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i-want-my-iwtv · 3 years

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If Anne R. decided to publish another VC book in the future, how would you like it to be? What topics would you like to see explored? What's your ideal ending to the saga? L̶e̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶a̶g̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶w̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶

This is interesting, and possibly some very well-wrapped bait. The question about what we want to see in canon is usually framed the other way around, in the form of a statement about what we’re disliking about canon. I’ve seen so many salty posts and hot takes that criticize the series for lacking in many ways, and I can’t remember a time when I’ve had any interest to write one of those myself or engage in them.

Those statements are often about the issue of representation in published fiction, whether it be LGBT+, POC, etc., “[Author name]’s long history of discussing X but not depicting X in canon” is itself an accusation (deserved or not); that [Author] should do something about it, now! Representation is a nuanced issue, essays have been written on it by people more educated on it than I am, and out of respect, I’m not going to discuss this further publicly. For more on this topic, I would recommend @olderthannetfic.

>If Anne R. decided to publish another VC book in the future, how would you like it to be?

Fanworks have fed me so well over the years that there’s not much Anne herself could give me that I can’t find elsewhere. If she can’t or doesn’t want to make the content I want, I’ll write it myself or see if someone else is writing/has written it.

I would say that my favorite fanfics, fanart, and the parts of VC canon (which are all basically sequels of IWTV in some shape or form) that I’ve enjoyed have all landed somewhere in the sweet spot briefly described below.

From “Star Wars - How To Kill A Franchise,” by The Closer Look:

“Imagine exploring the elements from an original story in the sequel like a gradient. On the left, you’ve got ‘Not enough change,’ in the middle you’ve got that ‘Sweet spot’ where they’re different but it feels like a natural development in their character... In a perfect sequel, everything carried over from the original story should be in that Goldilocks zone where they’re still the same characters... but they’ve been developed in natural, interesting ways that allows for entertaining new directions in the follow-up story.”

Then there’s further to the right... ‘For the love of God stop!’ Which is where we use the phrase “jumped the shark,” “Moments labeled as "jumping the shark" are considered indications that writers have exhausted their focus, that the show has strayed irretrievably from an older and better formula...”

>What topics would you like to see explored?

A return to the sweet spot, some ideas would be:

The hypothetical book she might have written thirty years ago as a follow up to QOTD instead of TOBT.

A story, any story, from Louis's POV where he has more perspective in the wake of TVL and QOTD. That last scene of QOTD with Lestat and Louis flying together and so on... Lestat wondered what it had done to Louis to finally learn all these secrets, after being told for so long they didn't exist. Currently, Louis is characterized primarily by his obvious top-level traits, which get exaggerated and turned into the entire depiction, which is so flat, and he has so much more to offer.

Discussions about the consequences of Merrick, and how that’s changed the way Louis sees things and navigates his existence, whether he and Lestat have the intimacy they were unable to achieve from the end of QOTD to Merrick.

I would prefer that certain characters that had died were allowed to stay dead, and could be talked about and mourned.

The exception being - I’d be open to a Nicolas return! He died off-screen after all.

>What's your ideal ending to the saga?

Ultimately, every problematic thing can't be addressed and tidied up. All of the vampires in VC have killed tens of thousands of people. There's no reparation for that. It's weird to try to apply any kind of human-standard morality to them, because you start from "First of all, they're all mostly-unrepentant killers."

While it would count as possibly Too much change, I think it could be intriguing to make all the vampires mortal and human again; they age together; now that their lives are finite they realize they need to sort out their shit, they get therapy and learn to communicate, and resolve all their many and varied interpersonal problems.

I’m ready to see what Christopher does with it when he takes over. I haven’t read his writing myself, but I’ve been told it’s good, so we’ll see. Maybe he has the Ricean spark✨

>L̶e̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶a̶g̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶w̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶

You know, over the years, especially when there was more of a sense of humor and people could get away with hyperbole, I’ve made it publicly known that some of the books were not my cup of tea, but there are fans who come to the series from every one of the books. They don’t have the same calibration as I do, IWTV may not be the original material at all for them! One could argue that any of these books could exist as standalones, because AR never promised us a forge weld to them all, 40+ yrs and 10+ books later. It’s not delamination of the stories splitting off from each other and conflicting accounts of events (”unreliable narrators”) if the intention wasn’t a fused weld.

In some respect, AR has reflected, she often asks her FB followers what they like about certain books/characters/etc. and I think she does read those responses... and while I wouldn’t say she admitted she “screwed it up,” she has said the Mayfair/VC crossovers “did not age well,” even though she is proud of them:

So I think AR’s point is that she tried a direction, and now that years have passed, she decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing further, and it will impact her choices in future books (in this case, not to do more crossovers). I think it takes a lot of guts for her to post that publicly, and it gives me hope that whatever she writes next, I think she’s trying to capture her older and better formula.

But just because she made us a magnificent cake once, I don’t expect her to make anything like it for us again, ever, and it gives me peace of mind not to expect her to.

