#also i did the turning scene more than once to see different dialogue and did you know that depending on what you choose

[amatres]

mutual destruction everyone! give it up for mutual destruction!

#ama plays baldurs gate #balaerra (oc) #ship: you will always be hungry #ill post more screenshots this just fit well as it's own post lol #also i did the turning scene more than once to see different dialogue and did you know that depending on what you choose #they either keep their eyes open and look worried or keep their eyes closed? interesting! #also for why i did it multiple times: i was curious and also none of the dialogue options Really fit balaerra for once #she wouldn't have asked for anything she would have told him she got what she wanted now that cazadors dead and he is safe #his dialogue wouldn't change much tho i think. he would still try to convince her to become his spawn and she would agree to it #bc who better to keep her safe than him? and eternity doesn't sound to bad especially if it's with him. #mutual destruction at it's finest my guys

[freetobeeyouandme]

Mike’s Monologue (Actually Romantic Version)

Hey y'all! So, a lot of the analyses I've seen about the monologue and things I noticed about it myself as to why it sucks ass were kind of just easily fixable things related to the editing of the scene. And because I have an editing software and thought it would be a fun way to practice...I fixed it. So here's what Mike's Monologue could have looked like if they had wanted it to be actually romantic.

Notes and process under the cut.

- Everything I used (except flashbacks) is from the original ~4 min sequence from them pulling El out of the water to her sending Henry flying (I’ll reblog with a link in a second)

-My version is ~3 mins long, shaving off a whole minute from the og. I did that by cutting out everyone else who intrudes on the scene, which is Will and Max but also shots of Lucas, Hopper, Eddie and Dustin in distress after the bulk of Mike's speech

-The ending is super interesting because El looks at Max and then frees herself, but as she does so we leave the mindscape and Surferboy’s: We cut to Max irl, getting her bones broken, Lucas beating Jason to go stand and look at Max dying, a shot of Hopper with a snarling demodog on top of him, Eddie getting eaten and Dustin calling out for him, and then back to Max and Lucas. Only then do we cut back to Mike still yelling "fight!" and El falling off the wall sending Henry flying. Which imo emphazises that this isn’t the kind of romantic love saves the day scene that it should have been if it was meant genuinely. It’s El remembering Max is in danger that pushes her to fight, not Mike, which is why we see all of her friends in danger as she frees herself. It’s not just Will between them in this scene, it’s everyone.

-Cutting all that was relatively easy because at this point Mike just keeps repeating "fight, El" so no dialogue was lost and I didn't have to futz with the audio

-Similarly cutting Will's prompting Mike was also so easy to cut, which just shows how unnecessary it was. Which, in turn, just hammers home how suspicious it is

-I simply covered Will and Jonathan's reactions to "hurt more" with a reaction shot for El, eliminating further intrusions on the scene by others

-The montage includes 15 different clips of memories, which is more than El has when she restarts Max's heart (10) and about the same as Max during Running Up That Hill (16).

-Making the montage made me realize how jarring the constant back and forth between Mike and El becomes, especially towards the end of the monologue, after that first memory: During Running Up That Hill we focus solely on Max after the boys put on Kate Bush, only cutting to them once when Max starts to float and even then Max is still in the picture, because we're in her head and need to see how she feels and how she's escaping. I tried to imitate that with my montage, but it's interesting that in the real version we get dragged back to Surferboy's and see Mike talk, making the scene not just about El and her fight to escape but also about Mike performing (when he should become just a guiding voice like the song)

-El's reaction in the montage except for the laugh after the t-shirt mention are all from after the monologue

-The most immediate and drastic change imo was when I changed the background music. Even without the montage the cut already works so much better with "Unambigious True Love" playing instead of "You're The Heart"

-I didn't have to do anything fancy to make the new song work. I simply underlaid UTL so the track lined up with the fade to black and it fit basically on the first try. The length spans the entire monologue, slowly building up and then cresting during the montage and falling as Mike calls for her to fight and the vines fall away. It would literally have been the perfect track to use instead of making up a new one and then naming it after Will's feelings.

-There are still a couple of things about the monologue that I couldn't fix, such as lighting, shot composition (Will is still visible over Mike's shoulder for example) and the actual text, which is still a bit weird, but overall doing this was very interesting because it made me think about what we should have seen if they wanted this to be genuine and the difference between what I ended up creating and what we saw on screen is stark.

In conclusion: They’re bones

#Byler #anti mileven #stranger things #stranger things 4 #mike wheeler #eleven hopper #video edits

[comicaurora]

How do you ballance lore dumps and exposition. Whenever I see a friend ommiting a lore dump, it feels the rest of the story gets a massive plot hole, where if you state it later it feels like a lazy retcon.

I try to avoid lore dumps if possible, because they tend to feel like textbook reading and are very easy for me to skip over, leaving me subsequently confused when the information buried in the lore dump becomes relevant. In my experience, if the audience absolutely needs information in order for the plot to make sense, there are ways to communicate it in-story that aren't just a wall of text - even if it's just "letting a character deliver the wall of text in a way that works for them."

Lore dumps and "as you know" dialogue are frowned upon because they disrupt immersion, typically because they're a conversation between two characters who should both know this fundamental truth of their world and thus have no reason to state it plainly for a hypothetical third party. But there are plenty of ways to frame a conversation that communicate that information without having to go with "as you know-" or "we both know that-", like

A knowledgeable character explains to an ignorant character why the ignorant character's plan or idea won't work (so they have a legitimate reason to provide that information and the other character isn't just sitting passively and absorbing the information)

Two characters reminisce about a situation they both remember rather differently

A character makes an oblique reference to something without providing further detail (because why would they reference more detail when everybody present knows what they're talking about), and another character responds with a telling emotional reaction that tells the audience at least how they feel about that thing and implies more information about it (like that the thing was Very Bad And Upsetting, and maybe they'll even explain why if another character notices and asks)

Two experts in a fictional field get really into the weeds about how fascinating something they're working on is

Two experts in a fictional field have a furious argument about a disagreement they're having, dropping lore tidbits the whole time

An expert in a fictional field gets really excited about explaining something cool to anyone who'll listen

A villain monologues about the brilliance of their evil plan

Even in the space of exposition, there are ways to let a character's dialogue reveal key information without making it a wall of text, and it mostly centers around making the character want to provide that information, turning it into a character conversation rather than a hand-of-the-author situation.

I've also found that the process of planting and payoff can be strengthened significantly if the information planted is planted multiple times in different ways, rather than just being exposited. If a lore drop is necessary for a plot point to make sense, just saying it once and then leaving it alone will not necessarily work to get the audience aware of its true meaning, since until the information is actually relevant in the story the audience is liable to forget about it or file it very far back in their heads. Exposition and lore dumps need to be connected to something tangible in-story for the audience to get a feel for, or they're basically just more pointless flavor text.

For instance, when the mechanics of divine incarnations needed to be planted, I worked them in in a few different ways - first, showing it with no further explanation -

then showing it in a few different ways, establishing that the appearance of a god can change over time -

then showing that gods have a degree of direct control over their incarnation's physical appearance even outside of that -

all so that when a god did THIS, nobody was confused as to how.

Because it was kind of important that this scene hit the way I wanted it to. I needed the reaction of "OH SHIT" instead of "wait that's bs how did he do that" and that meant I needed the audience to have just enough intuitive understanding of what divine incarnations could and couldn't do for this to make sense.

It's a delicate balance, but in my experience a slow build is better and more effective than an all-at-once lore dump.

#asks #writing stuff

[project-sekai-facts]

I could totally be wrong abt this, since I haven't actually read most wxs stories, but from the ones I did read, I noticed that Tsukasa sometimes... weaponizes his insecurities and struggles? I shouldn't use the word weaponize, more like he uses them as a tool to enhance his acting? The biggest example being Pheonix at the Sky's Edge CH 7 & 8, where he feels like he'll never reach the goal he set for himself and uses it as a way to improve his role as Ryo? Or Dazzling Stage, where he turns his loneliness as a chid into a way to relate to Torpe? I think he does it all the time actually, since he's super loud and dramatic but his internal dialogue is so much quieter. He takes any emotion he feels and bass boosts it, which actually makes a lot of sense since we've seen him when he's not acting like that and Nene was actually kind of put-off that he wasn't yelling and being theatrical (wonder magical showtime CH 8).

Yeah, you're right. Tsukasa is probably best described as a method actor. He struggles with characters that he cannot relate to (emotionally), and has to find a way to connect himself with them in order to play them, such as Torpe and Rio. With Torpe, he was only able to act the character as best he could once he came to terms with his lonliness as a child/younger teen and realised that he used the piano in the exact same way Torpe looked at the stars. Same with Rio, where he tried starving himself like the character does first, only for that to not work but then forced himself to face his inferiority and hopelessness, and was able to connect that to the character. He always finds a way to relate to the character emotionally in the end, but both times it’s required him to uncover/face something unpleasant (that being his loneliness and inferior talent). So yeah, he's good at fairly flat 'hero' or otherwise mostly positive characters, but when he gets given a more emotionally complex character, he has to use his personal struggles to get into the mindset of the character.

