#am I planning a whole original novel for him in which he finally doesn't want to die and someone chooses him once in his fucking life?

[miabrown007]

not taking responsibility for the person I inevitably become when a sad blond boi shows up on the horizon

#I've only had grayson hawthorne for a week but if anything happened to him-- #LOOK he's the draco mafoy the jace wayland the adrien agreste depending on the angle you're looking at him of this series #he IS the tragic backstory and the punching bag for the narrative #am I planning a whole original novel for him in which he finally doesn't want to die and someone chooses him once in his fucking life? #MAYBE #you wouldn't know unless you're Jolly who got about 50 messages about this at 3 am for which I wish her a very sorry #anyway. if I'm only keeping one character of a franchise. I think that qualifies as original fiction. that's how that should go. #oh. I almost forgot to add hunter noceda to the mix. #you can see now how normal I am about this whole thing #and how I definitely 100% don't have a very embarrasingly predictable type of fictional man #god is this an I can fix him thing if I want them to fix themselves but find love while doing it #anyway. finished #the inheritance games #and this only opens 47 fics for me on ao3 which is a goddamn shame #miaing

[dearlystars]

not to complain about two things in one day but the last post got me thinking about how popular todd ingram became in fat gay artist circles after takes off when stephen stills is right there and at least to some degree intended to be a canonically fat gay character (even if the only real indicator of that is that he's drawn a bit broader than most of the guys [which frequently gets forgotten. looking at you volume six and the game. and also was portrayed by an actor that isn't fat in the movie] which i still have some thoughts about.) but i do think the biggest frustration i have with takes off is just how dirty they did stephen stills. this ended up getting kind of long so hi read more sorry for anyone that reads through all this

the whole point of the show was meant to be a "what would happen if scott wasn't there" story and when one of the biggest examples of scott being self-centered and hardly knowing anything about the lives of his friends in the original graphic novels was him not only not learning that stephen stills was gay until he saw him with his boyfriend but also not even knowing that one of his best friends has a boyfriend until a good few months into their relationship. yet in the one scott pilgrim story we got that doesn't center scott and his viewpoint it's genuinely unclear if stills himself even realizes that he's gay by the time the final episode wraps up because almost all of his screentime outside of just general main cast shenanigans is dedicated to his musical gag with knives.

at first when i finished the show i was kind of just hoping that it'd be for the sake of bringing over the "oh yeah i came out last volume but you looked busy so i didn't think to mention it, scott" gag just translated into "oh yeah i came out last season but you looked busy so i didn't think to mention it, ramona." in a stills-centric episode but then they confirmed that they had no plans for a second season and the sequel baiting credits scene with gideon and julie was meant to be a gag at that sort of sequel baiting credits scene and not a genuine one (despite not being written like a gag at all. no julie saying the goose is loose honk honk does not count this is scott pilgrim have you seen half of the dialogue in this series.) and it's just like??? okay so what happened with stephen stills then. i still think the way the novels handled knives' arc is far and away the best anything has but at the very least knives got to have a bit of her own thing coming into her own w/o scott in takes off but stephen stills really was basically just all the musical gag subplot in takes off.

i get that at the end of the day some things need to be cut for time especially in an eight episode tv series of half hours and that ramona really doesn't know stills all that well so it makes sense that he doesn't get to do a lot and he also didn't get a ton of focus or his coming out scene in the movie which is what takes off seems to be pretty heavily based off of so like, again, it makes sense, but god it's frustrating. scott pilgrim has had three major adaptations (four if you include the animation but considering that had a far more narrow scope and didn't even feature stills i'm leaving it out of the discussion) and in all of those stephen stills is kind of just there to be there. at the very least he gets to be a playable character in the game which joseph does get to show up in but even then his ending is one of three that doesn't feature any romance (with the only other two being nega scott who gets a gag ending about taking over the world and wallace, the other out gay man in the main cast) like. i don't really want to say that stephen stills getting shafted so much (pun very much intended) boils down to simple homophobia because like i am very much in the camp that believes that scott pilgrim as a series is just like. stupidly gay incredibly gay like it's still shocking to me how popular it is with cishet white guys gay but it's just like. weird to me how so consistently the characters that get the short end of the stick are him and lisa (who at the very least got to have her moment in the animation.)

