#wish i could go to adjacent fandoms for the time being but i think whats best for me is to live without this entirely

[n0phis]

[butchsophiewalten]

There was another space last night. Only found out about it this morning and apparently they mentioned a dog animatronic named Ringo. Could you do a recap on it?

OK twitter space recap again. Just for clarity, a lot of these answers are effectively verbatim, but have been chopped down for clarity and to remove some less relevant information.

-Someone asks what the hardest part of making an episode is and Martin goes 'Fucking, coming up with what's gonna happen in it.' And talks about how like, if TWF4 took three years to make, half the time was just preproduction and him figuring out what the hell was going to happen. He talks about how TWF4 was originally going to be a return to form for the series, and then one day he woke up and thought about it and was like "this is fucking shit." and that's when he decided to make it more cinematic.

-Someone asks if TWF4 will have Spanish subtitles, and Martin says no, because writing the English ones was a pain and he doesn't want to go through that again.

-Somebody asks who Martin would cast for Brian if The Walten Files was a live action series, and Kyle extends the question to 'Who would you cast for Everyone?'. They spend the next while just spitballing answers, which I've condensed here:

Kyle thinks it'd be fun to cast Jack as "Weird" Al Yankovic, and Martin thinks that's funny. He doesn't know who he would cast for Jack. Martin says Brian would be "The guy from Whiplash", who is Miles Teller.

Martin says Derek Collins would be Michael Mckean, but Kyle picks Clancy Brown.

Kyle says Charles should be Adam Driver.

Martin says Felix would be Michael Douglas as he is in Falling Down, and says that he's always thinking of him whenever he goes to draw Felix.

Martin says Sophie would be Ally Sheedy as she is in The Breakfast Club, and how Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club) was in part inspiration for Sophie's character. Secondary pick Martin gives is Mia Goth, but says they aren't the same in the face or the mannerisms, just that Mia Goth would make a good portrayal of the character because she's such a good actress.

Martin picks Shelley Duvall for Rosemary, saying again that they don't really look alike, but that she'd do a great job portraying the character. Kyle says a young Jane Kaczmarek would make a good Rosemary, too, and Martin mentions that he could also see a very young Carol Burnett, "...because she has a very smile-shaped smile."

Martin says that they aren't at all the same physically, but that Tina Parker would make a great Susan. Inspired heavily by her role in Better Call Saul.

-Martin hems and haws for a bit about who a good Jenny would be, saying that it's difficult, because she has such a particular face. On the topic, Kyle brings up how fans so often portray Jenny as "chubby", and how that's really impacted how he thinks of Jenny as a character, where he imagines the fanon version of her before even the canon one.

Martin agrees like, "This kinda influenced the way I draw her. I've been drawing concept art for Jenny recently and I noticed I've started drawing her a little chubbier. Not to the extent of the fanon, but the way I look at the character has changed a lot because of the way the fandom draws her... But I could definitely see Jenny as a chubby character, she just has that vibe." (<-Mostly paraphrased)

-Martin and Kyle say they both keep running into a funny problem where they google Charles using his full name, and wonder why all of the results just call him 'Charles Walten Files', forgetting that his full name is not public information yet.

-Martin says that if there was anything he would change about The Walten Files, he'd make Bon less adjacent to Bonnie from Five Nights at Freddy's. He says he wishes he'd made Bon a dog named Ringo, and that the name "Ringo" has a specific lore reason behind it (Unrelated to. The Beatles.)

-Martin talks about how when he first named Bon's Burgers, he thought he was being really clever, because in French "Bon" means "Good", so it was like calling it "Good Burgers".

-Someone asks what Martin would rename Bon's Burgers to if Bon's name had been different, and he says he'd call it "Wonderland".

-Martin gives a story about him actually seriously injuring himself opening a can of Palmitos, slicing his palm open and needing to get stitches, but how the main thing he was worried about was it keeping him from releasing TWF4 on time, and how he was really scared of the fan reaction of like, 'he always fucking does this, he always delays the episode', before he talked to some friends and calmed down about it. This all happened like less than a week ago. He tells everyone not to worry to much about it, that he's still in some pain, but he's fine.

-Someone asks about the "Bontest", the contest where people could submit their original characters to appear briefly in TWF4, and Martin says that he plans to work on it last, as a reward for himself.

-Someone asks if a Welcome to Bon's Burgers remake could ever happen, Martin answers: "No. I would have wanted to, but I'm really trying to stay, like, legally distinct from Five Nights at Freddys. So no more Welcome to Bon's Burgers, ever."

-Martin asks Kyle, "Is Charles mean? or nice?" and Kyle says he thinks Charles has like. Fun Uncle energy. That he's the sort of person you'd maybe think was mean, but that he's ultimately pretty silly and laid-back. He calls him the type of person to doodle in the margins of his work.

-Someone asks if Boozoo is a magician or a ringmaster, and Martin says that he is both. When he's not on stage, he falls into the ringmaster persona, but when he's performing he's doing magic tricks and the like. He switches between both.

-"Boozoo has a mechanism where he can take off his hat, and there's a very tiny plush rabbit in his hat"

-"Will we ever get to know how Jenny and Sophie met and/or became a couple?" "Yes. We will see it in the series, I have the whole thing planned out. Yippie!"

-Martin talks about how when making WTBB, he went through a phase where he really hated Banny, and took her out of the game. Then he was like, fuck, I need a new girl character, and that's why he created Sha.

-"Who has been your favorite character to develop personality-wise and role-wise?" "Felix Kranken. I fucking love but I fucking hate Felix kranken... I feel like the viewer keeps indirectly giving Felix chances, like, to make things right. And you will see how he uses those chances."

-Someone asks for a Felix Fact, and Kyle jokes that he smells bad. Martin says he disagrees, and that he thinks Felix smells like car air freshener.

-Actual Felix Fact: He loves Louis Wain's paintings, and has many in his office. Martin says he really connects with the story around them, and that he also feels a deep connection to cats.

-"How many takes did the phone call in BunnyFarm take to get right? Was the wavering in Jack's voice before he got angry intentional?" "It took three takes and yeah, yes it was. I did one take that was like, screaming angry, and another one was very whispery, and then i got the version that was used." They talk for a bit and then Martin goes "I think Jack here like, works best when he's not like, exaggerated, but you can tell that he's on the verge of just-- punching you fucking skull, but he doesn't like, explode. And it's this tension of like, when will we see this character like, genuinely lose his mind, yknow?"

-Someone asks if Bon could ever learn to like or be nice to Banny, and Martin says that if the showstoppers had any kind of linear story then he would probably grow to be nicer to her eventually, but because they're in like an episodic thing where everything resets, he's just gonna hate her forever

-Linda Lore: This isn't necessarily canon, but Martin kinda imagines that she'd move out of hurricane after only a couple of weeks because it's such a ghost town, so she moves to Nashville end ends up starting a family there and having two children.

-My question! I asked Kyle and Martin what musicians/bands they listen to. Kyle lists Gorillaz, Tally Hall, and Tenacious D. Martin lists MF Doom, Tyler, the Creator, and Canserbero.

-Martin mentions an incident with Bon's Burgers where a guy showed up and stood on a table demanding to eat pizza, and stayed there for 20 hours demanding to eat pizza.

-Martin imagines a funny scenario where Charles' car breaks down on the way to work and Jack gives him a ride. Charles asks to listen to some music, and Jack starts playing "obscure 30s music", and Charles is like, "what the fuck?", while Jack is bobbing his head like he's listening to heavy metal.

-Someone asks if there's any Autistic characters in The Walten Files, and Kyle brings up his personal headcanon that both Sophie and Jenny have autism, but that Jenny has it comorbid with ADHD. Martin mentions that it's actually canon that Charles has ADHD, and how it was one of the first things he decided on for his character.

-Kyle specifically asks if there's any Walten Files characters Martin can imagine being Autistic, and Martin gives a long answer I've written out as follows:

"Okay, so, this is really complicated, but the episode 5 draft is finished, and I sent it to Eva, and- this episode has a bigger focus on Sophie, episode 5, and I think a lot of things- Eva- I talked a lot about it with Eva, and she mentioned how Sophie, was like, had many many traits that imply that she is autistic.

And, while I said yes, that the intention was to like, sorta allude to it? I would never confirm it because I wouldn't be able to represent it properly. I would never be able to fully represent it, because it's not an experience I've gone through. But there's a lot of like, unintentional double meaning with Autism, with like, what's going on in her head and how like, she behaves, in a way?

But I feel like, from what Eva told me, from her experience as an Autistic person, she told me it was a really good representation, for like, the character. Even if it wasn't intentional, because she's never represented as like, mentally unstable, or not fit to, like-not competent... But you can still see some of her personal struggles in her behavior."

-They talk for a while about how Kyle likes to think that Boozoo is gay, but he's not especially a fan of the relatively popular ship between him and Bon. Martin says that a better Boozoo ship idea could maybe be Pete the Hippo, provided that the recasted his VA.

-On the same topic, Martin agrees that Boozoo and Bon would be a bad ship idea, because he doesn't like the idea of Bon being with anybody who he treats poorly, and how this is the reason why he really tries to be nice to Sha, even if he isn't especially good at it. Martin mentions that the thing that really makes Bon like Sha is that she's the one person who can really tell him off, and for a while he was a little scared of her.