I think that Tsukasa is the kind of person who doesn’t like to dwell on the past too much, but also he doesn’t seem to like to think about things that aren’t, y'know, mostly positive. Like, the reason he wanted to become a star, as well as his loneliness when he was younger both stem from Saki being really ill, which is not the most pleasant thing to think of. He doesn’t think about the group splitting up in future as much as the other members do, he is aware of it but doesn’t face it. Mr. Showtime and some brief scenes in Lion Dance New Year are the best look at that we get. And he has to force himself to face that he has less talent than the people around him in Phoenix at the Sky's Edge and breaks down crying (this is not healthy jeez).

There's an area conversation from a while back where Rui asks Toya if Tsukasa has always had the confident and showy personality and Toya says that Tsukasa adopted that personality as a kid because he felt he needed to be more outwardly confident for Saki, and it just stuck. (note: EN translated the first sentence a bit weird. As far as I can understand, in the original text Toya says that Tsukasa did do the persona deliberately as a child, but here it makes it sound like he didn't). I think that alone explains the difference between how he acts outwardly vs inwardly.

He projects everything big and loud because it makes him appear confident, and he had to be brave for Saki so he could make her happy. Not all of the projecting is for confidence reasons, he's generally pretty emotional when the emotions are positive, and always projects them up to 11. I'm assuming that with the length of time Saki was in hospital for, he got so used to his persona that it just naturally became his normal personality. So maybe as that happened he started to amplify how he expressed everything, not just his courage. When we get to see his inner self, I think it's more toned down because he doesn't need to project when he's alone, and I'm guessing that this is how he acted before the persona, or at least somewhat close.

#tsukasa’s psyche and mentality is definitely one of the hardest to understand out of the cast. #not helped by the fact he’s p emotionally constipated. fun to write about though #asks #mod talks #this is kinda messy #tsukasa tenma #project sekai

[buckttommy]

Okay, this is a novel. Go with me.

I'm not saying anyone's interpretation of canon is wrong, but I've seen some people interpreting the graveyard scene as Buck still trying to be something he's not in order to earn/maintain the love of the people he cares about and I just... don't agree with that at all. Where Buck is now is an in-between state. He's not the same person he was before the lightning strike, but he's also not the person he's meant to be after the lightning strike either. Not yet. So he's tucked in this Magical and Confusing World of Almost, where he's almost figured out all the pieces to the puzzle, and he almost knows who he is outside of people's expectations, and he's almost connected the plethora of dots drawn between himself and Eddie, but he's not there yet.

So when Buck says, "I feel like I have to be the same old Buck, mostly for everyone else," that's not him saying he thinks he won't be loved if he's not the same old Buck. That's him saying he's stuck as the same old Buck because he has no idea who to be and, where he is now, no one else can tell him who to be, just like when he asked Hen if she was "at ease" in 6x02. He is constantly looking for answers that nobody but himself can find or give. But he doesn't want anyone to worry in the interim, especially not when everyone else he knows already regards his death with far more depth and trauma than he himself regards it with. So he remains "the same old Buck." This idea also ties into his conversation with Natalia over lunch.

Buck told Eddie that he, in some way, felt like Natalia saw more in him than he saw in himself, but I'm so intrigued by that piece of dialogue, mainly because we didn't actually see the entirety of their conversation. We saw Natalia's fascination and Buck's intrigue (and, dare I say, discomfort!) by her fascination, but we didn't actually see anything beyond Buck beginning to tell her about his coma dream. So what is it that she sees? I think she sees exactly what he said to Eddie—that he got away with something he shouldn't have.

Natalia treats him like an anomaly because he is. No one else in Buck's life treats him like that.

They know him. They love him. They grieved for him. And when he came back to life and came out of the coma, they celebrated him and his return. But. They don't treat Buck dying and coming back as the anomaly, the rarity that it is. And I think this is a perfect example of a situation in which Buck is struggling to find the happy middle. His family treats his death with all the pain and gravitas inherent to literally seeing someone you love die and hang limply, helplessly, in the air, whereas Natalia treats his death with too much glee, too much fascination. And as much as he loves his family, and as much as he's intrigued by Natalia, Buck doesn't need either of those things.

What Buck needs is for someone to acknowledge both aspects of his death: that it was scary and sad and traumatizing, yes, but also that it was something out of a film. Something that shouldn't exist but did. And I think once Buck finds that? Once he looks within himself and allows both of those realities to coexist and inform his processing and who he is, then he will be on his way to finding the peace he's so desperately craving. But until then, he'll struggle with his voice, with Natalia's voice, with the voices of everyone he loves all saying different things on completely different ends of the same spectrum. Which is hard in ordinary circumstances, but especially in this one, in which matters of life or death are explicitly in play.

Buck is loved by his family. He knows he's loved by his family and, overbearing as they are/can be, he recognizes their love and loves them for it in turn. But in 6x11, Buck finally came to a place where Being Buck was enough for him. Now he has to redefine what that means to him. Which doesn't mean that the current version of himself that he's playing pretend at is wrong or lesser, only that this current version is ill-fitting now and he's struggling to find an identity that's the "right size," especially with several different voices (his own included) telling him how he should feel and respond to life-altering trauma.

I'm not the costume meta person here, that title belongs to the lovely Kym, but I'm assuming Buck's internal struggle also calls back to the wardrobe choices made in 5x14 too. The choice to have Eddie and Buck in the same/similar clothes they wore during their outing to the equestrian center only illuminates to me what we already knew: that Buck's 6B arc is a speed-run through Eddie's 5B arc, in that they both dealt with the nuanced complexities of similar traumas. Eddie dealt with horrendous survivor's guilt following the loss of his team, and Buck, too, is dealing with a similar brand of "left behind" confusion. Eddie was the only one "left behind" in that he's the only one who survived everything his squad went through, but Buck is dealing with it in the sense that death came and robbed him of something, but he's still "left behind" to pick up the pieces.

Both men have struggled immensely with the idea of cheating death, of living on borrowed time (though both concepts are outlined more explicitly in Buck's arc than it was in Eddie's), but the similarities of their trajectories are important to note because they will both, ultimately, lead to the same place—to the realization that cheating death and living on borrowed time means you have to, subsequently, do something with that time. Buck says it himself a the end of the scene: every day, from the point of death onward, is a gift, one that must be embraced before time runs out.

Time is running out for Buck and Eddie, but not in an entirely ominous way. Time is running out in the sense that both are rapidly becoming aware of that fact that days wasted aren't just days wasted; they are gifts that are going discarded without being embraced to the fullest. And when they finally sort themselves out, I believe that realization is going to hit them the hardest. Because it won't be so much the idea that "we could have had this, we could have had each other, sooner if we weren't so afraid," but the realization that "we were happy and we were okay, but we weren't as happy or okay as we could have been," and that's a hard pill to swallow for two men who have lived chunks of their lives playing against the nebulous, overwhelming nature of time.

I'm sure they'll figure it out—both together and individually—they always do. But in the meantime, the slow crush of both of their feelings against each other, and against the audience, is nothing short of agonizing.

Get it together, boys. I'm on my knees begging. Work it out for the sake of your hearts and mine. I can't take this much longer lol

#This was a novel #I'm so sorry lol #jack.txt #tv: 911 #911: 06 x 15 #911 spoilers #meta

[lollytea]

Huntlow ft Gus au where they roleplay Cosmic frontier and being O'bailey helps Hunter feel more confident to flirt with Willow? Kinda like in Community when Annie, Troy and Abed roleplay Inspector Spacetime and Abed totally changes when getting into character

OKAY OKAY OKAY But after all this Collector shit is over and everything settles down. Hunter and Gus LARPing in their Cosmic Frontier cosplays and Gus casts an illusion curtain so Camila's basement really does feel like the inside of a futuristic spaceship. They even get Camila on board to join them. (Remember how excited she was to LARP in Yesterday's Lie?? She's never done anything like this before but she would be so into it!!)

Anyway. You KNOW how Gus and Hunter are. Obviously Gus is a born performer and very committed to theatrics but also there's Hunter who is intensely hyperfixated on Cosmic Frontier and not only connects to O'Bailey but also sees him as a fictional role model of sorts. He's cool and smart and kind and confident and basically everything Hunter aspires to be. So O'Bailey is basically Hunter's main blorbo. He WOULD be the type to keep a notebook full of O'Bailey characters analysis. He understands this fictional man inside and out. Everything from his big grand life aspirations and inner turmoil to his little character tics and personal details.

So when he and Gus get into the zone? Oh Hunter would take it so deathly seriously. Gus would too so they're perfect LARPing partners.