it really does feel like this is Just A Stephen Stills Thing and i can't help but wonder why that is, i guess? i don't really think it's an aversion to the character or anything considering o'malley was willing to give him multiple cameos in seconds and he was also happy to own that noda gaku doujin about him and joseph so it's kind of just confusing to me. my only real guess is that maybe it's because he's named after a Real Ass Guy and o'malley wanted to avoid cluttering any online discussion about The Real Ass Guy with discussions surrounding a gay guy from a series that starts with a grown man dating a high schooler but at the same time young neil got to play a pretty big part in the series all things considered who that is also applicable so it's kind of just??? why stephen stills???

also this is just meant as an aside since i know o'malley has a tumblr and occasionally looks through scott pilgrim things on here. so like. if you're reading this, hi! i promise this isn't meant to be a slight towards you or your work like. scott pilgrim is and has been very important to me especially when i was younger and i love seconds i still recommend it to people to this day. i'm just an annoying gay that cares arguably too much about one of your side characters and frequently think about what could have been when it comes to him and his writing.

#property of ruf #ruf's rambling #scott pilgrim #i made this tumblr after one of my big scott pilgrim phases i don't think i have tags for the characters yet what do i make my stephen tag #guy who doesn't realize he's gay despite one of his most famous outfits being him wearing a hat that says nuts on it #that works for now #i'll probably change it later #need to remember the next time i look for takes off inspired fanart to check on here instead of twitter like i always do

[littleladymab]

For the meta ask game - 3 and 20!

wah-heyyyyyY!!!!

3) What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

Okay I still can't be arsed to do it because I am getting ready to play DND and I know myself, it will turn into a whole thing but there are two that I'm currently rotating in my head. One I will tell you about, because the "star wars but fantasy au" has been shoving itself into the forefront of my mind thanks to big bang group chat. Specifically!

A More Civilized Age pod brought up an AU idea that I'm absolutely obsessed with and it's "what if, after the whole 'Boba Fett tries to kill Mace Windu' arc of TCW, Bail Organa goes "what this kid needs is a positive parental influence in his life' because lord knows Aurra Sing AIN'T IT and so just in addition to an ENTIRE au in which Boba Fett grows up in the Organa household and then gets to become a protective older brother to Leia, I really wanted a conversation between him and Ahsoka. Because she was part of the team that brought him in, and while I can't remember the bulk of the conversation that I wanted, Here's Ahsoka, just 4 years older than Boba, but look at how differently their lives were shaped and altered by the existence of the Clone Wars and also the idea of being child soldiers/weapons.

Anyway, my dream is to one day write a fantasy au which will have Boba as Leia's protective older brother who will absolutely give Han shit but will absolutely side-eye Luke so hard when he finally comes into the picture but I don't have anything but the Desire and Vibes right now. Maybe for next SW Big Bang

(don't hold me to it)

20) Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

It was funny because when I was reading over these prompts originally I was like "oh no if someone asks me 20 then I'll just have to confess that I don't know what the fuck I'm doing what are THEMES" but that's kind of a lie, I just never really recognize them myself. Especially because I have....... so many different things i'm doing at any given point.

So Here's just like, a general sort of list of things I do and like about my writing! I'm not a particularly clever author, imo, I plan everything well in advance so I don't feel like there are any surprises? but also that's because i get too into what I'm doing that I can't see the forest for the trees or w/e anywho

I think one of my fav things about writing for SW is that there's so much content everywhere, that I can pull a reference from a source and add it into a fic as a throwaway reference. For Phoenix Suite, I did reference the fact that Kallus likes to wake up early because it is the quietest part of the day -- a fun little tidbit that I pulled from the jr novel adaption of the S1 finale. For far from the home I've made, I referenced the fact that in one of the Rebels comics, Kallus mentions that he arrived on Courscant for training, implying that he came from off-world (who actually knows, but I took it and ran with it). I also wanted to include the fact that Ezra was friends with someone who moved to Alderaan, but I wasn't able to fit the conversation of what happened to Alderaan into the chapter because it was already uhhh way too long.

