#thinking about how the desire to do one specific and complicated thing can lead to spinoff projects

[yupyupppippi]

seeing cool stuff at the renaissance fair and thinking god I wish I knew how to make this

[byoldervine]

Motivation For Writing

Getting Off Your Butt:

1. Aestheticise it. Let the light in through the curtains, turn on your fairy lights, lay a blanket over your lap, light some candles, whatever you need to do to feel like a writer. The right vibes can go a long way

2. Picture that one scene. There’s almost always a moment you’re super excited about that basically inspired the whole book. Picture it, play it out in your head in full cinematic fanfare, gush to yourself about how cool it is and how everyone will love it, picture a future fanbase going nuts for it. You might get excited enough to go back to writing

3. Set a word count goal. During NaNoWriMo this year I think I wrote more than I ever have in one go. The thing that kept me coming back was the desire to not fall behind. I ended up with ~45K words after some complications irl caused me to drop off in the final few days, and that’s all just because I was adding up the 1667 a day word count goal and realising where I needed to be at to keep up. I definitely can’t stay as rigid as I did with 1667 words every single day, but seeing that you’re only a few hundred words off of a goal is super motivating - just be sure to set realistic, easy to achieve parameters for just general use, like 1000-2000 words per week. I know 200 words per day is a popular one for people trying to establish a writing routine that can’t dedicate forever to the craft

Maintaining Motivation:

1. Writing sprints. Writing sprints are a godsend for me, I like to set myself up in the living room with Abbie Emmons’ writing sprint video on. The video lasts two hours and is broken up into two parts; 25 minutes to write and 5 minutes for breaks between writing, so four 30 minute sprints overall. Having the timer and countdown with peaceful music and an aesthetic background is both relaxing and encouraging, as well as giving me a specific time for how much longer I have to push through. It’s easier for me to say “Okay, only ten more minutes, then you can take a break” then it is to say “Just keep going, we’re not stopping until I say so” which is too arbitrary for my brain to accept

2. Give yourself a choice. If you’re struggling to keep your focus, come up with a finish line and tell yourself you don’t have to do any more work once you’ve reached that point. Finish the paragraph, go for another five or ten minutes, keep it up until your next scheduled break. Whatever sounds realistic and doable without being overwhelming. And once you’ve met this goal, ask yourself if you still want to stop. With any luck, you’ll have gotten back into the zone and will choose to keep going. Maybe you’ll want to take a quick break but you’ll come back later on. And maybe you’ll decide that now actually is a good stopping point. Just remember that, if you do still want to stop, don’t force yourself to keep going. You can’t strike deals with yourself if you know you won’t keep your word and all you’ll end up doing is burning yourself out, which will lead to even less writing getting done

3. Try a new angle. If you can’t be bothered to write anymore, is there anything else you can do for your book? Plotting, editing, worldbuilding, character sheets, one-shots all that sort of thing can still be productive for your book while still being different enough to give your brain a slight respite. It also means less work in that particular area later on

Afterwards:

1. Organise. Clean up your workspace and put everything away so it’s nice and neat for when you come back to it. Or if you don’t need to pack things out the way, set it up in an aesthetically pleasing way so it will tempt you back next time. Let it give you the writer vibe

2. Take care of yourself. Get a drink, have a snack, walk about, stretch your limbs, take a breath, cuddle your pet. Something that gets you away from straining your eyes looking at text for a bit. This is also a good time to reward yourself if positive reinforcement is something you use on yourself. If you always feel shitty after your writing sessions, you won’t want to go back to it

3. Positive reflection. Make sure to tell yourself you did good, even if you didn’t get as much done as you would’ve liked or it isn’t up to a standard of quality you’re aiming for. That can all be fixed later on, and you’re infinitely better off than you would’ve been if you didn’t do it. Be proud of yourself. Tell yourself you’re proud of your hard work and your dedication and your effort. Remind yourself that this is a fun thing you like to do. Marvel over how insane it is that you’ve gotten this far - not many people do - and that you’ve got all this tangible work to prove you’ve accomplished something so many people wish they could pull off. If this isn’t fun overall, there’s no point

[leitereads]

Kuroshitsuji: an analysis on "fagging" and a change of power dynamics between characters

I know how disappointed some fans are regarding the "politically correct" presentation of Ciel and the overall "fagging" culture that was common back then at elite boarding schools in the UK. From what I have heard from people slightly older than me, this was a thing that carried on into the late 90s in certain private schools. As of now, I am sorry, I don’t know anyone rich enough to ask them regarding those things.

However, what I can say about this matter is that a) this practice is can be found almost anywhere in the world (mostly in universities), b) it is about power exchange and how it leads to respecting tradition and bond with other students, c) I am part of it in my own university and d) it’s deliciously represented in Kuroshitsuji, in a way that somehow gives us a different perspective over what Ciel can and cannot do, limiting his actions, something that he, as a powerful noble, is not used to.

Fagging

In many countries and cultures cross the world, "fagging" has many different names, and many different forms. In the US you have fraternities and sororities, here in my country you have the "Praxe". In the UK you have (had?) fagging, in which consisted exactly on younger students doing most part of domestic tasks that were supposed to be made by older students. The older the students were, the more power and status they gained inside the institution, and therefore the more privileges they had. In consequence, although these fags didn’t have an easy life, they still had some sort of protection and status themselves for serving someone older. This creates an hierarchy based on age, more specifically just academic age.

Ciel, as being someone young is, of course, at the base of this hierarchical system. Someone who is used to be at the top of the hierarchical ladder is going to struggle to adapt to a new environment, one in which he simply cannot understand/agree with the traditions imposed. This will create a certain obstacle at first, because he needs to learn how to navigate in a different society so different and, at the same time, so similar to the one he belongs to: the only difference being where he stands. And we see Ciel, for the second time in his life, working himself from the the way down to the way up.

In the first time, his birth condition (well, let’s assume we are speaking about Ciel’s condition, and not o!Ciel’s one at least) gave him a kickstart in life: a manor, monetary goods, a title. In this case, he is a mere 1st year student, and he must subjugate himself to the desires (sometimes sadistic) of older students, especially Clayton at first.

Psychological Implications

It may be complicated from Ciel, even more taking in consideration how prideful he is, to swallow that pride and abide by traditions he a) doesn’t relate to b) finds useless and c) seeing himself without a lot of power to swiftly surpass those obstacles. Ciel is not there in order to live the academic traditions that are present around him, nor to make friends, of course. And, in the end, fagging and these other academic traditions open the door to just that: when people suffer together they usually stick together. This is the meaning of fagging, Praxe, and all the other academic traditions listed. And this is not what he is searching for. Which puts a little bit of strain on him, and he ultimately might think they are extremely childish and ridiculous.

Another interesting aspect of this overall power exchange here is that Sebastian is in a higher position of power than Ciel, as opposed to their base situation. This is, of course, extremely debatable, and the power that each one of them holds in their master/servant (no, I am not talking about that sort of thing… eww) is quite mutable, and, at times, one may hold more control over the other, and that is changing. Here we have a third factor contributing to that mutable power exchange: a different environment, where Sebastian’s position allows him to be seen as more respectable. And this is extremely delicious to see when he lets Ciel undergoing the initiation ritual with the bedsheets and being thrown: Sebastian is, obviously, enjoying himself at the expense of his master’s suffering, since in normal situations he simply cannot do that, at least not as frequently. To Sebastian this is cathartic, and to Ciel (Sebastian’s master) this must feel extremely insolent. Especially because Ciel is someone who likes to always be in control, having in consideration all he went through.

Undergoing this traditional upbringing will, hopefully, provide Ciel either the necessary tools regarding being more self-reliant and independent when it comes to Sebastian because, even if the demon is able to help him out with all the domestic tasks that he needs to do, who knows what will happen when Ciel loses (even if just temporarily) Sebastian one day (which, as another post explained, it might happen sooner than we think).

By being a fag and by navigating a position in which he is in a lower position, Ciel can’t find many shortcuts to success, and he will need to a) rely on his interpersonal skills, b) make connections with other students, c) be aware of what’s going on, socially, around him (read the room) and d) use his insight more than the sheer force and threats of Sebastian.

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

Sorry if you've answered this, but I was thinking abt the most common form of Dream we see, and I know it's the way he's perceived that changes not him, but like, do you think that's his kinda 'preferred' form, is there no in world reason and its just a real life practicality thing, or is it like that's the way 'the audience' perceives him and it only changes when the story specifically shows us someone else's perspective? Sorry if this doesn't make sense lol

hello!

so, i'm pretty sure you're here from this post, or at least have seen it, but for anyone who hasn't, here's the basic gist of dream's aspects work so i'm not rehashing that all here

and to your actual question! the short answer is no, i don't believe dream has a preferred form, though he probably has aspects of presentation he prefers, and that's why all versions of dream tend to be black and white and on fire

(and yes, the reason we mostly see that one is bc that's the one the audience by default sees)

the long answer does have major comic spoilers, that's unavoidable for the stuff i need to explain, so here's your heads up on that since i'm not sure how caught up you are

but to dig into all that! first off, the reader/audience is definitely a character in the story, and the endless are aware of this. it's a story most likely narrated by dream, for the most part, and then just hijacked by other narrators when they need to get their point across

this is something that stayed in the show too actually, and i do love that we get dream's narration at the start of episode one, because the reason we're seeing this is he is a storyteller by nature and he has invited us to see this! but throughout the comics too, especially in the early issues, dream's inner narration is a narration, he's not just talking to himself, he's talking to us

this is explicitly confirmed at dream's funeral, because we are one of the dreamers invited to watch - and the last one to wake up

and my other favourite instance proving this? the end of brief lives. where desire grabs the narration and forcibly turns it away.

up until now, they've had no problems with us watching, they like the attention, and performing all this for an audience. but here? where it's extremely implied that they're worried about dream and that this might have been their fault? no. desire doesn't want to share that. we're nosing too deep into their business now, and whatever it is they're thinking in this moment, it's private