#ask #anon #iwantmyiwtv has opinions #screencap #fb #anne rice #advice #on writing #The Closer Look #star wars #long post

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ashenpages · 3 years

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Current Fic Ideas & Emoji Voting Key

Quick disclaimer that I’m a romance writer in all aspects of the term, so most of my fics will contain mature content. Engage at your own risk, you know the rules, you’re responsible for curating your own experience of the internet, blah blah blah. This post serves as a current mock up of fic ideas I’m either actively working on or considering working on next. You can drop me an ask about any of them, or just vote via the emoji combo I’ve assigned them.

Voting lets me know you’re excited about an idea and makes it more likely I’ll actually work on it. You can vote anytime, there’re no deadlines or winner announcements, just me gauging your interest by what I see in my ask box most often.

You can also ask me about the original stuff I’m working on currently. The current WIPs are Medusa centric and the emoji for them is: 🐍

- Lupin: 🤑🤠💍 These are all oneshot ideas, between 5-15K each. If you want to vote for a specific idea, send me the emojis and the number of the idea.

Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon always play rock-paper-scissors after a big heist to decide who’ll give the group a striptease, and who will get showered with money. Based on a piece of fanart that is basically this sequence of events in a 4koma (except in their version Jigen loses and in mine, it’s Goemon). (written, just needs editing)

Zenigata cuffs Lupin four times, and Lupin steals his heart. Very NSFW conclusion. Zenigata is the most caring lover you’ll ever find. Lupin is as thirsty as usual and twice as intense. (written, just needs editing)

Jigen protects Lupin from poison darts during a treasure hunt in an Aztec temple, and Lupin nurses him back to help--forcibly, since Jigen is a horrible patient. Born from my desire to spoil Jigen and talk about what ridiculous domestic husbands these two are. (WIP)

Born from the idea that Goemon and Zenigata probably couldn’t be an item, my brain decided to come up with how I could write for them. Goemon’s teaching an ikebana class as part of his training, and Zenigata shows up as a student on forced recreational leave for his health from the ICPO. Zenigata wins the samurai’s heart through flowers. But what happens when Lupin and Jigen find out? (Only good sexy things, I promise. These beans are in a healthy polycule--be gay, do crimes)

Trans!Lupin and Trans!Jigen premise: Jigen cares for Lupin after the master thief has top surgery, since Jigen has Been There and Done That. Caring, sweet, and a little sexy. Lupin is a much better patient than Jigen.

- Sonic Vampire Novelist Coffee Shop AU: 📚☕💐

Shadow is an immortal vampire who has seen the world change for the worse too many times. These days it feels like he only lives for his coffee dates with Rouge, another immortal who loves each new era they encounter, warts and all. He has to admit that the book series she got him into speaks to him, at least. If someone in this era can understand him without meeting him, it can’t all be bad. But he hardly expected the goofy blue barista at the new coffee place to understand him the way those books do.

This is a novel length romcom romp with some big feelings about what it means to watch as things change, grow, and die. Expect lots of Big gothic feelings from this one, emotionally charged kissing, and overly-adoring sex. But also expect shenanigans from everyone in the coffee shop, which include Rouge, Amy, Tails, Knuckles, Cream, and more.

- Sonic Blazamy: 💖🌸💎

Amy Rose has been in love with Sonic for a while.

Or has she?

When the Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, and Silver are trapped as the fuel sources for Doctor Eggman’s newest evil scheme, Amy teams up with Blaze, Rouge, and Cream to save them. With Sonic out of the picture and Amy fulfilling his role, was she ever really in love with him? Or did she just want to be like him?

This is a novel length epic romance with lots of competent women and lots of romantic Blazamy content. Expect flowery hopes and dreams, badass self-actualization, and glancing hand touches that give way to cuddly and sweet sex.

- Persona 5: 🗡🍛☕

After bringing down the Metaverse twice, Ryuji didn’t think graduating high school and figuring out what to do with his life would be so hard. Akira’s back in town, and the gang’s more-or-less all in Tokyo, but everyone else seems to have a plan while Ryuji just floats. How’s he supposed to change the world when he’s not a phantom thief anymore?

This is a novel length fic that addresses how powerless one can feel being just one person in the face of all the corrupted systems and bigotry the world has to offer. It’s about holding on to what you believe in, working through the doubt, and fighting your way to a better tomorrow with the power you do have. The whole gang is queer, featured relationships being Mako x Ann, Ryuji x Akira, Futaba & Yusuke as platonic life partners. Akira is polyamorous and omnisexual, Futaba’s asexual and aromantic while Yusuke is demisexual and very romantic, Makoto’s a lesbian, Ann and Ryuji are bi, and Haru’s pansexual, demisexual, and aromantic. They’re one giant band of queer Phantom Thieves, and even if they’re not really doing the Metaverse thing anymore, they’re still gonna save the world!

Also, I’m gonna make Makoto not a cop. That super didn’t age well. Zenkichi and his boss can work on making them better/abolishing them for other better organizations.