I absolutely looooove to make the inhuman experience human emotions, while also expressing their inhumanity. I use 'inhuman' extremely loosely here, mostly for just 'anything beyond the mundane'. Far from the home I've made has Ezra being sad and scared while at the same time coming from an experience in which he sacrificed himself to save an entire planet. My place to land has Signet giving away pieces of herself in order to ensure that Echo doesn't lose their eye, though it results in both of them being half-blind for a bit. every open eye has Sasha fully ready to surrender herself to the Stranger in order to save Jon. I had an answer for Mwyr, but I forgot what it was, but that's OC content and we don't have time to unpack all of that lolol

I LOVE PEOPLE BEING A MESS. BEING AWFUL TO REMEMBER TO DO THINGS, GETTING INTO RELATIONSHIPS THEY SHOULDN'T. This adheres more to OC stuff, here's to all these normal people being normal messes, amirite???

One of my favorite uhhhh not really tropes but like, identifiable "mab" things in my writing, is I love the physicality of an intimate moment. Like, non-sexual acts of intimacy, and just residing in the physicality of it. A friend left me a comment about how they noticed it in my writing before and love it, and I've been riding that high for like, two and a half years LMAO

I also just love writing friends being friends and being in love with each other like there is nothing better to me than found family and also just a pair of friends being non-romantically in love with each other where you can look at them and go BESTIES!!!!

that's all I got time for, time for dnd, but HEY!!! Feel free to ask me more meta writing questions if you'd like, everyone :')

#writing #lil miss writings

[nadziejastar]

You know why the Seekers having high levels of agency makes no sense? Because Xehanort wanted Sora as one! It's a plot point that doesn't work unless you assume that some level of mind control is involved.

LOL, exactly. How are you going to make Sora of all people a Seeker of Darkness if they are not just Xehanort’s puppets? What was the point of even going after someone like him? He would never help the bad guys willingly. So Xehanort obviously has to be able to fully control them on a whim. This is also a subject I had been meaning to write about.

KH3D ended with Xehanort NOT getting Sora, leaving him one Seeker short. Ooh, that’s exciting, now what’s he gonna do? I thought that his search for the final Seeker would have been a big part of KH3′s plot. But it really wasn’t. I thought that was so anticlimactic.By the time KH3 rolled around, Xehanort had so many Seekers lined up that he even had reserve members.

It’s funny. I remember a lot of people complaining about how all the villains got an undeserved redemption in KH3. After spending the whole game helping Xehanort, they randomly give a heartfelt speech at the very end. So, only once Sora defeats them do they grow a conscience? Everyone was asking why they didn’t have any remorse before.

There’s a big pillar of darkness that leaves their body after they’re beaten. It’s almost like that would have been Xehanort’s heart and darkness leaving them; thus, they’d no longer be controlled once it’s gone. They’d have their own minds and hearts back again. So, in that context, their little speeches would have actually made sense. I’m sure that was originally the idea, at least for characters like characters like Saix and Luxord. But when you have the characters acting in full control of themselves the entire time beforehand, these scenes seem ridiculous and lose all of their meaning.

Master Xehanort: All of this was decided. My twelve selves would welcome me here on this day, when I would return a complete person. It is the future which lies beyond my sight.

The story made it clear that not just anyone can become a Seeker of Darkness. He literally calls them his 12 selves. It apparently takes a very specific type of person to make a suitable vessel for Xehanort’s heart. That’s why most of them are Xehanort’s own alter egos; extensions of himself. His old self, his young self, his Heartless, his Nobody. Terranort and young Riku are also Xehanort, just while he’s possessing other people’s bodies.Vanitas is a being born of pure darkness. Only the strongest vessels can handle a heart like Xehanort’s. That’s why he targeted Terra in the first place.

Sora: Make more Xehanorts? You tricked your friends to… But you–aren’t you scared of just turning into someone else?

Xigbar: Me? I’m already half Xehanort.

Sora: That’s nuts…

KH3D also stressed the consequences of getting Xehanort’d. A totally willing person immersed in darkness is a candidate (if they are strong enough). But you’d have to be willing to sacrifice part of yourself; your identity, your mind, your agency. Few are crazy enough to do that. Braig just happens to be that nuts. But the rest?

Xigbar: Xemnas and Xehanort formed the Organization for a specific reason–round up a bunch of empty husks, hook them up to Kingdom Hearts, then fill them all with the exact same heart and mind. Translation–they were gonna turn all the members into Xehanort.

Xemnas: However–through weakness of body…weakness of will…or weakness of trust–most of the original members we had chosen for the Organization were inadequate. Thus, naturally, they never had a chance to attain their goal. Yet, even this was to be expected. We have learned of the heart’s folly, and we have achieved our other goals.