I think it definitely fits with Hunter's tendency to lose himself in the roles that he plays, like how his personality altered when he was wearing the Golden Guard uniform. Except, in this case, Hunter's face is on full display and rather than O'Bailey being a character Hunter can hide behind like the GG was, it's more like Hunter is just having fun playing pretend, while using O'Bailey as a bit of an outlet for him to experiment with the person he wants to be. Role-playing as this character he really likes helps with his confidence significantly as with the bonus of being unmasked, it's easier for him to tap into it as Hunter.

Eventually. Eventually.

Because when they first start playing pretend, Hunter believes that he's playing an entirely different person than himself. But he has so much fun with it!!!

Anyway Gus and Hunter get very into their roles, acting out extremely tense and emotionally gripping scenes. Camila is also very enthusiastic, though she has a tendency to break character every once in a while by devolving into squeals because this is just SO cool!!! Why did she and Manny never do this??

Anyway Willow almost always shows up to watch. For the plot. She sits there and she watches Hunter go full cool hero protagonist mode for the plot. She's very interested in....whatever the fuck is going on. There's an asteroid about to hit the ship she thinks. She doesn't know what an asteroid is but she assumes this is a bad thing.

It's Camila that kickstarts the chaos. She notices the scene is waning in regards to cool shit to say and decides to spice things up. As O'Bailey and Avery are engaged in a tense dialogue, she shuffles over to where Willow is sitting and takes her by the hands to hoist her up.

"How about you join us, Mija? :)"

"Oh!" Says Willow, blinking out of the stupor that overcame her when Hunter started a dramatic monologue about the safety of everyone in the galaxy. "Okay...?"

She had never done something like this before. But now that Camila is leading her over to the boys, she thinks to herself...hm. yeah...Yeah!! Yeah, this could be fun!!!

"Captain Avery." Camila says sharply, snapping her posture straight. "Botanist Kumiko O'Bailey has been sent to inspect our vegetation crop and report back to the Nebula Federation."

Gus and Hunter turn to look at them and Willow feels the push to engage.

"Uhh. YES!" She announces, adopting a powerful air as she places her fists on her hips and tips her chin up high. "It's me! Kumiko!! And I'm here to...uh. To do what Camila just said."

"Quando."

"What Quando just said."

"Also...." Camila continues. "She mentioned wanting to see her husband."

"My what now?" Willow blurts out under her breath.

Oh. Right. Kumiko. Kumiko O'Bailey. She had heard that name once or twice. She knows at least a chunk of the lore. Hunter talks about it often.

So. So she's currently playing the role of...

"Kumiko!" Hunter exclaims and rushes to her side. And then suddenly there's hands and they're long and narrow and warm and they are cradling her hands. And though Willow has held Hunter's hands plenty of times, it was always initiated by her. It's his sudden bout of forwardness that stuns her speechless.

Where is this coming from?

"Um..." Willow finds herself mumbling idiotically.

"You weren't answering any of my communications." Hunter says, looking deeply invested in the colour of Willow's eyes. "I was worried..."

Hunter has not acknowledged that this is something he would have been far too shy to do with Willow Park under any other circumstances. Because he is currently Chief Engineer O'Bailey and he is extremely committed to portraying this role faithfully. And if there's one thing he knows about O'Bailey, it's that he loves Kumiko with abandon.

"Aw, well, you know how it is," Willow grins, still a little breathless. She tries to tear her eyes away from their interlaced fingers, a slight blush seeping across her cheeks.

"The communication....thingie...was busted. So I just figured I'd hop on a spaceship and come find ya."

Under the assumption that she's nailing this role, Willow decides to get a little rambunctious with it. She tilts her head to the side, tweaking her smile into something overtly flirty. "I missed you <3" She says in a honey sweet tone that she has used on him on numerous occasions. It usually renders Hunter completely unsure of what to do with himself. It's adorable.

But not this time.

Hunter, completely unruffled, responds with a warm endeared smile that sends Willow's pulse coursing. "I missed you too." He says softly.

And then. One of those accursed hands of his. It settles into a gentle caress against her face.

Willow's eyes are just about about bulging out of their sockets.

"But wooow," Hunter croons, stroking the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. (Her skin is hot and he is gonna notice, which is only making it hotter.) That's when the flirtatious touch to his own smile cracks through. "You traveled all those lightyears? For me?"

Willow does not have a fucking clue what a lightyear is. But she likes the sound of the word when he says it like that.

"You betcha, babe!" Willow responds enthusiastically, trying to regain some handle on this scenario. "You know I'd travel a million lightyears just to see you."

She flirts. Her. Willow.

Hunter unexpectedly taking the lead here is throwing her off. She's floundering.

Is this what she does to him all the time?

Hunter's smile spreads and he takes a step closer.

Willow would have taken an instinctive step back but she is currently frozen to the spot.

Hunter's eyes are very brown.

"Well..." He says musingly. "You've seen me. Will that be everything, Mrs O'Bailey?"

Willow is certain her heart forgot its main functions before promptly bursting into a frenzy.

How has his palm not scalded against her cheek.

Willow is about to say something. Potential responses swirl around in her head.

She isn't quite sure what is about to happen. All she's processing is that Hunter is standing very close and she has some ideas of what she would like to happen right now and she's pretty sure if she just--

"Oooooh. Go Hunter!" Somebody suddenly whoops and Willow gets to see the O'Bailey persona shatter like glass before her very eyes.

Luz has descended the stairs with not an ounce of context of what is going on. All she sees is Hunter cupping Willow's cheek and moving closer and closer.

Camila is observing with a broad beam, while Gus leans against a nearby wall, a little bored.

With that, Hunter is yanked back to the reality of the situation. He's not in space, he's in a basement. He's not Chief Engineer O'Bailey, he's Hunter. And she is not his wife Kumiko. She is Willow Park.

He might have been about to kiss Willow Park.

Heat floods his face and he breaks into a splutter of rapid-fire apologies. The words are spit out so frantically, they begin to tangle together.

And as charmed as Willow tends to be with flustered Hunter, she is quite disappointed that whatever that was is over.

Meanwhile Hunter is dangerously close to the realization that flirting with Willow Park is something as impossible as he originally thought.

#huntlow #if you send me fun little huntlow asks you too might receive some stupid shit like this

[yamameta-inc]

okay, so here's my post digging into kirimusubi, one of the songs DOES did for gintama the final.

this is largely based on two existing translations (turn on english CC for the video), both of which i compared carefully and supplemented with my meagre understanding of japanese and some research.

both translations are generally pretty good, with the tumblr one (not sure where it's originally from) being more literal and the youtube video one smoothing the words to sound a bit more natural. one or the other seems more accurate in different places. here's more or less what i believe the lyrics to mean, with a priority over conveying meaning:

The stardust in the night sky that I look up at is always Beyond the silver dream In order to regain the old bond that I lost/was lost We have been trying to wash away even red-dyed fate And kept searching And finally got here in that hollow sunlight We swore that we would never let go of each other again [kiri musubu], shedding tears at the unruly/rough tenderness/kindness In order to love, we must continue forward on this path no matter what The stardust in the night sky that I look up at is always Beyond the silver dream If you're going to bitterly abandon yourself and go mad Why not live an upright life that's like you? (as in, when people say "That's just like you" or "that's not like you") With wounds/scars in our chests, Let's walk, then laugh like brats again So that one day, our shadows will meet again [A cry from the underbelly of my blazing soul] or [A blazing cry from the underbelly of my soul] (where "ura" is used, as in ura and omote, to denote the "other side" of the stomach) Engraves the proof that we once lived together in this place The destination of our messing around is always Beyond the silver dream If you'll do anything to protect someone, Raise your fist [kiri musubu], shedding tears at the unruly/rough tenderness/kindness In order to love, we must continue forward on this path no matter what A cry from the underbelly of my blazing soul Engraves the proof that we once lived together in this place The destination of our messing around is always Beyond the silver dream

so. there's a LOT to unpack here. but first, let's address the lyric i left untranslated, which is also the title of the song: kiri musubi. so what does this term actually mean?

literally speaking, these words mean "cut" and "tie." you might recognize kiri as a different form of "kiru." interestingly, the video translator translated it as "in the clashing swords." i'm not sure this actually has basis in anything, but it's a neat thought.

see, the title of the song is almost certainly an inversion of musubi kiri, a specific kind of knot in the japanese tradition of knot-tying, mizuhiki. what does this knot signify? well...

