#literally built-in mechanics for 'hey the fans want to see the characters in this kind of situation'

[biggiedraws]

thinking about. yoohankim body swap......

mild novel spoilers ahead but no big story moments or anything just. brief mentions of skills they get later and such

okay so weve got 2 options here, right (well technically theres 6 ways to arrange 3 objects but. if we assume each of them swaps into someone else. theres 2). first one. kdj -> yjh, yjh -> hsy, hsy -> kdj. right off the bat - extremely funny. kdj in yjhs body having the time of his life (i am the protagonist!!), but also adjusts fairly quickly bc like. hes done this before. hsy in kdjs body is a menace. immediately rummaging through his pockets. everyone is unsettled by unreadable normalguy kdj making hsys evil little gremlin expressions. and yjh in hsys body is like. immediately getting bullied because his menacing aura does not work at all in hsys 5 foot frame. kdj-as-yjh is picking him up by the scruff of the neck and all he can do is glare murderously

second arrangement. kdj -> hsy, hsy -> yjh, yjh -> kdj. i think i like this one less but lets see. yjh as kdj is pretty good, i think yjh would be disgruntled no matter who he swaps bodies with but since the 2 of them are on such even footing in the narrative, i think actually spending time in kdjs weak pathetic body would make him lose some respect for him lmfao. like "what have you been doing all this time that your body is in such poor shape. pathetic." hsy as yjh is extremely salty about how op he is. muttering about cliches under her breath. definitely uses her new power to relentlessly bully kdj (omg wait that means hsys body is getting harassed by yjhs body in both scenarios..... what can i say. shes the perfect size to be bothered. the only reason she isnt bothered more in canon is because of her sharp teeth - i stand by this). kdj as hsy is. unremarkable i think. loudly complains about how much shorter he is now just to piss her off. finds an unholy amount of candy in her pockets and publicly shames her about it until she points yjhs sword at him and he shuts up real quick.

honestly i think both of these scenarios have great potential for physical comedy though. they all have such different mannerisms and such different appearances that reshuffling them is always gonna be striking. i need to draw it.....

okay lets talk logistics. do they keep all their skills or do the skills stay with the body? they probably keep them, although it might be more interesting to have like. physical skills like swordfighting and whatnot stay with the body. so if they get stuck like that for a while and end up fighting in each others bodies they kinda have to adapt to the bodies skills and fighting style. could be fun! hmmm that kinda leaves whoevers in kdjs body in the lurch though, since all his skills are mental..... and then kdj has a massive advantage, because surely the bookmark skill gets a boost if hes literally in the body of the person hes copying. so perhaps they keep all their skills - hsys avatar skill in yjhs protagonist body would be pretty op. and yjh has so many skills that he could make anything work - he might end up ripping kdjs body to shreds though lmfao. also im not sure if we get much of kdj using hsy as a bookmark in the novel? i actually dont remember an instance of it, although i can see him wanting to steal predictive plagiarism so it may have happened and i just forgot. but anyway kdj as hsy using bookmark + avatar, and then hsy as yjh also using avatar is an INSANE combo. two man army. and then theres kdjs body there like *struggling to hold up a sword* "i am yoo joonghyuk......" *passes out* LMAO sorry kdj i know youre not that pathetic its just so funny to imagine the protagonists sheer power literally destroying your fragile salaryman body from the inside out.

omg also. if the swap lasts more than a few minutes theyre DEFINITELY getting their weapons and coats back from their bodies. black coat hsy...... wait omg. okay i know kdjs coat is like a high grade magic item that changes size with him. not sure if yjhs is the same but allow me for a moment - yjh-as-hsy trying to look menacing (already failing) but his coat is way too big. its dragging on the floor. the sleeves cover his hands. 😭😭😭😭 its so ridiculous...... other notable combos - white coat hsy (head in hands). hsy-as-yjh gets yjhs coat stolen from her which means the protagonist physique is on full display - she makes a comment about how WoS should have made more use of this kind of fanservice and now she and kdj are arguing. black coat kdj..... i am yoo joonghyuk......

okay i think thats all i got for now. i hope its in character because i really havent read orv in a while..... anyway i think this has a lot of potential so i wanna try drawing it - maybe ill have more thoughts on specific character interactions once i can like,, put personalities to faces lmao

#to be clear im picturing this as a random scenario (as in. scenario in the orv sense) somewhere in the middle of the novel #god i love the orv worldbuilding its so good for fanfiction #literally built-in mechanics for 'hey the fans want to see the characters in this kind of situation' #anyway yeah. im sure theres bodyswap fanfic out there but i wanted to sort out my first thoughts about it before i open ao3 lmfao #orv #omniscient reader's viewpoint #yoohankim #body swap #brb drawing it

[theidiotwhowritesthings]

hey! I just wanted to say I love your fic A Fresh Start SO MUCH !! the writing is just *chefs kiss* and the slow burn is just long enough to be agonizing but in literally the best way possible, it’s written SO WELL AND I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH DUDE !!!!!

I love your fic so much, and for the past couple of days I’ve been kicking around the idea to ask you: is it ok if I draw your character Nima from A Fresh Start? I just love her so much and she’s one of my favorite side characters, and I was hoping I could ask if it was ok if I could draw her? She’s just such a fun character and I really like the idea of drawing her pink(?) skin and other details, and if I could draw her, do you mind providing any details about her? Like maybe some references, any outfit she wears, or just any sort of spare details you have about her?

anywyas, tysm, I love your fic a LOT and have a good day !! <3

ps. if you have an anon list going, I wouldn’t mind going by ⭐️ (star) Anon :)

THE SOUND THAT LEFT MY MOUTH WHEN I READ YOUR MESSAGE WAS INHUMAN. ABSOLUTELY YES YOU CAN DRAW NIMA HOLY SHIT IM SCREEEEAMING.

Okay. Deep breath. Holy moly. Alright. Guess what, my friend? You just opened Pandora's box. You asked for spare details but I'm about to ramble for DAYS. Nima's got a full history and backstory (b/c I'm obsessive about this kind of stuff) that I haven't been able to explore in the story to the degree I want SO NOW YOU GOTTA SUFFER THROUGH PARAGRAPHS OF INFORMATION.

Just swear to me that you'll send me the finished result because I neeeeeeed it. You think I'm insane and feral now? Just you wait. Okay. Now, info dump waiting below.

So mentally the closest face claim I have for Nima would be the actress Seo Ye Ji (as in if Nima got to ever see the silver screen that's exactly who I would want hired to play her lol).

Nima is pretty average in height, and she's built firm. Not a body builder by any means, but you can see the strength in her arms and shoulders from the multiple years of working in a garage doing heavy lifting and being hands on. Her skin tone is a more pastel shade of pink, like a soft bubble gum pink, but her lekku both have a sprinkling of freckles all over them in a darker shade of pink. Her eyes are a dark brown, and she has freckles across the bridge of her nose and on her cheekbones that match the ones on her lekku.

Nima has no tattoos or piercings, she's terrified of needles. Markings of note though, she has a collection of scars along her arms (burns and cuts) from her work. Nima has a bad habit of getting excited when working on a project she's excited about and in her excitement she'll forget to wear gloves or cover her arms in the proper gear.

When she's working, Nima wears a pair of navy mechanic coveralls to protect her skin when doing more dangerous work, but as said previously, Nima has a bad habit of shrugging out of the upper half to tie the arms around her waist leaving her in either a plain tank top or sports bra. She does it to cool off, but often forgets to zip the upper body part back up before getting back to work. While on the job, there are three things she always has on her: a pair of work goggles either resting on her forehead or hanging around her neck, an old pair of work gloves she's kept forever despite their disrepair, and a matching set of dark brown work boots. All three were gifts from her father when she got her first job as a mechanic.

When Nima's not working, her style is all over the place. She prefers pants and shorts to dresses and skirts and tends to lean toward large, loose fitting t-shirts that she'll tuck into high waist shorts or pants. But, she's also a big fan of oversized hoodies, cardigans, and flannels for when the weather gets cooler.

I attached some random pictures I found on pinterest of things I could picture Nima wearing.

AGAIN DON'T FORGET TO SEND ME THE ART PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU🥺⭐️

#a fresh start #nima #fan art #listen to me #i am losing it #omg #any sort of art of my work will make me foam at the mouth #i'll be rabid #i need the serotonin #pls #asks #feel free to ask me about anything!!

[kitkatpancakestack]

Hey! Wanted to pick your brilliant brain about something: We're all pretty sure Eddie is going to be the one pining in season 5 (I mean all signs point to that), so what do you think they'll do with Buck this season regarding his feelings for Eddie? Eddie realizing things first changes things, so I wonder how they will write the trajectory of Buck realizing his own feelings and reciprocating Eddie's, especially since he'll be with Taylor. What do you think? How do you want to see it play out?

@ktinaj well hello there friend! I am honored a galaxy brain like yours would deign to pick my brain. Thank you for this excellent ask, it's something I most definitely think about and I do have some thoughts on the matter, predictably :3

Also, this might get long because I love delving into character psyches and motivations, so I apologize upfront but here we go:

I'll just say that I know the popular fandom treatment of Buck is him being the one who is in touch with his feelings and his emotions, the one who wears his heart on his sleeve, the one who is an open book. To be honest, I lean in the opposite direction. Buck, to me, is one of those people who is pseudo-open. You know the people who share so much superficial information (e.g. their sex life, their hobbies, their workout routine) that you just default them as being this super open person, when in reality it's just a defense mechanism to control the way others perceive them (hello not-totally-worthless psychology degree!)

This is all to say that I think Buck is going to Struggle with how to fit this revelation into the context of his engrained preconceptions toward himself. Not that he is actively trying to self-sabotage, or that he is ungrateful toward Eddie, but that he is literally facing a wall built of 20+ years worth of the damage caused by his parents, toxicity he perpetuated with one-night stands and meaningless flings and self-disparagement.

Buck's character arc is just such a realistic and important subject that I have not seen this beautiful crafted in any other show/movie. It was so well-rounded out through season 4, and I think they will continue to nurture it through the context of Eddie's (likely) burgeoning feelings toward Buck. While I'm not a fan by any means of Buck and Taylor together (he so obviously regresses when he's with her) I think it would be a pivotal way to show Buck grappling with how he feels about Eddie. I think since season 2, Taylor has been Buck's kind of "what if," which morphed into this weird idealistic version of her, which morphed into this thinking of, "If I can't make it work with her, then I won't be able to make it work with anybody, and I'm screwed." Obviously this isn't the case. But I think he needs to move through the motions of this thing with Taylor, given the knowledge of how Eddie feels about him and his place in his and Christopher's lives, to be able to draw the parallels and realize, Wait a minute, this isn't what I imagined, this isn't what I thought, maybe we really shouldn't be together, or for him to realize that nobody can give him what he needs in the way Eddie can.