-Martin talks about a funny showstoppers story he's thought of, where Banny gets a crush on a girl from school and Boozoo and Sha help her work up the courage to ask her out, but the girl is just so unapologetically mean to Banny and totally breaks her heart, and so all the showstoppers come to defend Banny, and they go and beat up this teenager on her behalf.

-Someone asks for a "Susan Fun Fact" but typos it as "Susan Gun Fact". Martin says that Susan would think that the American attitude towards guns and gun control is one of the things most wrong with the United States. Kyle says it'd be funny if she was the type to believe that, but then own a gun anyway.

-Martin says that he really loves Susan's voice, and thinks it's so perfect for her character.

[dukeofriven]

To Ravel-Out The Weaved-Up Follies: The Decline and Fall of Homestuck^2

[I first started this essay a few months ago during a strange, brief resurgence of Homestuck^2 discussion that vanished almost as quickly as it began. Because my brain is A Wretchedly Uncooperative Thing this essay has stayed in draft form, being picked at, until—naturally—Homestuck^2 surprised us all by relaunching with a completely new team at its head. I’ve decided to push myself to publish this anyway, because I still think the core of my thesis is correct. So, keeping in mind that this leaves the starting gate slightly later than I would have wished (not knowing I was in a race), let us commence.]

___________________________________________________

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 “Once upon a time there was a Boojum——" the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. "I forget the rest of the Fable," he said. "And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I'm afraid I forget that, too." -Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1893

Several posts about Homestuck^2 have started to crop-up… adjacent to my dash. I'm not attaching myself to those posts because it seems rude, but their points are largely an attempt at revisionism of the fate of Homestuck^2. Understand I'm not using the term ‘revisionist’ pejoratively: it is common, even sensible for artists to look back at failed projects and try to pick up the pieces and derive some value from them. I’ve done it myself, many times. Nobody likes to say "I entirely wasted my time, my passion, and my creative energy for [X] days, months, years.” It is important to look at a failure and see what you did right, treasure the parts that were worth treasuring.

But equally I don't want to go too far in rehabilitating what was, undeniably, a failure. There's a lot of critical theory being brought-up, a lot of talk of Homestuck^2 from a standpoint of post-modernism, or post-post-modernism, trying to engage with what Homestuck^2 was as a platform for ideas. A habitus, if you’ll forgive the jargon, what Bourdieu famously called (in a Hussie-like masterwork of language) “the structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.”

I get it. I get what the Homestuck^2 team was trying to do intellectually: where their minds were at, the hostility they faced, the vitriol they were harmed by. I get it.

But that's not why Homestuck^2 failed. Homestuck^2 did not fail because it dreamed too big, or was too intellectual. It did not fail because its themes were not worth exploring, or because its lens was too meta: for most of its original run, after all, Homestuck is nothing but an interrogation of Homestuck. Its brains were not why Homestuck^2 failed. The problem was its execution. The problem was its heart.

There's a lot to be said about not giving fans what they think they want. The internet drowns in coffee shop AUs where everything interesting about a franchise's characters has been vulgarly ripped from the text, leaving a drama-less, tension-less pablum where everything is stagnant and unchanging, everyone gets along, all the romances are cute and smooth, and you can burrow in the comforting ooze of artistic and narrative death. Give fans exactly what they want and frequently nothing creatively meaningful will result. Fandoms famously resisted both The Empire Strikes Back and The Wrath of Khan when they first released because they pushed characters to change, and yet they grew to be beloved as fans realized that what they thought they wanted and what it turned out they could enjoy were not as alike s they assumed. There's nothing wrong with showing fans that there can be more to a story that just doing the same thing over again, retrenching into the pablum wastelands of growth-free comfort fics.

But when asking whether Homestuck^2 did or did not gave fans what they wanted or needed, we must first raise an important establishing question: which fans? That is to say: who was its intended audience? Who was Homestuck^2 written for?

At its peak, Homestuck Classic had millions of readers and a million page-hits a day. There was a whole contingent of fandom who came only for the trolls (in some baffling cases actually skipping the first four acts of the story to jump right to into Act 5). There was another contingent who loved the video game parody, there were Problem Sleuth junkies, and in the early acts there were the suggestion box obsessives: all of these were readers who were fans of parts of the story but largely stopped reading Homestuck as the story got more concerned with the complex nature of stories and narrative itself. Homestuck^2 is clearly not for them—as indeed Homestuck Classic itself had not 'been' for them for much of its run. Homestuck^2 is also not for new readers: if you haven't read the Homestuck Epilogues through at least twice, if you don't remember all its major plot points and the plot points of Homestuck Classic, it makes no attempt to onboard you and is, probably in-arguably, outright impenetrable to those not already in the know. It’s not impossible—there were SBaHJ fans who onboarded with the first context-free SBaHJ and went ‘yeah, I can vibe with this’ and never knew or cared that it was a reference work for something else— but it doesn’t seem likely that many people ‘jumped on’ the Homestuck train with Homestuck^2. I think Homestuck^2’s writers would agree that Homestuck^2 expected you to know the lay of the land. So: nobody new was likely going to read Homestuck^2, and (given its density of Homestuck call-backs) neither was it for more casual Homestuck fans. Homestuck^2 was not even for the truly otiose Andrew Hussie diehards: Hussie was only tangentially involved in the project, they weren't writing it, and there's seemingly no references at all to Barty's Brew-Ha-Ha or Inappropriate Time for Ham, so that's a full seventeen readers it also likely turned off (sorry, comrades. One day…)

So who, then, was Homestuck^2 for? Its intended readers seemed to be those who read the Epilogues and loved them. This is a complicated issue: for those who weren’t there, the Epilogues were… controversial. I defended them at the time: I liked them, even admired them, partially because I believed with the fervor of a zealot that there was still something else to come. I called this final entry ‘Pumpkin.’ Homestuck, a story that always rejected binaries, surely was not meant to conclude with over-the-top Candy and/or grim, dour Meat. I knew in my heart that Pumpkin was coming, where John rejected both of these dark and crazy futures and found a third way in which his friends grew up and matured without losing themselves and their friendship: not a story without conflict, but surely the prime timeline as existed in general fandom imagination could not accept Dirk’s grotesque, manipulative suicide, breastfeeding Gamzee, brutal civil wars, and Dirk and Jane becoming so cruel and hateful. Surely that was set-up to pay-off a better future later: after all, like its author, Homestuck abhorred a binary.

But Pumpkin never came, and now I look at the Epilogues and I find lot in it (for lack of a better term) ‘edge lord showboating.’ It feels like reading 90s comics all over again, including the bits with cannibalism. A lot of bleak and miserable things happen in the narrative, and I find myself asking ‘do they happen because they should, or just because they could?’ (And how many times can one franchise treat Jade Harley like absolutely garbage?)

But if the Epilogues had a true and golden virtue, it was their framing as intrinsically being fan-fiction: Meat or Candy, this was not the 'true' continuation of the franchise (as much as that means anything), this was speculative futures, not much different from Doc Scratch’s story of the Vriska/Noir battle. A one-shot, in other terms, an elseworlds: not a definitive statement about What Homestuck Was From Now On, but an experiment in tone and structure. How far can you push Homestuck before it doesn’t feel like Homestuck any more? (Turns out not nearly as far as you might think.) A lot of people didn’t notice, however, or perhaps simply didn’t care: the Epilogues ripped the Homestuck fandom apart. Homestuck Classic often did things in bad-taste as part of its odd charm: Gamzee’s codpiece, Jack playing dress-up after slaughtering a nice couple on a date, Caliborn’s cartoonish misogyny. Some bits land, some don’t, but for fans—I think for many, if not most—the Epilogues crossed a line that they were not comfortable with.

In some quarters the Epilogues are reviled, and I honestly can not fault people who found them off-putting. They are: intentionally so, provocatively so, and it should be okay for people to be put off by them without insisting that the haters ‘just didn’t get it.’ Often they did: they ‘got it,’ they just didn’t like it. It ‘squiked them out’ as we used to say, and the writers had to have known it would: discomfort is the nature and partial purpose of provocative art.

(Sidebar: Epilogue writers, you wrote a plot-line in which 16-year old Homestuck Act 6 protagonist Jane Crocker grows-up to become a racist dictator who has a cuckolding sexual relationship with Gamzee Makarra that involves kin-play involving public breastfeeding.

Sorry Andres Serranos acolytes, that’s not going to go down super-well with the majority of people, not because they are uptight suburban prudes but because they liked Jane Crocker and felt this outcome was not grounded well in the character they knew: only the obtuse would act shocked and try and argue it was due to a lack of sophistication. You took a gamble, you took a risk, you faced the outcome. You fucked around with ICP Hitler breastfeeding cuckoldry and you found out.)

So: who was Homestuck^2 for? It was for people who had read Homestuck multiple times, had read the Epilogues multiple times, and wanted a sequel that involved those Epilogues.

