#casting fictional characters inspired by real people as other fictional characters

[sukunasweetheart]

actor!sukuna!!!

warnings; fem reader, jjk manga spoilers, a bit of both submissive and dominant sukuna, and also sukuna who loves his domineering wife a little too much, smut and fluff at the end, breeding, choking, use of collar and leash (on sukuna), rough sex, lots of teasing and provoking

i really really adore the trope where actors who play utterly vile, evil villain roles all the time simply bc of their intimidating appearance but their real personality is rather sweet and gentle, and i desperately want to apply this to sukuna. they would've probably needed to cast a whole different man for his trueform, which is what inspired this idea <3<3

actor!sukuna is oh so very notorious for his antagonistic roles, always always being the charismatic, devilish character in any film, tv series or dramas he's casted in, the ones that always somehow has the upper hand, who never shows care for anyone else, who always seems to have control over everything in all situations he's put into...

and the recent hit series 'jujutsu kaisen' is exactly the same. with him being the king of curses, having those extra cgi arms and tummy mouth and having to spend hours before shooting simply doing the makeup for the distorted side of his face. not to mention all those tattoos!

actor!sukuna, who loves his job, but sometimes gets exhausted by the kinds of roles he has to play. he's gotten so used to it, his normal facial expressions and mannerisms also may have changed a little because at times he gets himself too immersed into his character

and you might say fiction doesnt cross over to real life at the best of times, but for sukuna, it might not be the case... he's noticed over the years that people around him do truly get scared or intimidated by him. and like any celebrity, he has his own fair share of haters.

with his character's newest victim being the fans' beloved gojo satoru, it only aggravated them-- and he knew from the moment he read the script that he was going to get flamed for it. he's used to this but because of jjk's intense popularity, he actually gets a little concerned this time around...

thankfully, thankfully! he has a wife he can run home to and seek comfort from, and fully let go of this fictional persona of his.

actor!sukuna, who is often burdened with the unconscious expectations from others, to have his intimidating aura and always have control over situations (maybe sometimes people)...

but he is able to put all of this down in front of you and just lay in your lap in front of the tv as you play with his pink curls.

oh, he's so grateful for his wife, who fulfills his hidden desires... his wife, who didn't see him only by his villainous roles, but also took notice of his gentler side and decided to grab hold onto that part of him with an iron grip instead.

actor!sukuna may be a man well over two metres tall, with a resting bitch face and a deep, velvety voice perfect for being a natural dominant and aggressive lover-- which, sometimes he is of course, when the situation calls for it (whenever you feel like you want to be dominated) - but in actuality, he aches to be controlled for the most part, rather than the one controlling...

when he told you about his worries of his real life reputation, of how people on set seem to avoid him subtly, and get a bit over-polite with him, you sent a handful of extravagant food and drink trucks over to the shooting set in sukuna's name, raising the spirits of his colleagues, the camera and film crew members etc., and of course, sukuna himself.

and everytime he has any complaints about his job, you comfort him by saying that if he ever feels like it's too much, he can quit anytime he wants, because you'd be happy to be him support financially as long as he'd be your househusband *wink wink*

actor!sukuna laughs at the thought, but there are times where he seriously considers it... he is getting older, and sometimes doing all these action scenes as the villain is taxing on his body... (perhaps after jjk is over, he'll take a well deserved, long break from his career for a little while)

before getting married, from the moment sukuna first interacted with you, he was already hooked- you flirted with him openly without expecting him to take lead, and you talked less about his various identities in his shows, but showed more curiosity in his true self, and he was simply attracted to your... fearlessness?

and a part of him tried to fight against it too, but you were simply too charismatic. (it only charmed him more)

"you're an awfully cocky woman. you sure you can take me on?"

"take you on? oh, no, handsome. you'll be the one taking me on. i'll have you wrung out dry by the end of this week... if you'll let me, of course."

and that, he did.

fast forward to the present.

sukuna had come home without erasing all the makeup from his filming of jjk, to your curiosity...

"the king of curses, was it? the name of this character," you ask with a relaxed voice, watching as sukuna's large cock throbs between his legs, drooling precum messily into his boxers. ironically, you're the one lying against your back on the bed, with him hovering over your body longingly, but not being permitted to touch you... yet.

you'd put a collar around his neck. and you have him leashed, with the rope being in your hand. he has you between his arms that are supporting his body weight... muscles flexing and sweat dripping down his skin from his own arousal.... he was supposed to be tired from today's filming session but right now, his whole body is heating up like boiling water in a kettle. how cruel of you to do this to him, right after he gets home from work.

you loop the rope around your fingers once, and tug on the leash harshly, making his face shift closer to yours.

"i'd like to hear an answer, please."

"...yes, the king of curses," sukuna hisses, eyeing the leash that both turns him on and also pisses him off simultaneously.

"interesting..." you hum with a smile, gently touching the fabricated side of his face that's been made with make up.

"i do have to say, the tattoos and black nails fit you so well, my love."

sukuna remains silent as he resists the urge to kiss you, with your lips hovering so close to his.

"don't fuck me with your eyes, honey. you're making yourself too obivous," you tease, ghosting your fingers over his chest, touching him languidly. his dick swells even more.

"darling, please... i need to touch you," sukuna says, softspoken and yearning so hard it makes him dizzy.

"oh... i love when you beg like that. what would your fans think, if they saw their most cold-blooded villain pleading me like this?"

with a collar and leash on, no less.

"it wouldn't matter what they think. you're the only one i love," he responds, shuddering as you nudge your knee against the erection in his pants.

"i like that answer."

you kiss him, which is an act that means you're permitting him to finally lay his hands on you - and this breaks the restraint he'd been holding onto until now.

sukuna kisses you back with a throaty growl, slipping his tongue in to smother you with, as your lips are curled up into a pleased smile. drunk on the taste of you, he doesn't stop kissing until he's had his fill. both of you are breathing heavily when he finally pulls away, his face being flushed beautifully.

large hands come to tug away at your clothes, exposing the swell of your chest, and he clamps his lips around one of your nipples, like a man starving... you gasp, and tug at his soft hair from the back, the other hand still gripping onto the rope that connects with his collar.

you arch your back when he nips on them a little, earning him a hiss from you and another harsh tug at his leash. when he comes up to face you once again, he's wearing a smirk with foggy eyes, satisfied with this small payback.

once he finally comes around to releasing his strained cock, he gives a sigh of relief. the tip is glistening with his precum, and he wants to be buried in your cunt so bad. he slides it in with one go.

"oof, always so big, aren't you?" you tell him, feeling his throbbing dick reach so deep inside. it's not your first time saying such a thing, so he knows you mean it as a compliment. it inflates his ego.

"fuck- you feel so good," he mumbles mindlessly, pushing your thighs back.

sukuna begins to thrust into you, his heavy balls slapping down against your ass as he starts with a slow pace. another tug of his leash gets him to stop again.

"c'mon, love. is that all you can do?" you urge him, your grip still strong on his rope. he narrows his eyes, and pushes your thighs back harder, and begins to slam his hips into you, the way you love it.

"f-fuck... harder, sukuna... harder-" you moan as you keep taunting him with several pulls of his leash.

"tug that thing one more time..." he mutters with a low, out of breath voice, "and i'll make you regret it."

you love it when he's submissive, but even more so when he's in the mood to put his foot down. but you're not giving in so easily. you give it another tug, playfully.

"try me."

from then on, he snaps and decides he'll give you your own "collar".

his hand.

you squeal in delight as he roughs you up from his grip on your throat, to the biting, and to the bruising pace of his thrusts, all harmonising to bring you to your orgasm...

when sukuna cums, he does so right against your cervix, spilling all his thick, hot seed into your womb, with a loud groan. he's sucking a hickey onto your shoulder as he does so, full body shuddering with each clench of his balls as he dumps more into you. your pussy squeezes around him, fingernails digging deeply into his muscled back, feeling blissful.

he soon collapses onto you, and you start playing with his hair again, as he rests momentarily, being spent after the rough sex that happened when he'd just come back home. you'll need to reward him later for this.

in the bathroom, you help him scrub away all those tattoos, and tear off that falsified right side of his face. he appreciates this, especially the ones on his back that are difficult to reach. in the tub, you sit between his legs, and lean back as he dotes on you, calloused hands not leaving anywhere of you untouched.

once the bathing is finished, you do his nightly skin care routine for him. an actor's gotta preserve their skin, you know. before the moisturizer though, you press a soft kiss onto his pure face, clean of tattoos, and hum with a pleased expression.

"i love this one more, after all."

he huffs out a chuckle and pulls you onto his lap.

"hah. the king of curses ought to cry real tears with envy."

he clings onto you all night, face buried into your chest, indulging in the feeling of being the little spoon.

Masterlist

Tagging: @yuujispinkhair and @gojos-thot-patrol (who encouraged the leash idea...)

credit and link to the cute heart dividers here

#sukuna x reader #sukuna #jjk x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #sukuna smut #sukuna x y/n #jujutsu kaisen x reader #soft sukuna

[ponett]

Do you have any advice for people making OCs/sonas? Yours are really well rounded and unique and I'd greatly appreciate the insight of someone who got a passion project off the ground!

So this is a very broad topic, and it varies a lot based on your own creative goals, what kind of characters you're creating, and where you want to use them. Creating an OC to be used in furry pinups is a little different than creating one for a dramatic story. But I'll try to give some general advice on how I do things for the types of characters and stories I tend to work with

Heads up: this will be kinda long lol

The germ of an idea

For me, I'll generally be inspired to create a character starting with a small number of core traits. These could be anything. A color scheme, a body type, a job, a hobby, a personality archetype, an outfit, a visual motif, a functional role in a story I'm working on, a noteworthy facial feature, a weapon, a relationship of some sort to an existing character, a single scene or joke I want to use them for. For furries and fantasy characters, species is usually one of the first things I'll have an idea for, which tends to get the ball rolling fairly easily since we have all sorts of cultural associations with different animals and fantasy creatures.

Any standout character trait like this that you find compelling can serve as that initial spark. The inspiration can come from anywhere, but it's often just a matter of knowing yourself and your own tastes. What do you like? What are the people in your life like? What really speaks to you in a character? What's an existing fictional character that you'd like to rewrite and take in a different direction? What's an aspect of yourself that you would like to see represented more often in fiction? It doesn't have to be something super deep or fleshed out right from the start, though. You can start with something as simple as "I want a black cat character" or "I want a character who dresses like an arcade carpet" or "I want a character who looks scary but is actually nice." Whatever it is, it's something that differentiates the new character from the ones I already have, because otherwise I'd just be using them.

