ok my bsd predictions for major plot points in the future

1.

If dazai were to be killed off in bsd, chuuya would probably be killed with him in a final act of coded symbiosis.

Tbh tho that's such a major thing that it probably wouldn't happen until when the manga is finishing up so

2.

Chuuya will either become the PM Boss or he'll join the ADA.

So chuuya is strongly suggested in two ways for his future which is HM INTERESTING. So the way that Mori clearly recruits him not just for his ability but for his leadership skills, plus the how chuuya has been developing those skills, is something I was thinking about a lot in S3. Mori is very clearly not happy with Dazai being the heir, even though he was the best choice. Dazai would have probably killed Mori and taken his place by the time he was 20 if odasaku hadn't died. Chuuya has loyalty to the mafia plus the fighting and leadership abilities. He's also got a certain obedience and controllability that if Mori was to step aside and not die he would like. Also something ppl forget is that chuuya is actually good at negotiation and staying calm under pressure, it's suggested that dazai particularly triggers his anger because dazai is an annoying shit who seems to be in canon attached to him whenever they're in the same room.

HOWEVER. Now I don't think I've ever said this on this blog despite me constantly thinking about it but Fukuzawa's ability is the perfect thing for Chuuya, as it has the possibility of actually reigning in corruption. If chuuya joined the ADA he would actually be able to use corruption's ability of throwing black holes without losing control of himself. Arguably that would also get rid of the need for dazai's intervention although it's been established that skk were thought of as a perfect fighting duo for a year before corruption even first manifested in a fight, so I don't think this would kill skk. And chuuya joining the ADA would mean that he and dazai have to interact on the daily. It also means that the mafia is left without any clear heir. People have vouched for kouyou in this situation but I think it's clear that kouyou is being forced to be in the mafia, she's given up on leaving and doesn't want to be there actively.

I don't think the second outcome is very possible plotwise for a few reasons. These are all totally writer's arguments so appeals to logic and plot aren't exactly going to work here, but as a writer myself these are the planning issues that stick out extremely badly if we get chuuya to defect:

- it would have to take something extremely major to get chuuya to leave the loyalty of the mafia

- chuuya becomes even more OP. asagiri kafka has said that though he really likes chuuya (as evidenced by the amount of goddamn times chuuya comes up in the novels), he avoids putting him in the manga because chuuya is extremely overpowered. If he and dazai were logically paired together for each issue every arc would be solved far too quickly for things like character development, or like...story...to take place. This is why chuuya is constantly sidelined. You have to actively make it so that chuuya isn't on people's minds constantly, or get him out of the picture immediately, so that your narrative can actually develop. Chuuya is honestly a mistake in a writing sense. But he's a strong character and he and dazai were written in tandem to each other so he's absolutely unremovable. A character like chuuya NEEDS to exist. So the way chuuya has been toned down is Corruption. Chuuya's ability by itself is just...incredibly powerful. He's virtually indestructible. However Corruption, the ultimate form, is shown to actively kill chuuya. The only times we've seen corruption used is cthulu, shibusawa, and shibusawa big dragon, all extreme threats. So chuuya's life when he's pulled out as the deus ex machina is tied to dazai. This makes chuuya's unchecked OP a little less unchecked and a little less OP. Chuuya is actually a fantastic example of why you CAN have OP characters, you just have to write them a certain way.

However in writing them a certain way, the most stupid thing you could do for your narratives would be to bring corruption under control, and to bring chuuya into the group of protagonists. you have to find excuses in every problem to why chuuya can't just come out and handle this himself, like you were before but now dazai's absence isn't an issue PLUS your readers are paying more attention to chuuya because he's around all the time.

So yeah, chuuya being in the ADA would be a bad choice narrative wise unless it was for like...one arc or smth. Chuuya becoming the next boss of the port mafia is wayyyyy more likely to me. I don't think chuuya would like it but he's really the most obvious choice

3.

Dostoyevsky/rat arc is going to be mega arc/s.

one of the exciting things abt this series is that I have no idea how long this conflict with the rats will go on for. At first I thought it would be an occasional and ongoing plotline that is explored not as one big set arc but interspersed with other non-rat arcs. However by the way it's going it looks like we have two options, either 1) the rat issue is being dealt with across one mega-arc or 2) rat issues will still be dealt with like I thought, interspersed, but each time they pop up it will be a mega-arc like it has been so far. I genuinely don't know how this will be resolved, and I'm actually kind of wondering if the characters will finally leave kanagawa prefecture and maybe head to Russia to defeat the rats. I think this could be a good start to travelling the characters to settings outside yokohama.

4.

Agatha Christie is going to be matched up to Ranpo.

Like Dostoyevsky is dazai's foil because their works IRL were similar in tone, Agatha Christie and Ranpo match up in that way perfectly. We've already met the trick foil (we thought he would be, but he wasn't) for Ranpo in Poe (IRL Poe actually did write mystery at times, and his works do contain elements of suspense and unknown). Ranpo is clearly going through hell in this arc which makes me feel like he's going to start being a much more major character in the future.