That is… a small audience. A very small audience. I counted myself among them, but had no illusions that its reach was ever going to be very large. Homestuck^2 was never going to be the Second Coming of Homestuck as a sui generis cultural phenomenon: seemingly by design, it was deliberately written for an insular audience who liked a controversial and difficult interpretation of a famous story and wanted more of that interpretation. So the Homestuck^2 team wrote for them: they came to the table with big dreams and big ideas. They came to the table with lots of critical theory under their belts: they knew their Barthes and Baudrillard, they could reference queer theory and the legacy of post-structuralism, they were the sort of people who knew how to situate Homestuck in post-post-modernism and what that meant for the nature of its exploration of stories.

They had an audience, and they had a plan. They were going to give the fans what they wanted.

So after much hype and fanfare, after interviews and the Tumblr equivalent of a press-junket—which saw the new team saying how excited they were to tackle Homestuck’s legacy, how many great ideas they had, how much having a diverse team was going to see Homestuck ‘done right’—Homestuck^2 first published on the 25th of October, 2019, releasing 32 pages.

We start in the glittering majesty of space. The camera swoops in among the stars, barrelling towards a rushing spacecraft (every frame of Homestuck^2 looks great, the visual arts team's work is its unquestioned highlight). We aim at a viewport in the spacecraft’s hull and slowly the Muti-Narratively-Dimensional Ubervillian Dirk Strider comes into view. Fresh from his triumph in the Epilogues, continuing his wicked schemes, he looks right at the camera, and—speaking directly to the audience—he voices the first line of dialogue in Homestuck^2:

"Surprise, bitch."

…

There is…

…

… there is no coming from back that.

There is no saving it.

It is the 25th of October, 2019, and Homestuck^2 launches with its own death-rattle. It stumbles out of the gate like a beautiful racing pony catching its delicate hoof on the sharp, treacherous edge of an unwieldy analogy and tumbling into the indifferent soil of hard reality, shattering all four legs and immediately marking itself for teary euthanasia at the hand of the devastated young girl with the violet eyes who raised it from a foal and dreamed of making Nationals.

We have established that Homestuck^2’s potential audience was small. The people who were most likely to like it were already an insular, distinctive group who had bought-in to what much or all the Epilogues had to offer. Homestuck^2’s opening-day crowd did not need to be sold on the word of the Lord—they already believe it: they came to see their first glimpse of the promised land.

And in its very first conversation with that audience, in its very first words, Homestuck^2 makes the most spectacular miscalculation of tone since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry—or for those of us of who remember the 90s: ‘Dirk Strider’s about to make you his bitch.’

There's nothing wrong with starting a story with a villain, there's nothing wrong with a villain being a contemptible heel to its audience, but Homestuck^2 spends its opening 32 entries—which, at over 7600 words are longer than the prologue to the Homestuck Epilogues—jumping between Dirk’s smarmy conversations with fellow characters and a monologue to the audience, pages infused with an arrogance and condescension that is downright enervating. The text is frequently dense, so dense it feels like chewing your way through a plank of wood. It is actively tiring to read: I bailed on my first attempt at reading Homestuck^2 when it originally dropped because I just did not have the energy to squint at my screen and read that much orange-on-off-white text.

It is, to be clear, contemptuous. Dirk did much the same in the Epilogues, but the locus has changed. In the Epilogues Dirk taunts the reader with the changes he is making to the story: he knows they object to his manipulations, and he preens as good villains do. But in Homestuck^2, Dirk speaks not of his changes but of the very existence of Homestuck^2 itself. He treats his audience as inherently hostile to the entire existence of the work they have just shown-up to read (or even support via a Patreon), a hostility that culminates when he ‘opens’ a suggestion box and receives the suggestion ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck,’—which he at-once rejects and goes on to monologue some more.

Dirk is talking to an audience who isn’t there. He is speaking to everyone who didn’t like the Epilogues and objects to Homestuck’s 'sequel' directly following them: but that audience isn’t reading Homestuck^2. They bailed in advance, and any who did try and keep an open mind likely jumped ship the moment the comic started by calling them a bitch and implying they’re idiots. The only people likely to read past the fifth page are those who already bought-in to Homestuck^2’s plan: and they are greeted with some 32 pages and 7600 words of the comic’s villain re-litigating and justifying that plan over and over and over again to people who nominally already agreed with him.

It is draining. It is annoying. It is boring to read.

There’s so much you could critique about Homestuck^2’s choices: from Rose cheating on Kanaya to impregnate Jade to Jane Crocker going full Trump and keeping kids in cages. Equally there’s arguments to be made that Homestuck^2’s very premature cancellation inhibits any ability to judge the story fairly: like any serialized narrative stopped mid-way, we have no way of knowing what narrative payoffs were supposed to be. Decisions that seemed baffling on page 8 might prove brilliant and bold by page 8000. But we never got to page 8000, because Homestuck^2 made one crucial error:

It started by telling its audience they were fools for not being smart enough to appreciate how brilliant Homestuck^2 was going to be, and then spent a majority of some 7600 words repeating itself like the worst self-pitying incel you’ve ever had the misfortune to be trapped with at a party. If only the ungrateful could realize how smart, handsome, and well-educated I—Homestuck^2—am, the love I deserve will come flowing in. I’ll show them all.

Homestuck^2 never recovered from that first, fatal error. The rest of its choices, good and bad, are almost irrelevant in the face of that opening broadside, that hostility, that tedium. Homestuck Classic earned its walls of text and at least knew how to space them: Hometuck^2 took its audience forbearance as a given and opens with a lecture on its principles and quality like an unusually snide abstract on a sociology paper. Homestuck^2 essentially began by telling its audience to leave unless they were willing to give it carte blanche, to roll over for its brilliance from the first, to accept in advance that its intelligence and virtue were first rate. So the audience did leave and it never came back and eventually the whole thing collapsed via artist infighting that was so rancorous and possibly subsumed by NDAs that to this day no one has ever halfway adequately explained what happened at the end.

But that ending was preordained from the beginning, for the balance was hopelessly incorrect.

So to anyone trying to write a revisionist history of Homestuck^2 in which its downfall was the fault of readers who simply didn’t ‘give it a chance,’ who didn’t appreciate its themes, who couldn’t grasp (or didn’t care to grasp) its intellectual bonafides (not to mention its extraordinary self-assurance that it was going to be queer Homestuck ‘done right,’ which is a whole essay about a priori reasoning in and of itself)... in other words, a history in which Homestuck^2' downfall happened because people just didn’t ‘get it,’ I’d like to sum up my counter-argument succinctly:

People didn’t like Homestuck^2 because you wrote it bad.

[Afterwards:

There is something bitingly funny about the ‘return’ of Homestuck^2 with the announcement that, from what I can gather, seemingly every person involved with the original project was fired (or, as they’d probably insist, refused to come back). Dirk’s preening, overwhelming arrogance, that ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck’ prompt, will forever haunt the original team’s unwieldy vision. “I’d bet you just looove for us not to make Homestuck anymore” the team said, with all the confidence of an entrepreneur dismissing safety regulations before climbing into his homemade submarine, and boy were lessons learned. My problem with the return, however, is that I don’t know who genuinely wants to see the story of Homestuck^2 finished: the remaining cadre of die-hard patrons who still have enough goodwill to want the promise of the story’s finale fulfilled is microscopic. I’d argue there’s more people waiting for the conclusion of Wizardy Herbert, and I’m the only person I know who has ever read it. What I mean is: as a choice to revive a struggling franchise it doesn’t make much sense, and further—if it is not clear—I don’t think this is a story worth finishing. What is to be salvaged? Jane-the-Dictator, Rose’s cheating, Obnoxious BabyVriska, Dirk Strider the monster? The problem with Homestuck^2 is that Pesterquest happened, and those who played it went ‘this—this is the kind of story we were hoping for, not your edge lord showboating.’ And we only got one Pesterquest and Homestuck^2 limped on for another year reviled, ignored, and eventually forgotten. When it died, most people didn’t have any idea, because the drama never crossed their screens: nobody was talking about it any more. As my best friend noted, give us more Paradox Space. Give us more stories with joy and some sense of fun, something not written by people who often felt like they had an ‘End of Evangelion’ style hatred of Homestuck, or at the very least took the old joke that Hussie was ‘trolling’ his audience at face value. (Writing a good story with twists, set-backs, and tragic moments is not trolling, it is just writing a good story.) Homestuck^2 never felt like it understood that: it was rude and iconoclastic for no more compelling reason than it thought that was meaningful. But then I think the legacy of Epilogues has been extremely toxic—part of the positivity towards Pesterquest was that it let the Epilogues go, featuring a triumphant moment where YoungDirk confronts his Epilogues self and goes ‘I don’t have to be a huge wanker, actually, I can stay a character people can stand and even love again.’

Do that, new team. Pesterquest is named-dropped on the new site more than once, and my dream is that its cast arrives and overthrows the corrosive toxicity of the Epilogues, banishes it to the far realm of underbaked elsewhere ‘what-ifs’ along with every DC cannibalism story and that time Peter Parker’s radioactive semen gave MJ cancer.

The Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are, at this point, not worth salvaging—but I’d happily see them formally buried.]