Contrast

From there, you can start brainstorming other traits that might go with those core traits. Some of those may be traits that naturally complement each other. Continuing with the black cat example, maybe you wanna play into the common cultural perception of black cats and say that this character brings bad luck, or is associated with witchcraft. However, I often like to give characters contrasting or even seemingly contradictory traits, which can help elevate a character beyond a stock archetype. Real people tend to be a walking ball of contradictions, after all.

I've talked a lot about how I did this with the main cast of SLARPG. Melody is a fox, traditionally a crafty and untrustworthy predator, but she's extremely introverted and gentle. Allison is a bunny, but instead of being a meek and cuddly little prey animal she's an outgoing fighter who loves a challenge, and she has a muscular build. I think this kind of thing gives characters some fun flavor, and can be really effective for both comedy and drama. For an example from something I didn't write, take Senshi from Dungeon Meshi. He's a dwarf, and he embodies certain stereotypical aspects of dwarves - he's a short, buff man with a big bushy beard, he lives underground, he's stubborn and doesn't like elven magic - but he also goes against some of them. Instead of being an expert on mining and blacksmithing, Senshi is a culinary expert who has a deep appreciation for the natural ecosystem of the dungeon. He's a weirdo among dwarves for not caring about the wellbeing of his axe and for using his super awesome shield primarily as a giant wok. And that's what makes Senshi fun and interesting.

So going back to our example, instead of going with the stereotype, we could make a black cat character who has comically good luck, or who's superstitious and afraid of witchcraft, or who's an extremely rational person who always believes in science over superstition. Or maybe you roll with the bad luck angle, but instead make the black cat be the victim of their own bad luck in some interesting way. Maybe this black cat has terrible luck with love and can't hold down a relationship. Maybe this black cat is an aspiring speedrunner who consistently gets the absolute worst RNG possible in every video game due to their own bad luck. Maybe this black cat has accrued a horrendous gambling debt after a long losing streak and has loan sharks coming after them.

These are all just hypothetical examples, of course. I don't exclusively make characters with ironic contradictions like this. The idea is just to build on those core traits you started with in interesting ways, and that's one of my favorite ways to do so. But honestly, a lot of the time execution is more important than the sheer originality of an idea, and sometimes really putting your all into playing a trope you love straight is the right move.

Specificity

Regardless of what direction I take a character in past that initial seed of an idea, the key ingredient tends to be specificity. To give them specific details beyond the most stock possible version of that core idea you started with.

This is something I internalized from Tim Schafer, via a blog post in the behind-the-scenes backer material for Broken Age. Sadly I'm not sure if that stuff is still available, but I did save this particular post about creating characters since it really helped me, so I'll directly quote a chunk of that post here:

No two characters would approach a problem or react to events in the same way. At least, not if you’ve designed the characters well. If you’ve left them too vague or superficial, if they are merely functional elements in your story instead of individuals, then they might react in the same way. And that’s a problem. So to avoid that, I’m going to talk about one the most important parts of character development: specificity. Making sure your character is a specific individual, not a stereotype. A unique character, different from anyone else in the world. It doesn’t mean that they have to have wacky gimmicks, eyepatches and crazy accents. It just means they have to be specific. For example, let's create a new character. Let's say your story has a scene where your main character gets in trouble in school. So you’re probably going to need a school teacher. Imagine a school teacher for a bit. Do you see her in a little red schoolhouse? Maybe a bun in her hair? An apple on her desk? Thick black glasses? Let’s put a ruler in her hand for good measure. Done! We have our teacher character. She’s ready to be in the scene where our hero goes to school and the teacher sends her to the principal’s office for passing notes. Right? I mean, this character doesn’t have too many lines, so why develop her character any more? The problem is that this teacher is a very shallow stereotype of a teacher. She has no specific attributes that make her memorable. She’s the teacher you would get in a set of free clip art. She might not have many lines, but if all your supporting characters are this way, your story will be more bland than it should be. Even if this teacher is only onscreen for a minute, she should be unique and different from any other teacher in the world. Luckily, it's not actually that hard to make her so. You just have to ask some very basic, specific questions.

Tim goes on to explain how simple exercises like filling out character sheets with basic questions about your character (there are a million of these online) can help push a character beyond a stock archetype, even if it's a minor supporting character. Questions about where they're from, their likes and dislikes, their beliefs, their goals in life, that sort of thing. For minor characters especially, a lot of these details may never actually come up in a story, but just asking even a few of these questions and giving them specific answers helps you see them less like an archetype and more like a real person in your head. Maybe you never bring up your character's backstory or their favorite sport or what kind of music they listen to, but just having a specific answer for questions like that might help color the way you depict that character in subtle ways. It makes it feel like they aren't defined by just that one core trait you started with, and helps make the characters and world feel more alive, like there's stuff going on with them beyond the bounds of the story or the drawing.

It's a careful balancing act, though. It's easy for a character to feel like they're a collection of too many unrelated gimmicks and quirks. Again, like Tim said, these specifics don't have to make for the craziest, most original character ever, there just has to be something there.

Let's go back to SLARPG as an example, where I combined broad character archetypes I liked with more specific personal elements that I felt like I wasn't seeing enough in the fiction I liked. Melody is riffing on the common idea of the reserved healer character in the RPG or MMO party and the shy girl archetype, but she's the main hero instead of a supporting player in another person's story, and she's also a fat bisexual trans woman who draws a lot of little details from my own life. Her interests, her relationships, her opinions on things, her personal hangups and dreams, these all set Melody apart from other fantasy healer characters and define her as Melody Amaranth. Specificity!

But it doesn't always have to be super deep, especially if you just want some characters to draw for fun and aren't planning on writing a story with them. Take my fursona. I've always loved dogs, so I made my fursona a dog. I chose a Samoyed in particular because I think Samoyeds are the cutest, and I hadn't seen hardly any anthro Samoyed OCs at the time. I leaned into the breed's signature fluffiness to help my fursona stand out from other canine OCs. She has simple identifying traits like being fat like me, wearing glasses like mine, and having a hairstyle kinda like mine (when I tied my hair up in a bun, at least). And there you go. Fursona achieved. She's not a wildly high concept character, but she doesn't need to be

Anyway I realize that this is mostly about the writing aspect, so here's a few quick bullet points about designing a character's appearance:

Face and body type variety are good, but personally I would say lack of body type variety is worse than same face syndrome

Knowing some stuff about shape language is good, but you don't have to be completely beholden to the "circles are friendly, squares are sturdy, triangles are scary" shit. I'm generally more interested in using repeated shaping in different parts of a character's design as sort of a shape motif. Melody's body, hair, and tail are all made of round, swooping shapes, for example. (This is more applicable if you're designing cartoonier characters as opposed to realistic humans, obviously.)

Knowing some basics of color theory is also good. I like using complementary and contiguous color schemes on characters and generally try not to use too many distinct colors on one design. Black and white and grey and various browns are good as neutral colors to balance out the colors of the rainbow, and gold can be a nice accent color

A small handful of identifying accessories can be fun, but don't rely on those to make a design stand out. Ideally your character should still be identifiable even when not wearing their default outfit, or even in silhouette

Aaaaaand I'm gonna call it a wrap there! This is a huge topic, so hopefully this helps with at least some of the basics! At the end of the day, though, don't beat yourself up if you can't sit down and force yourself to come up with the most crazy awesome OC ever. Just have fun and be yourself!

#rakruined #ask #slarpg asks

[shittinggold]

Black Sails at its core is a tragedy, in that we know how the story will end. This is the nature of its existence as a prequel - we know the fates of many characters, as well as the fate of Nassau and the wider world because Treasure Island exists. We know Billy must end up on that beach, we know Flint must be long gone, we know John Silver must become Long, and we know the revolution fails. The events of the story are dictated by its ending, which we are told before the story starts.

And at the same time, because it is a historical show that uses real world elements and real people, it is also constrained by the bind of history. We know the pirate rebellion does not succeed; we know that slaves do not overthrow the British Empire in 1718. This is what's so brilliant about the way the show's cast is constructed. By using a combination of historical and fictional priates, the show locks itself into being a tragedy on multiple levels. The story of Treasure Island and the story of history both contain it.

Yet even within that, the hope it inspires is so real and powerful that it makes us believe that it can end some other way. We hear Flint or Madi talk about a world after England, and it is such a beautiful thought that we believe it might actually happen, despite knowing that that it can't.

Which is what's so brilliant about the climax, with Flint and Silver in the woods. Flint is raging, rattling the bars of narrative and history both, adamant that the world he envisions can be real. While Silver, the storyteller, knows the truth - that there is only one way the story ends, and the revolution's failure is inevitable.

...Or is it? Certainly, it doesn't succeed, but was it inevitable? So many characters talk about inevitability, but one of my favourite scenes is between Jack and Max in 4x07, where Max claims that war against civilisation is inherently doomed nd history proves that, and Jack points out that it's that belief that caused her to side against the pirates and cause the war's doom. The thing is that they're both right. History is fact, and also written in part because of what people believe will be written.

So the story ends with so many questions, and invites us to write the rest. We thought Flint's fate, drinking himself to death in Savannah, was sealed by Treasure Island, but now we have been told a new story. He instead finds his lost love and lives happily ever afer. Except, no, that itself was a story, and he's actually buried in the forest by Silver. The story's ending depends on the teller, and we are pushed into the role of teller.

And because of how the show is structured - fiction and history interwoven - we must consider how this fuidity in truth applies to history. We assume we know the story of history because we are at its end. It seems so inevitable in retrospect. Yet it never was, and isn't now, as it is being written. Maybe we know that Jack Rackham is arrested and killed soon after the series ends, because that's what happened in real life, but maybe we're wrong. Maybe there's something else. A story is true, a story is untrue.

Everything is built to make the awful ending an absolute certainty, locked tight in the dual cages of fiction and fact. But there is enough ambiguity and hope within to make us justifiably believe that it can end another way. Silver and Flint are both right. The ending was both inevitable and a direct result of the choices people made. It was always going to end this way. It didn't have to end this way.