(and there's our proof too that it's all endless who can do this, not just the storyteller, because we see a lot of mortals' private inner thoughts leading up to this, and it's only when we get to desire that the narration tells us to fuck off)

so, since the reader is a character, and presumably a human one, we're gonna see a human dream, and the one matching the modern english speaking western world, until the comic or the show deliberately switches perspective and then we see that one

which could just be the final answer to your question and i could end this here, but i think there's actually an additional supplementary answer here

which i think borders on headcanon? certainly people have disagreed with me on this before, but it's the way that makes sense to me in terms of what we're given in the story

so like. the endless are more than three dimensional beings. we don't know how many dimensions, but enough that a three dimensional being can't ever see their entire shape at once, hence why they look different from different perspectives despite not ever changing

and that's an easy answer not too difficult to understand. but then things like overture come up, where we see multiple facets interacting. and it's a bit more complicated than just these are all the sides to the shape that is dream. we've got both the overarching dream, the whole being, every facet at once, and we've got the individual facets that all move in slightly different ways

it makes me think of like... you know if you've ever seen a dance performance, where many performers are acting as different parts of a whole creature? and they all move slightly differently, but it's through that you see the movement of the singular creature?

every facet of dream is moving through slightly different versions of dream's life. and dream's life isn't any one of them, it's all of them at once, but if you wanted to, you could still focus on one of those performers

which i think the story does

because in overture, in the meeting between all of dream's facets, our dream arrives late. because he was held up dealing with the corinthian. so all of the other facets must have either dealt with the corinthian faster, in their version of canon, or chosen to prioritise this meeting.

they're moving differently.

but still, as the meeting between the facets continues, now that they're all in one place and synchronized again, they start to fold back into one being. say all the performers are standing in a line, and now you can't see every individual one, just the creature. and the existence of the endless continues like that, moments of synchronization and moments of ever so slight disparity weaving in and out of each other, because if dream's facets are all based on the culture perceiving them, they physically can't be doing exactly the same things all at the same time, reality has to distort just a little bit around them. (and we know they do distort reality with their presence, it's something del likes to talk about, and in extreme cases we get things like the reality storm)

it's why desire's trick in overture works, because the human facet of dream can believe that the cat facet of dream is just deciding not to synchronize with the group bc cats. and cat desire only ever talks about parts of dream's life that they know about (dream's love life, how shitty their parents are), so dream doesn't realise that's not him

(side note i do love this scene bc desire doesn't know what happened to alianora. they're asking bc they cared a lot about alianora and was genuinely hoping this would end well)

but i think that's the other reason we see one specific aspect of dream so much. because the big moments in dream's life, those are consistent across facets, but the minor details? those can shift. so if we wanna see those minor details, we have to pick one performer to focus on

and in this case, that's the morpheus we're used to

[ceterisparibus116]

Could you talk about the things you think the fandom gets wrong about Matt? I’m very curious 😆

Okay, so this is gonna be a controversial take, I’m sure. I definitely don’t expect everyone to agree with me, and I welcome healthy discussion!

Also, this is incredibly subjective. I’m only speaking to the bits of fandom I’ve observed. And the Daredevil fandom is big enough that I can’t say I’ve seen all of it or the majority of it.

That said, here goes.

First and foremost: Matt is not a bad person. I don’t know how much of fandom actually means it when they call him an ass, a bad friend, etc., vs just saying it in the tongue-and-cheek “human disaster” sort of way. But I don’t think Matt’s a bad person at all, nor do I think he’s a bad friend (although this second one is admittedly more complicated).

What makes a person bad? I think I’ve talked about this a little before in other posts, but you can evaluate badness on at least two spectrums: intent and outcome. I don’t think anyone can deny that Matt’s intentions are incredibly good. He deeply desires to help other people. He makes dumb choices, sure, but even those dumb choices are usually inspired by a desire to help.

Of course, sometimes his intentions are less about helping others, and more about something else. That “something else” is most often, I think, self-protectiveness. Like, does he keep his survival of Midland Circle a secret because he thinks Foggy and Karen are better off without him (a dumb but also selfless, others-centered intention)? I think so. Does he also keep his survival a secret because he’s afraid of their rejection (a self-protective intention)? I think so.

But self-protectiveness is clearly rooted in specific traumas, like the rejection he’s experienced from Stick and Elektra and even Foggy and Karen. Personally, I see that as a mitigating factor. I challenge any of us to go through rejections like that and not end up self-protective. Does that make us bad? No. It makes us hurt.

(And this leads to a third factor: capability, or, at least, a person's capability at the moment. I don't think I touched on this the last time when I talked about intent and outcome, but capability is very important to me when determining if I think a person is good or bad. Someone who's been raised with privilege and who's been taught how to treat others well, and yet fails to do so...I'm more likely to believe that this is a person who's either intentionally or negligently treating others poorly. But someone who's never been shown how to treat others well is acting within their capabilities if they treat others poorly. This matters for someone like Matt. I don't see any evidence that Matt was ever taught how to handle even the normal types of complications that come up in human relationships, let alone how to handle something as bizarre as heightened senses and vigilantism. Instead, what was modeled to Matt was that when relationships get complicated, you walk away. Maggie did it first, then Stick, then Elektra. AND YET MATT DOESN’T WALK AWAY. He...uh, pushes people away. But he doesn’t leave them himself, which is what you’d expect, given what he was shown over and over growing up. Also, Matt's capability is clearly capable of expanding as he matures, especially as seen in Season 3. But I think his capability for trust and honesty in Seasons 1 and 2 is lower - and that's not his fault.)

And then we have the outcomes. Matt certainly causes bad outcomes. But do those bad outcomes outweigh the good? Really? Does the heartbreak he causes Foggy and Karen outweigh the lives he’s saved and the people he’s protected from the unthinkable? I don’t believe so, not at all.

Personally, I think both his intentions and the sum total of the outcomes of his life are all good, so to the extent that we measure the goodness of a person that way at all, I’d say he’s solidly “good.”

What about being a bad friend? This is more difficult. Matt is certainly a high-maintenance friend. He’s a difficult friend. But is he a bad friend? This is a much more subjective question, but I personally don’t think he is. I don’t think every high-maintenance and difficult person is a bad friend.

Do you have a friend in your life who struggles with mental illness and trauma which causes them to make choices that hurt you? Does that make them a bad friend?

Do you have a friend in your life who has a job that’s stressful or dangerous, and it worries you? Does that make them a bad friend?

Well, maybe they are a bad friend insofar as they’re not a good fit for you. But for someone else, those issues may not be obstructions. That doesn't make them a bad friend, that merely makes them a bad friend for you.

Honestly, I’m a high-maintenance friend. I’m a person who cares deeply about the problems of others, and it’s hardly unusual for me to call my friends in tears because someone I care about is hurting or because I’ve run into a problem in the world that I can’t fix. This puts a burden on my friends that I'm sure they don't always enjoy.

I’m also a difficult friend because I’m opinionated and argumentative. Sometimes I don’t control that very well. I’ve hurt people in arguments and not realized it, and sometimes I’ve hurt people and realized it and just...kept going. Although I will note that I try not to do this and try to apologize when I do. Still, there are some people who would never want me to be their friend because they don’t want to be friends with an opinionated and argumentative person. I would definitely be a bad friend for them.

Additionally, as a prosecutor, my job is incredibly stressful, and if I end up prosecuting the types of people I desire to prosecute (sex traffickers), then my job will also be dangerous. It means long hours when I’m simply not free to go out for drinks with friends, and it means heavy conversations, and it might very well mean, in the future, that my friends will worry about me if I don’t answer their calls.

Am I a bad friend?

I mean, maybe, lol. But my point is: those things by themselves don’t make me a bad friend; they merely make me a high-maintenance and sometimes difficult friend—and that's not the same thing.

I’ve said it before: if Foggy or Karen can’t handle the stress involved with being Matt’s friend, both due to his choices as Daredevil and due to the impact of his mental health issues, then they need to evaluate whether the friendship is a good fit for them—but that doesn’t mean Matt is a bad friend. The truth is, Matt is a person who is high-maintenance and stressful, but who loves his friends intensely and struggles to treat them well but (and this is key) actively tries to do better, as seen in Season 3.

That’s not a bad friend. A bad friend is someone who hurts their friends and doesn’t care. A bad friend is someone who willfully or negligently takes advantage of their friends. A bad friend is someone who doesn’t bother trying to do better.

Matt doesn’t do any of these things.

Next up, another thing I’ve noticed is that…I don’t agree with how Daredevil fandom seems to think about what it means for Matt to be happy. That’s what a lot of us want, right? We want Matt to be happy. We want him to find healing.

But a lot of fics, posts, etc. seem to focus on happiness as Matt finding more stability in his relationships, be they romantic or platonic. Like, Foggy or Karen or Frank or whomever supporting him. And although I certainly think that would contribute to his happiness, I think there’s a lot more at play.

Matt is a character who is deeply self-judgmental. Which is not to say that he constantly loathes himself; to the contrary, he clearly takes pride in several parts of himself. He is, overall, pleased with his abilities as a lawyer, with his competence as a fighter, and he’s even sometimes pleased with his ability to flirt. ;) What I mean when I say that Matt is self-judgmental is that Matt is constantly evaluating himself. He’s constantly trying to figure out if he’s doing the right thing, if he’s meeting the standards to which he holds himself.

From my perspective, a lot of fandom acts like if other people reassure him, then that will soothe his self-judgmentalness (shut up, tumblr, I know that’s not a word). But the thing is, it WON’T. Matt is not a person whose view of himself depends on how others view him. Even when everyone around him says he’s doing something wrong, he can be convinced that he’s doing something right. Even when everyone around him says he’s doing something right, he can be convinced that he’s doing something wrong.

So bringing Matt to a point where he’s happy needs to address this. Either: a) his standards need to lower so that he can meet them where he is; b) he needs to see that he is meeting his standards where he is, even if he thought he wasn’t; c) he needs to grow in the specific ways required for him to meet those standards; or d) he needs to somehow, despite his self-judgmentalness, become okay with not meeting his own standards.

None of those things automatically follow from his friends being supportive. The closest would be (b) and possibly (d), but I rarely see fics and posts actually address those specific elements of supportiveness.

Similarly, some fics and posts seem to suggest that Matt will be happy if he stops / lessens his Daredeviling. This is a complicated subject because there’s a wide range of how Matt would go about doing this. Is it simply spending less time in the mask? Is it fighting less dangerous bad guys? Is it taking backup? Is it getting better medical care? Is it letting other people know where he is so they know if he doesn’t come home? What, exactly, does that mean?