- Hades Game: ❤️‍🔥💀

Oneshot. I just really need to elaborate on the threesome you can have with them in-game, okay? Healthy and canon poly relationships are so few and far between, so often I have to do a ton of groundwork to explain why it’s working in the fic, but NOT WITH THESE KIDS!

Get ready for Meg helping Zag and Than be better at expressing their feelings, lots of kissing, and probably pegging.

- Castlevania Animation Trevor/Sypha/Alucard: 🧛🏰🛌

Castlevania gave Alucard a threesome last season, and I just really need S4 to give me him being taken care of by his partners. They’re probably not going to give it to me, so I’ll need to do it myself. This is just an everybody loves Alucard oneshot, with the gang’s signature banter (to an extent), Sypha being sexy, and Trever being remarkably sincere. This fic is gonna feel like that Ann Hathaway picture with Trevor kissing Alucard and Sypha holding the end of Trevor’s whip while she leans her head on Alucard’s shoulder adoringly.

- Devil May Cry Nico/Lady/Trish: 💋✨😈

Nico’s gay, okay? Like really, really gay. And Lady’s bi and not into men who make her pay bills, but very into women who make amazing guns for her and demonesses with hearts who fight by her side. Trish is ace, but loves people and is pretty attached to Lady at this point. Plus it’s cute when Lady blushes and says nice things like they’re insults. I don’t have super solid ideas for them yet, and I envision these more like a polycule where Lady’s with Nico and with Trish but they’re not with each other more than seeing it as a threesome, but who knows what might happen. This is probably 1-2 oneshots depending on ideas, but might turn into a series of oneshots if people are interested (or I can’t control myself and inspiration strikes).

- Post FMA:B Blind Roy & No Alchemy Ed: 👀👑🙏

This is actually an old novel-length fic I wrote ages ago and didn’t post that didn’t turn out well because I was new to writing sex when I first wrote it. The plot is good, and is all about Roy learning to work with his blindness to reclaim his ambition of being Fuhrer and changing the system to something that actually cares for its people. He and Ed reconnect, fall into bed, and both set about working through their respective traumas about being “useless” having lost their sight/alchemy. They go to Xing as an ambassadorial party to offer Amestris’s collaboration on Al and May’s Alkahestry experiments--and uncover a plot that might threaten both kingdoms.

- Age of Calamity continuity Mipha x Revali: 🦚🐟💘

The first time Revali noticed Mipha, it was in the heat of battle. She stole his mark, taking them down with a flurry of quick blows from her spear. Violence rained from her like water--and then she healed him on her way to her next battle. No questions, no conditions, just pure kindness. The usual need to measure himself against those around him was quiet in her wake. And Revali couldn’t understand it. But how to get to know more about her? A fish and bird may fall in love, but where would they live?

This fic could be a oneshot or novel length depending on how far down the hole I fall. I need it to cover time, but it could be done in linked vignettes or with actually covering events in detail. I may elect to do a oneshot just to get it done and out of my system faster. So much fic to write, so little time.

Expect trans!Revali, polyamorous Zoras, scary competent Mipha, songbird Revali, love confessions that are made up entirely of berating Link for not loving Mipha the way she wants him to, and breaking these characters a little outside of their assigned roles in BotW and Age of Calamity. Background Link x Zelda, and Urbosa x Zelda’s Mom.

- Epic desert romance about Urbosa and Zelda’s mom: 🏜🏝⚡

I just think Urbosa should kiss women and Zelda’s mom should get more development and maybe a name or something. Also, lightning imagery/metaphors/play.

It also went way over my head that Riju wasn’t Urbosa’s daughter the first time I played BotW, so now I want to write about the Gerudo queen who refused to produce an heir. The Gerudo are fascinating and have a very interesting cutlure, but I think it could be examined from a nonbinary perspective that rejected pregnancy and wanting to find a husband. Not in like a hateful way, but in a way that examines if that’s really right for everyone. There’s that shop in town that sells Voe armor, after all. Maybe finding a husband and having children isn’t something you have to do if you don’t want to. And Urbosa really doesn’t want to.

#sonic the hedgehog #Lupin III #persona 5 #Devil May Cry #Hades Game #Castlevania #fma #Breath of the Wild #age of calamity

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auncyen · 4 years

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001 - Ann & Ren/Akira; 002 - Morgana

this time I will c/p both templates at the start so I remember to do both lol

Ren/Ann

when I started shipping it if I did:

I was interested in it from my first playthrough, though I actually romanced Makoto that playthrough due to timing with confidants (I was...not too great with confidants my first playthrough, though I would like to say I only missed by three in the end). Romanced Ann my second playthrough and was happy.

my thoughts:

Like Ren/Ryuji, these two make me happy as a sort of “opposites attract”, where Ren appreciates Ann’s bubbly nature so much for helping him get out of his head for a bit and Ann doesn’t mind his reserved nature because of how thoughtful he is (until he’s keeping secrets on Christmas Eve and then it drives her a LITTLE nuts)

What makes me happy about them:

They’re pretty much my two favorite characters in p5 (though the competition for the top spots is fierce XD) and I think their differences make things interesting, so it’s fun to pair them just from that, but also thinking about Ren letting himself be silly with Ann is nice!