#gahhhh i love this show so much #it's so fuckign good i could talk forever #black sails

[thenightpost]

Pairing Audio and Print Fiction: Moonbase Theta, Out and Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel

Why you should listen to MTO:

This podcast by @monkeymanproductions is beautiful, grounded sci-fi that builds its world of struggle and hope through the hearts of its lifelike characters. The first season consists of micro-fiction episodes in the form of progress reports from a moon base in the process of being decommissioned. From the second season onward, the cast of one expands to a whole group of moon-based professionals, by necessity a kind of family that accepts their differences and their shared hardships. As I listened, I came to feel a part of that group too, and to care for these characters despite their shortcomings, as one does for real people.

Why you should read EotMIEP:

This short story collection by Julian K. Jarboe provides striking variety in its subjects while always cleaving close to its themes of queer/trans identity and resilience. Its title story/novella depicts a moon colonization industry that is obviously exploitative, but still offers hope to those laborers who have exhausted their opportunities on earth (particularly queer, disabled, and indigenous workers). My favorite story in the collection, "I Am a Beautiful Bug!", follows a person caught in a bureaucratic nightmare after receiving surgery to become a Kafkaesque giant insect. I reveled in the eventual triumph of this self-made bug-person, as well as in the trans joy of robots, troubled teens, and the other characters who populate these stories.

Why you should try both!

MTO and Jarboe's title novella share a vision of the moon as a place of hope to strive for, a hope frustratingly limited by self-serving capitalist interests. Despite coming up against systemic forces they can do little to combat, the heroes of both works find comfort and agency in community. There's a kind of queer revolutionary bent that runs through both of these texts, which does not proscribe what a better future must look like, but imagines possible paths toward it. These stories have inspired my own work in how they center the complexity and transcending power of human connection in overwhelming circumstances, and how our present shapes our dreams of the future.

#I hope to do more of these eventually! feel free to send requests! #audio drama #short fiction #queer fiction #audio fiction #moonbase theta out #everyone on the moon is essential personnel

[just-a-carrot]

Had the chance to sit down and play the new installment (that makes it sound like an appliance... OW: Smart Fridge Edition) and it's so viscerally raw and human. The whole game is, but wow. My favorite genre of fiction is fantasy, for being able to see a creator and their world as 'look at a life these people are living and the world they're living in'. A world surreal, fantastic, and all too easy to think about what it would be like if it was real-- acting like it is real with dreams of dragons and elves. Our Wonderland goes beyond that, in a way few other fantasy stories I've read have. It's not the fantasy of magical beings living in a sprawling, epic world; it's not the fantasy of a gigantic battle of good versus evil-- the fantasy comes in when the cast thinks their lives should be just like the tales of knights and glory. The fantasy is just humans trying their darndest, despite it all. Hoping for a better world. Which wouldn't be so worth commenting on if not for the execution. Every emotion, every action-- beat-by-beat it's gripping and a perfect sell into the world. Playing the finale elicited some feelings and memories I had forgotten about. The sense of turning on the GameCube late at night, going to play Mario Sunshine. Long road trips immersed in the scenery of forest and buffalo, after having spent hours staring at cities. Getting up to dumb hijinks with people I'd only know for a few days. Staring out into the open ocean upon a swing. I'm not sure why it brought those out, but I think it's because of how human the game is, it gets you to think. It got me to think, anyways. Anywho, thank you for an amazing experience Carrot. I hope you have a good rest, and that my thoughts are written here somewhat coherently. If not, I'll summarize: DAMN GOOD GAME. DAMN GOOD STORY. DAMN GOOD ART. DAMN GOOD.

SOB

i don't know how to respond to this... this is incredibly sweet and thoughtful and i'm not sure i have the eloquence currently to type up and actually decent response 🥺💦

but i can definitely feel in my heart what you mean. even if it's not necessarily the exact same emotions or in the exact same way, especially as the creator rather than the experiencer in this case. but like. OW has always filled me with those types of nostalgic feelings as well. maybe it's because at its core, its about these types of fundamental happinesses. and these fundamental relationships we form as kids. and perhaps also simply because so much of the OW cast's pasts and experiences draw so heavily from my own, so it becomes almost as though i'm looking back into my own past through some kind of slightly warped threshold or something

stuff like the final scene in the field for instance was inspired by a scene in majora's mask, which is something i used to play with my sister. we would talk the characters aloud and make up our own stories rather than what they were actually saying (usually really ridiculous and stupid stuff lakdsfjad) or make silly radio plays where we recorded ourselves acting our chars from the game. also a lot of the references both in and outside of the game (like in my non-in-game art and such) was inspired by my own memories. so thinking about the game often makes these additional nostalgic coils drift up through my own memories

at any rate, i can't be sure that's the exact type of same feelings you're talking about, but... i feel like i understand the vibe of what you're saying at least

AND OFC I'M JUST REALLY HAPPY YOU ENJOYED THE ENDING DLKJALDSKJFASD

i still can't believe it's really over. and i mean sure it's not OVER over because i still have plans for other stuff with the chars and even the revamp which would include still working on stuff for the main game. but nothing will ever be the same for me as working on this game itself. and i'm really so grateful for everyone who's joined me in this journey because i'm not sure i would have made it to the end without all of you 💦

but i digress. thank you for this lovely message and for attempting to write up your thoughts lsakjdfasd it really means a lot!! 💕

#ow: finale spoilers #ask: ow

[shen-daozhang]

A while ago @majestictortoise got an ask about c-drama recs for someone who has watched The Untamed, and opened the floor for more recommendations from other people. I have a Part 1 here, but I ran out of time/space, and there were still a couple that I wanted to mention- specifically for someone who is looking for more danmei-inspired shows. I have a watch list here that's filterable by genre, as well as some other things, but like my first list I wanted to pull out a couple that I think are good for people who are looking for something to watch after The Untamed that might not be the first shows you'll hear about here on Tumblr (so, no Word of Honor, Guardian or TGCF).

Since this is my list and I can do whatever I want, I have also included a movie and some donghua ^^

Want found family and food porn? A delightful cast of flawed people trying their best who grow and change throughout the show? Then check out...

THE SLUETH OF THE MING DYNASTY 48 episodes. Viki.

In 1478, three very different men- low-level magistrate and foodie Tang Fan, imperial guard Sui Zhuo, and palace eunuch and teenaged head of the Western Depot Wang Zhi- team up to solve mysteries and stop a major conspiracy

The found family in the show is one of my favorites in all of tv, and I love that it expands beyond the "two adults and a kid or two" setup you see a lot. Nearly all of the characters start off a strangers and the relationships that grow between them are just really well done. This show also touches on mental illness (Sui Zhuo has PTSD from his time in the military) and while it's through the lens of it being the 1470s, I just really like how it was handled in terms of how it impacts his relationships, but also how his relationships impact his mental health. I highly recommend this show if you enjoy historical mysteries with some basis in reality (while the events of the show are very much fiction, the Emperor, Consort Wan and Wang Zhi were all real people).

This is inspired by the danmei webnovel of the same name by Meng Xishi. While there is the addition of a female love interest for Tang Fan (who imo is an interesting character in her own right), Tang Fan and Sui Zhou literally end up living with each other and basically adopt a child together - I think it's pretty clear what's going on between them aside from a platonic bromance. You might recognize: Tang Fan is voiced Su Shangqing, who overdubbed Meng Yao in The Untamed and Cao Weining in Word of Honor.

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Looking for a short show with a unique take on the mystery procedural and fantastic chemistry between the leads? Then...

UNDER THE SKIN 20 episodes. Viki.

Artist Shen Yi has a remarkable talent for constructing eerily accurate portraits using limited information about the subject. Seven years ago, that talent was used to murder a police officer investigating a human trafficking ring. Newly hired as a police sketch artist, Shen Yi clashes with the headstrong police captain Du Cheng who blames Shen Yi for his colleague’s death. As cases with connections to the trafficking ring begin to appear, can they put aside their differences and move on from the shadows of the past?

"Wait, hold up," you say. "This isn't a danmei adaptation." Technically you're correct but hear me out. I tend to avoid modern mystery shows for personal reasons, but when this come out earlier this year I thought I'd give this a chance mostly for the language practice. I'm really glad I did, because a show I thought was going to be something I was just half-watching ended up grabbing me by the throat and not letting go.

This is a good show that's made exceptional by the acting of and chemistry between Shen Yi and Du Cheng. I actually stopped watching an episode to check if this is based on a danmei webnovel because the enemies-to .... bros was just so strong (it's completely original for the record). In fact, most of my faults with the show lie in the episodes where they don't interact as much.

I already thought Tan Jianci was a good actor going into this (he's a stand out in Winter Begonia and steals the show in Secret of the Three Kingdoms) but this is easily his best performance. He's fantastic as both the edge-lord Shen Yi of seven years ago, and the haunted, driven man he became. Jin Shijia is perfectly cast as the earnest, heart-on-his-sleeve Du Cheng, and is a wonderful foil to Shen Yi. Seriously, I could go on and on about the chemistry between the two of them. The art aspect of this show is also really interesting! Unlike a lot of shows with a "gimmick" this show actually keeps up the art thread and uses it in new and interesting ways. I will say that I think this show loses a little steam in the middle (though it regains it again); however the characters more than make up for any faults to be found in the plot. I also wanted to mention that I really liked that there were two young women in the show who weren't there to be love interests, who develop a caring friendship with the men. I found that really refreshing.

I just want to give a heads up that there are some cases involving sexual violence (all handled in a PG13 manner). Feel free to message me if you need more details. I also go into more details about the content in my entry for this show on my watchlist.

You might recognize: Tan Jianci is playing Gu Yun in Winner is King Two actors from Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty appear in this. Baby Zhang (Qing Ge in TSOMD) is a co-worker, and the Emperor shows up in one of the cases.

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Are you in the mood for a beautifully designed and evocative show about the importance of the arts in a time of rapid change?

WINTER BEGONIA 49 episodes. Viki.

As the threat of the 1937 Japanese invasion looms over Beijing, two very different men- Western-educated businessman Cheng Fengtai and eccentric and talented opera singer Shang Xirui bond over their shared love for Peking opera.

(Full disclosure I'm still watching this at a glacial pace - this is a show I have to savor rather than binge - however I still feel the need to recommend this show because it's just so good so far)

Going into this, I'd heard this got regulated to just a bromance (you know how it is), but upon watching this I just have to say I have never seen more soft looks and soft-focus camera lenses used in so many shots with two men gazing at each other. Seriously, get yourself somebody who looks at you like Cheng Fengtai looks at Shang Xirui.