[funishment-time]

what i would personally want from another DR game

(note: not all at once, since some of these are Mutually Exclusive in fact ha)

realistically:

preferably not a Killing Game. this sounds like Blasphemy but DR was never "about" Killing Games. i'll accept it if it happens, but i'll be Very Skeptical. there's plenty to say about that universe and its themes without throwing another new 16 into the mix. leave that to the Fangans, as i think only Fans can produce something that feels fully "new" w/r/t Killing Games now

preferably uses mostly characters we already know with some great additions. a la UDG

could be serious or a spinoff. racing game, RPG, rhythm game, fighting game, game where we use the Kumas like Pokemon...

if a spinoff, would prefer it still has something of a Narrative to it where everyone's somewhat in character, even if it's silly. think Usami forcing Kamukura to participate in Dangan Kart and he does because he's Bored or some dumb shit like that. give me that Stupid Content

just...another game with Kodaka's involvement specifically. this is filed under "realistically" because Kodaka has recently stated he would like to do it, and that after v3, he was on break from Danganronpa, not Done With It 5ever. considering he still does Birthday Posts and constantly answers questions about DR, he is clearly quite attached still, but ultimately by his own admission it's up to Spikechun

non-realistically:

End of HPA/adjacent timeline. IF, Everyone Is Here UTDP/Summer Camp etc

as a corollary to the above, would prefer that it is not V3's timeline. and V3 is, in fact, a Separate Timeline/"setting reset" according to Kodaka. it is not a retcon/continuation of previous games. BUT: i think that world would be best explored in novels/manga via the Rantaro series Kodaka wanted to do. BUT: i think if it is explored, it will be in a game

further: would prefer an Everyone Is Here game. it would unite the fandom, from old-time fans to folks who came in mostly thru V3 and stick to it

however, of these personal wish fulfillment settings, i think the most realistic of them is an IF-like timeline, esp if released on the 15th or 20th anniversaries. what better way to Celebrate than with everyone from DR1 being alive

Kyoko game that's like Ace Attorney because i don't know it'd just be funny. can you imagine. can we use Komaru to channel Yui

i want a Mukuro game but that's not going to Happen

unless???

???:

female protagonist that lives. for real this time. could be a new one or not but the Universe Needs Balance. Komaru and Kaede need one more for their team!!!

a UDG-type game in that it Expands on an existing character who desperately needed it. this is under ??? because i imagine no one expected Toko to get her own game that transformed her from kind of a Joke Character into a Fully Fledged Baby. even Kodaka admits he didn't know what to do with her in the latter half of DR1, and she became one of the most Beloved Girls in the franchise in her game

Miu:

Miu

please Kodaka

give her the Arc she deserves

pls............

[fischerfrey]

a psa regarding the upcoming release of hogwarts legacy:

disclaimer: the following is not targeted towards anyone in particular

this has been said a billion times and i’m getting kind of tired of saying this: no, buying and playing the game does not immediately make you a bad person or a transphobe.

however, if you do buy the game, you’re not being an ally to trans people. being an ally requires giving up things you don’t want to give up. it’s recognizing that your entertainment is not more important than the dignity and rights of trans people and the dignity and rights of jewish people, since the story seems to lean heavily on antisemitic tropes.

i really don’t want to hear your justification for why you buy or play the game, that’s your business. but if people don’t feel comfortable engaging with your content anymore, or have an opinion to share that makes you uncomfortable, then i want you all to know, from the bottom of my heart, it’s not trans or jewish people tearing this community apart.

i say this all as a non-binary person who is obviously still creating content for hphl era (and the hp universe at large, but that’s a whole other conversation). i got into hphl not really knowing any of the game’s context. i should’ve looked into the background more, but i saw people creating ocs for late 1800s and i ate that shit up.

i chose to be a part of this fandom. i chose not to drop harry potter once i realised what kind of person jkr is. that was my choice and everyone is entitled to make their own. but choosing to support this particular game, even after everything that has come out about it, is going to affect this small corner of the hp fandom that we have all created together. there’s nothing to be done about that.

however you feel about this issue, i don’t condone hate or harassment. there are discussions to be had here but i really, really hope we can have them in a respectful manner.

i love my hphl era ocs, and i’m not going anywhere. i might start using a different tag for my legacy-adjacent content though, since my story lines really have nothing to do with the game anyway.

i wanted to play this game so badly. i wanted it to be good. but i’m not buying it, even if the story line ends up not being as antisemitic as the trailers made it out to be (doubtful, but hey, it could happen). i strongly encourage engaging in some good, old-fashioned piracy if you want to try it out.

please watch this video, or at least the part about legacy itself (starts at around 2 hours and 13 minutes), if you have the time:

undefined

“i know many people say and feel like ‘well capitalism makes us all complicit in one way or another. why bother fighting this fight? why not buy this game if it makes me happy? rowling’s gonna rowling anyway, regardless of what i do.’ and it creates a cognitive dissonance in people. they realise jk rowling is causing harm but they don’t wish to feel like a bad person if they want to play the game. they want to be made to feel okay.”

“but what discourse like this does is try to comfort those who want to buy the game, to make them feel like they’re still good people if they support a system that causes harm, because they can’t fight it anyways. yet it ignores that you do actually have power. it tries to make you forget that you don’t have an obligation to buy the game. you don’t have to give it your attention.”

to reiterate: i don’t think everyone who buys and/or plays this game is a terrible person, but i do disagree with those saying that buying the game is a non-issue.

finally, there are so many good games out there that don’t support a terf or subscribe to antisemitic tropes!!! i know you all fellow gamers have loads of unplayed games on your devices or libraries just waiting for you to play them. maybe try those out instead. 

[moltengoldveins]

That TCU post…that is truly one of, if not the greatest thing I’ve ever seen come out of this fandom. I tried my own hand a while back at writing “the dsmp but taken seriously”; gave it a name and a playlist but didn’t really write much before I went back to my other projects. If you ever have the motivation to do more with that outline I’d be honored to be a co-writer or help out in any way, or if you want you could just use my title as a name for the series: A Ballad of Broken Dreams.

holy crap op this is so sweet. Thank you so much. I’m… wow ok. That. Wow. Thank you. That’s legitimately so kind and I’m so glad you enjoyed it XD. Id also Love to see your playlist and your thoughts behind the songs if you’re down?! That sounds awesome :D

funnily enough, I’ve had a drafted outline for this heccin thing running around in my head since the Butcher Army arc. Right around when SAD-ist dropped her animatic, I simultaneously realized ‘oh wow, I Adore this concept’ and ‘oh wow, I Highly doubt the CCs are gonna manage to do this the way I’d want to see it’ and lo and behold: I was correct. So painfully correct. (There were also People Involved whom I had Really Bad Feelings About from very early on that, sure enough, turned out to be exactly what i thought they were, rip) So the Emduo prequels, Icarus heccin Dying, and the end of Axe of Peace have been around for Ages.

I’d honestly love to do more with this concept, (i am designing movie posters as we speak) but due to Chronic Illness Pog I’m in a rather unstable financial situation? And don’t have a ton of free time for art. Any big projects are gonna take a While, or id need to find a way to use it or something adjacent to fund, y’know, Rent. That being said, I’m definitely writing the emduo prequels, both as movie scripts and as novels, as those are the films focused on, yknow, My Bois. I also think it’d be hilarious to release the novels and then the scripts and watch people Loose Their Minds over the ‘inaccurate adaptation >>:(‘

I’d absolutely love to work with other people in the fandom on this stuff, though I’ve never been the best at directly co-writing (my writing method and style is painfully specific (ie needlessly poetic) and I’m very autistic: I don’t like it when people touch that Specific Thing) but literally anything else? Im open ears. I love collabs.

and finally, I adore your name for the series, (excellent word choice there /srs, it fits perfectly with the symbolism of the whole story) and I think it works really Really well for the actual DSMP, but if I’m entirely honest… I’m not sure it fits the TCU? Like genuinely I’m so grateful for the suggestion, I love when people offer ideas and bounce things around like that. But one of the main things I tried to do with this concept was work out how the story could actually end Well. A deep-seated belief in the good-but-fallen nature of man, the importance of hope, and the inevitability of redemption kinda comes part and parcel with the whole Being-A-Christian Thing (if it doesn’t, you’re missing the Whole Point Of The Bible) and while the actual DSMP may have ended in broken dreams… this doesn’t. That was my first thought when writing that outline: This Is Going To End Well. Not for wish-fulfillment reasons, not because I’m naive or I don’t like bad endings, but because fundamentally, everything sad is a lie, and if the story has ended in tragedy, it hasn’t ended yet.

If I had to pick a series name now, I’m not sure what I’d pick. A part of me balks at referencing anything popularized by Our Local Redacted, but ‘unfinished symphony’ wasn’t his in the first place, it was from Hamilton. “The Finished Symphony” has a cool ring to it? I dunno. If anyone else has ideas please feel free to toss them in here aight, I’m not settling on anything for a While.