What makes me sad about them:

Because the game doesn’t let who your girlfriend is affect too much mechanically (which is a bit understandable in terms of difficulty implementing it...), it’s a little awkward if you romance Ann ASAP and they just...seem to go through the entire game with it apparently being a secret? I think it is believable for them to keep it quiet for a while (maybe not wanting to make a big deal out of it in case they break up, or Ren worrying that any decision involving Ann will immediately lead to suspicions of favoritism once people know, or just not wanting to upset Mona/Ryuji/Yusuke, depending on what Ren thinks the other guys’ feelings for Ann are), but I would hope that by mid and especially end-game, they’d be comfortable enough with each other and the team to say “hey, yeah, we’re a couple”.

(Of course that would get in the way of harem route. But harem route is dumb anyway.)

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Sometimes I feel the ditziness for Ann gets...way too overdone? It’s a hard balance to strike because she canonically isn’t much better as a student than Ryuji and it’s implied she has trouble staying on task on her own, but she definitely can stay on task in a group setting and she’s insightful at times. I can get her getting down on herself sometimes (there’s little moments in canon that seem to imply she does) but when fic actually makes it seem like Joker has to...babysit her or something it’s like nooooooo.

things I look for in fanfic:

I guess just going with above, the sense that they’re equals and both making decisions to better themselves.

But also fluff. I love fluff.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

Ren: Ryuji, Haru, Yusuke

Ann: ...Ryuji with the caveat of a bit of development? Like I don’t think I’d hate a different PT romance for her but I haven’t really been interested in any of them. (Ann/Shiho is kind of so prevalent and usually presented like it’s just some automatic thing that I’m just “meh” on it. I like them fine as best friends.)

My happily ever after for them:

I really would like Ann to finally figure out what acting is XD and be able to work as an actress. I’m not sure if it’s something I see her sticking with long term, but I do think her career would be spent in the public spotlight, with her making sure to take lots of downtime in private to be with Ren and keep herself sane. Ren could go a few ways--became a local politician out of sheer spite over bullshit policies, is a journalist in the politics section because he’s good at stumbling into all sorts of trouble and getting people to open up to him so it’s never been a dull moment....not sure. They have a nice apartment where Morgana is staying with them (having long gotten over his crush by this point).

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

Ann initiates more often as the big spoon but every once in a while, Ren decides he needs to snuggle her close and is the big spoon.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

...Cuddling. Though I’m also amused by the idea of them playing team-based games easy for couples to play, like pictionary (ESPECIALLY pictionary--Ren��s drawings look fine, Ann’s look like an imaginative first grader’s...this would go one of two ways--Ren having fun lightly teasing Ann as their team goes down in flames because he can’t make heads or tails of what she’s drawing, or Ren astounding the other team because he can.)

Morgana

How I feel about this character:

So Ann and Ren are my top two characters; Morgana is third. (Again, the competition for top spots is pretty fierce--Ryuji, Haru and Yusuke are all right below this, and I like Makoto and Futaba pretty well too.) ...Part of that is probably because he is a cat, but it’s also just--he definitely comes off to me as a younger, caring but bossy sibling to the protagonist, and it’s just cute???

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

...I don’t...really...although actually in one fic where Ren’s hometown was Inaba and Morgana was trying to become human, I h/ced him having a crush on Nanako, who would be pretty close to the age I h/c him being equivalent to. (I think they were just slightly off by a year or two? I’d have to figure out her age again.) ...But like even in that fic idea he didn’t actually get with Nanako. In fic where he turns human there are a couple ships I’d be willing to read, but personally I feel like all the PT would probably see him as a younger brother. ...and also be a little hung up on the fact that he’d once been cat-shaped.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

Ren & Morgana brotp for life. Morgana probably gets in trouble with other PT at some point for keeping secrets about Ren’s more dangerous activities, but he and Ren have a code. (The code is “snitches get stitches”. They are both a little terrible sometimes.)

My unpopular opinion about this character:

I just think he gets bashed way too much. I have literally seen posts where Ryuji is excused on certain things for being immature, still a teenager, and then Morgana is bashed, and it’s like ?????? Ryuji has sixteen years of life experience over Morgana! If Ryuji deserves that sympathy (which I think is fair, he does), Morgana deserves it as well, if not more! Where in Mementos was Morgana supposed to pick up life lessons on being mature?