Buck and Eddie both have some deep-seates abandonment issues, but Buck's is just astronomically tragic. I think once the fallout of Eddie's guardianship reveal settles, Buck will have to work through what that does to his place in the Diaz's lives. Honestly, I don't think we're done with Eddie's grand verbal gestures @ Buck, because while Buck would die for Christopher, I think the gravity of Eddie's conviction will only truly hit home when Eddie says to Buck, verbatim, "I need you here, too. We aren't a family without you."

Exquisite ask. I'll be thinking about this for awhile for sure.

#buddie #buddie meta #its angsty buddie hours #they are just so! #soulmatey! #Buck really just needs it spelled out for him which I get #Put in such a way where there are no loopholes and no uncertainties #He just wants something he can trust that can be HIS #He wants Eddie and Christopher but I really don't think he believes something that great is possible for him #I think Eddie feels the same but that's a separate post #these two jfc I cannot with them #ask #meta by me

[reylorabbittrail]

Long, Barely Coherent Thoughts about The Rise of Skywalker

Since some of you wanted to hear my thoughts about “The Rise of Skywalker”, I’ve taken some time to write them up and provide context for why I responded the way I did.

A small preamble: I didn’t hate it. Hate is a strong word. And there were moments that I liked. Some that I even loved. However, the aggregate feeling for the movie overall was disappointment. For certain elements, it went beyond that into something genuinely painful and I don’t think that will make sense unless I also go into why I loved the previous two installments of this trilogy.

Also, if you loved this movie, I’m very happy for you. This is about my personal response to a piece of media and I make no judgements on those who enjoyed what you saw. I wish I could join you.

Finally, I will be talking about some sensitive subjects, including child loss and abuse. Please be aware of that before reading further.

Okay, so what was my overall impression of The Rise of Skywalker?

Soulless. Cowardly. Incoherent. Badly paced.

I spent large portions of the movie unable to get into the action because the pacing was so breakneck. There was no time to breathe. Consequently, there was never enough time to recover from one rush before another started. If everything is exciting, nothing is.

I think that this was a deliberate choice to cover up the lack of sense behind the exposition. Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron looks dead inside as he temporarily takes up the mantle of Basil Exposition to explain that somehow or other, Emperor Palpatine has returned and there’s a hard time limit on destroying his fleet.

This is a fine example of a running problem throughout the movie. Whereas both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi used visual storytelling to move the story forward, things in TROS were explained through dialogue time and again. And the dialogue was incredibly clunky.

But back to the story. We are given a paper thin explanation of the Emperor’s return, and immediately are thrown into a fetch quest to find the Big Bad. I’m sure it will make an exciting video game adaptation.

The thing though is that the fetch quest makes no sense. One of the wayfinders is found in the first two minutes of the movie. Yes, it’s in the hands of the bad guys. But does the audience not remember that our heroine is bound to the villain? Why couldn’t she try to use that bond to get at the directions? Why does the Resistance not try to use that bond? Has she hidden from them her connection to Kylo Ren? Either she’s built up a wall of mistrust between her found family and herself by keeping the bond a secret, or she’s revealed all and no one thinks to try to use that bond to their advantage. It’s just conveniently overlooked.

Oh, a sidenote. Wayfinder. Why? There is an in-universe word for such objects already. It’s a holocron. Why not use holocron? We throw Star Wars-isms at the audience all the time. It would be an Easter Egg to the diehards while not bothering the general audience one iota.

Back to our fetch quest. We head to the desert planet of Pasaana. There’s a festival going on. A festival about family. Rey looks longingly at children and infants. A child gives her a fertility necklace. And then suddenly she’s connected by her bondmate through the force.

Now it’s no secret that the Rey and Kylo dynamic is one of the reasons I loved the first two movies in the trilogy. The actors have great chemistry. More importantly, the characters have interesting conflict. And yet that conflict seems off in this movie. TLJ left them complicated enemies. But they feel out of character. I don’t understand what each is trying to get out of their encounters. I have to do massive amounts of work to understand their actions and the dialogue doesn’t help. Because it doesn’t ring true.

Setting such details aside, Kylo rips off the necklace in a moment worthy of the Phantom of the Opera and for once it’s an action that makes sense, having both the subtext of obsessive love and jealousy, and the text of offering a clue for analysis to Rey’s location. Bravo. The writers did something right.

Meanwhile, we get a clunky reintroduction of Lando Calrissian. Has he been stuck on this desert for over 7 years? Longer? We just don’t know and he doesn’t tell us. Our heroes hitch a ride and then we get a fun speeder chase.

Okay, a couple more questions. There’s some good stuff here. The omnipresence of the First Order helps convey how thorough their control is. But why doesn’t Rey hotwire the speeder? It was established two movies ago that she’s a good mechanic. And on Jakku that kind of skill makes sense. Why hand that off to Poe? And why this Trio stuff. It’s fanon. We have just been assuming that Finn’s best friends would form the new Han, Luke, and Leia. Because reasons. None of them textual. It was a failure of TFA to not establish this dynamic if this was an essential element of Star Wars that had to be there from the start.

Which gets to the heart the problem in fandom which is that Star Wars is different  for every fan. What is essential to the series is subjective. For me, Star Wars is light sabers, hyperspace, the Force, epic battles, strange world with one biome only per world. So I’ve never felt like something was missing. But if an essential element was a very particular character dynamic (like a good guy Trio), then I can see why some fans felt let down. As if all the pieces were there but never got put together.

Back to Pasaana. We have a brief descent into the underworld in which Rey has a moment of true Jedi compassion and is rewarded when her compassion for the monster leads to an exit from said underworld. Nice. Mythically coherent. And hey, we also get one of the MacGuffins we’ve been searching for, so, bonus.

 Now we get the arrival of Kylo and his backup band. What was the point of these dudes? I mean, they look cool and I can’t wait to edit videos of them to classic NKOTB. But narratively, why are they there? Why did Kylo reforge the mask? Why all these questions in the third act when we should be in the process of tying up loose ends.

Rey, in a moment reminiscent of bull leaping from Crete, goes out to stall them? I guess? And then ends up in a battle of wills with Kylo that leads to her inadvertent use of Force Lightning.

Okay, another side trip. Are they trying to make out that Dark Side Powers are genetic? Because that’s all I can figure. Really, it’s kind of gross because it suggests that darkness isn’t a human trait that we all carry and must confront, but rather that Rey’s specific problem is a dark legacy. Which, that’s Kylo’s story. He’s the one grappling with the legacy of Vader and how that led his family to fear his darkness rather than aid him in confronting it.

Anyway, we have Rey briefly thinking she’s killed Chewie and that sets our heroes off to our next quest location and another set of problems: Why did we make the Latino man a drug runner and car thief? No, this isn’t just putting an unneeded real world spin on the universe. This is about narrative consistency. Because in a bid to make Poe Dameron an ersatz Han Solo, they broke his actual in-universe back story that had been established in comics and novels. That Poe Dameron was a pilot in the New Republic Navy, the child of war heroes Kes Dameron and Shara Bey. He grew up on Yavin IV. When did he have time to be a smuggler? He’s only a few years older that Ben Solo.

See Lucasfilm has a Story Group that is supposed to help keep narrative consistency between the various media released. And I can’t help shake the feeling that the Story Group was ignored or stonewalled. To please who? The fans? Which fans? Because I would be under the impression that the fans who read the novels and the comics, who dig the trivia aspects of the universe, would be the first to desire the universe to remain coherent.

The Kijimi stuff is fun. Babu Frik is adorable. C3PO is touching. There’s good moments. There really are.

We now go to the infiltration of the Star Destroyer (Does it have a name? Nerds, help me out here. Usually I know this sort of thing.) Again, good moments. I like the implication that Rey’s Force Powers disturb Poe, but it’s never brought up again. One of dozens of Chekhov’s guns left unfired. This is incredibly sloppy in the plotting. Hux is the mole!?! Fun. Yet, again, wasted. And out of character, but I’m sure that’s not going to bother the general audience. Rey gets caught sneaking around in Kylo’s bedroom? Priceless, and some good imagery (smashing the altar to Vader) combined with incredibly clunky dialogue and some more serious questions that never get answered.

The whole time Kylo thought Vader was talking to him it was Palpatine? Why the hell does he still have that mask on a pedestal? He just couldn’t bear to get rid of a collectible? He hadn’t had time to konmari yet? And just what does smashing the pedestal symbolize? Is this the start of Kylo breaking free? We’ll probably never know.

Rey escapes on the Falcon. After getting the worst character reveal in the Saga. I’m sorry. Rey Palapatine is just dumb. I liked that she was a nobody. It allowed her to be the Forces solution to the manipulation and abuse heaped upon the Skywalkers. She was brought into the story and bound to the last scion of House Skywalker as a corrective. She wasn’t overpowered. (No really. She executed a few very basic Jedi skills in the first two movies, none of them exceptional.) And her skill level makes sense the moment you understand that she is bound to Ben Solo. She is literally downloading his training. She can do what he can do. Even her fighting style mirrors his. Fun fact: if you watch the scene in The Last Jedi where she’s practicing sword forms on Ach-to, and compare them to Kylo in his duel with Luke, they’re identical. To a move. Rey is powerful because the Force chooses its vessels. No one was asking who Mace Windu’s parents were. Or Ki-Adi Mundi’s. But Rey is skilled because a very clear in universe device means she has access to Ben Solo’s mind and that included every skill he ever learned.

Alrighty, so now our team is on to the next step in the quest, the ocean moon of Kef Bir, one of the many moons in the Endor system. (No, it’s not the Forest or Sanctuary Moon with the Ewoks.) We meet Jannah, another wasted character. She is pretty and could have been cool. But she exists for us to realize that Finn is probably Force Sensitive and that he broke conditioning not due to innate morality but because he’s not a Muggle.

Which brings me to my gripe with how Finn’s character was treated. He spent the whole movie running around shouting Rey. That’s it. That’s his arc. I don’t mind that he can feel the Force. But I feel like his development was regressed. He had a clear character arc in the first two movies. From a man running away from responsibility to one willing to fight for a friend, to a man willing to commit to cause. This movie should have had him building on that, and perhaps like Moses returning to free the rest of the Stormtroopers who are canonically child soldiers brainwashed into fighting for the bad guys.