I had sworn off Republic-era dramas because the costuming and prop design tends to be... not great and those are two of my special interests, but I am so glad I gave this show a chance because it's beautiful. They walk a good line of being decently period correct while still telling you a lot about a character at a glance, and the opera costumes are stunning. It also looks like they sourced a good number of actual vintage props as well. A lot of care and effort was clearly taken to recreate the world of 1930s Beijing (called Beiping during this period), and the show really immerses you in a world that's rapidly changing. I think they also do an excellent job of involving audiences in why opera- which has become an acquired taste for modern audiences - is something that is so important to these characters.

You might recognize: Hei Zi (Gao Chong in Word of Honor) as Commander Cao Tan Jianci (Secret of the Three Kingdoms, Under the Skin, Winner is King) as Chen Renxiang

A film and some donghua under the cut!

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Open to film or animation? Well, then that case...

THE YIN YANG MASTER: DREAM OF ETERNITY (film) Netflix.

When a demonic serpent awakens, polar opposites Qingming and Boya must team up to stop a dark conspiracy that threatens their world.

Another "this technically isn't a danmei adaptation but there is no heterosexual explanation for what's going on"

This is one of my favorite movies! In particular, I'm really taken with the art direction, which is a blend of Japanese and Chinese influences. The costuming in this movie is drop-dead gorgeous. If you like opposites-attract, and sorta-enemies to.... "bros", you'll love how Boya and Qingming go from literally spying on each other because they don't trust the other one, to the other being the one person they are willing to lay down their life for :') There's also a side-romance that's checks off a lot of tropes for me that I can't get into with getting spoiler-y, but suffice it to say this movie gave me more feels than I expected from a New Years SFX extravaganza.

You might recognize Deng Lun (Boya) from Ashes of Love

NOTE: This movie and Yin Yang Master (Shi Shen Ling) are not related! They're both on Netflix and about the same characters, but they're completely different takes, with different stories and tones. I also really like that movie too and recommend it (in particular Chen Kun is fantastic as a more openly chaotic Qingming), but there aren't any of the implied feelings between Boya and Qingming in that one, even though that Qingming exudes chaotic bisexual energy

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Do you like stories with a main character who is trying to remain true to his principles and survive in a corrupt environment, while their foil is very "I don't see why I can't be both the love interest and the antagonist?" Then check out:

THOUSAND AUTUMNS 16 episodes. WeTV.

Devout Daoist sect leader Shen Qiao believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity. Demonic sect leader Yan Wushi firmly believes that all humans are fundamentally evil. When an assassination attempt leaves a poisoned and blinded Shen Qiao in Yan Wushi's hands, will Yan Wushi be able to corrupt him? Or will their relationship change how they both see the world and their place in it?

Obviously I love this show (and the webnovel it's adapted from, also by Meng Xishi), given my username. Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao- and how they play off each other- are some of the most fascinating characters in fiction, in my opinion. In addition they cast one of my favorite voice actors as Yan Wushi, and somehow made it more explicitly gay than the novel at this point in the story- which never happens- so it's just fantastic all around, honestly.

There is an unofficial resub that I highly recommend checking out because the the official one leaves a lot to be desired and frankly doesn't do justice to the show by a long shot. Send me a message for a link! You might recognize Yan Wushi is voiced by Wu Lei (voice of Shen Qingqiu in Scum Villain)

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Want a modern fantasy with interesting world-building and a story that stretches back millennia? Do you like two main characters who are both kind of terrible people and are incredibly full of themselves, who are also just really fun to watch? Then.... DROWNING SORROWS IN RAGING FIRE 12 episodes. Funimation.

3,000 years ago, against seemingly insurmountable odds Sheng Lingyuan united humans against the monstrous yao threatening their survival, and won. But despite being heralded as savior in his youth, Sheng Lingyuan is remembered by history as an infamous emperor who committed many ruthless and cold-blooded atrocities before throwing himself into a lake of fire. In the modern day, Xuan Ji- who works for an organization dealing with magical beings while being one himself- has a big mess on his hands because someone just raised a demon Sheng Lingyuan from the dead, and their reasons for doing so are probably bad news for everyone. And also Sheng Lingyuan is an emotionally manipulative asshole, honestly. But why do Sheng Lingyuan and Xuan Ji seem to have an inexplicable connection? And what's the truth behind Sheng Lingyuan's actions so long ago?

I feel like this sells itself - the main character is a cocky bisexual fire bird-man, and the love interest is a manipulative demon who blows up an elevator because he doesn't understand Arabic numerals, and they're both terrible people and it's fantastic. This is based on the webnovel of the same name by my favorite author, Priest, which I also highly recommend.

I watched this as it aired and I went from skepticism (don't care for the animation style or the character design, makes me think of Pokémon) to LOVE by the end of the first episode when the two main characters started interacting. And really, the interactions between the two leads is what really carries this show, but I also have a soft spot for Aloujin. My biggest compliant is I personally found some of the humor from the ensemble characters to be a swing-and-a-miss, and the show starts off a little funky, but my love for the main characters more than overpowers those elements.

You might recognize: Sheng Lingyuan is voiced by Jiang Guangtao (Xie Lian in TGCF- he's the complete opposite in this and it's great) Xuan Ji's sugar daddy Xiao Zheng is voiced by Guo Haoran (dubbing actor for Zhao Jing in Word of Honor)

So that's that for my recommendations for the moment! I've been thinking about doing one of these for webnovels (which I also have a list for) ...

#cdrama recs #slueth of the ming dynasty #tsomd #under the skin #猎罪图鉴 #winter begonia #yin yang master dream of eternity #shjx #thousand autumns #drowning sorrows in raging fire #lhjc

[amyyythestarry]

My Welcome Home Aus!

( Some of these aus are inspired by others ideas, I will give the names if I remember them )

New World - The world of Welcome Home was destroyed by the infamous Wally Darling, who had killed the inhumane creators and wrecked him, his friends, and family ( Which was only his mother and Eddie). The only one who was conscious in the ‘ Disposal Void ‘ was him, of course, and he couldn’t bare see the ones he loved lay unconscious, their felt torn, stuffing spilt, and body parts ripped from their very bodies. So, Wally sew them all back together with golden threads that caught his attention ( He didn’t know why the thread wa actually gold, but he knew it was laying near a brown book with a gold infinity sign on it. He took that too ). After patching his loved ones up he realized that their was nothing else of the world they once lived in, but unknowingly to him, he could make one of his own, from his own mine, and manipulate it however he pleased. But the previous world would not leave his memories no matter how hard he tried.

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Breaking The Show, Anything Goes! ( The person who gave me the idea to make this au is anonymous on AO3, but their fanfic is called “Falling In Love With Living” ) - After the creators ditched the puppets and the viewers stopped watching the Welcome Home cast caught themselves in a time loop, but the only ones who was aware of it were Wally and Home. Being the only sentient beings in the neighborhood they helped each other cope with the world they were in but found themselves going mad over the repetitiveness of everyday that has been going on for five years.

But one day their friends started acting weird and suspicious, which was not supposed to happen in the episode they went over everyday. They started gaining sentience, and messed up everything from there. New places and people started to show up, the world started acting a little too real as well as their neighborly best friends. Tearing apart every script, ruining every episode, and even acting out of character. Wally Darling tried to stop the madness and make everything go back to normal ( Since new was wrong ), I mean sure, he was physically and mentally tired of the days repeated over and over and over and over and over and over again but he feared that if things kept going like this the world would simply end. But would it reallly?

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Darling Little Mischeif ( This was particularly inspired by the person who created the vampire Wally au, I just can’t remember their @ ) - A Halloween WH au where the puppets live side by side with humans along with puppet monster and humanoid monsters. Their neighborhood is full of sunshine and happiness as well as spookiness and mystery, especially since people have been randomly going missing, sometimes found extremely injured, turned into rainbow vampires, or dead. Nobody knows who’s causing the disasters, not even the police, so the Welcome Home characters help find out what’s going on!  —

Lights, Camera, Action! ( I don’t know who originally made this au ) - Actor au. That’s it.

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Smile On Your Own - A world where everything is near perfection, no capitalism, no criminalism, no evil, no negativity. A world that was made by Wally Darling. 

Wally makes a world that is brilliant, bright and perfect ( Like him ) and brings people who are miserable and desperate for a change to that world! Julie Joyful and Frank Frankly are the first ones to come across it, thinking it was fiction and showing it off to their friends until they all get trapped in it. And once they find out who runs the place they immediately blame it on Wally. But he claims that it will make all of their worries, despressions, anxiety and negative feelings go away in a snap! Their not falling for it, still thinking it’s a malicious trap. But oh, Wally will make them wish they gave in.

—

PART TWO COMING SOON! 

And also want y’all to know that these aus will include my ocs that I will be introducing. I would draw them but I haven’t been the best at drawing lately and I don’t think I have time for that so yeah.

And the WH casts are aged down to teens in every au.

Having a good morning/afternoon/evening/night.

#welcome home #welcome home webseries #welcome home aus #wally darling #julie joyful #frank frankly #home #part two coming soon #welcome home au

[penultimate-step]

JJK S2 Livewatch: Eps 8-12

Hello, everybody! Sorry for taking so long to continue this live reaction. Since this is the part where the fights start in earnest, I had a lot less to say about the show's specifics and more general rambling thoughts I had as watching. It made me unsure about how to write this part up, and I ended up taking way longer than I should have (I watched these eps weeks ago!) Not sure if this will make the livewatch more or less entertaining to read along. But at this point I am going to post and hope for the best. Hope nobody is disappointed.

So, following up the end of the last ep, Gojo is called out to the danger zone. It's emphasized how much he's the one guy who matters and can do anything here. Which does kind of make me have thoughts about the worldbuilding.

Ok, so, what is the size of the jujutsu world, exactly?

Between Gojo and Tengen, we have multiple individuals who apparently single handedly hold the jujutsu world on their shoulders. That is so many points of failure, so many points where things could just go catastrophically wrong at any moment, presumably dooming the world. I know that this is primarily in order to place the plot focus on the important people. but it feels less like the jujutsu world is an institution or a world on its own, and more like a small club. Which could be fine, but its established that curses appear constantly, all over the world. It's hard to believe that a group small enough to need a handful of people to hold critical roles could cover the whole nation We know there are only 2 jujutsu schools in japan, and its unknown how many elsewhere but presumably an equivalent amount. We've seen most of the students at the school competition arc, and there were less than a dozen altogether. So....what's going on here? It just seems kind of arbitrary, and makes the world feel more constructed - which, of course, it is, being a fictional world, but generally we prefer when the guiding hand of the author is less obtrusive.