(Granted I think it’s perfectly fair to be irked at the writers for making Morgana the character he is, because they certainly could have made him mature if they wanted to with some handwavey reason. Just, from an in-universe perspective, ...he actually could have been way worse with the background he has.)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Let him be human! Kind of still on the last point but I also think it’s understandable for Morgana to not always approach issues maturely because there are literally only seven people he can talk to so god help him when he needs to ask advice on an interpersonal conflict because there could easily be no neutral party for him to ask. I just feel like him being stuck as a cat hamstrings him so much in terms of potential development which like...I guess ATLUS wants a mascot character, but in-universe? Feels kind of cruel of Igor unless there wasn’t an option on how to make Mona.

...There were ship questions in this meme but I’m taking those out lol

a headcanon fact:

He can’t talk to normal cats, but he does understand them better than most humans do (though he doesn’t understand them perfectly himself--he is still a product of human cognition, not feline) and that’s part of why he gets so upset about the cat abuser. He people-watches a lot when Ren’s with confidants, but he has once or twice gotten attached to strays in the area and done his best to try to help them, most likely by leading them to friendly humans, or leading the friendly humans to them.

#persona 5 #ren amamiya #ann takamaki #shuann #ren x ann #morgana #persona 5 spoilers #meme #Anonymous

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hancfubuki · 4 years

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character analysis;

SAKURA FUTABA

alright, lads. those who know me or followed me on my previous blog know that i LOVE to do this. i need to clarify that i study psychology, so these analysis is coming from a professional point of view ( which i do mostly to reinforce my essays because like, teachers love to make us analyse movies and characters lol ) and solidify my characters as my passion is giving a feeling to them of ACTUAL human beings.

now, i have seen many headcanons of futaba being autistic but, yet again, from a psychological perspective i don’t see it, and i’m gonna explain why. ( however if you headcanon her as autistic is completely valid. this is a personal analysis and perspective ).

if you have a character analysis request let me know and i’ll be more than glad to do it!!

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG POST. I’LL TRY TO MAKE IT AS SHORT AS POSSIBLE BUT I KNOW BEFOREHAND IT IS FOR SURE GONNA BE LONG.

breaking down the character i can see clear signals of depression, anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, hikikomori syndrome and selective mutism; this last one is commonly mistaken with the autistic spectrum because the common knowledge is associating the non-verbal behavior with the autistic spectrum or cases of schizophrenia, but in fact, this condition is not only applicable to those disorders. in real life, some people have been diagnosed with autism when in fact they suffer selective mutism, so it’s better to actually understand the root of the disorder before jumping to conclusions and giving an actual diagnosis.

let’s start with a short definition of each condition:

MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER: this condition affects negatively on the way a patient feels, thinks or acts. it causes severe feelings of sadness and in the majority of the cases loss of interest in activities that were formerly enjoyed. this also has an effect on the patient’s behavior and can also lead to physical problems.

( SOCIAL ) ANXIETY DISORDER: a pretty common condition ( there are studies that say that nearly 30% of the adult population suffer from this disorder ). this is actually a normal reaction of the brain when it senses excessive fear or stress, it alerts our brain of possible danger and sometimes it can escalate and turn into panic attacks.

AGORAPHOBIA: derives from the anxiety disorder. it is the fear of open, big spaces that can handle large crowds. usually the patient’s affected with this phobia feel fear mostly because they anticipate situations like using public transportation, standing in line, etc. it causes an immense fear that leads to panic attacks because they feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed. in some cases, this phobia starts because of previous panic attacks, so the patient will try to avoid those places and if something triggers that feeling, the phobia is going to act up.

HIKIKOMORI SYNDROME: this is a japanese culture-bound syndrome. it affects mostly young people in japan. they live isolated from the world, most of them locked down on their parent’s house ( some of the cases might communicate ONLY with their relatives. in the most severe cases they won’t speak to anyone at all ). this lock down can last days, months or years and it is heavily influenced by the internet and technology, as the it is their only escape.

SELECTIVE MUTISM: also derives from anxiety disorder. the patient is unable to speak in CERTAIN social situations. it usually starts on childhood but it also affects adults. contrary to its name the person does not refuse to speak, they don’t have a choice as they are truly UNABLE to speak. certain people triggers panic on them and this causes the talking to be impossible, as it is an anxiety disorder, the person will anticipate situation as well that cause distress. however, despite of this trigger the people that suffer from this condition is able to speak freely to close family circles and friends as they don’t really trigger a freeze response on them. mostly this fear comes from the expectation the other person might have on them, and this provokes the anxiety causing a great difficulty responding or initiating verbal communication.

moving to her personality and background, from the very first moment we notice the anxiety coming from her, she is only able to communicate behind a screen and with an alias as she does not really completely trusts the phantom thieves. why do i think she has selective mutism instead of being under the autistic spectrum? easy, when you start the game you can notice sojiro constantly getting calls ( and we realize later on they were from futaba ). meaning that she is able to bond properly with him, sojiro even explains later on the game that she didn’t eat nor talk for a long time and little by little he was regaining her trust to let her know that she wasn’t alone. still, you can notice sojiro’s guilt as he is not able to take her out of the house and he is happy that at least she is eating but still you can see the traces of the depression and anxiety on her personality.