Back to the plot. Rey takes off for the Death Star, searches the haunted house and yet again has her moment in the cave, this time confronting a dark vision of herself. Dang that was cool. Would have liked to see more of that. Anyway, she confronts Kylo and he smashes the holocron. Emphasizing for us how pointless this fetch quest has been. Girl could have hopped a ride in his TIE at any point and dealt with the fallout after they dealt with the emperor.

They fight. It wasn’t a bad fight. Just not my favorite. It did emphasize though that Kylo is never ever fighting on the offensive with her. Never in three movies has he ever taken an advantage of an opening for a killing blow, and never was it more obvious than in this fight. Kylo gets distracted, Rey stabs him mortally, and this act seems to wake her up from whatever possessed her in the throne room. She heals him and runs away.

This brings up another thing that bothers me. I know the filmmakers were working with some severe challenges with their footage of Carrie. I don’t think it was badly used for the most part. But I was left baffled at what exactly was going on here.

I was not baffled at Kylo/Ben’s confrontation with Han. This was the high point of the movie for me. It was pitch perfect in tone, and touched on the one an only sin Ben ever committed that wasn’t connected to a war objective, the murder of his father. And it made clear that the prodigal was loved and wanted and it wasn’t too late to come home. The heart of Ben’s problem has been the conviction that he has done too much wrong to come home, and while it is only a memory, it is a true memory of the man who loved Ben enough to walk straight into Hell though he knew it would probably be the death of him. I can forgive this scene for throwing the lightsaber  into the ocean. I realize that most of the audience doesn’t know that you can heal kyber crystals. Yes, the saber was a metaphor for Ben’s damaged and unstable soul, and yes, it would have been poetic (and badass) for him to show up later with a healed lightsaber, stable and blue and looking like something an angel would fight with. But I’ll forgive that for the poetry of what happens on Exegol.

And then we go to my low point. I’ll set my costumer’s beef with Luke Skywalker’s wig aside. It looked cheap and that’s all I’ll say. It was more the deliberate middle finger to TLJ in the lines while ignoring that Luke’s most iconic and Jedi-like moment in the original trilogy was casting aside his lightsaber in an act of compassion. Yes, Rey was burning her ship and throwing away her weapon for the wrong reason.  And it was a deliberate echo of Luke who also was appalled when his fear was twisted by the Dark into an attack on his nephew. She is overcome with the same shame and fear of self. Luke can speak to this in a real way. With better dialogue, it might have worked for me. Alas, it didn’t. Instead we got more exposition to provide us with an extra lightsaber. And more questions about why everyone in this family gave up on Ben Solo.

Here’s the thing. If Leia remains untrained, lots of things make sense: her instinctive but infrequent use of the Force; her fear for her son and sense of inadequacy in dealing with he struggles with darkness, her unresolved issues with her father which lead her to hide her parentage not only from the galaxy but also from her own son. All of this is undone by the training reveal and makes us wonder why everyone was willing to help a descendent of Palpatine but not their own flesh and blood. And in a movie that used dialogue to explain nearly everything, these lacunae stand out more than they would in a film that trusted the audience more. See you could have had Luke say “We messed up. We gave in to fear. And we didn’t want to make the same mistake with you. Rey. I’m the son of Darth Vader. I know more than any man that we are more than our bloodline. And forgetting that with Ben was the worst mistake of my life.” But  he didn’t. Which in a movie which tells as much as or more than it shows seems like a deliberate choice.

Have you noticed that I’m ignoring the space battles? That’s because they’re forgettable. I just didn’t care about them. Especially since the galactic conflict remained essentially unresolved. Back to the Force Plot, the only plot that matters.

Rey confronts Palpatine. Yawn. At this point I just don’t care. For most of the movie, she hasn’t seemed like my Rey. I couldn’t relate and by this point I’ve lost interest so I’m more wondering where did all these people come from. Are there concessions? How much does a hot dog and Coke cost on Exegol? Does this stadium have bathrooms? Nice to see that it’s built like the AT&T one down the street with the sliding roof panels. And then my boy Ben Solo arrives and the film is good again. Without a word of dialogue (besides “ow”) Adam Driver delivers the best performance of the movie, showing that the Han Solo of the trilogy was there the whole time in his son. Was there ever a more Han Solo thing than running into a Dark Side temple in your pajamas, armed only with a blaster? And then Rey passes him Anakin’s saber. OMG. Brilliance. The best part of the movie. For a moment I thought that they would at least wrap it up well. And for a moment they’re side by side and all is right in the world. And then Palpatine throws Ben in a pit.

I hate this. I don’t hate this movie but I hate this moment. For three movies we’ve set up that Rey and Ben (He’s Ben now; don’t’ @ me.) are equals in the Force. They have a Yin/Yang dynamic that made this work. The natural conclusion here should have been that they take out Palpatine together. Because both have a beef with him. This is the man responsible for ruining the lives of four generations of Skywalkers. And while Ben is at the bottom of a pit, Rey stands alone, calling on the Jedi to help her.

The Jedi that are ignoring the Skywalker at the bottom of the pit.

Including Ben’s grandfather that he’s been begging for years to help him.

Including his uncle who promised to always be with him. (We were robbed of Ghost Luke trolling Kylo. Robbed I tell you. Mark Hamill would have nailed that.)

Ben is at the bottom of a pit being ignored while the Jedi transform Rey into their sacrificial lamb for Girl Power points.

So, yeah, I hated how Rey defeated Palpatine. It was wrong. It wasn’t in union with her bondmate. It wasn’t through the power of love and compassion. It was Space Wonder Woman meets Harry Potter. And then she dies. Because the Jedi only ever viewed people as tools in their grand battle with the Sith.

But Ben. Oh, Ben loves Rey for who she is. And he climbs out of the pit without a lick of help from anyone and cradles her lifeless form in the most heartbreaking Pieta, and you can see on his face the moment he make his decision and gives everything of himself to bring her back. It was beautiful, and they share the most pure, the most perfect kiss.

And then he dies.

And that’s where the movie breaks me. Because he didn’t have to die. It doesn’t make sense. Why does Leia hold on until this moment? Why does Maz seem satisfied? Where did Ben go? Why does he go unmourned? Where is his Force ghost? This movie just leaves us with more questions.

And the very end kills me. Rey is on Tatooine. A dead world that holds no importance to her (or Leia, I might add). She buries the Skywalker sabers. A funeral. She sees the ghosts of Luke and Leia bless her as she takes on the Skywalker name. A name that she could have taken in a life-affirming way through marriage, but that appears as scavenged from the dead that she has surrounded herself with as she ends the movie an eternal child, side by side with a stolen droid.

It makes no sense.

But whence my nerd rage? Why do I care? Why have I devoted over 3K words to this?

Because the first two movies in this trilogy made me care about these characters.

When I first saw The Force Awakens, I connected immediately with her loneliness. Loneliness is something I get viscerally. I have always been socially awkward and had difficulty making friends. I rarely felt known or understood and I understood that deep longing to belong. When Rey was being interrogated by Kylo Ren, that was what struck me. He notices her loneliness.

And you realize that Kylo is projecting. That he is seeing in her a kindred spirit. He too is lonely, and trapped by fear into being stuck in a place that he knows in his heart of hearts is a dead world. He too is trapped by relics of the past.

So, you see, Rey and Kylo were both me. I had lived that loneliness. I had experienced profound isolation and the sense that no one truly understood me. I desperately wanted them to find their belonging and heal their wounds. And that’s certainly the story that TLJ picked up on and continued.

But there was more. I became fascinated with the question of how the son of Han and Leia fell, and I could see the possibilities in the pattern of their characters: Leia, the woman driven by duty, trying to build the New Republic to make a better galaxy for her son, and leaving her son vulnerable to predation in the process; Han, a man who had only just stopped running from responsibility, and who’s own lack of father figures left him feeling inadequate as a father. Throw in a villain who can groom and psychically abuse their son and you have the ingredients for a tragedy.

And because I identified with Leia, Ben became, in a way, an additional child. A parent’s greatest fear is that in trying to do the right thing for your child you inadvertently make things worse. Poor Leia. She needed a mother to tell her child mattered more than a bill in the Senate. That the galaxy could wait. But Palpatine killed her mother. Both her mothers, because he was as complicit in the death of Breha Organa as he was in the death of Padme Amidala Naberrie.

So when Ben Solo died, it was like losing a child. And anyone who knows me personally knows that I do not choose that phrasing lightly. And being a mother, there is always a sense of survivor’s guilt. The sense that if you had done the right thing, it wouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t matter if that isn’t the truth. It’s how it feels.

I have met so many people online who identify with Ben Solo because they were abused as children. Who like him processed their trauma in unhealthy ways. It’s not where I come from, but I have the capacity to empathize and hear the message they’re inadvertently being told: that if you do bad things because you’ve been groomed and manipulated and brainwashed, you can’t come back. Even if you turn your life around, it won’t matter. You’ll only find peace in death and you will die unremembered as punishment for your sins. And your family will replace you with someone nicer and easier to live with.

But I can hear you saying: It’s not that deep. It’s fake and in space. It’s just a story.

Well, here’s the problem:

1)    The brain does not distinguish real people from fictional characters. The part of the brain that produces serotonin and dopamine can’t distinguish fact from fiction. This is actually why art has the power to heal. The catharsis experienced in a work of art can help us process trauma because we relate to the characters in the story. But the flip side is that stories can cause genuine trauma. If we related to characters in a story and they are treated unjustly, we feel that injustice and it hurts as badly as if it were real.

2)    Ben Solo was written to be sympathetic. He is the child of beloved characters. His backstory is one filled with pain. He was failed by every family member who should have protected him. He was abused physically and mentally for years. Recently published materials exonerate him from the destruction of the Jedi temple. It was all part of a plot to push him to the Dark. All Ben ever wanted was to be loved for who he was. And that was snatched away from him.

3)    I can’t turn off my brain. I can’t stop asking questions and trying to make sense of things. I can help but see the Chekhov’s guns and the symbols and the messages, however inadvertent.

4)    It is a grand failure of a movie if it only works on a surface level and not when you start digging deeper. Every other Star Wars movie, including The Phantom Menace, rewards the person who can’t turn off their brain. This was the first one that falls apart so completely the second you start asking questions.

I wish I could like this movie. I was prepared to like it if not love it. And while I got Ben’s redemption and the Rey and Kylo romance that I wanted, I feel like I got nothing. Like they don’t matter at all.