Agatha Christie and Edogawa Ranpo's works both fit in the mystery genre and were both alive irl around the same time. They both played historic roles in developing the mystery genre of their language's literature and are pretty well-known in non-literature circles because mystery often has a pulp, mass-consumable aspect to it. It was actually surprising to me that they were made into characters considering the other characters are named after authors of much "higher grade" Literature, as in Literature capital L. Mystery authors especially like Agatha Christie don't fit that bill, but they've played a central role in developing the fiction industry so I don't find it odd. Plus there's a bit of a debate what counts as Literature and every person has different opinions. Mine differs to asagiri kafka's which evidently seems to be that if the author has had a significant impact on the literary field then their works become Literature, thus they become 文豪 (Literary masters), thus they become a bsd character. I think that's fair, even if it isn't what I would personally say Literature is. This is par for the course tho lol, p sure any person who is into Literature will have a different thing to say about what gets that capital L.

But yeah, I think Ranpo and Christie are clearly going to be each others foils.

5.

Christie is going to be cold. Like. COLD.

Dostoyevsky is more obvious evil, it shows on the surface. But Christie will have a polite veneer, a charm to her. We've seen her in a shot, and she sits tall, she enjoys tea, she dresses expensively and lives in colourful rooms. But she had no hesitation to destroy Yokohama if a situation wasn't dealt with within half an hour in the cruelest way possible. Christie was actively ready to incinerate Yokohama alive, that was her first instinct when contacted for help. Christie very clearly has a lack of care for the lives of others, OR she wants to destroy Yokohama in particular. However considering this is the goal of Dostoyevsky and Christie will probably be the next major villain after Dostoyevsky, repeating that goal and motivation is pretty boring and not very bungou stray dogs.

6.

The order of the clock tower will not come to yokohama first.

The Guild were the ones to come to yokohama and threaten it up close. The order of the clock tower was a major threat to yokohama from across the continent. That's terrifying. The ADA/Mafia will have to work proactively

7.

The end of the clock tower will have major repercussions.

The order of the clock tower seems to have its claws in everything and has a tight maintenance of leadership and control over almost every gifted organisation we've met. The Order seems to literally keep order. But they've clearly got a goal with sending the guild and the rats after the book. If the order is destroyed then certain aspects of gifted society slip loose and create new problems. This will probably be the creator of an arc or two after the order arc is over.

8.

Chuuya's backstory is linked to Dazai's.

Chuuya was used by the military and experimented on until he could contain a god of destruction, after which he went haywire, blasted a huge crater in yokohama, and became a feral child.

Dazai was...we don't know. The furthest back we can tell is that some time in his early teens he was taken in by Mori. Before that he was apparently wandering around trying to find some kind of emotion, something to make him feel. He eventually found that with the violence and adrenaline rush of the mafia.

Now I don't think that dazai is a psychopath. It's easy to say he is with the way he seems to talk about the hole in his heart and the absence and emptiness. However dazai very very clearly cares. He cares about odasaku, he cares about atsushi, he cares about the ADA, and he even cares about chuuya (this is not my shipper brain talking, I am literally talking about canon). Dazai very clearly CARES. He isn't a psychopath.

My belief is that dazai is the most clear argument for my case that the series is about mental illness and self worth. Dazai very clearly has a major depressive disorder.

I also think that dazai is extremely traumatised. Obviously he's traumatised by being in the mafia at 15 and by odasaku's death, but I also think dazai may have been traumatised even before then.

Atsushi is dazai's mentee, the half of shin soukoku. He's shown to have childhood trauma. Akutagawa also has childhood trauma. Chuuya has childhood trauma. This may be a coincidence but almost every main character in this series has some form of early trauma.

Dazai IRL was not called Dazai Osamu. Dazai Osamu is actually a very sad name but Dazai's birth name is Tsushima Shuuji. IRL dazai/Tsushima was the son of a rich family that lived in Aomori prefecture (which is very rural lol). Dazai had an absent father and a sick mother and wasnt raised by his parents but rather by servants and his aunt. His father died when he was young (not that he got very old) and his life was plagued by constantly running off with girls, getting his allowance cut for being a marxist, and, yes, suicide attempts.

So my ideas for how this may translate into bsd dazai is this:

- dazai ran away from home when he was young

- dazai never had a good parental figure

- dazai is from a rich family in a rural area very far away. Like for those who don't know Aomori is at the northern tip of Honshū, just below Hokkaido. Yokohama is just south of Tokyo. The region in between is mostly forest and smaller cities. Most of Japan's (major) cities are cloistered around Tokyo and Kyoto and Fukuoka which are towards the south. So dazai is a country boy who has wandered japan after running away from home.

- dazai's real name is Tsushima Shuuji and there's a personal reason he's distanced himself from that. This one im not sure about but yeah

- thus follows that why would dazai be so fucked up if he isn't a psychopath and he did come from a rich family? Dazai to me reads that something major happened. In shin skk it's clear that atsushi and alutagawa share a past of abuse at the hands of parental figures and loneliness. With all the similarities and parallels drawn between the characters in skk and shin skk it seems logical to me that chuuya's past of torture may be similar to Dazai's in a way. It would be disappointing to me if dazai's past was covered and it didn't in some way affect him. The clearest parallel between skk is that they both lacked parental figures most if not their entire lives.