The problem is that some of these answers, namely “spending less time in the mask” and “fighting less dangerous bad guys,” risk leaving him feeling like he’s not meeting his standards, and he's not okay with that. As he tells Foggy, people get hurt when he takes a night off. So it’s not enough to get him to Daredevil less in those two regards; he has to also believe that he’s still doing the right thing. And I sometimes see that addressed, usually in a utilitarian “you’ll be able to help more people if you’re not on the verge of collapse” sort of way. But although there’s a certain logic to that perspective, it doesn’t really get at the heart of what it means for Matt to believe he’s a good person, you know?

And I mean, I get that a lot of fics and posts aren’t trying to do a deep-dive into Matt’s understanding of what a good person is, especially as applied to himself. This is just a thing that I happen to think about a lot, so I notice when it seems like it’s getting skimmed over.

The final thing that’s probably more controversial is Matt’s relationship to his faith. You can’t scroll though his tag on tumblr or AO3 without seeing “religious trauma” and “Catholic guilt” somewhere.

And here I want to pause to acknowledge my own bias. I’m religious, and I love it. My faith has made my life infinitely better. It has some sort-of downsides (in ways that I believe are similar to what Matt experiences, in that the downsides don't actually come from the faith itself but rather from my misunderstanding/misapplication of my faith), but it’s overall my favorite thing about myself.

I also need to acknowledge that many people in the Daredevil fandom have been hurt by religion. I in no way want to diminish that, nor do I want to diminish the value of Matt as a comfort character to anyone.

But what I’m trying to do is set aside my personal experiences and set aside other people’s personal experiences, and just evaluate Matt within the confines of the story as told on Netflix. Factually, objectively, what is his relationship with religion?

I don’t think it overall is one of trauma or even guilt.

Here’s my understanding of his relationship with religion:

As a child, he’s told by his grandmother that he has the devil inside. He may not know exactly what she meant by that, but he certainly has his own idea: the devil is a scary sort of rage that hurts people. He sees it in his dad, and he sees it in himself. Even as an adult, he still remembers that phrase and still identifies with it to the point that he continually brings it up with Father Lantom, clearly seeking some sort of explanation of it and guidance for how to deal with it.

He believes in damnation. He believes, specifically, that killing someone will lead to damnation.

He believes in redemption. He believes anyone and everyone, no matter what they’ve done, can be redeemed. (Apparently redemption triumphs over damnation, at least in theory, because when Frank talks about giving killers a chance to kill again, Matt doesn’t hesitate to argue that they should have the chance to try again—because redemption is still possible, even for them.)

He believes God made everyone for a purpose. He believes this includes himself, although he’s not certain how that works out in the context of Daredevil, where God’s purpose seems to clash with (or perhaps take advantage of?) the “devil inside.”

He believes God hears people’s prayers, and believes God has given him his abilities so he can answer those prayers.

He believes God hears him and expects God to answer him—and is confused and hurt when it appears that God is silent. But although we don’t see him pray often, he makes the sign of the cross before making hard/questionable decisions (like…to kill someone), and he prays desperately over Elektra when he thought he was losing her. (I also think he prayed when he hugged Karen after Frank shot at the hospital, but I’m not entirely sure.)

He comes to believe that God is not silent, but instead that God is at work subtly in and through him, as well as in and through the people around him, to bring about good in the world.

His faith brings him comfort when confronting the hard things in life—not always, but sometimes. (Unless he’s not being honest with Karen about that, back in Season 1.)

He finds comfort and guidance in talking to religious characters like Maggie and Father Lantom. He seemed to distance himself from religion for a while before the show started, but eventually the need for that comfort and guidance brought him back.

He’s grown up in a church that clearly cares about “the least of these.” There’s the orphanage for one, and Father Lantom sharing the church with people of other faiths, like the mosque in S3, and Maggie’s statement to Karen that the church is experienced with protecting people who are on the run who have nowhere else to go.

The church gave him a home when he had nowhere else to go. Father Lantom was a father figure when he had no one else to care for him that way.

He notably doesn’t appear to feel any guilt over a lot of Catholic sins: most prominently punching people in general (which…actually, it’s debatable whether that’s a sin in the context of defense of others), sex outside of marriage, getting drunk, swearing, skipping church, etc.

I think that about sums it up? Looking over this list, the only things that seems to be traumatic is his belief of “the devil inside,” and possibly his belief in damnation (though arguably not, or at least less so, to the extent that he considers the possibility of redemption for himself). Those are also the only two areas where I see guilt really arising.

Is that enough to say he’s a character with religious trauma and Catholic guilt? Well, definitely not Catholic guilt as it is technically defined, since technically Catholic guilt is about feeling guilt for something that you don’t actually think is wrong, but you feel guilty anyway because you were taught by Catholicism that the behavior is wrong. This would apply to all the things Matt does without feeling guilt, like sex outside of marriage, etc. This would not apply to the things Matt does feel guilt about, like, y’know, beating people up and considering murder, since these are things that Matt truly thinks are wrong.

So I think fandom is using “Catholic guilt” to suggest that Matt feels extra guilt or too much guilt (or…any guilt, to the extent that you might think no guilt should ever be felt) for doing certain things.

So by that definition, is it fair to say that Matt has religious trauma and Catholic guilt? Well, maybe—except when we consider his personality.

I mean, imagine Matt without ever having heard the words “devil inside.” Imagine Matt without any belief in damnation or hell.

Now imagine that same Matt lashing out in anger and beating people up. Imagine that Matt trying to kill someone.

How would he feel about himself?

Here’s the point I’m trying to make: Matt is an intensely self-judgmental person with or without his faith, and it is this self-judgmentalness that compounds his trauma and feeds his guilt. His faith gives him a certain specific framework by which to evaluate himself and his actions, but I don’t see any evidence that, if he ditched his faith, he would no longer care about doing the right thing. Nor do I see any evidence that, if he ditched his faith, he would think that lashing out in anger and trying to kill people is fine.

In other words, Matt would be a guilt-ridden person even if he weren't Catholic.

Additionally, the moments in his life that I believe were most traumatic have nothing to do with religion. Growing up without a mom. Losing his dad. Losing his sight. Growing up in an orphanage (and presumably watching other kids get adopted / fostered, while he was left behind). Stick’s rejection. Elektra’s rejection. These were all formative in his life, and most clearly lead to his specific trauma responses, and they would’ve happened with or without his faith.

Why, then, does Matt sometimes appear to have religious trauma or Catholic guilt, when in fact he’d have trauma and guilt regardless? I think the answer is this: his religion colors his trauma and guilt, and people see the coloring and mistake the coloring for causality.

This is where I have to tread carefully, because I’m straying from fact and entering into speculation, and I recognize that my own life experiences might be coloring (ha) my perspective. But then again…maybe my own life experiences, as a religious person, are simply giving me a unique insight into a religious character.

I mean, Matt hasn’t been to therapy, okay? He doesn’t appear to know the first thing about mental health. He doesn’t have the vocabulary to talk about it.

But what vocabulary does he have? A religious vocabulary. So how does he talk about trauma and guilt? With religion and in the context of religion.

Take his angst over his anger and how he acts on it, for example. If he had the vocabulary, he could talk about it in terms of nuanced emotions or in terms of cognitive distortions. But he doesn’t have that vocabulary. Instead of saying, “I’m constantly angry at the injustices of the world,” he says, “I have the devil inside.” Instead of saying, “I don’t always know how to act on my anger appropriately,” he says, “Sometimes I let the devil out.” Instead of saying, “I engage in self-blame and believe that every bad thing is somehow my fault,” he says, “I feel guilty.” These religious phrases (”the devil” and “guilty”) are not the cause of how he feels; they’re merely the vocabulary he has to explain how he feels.

So again, this is a matter of vocabulary, not causation. And it’s personally what I’ve experienced. My parents are psychologists, so I actually have an advantage over Matt in that I do have a vocabulary for talking about mental health. But even so, my faith adds a layer to things. It has to, if it means anything to me, if it’s not just window dressing.

Like, if I’m depressed and feel that I’m of no value, then I necessarily wonder if God values me. If I’m anxious and I feel that everything is out of control, then that could easily lead to me thinking God has abandoned me. That doesn’t mean my faith caused the depression or the anxiety, but it certainly is how I explain it. My faith colors it.

All that being said, I have to be fair: the idea that Matt’s faith colors his trauma and guilt rather than causing it does not negate the possibility that, by coloring it, Matt’s faith also exacerbates it.

So does it? Personally, I think…yeah, sometimes. Sometimes, but only to the extent that Matt applies his faith in an incomplete, patchwork way to himself. The clearest example is the damnation vs redemption issue, where Matt jumps to say that killing someone will damn him, but never seems to consider the possibility that he could be redeemed from that—or that he could be redeemed from any of his bad choices whatsoever.

I also think Father Lantom was woefully unhelpful in telling Matt that guilt is a sign that his work is not finished, which 1) misstates the Gospel (smh); and 2) places the responsibility of bad things on Matt’s shoulders; and 3) doesn’t bother to help Matt distinguish between the feeling of guilt and the reality of guilt—the reality that he’s done something wrong. (Which is incredibly ironic in S2, given that the “guilt” Matt was referring to in this conversation was about Grotto’s death, which wasn’t his fault at all, and yet we never see Matt process his mistakes with Foggy, Karen, and Frank’s trial in terms of guilt, even though those mistakes decidedly were his fault.)

And personally, I think the positives from Matt’s faith outweigh those. Positives like comfort and guidance, stability, a sense of purpose, a home, the belief that someone out there is listening, the belief that someone powerful is working things for good, the model of a lifestyle of service to others, the belief in redemption...that’s a lot of beautiful things, don’t you think?

I also think the positives from Matt’s faith would outweigh the negatives even more if he had a more accurate understanding of his faith, which would get at issues like whether his anger really is “the devil,” whether his feelings of guilt are accurate, whether his wrongs determine his value, whether redemption is applicable to him, etc. But that’s an essay for another time. ;)

Anyway, those are my thoughts on a character that I love and obsess over and enjoy analyzing way too much. Thank you for the fun and very challenging ask!

[ilynpilled]

do u ever wonder why jaime never told tyrion or cersei about the wildfire plot?

Alright, here’s the thing. A lot of the story will not function if this is known by other people, so I won’t not acknowledge that maybe it is a plot convenience. The caches of wildfire under KG is a Chekhov’s gun leading to something big, we cannot have it removed from there. Jaime’s story relies on the fact that a whole kingdom despises him for his “finest act”, which also falls apart if the context of that act is known, especially with Tyrion dropping it earlier to the reader in his POVs (would be kind of odd if he never mentions this lmao). Not to mention that if certain powerful people are aware of it, it could shift the game entirely. But still, that does not mean that we cannot make sense of it. I just think George neglected to give us an actual concrete explanation (perhaps intentionally). Maybe this is very deliberate and speaks to Jaime’s characterization.