Xemnas never considered most of them truly worthy vessels. He needed to use the power of a fully completed artificial Kingdom Hearts, just to be able to use them as vessels… and even still they weren’t worthy. Xemnas says as much, and that they had to resort to “other goals”. Sounds like he gave up on all of the old Organization, other than Xigbar and Saix.

Weakness of trust is something that is supposed to exclude them from being worthy. So why all of a sudden are Marluxia and Larxene back again? They didn’t seem to be controlled exactly. But they didn’t seem to be willing participants either. There’s no way they trust Xehanort, though. He said he brought them to be Seekers due to their connection to the past and the Keyblade War. If they were so important to his plans, why did he send Larxene and Marluxia to get executed in Castle Oblivion for their treachery? It’s possible KH4 will answer this, but for now it makes little sense.

And if Xehanort can force unwilling people to be his vessels that easily, why didn’t Young Xehanort take any of the others with him when he took Isa? I just bought the BBS novel that came out a few days ago. I thought it was interesting how this little character blurb described Dilan. It says unlike Aeleus, he is adept at manipulating the hearts of others. Honestly Dilan sounded like a pretty bad person, even before Xehanort came along. That’s exactly the message I got from doing his weapon analysis, too. If anyone from the old Organization actually seemed like they would join the new Organization willingly, it would have been him and Braig. I am sure there was more to Dilan than what we got. He basically did nothing in KH3.

Aeleus: Dilan and Even are conscious again, but still unstable. They’re resting inside. -KH3D

Ienzo: He was recompleted like the rest of us, but he didn’t regain consciousness. After Lea left, he must have woken and taken his leave. -KH3

Then there’s this whole thing which I thought was weird. Aeleus specifically said that they both regained consciousness, but they were just unstable. And Ienzo is right there to hear this. He had to know. Yet in KH3, Ienzo says that he never regained consciousness.

I think there had to be a reason those two characters in particular were kept away from Lea in DDD. They were going to be important for something. The fact that Vexen and Demyx are “reserve” members just reeks of retconning. Like they were not supposed to be there originally and they didn’t know how to quite fit them into the story. So yeah, they’re just reserves. They even whine about getting “benched” which was really silly to me.

Besides Xehanort and Braig, I think Dilan and Even were the apprentices that were the most heavily involved in Lea’s dark past and the human experiments. That’s why he wasn’t allowed to interact with them yet. They knew the truth about Isa. Even probably was not willingly involved, and would feel remorseful to Lea. And he probably would have confessed the truth about Isa. It was necessary to the plot for him to be kept away from Lea. That’s my theory.

Xehanort: Roxas… Now, there was a worthy candidate. But, unfortunately, he became too aware of himself, and returned to Sora. Organization XIII’s  goal is to divide Xehanort’s heart among thirteen vessels. Thanks to you and Sora, we learned not all our candidates were fit for the task.

As for completely unwilling people being made into Seekers, they would need to be totally steeped in darkness, like Terra, where Xehanort can basically just hijack their body. But Terra put up way too much of a fight, and he couldn’t risk that again; Xehanort learned from that mistake. That’s why Roxas was a good candidate at first. He started off so spacey, and without much awareness. Of course, he didn’t stay that way for long.

I shall conduct the following experiments:

Extract the darkness from a person’s heart.

Cultivate darkness in a pure heart.

Both suppress and amplify the darkness within.

The experiments caused the test subject’s heart to collapse, including those of the most stalwart. How fragile our hearts are! My treatment produced no signs of recovery. -Ansem’s Report

Weakness of will is another issue. It is very tricky to make the person vulnerable to possession, but not have their heart totally collapse. If their heart collapses, they are too broken to use.If your’e too far gone, you’re no good; there is a point of no return. That’s basically how Xehanort viewed Ventus at the beginning of BBS. I think that’s why Xemnas was so desperate to find Ventus in 358/2 Days. His body was asleep, and his heart was elsewhere. He’s totally vacant, but his heart was not collapsed or broken thanks to Sora. Roxas became too aware, but Ven was a perfect vessel.

Xemnas: Our experiments creating Heartless were attempts to control the mind, and convince it to renounce its sense of self.