"a knot that's difficult to loosen once it's been tied" brings to mind the way that shouka sonjuku trio describe the bonds between them. for example when they're complaining about it in the beginning of the final (ch 699):

this is just one of the many terms used in the song that evokes a specific moment or line of dialogue in gintama. for example, "raise your fist" and

but i digress. the shocking truth is that the song's title, and part of the lyrics in its chorus, deliberately invokes a marriage and funeral simultaneously. "tying the knot" and "cutting the knot," literally. in case you didn't think the movie-original sakura blossom boat scene was enough.

that's not all, though. because i would argue that the words being inverted--kiri musubi rather than musubi kiri--alongside the other lyrics imply that rather than "a wish for something to only happen once," the song is expressing a wish for something to happen once more. "to regain the old bond that was lost" and "that we once lived together in this place" make it pretty clear what's being implied, i think.

and yet, kiri means to cut. it means to snip away that difficult-to-loosen knot. and the rest of that line is about shedding tears at a violent kindness, a kindness that must be performed no matter how difficult because. if you'll do anything to protect someone, you'll even use their corpse, your sensei's corpse, as a stepping stone.

and the irony is pretty clear here too. the wish for something to only have to occur once--but this isn't the first time gintoki has had to cut down takasugi, or lose shouyou. so naturally, the words are inverted. that hope was dashed. the whole arc is a bizarre rehashing of their past. but in that happening, there's also opportunity for a different kind of wish. whatever your thoughts are on the writing choices for the final arc, this song seems like a sincere dedication to the emotions therein...

so like. what the fuck is up with that

#takagin #gintaka #gintama #?????????????? why did they do this. to torment me i guess #IM JUST SAYING EVEN I TAKAGINNIE9000 would not use symbolism or language like marriage for them canonically???

[amemenojaku]

Hisami and Zanmu for 1 on that ask game!

When I started shipping it if I did: Since day 1 when I read Hisami's dialogues, like most people I believe lol. I mean, how can you see her and not start cheering for her to get what she wants... Since it's still pretty recent I can add that two lines in particular made me seriously consider it and think about it beyond 'this is nice/funny': when Hisami tells Zanmu that she doesn't have to hold back around her, and when Zanmu tells Hisami that she knew Hisami would mess up on purpose, and that she'll give her a reward anyway - both are about danmaku obviously, but it got my brain gears turning >:]

My thoughts: They've slowly but steadily been going up my favorite ships, especially for the past 2-3 months... They work well together. Obviously I'd love the ship in touhou where one of them has a big fat actual canon crush on the other one, I've been in this hole since 2010 or something so Hisami's kind of a gift... but also in general I think it's a good spin on the boss/henchman trope when the boss is some mega charismatic chessmaster who could probably get anyone they want on their knees and yet their subordinate is one of the only people they can't fully predict/control. The wild card aspect is really funny to me and I love seeing fanworks where Zanmu's like... fondly sighing at Hisami's antics.

Things done in fanworks that annoy me: I think there's too many fanworks where Zanmu looks generally uncomfortable around Hisami despite never doing so even once ingame, and also too many fanworks where Hisami harasses Zanmu, sometimes to make very early 2000s jokes in very poor taste... I won't name anyone but there's a few big yuri artists on twitter who do that and it makes me want to bash my head against the wall when they get praised for it just because their artstyle looks good..... On a more positive note there's a few people who've been creating constantly good content of this pair and I think given a year or two nature will be healing!!

Also I'm of the opinion that Zanmu's fairly tall herself, just a bit shorter than Hisami, so I'm not big on the crazy size difference stuff (funny coming from a seishin fan, I know......)

Things I look for in fanworks: MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING!!! Getting to know each other past the infatuation (in Hisami's case)/the curiosity (in Zanmu's case) in deeper ways. I promise this isn't about sex lol (I do think about that too but not here rn) I really want to see how their relationship can grow and I especially want to see Zanmu enjoying it (as a petty reaction to the stuff listed above...). In their case I think physical intimacy would be a good setting for that kind of scene where their emotional bond grows, so that's what I'd go with if I were to create something like it, but anything can work if it's done in good taste imo. And in general I want to see Zanmu answering Hisami's affections with a positive emotion... whatever it is... I'm desperate.......

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: It's difficult for me to imagine Hisami with anyone else, although I do think she'd have physical relationships with a bunch of women while her feelings for her boss are still unrequited. Zanmu on the other hand I can picture being interested in a few other characters like Reimu or other onis or even the sages, but ultimately not as something she'd commit to and take seriously. The only real endgame is still zanhisa haha

My prefered future/ending for them: Whenever Zanmu considers them close enough to tell Hisami to drop the honorifics and overly reverent language when they're alone, and whenever Hisami feels comfortable doing that would be the ideal "endpoint" for me because of all the things it implies :) I don't care if at that point they actually consider themselves in a relationship or if they just aknowledge there's something going on. Though if they do get in a relationship proper I imagine they'd be very discreet about it. Also I think Hisami should get a promotion so she can directly work as Zanmu's prefered right hand arm man. woman. her everything. her confidant. her silly rabbi

What is their favorite activity together: Probably drinking. I imagine with how old she is and hanging out with onis Hisami's built up a decent hold on alcohol, and Zanmu appreciates it. They reminisce about their respective pasts and talk about the inner workings of hell and Zanmu gets a huge ego boost from showing off her 4D chess plans and Hisami praising her for it

#thank you for sending something!! I got a few other asks for this pair and it makes me really happy haha

[tritoch]

the damsel and the hero: some thoughts on minfilia and elidibus

I get why many people have (understandable, justified, legitimate) gripes to this day about how Minfilia was handled, but I think you don't have to change anything about how she's presented in game to arrive at a reading that lets her feel like more than a sacrificial victim. Within the game as it exists, Minfilia is already a rich and layered heroic character. She is not a damsel or a tragic hero but a victorious figure whose very exit from the narrative affirmed her own ideals, and she controlled her own destiny to the end. All you have to do to see this more clearly is read her against one of her underexamined foils: Elidibus.

Spoilers through the end of Pandemonium (6.4) below.

After 5.3 dropped, the devs mentioned that because they basically had to develop and pay off Elidibus in the space of a patch or two, they drew conscious parallels between him and other characters. The game highlights the G'raha parallels in the scene just before Seat of Sacrifice. There's also the parallels to Alphinaud that people have noticed in both the broad strokes of their characterization (idealistic short kings who believe in the power of rhetoric and diplomacy to achieve true and lasting understanding between people, whose mission to save the world is forever held in balance with their duty to save those they love) and in specific lines of dialogue.

But a far more direct narrative parallel than either character is Minfilia. Like Elidibus and Zodiark, Minfilia offered herself to Hydaelyn, serving as the Word of the Mother, only to be called forth once more when an intractable conflict between her allies threatened the stability of the world. Both were messianic young figures who nonetheless lead their older allies by both example and command. Both, seeing an opportunity to save not just their close friends but everyone, offered themselves up to a higher power in an act not of desperation but of deliberate will. You can even poetically gloss both Antecedent and Emissary as "The One That Goes Before."

The difference between the two of them is that at every turn, where Elidibus failed, Minfilia succeeded.

Elidibus returned to broker peace between the Hydaelyn faction and the Convocation. He failed, and the result was the Sundering. Minfilia, entreated by Urianger, came back to resolve the conflict between the Warriors of Darkness (Hydaelyn's champions and Warriors of Light themselves) and the Scions, and succeeded in saving two worlds by her actions.

But more than that, Elidibus provided us a picture of what it actually looks like to lose your identity to a primal like Zodiark. He'd lived a thousand thousand lifetimes as himself and he was so broken he could scarcely remember anything more than his name and his duty. He is one of the most explicitly tragic figures in all of FFXIV, and his final sendoff in 5.3 was an image of him plagued by unanswerable grief, which for him was a consequence of his failure: "The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it."

Meanwhile, in the preceding expansion, you actually had the chance to spend multiple scenes with Minfilia and they're all extremely clear: unlike Ardbert or Elidibus, after 100 years this was still Minfilia, she remained resolute in her mission to see the First saved, but she had not forgotten the woman she was or the people she loved. In both 3.4 and 5.0, she went out as herself, head held high.

Speaking to the Warrior of Light before she departs for the First: "So many times have I watched you depart, my heart filled with worry, and ever did you return to me in triumph. Someday, when I have found a way to free this star from Her sorrow, I promise you I shall repay the favor."

Her final words to Ryne: "No one, however powerful, is immune to the whisperings of doubt and despair. Do not give in to them, but do not deny them either. Look instead to the light within, that you may continue to serve as a beacon to others."

In both instances, we were given a Minfilia who had not merely accepted her fate, but who had chosen it of her own volition and rose confidently to meet it, even imparting to her successor some final hard-won words of wisdom. And unlike Elidibus, she met her friends again at duty's end; they live, and they are happy, and she is content. She's already heroic, but the contrast to Elidibus (and Ardbert, and Emet) underlines the extent to which we should see her as extraordinarily driven, self-possessed and ultimately victorious on her own terms.

And in making the connection between Elidibus and Minfilia, we can begin to let Elidibus's characterization inform hers in retrospect.