There's also this comment that dazai makes when the head of atsushi's orphanage dies. It's that relationships with fathers are messy and even if they were terrible it's natural to cry. This seems like bsd dazai may share irl dazai's father's death early in his life. It's hinted therefore that dazai's father was either abusive or neglectful and died when dazai was younger.

Anyway this went longer than I thought it would but I invest far too much brain time into bsd so it's gotta seep out at some point lol

[tossertozier]

you mentioned possibly doing a ben or mike writing guide.. would you.. be willing to post a mike one. i'm plotting a fic and im struggling to get my mans down?? also i think abt ur fics weekly bare minimum.

hi there!!! i did my best. i tried to not sound preachy or like a know it all bc y’all know i can barely write. i hope this is helpful in some way!! disclaimer of of course this is all just my opinion & there’s no wrong way to write, you’re the only person who can tell your story!!

[[MORE]]

i think the first really important decision you have to make as Person Writing Mike is his

family & background

-are both of his parents alive?

-if yes, what’s their relationship like?

-if no, who’s his primary caretaker? what’s their relationship like?

-if no, when did they die? did he cope well with it? what’s his relationship with their memory like?

these are really really where you gotta start to write mike imo. or any character! i think one thing stephen king is to be admired for is he doesn’t neglect the parent-child relationship as so many people who write youth do. your parents are the most important people in your life for a long time. i don’t think there’s a wrong or ooc way to answer the above questions tbh. canon has really left a wide open field for you to run amuck in.

(example: i’ve mentioned in the past that my & tfat mike being a small adult is no mistake and intentional. it’s a bit of a throwaway scene, but i mention in on pointe that mike’s parents are coming. it’s intentionally done there too. mike is goofier, more outgoing, more immature in general in that fic in the small bits he’s in & that’s all a response to his familial life. )

culture + friendships

after you answer those questions, important follow up questions are:

-are the losers his first set of friends?

-how much social exposure has he had?

-has he dated? who is he attracted to?

-who influences him? (celebrities, family, culturally)

-what are his cultural interests? what does he do in his free time? how would that impact how he interacts with the rest of the world?

again, no wrong way to answer these. i’ve seen a super broad spectrum of indirect answers to these questions. even thinking about where he might pick up patterns of speech can make him feel much more like a realized character. i’ve noticed some people dip fully into aave to an extent that doesn’t even seem logical in their character’s current situation & it can really seem like a caricature, but i think to write mike without any sense of aave at all is a little ?? too. just be cognizant of it is my only real advice here. it doesn’t so much matter as long as you don’t forget who mike is which next point

humor & personality

-what do you think he would find (shows, comedians, youtube videos) really funny?

-does he have something he quotes often? something he started saying ironically but never stopped?

man i know i’m all there’s no wrong way to write mike !! in this post but i will say real quick that i think mike is funny and i don’t really respect depictions of him where he’s not. i think this is where the movies really just fucked up. book mike drops some of the funniest lines of the book. and honest to god tip is to write out a scene as you feel the urge too, look away for five minutes, look back and give half of richie’s lines away. (or... dialogue.) this sounds like a joke but it was what i did when i first started writing & tfat

i’d always be like “n the funny part goes... to richie.” and thats a fandom inclination too. nooooo. avoid this trap. it doesn’t even make sense. have u ever been in a friend group where only one person... makes jokes? that’d be genuinely so weird. especially bc if you give the joke away to someone else, you can also build on it. amazing things start happening when u start thinking of the characters in flexible patterns. like for example, i almost always give absurdist humor to stan now. wholesome to ben.

mike’s humor is largely situational to me. solid comedic timing & he’s an observant person. sometimes i read back my own writing & have to change the pov bc richies making jokes about things he would never ever notice to make fun of. mike would. mike genuinely sees all. i think he’s just got one of the most analytical brain of the losers. & i think intelligence is subjective and people are smart in different ways but i think it’s foolish to write him as anything other than incredibly intelligent both academically and emotionally. he’s just a natural observer and pattern notice-er. which brings me to my next mike thing:

love & selflessness

i think the biggest part of mike being harder to flesh into a fully realized person is the fandom tendency to make him kind and nothing else. here’s mike. he’s nice. next. bc the book kind of points out his selflessness in his decisions and it makes itself one of his strongest character traits.

especially bc nice seems to trump him having any other emotions. ...no?

i believe in general, but ESPECIALLY in the case of mike, that kindness is a choice. it’s one i genuinely believe he’d make, over & over again. but a choice he makes. he gets annoyed with his friends being annoying like anyone else would. he gets hurt when he feels left out. he feels tired & anxious & hungry and all those other human things. sometimes he might not let it show outwardly, but there’s a difference between that and not giving him feelings at all.

people are selfish. it’s a defense mechanism. it’s to protect us. it’s not a bad thing. we think of how the world impacts ourselves first. we don’t always act upon those thoughts or voice them, but don’t forget to let mike have them. he doesn’t need to be happy for his friends all the time, or rooting for them or supportive. he should have his own things going on.

also. mike’s not a doormat. yes, he stays in derry. but those were life-death consequences for generations of children. it’s really not comparable to almost any decision mike would make in a pennywise free universe. yes, he made a sacrifice in the book but i don’t think he’d just lay himself down in any given universe to whatever fate wants to hand him. but this is where i end this topic bc i’m actually only barely beginning to get to this topic in my own fic!