Some comparisons that can be made are to Naruto, the manga which I am almost certain is JJK's biggest inspiration, and to Chainsaw Man, a contemporary peer. Naruto's worldbuilding is large and sprawling, with plenty of named organizations, locations, and events offscreen. out of universe info books and spinoffs help add detail to this, but aren't necessary. There, it is believable that any given character exists in the context of the world because the world exists as background. in contrast, chainsaw man shares a much tighter focus with jjk. much less exacting detail, minor characters, etc; a greater focus on a small cast. There is no greater detail, readers know nothing about the structure of hell, the goings-on in the US or USSR, or even other divisions and areas in japan. but there is enough there to maintain an illusion that the world exists - mentions of foreign countries, occasional shots of hunters or political leaders. Sure, it's not the same as actually detailing in the world, but there's no need to go that far - enough has been sketched in that the readers can imagine the characters getting on a plane and flying to another country, even if they don't have any details about the destination, it feels like they exist in a real world with real places that the camera just doesn't turn to.

This might seem like I'm being overly harsh to the setting. it is clearly an intentional choice to have Gojo be the lynchpin of the world, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But as someone who loves urban fantasy as a setting, it does sometimes bother me when I feel like the world exists only for the convenience of the main cast. It's a world close enough to our own that I feel like it should make sense.

Anyway, that's enough of that. Moving on to actually talking about the events of the episodes. I did warn you at the start that I had less to say about this set, though.

The fight between Yuuji and the locust curse isn't a bad fight to reintroduce us to the main protagonist. It's smoothly animated, outside some hiccups when jumping through walls, and the fact that both fighters use fully physical techniques made the whole thing seem very even and straightforward.

It's outshone completely by the Gojo vs villain gang battle at the end of 8 and through 9, though. I love when hidden world fantasy type settings use the clash between the normal world and the fantastical, setting these fights in a crowded city subway was a cool enough idea already, but the villain plan to use ordinary citizens to box gojo in, the use of trains in the battle, all hammered it in. the way the battle goes on around them while they can't even see most of it is interesting.

The almost wild, ruthless way Gojo speaks and fights in this battle make it clear he's been pushed very far. Between this and the flashback eps, S2 hasn't been shy about showing Gojo struggling and on the edge, a stark contrast to the way he was essentially the plot device "I win" button in his season 1 appearances. Where many of his memorable moments then had him floating at a distance to his opponents, untouchable as his technique, this fight is brutally physical. The moment he grabs at Hanami's branches was visceral. I was actually really surprised to see Hanami die. When he had Hanami against the wall, I started saying out loud "You know, the ruthlessly strategic thing to do here would be go for the killing blow on the weakened enemy. I just know Hanami is going to come back and cause trouble in future arcs. But it makes sense the author wouldn't want to waste a villain with so much buildup like that." And then he actually did kill him. Okay! Message received, Gege! I'll stay on my toes a bit more!

Also, as an aside (much as the show does,) I really liked the villain interludes. Seeing them messing around playing games in their free time did a lot to add to their characterization, even if it was just a way to exposit their plans to the audience.

While I'm giving praise, the sound design and music team did a great job. There's so much that wordlessly conveys the emotions going on mid-scene without having to stop and actually demonstrate them. the ominous overlay on the villains, the frenetic piano as gojo rushes to use his domain, and the most evocative of all, the soft and emotional tunes of shock when Gojo sees Geto again.

Also, this is the part where I have to embarrassedly admit that I was already spoiled on present day geto being fake. Rather, I was so spoiled that I assumed it wasn't a spoiler and was revealed in S1, until seeing the big reveal scene made me realize someone must have told me about this years ago. Whoops. Apologies if any of my followers were waiting for my reaction to that bit :(

Ep 10 is mostly a bridge and setup for the next portion, but I do have some brief thoughts on the new characters to touch on before moving on. The drinking old man is not endearing himself to me with his flippancy, the curse user with the hand sword from season 1 is back, and still kind of annoying whenever he's on screen. The unnamed white-haired girl with him seems cool though. also, this may be kind of a late moment to say this, but I really do like mahito as a character. Some of his transfiguration stunts were genuinely unsettling, and the way he alternates between that kind of cruelty and his general playful attitude makes him pretty fun to have on screen. He's far and away my favorite of the present day villains.

Skipping ahead to the fights in eps 11 and 12. The montage of murders by the curse users actually disgusted me. Which is kind of funny to contrast with the appearance and fighting style of the man who fights Yuuji and Megumi in this episode. His face and movements are different than most of the cast, reminding me more of some kind of demonic looney tunes character, jumping around and letting hits bounce off him. The fight is a cool showcase of 10 shadows, as well as giving some fun interactions between Yuuji and Megumi.

Actually, as I look back on it, I'm somewhat more impressed by this bit than I was as I was actually watching. None of the individual moments are super impressive or thought provoking, but as I come in to write down thoughts I realize that this two episode span seamlessly transitions between 4 different fights, done well enough that I didn't see it as an interruption, and only realized while writing this about it afterwards.

I don't want to dwell too much on the Nobara and Nanami vs hand guy fight, because that guys icks me out. Mei Mei's fight is mostly offscreen, but I do have a meme about it, because I cannot stop my brain from making unfortunate connections. The fight between the masked sorcerer (I don't remember if we got his name?) and the pair on the rooftop, though. It starts pretty slow - I don't think either of their powers or the way they use them are very interesting - but things tick up immediately when Toji shows up. Just like in the flashback arc, he just grabs the attention in every scene he's in, an

While I'm on the topic, one thing I noticed is how efficient the flashback arc was. Pretty much every element from there makes a direct return now, not even 10 episodes after the fact. Geto and Toji are shown off in the past right in time for them to be introduced in the main plot, not wasted elements. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing but it did feel noticeable. Possibly this ties back to the stuff I was talking about at the start of this, where JJK keeps making the tradeoff of telling a tighter and more focused story while cutting lose any elements that could be seen as extraneous, for better or for worse.

Anyway, that wraps up that watch session. It was pretty good, I didn't enjoy it as much as I liked eps 1-5, but much more than I liked 6-7. as a whole I think I can start to calibrate my expectations for how good this seasons is going to be now, very well executed but much more straightforward than that first arc would suggest. Less exploration of world and characters, more cool fights and action scenes.

I feel like I said a lot without actually saying very much, I worry that this was almost entirely recap of things any watcher knows already. I'll try and write the next section much faster, and hopefully I'll have more interesting things to say about that one.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #step.animanga #step.live

[tobiasdrake]

Something I like about the cast of Danganronpa V3 is how needlessly over-the-top they can be.

Like. Okay. What sets this group of characters apart is that they were not created in good faith.

What I mean by that is, the casts of previous Danganronpa games often had an interesting backstory to justify how they came to be Ultimates. Some were tragic, some were thought-provoking, but they generally felt like... Like, yeah, okay, this is a fairly believable sort of background that could create a person whose personality is hyper-specialized around this or that activity.

As I said before, the more you get to know these Ultimate Students, the more you realize that this is just a collection of neurodivergent kids and their myriad collections of rocks. Sure, there's a secret clan of detectives or a Fist of the North Star fanfic here or there.

But most of them are just things like. "My grandpa's failings taught me that I should work hard." "I learned about medicine because I was beaten a lot." "My heart disease could kill me at any moment so I devoted my life to inspiring others to live well." "I started programming on my dad's computer and got really good at it."

Most of the DR cast feel like people who could exist right now.

But V3's characters are way over-the-top, and that's by design. As part of V3's commentary on fact and fiction, these characters are created as over-designed, over-complex messes.

Nearly all of V3 characters are like, "I lied about my age to get into the astronaut program but then I was so good at astronaut that they let me stay in the program even though they found out my secret, and also I'm suffering from a lethal space virus that could kill me at any moment but I'm hanging in there so that I can see space."

"I come from a long line of magicians who are secret mages and I trained in magic under an ancient magician master, but my secret magician talents were so great that I surpassed my master. It's all real magic, by the way."

"I was lost in the wilderness as a child and then raised by wolves who inspired me to become the ultimate gentleman and be interested in insects."

"I was an orphan with extremely aggressive habits who was taken in by monks. The head monk trained me in aikido, ironically a martial art predicated on non-aggression but we invented a super secret ultimate aggressive version of it. Then we became a crime-fighting duo, battling the forces of evil to protect women everywhere!"

With just a few exceptions, they're all like this.

Danganronpa V3 characters read like someone who wrote a novel-length backstory for their D&D character before the campaign began, because they didn't understand that the plot was supposed to be what happens right here, in the game.

But. Like. That is exactly what they are. So that dynamic actually fits really well. These are not Danganronpa characters created in good faith; They're actors LARPing their fanfiction OCs. And they read like it.

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #revisiting drv3

[snurgle07]

Say all your psychonauts 2 thoughtS

All of them huh? I think about this game so much, I’d be here all day, but this certainly gives me a good excuse to ramble about some things I love about pn2. :D

- The characters are amazing! 10/10 I care about pretty much all of those freaks. The art style makes them all look so charming in a lopsided weird sort of way, and the game is so empathetic to everyone that even the characters we don’t get much of or who serve a limited purpose still feel well rounded and real.

- Raz is excellent. He’s loads of fun in the first game and continues to be a blast in the second. He’s even more adorable and earnest in the sequel and I love that for him!! He’s definitely one of my favorite characters of all time, I adore him.

- Adoring the characters goes for everyone though. And pn2 has a whole new cast of characters who are all super fun in their own ways. The Psychic 7 especially are super cool. My biggest soft spot is for Lucy, but I love Bob, Ford, and well, the rest of the seven really, a whole lot. Getting to meet the Aquatos is also awesome, and the interns are cool too. Lotsa cool groups of characters to enjoy.

- The story? Awesome. Feels grander than pn1 to be honest, and I like that, but also it’s completely great on its own. It’s got loads of mind shenanigans, drama, great mental health commentary, and manages to balance out all the trauma with enough healing and empathy and even a bit of humor that it all still feels nice and hopeful despite everything. Like yeah there’s a lot of angst material certainly, and as a fan I gotta love that, buuuut sometimes I need a piece of media to punch me in the gut and then give me a warm hug afterward.