Elidibus as we see him in 5.3 and earlier more specifically paralleled Minfilia as the Word of the Mother. Prior to that point in her arc, Minfilia's parallel was Themis, the pre-Zodiark Elidibus we glimpse briefly in the 5.3 Echo flashbacks and would only meet properly an expansion later in Pandemonium. The important thing about Themis for our purposes is that he was not some naive or too-young figurehead tricked into serving as Zodiark's Emissary. This was not a Crystal Braves situation for him. In Pandemonium, you can see how the kind of man Themis was very clearly lead to him choosing to be offered up to Zodiark. He took seriously the principles and duties of the Convocation. He valued dearly the lives of all people generally and his friends and comrades in particular, but held those truths in balance rather than prizing one. He was rational, clear-sighted, and decisive.

All of these, obviously, were true of Minfilia. And unlike Elidibus, whose ascension into Zodiark was forever somewhat obscured by the narrative, we were quite close to Minfilia before she became the Word of the Mother. We were quite familiar with her grief and guilt over surviving where Louisoix did not, her fear that she could neither fill his shoes as a leader nor serve in action as others did. She confided in us about the difficulty of her task in serving as the pillar of strength and guiding light for the rest of the Scions. She despaired alongside the player character at both the death of Moenbryda and the disastrous events of the Banquet. We know what she believed, what she valued, what she feared, what frustrated her. When she chose to depart for the First, it paid off very directly everything else the game has said about her through 3.4. Her arc was one of trepidation and doubt, and it ended in her ultimate victory and an astonishingly clean win that compromises none of her values.

Both Urianger and some fans raised the question of whether it was wrong for Urianger to ever offer her the choice of sacrificing herself for the First at all. Minfilia, for her part, got a chance to speak to this directly: "Have we not walked together in the light of the Crystal, and at Her bidding borne witness to the joys and sorrows of this land? Each and every one of you knows my heart. If this be the price I must pay, I pay it gladly." It did not matter whether she was given this particular decision or not. You could have offered her this dilemma in a thousand different permutations in a thousand thousand different scenarios. This was the choice she made. This was her choice, forever and always: to save everyone she can, in honor of those she loves.

Candidly, I understand critiques of Minfilia's writing far better than any praise it could ever receive. Nothing I've written above answers the clear and obvious truths that she is underwritten, that she does not get much to do or much screentime for a putatively important character, that it is very easy and common to read her death as a fridging, that she is unfairly dismissed by many due to her role in the narrative and the way she leaves it. Her sacrifice plays into specific gendered tropes that are disappointingly common to see. Those things all remain true.

But I think as we remember those things we should also keep in mind that she does still get a complete arc that is interesting and thematically rich in itself, and which puts her in some senses on the same level in the narrative as characters like Elidibus, Emet-Selch, and Ardbert.

Her sacrifice continues to inform the game. Her literal ghost returns to affirm the truth and value of her beliefs and the choices she made. Her guiding words ("For those we have lost, for those we can yet save") remain a mantra not just for the Scions but specifically for the player character. They are not an empty slogan. The phrase succinctly conveys an ideal of all-encompassing humanism and compassion arising from grief. The ideal those words represent is one of many organizing principles and responses to grief that the game examines (because a lot of FFXIV is about grief and how we respond to tragedy and change), it is Minfilia who develops and articulates it, and it is the one the heroes continue to align themselves with. It is the same principle that leads her to the First, and G'raha, and us too. It is Minfilia's ideals--Minfilia's heroism--which continue to serve as the model to which the Warrior of Light aspires, in the game's text.

Truthfully, my gripe is this. I think it is very easy to imagine a male Minfilia--same lines, same screentime, same blocking, same ass cut-out--appearing in place of the Minfilia we have. And I feel quite sincerely, and quite frustratedly, that if we had Malefilia, both the fans and detractors of that character would ascribe to him more thoughtfulness and more thematic depth than the Minfilia we already have, even though their lines would be exactly the same. We are so ready to see the damsel we expect in Minfilia that we are unwilling to see her as the hero she is in the text, and my hope is that by holding her up to her mirror, Elidibus, we may see her as a rich character in her own right all the more clearly.

#minfilia #ffxiv #elidibus #and notice that i didn't have to mention the gunbreaker once! #it's kind of interesting actually; she's absolutely crucial to his arc and he's not at all critical to hers #I don't think that means she got fridged for him necessarily i just think they draw on different archetypes and have different arcs #louisoix is ultimately more important to minfilia's growth and feelings of guilt than thancred ever is #in some ways i feel how i do about minfilia how i do about ardbert #would i have liked more time and fan attention on them? sure #they both could be emet or g'raha levels of popular the bones are all there for that kind of popularity #but instead they both have really thematically resonant arcs that the game won't fuck around with anymore. that's worth a lot!

[ab4eva]

could you, please, write a silly fluff in which austin implies that he has a crush on the actress who co-starred with him in elvis, and everyone (including reader) believes he is talking about olivia, when in fact he is talking about reader, who played Dixie

‘These Arms Of Mine’

warnings: angst, fluff

a/n: thanks for this cute request, darling anon! I’m sorry this turned out a little more angsty than I’m sure you had in mind. But my mind truly couldn’t help going there with the subject matter. I hope that’s ok and I hope you like it!

-

It’s a known fact that you have a secret crush on Austin Butler. Which technically makes it not a secret. But only a handful of people know and they’ve been sworn to secrecy. When you were cast in the role of Dixie Locke, Elvis’s first girlfriend, in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, you found yourself face-to-face with the most confounding man you’d ever been in a room with. Austin Butler was quiet and shy. Tall and lanky, his hands always fidgeting with his clothes or pulling at his bottom lip. Dark hair slicked back, blue eyes silently observing and taking in the world around him. He always spoke softly and only when spoken to. He was polite, almost to a fault, with a “yes, ma’am” or “no, sir” always on the tip of his tongue. He was completely dedicated and fully immersed into Elvis and his life. In fact, by the time you met him, he was Elvis. Not Vegas Elvis, of jumpsuit and glitter fame. Not Movie Elvis either, slick and polished and cheeky. He was young Elvis - slightly unsure of himself and finding his footing in a strange, new world.

He was also scared out of his mind. You could see it in the way his pulse beat quickly beneath his jaw during a particularly intense rehearsal. The way his hands shook when turning a page of dialogue he was memorizing. Or the dark circles that plagued his under-eyes, Austin himself once confessing to a small group on set that he was only getting a couple of hours sleep each night. You didn’t know how he did it - carry this massive weight of responsibility on his broad but thin shoulders. Anyone else would have buckled under such pressure. But not Austin. You saw him rise to the occasion again and again, giving his all, going above and beyond. Everyone on set could tell that this was something different. Something special. Lightening in a bottle.

You tried to push away your feelings for him, you really did. It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t possible. You knew this. You had seen the way Austin looked at Olivia when they rehearsed a scene. Or laughed together in between takes. Or when they left the set together one night, thinking no one saw. But you did. And it broke your heart a tiny little bit. He trusted her and it seemed like he needed someone to trust. He looked so lost and alone most of the time, in his own world. Elvis’s world. All you really wanted to do was take him in your arms and hold him forever. Let him rest his weary head on your shoulder and stroke his hair. Whisper to him that everything was going to be ok. You did your best to keep a bright smile plastered on your face, even though being near him ripped you to pieces, bit by bit, every day.

One morning halfway through filming, just as you were about to step into the makeup trailer, you heard hushed voices from inside and paused, not wanting to interrupt anything important. You recognized the timber of Austin’s voice immediately, which made your heart beat wildly. It was rare you crossed paths in here, as he had his own team dedicated solely to his hair and makeup. Something made you stay outside, listening. You really shouldn’t have but you couldn’t help it.

“I don’t know…it’s just a feeling I get whenever I’m around her, you know? It’s like that thing of feeling that you’ve known someone a long time, right? Which is crazy. But I can’t shake the feeling that…I don’t know, that we’d be great together,” you hear Austin say. Your heart squeezed in your chest, and you put a hand up to steady yourself on the side of the trailer. Olivia. It was just confirmation that something was going on between them. You took a deep breath as you felt tears spring to your eyes. You blinked them back quickly as a PA appeared from around the corner and you pulled the door open quickly, not wanting to get caught lingering outside. You weren’t ready to face Austin, but you had no choice. Good thing it wasn’t Austin staring back at you in the mirror. Elvis blinked his eyes rapidly and his mouth parted just a little in surprise. His hand fluttered up to rake through his hair before realizing he couldn’t without messing up his wig. You quickly averted your eyes from his gaze - whoever it was staring back at you in the mirror, Austin or Elvis - you couldn’t really tell. Either way it was too intense for this early in the day.

“Morning,” you said, smiling through your pain, and sitting down in a makeup chair.