I am planning to start new hobbies in the new year. I got some war gaming miniatures painting sets for Christmas and I’m glad I have a new special interest to pour myself into. I have enjoyed sharing my love of Star Wars trivia with my kids but it just hurts too much at the moment to spend time thinking about a franchise that has been so  badly mangled. I’m probably in the bargaining stage of grief at the moment. I wholly buy the theory that there was happy ending filmed and someone blinked in the game of chicken, leaving us the mess that we were handed.

I’m also planning to get back to writing. If even Disney can’t tell a fairy tale properly anymore, it’s time for a new batch of writers to get out there and tell the stories I want to hear. I am sick of grimdark fantasies and cynicism masquerading as sophistication. I may write a fanfic or two to fix the story in my mind, but I think that ultimately I need to be creating original works. I know that there are children eager to believe in happy endings, plenty of women who believe that Byronic heroes can be redeemed, and not a few men who will buy both if the story is well told.

#tros spoilers #negativity #cw:child loss #cw: abuse

[yelloskello]

My thoughts about the latest episode of a not-great show that, god damn it, i’ve already invested 7 seasons worth of time into, I might as well finish it out.

(Game of Thrones. This is a Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 5 spoiler post. Read on at your own risk.)

So this ep. Hmmm.

PRO: they did a very good job getting across the devastating effects of the siege. It felt raw, jarring, horrifying, exhausting. All that good shit.

CON: I get they were running it home, but that’s also all they did. The entire episode. When it came down to characters actually interacting, it felt weak.

PRO(?): Lots of people are saying that Dany going Mad Queen is throwing away seven seasons worth of building up her character to be a good person, and I don’t necessarily agree. I feel like the last seven seasons hasn’t been seeing a good person; it’s been seeing a person who is juggling between struggling to maintain her composure in the face of fits of impulsive anger (return their cities to dirt! i’m just gonna fly over to the red keep and burn it tf down!), and only maintaining it at the behest of the people around her, so at best actively fighting trying to become the Mad Queen, and running on what is quite frankly a power trip. And then big emotions and grief and trauma happens in spades and you know what’s a great way to just throw every coping mechanism you might have ever built up out the fuckin window? That! Exactly that.

She is a woman who feels entitled based on birthright to rule, with the most powerful beings alive under her command and a trail of good deeds - or, at least, deeds she perceives as good - to bolster her belief in herself and what she’s doing. (I bet she flashes back to that deeply uncomfortable White Savior scene a lot in her off time and just feels reeeeal good about it.) She’s always been hellbent on revenge for… Basically everything, and we’ve absolutely seen that desire for revenge outweigh her compassion: remember Mirri Maz Duur? Remember how she played up the role of Benevolent Khaleesi Saving the Poor Civilians? Remember Mirri telling her, ay fuckface, your people had already assaulted me by the time you got there and my future looks hella bleak, you haven’t saved shit? Remember how, when Mirri did what was best for people like herself and saved civilizations from a hellish prophecy, Dany threw all that compassion and what mirri had told her clear out the fuckin door, showing where her priorities as a ruler lie? (I mean, I get it. It’s her husband. But you get what i’m saying.)

People who are capable of significant evil don’t all act like cartoon villains, here. Not every “”””insane”””” person is foaming at the mouth screaming BURN THEM ALL!! 24/7. Someone who’s kind, gentle, and fair in one situation can be a fuckin’ monster in others, especially if they believe they’re doing what’s right, or if their emotional regulation is uhhh h hh garbage and all their loved ones just died in the span of, like, a week. If anything, i’d actually applaud that they managed to overtly include bits and pieces of that characterization while still largely maintaining her appearance of having her shit together to the point where so many fans buy it. Her anger and impulse was clearly there, and some folks caught it, they got their theories, but for the most part, red flags were only kinda raised. Disney could take notes on this the next time they wanna write a hans.

CON: all that being said, hey, thanks for fucking demonizing mental illness again, GoT writers. Just what we needed. : | how fucking lazy and tired, falling back on ‘ha ha she’s crazy and thus the FINAL ULTIMATE VILLAIN :^)’. On a milder level, like… They took a woman fighting for justice and peace, a woman in power and control, and decided to put her down the villain route, which i’m sure is disappointing to fans of the ‘feminist’ parts of her story.

…least we still have Sansa, I guess.

CON 2: and they had to fridge a fucking black woman for it.

PRO: Cleganebowl was a nice wrap-up to that storyline.

CON: Varys, Jaime, and Cersei’s wrap-ups felt rushed, impotent, disappointing, unnecessary (in varys’ case, and somewhat in Jaime’s case), and failed to land emotionally. What the fuck was varys even doing? He’s supposed to one of the smartest characters in the show, but he’s running around like hey you wanna talk treason?? no?? oh okay i’ll go talk to frank about it–HEY FRANK, YOU WANNA TALK TREASON??

PRO: I guess, as meh as it was, there is something poetic about Jaime and Cersei’s end that goes to show how insidious low self-worth can be. that even after everything, all he’s been through, he still comes back to Cersei. Not everyone’s story ends with them breaking free, as sad as it is. And, ofc, the whole ‘came into this world together; going out together’ yadda yadda.

CON-ISH: I just think he should’a gotten to live and redeem himself and grow, far away from his sister. But that’s because literally the entire reason I started watching the show is Brienne, LITERALLY the whole reason, and I want her to get everything she wants in life. And, y’know, while it’s outside the realm of this episode, I feel like the wrap-up of the Jaime/Brienne story felt pretty impotent, too. 

CON: Man Arya sure did do nothing useful the whole episode, huh.

PRO: At least she’s already gotten to enjoy the honor of being the coolest motherfucker in the entire series. Good for her.

Now, for ep 6, i have a dream. And that dream is that its not jon snow who kills dany (but its gonna be, unless they pull a shyamalan and dany ultimately wins it all), but arya disguised as jon (whether its only the faces of the dead she can use is kinda wishy washy, right) which arya is doing to get close to dany without raising her suspicion. (But she already got to kill the night king, so i doubt they gonna let her do THIS, too). ...and then jaime crawls out from the rubble but cersei is still dead o no what a tragedy so he somberly returns to winterfell to keep his head down and start a new, quiet life for himself. (This *definitely* isnt happening.)

#got spoilers #game of thrones spoilers #spoilers

[xaeneron]

On Path of Fire

I haven’t done one of these in a while (or rather I wrote them and then forgot to post them lel), so maybe I’ll actually post this one for the new GW2 expansion after spending the week running around.

Overall, I found the expansion to be pretty solid; the maps are beautiful, the mounts are hilarious and well-implemented, the story was interesting and decently paced, and I’m still experimenting with the new elite specs.  Massive spoilers below the cut!

Questions on anything I wrote, thoughts of your own?  Feel free to boop me; I know I wrote a lot.  

But really, don’t say I didn’t warn you.  There are a LOT of bullet points beneath that cut.  xD

On the maps

Obligatory: they are huge.  It’s fitting since they were designed against HoT’s verticality and more geared towards the use of mounts, so it’s more of an observation, less of a complaint.  There’s a lot of detail and a lot of little things here and there, and it’s incredibly fun to see what you can get away with using mounts to get around the terrain.

That being said I do miss the verticality of HoT maps.  Maybe a combination of both pls? :3

I kind of wish there were more large obvious meta events, but I haven’t gotten to see all of the sort of meta events that go on in the PoF zones. I do think the large metas add replay value, but again a balance is a good thing.

We spur-of-the-moment yolo’ed the Ruptured Heart meta with 11 people.  It was actually pretty fun.  Also so many cannonades ;-;

Hearts feel like they take just a little bit too long.  Some of them are amusing, but when trekking through zones doing map comp (or redoing hearts to get collection items) they drag on a bit.  Guild chatter about hearts was fantastic though:

“These nobles are useless.  What should I do with the chamber pot, throw it off the side or throw it at one of them?”

“I’m throwing flowers at people and making them happy?”

“Matchmaker heart best heart.”

Bounties are hilariously fun?  Sometimes you get unfortunate bullshit combinations of modifiers (anti-stacking fleas + pls stack in the bubble to actually be able to hit the boss mob, I’m looking at you), but overall they’re quite fun.  We spent a good few hours trekking through all five zones murdering things and getting murdered.

These actually look super promising for replayability; our goal/challenge as a group has always been to optimize and work together, so it should be fun to go track down bounties and see what kind of dumb shenanigans we can get up to.

I actually find these really fun in small groups of 5-10.  Zergs sound...unfun.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The caffeinated skritt is...kind of annoying.  Mostly because it doesn’t operate like the treasure mushroom in HoT and you have to be on the class you want the collection item on, and the maps are so large someone could trigger a chest and no one would be the wiser.

A tip though for people wanting to complete multiple collections: you only need to loot the last bag it drops.  If you’re wandering around with friends and they’re nice enough to chill at the bag, you can reload with other characters and grab the bag again for another collection item (until it despawns).  I have no idea if this was intended, but I burned a few TP to friends on this for the lulz.

I had a lot of GW1 feels running through these maps, especially going down to the Desolation and Vabbi.  I appreciate that these places still exist but have changed with the years, and it’s nice to see what happened.  

Although Vabbi is one weird-ass place now.

BUUUUUUT Zomoros’ lair was hilarious.

I haven’t explored for the sake of exploring in a very long time and it was really, really nice.

CHOYA PINATA.

On the elite specializations

I haven’t actually gotten to try all of them yet, but I’m also not super enthused about all of them (Spellbreaker, I’m looking at you).  Also a gentle reminder that my opinions are mainly based on my background as a PvE player and moreso as a raider.  Also they’re just initial opinions.  Opinions change.  

I started with thief (duh), and proceeded to do the entire story with Daredevil.  I’m not particularly a fan of Deadeye; I appreciate the archetype but I don’t really see rifle having a place with a game designed more around active response in combat.  Also as someone who still can’t shake the seaweed salad dance, rifle just feels really static and dull to me.  But we’ll see.  Maybe I’ll have to make the Predator hue. D/D Deadeye also felt strange, so idk.  But we’ll keep fiddling with it.

Mirage still feels kind of odd but I need to get poor Naois the spec since he’s actually specced for condi, unlike Eet.  It seems like an upgrade to condi mesmer, and the triple blink is hilarious.

I really hope Scourge ends up with some sort of place.  Initial benchmarks look hilarious (but then, so did Soulbeast/Weaver/Firebrand ones), but I took out Richter again for Scourge and I’m actually really happy to play him again.  It’s been so long ;-;

My brother told me, “do yourself a favor and put down a sand shade near some enemies, then press F4.”  I tried it.  I laughed pretty hard.