- On the note of mental health stuff, I feel it did great. It’s noticeable that they talked to experts and people with personal experience. They were able to convey the mindscapes of certain traumas and mental health issues with more accuracy. The first game was certainly empathetic and kind in regards to that, which was a big deal at the time, buuuut the accuracy was a bit lacking back then. Pn1 shows it’s age a bit in that regard. Pn2 improves on that wonderfully with both kind and more researched explorations into the mind.

-The morals regarding the complexity of the human mind and the messiness of humanity and how we often make mistakes and have more to us under the surface… heroes are often flawed, villains may just be a version of a person we made up in our mind based off of our limited perceptions… aughh good stuff. There are so many good takeaways from psychonauts 2 and I love it!

- Also on a more personal note, I probably owe this game my fascination with psychic powers and psychics in fiction. It’s tangentially what got me into Mob Psycho 100, and has inspired me to make some psychic ocs. The art direction really impacted me and even the way I draw. My style has opened up so much more since practicing drawing such funky looking characters. I genuinely think it has helped me improve a lot and helped me discover more about what kinds of art style I adore and inspired my own. The gameplay too, alongside the art direction, has impacted my aspirations a lot as far as being an artist and hopefully to work in game design— which is to say it’s super inspiring! I think it can inspire people in a myriad of ways, it’s a very unique game like that, and it really reminds me why I love art, storytelling, and games so much. I genuinely feel I owe it a lot for a variety of reasons and I’ve seen many others who play it feel the same. :)

TLDR: Psychonauts 2 my beloved…

Thanks for the ask! I will never not want to talk about psychonauts, this game is sticking in my brain for good.

#psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #shut up snurgle

[discluded]

Hi, what is your pov on some of these comments about mileapo fans being “delulu” and naive bc it’s “just fake bl fanservice”?

Because idk if I’m going crazy but like as a gay person this shit seems borderline homophobic? On the one hand I kinda get where they’re coming from with like the concert “plot” (idk what else to call it 😭), but otherwise seeing how they interact with each other in off-screen/stage moments and their chemistry and the huge ass difference with the entire cast, how they interact with each other vs others, the side couples energy with each other, it’s not that big of a leap… and to imply that it’s dumb or naive for ppl (lots of them queer themselves) to perceive that smells like homophobia to me… idk

I’m not even trying to be mad abt the mileapo thing bc frankly i don’t give a shit what people do or don’t believe about two actors but it’s the dismissive tone of such comments that pisses me off, and I was wondering if maybe you or any of your followers have some thoughts about this too.

Hello friend.

Thank you for trusting me with this delicate ask. Hopefully I can do a good job with it.

I'm hearing a couple of things in your question, part of which I'm guessing is just being able vent (glad to provide the space!) but the crux of which is commenting on the irony of homophobia in Kinnporshe / BL fandom. And yeah. You're not imagining it.

CW: Homophobia. I'm serious, this is your only warning. Some of this really upset me today and I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing.

I saw this after I got your ask and already spent some time thinking about how to respond, but these comments were in response to Tong coming out at KPWT Manila on Tiktok. I hate looking at them, but I'll embed them in case the tweet ever gets deleted as a reminder that EQUALITY IS NOT REAL IN THIS WORLD.

I won't lie, this hurt my feelings a lot and it's not even about me. I spent half a second being mad before just being sad about this for hours.

I've been into BL for so long, I am tired of this round-about argument we keep having over women, many of whom are queer or questioning, enjoying queer stories where the characters are male. There are culturally-adept literary and queer studies scholars who do research on this.

That being said, a not-small proportion of the fan base is made people who are genuinely homophobic and use BL as their fantasy. Just like watching lesbian porn doesn't make straight men allies, neither does watching BL make straight women allies. I am too exhausted to explain why they do but it's basically a mix of misogyny in not wanting to see other female actors opposite an actor you like but also using queer men as placeholders for your fantasy. Sometimes in fiction, but other times in reality.

I'm with @mirrorofprinces, we need to attack more homophobes for this. 😒😒😒 no more fighting over gay rights, time for KPTS-inspired gay wrongs and gay violence on the gaygenda.

The "delulu" and "it's just fanservice" comments are...indeed kind of homophobic. I respect people who don't want to comment on or interpret their relationship, like you said, or interpret it differently. And it kind of sucks to be like "well some people will be homophobic and you have to share a space with them" in fandom about a queer story, but how do you confront people, some of whom are happy to be openly homophobic, about homophobia that is more nuanced?

But I think one thing that undermines MileApo's authenticity is that BibleBuild do so much fan service despite also claiming not to. Fan service is a Thai BL industry standard with other actor pairs. And as a reality check to myself, I have looked at some of those pairs interacting and yeah. Definitely brotherly or fan service there.

The other part of the problem is young people, especially after the pandemic, genuinely do not seem to know what normal human interaction looks like, including the difference between what's fake and what's real AND what's platonic vs. what's flirty or romantic affection.

As for what my friends/moots think, here's @mellowroxy and @cookiedoughfiesta's thoughts from August about Mile saying he was in love with Apo about the "delulu" comments. (Though let's be real... sometimes the fandom is also... a bit much 🤣🤣🤣)

When I talked to Yams (@mellowroxy) about this earlier, here's what she had to add on to the point:

Me: fans were freaking out when Tom called Zendaya 'my MJ' on his birthday wish to her, and that's way more subtle than what Mile and Apo are doing

Yams: There wouldn’t be this much push back if it was a guy and girl. Most people would be like “oh another on set romance” and call it a day. On the Zendaya and Tom topic, if this was decades back when interracial couples were taboo as fuck then they wouldn’t come out as well.

A conscious reminder equality has always been hard-fought for.

But trust me, this paradox of people who watch BL who are homophobic have not escaped Mile and Apo's notice either.

"Equality isn't real in this world."

Apo's comment at KPWT Bangkok day 2, which many people have noted was likely about complaints over them reenacting Kinn and Porsche's first kiss live. I'm not going to look for it but @soft-husbands mentioned she saw a fancam that blurred the kiss out on Youtube 😑 (Why did you watch KPTS in the first place then.)

"People say that they are open minded, But they are actually not."

And isn't that the crux of it.

As I always say, you haven't have an opinion on the truth. So in the end, no one's opinions on the situation matters except for Mile's and Apo's. But it does suck to bear the brunt of people's negativity doesn't it.

Hopefully this didn't make you feel more sad... but you're not alone in noticing it at least.

#cw homophobia #mileapo #kpwt #kpwt bangkok #kpwt manila #mileapo and pride

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hello, I love your adventure prompts and I am using them as inspiration for my own game (still in the planning stages). How would you write an adventure about Ninjas? I want to have a village of Ninjas hidden deep in the wooded hills but I am having trouble getting specifics in place. Do you have any advice?

Footnotes on Foes: Ninjas

So the funny thing about ninjas is that they've been a pop culture thing longer than the modern world, with the "idea" of ninjas as they exist today with secret techniques and unique weapons largely being a conceit of 1800s Japanese theater filtered through the 1970s-80s post war cultural mingling.

If we're going back to their historic roots, you need to understand ninja/shinobi in contrast to The Samurai, a social caste of warriors that originally started out as mercenaries but evolved into a powerful political block that ruled Japan on and off throughout its history, evolving into a largely bureaucratic class as time went on.

Just like any warrior nobility, the Samurai preferred it when war was conducted on their terms, at first because that was how they got paid, and later because that was how they retained their grip on power (see the several points throughout history where Japan actively outlawed firearms not because they were dangerous, but because they posed a danger to the sword-wielding noble classes), which meant large open battles with lots of horses and foot soldiers, a style of warfare that favors the landowning class.

Ninjas then were anyone who conducted violence "dishonorably" or more accurately " in a way that didn't let the samurai use money or privilege to buy themselves the victory".

Samurai's got himself an expensive set of swords and armor that make him immune to most footsoldier weapons? Poison

Samurai can field a large number of troops to bully the pesants into compliance? Sneak in at night and stab him in his sleep.

Samurai has enough wealth to devote time to training blade skills and conditioning their body while the peasants starve? Dress up as a peasant and murder him with whatever you happen to have on you when he least expects it. 

Over time though, Ninjas started to take on mystical quality, largely due to their role as a stock character in fiction and especially theater where their stealthy abilities where blended with 18th century special effects to make them seem almost superhuman in their capabilities. There’s a (possibly apocryphal) story that I’m fond of that explains that the head to toe black we associate with ninjas is actually the uniform of stage hands, people that are meant to be ignored by the audience as they move sets and props around. Having one of these “invisible” people pull out a sword and try to stab our hero is a jumpscare for the ages, playing with the audience’s expectations and perfectly simulating the tension of a sudden assassination attempt.  Like everything else about the ninja, this gimmick eventually got folded into the “Legendary”  version of ninjas which became near superhuman practicitoners of various kinds of magic that bore little resemblance to who they were in real life.

As for writing adventures about those “legendary” ninjas, you’re going to have to read below the cut, because I’ve got IDEAS.

Setting: So if you’re going to write adventures about Ninjas (or any other codified assassin group), your setting is going to need a powerful warrior nobility that they can be contrasted against, one that’s divided enough that there’s lots of competition between different ranks and clans, but powerful enough that outright warfare between them would spell disaster for the lands they rule.

This is where ninjas come in, slipping through the gridlock of honor culture and mutually assured destruction to do the political will of those they serve. Some ninja/shinobi organizations might be sworn to a particular clan, while others might work as freelancers for whoever pays them the most.  If there’s a central power like an emperor/shogun/prime minister, the best ninjas are going to work for them, as if it’s one thing lawful governments love it’s having secret death squads they can send out to ensure their rule goes unquestioned.

It’s in this later case, where the ninjas are kept on retainer by another group that you get “ninja villages”, as just like any other fighting force, a group of ninjas will need people to do the work of raising food/making tools/keeping life in order for them so they can concentrate on training to become better assassins. These villages are likely only considered “secret” because their inhabitants don’t know that they’re supporting the ninja garrison rather than your average lord, because you wouldn’t want the peasants leaking the fact that you’re training assassins to your neighbors. To that end, a village that did support ninjas would likely have a small-fry noble figurehead to divert attention.