futaba explains her desire to die, a common thought that derives from depression as the people that suffer this condition usually see life as meaningless. she doesn’t want to be seen either, so she covers her face and any trace that could easily identify her because yet again, she needs trust to speak normally to another person, besides she has this constant fear of being judged which shows her anxiety.

also a very important point is that people with this affections ( anxiety and selective mutism ) is that they might come off as RUDE or BLUNT ( something we notice on futaba ), because they are well, socially inept. however, as soon as she starts spending more time with the thieves she starts acting more relaxed and it’s when she starts showing her cheerful, childish side. i truly believe that these conditions started from her childhood, because as it is stated on her story line, she grew up being a lonely child. kids would just ignore her because she was considered a genius, her mother was never home and she started believing that her mother cared more about her research than being with her, this plus the lack of friendships and her mother’s dead only developed a severe anxiety disorder that later on was going to evolve in the conditions i explained previously.

the thieves indeed help her to slowly start her process of overcoming her fears, and it shows that initially she didn’t really got along well with all of them, especially makoto because makoto has a more mature vibe than the others and this would only intimidate her and made it hard to actually catch her attention because most of the subjects makoto would bring were considered boring for futaba. remember that social anxiety causes that, you are not going to bond with everyone and only trust can lead to a relationship of reciprocate interest.

overall, we can see how throughout the game she starts doing better. she creates a list with joker that allows her to conquer her own fears and well, after all everything is a process that takes years. she still relies a lot on the internet, but now she has real interaction and friends, but still when joker is about to leave she thinks about the possibility of them no talking to her anymore because akira is actually the glue in the group. of course thankfully it didn’t go that way, and they remained closed even after their leader left ( it’s canon on P5D don’t touch me ). akira is such an important figure for her as well, he has a lot to do with her improvement and i sense ADMIRATION coming from her, because akira is everything she would never dare to be. however the best chemistry she has among her friends are ryuji and yusuke, as they are easygoing, eccentric people and it’s easier to pick up trust on their personalities, as well as morgana as she shows a deep love for cats. ann, makoto and haru are the completely opposite of what futaba is yet the friendship still work because they take up on the big sis role for her. makoto is extremely mature so she actually helps her to find her boundaries, ann might have caused an issue on her self-esteem at some point but she also is someone she admires because futaba realized that she is not only looks, instead, she is an actual warrior who deals with a lot of things, and haru is the fluff ball that actually spoils her. all the different personalities among the group helps futaba towards her rehabilitation ( i’m sorry, i had to LMAO ).

an important aspect is sojiro, HE DOESN’T PRESSURE HER INTO ANYTHING, he knows and understand what she is going through and he let her be because he is aware that HE CANNOT CHANGE HER. change and getting better is a personal decision, and of course a person needs support but you can’t actually do it for them. honestly, sojiro is a GREAT paternal figure and he deserves all the love he gets because he is so caring and understanding that he contributes to her growing. also the balance in the group of friends is really important for a person who suffers from severe anxiety disorders because it allows them to interact and explore things that are out of their comfort zone, and this is the case with the thieves. they are so different yet so similar that it is easy for her to understand how despite having a similar background it affects everyone differently, leading her to open up her mind a little and allowing her to understand that the change lies within her.

in summary, we can notice a big change on futaba, she is more comfortable outside and with people and she eventually will be over her traumas. remember that she is still growing up and she has a lot to go through, there will be good and bad times, probably future traumas that might affect her anxiety but that’s what i love about her character, it’s not about “getting cured of the conditions” is learning to live with them because they are apart of you. and this is what the character development on my futaba portrayal will go, it will be her accepting her anxiety and realizing that anxiety doesn’t control her but instead finding balance.

#( headcanon. )#( character analysis. )#⌜ *¨*•.¸ sakura futaba┊ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇʀᴍɪᴛ⌟#shit bro this got long but #i felt like i rlly needed to explain her condition #im passionate about this shit tbh i actually studied psychology because i wanted to mix it with literature and film arts #like if im gonna write i wanna make the characters feel real and relatable and ofc #i like to inform people as well #( queue. )

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fyrapartnersearch · 4 years

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Calling for dedicated roleplayers with a passion for writing

Hello! My name is Aaliyah or Ally for short, and I will cut right to the chase. I am looking for a mature role-player, preferably 21+ but will also accept 18+ (just to be sure that you are of legal age, otherwise it’ll be very uncomfortable).