Anyways, thanks for Ted talking with me, drink water 💜

[astaraels]

i was tagged by the lovely @callivich for some fandom asks, let's fuckin goooo

What’s a fic you’ve read more than once? Cold Feet by aeli_kindara; In a Haze of Smoke & Fire by IanRightsOnly; please don't say I'm going alone and broad-shouldered beasts by biblionerd07; Cooperative Gameplay and Bright by grayola; to think that we could stay the same by teatrolley; love, let your hands be tender by sadwhales; to stop our hearts from drowning by enbytim; Redheaded Stepchildren by ZebraWallpaper (there's a lot, I know)

What’s a gifset you always have to reblog? anything with 5x10 i'm a slut for love and violence interplay

What’s a headcanon you can’t stop thinking about? honestly when/if ian and mickey do eventually end up with a kid (it would happen completely by accident, of course) they're the biggest girl dads ever.

What’s a fanart you love looking at? this one is g o r g e o u s

What’s an idea you’d love to create if you had the time/inspiration? well, i'm currently working on a soulmates au fic that's canon-adjacent of seasons 1-5, so that's been fun! (featuring romantic and platonic soulmates because i refuse to write only the romantic kind :p) i'm also fond of writing character study fics when the mood strikes. i haven't been motivated to write fic and post it in nearly ten years, but i'm very happy that shameless and gallavich have helped me knock some of the rust off the old writing skills.

What’s an underrated trope or concept you’d like to see more of? SHOTGUNNING. where are all the shotgunning fics. also nurse!mickey (I read a fic with this once and it's a crying shame there's no emt!ian/nurse!mickey fic--at least none that i've ever seen...)

What’s your favourite season? And has this changed after multiple rewatches of the show? i've only watched the show through once but honestly s4/5 are my favorites, but i have a special place in my heart for s1 and s10.

What’s a plot hole you wish had been answered or resolved? I mean the fact that they managed to convict mickey of attempted murder and debbie of statutory rape is insane. (the age of consent is 17 in illinois! and it's literally sammi's word against mickey's AND debbie's! but it's fine, just fine, everything's fine...)

What line/dialogue/description from something else (a poem, a book, a tv show, a movie, or something else) do you feel describes Ian and Mickey’s relationship? these two are the most siken-coded ship since dean/cas. in particular: little beast, saying your names, you are jeff, and wishbone. I even named my gallavich playlist on spotify after a siken poem, and half the chapter titles in my long fic will end up being from his works as well....

What do you think is next for Ian and Mickey post-finale? i think things are gonna go okay for them! i think that they may make their way back to the south side, but in a house of their own not too far from the other gallaghers. i like the idea of them ending up with a little girl of their own but i can also see them just being cat dads and being the best uncles to ian's siblings' kids. i would love for them to reunite with svet and yev later down the road, as well. there's endless possibilities <3

[prophecydungeon]

:EYES: gimme 1, 3, 10, 12, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24. :3c

How old were you when you started writing fic?

oh man.... it was the summer before 9th grade, so i think i must have been 13 or 14? that's the first time i sat down expressly thinking "i want to write a story about naruto where there's a GIRL with COOL POWERS and-", but then when i think back, i'm sure i probably scribbled down other similar "stories" about [insert media]. fanart For Sure came before fanfic for me.

3. What was your first fandom?

for the purposes of this Q i'm going to define one's first fandom as something i felt, like, Identifiably Fandomy feelings and experiences about (not just "omgggg i love pokemon lugia is my fave"), and that was, unsurprisingly, naruto.

HOWEVER, nart came to me on the heels of FMA, which i also definitely had fandomy feelings and experiences about, but nart was when i really dove into the whole fucking nine yards of early-aughts Fandom: AMVs, googling "cute sasuke pictures", printing shit out to put in my binder, baby's first yaoi (legitimately got a Talking To from a conservative christian friend about this, it was so goddamn funny), those animatics that people posted on deviantart, drawing soooo much fanart, and reading and writing Fan Fiction™ while actually calling it that.

10. Do you read your own fics for fun?

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!! dude i reread my stuff ALL the time. especially when i'm at the point where i can't find anything that scratches the itch. i wrote that shit for me, of course i'm gonna reread it a million times.

12. Post a sentence from your current WIP

ok i lied i guess since we talked about it yesterday i will try to make this an active WIP so:

“If you chop my hands off,” Sanji threatens in Zoro’s low voice, jabbing an accusatory finger towards his own body, “I won’t just kill you. I’ll make you wish you bled out on the Baratie’s deck.”

16. What are your favorite characters to write?

i'm gonna take this as asking for a type of character rather than a list of names, so: i looooove writing POV characters who have every reason to misinterpret/misread what's happening, which is to say, i love an Outside POV character who doesn't catch on because why the fuck would they catch on. i've loved writing every outside POV fic i've written because i get to find ways for the POV character to reasonably not catch onto whatever fuckoffery is actually going on, albeit in different ways: hiyori doesn't like sanji because she's got no reason to believe The Bit is just a bit (girl i get it); the POV chars in the last two ficlets in this bleach collection genuinely have no frame of reference for what the fuck kind of creatures ichigo or grimmjow could be; if someone had told aunor flat-out "yeah shin malphur is also zyre orsa who is also dredgen vale and he's in some kind of situationship with the drifter" she would have laughed and fried them to cinders.

i could do this shit all day! it's all about finding a logical path for the POV char to figure out what is actually going on, at least to some degree, and then letting them deal with the fallout. (sorry, aunor.)

18. Is there some headcanon you've included in more than one fic?

yes, totally! i think Reishi Theory and adjacent bits and bobs is the most salient example; i think everything i've written for bleach has included some facet of our headcanons regarding how it all works. in general, my headcanons and interpretations tend to be pretty stable across fics, so if i've written more than one work for a fandom, there's probably some connecting thread.

22. Pick out a random line from a fic you're really proud of

from the blood of the covenant:

Sanji thinks: this is a ritual like everything Zeff has ever taught me. The purpose is in its existence. There's nothing unpragmatic about that.

this whole bit might be my favorite part of the fic, but this line(...s) in particular i like a lot; there's a lot of things in a lot of different disciplines that boil down to just being ritual, and that's a purpose of its own.

23. What's the most personal fic you've ever written?

ah....... i think in a roundabout way that goes to steam, fill, shape, share in ways that are pretty clear from the first paragraph. i project plenty throughout fics - really, what else is writing for - but this one was definitely personal.

24. What's the cringiest (affectionate) fic you've ever written?

answered!

[claraxbarton]

You might have answered this before, BUT I’m a recent follower and curious ok!! Generally speaking, what is your writing process like? I’m genuinely so impressed by how many different fics you’ll have going simultaneously and they’re all updated SO frequently. AND THEY’RE ALL SO GOOD?? Like do you have vague plans/outlines or drafts that you expand on/edit? Your accountability post will mention writing a few thousand words and then there’s an update the same day and it’s written so well lmao it blows my MIND bc it seems like you just come up with the plot on the fly and then casually write a lil masterpiece after work like it’s nbd. All of this to say I appreciate your work so much ♥️

<3

So uh, to start off with, I'm guessing when you say you recently started following me, you're probably just reading my HRPF fics? I SAY that/ask that because I've bounced through a few fandoms and I kind of go back and forth between being VERY prolific and finishing up projects and kind of... losing steam.

To be fair to me and not to scare anyone off, before this year I have, for the last decade and change, been juggling two full time jobs, part time work, childcare and a lot of volunteer work PLUS trying to write so like, I'm cutting myself some slack on abandoned projects. Because I'm finally down to 1 full time job and 1 part time gig that is only during the summer. I will ALSO say, in December I switched meds for my anxiety/depression so I'm on a new dose, new meds for the first time in 5 years and I do think that's been really impactful in a positive way.

SO, exposition and TMI out of the way:

I wish I could say I had a really clear process that I follow every time, but I don't want to lie. I create docs with notes - I'm thinking about including those as an epilogue chapter on the fics I'm currently working on, if anyone is interested in my scribbles aside from myself and my beta - and SOMETIMES I create outlines. A lot of the time, I will write a chapter or two and THEN create the outline? That's what happened with Gold Rush, but also with Gold Rush, I have already deviated from the outline like... a lot.

I'm trying to be way more chill with myself than I used to be. I was in this deep grind of forcing myself to be productive because that's where my value was (@kangofu-cb is a real one and has been trying to beat this out of me for years. Beating with love). And I'll be honest, being kinder to myself and putting less pressure is, like, so far, so good.

I usually have about, like... a dozen or so fic ideas in my head at any one time (@dwisp can attest to the DAILY messages of 'hear me out' as can @kangofu-cb), but I uh, I really feel 4 long fic is my simultaneous max.

I also have a problem with like, so if you DO want to read some of my not HRPF stuff, I think a good primer is the WinterhawkHood month I did in October with a fic a day, and the consistent issue is: I feel like I'm really good at creating a premise and that premise wants to exist beyond 2-5k. So longfic is probably the format to best tell the stories I want to tell, but, like, writing shorter fic is a lot of fun? That also does NOT answer your question.

Oh! MUSIC! It's so so so so important to my process. I used to put on specific artists, like really get into a singular vibe for a fic. But these days it's just my routine sleepy sad girl playlists (name coined by a former assistant and like she wasn't wrong). Which also probably explains how much sad sack Leon there is in my current fics. I should probably like, get some new playlists going...