A big factor is that he was a traumatized 17 yo when it happened. This event really messed him up. He represses, dissociates from, and compartmentalizes things. The way he reacts to the act of confessing during the bath scene is further proof of this. His thoughts communicate that he thinks he is so out of it that he can no longer check himself from admitting it to someone, including himself. Like he does not even think about the wildfire plot before the confession, even though we are in his head. Wouldn’t he want to justify it to himself in his own head when he gets judged by Brienne early on? Look at just how the confession even happens, he is completely out of it, his walls fall down, he acts like it is out of his control, it is like a part that was buried for years bubbling to the surface:

Wildfire and its qualities are also not very well understood. Barely anyone is familiar with how it truly works, and how volatile it is, as showcased by Tyrion’s ACoK chapters. I truly do not believe Jaime is aware how much of a threat they are still, and thinks it is the best if they remain ignored, hidden in jars under the city.

This is the most direct way that his silence about it is addressed:

Making “Lannister pride and stubbornness” the main, or only, explanation is something I always found a little vague. Same with his smart-ass response about oaths. It feels like deflection, and Jaime’s pathetic return to his bitter posturing. Especially how this justification of his does not really work for keeping it from Cersei and Tyrion. In fact, it mostly only works with Ned, and then he seems to become consumed by the bitterness of that specific interaction until he hurts himself and faints (loser). Also, I am curious as to how this holds up when Jaime gradually climbs out of his bitterness and cynicism and is making attempts to change his self concept later in the series. If people read Jaime as exclusively more concerned with the way he is perceived than being an actual good person, I feel like dropping this fact post bath confession to remedy his image would have certainly aided in the desire to have a better reputation (or would it be too late? I do not think so. It certainly worked with Brienne). Would anyone believe him? Is there a point? Is it his pride in confict with his desire to be humanized in the eyes of others? I think it is way more complicated. I think it is about hopelessness. I think it is just a general disillusionment with the concept of honor and morality and how it operates within this system. Jaime has no faith in these institutions at that point. We see it in the weirwood dream. He confesses. He tells the truth. Yet he is damned by his heroes all the same. That results in his fire going out, and there is no coming back from that.

Him not telling his loved ones in specific is interesting though. Including his father. Maybe it is the fact that they never judged him for it or they do not care. However, what I do find pretty interesting is that Tyrion and Cersei make use of wildfire as a weapon within the story.

I really read, or believe a big part of, Jaime’s decision to bury the existence of the caches is making them essentially unavailable. He knows that nobody is aware of them, because he went out of his way to kill everyone who was:

Jaime is so deeply traumatized about Aerys, and this whole situation is so monumental in his development, that I think there has to be a deep fear of anyone making use of it again. Including his own family. Therefore, I think he is willing to essentially bury the secret with him, despite its personal consequences. This of course paints him in a pretty moral light, which you can disagree with.

I feel like to justify this reading I also need to address the perspective of “that doesnt make sense bc jaime doesnt care about the innocents he just did it to save his father/self preservation etc”. This might be a reading exclusive to very Jaime critical circles, but there was a GoT (i know. i know. i shouldnt give a shit😭) video essay with views in the hundred thousands that claimed this so it might not be so obscure.

First of all, I dont think that makes sense with how the confession is structured and written at all. Second, idk how that reading would benefit his character writing. We start out with a comically villainous character that is unveiled to be a complex individual. Why must there be another twist on that that subverts this and goes like “no, actually he is that comically villainous individual that would be fine with 500k people being burned alive at age 17”. I am not a fan of the woobification done to him sometimes either, but there comes a point where people feel the need to misconstrue and add twists to scenes that obviously had a specific purpose for the character. What would this scene gain by having the added twist of “oh he EXCLUSIVELY did it to save his father/self preservation”? Genuinely what would such a strong moment of recontextualization gain from this? Jaime was supposed to be all about his immediate family to the ruin of everybody else. The reveal serves the purpose of recontextualizing his character and adding dimensions to it by showing that that is not entirely the case, while also delineating his trajectory thus far, especially regarding his cynicism concerning feudalistic moral constructs. What is the purpose of telling us “actually, he saved KG” only to go “this does not change how you should view his character though, circumstances just perfectly aligned for him so he committed a heroic act.”

On top of that, the logistics of removing wildfire is something insanely complicated. Him telling Ned? Sure, great. But then who else would they need to tell? The point of the wildfire under the city is that it sentences KL to death. There is really no solution. I think metaphorically it is about the culmination of corruption. That place was on a trajectory of doom, and it was never really saved, Robert, its supposed savior, was nothing but stagnation. The city is filled to the brim with corruption. Someone would abuse that power, if it is not set off during attempts at removal. Ntm even the exact locations are not known. You cannot make the caches disappear. The closest thing to it is burying the secret with you, which is what Jaime is doing. Mind you Brienne knows it too now, yet she is not eager to tell anyone either. Neither of them know what a ticking time-bomb it is. But even if they did, I think the point is that you cannot really do anything about it at this point. KL was sentenced to death and it is at a point of no return.

For the rationale of “Jaime never justifies it in such a way in his own thoughts, when he could.” Well he also never justifies him pushing Bran with “I wanted to save the lives of Cersei and our children.” Even though George believes that is the case. Jaime’s denial and posturing is not exclusive to his words, but also his thoughts. This man also deludes himself, not just those around him. He detaches himself from truth constantly to avoid vulnerability. You are hit in the face with this repeatedly in ASoS. He even lies about his motivations for things he does after they happen, which is just hilarious because we are inside his head when he decides to take certain actions and know what he is thinking and know that he is full of shit. So I do not think this contradicts my interpretation.

[imthepunchlord]

Hey, I'm sorry. I know you're not part of the miraculous fandom anymore, but I've wanted to ask this question for a really long time. Were there ever moments when designing your own miracle box, kwamis, or powers did you ever feel the urge to just throw out the idea of the miraculous being tied to a specific culture and just having them be generic fantasy? Or just throw out the idea of the guardians and miracle boxes in general and just have the kwamis be free roamers that pick their own holders based on their personalities? (There is also the idea of just throwing out the idea of the kwamis embodying concept and just being beings of magic)

Oh plenty of times.

In hindsight, and in the grand scheme of things, that's honestly how they should've handled the Miraculous, not tie them to any one specific culture or region. Just let them be open to the world. Let them be magical.

It would've opened them up to work with a variety of myths and cultures or pick what they want to work with power wise instead of just tying it to one specific region. It would've allowed them to be flexible with what animals could appear and they didn't have to limit themselves to iconic groups of animals of that region or bring in a huge number like the freak Chinese Zodiac that they clearly couldn't handle or scale evenly.

I can't say for others cause it just may be me, but I definitely wouldn't be raising a brow or be put off at some of the choices made with powers and some of the clear inspirations for the Miraculous and kwamis. Like, Rabbit I would've only be bothered by the time traveling power and not just it also being tied to a European novel when it's supposed to be tied to China (and the Moon Rabbit IS RIGHT THERE but I guess we can't have a 2nd healing Miraculous to help shoulder the burden for LB but we can have multiple that generate items).

I also wouldn't be so bothered about how Tikki and Plagg are portrayed and their very European/Christian inspirations (especially them becoming those over designed biblical angels, if anyone knows for sure please do correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think those have a place in Taoism and to me just screams they should've been Europe based, especially as Thomas still works off the European good and bad luck themes more than creation and destruction (like there was a whole series of tweets from Thomas insisting that Cataclysm doesn't DESTROY but causes bad things to happen), even though this is a power from what should be Destruction... and they're the most iconic animal symbols for good and bad luck in Europe specifically).

Honestly, the only issue that could've arose if they let them loose in origins is the two that's very European/Christian based being established as "most powerful", and you don't really want that, but if you just remove the idea of tiers and just roll with that some have an edge over others (like Ladybug always has an edge over Butterfly), then that fixes that.

But, in doing so, that does lead down a path of changes and questions to consider: Miraculous wise what should exist, what should be cut, how do Miraculous work off each other, what's the system of control in the face of misuse, should Ladybug and Cat be the ONLY wish granting duo, should there be others, if so how is Ladybug and Cat more desirable than any other wish granting duo, could it be that every pair can grant a unique sort of wish, or could it be that by a specific year a specific duo grants the wish and it's the year of LB and Cat, ect..

I admit that it's all probably over complicating things, but it's questions like those that come to mind when I think of tossing away Miraculous tied to a specific region and culture, and it's just apart of the ongoing issue of trying to think of how to fix the show cause it's just endless possibilities and potential to pick from and consider. Like, take Adrien as an example, his character could have roughly 10 possible paths to take as a character. If they wanted to do something with him, the options are there. Could done him as a starting hero who starts it for freedom and fun and then becomes serious later. Could do him learning friendship lessons. Could do him learning that he can find happiness outside the need for romantic love. If not as a starting hero, could've given the Ladyblog to him to run and he wants to expose his crush and just not consider what that could mean for her and not everyone likes that public attention that he's used to (and for angst, Gabriel is supportive of Adrien doing this), heck, if you wanted sentiAdrien, could do him growing into his own, becoming his own person and breaking free of Gabriel's control.

Another big factor is that you change so much of ML's set up and the little lore that's given, well, it becomes less ML and more your take on the concept, and at that point, maybe it's best just to do your own thing cause it's not ML anymore.

Either way, for Guardians, the Order, and the Miracle Box, I honestly don't mind them existing, but they were mishandled. If Miraculous popped up enough, then there will be a good number of people who will know about them, and there will be people who will think it's a good idea to make an organization designed to work with them, secure they don't fall into wrong hands, and handle any big crisis that arises. And I like the idea that the Miracle Box was designed to house the jewelry, but also offered kwamis their own safe pocket dimension, which could open up to more so they can have their own rooms but also a core space for all to hang out in. The big issue of the Order is that what we get is just incredibly incompetent that they shouldn't have bothered. And the big shame is that they could've been an antagonistic force or the next villains to face post HM, cause hey, it is human nature to be controlling and have a say in how things should be and it could it started with good intentions and turned south, could've done humans could look down on kwamis and their views and think they know better, or it could be that kwamis can't be fully trusted in their views. It just could've been complex and interesting.