  As I am 26 years of age with 12 years of experience, I hope to meet someone who shares my passion in creative writing, as well as formulating interesting plots and characters.   In case you are curious about me as a person, I am a full-time student and a young writer who works at the gym on the side, but also enjoys other creative outlets such as drawing. Usually my schedule is fairly full, including the attendance of friends or family. However I always have ample time for a good roleplay. :)   

I am seeking a literate writer who is committed to a long-term partnership, and by that I truly mean it. Please do not respond if you are uncertain of upholding a stable roleplay. Furthermore, I’ve noticed the “ghosting after the first few messages“ trope is a fairly widespread issue in the roleplaying scene / community. I would like to implore you from refraining it. I’ve grown quite irritated by it lately and rather like to avoid it in the near future. That way we don’t waste anyone’s time. Thank you in advance. If you are hitting a hiatus, that’s completely fine! A simple message of putting things on hold is completely sufficient, but I would like to keep in touch in case the story bears great potential. Now I have a wish, or as other say it, a certain craving for something new and fresh. And that something is quite specific, as my interests are a little unorthodox. Not the typical ‘Marvel, DC, My Hero Academia, etc’ type of stick. (Not to throw shade on them! They are great! Just not my cup of tea at the moment)

 I heavily enjoy video-games, tv-shows, comics, films, books, the list goes on. Hopefully I can attract some kindred spirits.   I do roleplay both Canon and Original!

  So if there’s no luck in finding a fitting Canon based story, we can always switch to original world building. First, I like to list all of my heavy cravings and interests. The ones marked in bold are usually the ones I am very willing to do.

  Books:

Harry Potter Next Gen (original character cast)

True Blood

Vampire Hunter D (or Manga / Anime)

Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice

Game of Thrones

Videogames:

Dragon Age (from Origins to current instalment)

Castlevania

Devil May Cry

Infamous series

The Darkness

Smite

Star Wars the Old Republic

 Webcomics:

Lore Olympus

Lookism

True Beauty

Comics:

Constantine

Hellboy

Witchblade

The Darkness

X-Men

Films:

Alita Battle Angel

Kingsmen

Vampire Hunter D

TV-Shows live action:

True Blood

The Boys

Vikings

Game of Thrones (Open for discussion. Still haven’t recovered from the season finale however…)

TV-Shows animated:

Hellsing

Castlevania (Netflix adaptation)

Devil May Cry (Anime adaptation)

Demon Slayer (I have only started watching this)

FMA Brotherhood

Jojo’s bizarre adventure

Black lagoon

As for original plots, I am very keen on urban and gothic fantasy, but also mythology as well as horror and crime and action. I have plenty of ideas up my sleeve, some of them quite fleshed out and some of them being concepts in the making. Either way, I would rather have these ideas introduced throughout email or whatever platform we choose to communicate on. Themes for an original story I am most inclined to do are:

Supernatural / Metaphysical (Demons, Angels, Spirits, Monsters, etc.)

Mystery

Crime

Action

Sci-Fi & fantasy (Aliens coming in contact with unsuspecting earthlings during the middle ages / ancient time-periods)

Urban fantasy mixed with high school / college themes (similar to Supernatural with local monsters, creatures, etc)

Now onto the qualities of what my roleplaying partner should have.

What it all entails: What the Partnership should be: I strongly encourage an active roleplayer who is not afraid of sharing 50% of ideas, plotting, length, detail but most important of all, passion. A bird cannot fly with only one wing. Communication: I love making new friends and brainstorming, and communication is the bedrock of it all. It strengthens our compatibility and the story. Should there be anything that might bother you, or if you think you are left out in some type of way (be it a mistake on my part or if we’re both at fault here), simply tell me. It really doesn’t bother me rewriting certain scenes to better fit the narrative. We can always exchange opinions and see what would benefit the story most. The Way of Writing: No one-liners. No text-talk. No half-assed replies. And certainly no ‘quality over quantity’ when you can have both. I don’t expect anyone to write a novel, absolutely not. I don’t either, but if I get the feeling of my partner wavering in their effort and not investing as much as I do, I have to give them the chop, unfortunately. Too often have I encountered partners who showed strong enthusiasm at first, but after a while… they slacked and eventually only put the adequate effort into their side of things whilst completely disregarding my characters. I hope to avoid this in the future. And now to myself and how I write: My writing: Third person perspective usually, although I have made some exceptions in my years of writing. My style is wide-ranging and flexible, which means that frequently, word count will go up 1000+ per reply - though it also depends on the given situation and partner. And yes, I do double, preferably even, most likely in a canon universe. However this again wholly depends on the type of story, partner and cast of characters. I am very open and willing to discuss.

 Rating: So you are writing with some of mature age. I have 12 years of writing under my belt. There will be violence, there will be swearing, gore, intimacy, uncomfortable topics, drama, conflict and other dark themes included when you are writing with me. I have few limits but I will respect the boundaries of my partner. And lastly, I won’t fade to black or skip out on the nitty gritty, unless it doesn’t serve a particular purpose in forwarding the story.

Characters: I write canon as well as OC characters. Faceclaims, GIFs, drawings, mood boards or just a plain physical description is absolutely sufficient. Characters should be written as opulent, flawed, unique, talented, heroic, villainous, spiteful, angry, and everything in-between. In other words, don’t be scared of making them flawed.