Uh, in terms of like, my style/my ideas... so my professional life is theatre adjacent, and I think because of that, dialogue and THE INCITING INCIDENT are really important to me. So usually any fic idea forms around the kernal of the meet ugly and some choice words.

Like, for Gold Rush, I absolutely started from the idea of Leon being a bitch to the press and getting a text from an unknown number/Matthew and it just grew from there.

For Playing Favorites, I absolutely wanted to have former camboy Vince realize his new... work colleague??? Adam Larsson knew he was a former camboy. Which is funny because that moment happens in the middle of the fic (which I AM going to update again soon, y'all might vote consistently for Gold Rush in the polls but this weekend I think it's gotta be some love for my two Lars&Dunn fics).

For Northern Attitude, that inciting incident is, uh, about to occur in ch4 that I'm currently working on. And it's. Well. Yeah. So I got the idea for that 'scene' if you will first and then figured it out backwards?

For Wildfire that, too, has an inciting incident that has yet to make it into a chapter. But she's coming soon.

So really, only Gold Rush started as the beginning as far as ideas went for me? That said, I still START at the beginning when I write. I used to scribble down scenes and then piece them in, but I honestly found it constrained me more than anything else and I'm aware that doesn't make much sense.

I feel like this entire answer is a total nonanswer of me just blathering away. I hope at least part of this is what you wanted and uh... sincerely? Thank you for asking. It means a lot and like, my process is weird and inconsistent but I do genuinely love to talk about my writing.

[river-taxbird]

I am becoming dangerously obsessed with The Moomins.

In which I explore my deeply ingrained weakness for furry media, and why a weird kids series that comes from a queer, poly, anti fascist place speaks to me deeply.

The moomins were always something I was aware of. I saw a couple of episodes of the 90s show when I was a kid, and we had one of the books in the house when I was a kid, but I never read it. Not sure why, but discussing it with my mum she said she never liked the moomins much.

A while ago my roomate introduced me to Comet in Moominland, the 90s movie that is a prequel to the TV series, and based on the first full length moomin book. It was a beautiful and harrowing movie about the moomins dealing with the knowledge that a comet is going to hit the earth, and having to deal with an apocalypse of biblical proportions.

After that, my partner and I decided to watch the 90s anime that follows on from the movie. It's cute and charming, it's wholesome and positive. It is depicting the childhood you maybe wish you had, with good friends and positive role models. I also picked up some of the books, those are my own copies in the picture.

Now throughout my life, I have always been a sucker for furry media. Being a furry is essentially my favorite thing and defines a lot of my identity. Most of my favourite media is furry media, be it core fandom, or wider furry adjacent media. On the surface, Moomin is obviously furry media, it deals with creatures having adventures, but I believe the furry connection goes deeper.

I found this video from youtube channel Culturally F'd, that gives a queer, poly, anti fascist reading of the moomins.

The video basically alleges that the Moomin's creator, Tove Jasson, was queer and for much of her life was in what we would now call a poly relationship with a man and a woman at the same time. It also notes how the moomins first appeared in a left wing magazine, hence the anti fascist element. If you want an example of cottagecore media without a hint of fascism, the moomins is probably a good place to look. It's not apolitical of course. There is that one post that is doing the rounds like "I only want apolitical media, like studio ghibli and the moomins" which is very funny and has never left my head.

While the text may not be explicitly queer, you could call Moomintroll textually "In love" with Snufkin, as well as his girlfriend, it's not like they openly date, but I have verified the things that video says about the author with other sources and it seems to be true. It does seem like the moomins comes from a queer, poly worldview, and now I have realised that, I think that is when I crossed the line from interest to obsession. That is how my life works, I tend to become obsessed with a specific piece of furry media for a year or so, hyperfixate on it as much as I can, then I move on but can always engage with furry fan work for it.

I think a lot of the appeal of furry stuff is explored in this awesome video from Patricia Taxxon. It argues that a lot of the appeal of being a furry lies in "The symbolic, the sensory, and the autistic" and that a lot of furries also have other intersecting identities that may have made you feel simultaneously human and inhuman. I guess what I am trying to say here is that I feel the moomins are very deeply furry media in a way that a lot of mainstream "furry" media isn't. Don't get me wrong, I still love a lot of mainstream furry stuff, but I think the true appeal for me is using symbolism effectively. Using your funny little animal creatures to explore things about the world and your life.

The moomins come from a genuinely weird, non corporate place. I would maybe even say if the author were still around today, we would probably consider her a furry. It may be a pleasant, pastoral, almost childish setting, but it deals with all aspects of childhood, from scary or dangerous events you don't understand, to interpersonal conflict, to even stuff as simple as getting sick. It's speaking to me on a level that not many things have before, with its depiction of subtextual, yet healthy and real feeling poly relationships, and real classical feeling adventures and family dynamics. This isn't a word I use much but it's wholesome, yet deep. I know I am only scratching the surface of the moomins and I can't believe it has taken me this long to get into them. I know this is probably fairly incoherent and it is mainly just my initial thoughts on what I have been getting into for the past month or so. I will probably post about it more going forward but just wanted to say something.

[and-stir-the-stars]

Ok so a Thought occured and it's like... half a joke? Half not? Like idk if the concept is funny, per se, but it's something adjacent to it.

Anyway! I figured I'd throw it at you since you're the resident Evan support blog and all that

Concept: Glamrock Freddy's personality as shown in Security Breach is also the generic Freddy personality that has been consistent across all iterations, beginning with Fredbear.

Secondly, by either Henry's absurd engineering talent that's fueled by hope and love or whatever, or through just years of being a beloved mascot, the animatronics can develop souls of their own.

All this is leading up to the idea that, when the Bite happens, Evan is immediately greeted with an "Oh No Superstar D':ß"

THIS IS LITERALLY THE IDEA OF THE CENTURY

there's so many things about this that I'm obsessing with. First thing that literally flew up and smacked me in the face when I read this was Fredbear being loving and just so horrified that Evan died and his soul is stuck there now, is that Fredbear must not have wanted to chomp down on Evan's head but was forced to do it anyway. This implies that the animatronics' souls are as much a prisoner within the animatronics as the children's souls are. If their programming says they are going to do or say something, they must do or say that thing no matter what, even if it results in something they would never have wanted. Literally obsessed with that. Also raises the question of whether the souls are inside the endoskeletons or the suits or both. Does their consciousness only exist so long as their endoskeletons are in place and turned on? Is being conscious synonymous with being trapped in their own body? Or can they take control over their bodies when the endos/programming is off? Do they choose to sacrifice the only control they have to let the kids take over at night after the murders? Or do the kids not give them a choice?

Also thinking about Spring Bonnie in this case. Would S Bonnie be conscious of what William is doing with the suit? Would S Bonnie be against it? Or would William's hatred and sadism rub off on S Bonnie's soul in a similar way to how Henry and the customer's love brought the souls into existence in the first place, turning S Bonnie into a sadistic creature as well? Emotions have a tendency to attach themselves to objects in this fandom, if i understand the lore correctly

Also, just. Just. All the times Fredbear would have seen Evan before the Bite. Like how many times did he see Evan cowering under a table during a performance or watch Evan run away from him in sobbing terror while a worker was walking around in the Fredbear suit, and no matter how much Fredbear wanted to assure Evan that he would be okay over the years, he never could because he just. didn't have control over his body. How much would it have hurt to see Evan so scared of him for so long, to feel like it was all his fault, and never be able to do anything to fix it. And then the Bite happens, and Fredbear has to watch Evan be dragged kicking and screaming and crying closer and closer, listening to Evan beg for mercy that would never be granted, and Fredbear just. couldn't do anything about it. not even when Evan's head was inside the animatronics mouth and Fredbear's programming was screaming "close upper jaw now."

And then Evan's dead, and he becomes one with his greatest fear, but Fredbear finally has the opportunity to interact in a more meaningful way. He does take up the opportunity to comfort Evan, but he wishes that Evan was still alive and that cruel thing had never happened, but he's forced to recognize that Evan's life was little more than one cruel thing stacked upon another cruel thing. It's a complicated mess and Evan's still scared of him, but Fredbear decides that the least he can do is give Evan what little comfort he can, whenever he can now that he actually has the means to do so.

And don't even get me started on the possibility that Fredbear's personality was so openly fatherly and loving. Imagine being poor Evan when your father hands you that Fredbear plush. Your father who can be so mean that it scares you hands you this symbol of fatherly love and devotion, and you take it to mean that he loves you; you're so starved for love, in fact, that Fredbear becomes your favorite character of the Freddy's gang because now every time you look at him, you get reminded of your father handing you that plush as though saying he loves you as much as Fredbear loves kids, too. Except it was never a symbol of William's love. Just a camera and nothing more.

[welcometoteyvat]

i am very curious (and i'm asking this not with any malicious intent) but what ages do you see the genshin characters! i personally see them (most of them) as adults, even collei. even if they were teenagers, time passes in-game (i.e. lantern rite happens every year and we already had 2 lantern rites in-game) so they'll eventually grow to be adults.

tldr: I have schrodinger's age headcanons

long answer: if they're in a ship with a ""clearly"" adult character, I'll assume they're young adults; idk I feel like there's some blurring of age and what growth stage you're in when people are around 17 to 20 (from my experience) so I think it's vague-ish enough that you could probably do what you want.