it’s hard writing the losers young sometimes bc i do feel relationships are naturally a little unbalanced based on basic maturity levels as young people. sometimes friendships just are unbalanced bc of who people are at that time. everyone involved can still be good people in these relationships. it’s about growing together and learning how to be good friends to each other.

for example, in &tfat: certain losers are always checking in with others. others are really wrapped up in their own shit and don’t really notice what bothers the others. it would probably take a chart the size of a textbook to explain how i think this dynamic wholly pans out in full. and yeah, i think it grates on mike a little bit that he is always the checker and never the checkee.

but even when mike snaps, even when he gets upset, i always write it coming out of him with a lot of love. i genuinely think mike, regardless of experience in that fic, has the deepest understanding of love as its own concept and an understand of how exactly it rules his life and and his relationships. mike knows to feel strongly about something he has to care about it. there are lots of things he just doesn’t care about. in the book it’s stated he’s difficult to connect with as an adult. he’s distant. he’s focused on what he wants to focus on. i think mike is actually the most interesting when he becomes a little bit of a disaster man with very little time for what doesn’t interest him.

which last thing, dislikes & disinterests

-what annoys him?

-what makes him genuinely angry?

-what bores him to tears?

i always make jokes that i bring up the nastier parts of the losers bc i love nasty boys but thinking of things people don’t like is as much a part of them as the things they do.

for example, in &tfat, i write richie as making fun of “nerdy” things like anything you could find at comic con. i write bev as not giving a fuck about sports. bill doesn’t care about richie’s music tastes. eddie hates getting condescended to.

bc of the ... kind thing, mike’s one of the harder losers to do this with. i genuinely think mike would listen to any of his friends tell him about anything. & he knows, in return, they can’t say shit when he wants to ramble about history. but dislikes can also be super situational.

again, for example in & tfat: mike doesn’t like when his friends talk about college right now. no one is really being sensitive to him at all. he hates getting blamed for stuff that isn’t his fault, mostly bc it keeps happening.

anyway. i based a lot of my mike (mostly sense of humor and personality) off of a mix of real life friends of mine. it’s a luxury. i know. i’ve been blessed to have friends from literally all walks of life & for me borrowing little habits & quirks & sayings & jokes to slip into my fics and characters is my way of writing one massive love letter to those ive known. i hope i’ve helped you in some way anon. n if not.... don’t be sad i’m hardly one to take writing advice from anyway jandjxjx

overall, as i used to do often, i’d genuinely stop myself and say: is this a person, or a convenience for the plot? and if it was the latter, sigh, and get my backspace key ready.

[standardlovers]

ok here’s another ask skwnskwn uhhh unpopular stranger things 3 opinions?

idk most opinions of st3 are so idk which are unpopular but i can give it a shot with just random opinions i have and it will loop over into what i think should/shouldnt happen in st4

it was really uncomfy and weird watching mike and el kiss at all, they're like 5 they're children it's just, it's uncomfy to be looking at

billy was not Redeemed in st3, we see depth in his character, we see a slight explanation for some behaviours and we see he's different but he's not technically Redeemed

Robin is the best character on the show, smart as fuck but terrible taste in women. my kinda girl

Steve not getting a love interest is better than the alternative, even if they make steve bi in canon i seriously need a season of steve being Alone romantically, so far he's gone from years with Nancy, trying to get Nancy back, trying to pick up girls and having a crush on Robin so he's always looking for Something romantic and im glad he isn't getting it, Steve needs to get some grasp on himself without the need for a romantic partner and allow himself to be without one and without need to get one before he does get with someone knew

erica and lucas are the best possible examples of siblings, then nancy and mike THEN jonathan and will, even if they're better at being close and stuff they aren't 1000% realistic for most sibling relationships

jim was quite harsh a lot this season and i know it was him being overprotective of el but sometimes it was a fine line between him being a steady and protective dad and him being pushed and losing it cause he didn't talk it out sooner

mike was a little shit and annoying as fuck this season. also a bad friend and a bad boyfriend. i know he's just a kid so im not gonna grasp the situation the same way he does cause im looking at it as someone older than him but he's sucked and did we see him actually apologise to will and say he's sorry? at all?

will and dustin were treated badly by people who are established to be their best friends and shouldve said smth sooner

nobody fessed up and took responsibility that they had such low expectations of dustin they not only accused him of lying abt having a girlfriend but didn't seem to show any sadness at not trusting their friend when he did reveal that it was true

joyce deserves that move away, even if hop had lived Joyce and the kids had been so beyond hurt and traumatised in Hawkins they deserved to be away from it all, especially el and will

billys mum is alive, it's clear she left and billy spoke to her on the phone in the memories so she's Alive and back in cali

speaking of, it doesn't in any way shape or form justify his actions and im not at all trying to but i do think a part of the change in billys attitudes between S2 and S3 could have been impacted by the fact in S2 he was JUST up and moved to a new town away from where he lived his whole life and probably the last connection or hope he had of being with his mother again so his being more calmed or tame in S3 could be him getting used to Hawkins and accepting he has to stay for X amount of time until he can move back alone if he wants to