Weaver is so much button-pressing but it’s really fun?  I’m still getting the hang of it but I do like it a lot.  At least it’s more challenging than condi tempest. *grumbles eternally*

Soulbeast looks promising, although I hope it doesn’t lead to another “let’s use condi ranger/thief on absolutely everything” situation again.  The new pets are also...interesting.  

Although when it comes to ranger I’m a druid at heart, so we’ll see.  Not that I’m usually conscripted for DPS roles anyway

Firebrand looks silly.  And broken.  I’m all for alternative sources of quickness (and alacrity in the case of other specs), but I don’t really want to see raid meta go to 2x PS 2x druid 2x chrono 2x firebrand (or something like that) with only 2 flex spots.  That doesn’t sound fun at all.

Also I’m guessing Firebrand will be the first to get the nerfbat.  The damage numbers people are getting are bonkers.

And hey look, they got the nerfbat.  Down to 33-35k.  At least that’s better than 50k? Ugh.

Renegade feels pretty decent.  Revenant has always been in a weird “built around elite specs” class, and that hasn’t changed.  I’m not sure how I feel about condi rev being more of a thing and less of a meme, but ayyy

Holosmith seems like it would be a lot more relevant if the transform wasn’t currently borked.  Scaling damage to a level 76 fine weapon is...sad.  If it’s fixed power Holosmith could be something legit?  Maybe?  Overall though I like the theme and look of it.  Also lol lightsaber.

Spellbreaker I...idk.  Thematically I like it a lot; I was a big fan of mesmer and shut down mechanics in GW1 and I like the idea of Spellbreaker, but from a mostly PvE perspective, it’s just kind of...eh? WvW and PvP I see it being incredibly useful but with limited boons to nom in PvE it doesn’t really look particularly great (especially with condi berserker getting tuned through the roof).

On mounts

I keep dyeing them funny colors.  Yes Quill’s are all some shade of yellow.

I honestly think they were well done.  I was never a supporter of adding them to the game (not against, but not for them either), but now that they’re here, I’m pretty okay with them.  

I like that each mount is useful in some specific capacity - raptor for flat open stretches, springer for verticality, skimmer for no touchy floor, jackal for portals and evasion through high mob density areas, and griffon for the absolute lulz of flying.  

I keep getting the “mount doesn’t render so your character model is riding away sunk in the ground while your camera remains in place” bug (I think it’s attached to trying to mount up before things are completely loaded), and while it’s funny, it’s kind of frustrating.

Mount swapping is a bit awkward, although binding each mount to its own key helps a lot.

I appreciate that the starting mount (the raptor) is still relevant even when you pick up the other three (four), as it’s definitely the fastest mount on flat ground and it’s improved leap is hilariously long.

Also it’s a giant scaly puppy so I have no problems with this.

The springer is hilarious.  And super terrain-breaking.  High cliff?  No problem, bunny hop.  Core and HoT map comp probably just got much, much simpler.  Also JPs that don’t have mount restrictions.

The skimmer is adorable, and riding it around is strangely...calming?  idk.  Also as one of my guildies put it: “maybe this is Anet’s answer to underwater combat: glide right over it.”  rip.

Of the four core mounts I think the jackal (blink doge) is my favorite.  It has a gorgeous design and the blink/portals are super cool.  Although the blink can get a bit titchy if you’re trigger happy with the jump button.

Of course I have the griffon.

IT’S SO FLUFFY.

I think it handles a little strangely (esp when you can’t dismount quickly, although you can divebomb), but it’s pretty solid.  And adorable.

250g was entirely worth it.

Also that Tahlkora cameo hit me right in the feels.

On the story

I’d get here eventually!  Eventually...;-;

All salad-shaped biases aside, the male sylvari VO is still my favorite and no one can convince me otherwise.  There was a good amount of sass, seriousness, and everything inbetween.  Ive is one to take everything with a “hahahaha you’re kidding what am I doing here help,” so overall the voice acting and dialogue fit him fairly well.

I’m a little disappointed by the lack of race-specific dialogue.  Humans don’t seem to have any special dialogue with or concerning Balthazar, and everyone else doesn’t really have a chance to comment as an outsider.  I know it’s more work and I still enjoyed the story as is, but it would have been a nice touch.

Like Ive would literally not give a shit about half of the things brought up.  Not because he doesn’t care about others, but because he has no clue what anyone is talking about.

This was particularly funny with Joko in the Domain of the Lost, because his whole tirade about the PC not knowing who he is could quickly be shut down with “I’m a salad, I have no idea who the fuck you are.”

The “decisions” were interesting, although unsurprisingly they had very little impact on the game as a whole (maybe in the future?  Doubt it).  I did appreciate that depending on the order the “decide on Amnoon’s independence” steps are done in, the dialogue changes.

I admit that I’ve gotten a little less partial to Taimi as she’s edged closer to Deus Ex Machina territory, but her dialogue and conversations (both with the PC and with others like Phlunt later on) are quite funny.

I wish there were more Vlast/Gleam before he died.  It’s sad that he showed up and just...died, but I can understand why they chose that path as well.  

Although some of that was my own fault; the chapter with the Exalted and Vlast’s upbringing I got supremely distracted by the jumping puzzle and spinning around on my new skimmer.

Still.  More Vlast!

RYTLOCK.  RYTLOCK WHY.  Nice job breaking it hero.  Surely you would know better than to accept help in the Mists from a random shackled man who CONVENIENTLY knows how to relight your magic sword.  Sigh.

I thought a lot about the Herald of Balthazar after finding the notes in Night of Fires.  I went back to it after talking to my brother and came to a very similar conclusion as a theorizer on the GW2 subreddit.  If that theory is true, that makes me very sad.

Pls say it’s true I like gut-punch feels.

Speaking of gut-punch feels, The Departing was amazing.  It was super disorienting not having access to the inventory or the minimap, but it was a very well-done instance and I enjoyed it immensely.  I appreciated that they stuck to the “you lost your name and purpose” thing to the point of replacing your character name (including in the hero panel) with Lost Spirit.

Balthazar murdering the PC was pretty neat. 

Also Aurene showing up exactly on time was both cliche and NO BALTHAZAR BAD STAY AWAY FROM BABY DRAGON. 

This, like a few other story missions later on, is super awkward to do as a group.  It’s supposed to be rather personal, and so the not-instance owners are reduced to buffing wisps (like later on in the thrall party instance, not-instance owners are just awakened thralls), and idk I was lucky I was instance owner but that seems rather :|

Ive had a lot of feels hearing everyone’s voices again.  Also the feels of him not exactly remembering everything and having to follow his purpose through his own memories and not quite remembering everything.  Including Trahearne.  

Also tfw the story mission is essentially Full Circle (as a sub-section of Closure) with a bit of bonus Balthazar.

Joko is being very obviously set up as a “you left me in a cage I swear vengeance rahhhhhh” villain.  Or Anet is going to pull a fast one and he will never show up again, which would be hilarious.

Bonus feels for everyone else surviving and Ive being the only one dead (think Eet).

Backtracking slightly, I’ve never liked Kormir.  I still don’t like Kormir.  And the human gods are miserably terrible people.  At this point there’s not much questioning as to whether or not they exist, but with the extent of their influence, their decision to just kind of peace is...rather appropriately god-like, for better or for worse.

Seriously though, gods pls.  I can see some of the logic of “world will be destroyed anyway if god attempts to fight god,” but surely there are other things that need be maintained.  

Also I like how Kormir notes that Balthazar had been stripped of his powers, and yet he still curbstomps the PC (unless it was entirely the imprisonment in the Mists that just locked his powers away, but Kormir’s dialogue suggests otherwise).

I would kill for a library like that.  Seriously.  So jelly.

The “let’s disguise ourselves as the Archon and go and convince Palawa Joko’s army to fight for us” part was so incredibly stupid that of course it worked.  We spent the entire time laughing at how incredulous it was.

The battle at Kodash Bazaar was actually kind of awesome?  There was stuff everywhere and my only inclination for the first part of the instance was “go hit things.”  

It was incredibly weird to just have Sohothin for the entire instance.  Yes I’m aware I could have dropped it.  But it was hilarious in a Caladbolg sort of way.  With less idiotic knockback, and more 300s cooldown skills.  

AURENE.  Balthazar stop hurting my dragon >:(

Also because he just yolo killed her other brother before she had a chance to meet him in person?  rip.

Although now that I think about it, how would that meeting even go?  Talking to the Exalted indicates that Vlast was isolated and not well-acclimated to the world around him, so by the time they realized he should be interacting with other races it was too late for him to form any empathy for anyone.  His dialogue seems to imply that his motivation was simply the fulfillment of a goal; he seemed far more interested in fulfilling his legacy as Glint’s son than the reason why she needed him and Aurene to do anything in particular.  He doesn’t really have a reason for what he’s doing, he just does.

Aurene is implied to have an empathic link with Vlast similar to her connection to the PC, but idk, it just seems like any actual meeting between the two of them would just be incredibly awkward.

I very much enjoyed both the penultimate and ultimate fight against Balthazar.  Also because if you turned around, you could see Kralkatorrik’s massive face just chilling in the sky because oh shit angry elder dragon.  It was...quite something.

I understand the PC’s current caution about killing elder dragons because of magic imbalance, and I also understand the need to stop Balthazar from being a total moron.  I also understand that there’s not much you can do to stop a mad god besides killing him (since those with the means to imprison him decided to float on).  But uh.  I’m not sure what anyone expected would happen if you kill the god who absorbed two dragons’ worth of magic with another dragon just chilling nearby.  Surely Kralkatorrik absorbing everything and flying off into the sunset while extending the Brand wasn’t a surprise.  

Seriously though what did you think was going to happen.

Baby dragon absorb magik and is not quite so baby anymore.  Aurene come back I miss you already ;-;

I commend you if you actually read all of that.  xD

Overall, a solid expansion with quite a bit of content.  We’ll see how replayable it ends up being as time goes on, but I am still quite amused by it and have plenty to do as it stands.  The story was fairly solid (although sometimes strange with questionable logic, as always), and I’m looking forward to where they take it with LWS4.  

#guild wars 2 #path of fire #path of fire spoilers #seriously all the spoilers #the artist rambles #a lot #that was really long #and still not all of it but ayyy #bullet points

[bittenscreations]

Bye, Mia

Supernatural fiction with original characters. First part of a ?? length series. Possible triggers include: blood, violence, kidnapping, panic attack, gore.

It was late, and Mia was ready to go home. She gathered up her things, locked her computer, and stood up just as the office lights went out. It wasn’t the first time she’d worked so late, though, and she was prepared. Picking up her phone, she opened the menu and turned on the flashlight. The icon lit up, but nothing else happened.