If they're not in a ship I see some of them as adults and some as still teens/underage. as a general rule of thumb a character's age is solely dependent on what I want at the moment, although I do think the way some characters are written (ie character arcs, character stories and general personality) pushes me to view them as underage (will explain more but the character I'm thinking about most w this is Xingqiu). Some of them read to me as clear adults, and then there are some in-betweens where I just have "vaguely young looking" in my hcs LOL

you bring up a good point that time is passing in game although we don't see it reflected in the character models—everyone points out that Xiao opens up a bit more every lantern rite, but fandom (and genshin devs too ig 💀) definitely forgets that all the other characters are also growing/changing. w/ 4.1 around the corner my personal wish is for hu tao, xingqiu, and chongyun's relationships to each other get developed more so that their relationships (as described through their voicelines abt each other) don't feel so flat,,,,,, it would also help with the sense of "time is passing in game for ALL characters", since we almost never get this kind of evolving relationship portrayed between 4*s/non endgame important charas.

I have too much time on my hands so I'll also just run through all the teen/short models there are for each region and list whether my personal headcanons are adult or minor (at least their ages when we "meet" them in canon):

liyue (mortal/mortal adjacent characters): yanfei, chongyun, xingqiu, hu tao, xiangling, xinyan, yun jin, keqing

yanfei and keqing are solidly adults to me, yanfei's a lawyer and keqing's also in a govt job so both of them feel around like 25-27 to me. Definitely somewhere around their mid-20s, although I can also see them as younger, especially Keqing, because of her overall attitude/perspective on life and the gods. iirc her character stories show how her worldview's grown/broadened to be not as naive/black and white, so I feel like she's still in the process of maturing. If you told me Yanfei was like 23 (appearance wise) I guess I'd believe you too, since she's a very peppy person who seems to be running all over the place all the time, doing errands for madame ping, checking on her clients, taking new cases etc. I feel like it gives her youthful energy, so I can see it if people hc her on the younger side of her 20s (in human years I forgot how her half-adeptal blood works).

I see the other 6 as a friend group (liyue 6ang let's go) so they're either all teens or all adults depending on the portrayal. You can obviously view them as adults all the time, but I don't get those vibes. Xinyan and Yun Jin might be like 18-19, but if that's the case, I can't see the other 4 being any younger than 17, just because I think they're all almost the same age or 1-2 years apart maximum. For some reason so many people view Hu Tao and Yun Jin as adults but at the same time think the others are minors? Idk about that.. genshin has shown that Xiangling, Xinyan, and Yun Jin are pretty close friends, and then always put Xingqiu and Chongyun together for the ship bait, so maybe that's the root of fanon's age hcs. However, I think if some of them are young adults, then all of them are. There's a max 2 year age gap between all 6 of them idk idk I really can't see it otherwise.

To me, Xingqiu's arc reads like a 16 year old finding his footing in the world. Hiding martial arts novels under his bed, tired of playing dutiful 2nd son and sneaking out to live out his idealized wuxia dreams, his multiple voicelines where he's implied to be super worried about us giving away his involvings in the Guhua sect, they all read like he's still trying to figure out his role in his family (what he wants it to be, and what his parents want it to be). He's also very naive about the world, but learning. He just feels a lot like how (chinese) teenagers grow up and like. growing into or out of the paths given to us by our parents. ... or i could just be projecting! Anyways, in my no ships world, he's a 16-17 yr old. Chongyun's clan and family play a not-insignificant role in his backstory, so I think he's the same age as Xingqiu, just older by a month for the flex. Lowkey I don't have as much reason for him as the others, but I think they're in the same age range by association; probably almost 18 at most. Hu Tao's character stories explicitly state she's 13 when her grandfather passed away, and I think she becomes Director not long after this, so I would say she's also around 16-17 when the game starts. @.acatoner who draws quite possibly my favorite interpretations of the gang(TM) once mentioned they see her with spoiled younger sister energy and honestly yeah. she's an only child but has the strongest solidarity with Xingqiu (they're the bratty younger siblings of the friendgroup). Out of all of them, Xiangling is the one with the most plausible job if she was like, young: being a chef apprentice with her dad to continue the family business is pretty reasonable. Middle child energy, probably 17. We did meet her when she was in Mondstadt foraging ingredients, so I'd say she's not very young, but still young enough for her dad to chew her out during moonchase for being like messy or clumsy or smth? Xinyan and Yun Jin.... I think Yun Jin is at least almost 18—running a well acclaimed opera troupe is a pretty big undertaking imo, even if her parents are there to like guide her and whatnot. Same with Xinyan, 17-18 range, although she def started playing rock publicly when she was way younger.

inazuma: shinobu, heizou, kazuha, kirara, gorou, kokomi, ayaka, yoimiya

Disclaimer I have not read the Lore and don't know whether actual ages are given for Ayaka and Ayato (specifically pointing them out because iirc their and Thoma's character stories are the most specific ones wrt the timeline).

I see basically all of them as adults, ayaka might be an exception but she's like 17 minimum in my head. That's pretty interesting considering I labeled almost all the liyue short models as teens. From what I can remember of their character stories, the Inazuman characters seem to be portrayed as having their formative struggles set In the Past (probably a couple years before we meet them) so perhaps that's why I see them as solidly young adults. Additionally, Inazuma's arc and its war pushes me to see all of them as adults, even if they're still obscenely young to be generals and strategicians. The exceptions I can see to this are only Yoimiya (smaller role in archon quest and not related to the government), and Shinobu + Heizou, who were released later. Yoimiya's maturity really stands out to me—from the way her neighbors and old people converse with her, and her overall character arc + second story quest, I cannot see her as below like 19 at least. Shinobu manages an entire unofficial gang and has countless certifications under her belt plus ex-shrine maiden stint—she probably isn't less than 23. It would be cute if she were the same age as Yanfei but just started law school later, so Yanfei's still her senior. I think there's not much to say on Heizou either, he's friends with Kazuha and has a real job, so I can't read him below 20-21. I don't know anything about Kirara (don't have her, haven't read her stories) but I also just get the vibes of like 20-something errand girl SDFDSSKDFJS in a modern au she'd deliver to teyvat/inazuma's college campus for sure

mondstadt (humans): barbara, razor, bennett, fischl, mika, amber, noelle, sucrose

this is a mix again, for Barbara Razor Bennett and Fischl they give me kid vibes, like little adventure gang things. Reddit apparently cites Mona called Fischl an adult in the 2.8 Midsummer Fantasia GAA event, so I mean. I guess she's 18 there—might've been 16 when we met in game the first time (1.2?? scaramouche fake stars event or something?) Idk really. Their group collectively gives me 16 year old vibes, at least when we start the game. I can see it if all of them have aged to 18 now—it just makes sense in my head lol. Mika feels like an 18 year old; mostly because of his relationship with Huffman. Amber seems vaguely adult-ish, I'd say 19 or so, maybe 20 during shadows amidst snowstorms in 2.3. there's some logic behind this that ties into her search for her grandfather but it's like vague and hazy in my head. I haven't given much thought to Noelle and Sucrose— Sucrose also gives "vaguely adult" vibes, idk if her character story about wanting to make a wonderland to meet her past friends in has any relevance to timeline estimation. I'd say Noelle also falls into the vague adult age range, but to me she's a puzzle, because her personality seems incongruent to how I thought she might act if she's like 23 or so.

anyways, anon if you read all this i will declare my love for you. thanks for giving me an excuse to genuinely think on this and then dump my thoughts out for the internet. you can clearly see none of my braincells really go towards Mondstadt headcanons but I hope you're happy w my response ehe

[flutishly]

At a family-adjacent event, someone from the other side of the family (who I know fairly well at this point) asked me "Have you ever read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall?" She knows that I love reading and like talking about books, so it wasn't completely out of left field, but given how much I adore Wolf Hall, it caught me off guard for a moment. Yes, I replied, it's actually genuinely one of my favorite books.

She then started talking about the reasons she mostly hated it. And it wasn't from a perspective of dismissing my love or tearing it down. She talked about how much she admired the writing and about how much she disliked the characters. "He's such a difficult main character," she mused. Yes! I cried, he is!

The whole time, we had this conversation while explicitly coming from different places in terms of engaging with this piece of art, coming from different generations (classic Boomer versus Millennial), and seeking different satisfaction from the art itself. She had just finished the book and I read it years ago, when it came out. But even though we had fundamentally different experiences reading the book, we forged a fascinating conversation. We argued over the literary merits of having such a flawed, difficult protagonist, about what it means to like that (as I do), and more.

And it's these sorts of conversations that I think are sorely missing from fandom. This debate wasn't an argument and it wasn't passive acceptance of someone else's other opinion with no pushback. There were aspects that were obviously just down to taste, but other things were interpretative or contextual. When I compared Wolf Hall as a contrast to the film "A Man For All Seasons", she brought up "Anne of the Thousand Days". Our interpretations were different. Our experiences were different. But that didn't prevent us from finding the contact points.