suzie and dustin singing was sweet as hell

if Mike had done that whisper in the ear shit with me, id have thrown his ass out too

el and max are bi and also have crushes on each other just a lil bit

el's new fashion is cute and im not just saying that cause she dresses like i do sometimes

joyce should have said sorry sincerely for standing hop up at the restaurant, even if she was doing research and learning and stuff she should have apologised for leaving him hanging like that

it was fucked up and cruel and unnecessary to kill billy in front of max, for emotion i get it but for me, she didn't need to see that, she's a kid that's gonna stick with her forever and as far as i can think it's the only death she's actually seen happen in canon

max shouldn't be left with neil, i don't trust him not to turn on her now that billy isn't there taking hits, i just don't trust him not to snap at her now billy isn't around to deal with all the shit

i Knew before the show was released and i said it to someone i'll look for the chat, but i KNEW the audio that was used would be a flashback for Billy's life in cali and i was right and im fuckin stoked abt that

killing hop was shit, he just got the chance of a new daughter and a better life and was working on it to be there for her and more supportive and stuff and trying to work around her being in his life and having her own life outside of that

release tammy thompsons music! i need new muppets hits!!!! make her sing life's a happy song!!!!

heather was cute, wish she wasn't possessed 😔

idk anything else but im in love with steve harrington

[ASK ME ABOUT ANYTHING PLEASE]

[webswng]

                    (  kim   taehyung .   twenty - one .   cismale .  )   ——   i   just   saw   PETER  PARKER   in   town ,   from   SPIDER - MAN :   THE   ANIMATED   SERIES ,   right  ?  HE   has   been   in   town   for   NINE   MONTHS   and   has  gotten   a   job   at   MAD  SCIENCE  OF  TOONSVILLE .   they   were   born   on   AUGUST  TENTH ,   which   makes   them   a   LEO .   i   can   see   it ,   considering   they're   SHREWD  &  DELICATE .   they've   got   SOME   of   their   memory ,   though ,   so   let's   see   how   they   do .

so to peter’s knowledge, his backstory remains the same as his canon one--- ie, was taken in by his uncle and aunt at a young age after his parents passed away

his uncle ben DID still die about three years ago--- but ofc in his mind the whole spider thing didn’t happen so he didn’t technically become spider boi 

instead this was a turning point for him but in a bAD direction

he lost sight of his goals and was really impacted by his uncle’s death , and without an escape (being spider-man) it was a lot harder to get out of the rut : / 

only did so when his aunt got sick and he realized he um had to snap out of it and get back to living his life

currently, he’s taking care of his aunt may and is interning at mad science of toonsville--- he gets most of his income by doing freelance photography for weddings and events and has gathered up a decent clientele 

he obviously isn’t rolling in dough but it’s enough to get by for now until he can finish school (also goes to the city college) and hopefully get a permanent job @ mad science of toonsville

will occasionally have deju-vu like moments when things spider-man related come up, ie if he’s wearing red, on building rooftops, sees a spider, etc etc he feels weirdly.... nostalgic ?? but of what ?? he doesn’t know

occasionally has dreams abt being spider-man too and they feel v much real but he doesn’t even have tiME to worry about something so (seemingly) trivial

personality wise, still ur average peter parker-- clumsy, bad at time management, barely sleeps, procrastinates, a little awkward, etc etc, tho his character will be more influenced by the animated series than mcu / sony’s versions of him !

[mabufu]

me: can i get uhhhhhhhhhhhh some sweet thots on yusorey,

yes omg you can get endless thots on yusorey at all times……. i’m gonna go with p5 verse for this so it’s a bit more #specific and also bc i love your p5 verse! :D

first & foremost: yusuke and sorey are both very passionate people. they’ve been called ‘weird’ for their enthusiasm in the past and are prone to doing eccentric things in the name of their interests. in sorey’s case, it’s history, and in yusuke’s case, it’s art. they’re also interested in certain elements of each other’s ‘main focus’ - yusuke enjoys researching historical events, and, in sorey’s case, you can’t really study history without acknowledging the cultural context of art during that time period. related to that, their interests 100% overlap in the form of art history in general, lmao. so the bottom line here is that they learn from each other a lot… which is important for characters like them, i think. they get excited abt documentaries and marathon them and Nerd Out and stuff. and tbh, this what made me fall for yusorey initially. yusuke is 100% attracted to sorey’s passion; to him, it’s just… so incredibly beautiful? sorey’s interests are fascinating and inspiring to yusuke and they really help each other out when it comes to fully exploring what they love. yusuke wouldn’t be afraid to text sorey paragraphs of information about an art piece. he’d trust sorey to actually read it and enjoy it and not brush him aside as weird. imo establishing that trust is a super strong foundation for their relationship. it’s part of why yusuke was so determined to get involved with sorey’s problems in the first place.

in p5, yusuke’s major fear is becoming tainted; in toz, sorey is associated with purifying taint. need i say more?!