“What the hell?” She tried again, tapping the icon twice. Nothing changed, so she sighed and grabbed her bag. She knew from previous experience that she could make it to the exit by using the small amount of light from the exit signs & regularly spaced safety lights.

As she walked through the abandoned halls, she was comforted by the regular nighttime sounds of the office: distant vacuuming as the cleaning staff tidied up, the echoing footsteps of the security guards as they made their rounds, and faint murmurs of other people making their way out of the building. A tiny scrabbling sound caught her attention and she frowned. Had another mouse gotten into the building somehow? The last one had wreaked havoc on the files before it was caught.

“Hey, Siri, make a note,” she said, holding up her phone.

“Ok I can take that note for you, just tell me what you want it to say,” the digital assistant replied.

Before she could answer, she heard a noise that sounded vaugely like laughter? Something sniffing? She wasn’t sure. She strained her ears to see what it was or where it had come from.

The phone in her hand spoke again, startling her. “Creating your note…here’s your note.” She looked down at the screen in surprise, then quickly glanced around. ‘I’m coming for you,’ was displayed in the area where Siri usually displayed whatever it had heard.

“Very funny,” Mia called, fear coloring her voice. “How did you manage to mess with my phone? It was on the desk next to me all day.” She turned, looking for someone in the depths of the shadows. If someone was trying to play a prank on her, they probably weren’t far away.

“Not far, no,” Siri responded to her thoughts, startling her again.

“Who’s there?” Mia whirled around again. It occurred to her that standing in the darkness & trying to find someone in its depths wasn’t the smartest thing to do, so she started walking toward the security desk to report the harrassment. She heard muffled footsteps behind her, and glanced back to find no one there. She walked faster, glad that she wore sneakers for the walk out to her car. As she passed under a security light, the rest of them went out.

Her text alert rang into the darkness, making her jump. As she glanced at the phone, she saw the text message for a brief moment before the screen glitched and went black. 'Gotcha,’ was all it said.

The light above her dimmed, brightened, and went out. As she stood in the darkness with her heart hammering frantically, she smelled something like burnt rubber. She heard the scrabbling sound again, louder this time, and realized that whatever was making the noise was too big to be a mouse. It sounded more like…like human-sized claws scraping along the office wall. She backed away from the noise, keeping one hand on the wall to guide herself.

“Yes,” Siri spoke from her hand again, “they’re claws.”

Mia threw her phone in the direction of the scrabbling and turned to run. She could make out the light of an exit sign in the distance. As she reached the door, the light went out. She threw open the door and felt warm air on her face. Something about it seemed wrong, though. The air outside the office usually smelled like pine trees, but this had the same scent she’d noticed before. Was it hot metal or burnt rubber? The air changed direction, heating up as she heard laughter and she realized it wasn’t air at all. Someone or something was breathing on her face.

She screamed and backed away, pushing her hands in front of her to ward off whoever it was. All she felt was the metal of the door as it swung shut. She listened for the claws behind her, but only heard the sound of her own harsh breathing. Her chest tightened painfully, and she wondered if she was having a heart attack. Did women hallucinate during heart attacks? She couldn’t remember the symptoms.

“Symptoms of heart attacks in women include breathlessness,” Siri again answered her thoughts. Mia could see the faint light from her phone as she looked back in the direction she’d thrown it. As she started crawling toward the phone, it continued reciting, “sweating, pain or discomfort in your chest or upper back, lightheadedness or dizziness, severe anxiety or confusion, and a feeling of impending doom.”

Mia reached out to her phone, ready to call 911. She had all of those symptoms, and more.

“The symptoms do not include hallucinations,” a different voice spoke from the darkness behind her. Mia screamed again as a hand closed around her ankle. The hand pulled her backward and she fell, hitting her head on the floor. As she blacked out, she felt the same hot breath against the back of her neck. The scent of burnt rubber (or was it hot metal? She still wasn’t sure) surrounded her, following her awareness into the depths of her mind.

As Mia came to, she could feel her hands tied behind her back. She tried to wiggle loose, but stopped as she felt the rope biting into her wrists painfully. She heard the laughter again, and looked around for the source.

She was sitting in a chair, in the center of a dim pool of light. She couldn’t see much beyond a few feet, but it looked like she was in an empty concrete room. Something moved in the darkness at the edge of her vision, and she turned to look at it.

“Who’s there?” she called.

“Did you rest well?” a hoarse, somewhat familiar-sounding voice replied with an eerie chuckle.

“Who are you? Why am I here?” Mia asked, terrified.

“I suppose I do owe you an answer, in thanks for such a wonderful meal. Dinner AND a show,” the voice said, and Mia could make out a human-looking form in the darkness. The figure moved closer and began clapping slowly. “Such a wonderful performance,” it mocked.

As the figure moved into the light, Mia’s first thought was that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Its hands were black, the fingers too long, ending in sharp-looking claws. As she stared, Mia realized that the black faded partway up the thing’s forearms, splitting into ragged lines that disappeared at various intervals as paler skin took over. The thing moved further into the light, and Mia realized with a start that she recognized the face.

“Theresa? What are you doing? Let me go, now!” she exclaimed.

“Theresa isn’t here right now,” the thing said in that same hoarse voice, and Mia realized it sounded like Theresa with a bad case of laryngitis.

“Would you like to leave a message?” Siri asked from her feet. Mia looked down and saw her phone, with the same glitchy screen she’d seen earlier.

“Ah, Siri,” the thing (Theresa?) cooed. “You played your part well, too. Of course,” it (she?) continued, Siri speaking in unison with it, “I DO have a way with technology.”

Mia blinked, recognizing one of Theresa’s favorite phrases. “Theresa, please let me go,” she begged.

“I told you,” the thing spat, “Theresa isn’t HERE right now!” A strange layer of static surrounded the thing that was Theresa, her voice overlaid with multiple tones. “You could say she’s gone on vacation.” Its mood changed suddenly, and it chuckled at some inner amusement. “But you asked some questions, and I agreed to answer them. You know part of who I am. Well, you know who my vessel is, at least. A better question would have been 'what are you,’ but I’ll give you that for free. I am a manifestation of pain, fear, and rage. As to the second question: you’re here because you’re the one who created me.”

“What? I don’t understand,” Mia protested. “I didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Oh, but you did,” the thing replied. “Everytime Theresa pushed aside her anger & rage at your idiocy, each time she literally bit her tongue or dug her nails into her palms under the table, all the times she kept silent for fear of losing her job; all of those things she pushed aside in the name of 'professionalism’,” it sneered, “had to go somewhere. For most people, those things just fester in their soul, or they find ways to work through them: alocholism, drugs, painting, escapism, kickboxing classes, all those coping mechanisms. Theresa, though, she never did any of those. She let her imagination roam instead. Every bit of pain became a spark, every instance of fear became a drop of oil, each moment of rage was a piece of wood on a funeral pyre she built for you all in her mind.”

“But why me?” Mia interrupted.

“Every time you went to your supervisor because you knew he would push until you got your way, every time you pretended not to understand a task so that someone else would have to do it, each moment you spent with that blank look on your face as she explained the same thing again and again, all of those were the logs that built your pyre. You built yourself a nice large bonfire, others fanned it into a towering inferno, and now it - or I should say 'I’ - have come to consume you all.” The thing pulsed with heat, seeming to grow and shrink before her eyes as it spoke. Mia stared at the thing in horror, just beginning to comprehend the situation she was in. This wasn’t a crazed Theresa, this was something else, something that didn’t care about losing a job or going to prison.

“You’re right,” it responded to her thoughts. “I don’t care about those things. Fire consumes, that’s all it does. And since you were so kind enough to create me with pain, fear, and rage, I decided to start with you.” The thing stared at her, and Mia realized that its veins and arteries, all of its blood vessels, had turned black. “It’s pitch, Mia. Theresa’s blood has turned to pitch in her veins.” The thing started to giggle as static covered its form. “I needed a way to keep myself alive in here until I consumed everything I could.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” Mia began to cry in fear.

“It’s too late for that,” the thing sang. “I’m here now, and I’m hungry. Hungry for the things that created me in the first place. Theresa has all the rage I’ll ever need. I was surprised at that; I’d have expected her to have problems with depression or anxiety, given her past, but she is filled with rage. You were kind enough to treat me to a wonderful feast of fear earlier, and it should keep me sated for a day or two.”

“Then let me go!” Mia exclaimed. “If you already got what you wanted, you don’t need to keep me here.”

“Mia, Mia, Mia,” the thing spoke gently to her, explaining itself like an adult to a child. “Don’t you remember? There were three things that brought me here. Three things that I crave: rage, fear…” it hesitated, looking at her expectantly.

“And pain,” Mia finished in a whisper, realizing that she wasn’t going to leave here alive.

“And pain,” the thing agreed, smiling in approval. “You’ve given me a small taste, but I need more.” It moved closer, gently caressing her face with its claws.

Mia gasped as pain followed the path of that caress. She hadn’t realized the thing’s claws were razor sharp, parting the skin as they gently moved from her forehead and along the side of her jaw. She felt the warmth of her own blood running down her skin, and the thing leaned closer, still smiling.

“That’s it,” it whispered, and Mia felt its hot breath wash over her just before its tongue darted out and flicked along one of the blood trails. “Oh,” it murmured in surprise, “I didn’t know she had a taste for blood, too.”

The last thing Mia was aware of, before the world disappeared into a haze of pain, was the thing’s delighted laughter and the smell of its breath, now tinged with the copperish smell of her own blood. Then the thing grabbed the flap of skin it had separated from her jawline and began to peel off her face, and Mia knew nothing but pain and screaming for a long, long time.

#possible trigger #blood #violence #kidnapping #panic attack #supernatural #rage #darkness

[paoulkaye-blog]

Redemption in 8 Bits

                I’ve mentioned before how I have been a Mega Man fan ever since I’ve been able to pick up an NES controller. If you missed it, hey, brief recap: I’m a fan of a game series by Capcom that stars a blue robot who jumps and shoots other robots and acquires their powers to stop a mad scientist. And I’ll tell you, it’s been a difficult time for me and fellow fans of the series.

                We used to be spoiled for choice in Mega Man. There was Classic, X, Battle Network, Zero, ZX, Legends, and Star Force. We’d get one, maybe even two games a year. Mega Man used to be more common than Call of Duty. And I’m not going to say it was always quality stuff, and personally I had no use for Star Force at all, but they were all fun to play and spoke to the nostalgia of my youth.