“Mornin’, darlin’” he drawled, quietly. You snuck a glance at him - his eyes were averted, focused on nails as his team finished up final touches. He gave you a quick, tight smile as he walked out. God, you felt like bursting into tears right there. But you were a professional. You pulled it together and made it through without crying and ruining your fresh makeup. You were due on set soon, shooting the breakup between Dixie and Elvis. This was good. You could use your emotion for the scene. You soon found yourself in a Cadillac sitting next to Austin, discussing the scene with Baz. While it wasn’t the last one you had to shoot on the the film, it was getting close for your time on set to be done, which only added to the weight of it. Baz called action, and Austin had barely gotten his lines out before you burst into tears. Miraculously, it was exactly what Baz was looking for and you only had to do it a couple more times before he called cut.

“You good, honey?” Austin asked you quietly as you two headed back to the trailers, except it was Elvis who spoke to you. You nodded and smiled quickly, wiping your eyes, not trusting yourself to speak. You took a steadying breath through your nose and gave yourself an internal pep talk, pressing your fingernails into your palms so hard you were sure you might break the skin. It grounded you, the pain, giving you something physical to focus on rather than the emotions swirling inside that just wouldn’t settle. It was silent as you two walked, the tension building until you were sure you couldn’t take it anymore. You had to get away from him, as soon as possible. You sped up, anxious to get to the sanctuary of your trailer.

“Hey I-“ Austin said.

“Thanks for-,” you said at the same time, before stopping, a slight smile forming on your lips despite your misery. “Sorry, you go.” He looked suddenly shy, a faint blush tinting his cheeks. He bit his bottom lip before finally looking at you.

“Yeah, so I was just wondering if maybe…if maybe you wanted to grab a drink tonight? I should done by 6:30ish, if we can get to all the scenes we need.” He looked at you expectantly. Hopefully. He must have seen the confusion on your face because his smile faltered. “Or, I mean. You know, we don’t have to…”

“Austin, what are you asking me?”

“Well, I’m trying to ask you out on a date,” he said, a smirk tugging at his mouth, his confidence returning. “But if you don’t want to..or, or you don’t like-”

“But you like Olivia,” you state, still confused. The shocked look on Austin’s face tells you all you need to know, just how wrong you’d read the entire situation. But you still weren’t completely convinced. “I heard you. This morning…in the makeup trailer? You said you two would be great together…”

“Oh,” he murmured quietly, slowly stepping towards you. “Oh no, Y/N…I wasn’t talking about Olivia.” He was so close now - you could see the deep blue of his eyes, the bits of glue at the edges of his sideburns, the curve of his plump mouth that was turning up into a smile. And all at once it hit you like a ton of bricks. What he was saying. What he meant. The way he was looking at you - hopeful and yearning and a tiny bit scared. Scared that you would say no. You thought you might explode from pure joy. You smiled at him then, as you closed the distance between you and stepped into his open arms.

Tags: @aconflagrationofmyown @jelliedonut

#austin butler #austin butler elvis #elvis 2022 #austin butler fantasy #austin butler x reader #austin butler x y/n #austin butler x you #austin butler angst #austin butler fluff #austin butler blurb #austin butler imagine #austin butler fic #austin butler fanfiction #written by ab4eva #ab4eva answers #anon request

[dontjudgemeimawriter]

OC in 15

Tagged byy @thegreatobsesso (through my main)

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!

1.

(to Raymond) “Your careful and my careful are different things.”

2.

(to Mika, about Raymond) "He might end up hating me, but what keeps him safe and alive is none of what he’s told you getting out. To the police or the Syndicate.”

3.

(to Raymond) "I know you don’t like the spell, but I don’t even know who [I am without the focus spell] okay? I’ve been focusing since I let you go. You don’t want the person from before that.” 

4.

Context: Raymond and Terran are talking about why Terran let Jesse live, and also why Terran had in the past let Raymond live/saved his life.

Raymond: “Everyone’s real.”

“Yeah, but you taught me that. Everyone who did feel real to me back then saw everyone else the same way I had. Maybe it was partially because you seemed to care, unlike anyone else did, but ultimately, I think that was it. You were real. So maybe all it took was talking to Jesse for him to be real to me. And I don’t know if that helps, because maybe you’re right that it should be everyone, or maybe it would be better if it’d come from something you said or did…”

5.

(to Raymond) “Focusing isn’t why I worry about things. Do you just not like me telling you what to do?” 

6.

(I'm going to count this as dialogue. It's a thought passed from Terran to Raymond that, as thoughts are, is a little jumbled:)

Tried to (can’t move) found Jodi, tried to free her (stuck) caught— failed— (The Judge) Mika was here, gave them something— mistake— Judge using me to bargain (care about me?)— can’t move— don’t do what they want.

7.

(to Mika) "You and Raymond were so good at knowing what the right thing to do is. I watch you do all this and see how much you hate it, because you know it’s wrong. But I’ve only known that based on you guys’s example.”

8.

(The actual dialogue here is 100% not true. But him lying here imo is a big part of his character. Basically, Terran needs to convince Alex that he isn't a threat, and recently Zachary advised Terran that Alex would exploit him caring about people. His denial here, him lying, in a way, really is about how much he does care. Also, I think it says a lot about him that he can and will solidly deny things like this in order to protect those he cares about. He's basically claiming that he doesn't care if Raymond lives, it was more about rebelling against Zachary than anything else. He ha also stated recently, in his thoughts, that to him, "freedom" is just being with Raymond)

“I want to leave. I want to quit.” I said, turning back to [Alex]. “Disobeying Zachary by letting Raymond live wasn’t the best way to go about it, I admit. But now he’s gotten me what I wanted. And you get what you want out of him. That was the deal you guys had, right? I’m not a threat to you because once this transaction is finished, I have what I wanted. Freedom.”

9.

(to Mika) “I already know enough [about my parents' death]. I appreciate learning about them in the journal, I’d be willing to learn more about who they were, but not this. I don’t want to know how they died. Zachary has taught me a million way to kill someone and he knows a million more. I don’t want to know which one it was.”

10.

(to Rayymond) “I’m constantly disappointing you. I’m always doing the wrong thing, the only difference is lately I’m finding excuses. I’m terrified of Alex paralyzing me again. But when I say you should leave without me, it’s what I owe not just you, but everyone— because I’ve always been sacrificing others for myself, haven’t I? Not even for my own life, just for…approval. The only difference lately is that you’ve become a part of who I’ll sacrifice others for, except you don’t want me to do that, and even if I try I don’t know how to do it. Even if I was ever able to leave, I can’t escape myself— everything I’ve done and everything I still want to do. And maybe we’ll all better off if you and Mika can escape and I’ll no longer be able to—“

I'll leave it there, since it said 15 of fewer, many of these are long, and I'm catching up to where I am. This was a lot of fun, and I definitely want to do this again for Raymond and Mika. I kinda wonder if I can even do it with Zachary. Please feel free to tag me again on this XD.

It's definitely difficult doing a POV character who's so often hiding things. I knew going in that this would most show up when he's talking to Raymond. But going through I saw some Very Raymond lines and Very Mika lines, and I think I talk more about Terran's character here, but I would like to pick out the lines that show the other characters whose only ways of showing their character is their dialogue (and actions).

Tagging @sleepy-night-child @squarebracket-trick @enbydragon02 (ik you might not be far enough in anything for this so you can just look XD) and @drippingmoon

#syndicate #terran #oc in 15 #oc in 15 tag

[melrosing]

opinions on Ned/Cersei?

I really like it and almost wrote fic for it once. as you may know I have never written fic so that might be saying something lol. Their dialogue and chemistry in that ONE AGOT scene is just off the charts, I could not help imagining what a Nedsei arranged marriage would look like

Anyway I imagined it and I think… in just about the right circumstances…. maybe Cersei wouldn’t murder him outright?? Like I don’t think he’s really her type to start with, she likes more excitement than Ned can really offer, and no I don’t think she’d ever settle for the role of Lady of Winterfell, she’d fucking hate it up there

But if Ned were Cersei’s betrothed instead of Robert… I mean, Robert is the source of a sizeable portion of Cersei’s self hatred. I think she was a bit more starry-eyed about the world before her marriage to him, but his abuse has caused her as much self hatred as it has hatred of Robert himself. Tywin’s parenting has obviously still fucked with her too, same as her brothers, but maybe there is more hope for a young Cers to find a level of happiness than thirty-something Cers of canon.