And lastly concepts, I go back and forth on that, cause on one hand, that can be limiting in terms of powers, cause animals can be so much more than one theme. Like, time does work well for snakes, but they're also tied to dragons, water, healing, death, duality, cunning/intelligence, ect.. But if you're doing a single power or a few, that can give you some idea on what to work with, especially if you can have a single power that is just right. If Dog was the Miraculous of Recollection, and you expanded upon what Fetch could Fetch, it's a perfect match, you could recollect a lost object or person (can work off search and rescue dogs), you could recollect a recently passed soul and revive someone who recently passed (works off hellhounds and guarding the underworld), it could even be done to bring forth a memory or be used as a means to bring forth the truth when it's denied (which is another term of recollection).

Gosh this became such a long rant, but yeah, I have thought of those things when I was trying to figure out how to rework stuff. I do think in the grand scheme of it all, it'd be better if Miraculous weren't tied to China and just allowed to dabble in a variety of cultures and be very traveled, especially as they clearly didn't want to really represent that culture and just used it because foreign = exotic and magical. Not to say there wouldn't be any issues but there'd be less to raise a brow at, and it would've given them more flexibility in powers and what Miraculous could appear. Now the Order and concepts, that's a give or take depending on how they're handled and what's done, but I'd say with the current show they're not worth the inclusion.

[navree]

Why do you think Aegon the Conqueror couldn’t endure Visenya’s presence later in marriage during his reign as king? P.S. love your blog xoxo

Ah thank you, glad you like the varied ramblings <3

Honestly, it's entirely open to speculation as to why they fell out as spectacularly as they did. There is absolutely no documentation on how these two felt about each other at all, and the only mention we get that even approaches on anything touching the subject is the fact that there was an in-universe joke at Aegon's court that the reason why Visenya was put in charge of building the Red Keep was so that Aegon "would not have to endure her presence on Dragonstone". It's why I always say that any theorizing about the Conquerors always veers into straight headcanoning after a little bit, because we know so little that trying to extrapolate interpretations really just depends on how an individual perceives them as people and their relationships.

It could be that they were just never close and never really liked each other much, and as they got older were just less able to put that to the side and decided that the less they saw of each other, the better. If they already had a relationship fueled by enmity and never cared for each other, once they got what they needed from each other (an son in the form of Maegor, a spare to Aenys's heir for Aegon and a foothold in her own power for Visenya), they both agreed that they didn't need to spend any more time together and that it was best to split duties in order not to be in the same place at the same time. After all, when Aegon was an active ruler living in King's Landing with Aenys, Visenya and Maegor were at Dragonstone, and once Aegon decided to spend more time at Dragonstone while passing on most of his kingly duties to his son, he put Visenya in charge of the the Red Keep so that she'd be in King's Landing, still away from him (though Maegor was in residence on Dragonstone while he was there, which is a lot but also a matter for another time).

It could be that Visenya might have done something in those years to get on Aegon's bad side. Common perception in Westeros was that Visenya was the odd one out in her marriage, with the old saying like that "Aegon wed Visenya out of duty and Rhaenys out of desire." and the court noticing that "the king spent ten nights with Rhaenys for every night with Visenya" being very popular talking points not just in historical circles later, but contemporaneously while they were alive. With Rhaenys gone after her death in the First Dornish War, Aegon shooting down any suggestions that he take another wife, and Visenya then providing Aegon with a male child herself to disprove rumors that she was barren, Visenya was in the strongest position as a consort specifically than she had ever been since she got married. And Visenya might have let that get to her head, and since we know she wasn't shy not just about thinking Aenys an unfit king while he was actively reigning, but also about her opinions on Rhaenys herself, given that it was able to be recorded that "Queen Visenya thought her sister frivolous" (though I've discussed that quote and my thoughts surrounding it in detail and I do think it's more complicated than that), Visenya might have said some unkind things about Rhaenys that Aegon overheard. Maybe she mentioned Rhaenys's rumored infidelities (another thing I don't subscribe to personally) or just disparaged her as a person, or the fact that she died, and Aegon, who canonically never entirely got over what happened to his most beloved wife/baby sister, heard it and that led to a falling out that would eventually lead to being unable to endure having her even in the same part of the country as him.

It could also be that their grief over what happened to Rhaenys drove them apart. Grief is a really powerful thing, and it can sometimes create wounds that don't ever fully heal, especially if the grief is caused by an external factor, such as someone being killed by someone else's deliberate actions, for instance. It's why some couples end up divorced after the loss of a child, for example. It could honestly be that Rhaenys's death, already during a precarious time (in the middle of a war that wasn't going the exact way Aegon and Visenya wanted it to go), not to mention the way it created some immediate stressors for Aegon specifically in Aenys's mental breakdown and new worries for the succession, as well as weakening the Targaryens as a dynasty, might have just been too much to overcome, even once the war was over. Neither Aegon nor Visenya seem like people who were inclined to talk their feelings out or even try to vocalize them at all, simply preferring to internalize them, and that this meant they never communicated their needs to each other to try and be able to find peace with what happened to Rhaenys, and it ultimately drove them away from each other rather than bringing them closer together.

I do think, however, that the key thing to remember here is that the common elements that led to Aegon and Visenya being the way they were with each other later in life is that they were cold with each other, and grew more distant. That doesn't speak to them having a sudden argument and immediately hating each other, but a situation that got worse and worse over time. Which leads us into what I personally think went down.

My own personal theory, however, is a bit more complex. I've always viewed Rhaenys as having been the glue that held her family together, due to the fact that Visenya was never bothered by her inclusion in the marriage, Orys and her seemed to be quite friendly, and obviously Aegon adored her. So her unexpected and tragically early demise, especially in the way it happened (literally shot out of the sky and crashing to the ground amidst the death throes of her beloved dragon) affected both siblings deeply, possibly irreparably, like I mentioned above, though I do think it drew them closer together for a time when they were basically carpet bombing Dorne. And when Aegon made the seemingly unilateral choice to end the war with Dorne, in what appears to be direct defiance to Visenya's own desires ("Prince Nymor’s peace proposals encountered strong opposition in King’s Landing. Queen Visenya was hard set against them. “No peace without submission,” she declared, and her friends on the king’s council echoed her words."), I think Visenya was not only angry at the decision, but potentially offended that she wasn't taken into consideration as well as deeply hurt Aegon was willing to put what happened to Rhaenys in the past, considering Visenya was just as involved in the Dragon's Wroth, a direct response to Rhaenys's death motivated by grief and rage for it, as he was. And while I do think that Aegon had his own reasons for it*, I highly doubt that he shared those reasons with Visenya, so to her it looks like she was being treated not as the co-monarch she was, but just as a mere queen consort, which is insulting, and not given any consultation in a decision that involved not just the realm, but family as well, as Rhaenys was her sister too. So you now have two people I don't believe were ever super close, beyond the love that a brother and sister might have for each other, especially when compared to Aegon's relationships with Orys and Rhaenys, neither of whom were the kind of people capable or even equipped to either offer comfort to the other or express how they were feeling, and both heavily feeling a very profound loss that has affected the very fabric of how this family operates, now in a situation where they're drifting further away than they already might have organically due to circumstances that are never going to be addressed or rectified because of who they are as people. And this likely progressively got worse and worse as everything settled in, to the point of literally damaging Aegon's relationship with Maegor, that after a good few years it likely did get to the point of Aegon and Visenya not being able to stand being in the same city. And I do think it eventually became more Aegon based than Visenya based, considering that he was the one dealing with the most pressure and the most profound feelings about it, being a widower and having to take care of a kid who almost died as a result of all of this and living with the weight of his choices and being the primary source of governance for six out of seven kingdoms on an entire continent.

TL;DR There are a lot of reasons that generally depend on how you view the relationship between the two of them, but my own view is that the circumstances of Rhaenys's death in Dorne and Aegon's eventual decision to go for peace over Visenya's wishes exacerbated some already complex dynamics between the two of them into something genuinely unfixable and neither of them were willing or able to try. And thanks for loving the blog, hugs and kisses!!

*My pet theory has always been that Nymor's letter contained the revelation that Rhaenys had managed to survive Meraxes's fall (it's possible, given what we seen with Aegon II and Baela Targaryen later) and had until recently been in the possession of the Ullers, given that she was shot down over Hellholt, but that the Martells had taken custody of her and were sending her to Dragonstone so that Aegon could at least have her remains, if not outright get a chance to say goodbye, as she was likely still fatally injured. It explains why Aegon reacted so strongly to the letter, why he immediately flew to Dragonstone (to verify the truth, possibly say goodbye to Rhaenys if she was still alive when he arrived, and at least give her a proper Targaryen funeral), and why he was so willing to immediately agree to peace with Dorne and be on such good terms with the Martells later in his reign, realizing the kindness they did him with this and Aegon himself having likely already reached the conclusion that the war couldn't carry on. If Visenya found out that this was the reason, and that Aegon hadn't just made a decision without her input on something this massive but had denied her an opportunity for goodbye and closure with someone she loved dearly (as a sister and also in my other pet theory that Visenya was a lesbian and in love with Rhaenys too), then that's an added reason why she and Aegon grew further and further apart.

[supergoodfilmanalysis]

Laughing Through Color: Alice Wu's Saving Face (2004)

Saving Face is a vastly underrated 2004 lesbian rom-com about Wilhelmina (AKA Wil), a young closeted Chinese-American surgeon whose mother Hwei-Lan, played by the inimitable Joan Chen of Twin Peaks fame, continues to try to set her up with Chinese men at community events, one of which leads her to the magnetic Vivian Shing, a dancer whose father happens to be Wil's boss. An unmarried 48-year-old widow, Hwei-Lan unexpectedly gets pregnant, is subsequently shunned by her community, and moves in with Wil all while refusing to divulge the identity of her child's father to anyone, including Wil. She hides herself from Wil, who hides herself in return as Vivian forces her to grapple with queerness in public vs. private. The mother and daughter both struggle with the ways their sexualities are on display, for Wil on the axis of queerness and for Hwei-Lan as a pregnant unmarried person and are afraid of how the cultural norms they transgress infiltrate their relationship with each other and the world around them, a fact that ultimately helps them relate to each other more.