As for actual ADVENTURES with ninjas: if you’re going to use them as a focus you’re going to want to set up a court intrigue in the surrounding lands, involving some tenuously stable situation that’s holding on by a thread and keeping whatever fiefdom/territory/province your adventure takes place in from dissolving into open bloodshed.  (Be sure to scale this looming conflict in line with what sort of adventure you’d like your party to face next, be it a simple blood feud or open warfare between families/territories)

the adventure is set in place when the party witnesses this thread being cut (by a ninja) and is then about figuring out who sent the ninja/who benefits from the chaos while trying not to fall victim to the chaos themselves. This turns the ninja into a thread the party can follow into the knot of local politics, while the ninja themselves try to off the party to hold onto their secret.  Here’s some examples:

After rescuing the survivors of a diplomatic caravan attacked by a rampaging monster and slaying the beast, the party are shocked to discover that one of survivors is the betrothed of the local duchess who was traveling in secret before their wedding. Having suddenly earned themselves an in, the heroes are invited as guests of honor to the celebrations, only to bear witness to the duchess’s assassination at the hand of masked assailants bearing the betrothed’s clan colors. The celebration erupts into chaos, leaving the party as bewildered potential suspects. Who sent the assassin? An ally of the betrothed? Their disapproving family? Someone who didn’t want the marriage alliance to take place?

while stopping in at an out of the way roadhouse, the party is joined in their drinking by a rakish stranger with tales to tell and a bottle to share. He’s charming, a bit of a flirt, and he might have work for them once his current mission is complete, which makes it such a shame when a poison dart plants itself in his neck and he collapses into their shared table frothing at the mouth. Ninjas attack, looking to claim something on the stranger’s body, leaving the party to decide whether to tussle with these assassins or stay out of it.   If they stand to protect the stranger, he’ll pass over a sealed scrollcase into their possession, and with his dying breath tell them to seek out his lord, and that the fate of the kingdom may depend on it.

One of the partymembers has a history with a masked assailant who left them for dead after killing someone close to them, with their only lead being the shape of the mask and the distinctive marking worked into the blade that they were stabbed with which they still carry to this day. Asking those in the know eventually leads them to the discovery that this blade belonged to a band of feared shinobi that were thought dead and dispersed for generations after their liege was killed off during a rebellion.

Art

#footnotes on foes #ninjas #prompt postage #Assassin #intrigue #rescue mission #nobility #noble #tavern

[maxwell-grant]

Speaking of Pulp Heroes and their rather more fraught relationship with the authorities than their 4-Color successors when I read the first couple Secret Agent "X" stories, it felt like he has a buffoonish cop nemesis solely because the writer felt the genre's tropes required him to have a buffoonish cop nemesis. So. Why do so many Pulp Heroes feel a need to have a cartoon caricature of Inspector Javert in their cast?

(Inspector Javert art by dasha-ko)

The simplest answer is that much of it can be chalked up to the importance pop culture osmosis plays in how we construct stories, especially when we're explicitly trying to reference existing tradition or building off an established mold. So much of superhero fiction's origins are built off the American pulp stock and trade, and so much of that in turn is owed to the British and French pulp fiction. And when people look at the history of detective/crime fiction history and it's origins, and the role of characters like Arsene Lupin's Ganimard, Fantomas' Juve, Jacques Closeau, Harvey Bullock, Zenigata and so on, they quite reasonably assume that, much like how tight circus costumes are grandfathered into the superhero concept, it's assumed that every Gentleman Thief protagonist needs a Ungentlemanly Cop arch-nemesis / annoyance, because that's just how the concept works. The longer answer means that we gotta talk about Inspector Javert specifically, and why he ended up becoming such an imitated touchstone for pulp fiction.

The fact that so many of them take up after Javert specifically is interesting in itself, because it's not just a result to Javert being one of the most popular mainstream examples of "bad cop" characters and thus the go-to example when you want your cops and detectives to be, at a minimum, dumb obtrusive goons who can have a change of heart and, at worst, one-note villains who usually still aren't quite bad to overshadow the more interesting villains and piss off real cops who are a million times worse than what you can usually show in fiction get in trouble with audiences for disrespecting authority. In some ways, they miss the point of Javert, but also expand on the point Victor Hugo was making with him and the novel as a whole, which was in some ways a response to what the serialized fiction tradition was like at the time, as part of Hugo's intended aim of advocating for social reform:

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless

A lot of people miss the fact that Javert did not exist in a vacuum. He wasn't just designed to be a criticism of law enforcement and a rotten cop or whatever, he was explicitly based on Inspector Eugéne Vidocq. Claims about his real life achievements are countless and self-aggrandizing and none of them matter here except for one fact: His memoirs published in 1829 are said to be the bedrock where this entire concept of "detective fiction" started, at least in the anglo-sphere (although his effect loomed globally). Vidocq was not only the inspiration for Javert (as well as Valjean), but he was also the inspiration for Rodolphe de Gerolstein in The Mysteries of Paris, Monsieur Lecoq who would go on to inspire Holmes, and long before that he inspired Edgar Allan Poe's C.Auguste Dupin, who was an unflattering take on Vidocq, and is considered the first fictional detective.

Detective fiction existed some ways before Poe's Dupin via magazines and newspapers, as the concept of the "private detective" started taking form circa the turn of the 19th century and, as all new things tend to develop, fiction started to develop about them, largely thanks to the memoirs and autobiographies of officers like Vidocq, to the point that by the 1830s, virtually all detective fiction was about private detectives. I'm linking this thread on the Pinkertons that Jess Nevins wrote on Twitter here, in case more of you wanna dive deep into where this grody copaganda business took it's baby steps to sink it’s teeth into fiction to never let go, but the point being: For about half a century, the whole concept of the Great Detective, the central figure of detective fiction and of much of popular fiction as a whole, was based on Inspector Vidocq, and that was what Victor Hugo was responding to when he made Javert. He was based on The Super Cop, the Cop of the Century for that era, and here's another dirty secret that even most Les Mis adaptations get wrong about Javert: He IS a Super Cop. In-universe, he's the best damn cop in the whole world.

He is without vices, but upon occasion will take a pinch of snuff. His life is one of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity—never any amusement

He would have arrested his own father if he escaped from prison and turned in his own mother for breaking parole. And he would have done it with that sort of interior satisfaction that springs from virtue.

He is every bit the incorruptible paragon of order and devotion that people tend to attribute to characters like Jim Gordon. He’s honest to a fault to a point he insists that, if he were to be dishonest, he should not only be resigned, but also punished, should he commit any injustice on others. Other cops in the story dislike and distrust him specifically because he’s not corrupt. He’s as unrelentingly hard on himself as he is to everyone else, and it literally kills him the second he’s forced to grow a seed of conscience towards those he spent his entire life oppressing. He is, by basically every metric, a Good Cop, an unusually good cop at that, and he is a bad, rotten person, because that’s what it takes to be a good cop. He isn’t bad because he’s “one rotten apple”, he isn’t bad because he’s just too obsessed with one particular man, he is bad specifically because he’s a good cop, and he is very good at serving a terrible system, and he is very good at enduring and enforcing it’s cruelties, and the moment he is forced to question to it, when he’s no longer a “good cop”, he kills himself because that’s his way of resigning from life.

He had lost his bearings in this unexpected presence; he did not know what to do with this superior (convict); he who was not ignorant that the subordinate is bound always to yield, that he ought neither to disobey, nor to blame, nor to discuss, and that, in the presence of this superior who astonishes him too much, the inferior has no resource but resignation. But how to manage to send in his resignation to God? - Victor Hugo

It was a very damning perspective that Hugo was putting forth with this character, not just as a criticism of law enforcement, but also as an open dialogue with pretty much the entirety of the feuilleton traditions that informed the century, of the uncorruptible, inscrutable, unfailingly correct detectives stomping on wicked criminals, a condemnation somehow more timeless in 1863 than countless other takes on the story across the couple of centuries since that downplayed what exactly Hugo was getting at and why Javert was that way. Javert was a response to almost 50 years worth of how the entire concept of detective fiction worked and was seemingly supposed to work forever. So, obviously when it was time for others to twist the concept further and start focusing on the daring thieves and arch-criminals for a change, well, if these characters are supposed to stand against the law at it’s mightiest and get away with it, and you don’t quite feel like buggering Conan Doyle again, what other archetype are you gonna invoke as the allmighty, yet failed, representative of the power of The Law? 

(Pictured: Inspector Zenigata, Inspector Lunge fan-art by admhire, Hank Schrader)

The Javert / Inspector has become an ubiquitous staple not just of fiction that stars gentleman thieves that, even when they are not specifically modeled after Javert, they often hit on many of the same notes that made Javert so enduring and potent of a character. It’s kind of almost a necessity, if you’re writing a story that focuses on a criminal, to see what does the law enforcement he opposes on some level looks like, and it makes for some pretty varied and interesting characters, often with some of the most interesting dynamics these stories have to offer. 

Sometimes you get characters who actually do need to be serious and heroic, if only because of the sheer scale or menace of what they’re up against, and because they don’t get to win, they can be played for tragedy, characters like Inspector Juve or Hank Schrader, who is interesting as he is very much not a Javert-kind of character at first and probably never would have come close to being one, if he didn’t find himself thrust into the position of Heisenberg’s arch-nemesis and thus had to try and make himself into the extraordinary pursuer of justice, to disastrous consequences. Zenigata’s one of a kind as, somehow both a Super Cop as well as the absolute worst cop alive and only one by the thinnest thread possible (which is part of why he’s ultimately sympathetic, because his morals usually come first and he will team up with Lupin to solve bigger problems), a more deranged nutjob than the entire gang of master thieves he keeps up with. He stretches the broad strokes of the Javert archetype to such an extreme while still remaining ultimately a moral character that he winds up becoming as much of a cop as Mario is a plumber, and an indispensable part of the gag while still being very much not just a gag character. 

Lunge’s on a totally opposite end of a similar scale, in that he’s a direct response to Javert as well as Holmes, demonstrating what an unflinching obsessive devotion to the law as well as a restless genial crime-solving brain does to someone who is not afforded a protagonist safety net or that sheen of fantasy most fiction affords these characters: it basically leads him to torpedo his life of everything that doesn’t get him to capture the criminal he mistakenly pursues, and it doesn’t bring him any step closer to stopping the real mastermind either, and it’s not until he owns up to his mistakes and starts to understand the story he’s in that he starts to actually help.

You can play these characters up as seriously, or as comedically, as you’d like. Sometimes they are overzealous clowns who never stood a chance and exist to make our protagonist and other villains seem cooler by comparison, and sometimes they make for such hilariously “bad” cops that they actually end up being pretty decent and even potential allies (like Chase Devineaux from Carmen Sandiego). Often, they can be a concentrated amalgam of the writer’s own feelings towards law enforcement and policing and carceral systems and whatnot, which often makes them complicated in ways even the authors don’t quite intend them to be. 