If she were to marry Ned instead, I think she’d still chafe with the role expected of her, but Ned’s not really a stranger to women chafing in that - his sister did, too, and when Ned sees Arya struggling the same way, he finds ways to help her embrace her own aspirations. I don’t think Cersei is much like Lyanna or Arya, but maybe a newly wed Ned would try to understand his wife and what she needs out of the marriage, rather than simply enforce what society expects of her. I mean he does a pretty astounding job seeing the whole ‘why did the lann twins attempt to murder my seven year old son’ from her perspective so credit where it’s due. Who knows what kind of understanding they’d come to

We still obvs have to grapple with the fact that Cersei ultimately wants to be Queen though, not a feudal lord’s wife, and it would take a LOT to convince her she has a better lot otherwise. Cersei is also just not very nice as is LMAO, even as a young woman, so to what extent Ned would be able to cope with having a wife who committed homicide at ten… well

I think what I like about Nedsei is imagining how two wildly different characters could come to any kind of understanding and turn it into something more. But in practice it probably takes some high level equations

#ask #eddard stark #cersei lannister #abuse cw

[myechoecho]

Rewatching W: Two Worlds

Ep 15, heading to the finale.

Not only has Yeon Joo been pulled into the comic but so has Sung Moo.

I didn't mind seeing So Hui, because if nothing else they did manage to completely change her set up. Cheol is no longer her only reason for being. They've changed it so successfully that she's even leaving for America while Cheol's appeal verdict is coming up.

I loved the scene in the courtroom! The look on Cheol's face when he hears her name and then sees her. It's a longish scene but there is no dialogue - everything is conveyed through their expressions. When Cheol has to turn back, you can see the relief and weight of his shoulders. But he also cannot stop from looking back at her again while the judge is droning on and rejecting his appeal.

When they finally speak, and Cheol learns how far out of wack their timelines are he mentions some of the thoughts he had about her not coming back because he's broke etc. I know Yeon Joo accuses him of joking but I don't think he fully was. There must have some some times in jail that he had those thoughts. It would be really hard not to.

Cheol can no longer move freely between the worlds. Not only that but it was his thought about not wanting to be the main character that triggers the final episode. I wonder it was all it ever took to end or if certain conditions had to be filled first. I suspect it's a combination of both.

Cheol escapes, with the help of Sung Moo and meets up with Yeon Joo. I do love this meeting between them with Yeon Joo upset and wondering how they will get their happy ending. Cheol just says they will plan a new one. I love how Cheol starts to tease her to lighten the mood - she's not as pretty as he remembers, she calls him old so he tells her to "call him Oppa" to her refusal (I imagine the Oppa part is going to be a running joke between them for the rest of their lives - him telling to call him Oppa and her refusal).

We find out the state of Sung Moo and it is not good. First, I do like that he thought to make a back up back up tablet and hide it in the comic.

I've been thinking about this and where it all went wrong for Sung Moo. More than trying to kill Cheol or the deal he made with the Real Culprit, it was when he gave the Real Culprit his face. That is the point of no return and where it doomed him. It's tragic too because the reason he used his own face made sense for the story of the comic. His face was the only one that Cheol would accept.

But by giving him his face, they are intertwined in a different way and they cannot be pulled apart. I still think it has something to do with not being in two places at once which allows for the Real Culprit to take over Sung Moo. It's also why he becomes a partial comic character. Do I think Sung Moo shot Yeon Joo? No that was clearly the Real Culprit.

If Sung Moo has stayed only in the real world, he may have been okay. He doesn't and the comic world is where he falls apart. He cannot separate himself from the Real Culprit. I think he was brought to the comic as the creator, the face of the Real Culprit and now, the spirit essence of the Real Culprit. Things have to be resolved with him for the story to end. He's right - there is no happy ending for Cheol and him both. It's one or the other.

Yeon Joo is still fighting but Cheol warns her there can be no happy ending for the three of them. Either Cheol or Sung Moo will not be at her side. He takes of their rings and says he will remove her from his family register. He lets her make the final decision - it is up to her and he will follow her choice.

#w two worlds #kdrama

[a-queenoffairys]

Code Lyoko Dialogue Stats

A while ago, I got curious about how much of the dialogue in Code Lyoko is spoken by each of the main characters, and how often some of them might get sidelined compared to others. I decided a quick way to find out would be to write a script to analyse all the fanmade episode transcripts and tally up the line and word count for each character.

So I did just that! And I ended up with a bunch of statistics I find pretty interesting. Image descriptions are in the alt text.

Ranking main characters across the original series

Jeremie was the clear winner when it came to the amount of dialogue everyone has. And it makes sense, given how he's the one who does the most work helping Aelita and trying to find ways to counter XANA, as well as acting as the group's guide on Lyoko, so he's much more likely to be able to get to the factory and help the others deactivate the tower.

Aelita and Yumi scored pretty low especially in the first two seasons, namely because Aelita spent all of season 1 stuck on Lyoko, and Yumi was in a different class to Ulrich, Odd and Jeremie. This meant that both of them had fewer chances to interact with the rest of the cast. Aelita in season 2 is a bit more strange, as she was living on Earth permanently but she just didn't appear in many of the classroom scenes. If there's some sort of explanation for this, I don't know what it is.

It was Odd who had the most lines spoken in a single episode, and that episode was Triple Trouble. So yeah, it's understandable he would have way more dialogue than everyone else in an episode where there are three of him running around.

Dialogue stats per season

Something of note here is how the average word and line count increase quite a bit by season 4. Season 4 is known for audio quirks such as the occasional sped-up voice line and sometimes cutting off syllables or entire words from the characters' sentences. People tend to think this was due to the English dub struggling to match the French lip flaps, but did you know the sped-up dialogue is present in the original French version too? I can't say for certain, but my theory is they did this because season 4's episodes were so densely packed with dialogue, they had trouble fitting it all in.

I think this shows just how big a role secondary and background characters had in season 1 compared to the other seasons. Speaking of which, Jim was the most talkative secondary character in the series, followed by Sissi.

Ranking main characters in Evolution

Once again Jeremie is the clear winner, by a wider margin this time. I have to give his actor credit for doing so many scenes where he was sitting alone in a chair pretending to talk to someone on Lyoko or the phone.

It's nice to see Aelita and Yumi moving up the rankings, but also disappointing that secondary characters have such a small role. Without more prominent secondary characters around to create interpersonal drama, I feel Evolution's writers would often turn to creating drama between the main characters instead, even when it didn't seem like it made sense for them to be upset at each other. Jim and Laura make up the bulk of the secondary character dialogue; all the other characters score very low.

Another thing to note is how low William scored. Even if you don't count the episodes prior to him officially joining the group, there are still a number of episodes where he only has about 4 to 6 lines - low scores not seen since Aelita was materialised at the end of season 1.

This graph is mostly the same as the previous one, but now with Evolution added and William separated from the other secondary characters in seasons 2-4.

Full data

If you click the link below you'll find the full spreadsheet with my methodology and full dialogue breakdowns for every episode, season, main character and top secondary characters, for both Code Lyoko and Evolution. Enjoy!

#code lyoko #code lyoko evolution #//I finally posted it wowwww

[northerngoshawk]

kfp4 review

just watched kfp4 for the first time yesterday, so here are my initial thoughts

spoilers under the cut!

The Good:

THE FIGHT SCENES!! as someone who once aspired to be a fight animator, the flow of each fight was astonishing - as expected of the kfp franchise 😌 my fav fight scene has to be between po and the chameleon as she shapeshifts into different enemies po had fought. just - UGH. scratches an itch i didn't know i even had

outside of the fight scenes, i really really REALLY loved the way they brought back tai lung. even if we only get like 5 min of dialogue n screentime with him, i really love the way he and po interacted with each other, how tai lung wasn't automatically all buddy-buddy with po and still held an ounce of contempt for po being the dragon warrior as opposed to him - even if he seems like he ultimately found some seamblance of inner peace. it made it that much more satisfying when tai lung finally acknowledges po as the dragon warrior. it really did feel like the resolution of tai lung's arc from the first movie, because while i think tai lung accepted that he would never be the dragon warrior, he didn't accept po as the dragon warrior until that very moment

in relation to the above, i think the part where everyone from the spirit realm acknowledges po alongside tai lung was the shining, pivotal moment of the entire film. it just felt entirely satisfying to see tai lung, shen, and kai in particular acknowledge po as someone worthy of the title of dragon warrior - tai lung bc of what i mentioned above, shen bc he only ever saw po as "the black-and-white warrior" that would defeat him, and kai bc he treated po as a joke until the very end of the third film. there's something very satisfying to see these former villains being saved by the very person they once fought and humbly bowing in respect to him.

the voice acting for the chameleon! the character itself, i'll get to in a moment, but i really do think the voice acting for her was phenomenal.

THE PANGOLIN!! idk why but honestly i thought he was a bit more intimidating than the chameleon. also i love the way they utilized his rolling around, so it didn't exactly feel like he was just being bounced back and forth, but being deliberate about it, like a martial artist

li and ping. i needn't say more.