It was the feature debut for Alice Wu, a Taiwanese-American lesbian director, and one of the most interesting things about it for me is how it explores Wil's queerness as a parallel to her mother's journey and the ways the two work against gendered and cultured expectations alongside each other. This movie is smart, sexy, funny, and thoughtful and demonstrates a possibility for the rom-com genre to traverse nuanced depths of love and relationships and how culture imbues them with questions that prove so difficult to answer. It doesn't rush to answer these questions or present them as simple dilemmas constructed as mechanisms to thicken the plot but positions them as part of the architecture of love. Saving Face is invested in how many things can be true at once. What if queerness could be relatable beyond its variable boundaries and could help articulate the disillusion of being marginalized by your own community? Hwei-Lan's journey with her daughter's sexuality prods at this, wades around in its fullness--she is at once in and out of her culture, held by its comforts and shunned by its rigidity, but when confronted with this complication in Wil she sees so much familiarity reflected back at her.

Wil's relationship with her mother starts to affect her budding romance with Vivian who, unlike Wil, is openly gay. Vivian is pursuing contemporary dance against the wishes of her father, who wants for her to continue in traditional ballet--at the nexus of this story is the conflict between individual desire and tradition, and the added layer of queerness implicates this conflict and creates in the characters differently complicated relationships with authenticity. Vivian transcends her ethnic origins in her espousal of American values, especially concerning individual freedoms, and Wil's reluctance to detach from these origins (and subsequently alienate her mother) starts to impact their relationship. Wil is afraid to kiss Vivian in public but loves her freely in private; Saving Face understands the ability to move through public spaces as yourself as a culturally specific phenomenon and presents the stories of people who never had to think about it so much as they do at this moment, who try to make it matter less but when it comes crashing down on them, discover how badly it is they wish to be seen.

Alice Wu sought specifically to make a movie by and for Asian-American queer people, repeatedly rejecting studio's pleas to cast a major white actress in one or both of the leading roles and the film having an entirely Asian-American cast is an significant diversion from the typical trajectory of Hollywood rom-coms--Kaklamanidou's “Romantic Comedy and the ‘Other’: Race, Ethnicity, and the Transcendental Star" points out that many people of color in the rom-com genre, Will Smith in Hitch being one achieve stardom and success through the ways they shore up comfortable, easily digestible and markedly neutral characters who happen to be people of color without isolating white audiences, wherein box office success is entrusted. Saving Face, however, demonstrates a lack of interest in mainstream success and is interestingly also somewhat lacking from the queer canon; it occupies a noticeably niche space in the realm of queer movies insofar that its mainstream success was limited but, unlike other "before-its-time" movies ascribed with queer cult status such as Jennifer's Body, didn't necessarily circle back around to audiences today. The lack of whiteness in this film is no doubt a salient causal factor in this lack of rebirth--while being funny, it also demonstrates a commitment to telling arguably a serious story, and the film doesn't necessitate a "campy" read as much as other retroactively added to the queer canon.

@theuncannyprofessoro

[padfootastic]

H E L L O jfp-eyes pen (thats your new name btw)

i know its a little late but my mind keep going back to it and i also talked about a similar issue w several other people on here since and i was wondering if you can/want elaborate on what you said about this:

"like, u want potters to be desi? it’s not just the cute clothes and good food and linguistic differences u need to keep in mind. there’s so much more where it comes from, including several practices that will be considered highly objectionable by this rigidly judgemental crowd."

((i am v v interested but no pressure to answer this, i totally get if you dont want to get into this discourse))

dani—you’re gonna pull me into the desi potters discourse one way or the other, eh?

so. i’m not sure how much sense this’ll make because it’s like…half-baked thoughts but my problem with this scenario actually stems from a more macro, general trend i’m noticing in fandom behaviour. for some reason, puritan culture & veiled conservatism is coming back in the guise of progressiveness? and that’s leading to a lack of critical thinking in these spaces & randomly attributing buzzwords to things out of context bc u don’t have more than a shallow understanding of it.

which means that that comment was directed at a very specific subset of fandom that decided that idk ignoring the Bad Things & Flaws would somehow make them cease to exist. let’s only take the most ‘exotic’, fun aspects even if it’s a completely one dimensional reading & run with it. they wouldn’t be able to tell u what desi is beyond the barebones.

so, you’ll have people vehemently arguing that the potters can’t be anything but desi and white james is gross and i’m just like—why. why are u, as a non-desi person, so attached to this headcanon that you’ll ridicule real people for it? and then their attitudes as well. the incest thing, for example. there are communities in india that marry their first cousins—if i write a story tomorrow where james marries his mother’s imaginary brother’s daughter, then depending on how i HC him, that’s perfectly culturally acceptable (and desirable). if i write a story where euphemia and fleamont use corporal punishment for him, and he takes it super lightly and jokes about it, that’s also fine. (which is a direct contrast to how the western black family & sirius’ abuse is treated). there’ a community in india where the man ‘drinks’ from his mother’s breast, publicly, at his wedding to symbolise the last time he’d be her son before he becomes someone’s husband. another where a new mother can’t feed her son until her sister-in-law washes her breast thoroughly. caste is something that’s not even touched upon. it’s so complicated. but how do u think it’ll be received by most of the desi potter crowd if i actually do write any of this? will i be praised for my ~representation or called out on twitter for being a freak?

and that’s really where i get annoyed. the attitudes most of this crowd hold does not have any space for cultural subjectivity, what is ok to them has to be universally ethical. there’s no way other cultures do things their way and if they do, it’s barbaric/backward/problematic etc etc. pseudo-colonial, like i said.

(disclaimer: i want it to be made very clear i’m not demanding people nclude this stuff in their fics. i’m well aware of how escapism works, being the premier advocate for it. im just saying it won’t hurt to be mindful of these facts, that this is a whole culture that’s ridiculously diverse that doesn’t just exist for the sake of people’s headcanons)

and this isn’t even going into the cultural nuances of how desi families work. you can’t bring in american/european individualism & have james move out at 18 & write everything transactionally & do everything the way u would for a white character but only pay lip service when saying they’re brown ykno? when u say they’re a certain identity, there’s so much that comes with that. and if u don’t include any of that, then it really just makes me wonder why u want a brown james—feels like ego appeasement and falling to peer pressure half the time tbh.

another important thing for me is that so much of this crowd intersects with the ‘fandom is activism’ crowd and i just. fundamentally disagree with those people. and find their words/actions incredibly performative. by which i mean, the way they treat real people—people from the communities they’re adopting as HCs for their beloved characters. there’s this…hypocrisy, yeah? what i mentioned above, about how if i wrote some culturally different practice, i’d probably be attacked. they don’t want desi potter, they want white-lite potters that is palatable to & tailored for their own constitution but in a form that they can pass of as ‘oh look, my characters r diverse which makes me Morally Good and i can use that to shit on others’.

i think my problem is just that i don’t like it when people use the identity headcanons to portray themselves as being inherently better because they have ~equal representation. fandom is not a government institution—lateral visibility & membership is not a prerequisite to wanting to write about x and y fucking or going on a date or hugging or having a conversation. making a marauder group where each character—functionally an OC—is from a different community (often w/o considering how intersectionality works) for the sake of saying ‘oh i have a x in my HCs’ does not make u some radical leftist, yeah? and i strongly dislike people who pretend it does.

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH Devlog 0001 – Finding Direction

There were some real-life complications that means this Devlog doesn’t have quite the progress that I would like, namely how long it took me to get feedback on my experiments. 70 mph windstorms can do that, apparently. The good news is that nobody was harmed, and damage was minimal.

To recap, I found three possible directions for Project RBH, and I promised to settle on one of them and write up a Game Design Document (GDD). And I have reached my conclusion from probably-not-extensive-enough playtesting.

Project RBH will involve the player starting out with a basic attack that they steadily upgrade over the course of a run, until by the end they are filling the screen with bullets like an angry god.

So the next step is writing out the GDD to make sure that the game actually reflects this idea.

I touched on it last time, but I feel like there’s more to say about GDDs and what makes them such useful tools for game design and development.

Conveniently, Game Maker’s Toolkit recently put out this video on means of analyzing games which ties directly into this subject.

The short version of this video is that a game’s systems and mechanics lead to dynamic interactions with the player(s), in turn coloring their emotional response. For example, a game where you have big guns and lots of bullets will probably make you feel like an unstoppable action movie hero, while a game with limited ammunition and powerful enemies will make you feel disempowered and cautious.

The GDD is a way for the development team and the designers to coordinate the systems and mechanics to steer the dynamics and achieve the desired emotional response. It’s an incredible tool for focusing design and development to a single, sharpened point. A way to ‘fail faster,’ so to speak.

Failing Faster refers to the practice of constant iteration as quickly as possible, in order to achieve more feedback and learn from the parts that don’t work. It’s the entire reason I threw together my current prototype even though I haven’t done my GDD yet. And yes, the GDD itself can be used to fail faster. Getting ideas out of your head and onto the page forces you to think of how to communicate those ideas, and gives you something tangible to show people and receive feedback on.

It's a way to prevent Perfect from being the enemy of Good.

But what’s included in a GDD? Yes. Yup, that too.

I’ve still got a template from my college professors while I was getting my degree in game design, and it includes:

The World,

Intended Audience,

Unique Selling Point

Multiple sections on plot and characters

Means of narrative progression

Locations, Layout, Maps

Intended Gameplay Experience

Enemies

Combat

Obstacles

Items and Equipment

User Interface

Art Style

Music and Sound

Among several other things.

As you can see, it’s a lot. Luckily, it’s divided into sections which makes it a heck of a lot easier to get through, especially because I don’t need to write an entire essay per section. The GDD is a living document, meant to be edited and updated throughout the lifespan of a project. I also won’t necessarily need every section.

This does, however, lead us to our next problem with the design. Story.

I’m the kind of person who really likes narrative in his games. Traditionally, Roguelike/lites are not known for being exactly narrative heavy. The cyclical nature of dying, restarting for zero, dying again, repeat, doesn’t always lend itself to storytelling.

Luckily this is a problem that has been solved multiple times. The recent Hades, for example, turns that very thing I listed as an obstacle to storytelling into a vehicle to drive the story forward. Heat Signature gives each of your playable characters a motivation; a specific goal they wish to achieve before dying or retiring, letting the player craft each character’s narrative through their successes and failures. Cult of the Lamb has a narrative explanation for your immortality and your runs with a plot that continues through the whole game, albeit a simple one. And, of course, the Mystery Dungeon games have been telling stories with roguelike elements for a long, long time.