                But that’s a time long past now. Capcom decided to bury my favorite Video Game character for various reasons, and managed to completely piss off the fans as they did so. I’ve never seen a company treat an intellectual property like this, and I am anxious for the future because the only news about Mega Man I have seen is in a cartoon show made by Man of Action (the guys who are doing the current rendition of Ben 10), and last I heard they were looking for writers familiar with the series.

                So my confidence in that isn’t high, is what I’m saying.

                So, I am a Mega Man fan in what is, for the time being, a post-Mega Man world. Sure, it turns up now and again as a cameo or as a reference or a character in one of Capcom’s bland and increasingly vanilla-flavored fighting games, but I have serious doubts that I’ll ever be able to play a seriously produced, well-crafted game with the title ‘Mega Man’ in it ever again. So what do I do to get my 2-dimensional jump and shoot itch scratched?

                Sure, there are fan-games and indie projects. 20XX comes to mind, a rouge-like take on the mechanics and aesthetic of Mega Man X that plays pretty well. Other projects, like a total Doom conversion called Mega Man 8 Bit Death Match, offer a loving homage to the series while also having some fun with the characters, weapons, and formula. Keiji Inafune even formed his own company after his split from Capcom to create a new Mega Man style game from scratch called Mighty No. 9, which was a ridiculous Kickstarter success that faced delays and disappointment and sort of left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

                But for sure, it was important for an official, known quantity to enter something into the conversation to lift the spirits of disheartened fans. Enter Inti-Creates. These guys did a lot of the work on the Mega Man Zero series, four games that are among the hardest the Game Boy Advanced ever offered, and a wonderful progression of the story and mechanics of Mega Man X. They also put together Mega Man ZX, an open-world platformer that followed the Zero series and built even further on it. With Capcom’s edict to put Mega Man into seeming retirement, Inti-Creates took it upon themselves to create something new, and yet familiar.

                Azure Striker Gunvolt has an obvious family history. It looks and plays like Zero and ZX, but tweaks mechanics like dealing and taking damage and the way you engage with opponents that put a fresh coat of paint of gameplay basics older than I am. It had a deep story, an interesting world and aesthetic, and really did help fill that particular gap. As a bonus, Inti-Creates would also create Mighty Gunvolt, a crossover between their new hero and Inafune’s Beck from Mighty No. 9, presented as an 8-bit adventure in the most classic of styles.

                It was a short game, maybe an hour or less from start to finish, but it felt perfect to me. Beck in Mighty Gunvolt is the perfect emulation of the classic Mega Man, with a few mechanics tacked-on from his lackluster debut. After a Gunvolt sequel, Inti-Creates also went back and remade an old NES hidden gem called Master Blaster. Master Blaster Zero was an excellent dip in a different kind of nostalgia pool, and through the magic of DLC, they went back and added in a full game mode for playing other characters through that story. I actually beat Master Blaster Zero for the first time playing as Gunvolt, who’s skill set can come off as over-powered if you’re careful with your energy management.

                Fast forward to this week, when a game I’ve actually been waiting for since I heard about it came along: Mighty Gunvolt Burst. A sequel to a one-off bonus game. Another hour-ish romp through nostalgia land, right?

                Except, no, it was way more. After an hour of play, I hadn’t even played more than three stages. Along with a full complement of Mega Man-style gameplay, complete with an intro stage, eight themed boss stages, and four full end-game levels (including the classic boss rush, mirror boss, and final boss rolled into one grueling finale), Mighty Gunvolt Burst would feature the return of the two titular characters. Beck feels great to play, absent his ridiculous xel-absorbtion dash-through-enemies thing which was counter-intuitive as hell for me as a long time Mega Man player. The only thing missing was stealing a weapon from your fallen foes, but…

                Well, Mighty Gunvolt Burst features the deepest, craziest customization system I have ever seen for a 2D side scrolling shooter. You unlock options in the customizer, as well as expand the number of points you can spend in it, by acquiring items hidden through the levels, and being able to choose a select reward whenever you clear a stage (three per stage, so you have to play through the game virtually 3 times to unlock everything, minimum.). Once you have a wealth of options and custom points, you can literally design anything.

                Do you want lightning balls that bounce and explode? Or to machine-gun knives in any direction? What about a spinning barrier of ice blocks that shatter into smaller blocks on impact with an enemy? Homing missiles that corner on a dime and explode five times? Spinning blades that bounce off walls and slice through enemies? Charge shots that cover the room in homing fireballs that congregate around an enemy and burn them to ashes? Or maybe just one big regular shot that just does a crap-ton of damage? You got it. All of it.

                Classic Mega Man would give you a weapon that worked really well against another boss. This game gives you an element that does more damage to a certain boss, yes, but how you deliver that is entirely up to you. The depth of this infinitely increased the replay value for me. I love trying crazy combinations to see what I can come up with. And there’s a challenge in coming up with the best way to hit certain bosses. Every boss in the game from the first eight stages hails from Mighty No. 9, and this game is a glorious representation of what that game could, and maybe should, have been.

                Inti-Creates knows what the hell they are doing with Mega Man-like things, and I’m thrilled that they’ve seen fit to fill that now-vacant market. They’ve mentioned releasing more character for Mighty Gunvolt Burst in the future, and I am totally down for that. This game? More of this, please. More of this until I am dead. Please. Thanks for reading.

#gaming

[sixmorningsafter]

A Thesis on Chapter 13

Despite all the almost sexy times last chapter, I think this is my favorite so far. There are less “I don’t know you”, “who do you think you are”, “can you just leave me alone” vibes but that doesn’t mean everything (or everyone) is comfortable.

A/N: LMAO this thesis is the greatest thing that’s ever happened, I’m dying. Is there a more appropriate way to review the rambliest fic in the known universe? Always adore your feedback and this is no exception, and I can’t stress enough how happy/giddy I was reading over this and seeing how much thought you put into it, man. Ugh. Cassie’s such a doll, y’all.

Anyway, onto the chapter: lmaoooo not even remotely comfortable, but yessss, the tone is definitely less belligerent and more so just unsettled (at least for Bamon) in 13. Stefan and Caroline were probably more intimate in 12 but hey, every action has an equal an opposite reaction, ja feel? Reality checks await. 

Putting the rest under a cut because your glorious long-windedness combined with mine is a chapter in and of itself. 

Bonnie: I like her introspection a lot, and I can relate to it (I too try to check myself before wrecking myself). I like that she’s hyper aware of the latent anger and her tendency to hide it away ‘cause then its hidden from her. 

I love how she thinks Damon might possibly feel violated by her advances the previous night. Girl, please. And lol “magical fucking reverse-dementor”? Gold.

Oblivious Bonnie. Oh, the hilarity.

A/N: She’s a mess, but she’s trying. I think much like Caroline, she’s convinced that if she drops her guard and removes the tight lid she keeps on parts of herself, disaster will strike, and I think much like Stefan, Damon’s going to play a part in proving that’s not what’s going to happen. Obviously a major difference is Bonnie keeps the lid on to protect others (friends, etc) from jagged parts of herself and Caroline’s is more self-preserving. And LMAO yeah needless to say, Damon’s not feeling particularly violated but bless Bonnie.

Baroline: Bless you. I like this scene a lot. Bonnie tackling a sleeping Caroline; Caroline being a “ferocious blanket monster”– love it. As a writer, it’s a gold mine ‘cause you can casually throw in some flashbacks, but as a reader, it’s a gold mine 'cause you get casually thrown into a fuller picture of who Caroline is– a force to be reckoned with, especially when it comes to the people she holds close. God, I live for Bonnie telling Caroline she came out of one of the worst situations as a “goddam warrior”–ugh, slay me.

Baroline + Tyler feels, love it.

Lol at the “messes” exchange. This is me and any of my best friends lol. Headcanon: Baroline gets messes forever as their matching bff tattoos. 

A/N: YAY, Baroline feels! I really wanted to balance out their relationship since so much of the last chapter was Caroline’s side of it, and given that Bonnie was in a ‘fuck everyone’ state it was lopsided, so writing out that scene and having Bonnie assume the role of Caroline’s no. 1 fan felt necessary. So glad the little moments and flashbacks painted a more detailed picture! I think we’ll see more of that ferocious friend side of Caroline in the upcoming chapters, when there are dinners to plan and she’s back in work mode and stuff. I have a fun scene planned where Stefan’s getting pushback on a work call and Caroline sort of snatches the phone and works her magic. And YES, #messesforever tattos! All the Tyler cameos. 

Stefan: The trademarked “Fix It” with the “associated apology tour”, that made me laugh.

I liked that Bonnie knows Stefan has callouses for her lashing out, 'cause he’s literally like, welp that wasn’t so bad.

Again, Stefan acknowledging Damon is more than meets the eye is good. I think it’s funny how he has these unrealistic views of people, but he also doesn’t, like when it comes to Damon. I suppose it’s just the women in his life. Unfortunately, his “Caroline is a partially ajar door” epiphany struck me as correct, but only as a reader, I would know that. I kind of like watching Stefan sort himself out. Idk if you made a Stefonnie parallel on purpose, but both are introspective in a very academic way. Unlike Daroline who are equally introspective but built a stone armour around themselves, Stefonnie built, like, a two-way glass armour, you know? God, Stefan would probably hate me for turning him into a metaphor ;p

“People weren’t tropes”, Stefan says as Gabi writes him as a trope. I literally said aloud, “ah the not-trope trope” lol. But I like that he’s self-aware. Unlike canon, where it seems like he embraces the Hero Hair wholeheartedly.

Ooo, such a great point - Stefan and Bonnie definitely take a much more logical approach to analyzing themselves than Caroline or Damon, who are like captains of the National Deflect Team. I think Stefonnie both have lowkey hero complexes and that might factor into it a bit: Bonnie fucks up and her first thought upon waking up is ‘fix it fix all of it’ - she’s more concerned about the people she might’ve affected last night than herself. So she rationally dissects everything she did and figures out the best strategy for making it better (though notice she doesn’t actually come up with a strategy for fixing her coping mechanisms). Stefan wakes up and rationalizes the fuck out of him and Caroline while downplaying the fact that hey, bud, regardless of all this rational mumbo jumbo, you felt something last night. You felt something tighten in you when she put the wall back up. You didn’t like it. So yeah, they’re both a little fake mature in that sense, like they think they’re taking the high road or being logical but they’re also kind of denying reality a bit in the process. And then there’s Daroline, lololol, who’re just like ‘sitting down to critically analyze our problems sounds like a GREAT conversation and all but here’s another suggestion: flinging ourselves off a bridge’. 

Stefonnie: Like that ask you answered, I didn’t know how much I needed Stefonnie until this scene. I really like how Bonnie’s approach to her Steroline apologies are to wrap them in light scenarios (like the stories about Caroline and Shark Week with Stefan).