The Meh:

zhen's character as a whole. ik most people's feelings on her range from indifference to outright hatred, and i personally lean more towards the former. the concept of her character in and of itself is intriguing, but the execution fell flat, turning her into one of those generic i-was-a-bad-guy-who's-totally-gonna-betray-you-but-because-of-your-good-heart-i've-changed-for-the-better characters. i'm fine with newer characters being added to the cast, don't get me wrong, but i want to see more... creativity ig, when it comes to their character arcs. i will say that i did enjoy the banter between her and po.

the jokes. the jokes themselves are fine, i even gave a chuckle every here and there, but the problem was really the timing of them. some jokes were placed well, but others felt like they completely messed up the emotional beats of the movie. some of em even felt almost... sacrilegious, esp when considering the first three movies.

how shen and kai didn't have speaking roles. i really really wished i would've gotten to see them exchange a few words with po alongside tai lung, but i also get the budget may not have allowed it. still, i will give the film points for focusing on them at the right moments, as well as having them flank tai lung when approaching po. not as satisfying as having them exchange a few words, but satisfying nontheless

The Egregious:

a severe lack of the furious five. i get that the budget may not have allowed them to come back in speaking roles, but by sidelining the five, kfp4 just didn't feel like a kfp movie. a core part of the first three movies, esp kfp 1 and 2, was the way the furious five grew alongside po and learned to not only work alongside him but to become his friends. i suppose the reason to have them step away was to also emphasize the "change" theme of the fourth movie, but it shouldn't change to the point where they are no longer a huge part of po's life. by taking them away, kfp4 really lost some of the soul that went into kfp 1-3

the fact that po really called himself the "kung fu panda." this is writing on par with "maybe the true dragon warrior was the friends we made along the way." we didn't need to hear the title come out of a character's mouth. please never ever EVER do that again, writers.

also the fact that po's achievements seemed downplayed in this movie. maybe kfp1 & kfp3 wouldn't be all that well-known, but when you save gongmen city and, essentially, the entirety of china, i'm pretty sure that your exploits would reach far and wide, regardless of where geographically you are on the map. the director mentioned that he wanted to take po to a far, distant land on his journey - but again??? gongmen city????

the chameleon's character. she just... didn't feel as intimidating as the other villains. when we first meet tai lung, he's a shadow with glowing gold eyes in the deepest pits of a dungeon. when we first meet shen, he effortlessly kills one of the most renowned kung fu masters in the land. when we meet kai, he overpowers and steals the chi of master oogway, a respected and well-beloved character in the universe. but chameleon? she just tosses someone down a set of stairs. painful, yes, but not quite as intimidating as the other three. her motivation for being a villain is also a bit weak, seeing as how she bemoans about being "too small" to be a kung fu master when mantis is, quite literally, right there. and while i can see arguments on how master oogway didn't judge mantis by his appearance but by his potential, it just didn't feel like a good enough motivator - or at least, the movie didn't really show us how the discrimination really affected her, instead relying on telling us how it affected her.

the entire plotline. i mean, i can understand needing to pass on the mantle of the dragon warrior to someone else once po passes, but the problem is that it essentially off-sets the ENTIRE point of the first movie. the whole point of being the dragon warrior was that it was a coveted title that couldn't be passed off to just ANYONE - oogway didn't choose tai lung, shifu, or any of the furious five for that very reason. the first film gave the sense of "fate" and "destiny" being the ultimate decider of who gets to be the dragon warrior, while this film po chooses his successor because... what? he felt bad for her and thinks she could become a better person? they could've done that for her without having her become the dragon warrior.

my biggest issue with kfp4, however, was that this entire film just felt like the writers were trying to copy the formula of kfp2 without understanding WHY kfp2 worked. let me break it down: po goes to a distant city with a bad guy that lives at the top of a terrifying tower, commences in a city-wide chase that leaves him in an underground/criminal environment where he tries to recruit people to his cause but fails, then goes out to face the enemy, gets thrown out at first, and then succeeds a second time. the scene when zhen tries to stop po from facing the chameleon, first by sparring with him and then hugging him, was especially remniscent of the scene in kfp2 when tigress tries to stop po from facing shen - except it didn't contain the same emotional beats as kfp2 did. why? it's because tigress and po had two movies to develop their relationship. we've seen how they were in kfp1 vs kfp2, from the one-sided rivalry and even contempt to friends who would put themselves on the line for the other's sake. we also know tigress's character, how she tries to be the stone-cold, tough love kind of person even around her fellow furious five members. so, when we see tigress hug po, it's a very pivotal moment not just for the movie, but for her character arc as well. but when i see zhen do the same thing for po, all i can think about is how it's essentially a cheap replication of what kfp2 does, but without the proper emotional investment and emotional beats kfp2 had.

The Memes:

if i had a nickel for every time awkwafina voiced a character whose themes revolved around trust, i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Overall:

despite all my gripes with the movie, i thought that this was a fun movie to watch and not take all that seriously. definitely the weakest movie of the franchise, but not a terrible sequel compared to other franchises. you'd just have to watch and form your own opinion on this movie. personally, if i wanted to watch a kfp movie with some of the best emotional beats of the franchise, i'd just rewatch kfp2.

#kfp 4 #kfp #kung fu panda #kung fu panda 4 #kfp4

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

Tagged by @meyerlansky

How many works do you have on AO3? 773

What's your total AO3 word count? 2,059,396

What fandoms do you write for? I'm deep in Masters of the Air now, obviously. I've also written for Band of Brothers and Generation Kill. I dabble a LOT, so my overall fandom list is very long. Way back in the day I wrote a lot of West Wing. I did a lot of Guy/Kyle in Green Lantern, and then Law & Order: SVU ate my brain for several years even though I can't actually say the show was ever good. Oh, and I was in Avengers fandom hanging out with my fellow Phlint crew at one point.

Top Five Fics by Kudos Revenge is Best Served @ (Check Please, Jack/Bitty)

But I Will Hold on Hope (And I Won't Let You Choke (Avengers, Phil/Clint)

By the Book (Avengers, Phil/Clint)

These Are Our Friends, and These Are Our Foes (You're the One I Love Most (Avengers, Phil/Clint)

5 Scenes to Build a Team (+2 Scenes of Sweet Sweet Victory) (Avengers, Phil/Clint)

Do you respond to comments? Yup! Usually in batches. I really like doing it.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? You Would Live a Hundred Years If I Could Show You How (Law & Order, Jack McCoy/Mike Cutter) -- I killed Jack.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I tend to write happy endings most of the time, so you can really just pick one, but I think it's probably A New Mode of Living (Band of Brothers, Speirs/Lipton), and I'm including the epilogue with that.

Do you get hate on fics? Very occasionally. I just delete/block and move on.

Do you write smut? Oh my yes.

Craziest Crossover? I once had CJ Cregg go on a date with Big Bird. They had a lovely time.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Yup! Someone stole a bunch of my Rita/Amanda fics from AO3 and slapped them on Wattpad with Amanda switched for Olivia but everything else verbatim. I reported the shit out of her, and when she moved over to AO3 and literally did the same thing, I reported her again. She accused me of bullying, naturally.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Several! And I have blanket permission for my fics if anyone wants to translate anything. I would love if you'd link back to the original story so I know it's out there.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Eons ago there was a show called Without a Trace, and a friend and I took turns writing vignettes for the same couple. Same friend let me write a sequel to their Leo/Josh West Wing story, and we did a few more things like that. I don't think that any of those survive, however.

All time favorite ship? Speirs/Lipton, Band of Brothers. They are very important to me. They see each other in a very important way, and I treasure them.

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? On the advice of counsel, I refuse to answer.

Seriously, though I don't really have that sort of WIP. Either I'm working on it (A Mighty, Vast, and Dangerous Place is still in active progress), or the idea didn't pan out (a bunch of stuff), or I actively chose to stop working on it (there's a Ted Lasso fic that I will never touch again).

What are your writing strengths? I do good character voices and can get the emotional response I want from readers. I have fun coming up with interesting descriptions.

What are your writing weaknesses? Losing steam. Getting distracted by a new fandom. From a writing-writing standpoint, I have a hard time remembering room layouts or where people are in them. I don't think visually, so I'm always having to scroll back up or make a note so I don't forget a piece of furniture or a whole guy.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? I got no problems. It's about being able to understand the point of the conversation, not necessarily the words themselves. There's lots of ways to get it across while having the dialogue in a different language than the rest of the fic for whatever reason. But the use of the other language needs to fit the story and the characters, and if you're writing in another language, you better know it's quirks.

First fandom you wrote in? Ahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha

Oh, god, it was Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers back when god was a child.

Oh, man. God, I just got the goofiest memories. I was SO into that show.

Favorite fic you've written? Oh advice of counsel, I plead the fifth.

Honestly, I don't know. It changes constantly.

Tags (very optional): um, @dytabytes, @infiniteeight8, @daysofxavierspast @sarahcakes613, @ralkana, @lunaris1013, and anyone who wants to. I swear I barely remember my own name when it comes to tagging time.

#fic writer ask #asked and answered #this was fun!