The issue is not that it is impossible to tell a story in this kind of game. The problem is that calling my budget ‘shoestring’ is a gross exaggeration. Having a simple excuse plot like the one in Orbital Bullet would dramatically reduce the development time of Project RBH.

On the other hand, making this game the way I am is already enough of a pipe dream that it might be worth going all-in on it.

So that’s where things stand at the end of Week 1. Next week I’ll be checking in with the progress of my GDD, and deciding how and where to start actually making this thing.

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

Special thanks to my Tier 3 Patron Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon

[thealmightyemprex]

Sci Fi Month Review 7 : Roger Cormans Fantastic Four

For this review…..We're looking at something special,the unreleased Fantastic Four movie

In this 1994 film Scientist Reed Richards(Alex Hyde-White ) and his companions Sue Storm (Rebecca Staab ),Johnny Storm (Jay Underwood ). and Ben Grimm(Michael Bailey Smith) take a space flight to study a comet,but things go wrong and the four find themselves changed with extraordinary powers and in the clutches of the mysterious figure named Doctor Doom (Joseph Culp )

So Marvel is huge now in mainstream American pop culture ……But that wasnt always the case.I'll just be honest people ,I am hesitant looking at pre Blade/X Men/Spider-Man live action Marvel adaptations cause they can be …Rough .I mean theres some gems ,I will always love The Incredible Hulk TV show starring Bill Bixby and even have a soft spot for the subsequent TV movies based on that show …..But then you have the 1990 Captain America movie ,Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD starring David Hasselhoff and of course,Howard the Duck .One that has always fascinated me is this film because in fandom circles for many years it was infamous for being the Marvel movie so bad ,they never released it (Which isnt the case truth is more complicated and capitalistic ,basically the film was a way to maintain rights ),a film you could only find as bootlegs at conventions,seen as a geeky oddity along the same lines as the Star Wars Holiday Special .Now you can find it on youtube (Which is how I watched it ) ,and having watched it……I think this film is kind of underrated and I am sad it did not get a proper release

So I gotta explain myself :As a kid some of my earliest comic memorie were reading the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby run of Fantastic Four ,and my dad had the complete series of the 90's Fantastic Four cartoon ….So the Fantastic Four have a special place for me .From the pathos of the Things plight ( a man trapped in the body of a monster ),to the sci fi adventure,to the romance of Reed and Susan ,to the grand villainy of Doctor Doom(Heck a slew of great villains),to the feeling of family ,the Fantastic Four appealed to me .....And I am kind of grumpy that Fantastic Four lacks a great adaptation that captures the spirit .Now there is no shortage of Fantastic Four adaptations out there.....But most of them,at least for me,are kind of mid ,specifically the film adaptations have left a lot to be desired .The Tim Story duology has the humor and the four leads relatively right ,but drops the ball in that they dont DO much and completely misrepresent the villains ,and 2015's Fant4stic might be the worst comic book movie I have ever seen .However this film ,while not the definitive film version I crave and not really a great movie .....IS the BEST movie version of the Fantastic Four and a fairly decent super hero film I feel

Now there is a lot I could make fun of ,its very flawed,like keep in mind ....This was produced by Roger Corman ,they didnt have much of a budget ,so the visual effects are a bit cheesy and bad(The CG Human Torch looks like he is straight out of Reboot ) but I dunno I find them charming .The only lack of budget thing that bothered me is the dialogue of Doctor Doom.....In that they didnt either have the money to loop him or think to loop him(HAve him record his lines later ) which is a problem cause Doom is clanking about and is wearing a mask that muffles his speech......So I dont know what the main villain is SAYING sometimes (Credit to Joseph Culp who does project very well so I know 75% of his dialogue but that 25 % is annoying ).My main flaws are the romance elements ,from the creepy Reed falling for Susan who he knew as a child to Ben and ALicia being in love despite meeting ONCE(And even that scene is a bit creepy ).We also have a subplot that frustrates me as the film has two villains ,Doctor Doom of course.....But then you have the Jeweler.Now the Jeweler was supposed to be the Mole Man ,a guy who due to his physical appearence has cast aside society to live underground and was actually the fours first villain.....Till Marvel said "NO you have the rights to this select group of character,not the Mole Man " ,so he was reworked into the Jeweler ....And I think they should have cut him out.Now I like the idea of his subplot ,him falling for Alicia and trying to make her his queen ,inviting Ben who has now become the monstrus thing to joing his group and Ian Trigger actually gives a great performance ,being creepy but also having a sense of sadness (He reminds me of what Tim Burton tried to do with the Penguin in Batman Returns ) ,and while the name is changed,its a good adaptation of the Mole Man .........Pity he adds nothing to the film other then causing the accident that makes the four the four and kidnapping Alicia,things that Doctor Doom couldve easilly done .I mean it folks in the grand scheme of things,the Jewler is pointless,he never fights the Fantastic Four and he just kind of runs off before the third act .I like the performance and the plot idea,but it shouldve been reworked or cut

Thaaaatttt said.....I still like the movie.....BEcause of the Fantastic Four movies.....Its the bonly one to get that Fantastic Four feel to me:A fun lighthearted sci fi adventure and thats what I want from Fantastic Four .The Four feel in character,its accurrate to the source material andits the only one to get Doctor Doom right at ALL(Actually keeping that he is the King of Latveria and hinting at doombots ).Yes the film is low budget but it makes that budget work ,heck the comic accurate sewn spandex costumes for the Four are charming to me because in universe the costumes are made by Susan and they legit look like something she could make herself (An issue I have with a lot of superhero movie costumes ment to be handmade ).Doctor Doom looks like he stepped right out of the comics with the green cloak and tunic combo and metal mask /armor ,I love this look for Doom .The Thing looks pretty good too with an animatronic face that brings to mind the old Jack Kirby design and stunt man Carl Ciafalio gives a good physical performance (THoughI do find it amusing that the Thing is SMALLER then his human persona Ben Grimm,played by Michael Bailey Smith ) .No one in the main cast is bad ,alll these actors are giving it their alll .I have already discussed my soft spot for Ian Trigger as the Jewler, Rebecca Staab is a good Susan ,and Jay Underwood is a suitable Johnny .Michael Bailey Smith is a good Ben Grimm and he also does a decent job voicing the Thing and bringing the appropriate pathos (Though I do wish he had the Things signature Brooklyn accent ).Alex Hyde White might be my favorite Reed Ritchards really selling both the scientist and the leader aspect .Biggest props have to go Joseph Culp,who delivers a great performance despite being in a vfery uncomfortable costume with a mask that muffles his speech,and is able to project well ,make grand gestures (Inspired by real tyrants like Mussolini ) but also make him a fun eloquent villain who still has a sense of humor with a good hero villain dynamic with Reed .Also he is CONSTANTLY evil laughing ,and I dig it

I like this movie ,there is clearly a lot of heart in this movie .....Which makes me sad that the film was mistreated by those at the top.Its not a lost masterpiece ,but it is an highly entertaining B movie that pays tribute to its source material

@ariel-seagull-wings @filmcityworld1 @the-blue-fairie @amalthea9 @goodanswerfoxmonster @themousefromfantasyland @angelixgutz @princesssarisa @theancientvaleofsoulmaking

[medics-secret-shipfic-folder]

hey this probably won’t make much sense to you, but thank you for your characterization of cheavy. i’m a classic heavy fictive, and i hate how everyone characterizes me either doing horrible things to medic or just doesn’t draw me at all, and it sucks. thank you for making stuff of me i can actually enjoy :] -tf2 heritage posts

First of all, thank you.

Second of all...I really can't blame anyone who characterizes Cheavy as a terrible person because he is a horrible person. In the comics, he was explicitly written to be a villain from the very beginning. He's big, he's intimidating, he's violent, quick to anger - everything about him is meant to be a parallel to the RED Heavy we all know and love.

Cheavy is a villain first and foremost. A very one-note villain at that. He's greedy, selfish, arrogant, and power hungry. He's everything a good tf2 villain needs to be.

I don't say any of this derisively; I think Cheavy is a fantastic villain, arguably one of the best tf2 has ever had and one of the best villains in 2017 overall, since that was the year where media of all kinds saw a massive glut of poorly written villains, especially in cartoons.

Cheavy was written to fill a very specific role. He's the bad guy we all want to see dead because he kicked our favorite characters - the modern mercs. He reminds me a lot of the Sirens from MLP and Jasper from Steven Universe. Everything leading up to his confrontation with Heavy in Comic #6 was a progressive ramping up of stakes until it was finally time for the boss fight.

And that's all Cheavy is. A one-note, highly effective boss fight. That's all he really is and all he needs to be. There's a reason he's no more complicated than that and why the fandom treats him as such. He's just a damn good villain.

Of course, with all of that said, this is where I turn to Take Back The Fortress because this fanfic takes a MASSIVE turn with Cheavy's character, and that makes sense. He's a protagonist in this fic and the fic itself focuses heavily on his and Cmedic's relationship, and this necessitates that he be more complex as a character. His greed, selfishness, and arrogance? All the things that make up his character in the comics? Here, its all treated as a problem that needs to be fixed, which pushes Cheavy through a long character arc of redemption.

Throughout the story of this fic, there's the undercurrent that Cmedic brings out the best in Cheavy, whether he realizes it or not. Cmedic is the catalyst for all this change as he is the one person Cheavy cares about more than anything else. But even then, Cheavy isn't entirely detached from how he is in the comics, mainly because TBTF literally takes place three months after the events of Comic #6.

A lot of Cheavy's character arc and personality in this fic is extrapolated from what little we know about him in the comics + common tfc headcanons. We know he's greedy, we know he's arrogant, we know he has a temper, and we know he's a coward - but where did all of that come from? In the comics it's heavily implied that he's just Like That tm, but in TBTF I decided to link all of that back to one suspiciously absent character - Cmedic.

In TBTF, Cmedic's disappearance 20 years prior to the events of the fic is revealed to be the catalyst for Cheavy's worst behaviors, which are later revealed to be self-destructive in the fic. Here, I've taken what little we know about Cheavy and managed to spin it into a far more complicated personality that fuels his eventual desire for redemption. He has Cmedic back after 20 years, but the drastic changes to his personality are going to drive a wedge between him and Cmedic and its up to him to fix that divide before its too late.

He willingly walked into hell; lets see if he's willing to crawl his way back out.