And their hug, how fucking sweet. 

God, I love how awkward both of them are when it comes to discussing their currently lowkey romantic ships. Lol, like I tweeted in response to Bonnie’s “I just hope it wasn’t too tense”, it was too intense (har har, I’m funny). And Stefan’s “hope it wasn’t too carnal”, I loved this word choice–thank you. And their stumbling over their own words with one another, like in this “you’re my bestie I can’t lie to you” kind of way.

The parallel, seen in the end, with Stefonnie being clueless when it comes to the romantic ships has me screaming. Wake up people! 

A/N: Stefan and Bonnie are totally the clueless problematic cinnamon rolls of this fic, man. Like I know Bonnie has a dark side, but they’re both still such naive koalas, it’s so dumb. So glad you caught the ‘I can’t lie to you’ vibe between them because I was totally going for that - they never explicitly lied but they definitely skirted around the truth, and as you’ll see especially from Stefan in 14, he really doesn’t like it. It’s not their style. Especially given their loaded history with Bonnie cutting him off and trying to leave him out of a whole part of her life - they’re not fans of not telling each other stuff. So yeah, that tension’s definitely there, but sandwiched between some fluff that I’m so glad you liked!

Steroline: YES I KNEW IT WAS A SEX PRE-COITAL CONTRACT AGREEMENT. And I think you should take that as a compliment 'cause its so characteristic of Caroline.

Lol at “how would we go about tracking our decibel levels”? Like how did she even come up with the right decibel levels? Like, as writers, we look up some crazy shit, but as Caroline, I feel like her research history is… more than abundant. 

“Would we be doing zumba on the side”, fucking Stefan lmfao. Idk if you watched the canon Steroline proposal, but he has this roundabout way of proposing, saying something like, I was thinking you’d wear this ring or whatever, and I think its interesting how this SMA line kinda parallels to that canon one, in terms of Stefan’s silly side (which is a rarity in canon). Like I feel like Paul insisted doing the proposal his way.

Stefan is such a dope. Like when Caroline is “demonstrating”, and he’s like “probably should’ve seen that coming”. Ugh, this dummy.

A/N: Caroline’s so extra it’s unreal. Like sometimes when I write her and I want to incorporate her more anal-retentive side, I have to literally stop for five minutes and just think up ridiculous shit. I’m the least detail-oriented/list-making person on earth so I basically have an out-of-body experience whenever I write Caroline, lololol - it’s a ton of fun, though. I really wanted to make that moment a canon nod to Stefan finding her control-freak side amusing/endearing. In SMA, he didn’t really know that side of her before they were snowed-in (it was sort of buried under the general frostiness and party girl persona), so I think it makes her feel more human to him. He likes catching glimpses of the real her. And yessss, hahaha, SMA Stefan is definitely like taking all of canon Stefan’s silly/trolly moments and just condensing them into the whole character. I kind of feel like without all of the vampire and Damon/Katherine nonsense in his life, though, Stefan would’ve been a much lighter, sassier person, so who knows. Totally a dope, though.  

Bamon: Bonnie’s sex fantasies– FINALLY. As canon Damon would say, “Glad to see you’ve boarded this train to crazy town, Bonnie Bennett” (yes I looked this up, no I have no regrets).  

Damon’s reaction to Bonnie’s apology is good lol. I like this. With Stefonnie and Baroline, it was teary-eyes and heartfelt-ness, and then there’s Damon. She connected with a stranger (in more ways than one), and she's just trying her best. Lol.

I didn’t realize this until Bonnie points it out, but I like that she recognized how self-centered their personal conversation had been. How she twisted everything about like it was a competition.

Lol the “can we just forget this happened” conversation is hilarious. It reminds me of when Defan are talking about the space heater, and Damon keeps toying with Stefan LOL. Idk if you intended that parallel, but its golden.

Ugh and I love how she’s like, “last night she’d be tangled up with a street kid”. I like that realization, 'cause it was kind of one for me too. Like, Damon looks like a babe, but Bonnie’s got him pegged.

A/N: Love all of these insights so much! So on point. ‘And then there’s Damon’ should really just be his tagline, I feel like. He’s kind of a constant question mark/occasional pleasant surprise in general to everyone, but to Bonnie, he’s proving a total wildcard. Majorly throwing her off her typical routine, slipping right under that stubbornly even-kiln skin - she really is just trying her best to adjust to it, lololol. But once again, she’s using suppressing techniques to do it, and if 12 should’ve taught her anything, it’s that he’s not afraid to poke through that. You’ll see her hit a much more comedic breaking point in 14 and some long-time-coming stuff comes out of it. And re: the Defan parallel, I didn’t really think about that but it’s totally true - Damon’s just a giant troll. I think his conversations with Stefan and Bonnie will usually have similar tones in that he’s this boundary-less shit-starter dealing with people who are used to having civilized, tactful interactions with people, vs. with Caroline, she’s just as blunt as he is so it’s much more abrasive-with-an-undercurrent-of-affection. 

Damon: So his line “I heard you loud and clear about last night, kid” (and okay, his insisting on calling her kid, as like a way to, idk, distance himself from her, for her sake and probably his own, is so deflating for me, 'cause they’re getting somewhere and then they’re not) is so telling. Just so very telling. “But she’d literally looked like she was going to crawl out of her skin whenever he was near her… He didn’t love it.” Honey, your need for affection is showing. Annoying? Yeah, annoying how you won’t admit you have a crush on her.

The scene with his reflection, even if it was only a snapshot of the past, it was good. So, idk if you do this on purpose, but the way you reveal Damon’s story is wildly different from the other three, and it’s very consist with his character. And it’s well written. Very, very good job. Oh, and reverting back to that line “pointless”. Mmmmm my poor baby.

Awww, haven’t heart this interpretation of kid yet! Could totally see some merit to it - I think it’s definitely telling of an unusual endearment Damon’s starting to feel for her, one that (despite how sexual their relationship got last chapter and the undercurrent of it this chapter) has surprisingly little to do with sex and more to do with this spunky, weird, stubborn, complicated little thing who keeps surprising him. Even if there is any intent to create distance (and maybe subconsciously there is), I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t stop calling her that even if they were together. And lmao re: his ‘annoyance’ with her aversion to him - not obvious at all, right? Everyone in this story is so dumb idk why I write it. 

Re: different writing strategies, I actually got a really cool ask about this from someone about the couples, and I think it’s the same deal where it just naturally happens? Like Damon lives stubbornly in the present, he doesn’t care what happens tomorrow or what happened yesterday, so having him go down long mental meanders through memory lane just doesn’t come out of my fingers, you know? His reveals kind of come in quick flashes - bursts of dialogue or action that only last as long as it takes him to recognize what he’s doing and pivot away from it. I know this fic is technically third person, but I write it a lot like a first person PoV (not really italicizing thoughts, writing the descriptions with run-on sentences and fragments like dialogue), so I feel like because of that, I naturally shift my style a bit for every character’s head. You’ll definitely get more Damon reveals up ahead, though - a lot of the Bamon dynamic has been focused on Bonnie in the past few chapters, but as that gets more under control, Ms. Fix It hasn’t gone anywhere, and she’s going to start putting some of the spotlight back on him. Her finding his wallet in the sneak peek is kind of the start of that. 

Daroline: LMFAO. You already know about my Daroline brotp feelings, so I’ll keep this short. Besides the hilarity that is defensive Caroline and shitstarter Damon, I really like that, because of their history, Damon’s first real sincere moment is with Caroline. Like, he prods and jokes about stuff with Bonnie and Stefan, but he’s not being helpful. With Caroline, though, he’s doing the friend thing.

Again, you probably did this on purpose, but I can’t help to point it out: Daroline knowing there’s something going on within the romantic ships has me geeking out. 

Yay, Daroline! I get way too much satisfaction from writing two characters who started off as explicitly sexual having entirely non-romantic emotional beats and becoming ain’t shit friends. I feel like in a way, it’s almost a little necessary in a fic like this, because otherwise every sexual relationship I’m writing leads to love and I really don’t think that’s true. I think it’s super possible for casual sex to be exactly that, and I think Daroline kind of spits in the face of the idea that two people who have been or are physically attracted to each other can’t be friends. Of course they can be. Sex and love are different. Sex is instant, easy. Love is layered af. And on the converse of that, we have Stefonnie as the ‘guys and girls can absolutely be best friends’ PSA, so yeah, I think the m/f brotps help balance the fic a bit. 

Defan:

God, it’s a great time just watching these idiots. “Steffy bear and I are getting married.“ Defan = Major/Ravi feelings. There’s only this scene at the end, but it’s really fun and there’s no drama between them, so it’s wholeheartedly silly.

Total Major/Ravi vibes! So glad you’re digging them - I haven’t had a chance to do a ton with them so far (outside of little beats here and there and references to offscreen/page bonding) but I’m definitely going more into Defan soon - they open up chapter 14 and it’s super fun/introduces some dynamic shifts for them. I think I get way too much of a kick out of making the most problematic canon ships the least problematic in this AU, lmao.

Bonus Round– the "Kai” scene: It strikes me as seriously mental of Bonnie to think she could face Kai on her own. Like, okay, so he may not be a serial killer, but he’s still fucking creepy! (though I love it tbh). I love Steroline’s protectiveness over Bonnie (“Yeah, I don’t know what kind of hangover brain she’s on, but you’re absolutely going with her”). Damon’s hardcore acting as the disgustingly affection bf (“It’s so cute it makes even us cringe”). Bonnie’s deadfish acting.

LMAO Bonnie’s definitely got some priorities to sort out. And yay, so glad you liked protective Steroline - I think it’s fun to make them so at odds about so many things and then suddenly when Bonnie’s the subject boom, team up. Damon’s affectionate boyfriend act is only going to get worse after some things that go down in 14, and Bonnie’s deadfish isn’t going to fool anyone. More apeshit Kai ahead!

Okay, I copy and pasted this into a Word doc, and it’s a full 5 pages. Yikes. I’m done. You’re amazing, bless you, continue doing the good Lord’s work, amen. <3, Cassandra

LMAOOOOO five pages of GLORY. I seriously can’t tell you how much I appreciate your super detailed, thoughtful, hilarious reviews - in fact, it took me this long to answer because I was like ‘I need to find a time where I can sit down and write a thesis back’. You’re amazing, bless you, continue doing the good Lord’s work, amen. <3 Gabi

#review #13 #six mornings after #sma steroline #sma bamon #such amazing insights here man #reply #submission