dlgkld;fkd but in all seriousness: yusuke is really preoccupied with the figurative concept of one’s heart, and he becomes fascinated with sorey’s ‘heart’ from their very first meeting due to his… unwavering kindness?! yusuke isn’t used to that at all. he’s used to being kept at a distance. sorey was the first person outside of the phantom thieves (prior to his joining) who treated yusuke like his opinion mattered, u know?!!! that goes a long way. their first meeting w the crepe means so much to me now bc while we were being silly back then, it absolutely showed that sorey accepted yusuke’s thought process from their very first encounter. he had the option of mocking him or calling him strange or, hell, even correcting him, but, instead, he went with it. it became a fun friend/couple joke as time went on, too. it genuinely set the tone for their relationship. 

they can definitely relate to each other in terms of their past experiences. their circumstances are different, of course - but they have that key similarity in that they both know what it’s like to be a victim of some corrupt adult’s cruelty. they both end up confronting extremely uncomfortable truths and have to work through all that leftover trauma, now. in doing so, they form a powerful support system with each other bc they can really empathize with each other. there isn’t any pity or anything, you know? it’s like a mutual understanding. both of them lost their mothers due to the actions of evil father-like figures (well, in sorey’s case, he wasn’t even a figure - he was flat-out his biological father… but u know what i mean). both of them know how it feels to kind of… be alone. separate from the world while also harboring curiosity. they can absolutely recover together, and are secure enough in their relationship to outlast even the rough patches.

this isn’t rly a meta point but like… when pre-pt sorey confided in yusuke re: his connection with heldalf, and yusuke decided he’d also confide in sorey w/o even consulting the other phantom thieves bc he trusted sorey just that much and was also willing to help sorey alone if he had to… that was gay culture in action right there.

we haven’t written out sorey’s journey into heldalf’s palace yet, but from what we’ve discussed… i just wanna say how amazing it’ll be. yusuke going into a palace that is based so firmly in fire elemental stuff - fire being one of his fears; not to mention his major canonical weakness - because he flat-out refuses to sit this one out. sorey learning a bunch of truths that will clearly have quite the impact on him, and yusuke being able to relate strongly to everything and being gripped by this determination to keep sorey safe; to protect his beautiful heart, to keep it free of the taint that afflicted his own heart after the madarame stuff… my god. it’ll be good. i could prob write a full meta piece based on that alone.

this is pretty unrelated and i can’t really take it somewhere deep just yet, but i’m also still rly (eyes emoji) over their phantom thief names. shepherd and fox. kind of cool in a weird way?! kind of fiesty?! a shepherd working alongside a fox has some kinda rad symbolism to me. yusorey is pastoral, now, apparently.

ok anyways: this is totally restating my first point but i want to drive HOME that they can genuinely be themselves around each other. given yusuke’s personality, that’s the most important, special thing possible lmao. they have such incredible compatibility and became friends so… quickly?! and their progression into romance was so fluid and natural, it’s just… iconic. i love yusorey so much and i’m so glad sorey babyboy was patched into p5 to be a member of the phantom thieves! thanks, atlus!

[therobinsonwayoflife]

Unnecessarily Complicated (Speculative) Psychoanalysis of the MTR characters:

*basically these are headcanons because the original canon? not much to go off of tbh

so I’m only doing the three main (ish) characters although I’ve already talked a lot abt Michael and Wilbur here. 

Cornelius:

We know about him the most, from gawky self-depreacting childhood to freakishly collected adulthood so i can confidently say that he consistently seeks validation, covertly through his inventions. He will literally never say so out loud, not under oath, not with a gun to his head, not to anyone. But he craves attention and nothing is ever enough. He’s used to working to the bone until he gets what he wants to the point where when he does achieve something, he doesn't know what to do with it. Once he’s finished one invention he’ll start another, if one project is failing or starts to bore him, he’ll immediately loose sleep on moving on to the next thing. Though he likes to tout about his love of charity and using his inventions to help people, they’re also a means to an end: both to seek others’ attention, and to distract from thinking about himself too much. 

He doesn’t want to think about his flaws or his strengths, or his personality, or his vulnerabilities; it’s all about what he does. If someone were to criticise his inventions, that’s fine he’ll just work harder if someone criticises his behaviour or his personality it’s like hitting a brick wall. Of course if he cares enough about the situation he will find a way to adapt, he’s very stubborn and sometimes even obtuse but he’s a people pleaser at the end of the day. He simultaneously cares about pleasing everyone and asserting himself as an individual  than everyone in a very specific way. He loves rules and he’ll follow them to a T until he finds a way to break them and be better than everyone else. He never wants praise for anything that he personally didn't achieve or can’t control. Like if someone compliments him on his looks, he’ll call them vapid. 

Everything is a work in progress, something to figure out and this also applies to his relationships. After years of rejection and abandonment he’s immediately suspicious of everyone but if and when someone does gain his trust and peak his interest, he’ll start to analyse them and pull their personality apart until he  (thinks) he knows them. He can be very charming and finds all these ways to indirectly play his strengths to them, tailor himself to their personality, make all the gears mesh together. He’s really good at chasing after people but he’s also extremely self-conscious about seeming too clingy so he’ll compulsively avoid the very people he wants attention from. Like his work, once he does get someone to love him back he gets confused, like he never expected this to happen, he didn't plan this far ahead. He needs someone to tell him what happens next, else he’ll get bored and scared and hole himself up in the lab. 