With that said; I am glad you like Cheavy's characterization in TBTF. Like I said, the way the story is built necessitated that I make him more complex and I'm glad people are receptive to the way I've been doing it.

[michelleelizabethtanner]

Love your analyses on all things brio. You observe things so much deeper than I do lol

Why do you think rio didn’t kill beth after she said she lost the baby? I don’t think he ever truly believed she was pregnant but wanted to get her to admit that herself and stop lying to him but once the whole pregnancy game was over why didn’t he kill her?

You are keeping me FED with these asks, you know that, right? Just like, who cares about my boring regular life when I can think about Brio all day. 🥰🥰🥰

The psychology of Rio (and Beth) is basically what keeps me coming back to these insane characters. On the one hand they’re so over-the-top toxic and crazy, but on other hand they are also both so relatably human. I talked about this particular part of season 3 in this post, discussing Rio’s feelings about Beth’s imaginary miscarriage. Where he suddenly realized that while he still felt anger, he also felt other emotions for her, which complicated his murderous plans.

And isn’t that just so relatably human? This cycle of abuse couples keep perpetuating, not knowing how to extricate themselves. The initial draw of Beth for Rio was rooted in juuuuuust enough validation to get him hooked. There are lots of jokes about Beth’s magic vagina that got Rio acting crazy. And it’s true in part. It isn’t the vagina though, it’s HER. She fulfilled something in him that he felt was missing, and that he somehow craved. We can’t pinpoint exactly what that specific craving was, but Rio is very much attracted to Beth’s life. Even Manny Montana described the Brio relationship this way, and I fully agree. The freedom and power that Beth envies in Rio is reflected by a similar envy and craving in Rio for the freedom of balance and privilege Beth has and takes for granted. That feeling of “you’re just like me but you have what I can’t” is gotta be crazy-making. I can see why he became obsessed. Sat outside her house at all hours of the night, just feeling the vibes. Trying to understand how a monster like her can hide in plain sight like that while he himself has given up everything for his kingdom. I imagine he had his own moment (or many moments) like Beth did in his closet, just examining her existence and trying to understand how she is who she is.

Given all that, given that compulsive attraction that’s so deeply rooted in his own psychology, in the absence of immediate and strong emotion, I don’t see how he could ever bring himself to kill her. He can’t even leave her alone, much less get rid of her forever. Because she serves a psychological purpose. She validates for him the absence of that maternal domesticity that he for whatever reason needs. Like people with “daddy issues” seeking endless validation from powerful men, Rio NEEDS Beth to validate his own humanity to himself. Rio’s personal self-outlook, I think, is rooted in a lot of darkness and shame. He masks it with playing to things he thinks are his strengths – his meticulousness, his leadership, his intelligence, even his attractiveness. But deep down I don’t think he likes himself as much as his cocky demeanor would lead us to believe. I think he grieves the loss of the child he was and the dreams that boy had to give up. Rio always felt he had no choice. That he HAD to be like he is and denied himself an enormous amount of happiness because he believed that was the consequence of being king. And then he sees Beth who hasn’t given up those things, who has the privilege of both ruthlessness and softness, and he cannot kill that. That would be like killing a part of himself. A part he’s always wanted for himself.

For the same reasons Beth can never kill Rio. They are linked. They feed each other’s inner child and they validate each other’s most secret desires: to be seen, to be understood, to be given permission to be themselves without losing all they’ve built. And it was this specific relationship that was in my mind when writing Rough Night. Their giving in to who they each always wanted to be and achieving happiness in the process. A fix-it.

[capricioussun]

what is fell papyrus' biggest obstacle in becoming the best version of himself?

His inability to self assess, without a doubt.

This is a problem consistent with all Papyruses imo, but it’s quite possibly the worst/most difficult to deal with for UF Papyrus. He struggles a lot with a personal sense of self, and isn’t really even aware enough to realize that, which causes, as I’m sure you can imagine, a lot of conflict when he‘s influenced by two (or possibly more) contradictory “goals”.

In general, I hc all Papyri as being…impressionable, of their surroundings and the people they care for, and due to…a lot of things that happened in his past/early childhood, UF Papyrus specifically wound up with an overactive sense of responsibility. He feels overly responsible for…like, everything, and constantly assumes the role of “problem solver” any time he comes across a problem he feels could impact him/the people he cares about (which…is most problems).

Aside from obvious reasons why this is unhealthy on its own, it becomes especially counterproductive when partnered with the fact that, despite how “malleable” his personality can be, at his core, there are some traits that are inherent, most of which are…rather “good” or “innocent” things, like his desire for companionship, his compassion for others, the genuine belief in the greater good. While those things can, and are impacted by his surroundings, it’s very difficult to fully and truly uproot or damage them. So in a world like underfell, he has essentially been raised and influenced by ideals that are the polar opposite of things lying at his core.

And that’s only just the first inception layer of complicated for him. The lines only get muddier and muddier as time goes on and his pool of people he cares for grows. Yes, there are tiers, for example, he would choose his brother over Undyne and Undyne over the Dogi, etc if pushed to it, but overall, he becomes influenced by all the people in his life. This causes a considerable amount of internal conflict, since he desperately tries to be…what he thinks he needs to be by everyone else(that he cares about)‘s standards.

So…when left to his own devices, like, for example, on the surface, after everything slowly becomes lower stakes for them, as the people he’s tasked himself with being caretaker/loyal to start “needing” him less, well, it can be a very difficult balancing act for him. Without a solid influence (be it good or bad) in his life, Papyrus struggles to understand what he “needs” to do. What his purpose is. And…I supposed “relapses” into simply looking to be as “useful” as possible in whatever ways he thinks he needs to be.

This is why being ambassador or something similar would be such a double edged sword for him - while it would be good for him to feel important and have a lot to do to keep him busy, it would be all too easy for him to slip into a sort of…unhealthily codependent relationship with his work.

At the end of the day, he always assumes if something in his life isn’t working out the way it should be, it’s somehow some fault of his own, to varying degrees, and if he wants to fix it, he has to fix “himself” in whatever ways this applies. This is a very unhealthy and even dangerous mindset, especially for someone as genuinely kindhearted as Papyrus, as he could so very easily forget about his own health and wellbeing for the sake of others’ (or a cause he’d believe worthy of it).

His lacking self awareness is the biggest roadblock in meeting his own goals, ironically, considering his main goals are…essentially always meeting his own goals. But, as the saying goes, you cannot feed others from an empty basket, and since he also doesn’t ask for help (it’s his responsibility, he can’t burden others with this), he can’t really see or learn how to identify this flaw in his own thinking. It’s one of his biggest fatal flaws, and can lead to even heavily self destructive behaviors in extreme enough circumstances (and unintentionally hurting/“burdening” those he’s trying not to in the process).

[shining-gem34]

6. What is your favorite thing about writing your current muse? (Any of them!)

Munday Questions || Accepted @etherealguard

Dan Heng/ Imbibitor Lunae

I personally like writing their monologues (actually I like writing all of my muses monologues). I do imagine during their downtime, they tend to think a lot, and they tend to overthink it when it comes to their emotions.

Dan Heng, when not focused on his archive duties, tries to process his emotions as rationally as he can. This is very noticeable whenever he's overwhelmed and needs time to sort out what he's feeling. Though, whatever conclusion he came up with tends to be logical and in the correct path that is best for everyone including himself.

Others might say he is running away.

In the case of Imbibitor Lunae...

It's a bit more complicated, because he was reborn every few centuries to lead his people and strive to uphold the Xianzhou ideology by eliminating the Plague Author remnants. He has to put the needs of others before his own; raised to become the perfect High Elder just like his predecessors were.

Yes, IL has his rebellious moments of spurning the Preceptors away and does as he wishes out of spite.

So what does IL think about?

He thinks about the world outside of the four walls of his office, of his room, and of his garden fences. A world so vast that IL longs to see it once instead of reading stories about it.

But he is an High Elder, his duty is to the Luofu and not some wild adventurer.

Yet it all changes when he meets his friends and later they became known as the High Cloud Quintet.

A constant conflict between his own needs and the needs of his people. Whatever his own desire is, even by the inquiry of his friends (and lovers), he tends to answer what is best for everyone and not himself.

But the one time he was selfish, not as the High Elder, but as an individual, it nearly destroyed his homeworld.

IL has no regrets though.

Scaramouche/Wanderer

Ah yes, the brat.

My favorite part of writing Scaramouche/Wanderer in general is that they are a menace to everyone he knows. Next after that, I just like writing scenarios wherever he's traveling, he's completely chill with it. But whenever he meets someone, or is running an errand, he will be the bitchest person in the room. Like absolutely moody af, but he still does the job.

Next after that, I do love writing the complications of Wanderer character where he's struggling to come to terms with his past. The truth he discovered will never erase his crimes, he accepted that after attempting to erase himself from history. He's not sure if he wants to face Ei, Yae Miko, or any other of the Inazumans especially the descendants that are closely entwined with his past.

But, Wanderer is aware and accepted the fact that eventually he'll have to face them even if they don't know the true history. After all, he is not looking to redeem himself, but he wants to accept retribution when it comes to him.

After he kills Dottore of course.

For Scaramouche specifically, not currently writing but hopefully in the future, I want to explore his role as the Sixth Fatui Harbinger (seen as the least favorite commander amongst the Fatui Harbingers) but also!!! I am interested in exploring how Scaramouche explores the Abyss for the Tsaritsa and his daily visits to Dottore just to be experimented on.

And that leaves him in a bad mood later on that he does take it out on his subordinates if they test his patience. Huhuhu.

Rook/Mallory (My OCs')

They are not my first OC's, but they are my favorite up to now!

Rook (who has a multiverse)- I just love writing how he doesn't give a damn about anything, but he definitely cares ALOT and he's willing to go so far for his friends! Also his horrible fashion sense like ew who wears that bright ass green jacket or that a magenta sweater that is blinding someone eye just by looking at it.

Mallory- Angst where the God of Misfortune can never be with anyone and he brings nothing but disasters to everyone and everything around him. But also I like writing myths/superstitions that came to be cause of Mallory intervention or people started making shit up. :DDD He does have some funny moments but he's usually doom and gloom and wants to be alone despite longing for company. Yet he knows it cannot happen no matter what (if he does fall in love with you, you're kind of screwed. You got a 50/50 chance that he learns not to be possessive/jealous/suffocating, or he does all three.)