A massive part of why we enjoy these kinds of stories comes in the form of transgressive fantasies where people can trick or escape or overpower or even take over and change the systems that routinely make life so difficult for us. So much of detective fiction stars police protagonists because they place readers in the shoes of getting to be the ones with the power of the jackboots for a change, but copaganda is not synonymous with detective fiction, and hasn’t been for well over a hundred years, much of it for so long has reveled in characters who are not police or police-adjacent. These characters often stand, in turn, as many things that you might need a cop in the story for, almost like a concentrated focal point.

Maybe you want to explore the ramifications of law enforcement in your fantasy world, maybe you do believe that cops can still be salvageable and you want to show what a “good one” would look like in your view, maybe you can’t think of them as anything other than distractions at best and chief enforcers of all wrong with the world at worst, or maybe you just put em in there so you can go “Oh, what would the cops do about my hero? They would hate them because they’re too cool and they would suck at stopping them, end of story, let’s move on to more interesting stuff”. 

They aren’t always the most interesting characters, especially when they are just 1-to-1 Javert clones who remain neutral or mistake the point of Javert for simple-minded obsession, but they are always very telling characters, and they are not just a crucial archetype for what makes this kind of fiction work, but also a very significant touchstone of it’s inception and how far it’s come, and often, just fun to have around to make idiots of themselves, when fiction lets us get away with that. Fiction lets us get away with softening the edges of a lot of things we need outlets to confront safely (what else lets us do that?), this being one of them. Even when they suck, and they’re pretty much made to suck most of the time, I’m glad this archetype stuck around.

#replies tag #pulp fiction #pulp magazines #les mis #les miserables #javert #Lupin III #lupin the third #zenigata #arsene lupin #lupin #detective fiction

[breadedsinner]

can i just say how Exhausting it is to try to find da blogs to follow when you're a fenris and seb stan who does not like anders. the entire fandom acts like they're being so noble and good by telling us we can like our Horrible Monstrous Blorbos as long as we respect that andycakes is the ultimate special baby boy who has won the suffering olympics for three decades in a row and i'm just here like. bitch your fave blew up a fucking church and approves of selling a man back into slavery. get a bloody grip

I want to stress that I don't hate Anders. As a character, I find him compelling. DA2 would not be the same story without him, he helps moves things along; I might even argue he and Isabela move the plot along the most.

I think he is interesting *because* he in on this downfall, because he is flawed; his goal becomes so encompassing that it creates tunnel vision. Because the situation is so desperate, he HAD to take this path.

It's just me personally, as a love interest, I don't find him desirable.

And then something about him inspired this weird attitude, equating the welfare of fictional mages to actual marginalized people, and because Anders arguably suffered the most, he's the most Valid and therefore we should just either forgive the way he acts around others, or dismiss it as bad writing, which in my opinion completely defangs him.

There is something to be said about this thing media does where a person who wants to liberate an oppressed people Goes Too Far (I understand Falcon and the Winter Soldier did that), but then the imagery of blowing up a place of worship (just to make stand against, again, fictional mages), is upsetting to actual people. Even the argument I've seen of "it was just Hightown" is very callous. Presumably it was not just nobles, but anyone working under them. You see servants walking around in the game.

So that's where me personally preferring Sebastian makes this difficult. Had the fandom taken a more nuanced approach, even if they firmly believed it was "right", it was not without heavy consequence, and Sebastian's pain is real, instead of just brushing it off, making jokes (again, none of the characters have ever commented when a cast remember lost someone, and when they did it was inappropriate anyway), this whole thing might have been easier to swallow. I can't relate to fighting for mage freedom, but I can relate to my own trauma being minimized.

And you can imagine how annoyed I get when people put a microscope to Seb's banter with Fenris about alerting the templars (where I think it was very clear he was very reluctant and confided in Fenris about it), whereas Anders being fine with turning in Fenris to his previous owner is just "bad writing" or that no one should have approved anyway so let's brush it off. It's almost like some of his fans wanted a scapegoat. To say nothing of the fact that Aveline canonically turns mages in, which tells me fans don't actually care about mages, but THEIR mages.

So yeah, I like Anders fine, but some of his fans have made it hard to navigate this fandom for a long time. I am certain he has plentythat are perfectly agreeable, but that was my takeaway. I am trying to lay off, it's been so long, and I am content to just play with my dolls with 5 other people at this point.

#DA Tag #Anders Negative

[soporificshoebill]

im not even an rpf consumer personally but ur prose in the s&b courtmangela thing was. mwah. chefs kiss. so lovely to read. going straight into my writing inspiration saves. if u ever write non rpf consider me seated sat and listening

askfjabgisbfjshf holy shit thank you sm!!!!! that means a ton 🥹🥹🥹🥹❤️❤️❤️. I used to write recreationally a lot more often but suffered some like. life and creative burnout that im slowly trying to push through, and so thats super affirming to hear. ☺️ Moreso if you dont normally enjoy this stuff!! extremely high praise hahaha.

I actually also did not partake in/like RPF previously! until now, when the. Fixation Got My Ass. Along with talented writers already being in the fandom. So, like, extremely valid stance, haha. I haven't decided if/when I'd want to like. cross streams in terms of other fandoms/things i do, but if i do, anon, and/when i write other stuff. i will let you know. somehow.

anyway i started sharing thoughts about rpf as a whole under the cut before realizing you did not even remotely ask for that so uh. they're under a cut if you want them. ignore it otherwise. thank you for the kind words though! i appreciate them a ton :'D

In case you were curious- I think I got more fine with RPF upon very explicitly understanding it as like. A pure fiction exercise rather than speculation. RPF (or at least rpf i prefer to interact with or consume) is more about fictionalized images/perceptions in a choose your own adventure sandbox that may or may not resemble reality. IMO its almost more akin to like. Mentally casting actors to be the faces of your OC's? Which I think can still verge into weird/unhealthy territory if you're not careful, but. Hey thats true of a lot of fiction. Its VERY important to remember that you Do Not Know these people and thus the images/characters/headcanons are. 100% Not Real. Made up out of air. But I think thats important to remember whether or not you're actively writing/reading RPF.

Its also interesting bc as someone who hasn't really written a ton of fanfic before, largely out of hesitation of making characters OOC, there's an element of freedom with RPF fanfic bc. Hey. Everything is kind of automatically OOC. You're makin' these guys up. Its more important to get it right within the context of the world/characterization you've built/decided on. In a weird way its a form of fanfic that loops around to something more akin to original fiction and character building. Which! i find really neat.

Anyway, totally understand not liking/wanting to consume RPF. Its an interesting space for sure though.

#this is a very sweet compliment ty :')))) no higher praise than getting someone to enjoy something out of their norm #ask tag #idk how to tag this tbh #s&b courtmangela #personal #(kind of) #smosh rpf #but like about the logistics of it

[denimbex1986]

'The London skyline. Hundreds and hundreds of buildings, both tall and small, housing thousands upon thousands of people. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, yet also one filled with loneliness. These buildings are nothing more than fancy prison cells, separating one stranger from another, making them pass their days with no real change or hope in the future.

Inside one of these haunting apartment complexes lives Adam (Andrew Scott), a screenwriter who is struggling to come up with new ideas. A fire alarm leads to him meeting Harry (Paul Mescal), a charming yet drunk neighbour. Adam refuses his sexual advances, and he then reminisces on his childhood in the British suburbs. He goes out to his childhood home, where he mysteriously finds his parents, who died in a car accident when he was a boy, still young and alive.

All of Us Strangers is a film firmly steeped in fantasy, to the point that examining it through a literal lens is a futile and senseless exercise. In a way, what Andrew Haigh has written and directed (based on Taichi Yamada’s Strangers), can be seen as Adam’s screenplay come to life. All of Us Strangers is a gothic ghost story for the 21st century, not dissimilarly from Joanna Hogg’s moving and underrated The Eternal Daughter. Through the process of filmmaking, of creating art, the artist can resonate with their own grief and the one that unites all of us.

Andrew Haigh’s filmography is characterised by such deep tenderness and understanding of love and longing, and All of Us Strangers shows two sides of that. With the romantic relationship that he strikes with Harry, Adam gets a chance to be vulnerable and naked with another person, one of the most beautiful and important parts of sharing your body and soul with another person. Casting Mescal is a particularly inspired choice, as he balances sensuality and sensitivity with ease, making his quiet conversations with Scott ring oh so true.

On the other hand, there is the relationship between Adam and his parents, with Haigh himself likely drawing from personal experience in exploring familial love. After all, both the director and his fictional character grew up in England in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, right when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister: amongst the various traumas that the Iron Lady caused to young and old generations, she introduced the infamous Section 28, which essentially rendered homosexuality of any kind illegal for over two decades (the brilliant indie Blue Jean, directed by Georgia Oakley, focuses on this dark period).

Not only was Adam victim of bullying due to his unwillingness to hide his sexuality identity, he also never got to fully come out to his parents. This is when All Of Us Strangers truly shines: every moment between Andrew Scott and his on-screen parents, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, is an immensely cathartic experience. Finally getting to show himself for who he is, confronting them about what happened in his childhood, and ultimately not being able to let go of their newfound love again, is a truly emotionally heartbreaking journey. But this is where the power of the film lies, as the earnestness of the dialogue and the genuine, grounded performances become a gift for all the queers who never managed to be honest with their parents. A sequence featuring the Pet Shop Boys cover of “Always On My Mind” is a particularly touching and wholesome scene, and another example in how a form of art (in this case music) can help people freely express themselves.

The final minutes of All Of Us Strangers seem to be what makes or breaks the film. Confusion and even bafflement are understandable when taking the entirety of the film at face value, but on further reflection, it is clear what Andrew Haigh is saying with his nuanced characters and gentle, delicate direction: Adam once saw himself as singular, alone, one among thousands of faceless individuals, but through his processing of grief he learns to control and embrace his emotions. He finally sees himself for who he is: one of many bright stars, floating together in the cosmos, connected by the power of love. We are all strangers, going through the same yearnings and troubles in life, and that is what ultimately unites all of us as we make meaningful connections that shape us. And, as a popular Reddit post said years ago, we are a mosaic of everyone we have ever loved, even for a heartbeat.'

#All of Us Strangers #Andrew Haigh #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Section 28 #Strangers #Taichi Yamada #“Always on My Mind” #Pet Shop Boys #Jamie Bell #Claire Foy