He’s very driven and can become really hyper fixated on something he’s working on/any goal he’s working towards which often intimidates people, if they can’t keep up he’s likely to just leave them behind. And sometimes even justifies it by thinking its their fault they can’t follow, he can be very snobby. (i definitely think thats why he surrounds himself with people who share his intensity) He’s not necessarily confrontational but I think he enjoys the challenge of people picking a fight with him, like a debate.

Though as he gets older he becomes a lot more confident and calmer (and of course he has to for the diplomatic side of being a CEO and a parent) and he’s probably able to deal with everything much better and compartmentalise his work vs personal life and separate his identity from his projects. Partially due to his lingering abandonment fears, he’s very loyal to a select number of people. And when he makes the effort (which he sometimes forgets to), boy can he read people and emotionally empathise with them very closely. Slowly, he starts to learn how not to push things towards an indeterminate future and just hang out in the moment. 

Franny: 

Franny craves attention but it has to be in a very specific way: she goes out of her way to stand out and be The Weird Kid. If someone ever called her normal she would die. Be a musician? Be a scientist? Ew no. And anything that doesnt fit her carefully curated personality she’ll hide like a dirty secret. She pretends she doesn't care about people’s opinions, that she’s above it all, if someone doesn’t like her, it must be because her strong sense of individuality intimidates people and not because she actively pushes them away because she’s afraid of intimacy. She’s independent that way, or stubborn depending on the day. 

She’s very ambitious and very competitive. And if she decides that someone’s either boring or feels like hey don’t appreciate her enough, she cuts them off. Despite her warmth and friendliness, even to strangers, she can have a mean, no-nonsense personality and punish you for expectations she won’t admit she has. I doubt it’s very fun to be grounded by her.  

Of course, to the people she loves, she goes all out and remembers every single little detail about them so she can make perfectly tailored, personalised gifts or outings on their birthdays. She’s very good at remembering people’s  dislikes and their flaws and depending on the situation, will either do her best to avoid them or deliberately push their buttons to get back at them. She’s also very intuitive about people’s emotions, but she’s not always very open about all that insight, which she’ll keep to herself for safekeeping. 

Franny is a sort of in-between for cornelius and wilbur, she doesnt care about performance at least not ultimately and she doesnt concern herself with what people think of her or wether they’ll leave her, she’s constantly living in the future and thinking about the big picture. She doesnt plan either because she knows that after the plan, life goes on. She just wants life to be fun and interesting and while she loves analysing it and taking it apart, it’s  all a game to her, she just wants to laze around, eat chocolate and maybe travel to the world’s highest mountain and do something really impulsive . 

Wilbur:

I once considered climbing into the Discourse Ring and getting into a debate w someone over wether or not Wilbur’s a Slytherin but i thought better of it because we’re all going to die and Hogwarts houses are worse than the MBTI types and who cares it’s just fun. But for the record: i don’t think he is and the reason is simple; it’s because he’s not ambitious. He's too afraid to be. 

He's extremely intelligent, very witty and fairly adaptable to complete disaster. Everything for him is about performance, he’s a perfectionist and he goes out of his way to try everything: sports, checkers, math, sculpture, acting, knitting, gif-making. All the time and he has to be the best at everything he does but when he finds that there’s something he can’t do, he’ll dismiss it like nothing really matters in the grand scheme of it all. He doesn’t wanna say anything about it lest he confront his family’s gung-ho opinion on failure. And the thing is: the Robinson’s celebration of failure predicates an expectation of trying, of constantly working and you know what? He doesn’t want to try.  He’s too scared to go after anything and he’s certainly weighed down by all the unspoken pressure of having a famous family of prodigies. 

Sometimes he wishes there were rules he could follow so he could be the best at life but that doesn't really work with his family’s complete lack of boundaries. I think there’s a part of Wilbur that will never truly grow up and not just because he’s spoilt or that he’ll always be freakishly close with his parents but also because he’s still waiting around for people to tell him what to do. I have a very specific image of him as an adult doing weird shit to compensate for how immature he feels. Like, he’ll make his house all black, no colour, he wears a tux and slicks his hair back with GOBS of hairgel, he has a fancy car he never uses but likes to show off because look how clean it is! Of course, even though he thrives on rules and fulfilling expectations, he’s still very selective on what rules he’ll follow because again: if he thinks it’s dumb or if it’ll negatively impact his rep, he’s not touching it with a ten-foot pole. 

He’s very easily bored and gets distracted all the time (also hd him as having ADDD or ADHD). He’s deliberately getting himself into trouble and pushing people’s buttons as a way to act out. But again he’s very charming and very observant. He likes to play dumb but he’s secretly paying attention to everything about everyone and he knows exactly what will tick them off and what won’t. And given the right circumstances he can be a genuinely caring and empathetic person. 

[shadowtongued]

Meta: GALRA and similarities that Galra and Mahjarrat share.

send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on(no rly plz. almost anything is fair game. even grody/gory/immoral/nsfw shit. help me world-build a species/character with like hardly any lore)

forewarning: not all answers to this meme are canon, some is headcanon based on personal interpretation. differing opinions are a welcome thing here/on this blog.

blue, this is the fucking best question :,,)c , i s 2 g . this right here is one of the main reasons i NEED™ to sit down and write out a VLD verse bc, tbh, there are A LOT of similarities. some i probably haven’t even thought of yet.

i had waaaay too much fun with this. this was a fuckin’ 10/10 question.