I love being able to engage with art (as should be pretty obvious by this entire blog). I love watching or reading something and going "ah yes, here is something I liked" and then discussing it. I also often like saying "ah yes, here is something I deeply disliked". My dislike usually doesn't negate my like (if I have it) or even someone else's like (if I don't). Today, gifmakers will often bristle at the idea of tags that don't fully embrace the characters or scenes depicted in the gifs. But for me, part of sharing something is having that discussion. If I'm sharing a gifset, it's because I like it and I want to be able to address something particular in that gifset. Sometimes, I find a relationship compelling without necessarily shipping them; does that mean I can't/shouldn't share something that comes from a place of viewing them romantically, while elaborating on that thought? Maybe, maybe not.

"Make your own post" is the common refrain, but that's exactly what I find missing. Smaller fandoms sometimes manage to have these conversations, but there's a sense that it's always the exception. Fandom revolves around the love of a thing, often leaving little room for truly nuanced discussions of what does or doesn't work for others. Ultimately, I'm surprised and gratified to have found exactly what I was looking for at a child's birthday party, discussing a book I really loved between the salad and the cake. I just wish I could have it within my other fandom communities as well.

[satsuha]

D V and Z for the ask game? :D

under the cut bc idk if this counts as ship hate and it got really long

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

hika ag... (not putting the eng ship name for search reasons) i already knew the devs were gonna push them the moment i saw the crossed paths illust released but ultimately it felt disappointing to me in the game orz i already don't like the feeling when a certain ship is being pushed if they aren't going to go the whole mile and make it canon but in a game like octopath where the protags have such minimal interaction i don't like that it feels like these two got special attention (they have the most banters together tied with thro/oche) and yet their interactions aren't.... interesting....! some of hikari's story banters with her literally feel like he could be talking to a random npc instead and the things hikari says in agnea's story ring very hollow to me 😞 given like the fact that they both lost their mothers, illusts show hikari dancing with her or playing the flute (even the lyre in a concept art draft), it's disappointing to me that their ingame banters don't touch on this at all... complained about their crossed paths story another time but honestly for all this complaining i don't hate them i just feel very disappointed and sort of like they wasted their interactions together ngrhg

V - Which character do you relate to most?

KINDA dungeon meshi spoilers... completely off topic from what i usually talk about but i like marcille's character arc and her goals arising from her fear of being left behind. i'm gonna keep things vague since dunmeshi just got an anime and is getting bigger and also since i don't want to go too deep into why i relate to her but stories about learning to value the time you have with friends while knowing it will end one day (frieren is another obvious one) are very close to me

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!

sorry when you say ramble i think it will always be complaining-adjacent with me but after playing agnea ch3 with english voices i got so surprised at the difference between eng and jp giselle that i got compelled to make a comparison of it and it JUST... makes me so sad that certain chars will be more likely to be overlooked or overshadowed, even liked/disliked depending on localization efforts o<-< i know it's unrealistic to ask people to play in multiple languages bc that isn't feasible for everybody but honestly it's jarring sometimes how different certain characters or scenes can come off as... i struggle with interacting in fandom spaces bc i don't always agree with english localizing efforts (and i get it, it really is a difficult job and by no means do i think they did a BAD job at it most of the time) but because so many people who will interact with my posts have only been exposed to that version, i'll feel very... alienated?? by some interpretations that i see. but i mean ultimately interpretation is more subjective and i think localization only nudges you to one side or another, so i still just do the same as i would do otherwise and find people whose content i enjoy... that was a lot of rambling but did you know that in hikari's ch2 banter with castti the english changed his lines quite a bit ?? i've already talked about how i think eng hikari is more expressive in his voice acting but i think it's something that was present in the text first and i... AM VERY MIXED about it bc i do think it works Really nicely in certain scenes, but i still like how restrained jp hikari sounds because i think it suits him more... anyway this is just a small snippet of the kind of thing i think about when looking at localization like in the end it's just Different versions, i guess i do look at the original jp version as more accurate to the creators' intentions but i think having an "official" interpretation in english can be nice and valuable in its own right.. if i didn't think so i just wouldn't play these games in english at all lmao (by comparison i don't play korean games in english bc at least the ones i've gotten into don't have great localizations so i don't think it adds much merit)

crying the last one is so long but you asked me to ramble 😭 LMAO... but ty for leaving an ask!

alphabet asks

[docholligay]

Genuine question: where does the "let me be stupid" maxim comes from? I do completely understand the "do not hint or imply anything" part, but not really the reluctance to accept (presumably) harmless non-spoilery information about cultural and historical aspects. Is it the general policy or just something active only while you're watching/reading? If it's the latter, then I have to announce that I have the deep dark urge to invite you to a dilapidated parking lot so we could fight over plovers.

People don't understand how often cultural and historical aspects affect my reading of the story and also help me figure stuff out. They think the detail is completely non-spoilery, but I have found people are very very bad at determining that. I'm fairly story savvy and so little bits of information like that can often make something click that I wouldn't catch otherwise. I'm okay with being an idiot!

People who commission me, commission me to experience things as myself. I am a person with a certain base of knowledge, very high in some areas and very low in others. Now, if someone who COMMISSIONS me wants to explain things to me as we go, that's something we have to negotiate before we begin and I accept. But from the general audience? Nah. If someone does not dig on the way I do something--which is fair--they can find someone else who experiences media in the way they like.

Which brings me to the next point: Very often explaining something as cultural or historical has to do with making me LIKE or ACCEPT something that does not jive with me. I (probably??) would hate it less if that had not been the bulk of my experiences, but I've been liveblogging a long time and this is what it is most of the time. I've been adjacent to anime fandom for a long time, and I think also some of this attitude of mine comes out of a long experience of people fawning over Japan and Japanese culture, and, though somewhat less so now, the idea that any critique of something simply because it was common in Japan is bad. It's not my jam! It's not something I want to encourage in my space.

After I am 100% done with something? This is a tough one. It's not a spoiler anymore at that point, but I may not CARE, you know? And sometimes people REALLY care that I don't care.

This goes back to point two: Is this coming from a space of "fun fact!" or is this coming from a space of "You just can't APPRECIATE this because you can't UNDERSTAND it." Those are two very different ways of approaching what may be, at core, the same factual information. Or do you want to show me how much you know about something and how smart you are? Another different approach. I can be very receptive to 'fun fact' and less so to others.

This is why sometimes people who I've interacted with more can get more latitude with me, and many of them will often ask before they tell me something, and half the time I'm like, "yeah go nuts" or "as soon as I'm done with this scene" because there's a level of mutual trust between us that everything is on the level and good faith, and it's being presented in a value-neutral way.

Honestly, it's that "Don't tell me fucking anything at all" is an easier rule than, 'Hey please be thoughtful as to what I could possibly glean from this information, and if you're trying to convince me of something, please don't, and also I can google wikipedia if I want, I don't need it."

My warnings have gotten more and more detailed as I've gotten on because folks have found shelter in the loophole. Do I wish it weren't that way? Oh my god, absolutely. But, that's not been my experience.

[phoenixislost]

(1/3) Aaa thank you for your response! it was a bit nerve-wrecking because i was afraid that the question might come off as too personal, but then again you’ve always been super gracious in answering my comments on AO3. and regarding tropes such as A/B/O, it's not really my thing either, but i also see a few trans/nb authors writing A/B/O because they rather not deal with the extra baggage, so to each their own. I just wish that the term “mother” in trans stories is dealt with much more nuance,

(2/3) not just using the term solely by the fact that they gave birth to the child (i know trans people don’t have to explain themselves but it would be nice to know the reasoning behind that character’s decision). There are trans people who go through this medical procedure but not the other, those who presents themselves unlike what a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ should be from a cis perspective, so i really wanted to know that story too! I also hope that there are more stories just like yours, (3/3) not just in terms of trans pregnancy, but also experiencing life while being trans! (relationships, family, day-to-day basis). Also addressing the hurdles that comes with those experiences, without defining trans characters solely on those struggles. P.S: English isn’t my first language so I hope you understand what i’m saying

A lil bit of a long-winded response again, so find it under the cut!

Before I say anything else: I am so sorry for making you wait for this reply! I ended up taking a bit of a tumblr nap ;A;

I am more than happy to answer questions, so don't shy away from asking. Even if it did end up being something I might be uncomfortable to speak about, I'm fairly certain I would find a way to at least poke at it.

On the topic about A/B/O and trans/nb authors - I have recently discovered this as well! It has been actually very, very refreshing to find it written from a trans, or at least trans-adjacent perspective. I don't think I will ever write the trope myself, but it has become far less squicky for myself to read. Goes to show - even fandom evolves with the times.

I know exactly what you mean about exploring trans stories that delve into the experiences without being revolved around those experiences. There was a time when I was but a wee trans boy, navigating my identity, and the only stories that I could find in fiction (fan-written or otherwise), were those that leaned towards the heavy-handed tropes and stereotypes, with very little nuance. That might be why I lean that way in my own writing of the trans experience. It's my reality, but not my personality; if that makes any sense. And on that topic: I have a fic with this same style/theme in the works right now. Fully outlined and waiting for when I have finished a few things that I am currently writing. So, keep an eye out for that! c:

(P.S: Your English is lovely, and I understood you perfectly!)