What it ultimately comes down to is: Xehanort needs a person who is devoid of a sense of self. Not broken; just lacking the mental capacity to reject his heart. The fact that Xehanort was resorting to mind control experiments shows how desperate he was to find someone like this, and how difficult it is to use someone as a vessel for his heart. And this is why I think Isa being “Subject X” is the only thing that actually makes sense to me. I mean, just look at how Nomura chose to draw him in the official artworks. He’s the only Organization member that just stares blankly ahead, while everyone else makes eye contact with the “camera”. That blank look is so similar to people who’ve lost their heart, like Kairi and Ventus.

It’s worth mentioning that the localization team chose the name “Recusant’s Sigil” for the “X” mark. When you recuse yourself, you remove yourself from a situation to avoid a conflict.A recusant is a person who refuses to submit to an authority or to comply with a regulation. That’s the exact opposite of what Xehanort would want in a person. It sounds like the “X” is something akin to a punishment for having too much of a sense of self. It’s a brand of ownership meant to break the person’s will. So I think if anything, Isa must have put up one heck of a fight before he recused himself. He definitely didn’t seem to have the “weakness of will” problem. Which is probably why he was so special. He had such a strong will that he lost his sense of self, but he didn’t completely break like everyone else did. He was a great vessel in that regard. “Subject X” possess all the qualities of an ideal vessel.

I mentioned this on the previous post about Axel, but deities like Shiva are often depicted with a dot directly between the eyebrows. This is significant because this is where the pineal gland is located, which is said to activate the Third Eye chakra on the forehead. It is also called the mind’s eye because it is the direct link between the mind and the physical world. It is also regarded as the highest feminine energy center in the body and the portal to the The Higher Self. This is generally regarded as a union with the divine source. Similar to the notion of the soul, basically. The true spiritual self. It is truly interesting to me that Saix’s scar is located directly between his eyebrows.

The symbol of death is situated directly on the source of his mind and soul. There’s no way that was just a coincidence. Also, it always seemed significant to me that Xemnas was covering Saix’s mouth in that picture. Nobody else in any of the official artwork has part of their face covered like that. It immediately stood out to me, since Saix was right up front and center in the illustration with Xemnas. Artists don’t just cover up a large part of a character’s face like that for no reason. I think it’s very symbolic that Xemans is covering Saix’s Throat chakra. Its emphasis is on communication and projecting authenticity into the world. When it is in balance we can express what we think and what we feel.

A question about Terranort. Ansem and Xemnas came from the splitting of Terranort. Does that mean that when they were defeated in KH1 and KH2, Terra was revived alongside Master Xehanort?

Nomura: By all rights, Terra should have been revived as himself at that point in time. However, his heart was still in the clutches of Xehanort, and it was unable to go back, and the shell of his body was the only thing that revived. Then, Xehanort brought the heart of Terranort from the past and put it in that shell of a body he once controlled.

If Isa’s heart had also been swallowed by Xehanort’s (which is what’s supposed to happen to those who get Xehanort’d) then it made perfect sense that they took him and only him. His heart wasn’t in his body. It was “captured”, as Nomura said. His body was just an empty shell, like Terra’s. A perfect empty vessel just waiting to be filled.

I thought I’d never see the word “replica” again. Any rational man would realize the Riku Replica was not likely unique, but I’m the only one in the Organization who knew of his exceptional copying functionality, and that he ultimately formed a sense of self. -Axel’s Report

Xemnas: The goal was to duplicate the Keyblade wielder’s memories, and through them, his powers–thus making them our own. Vexen oversaw the project at Castle Oblivion. However, our efforts were severely derailed by his unexpected demise. And this particular Replica–the one we called Xion–came to form an identity of her own.

Xemnas: We wanted the Key. Xion’s exposure to Roxas effected a transfer of its power, just as we had hoped. Had things stopped there, Xion would have been an unequivocal success. But then, through Roxas, Sora himself began to shape “it” into “her,” giving Xion a sense of identity. I was ready to scrap the whole project…

Lastly, I didn’t like the Deus ex Replica aspect of the story. How Xehanort could just use replicas to fill out his ranks. That was far too convenient, considering the Replica Program was an unfinished failure at the time of Vexen’s demise. Now he suddenly made that much progress so fast? Nah, I don’t buy it. The story made a big deal of this idea that the Replica Project was a failure, because even replicas will gain a sense of self over time.

#anti-kh3 #anti kh3 #kh3 spoilers #kh meta #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts meta #kh saix #kh isa #kh xehanort #kh org