- both are very warlike. galra more militaristically so, but mahjarrat parallel in the factor that where there’s a fight, there’s a chance they are interested. their whole home environment of freneskæ was essentially ‘if you survive maturity, congrats. you’re still eligible to die in a rejuvenation ritual for the better of us all. make sure you contribute to an enervation ( their breeding ritual ) so we don’t go extinct. no one really cares about what you think about it all.’ i have a feeling they would agree whole heartedly with zarkon’s statement of ‘weakness is an infection’ and the galran concept of ‘success or death’. they make it pretty culturally obvious through their rituals that only the strongest get to move their species forward and it’s super canon that despite the factor there is >10 mahjarrat left ( RIP what’s left of my baby boy tbfh post-endgame), those >10 are very intimidating and powerful through years of culling and being the winners. put it this way, unintentional genetic/natural selection took place and even their rituals ( which was stated after they were introduced, they literally built their culture around the rituals ) are super political; post-zaros’ banishment/post zamorak’s ascendancy and the factor that they SPLIT into two ‘political’ sides you win a fight and you kill the sacrificial kin/show your prowess over the others, you get to be closer to the ritual marker and get most of the energy. you drag ass and barely survive or just sit there and agree sycophantically with the others on a decision on who dies; you get to be in the back line and get just enough to get you through the next five centuries, sucks to be you. should have shown off and taken a risk.

- i’m not in the recent season yet, but from spoilers, i get the feeling in the past before the current paladins, zarkon/some galra were decently peaceful. which is cute. it kinda makes me realize before seren ( look, i love her but her choices had a huge impact : ((( ) showed them the rituals in order to preserve mah ( mother mah the stunted elder god who created both zaros, seren, and the four tribes, is by far my favorite ) the mahjarrat and other tribes were probably nothing more than little, confused nomadic people, worshiping their creator, who were probably hardly violent, if at all. seren’s implications of using the rituals to find a balance between the safety of mother mah and the four tribe’s population/creation to cycle energy between them all went haywire and ended up breeding hatred, spite, and hostility between each other, even what ‘family bonds’ they have are very, very fucking shoddy ( i.e; they aren’t above sending their relatives to slaughter: zemo turning on his cousin lucien ). it’s much like the headcanons i adore from you and your friends where some galra have no problem assassinating each other if they want a military rank freed up for thier possible taking.

- physiology wise? it’s not really too fuckin’ mentioned/paid much mind in RS but some mahjarrat look super fucking different from each other ( uhhh, pre-god, mahjarrat legatus zamorak has totally different horns than most of them and hardly any skull ridges ), hazeel bby obviously doesn’t count with his Massive Horns™ because he’s a Transformer: Mahserrat in Disguise, but some mahjarrat really look like they can physically differ a lot for being one tribe, out of four ( unless there actually was some form of breeding between tribes before they all in unison decided to Hate Each Other, we just don’t fucking know lore wise when it comes to pre-ritual/early freneskæ life ). just like how there are so many different galra traits, mahjarrat in RS kinda are streamlined for the sake of just….. being lazy and reskinning facial models, but i’m very sure and headcanon that some of them look vastly different from each other. i mean look at fucking azzy’s goddamn glorious chinspikes compared to the rest of them. look at how fucking towering at 8″ zemo and lucien are to the average 7″ of the rest. look at how only certain ones, sliske included, have more pronounced, horn like first ridges on their skulls. look at how some have one crystal in their forehead, and some have a whopping four or more. BREATHES DIRECTLY ONTO AND KEESES THIS CONCEPT ART OF MOST OF THEM.  i could go on. but in short, they have a lot of various species traits like galra. i love it. i love them both. they both have fucking wicked teeth and eyes. i’m 100% sure most galra could look at sliske/any mahjarrat and go ‘what fucking hairless subspecies are you?’ sans his obvious obnoxious yet fantastic taste in clothing, he physically might fit in**. low key strokes those stripes, don’t get me started. ** also, uh, there are so many inconsistencies in RS lore/concept art, i don’t at all accept that slissy has a fucking Stereotypical Villain Goatee™ in my linked fav artwork. he has nice chinspikes, not facial hair…. mahj just…. don’t…. fucking…. have hair. it’s not canon to me personally. we don’t talk abt that inconsistency, just like i refuse to believe in his horrendous endgame model and 360 personality change…… endgame sliske who???? who’s that??? i don’t know him??? n e ways…..

- they both can rely on energy sources: quintessence and the raw elder energy. galra can survive without it obviously versus mahjarrat very fucking much having a need for it lest they become skeletal and not as powerful. but it’s still neato they can absorb that tasty energy. 

- this is half baked and more of my yelling at a screen, but the druids totally, straight up, without a doubt, reminded me of mahjarrat. i remember just seeing that first fight between keith and the druid and later shiro with haggar and yelling in my room. the teleporting. the magic use. THE FUCKING SHAPESHIFTING AND ILLUSIONS. all of that is hallmark mahjarrat strats and i was just sitting there like (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و !!!!