Romance: Openly play and accept characters of both genders, preferable m x f pairings, but I am open to m x m and f x f relationships as well. I have more experience with m x f relationships, so I might be more adaptable with this one. If the chemistry of two characters compel me, I’m on board with it! When it comes to sexual scenarios and intimacy (intercourse, foreplay, all that funny business). I encourage eroticism, but always in a tasteful, sensual manner (that goes for romance as well), though it is never the main focus of any of my stories, rather a tool to further the plot. Erotica is welcome but never the focus of any kind of roleplay. Content: Drama, violence, sex, metamorphosis, symbolism, action, romance, pretty much everything is a-okay. I am not explicitly bothered by certain subjects that may be uncomfortable for the general public. Roleplays are fictional stories and we best keep treating them as such. If there are things you are uncomfortable with, name them and I shall respect those boundaries. But don’t be surprised when suddenly one of our characters bites the dust, or gets tortured, etc. It may be difficult to write and read, but it is all part of the story and a tool for furthering the plot. My roleplays imply and involve brutality, mayhem, psychological and physical altercations among other things. But I also endorse beauty, serenity and placid moments for our characters to grow in. I love it when it comes full circle… everyone- and everything has a beautiful and hideous side. Again, this is mature and I am not here to coddle, I am here for a challenge. Should I hit a hiatus myself, I will inform you as soon as possible. :)  

Platforms I usually roleplay on are email and google-docs. I also have Discord in case for plotting and chatting outside of the RP. Though Google Hangouts has proven itself as a sufficient chat-medium for such things, so I rather stay with that one.   

When you message me, please use the given codenames so I know what you like to specify in.

Blue Rose: Canon  

Red Feather: Original  

  I’d be happy to receive a small description of yourself and what your passions are! :) Message me here: EMAIL: [email protected] I am very excited to hear from you! Sincerely yours -Ally

#indie rp #indie roleplay #independent roleplay #oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #tumblr #harry potter rp #spn rp #aou rp #submission

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storywriting · 4 years

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Anemone, An Enemy, Anemone, An Enemy Anemone, Anne, Nemo, and Another Me

[ So.......Anemone huh? Here’s some loose thoughts after a first viewing, including my takes of H1-Evo #1 and how my opinion has evolved now that this film is in the mix. I’ve seen it through with the JP audio exactly one time and I do wonder if my opinion on this film will change at all on a second viewing or when I get around to the dub. It’s less about plot details and more about review and general discussion type stuff, doesn’t delve heavy into theorizing just yet. That’s a trip for a different post. Cut because long as fuck even though literally nobody asked. ]

Hi Evolution #1, starring our main man Renton “Only a Miniscule Few Braincells Above Himbo” Thurston, hit me in weird ways which I think is true for most everybody I’ve seen talking about it. Part of my problem with it honestly was that I came into things with the misconception that Hi-Evolution would be a reboot of sorts. A somewhat faithful retelling of the original story with new insight into things we didn’t get to see much of. I don’t know why this is the impression I had other than screencaps and stuff, but if you only watch the first Hi Evo movie you definitely could continue to think that once it’s over. When I thought it would be an encapsulation of the original series, I had intended to use the film to introduce @himbologythestudyofhimbo to the story. She has long known it to be one one of my most favorite anime franchises and I thought a film would be a good way to gauge whether she might find it interesting enough to hit 50 episodes with me.

Ha. Haha. That didn’t work.

I hadn’t seen Hi-Evo when I was like “hey wanna watch this?” so that’s my own fault. I had seen screenshots and thought it looked gorgeous, but that was about it. I was imagining something akin to the Berserk trilogy of movies, mostly faithful to the original story with some new tidbits of information thrown in for old fans.

And again, you could be forgiven for seeing the first Hi-Evo movie and still thinking that’s what you’re in for. It is mostly compliant to the original canon and the parts that aren’t compliant are pretty wishy washy about saying so. Unfortunately what I found out really quickly is that that it’s not at all a good entry point for new fans, and that really disappointed me. I’ve been hoping for years for something to get more young blood in this fandom, BUT ANYWAY--

The whole play forward/play back thing really hinders the flow of the film, as much as I understand the point of it, especially with the Anemone film for more context. Skipping around the timeline harms new viewers in particular. It’s challenging to understand the timeline and flow of events because everything is presented out of order and without context. Sure, the first Hi-Evolution covers a ton of major story beats surrounding Renton’s personal development, but the non-chronological presentation coupled with the utter lack of lead up to key moments from the original series robs this movie of carrying any emotional weight. Who is Renton? What’s the deal with him and wheelchair girl? Are these people his parents or not? Why do we care about this Eureka girl who has been on screen in Renton’s presence for a cumulative 30 seconds. Wait a minute what’s this ship? Where did he leave from again? I thought he had a home and parents? Who are these people and why do I care?

Put bluntly this movie sucks if you can’t answer these questions going in, and even if you can you may feel a bit cheated by it. As much as I feel the need to talk about how the film is inaccessible for new fans, these films clearly are not for new fans. They function to remind you of events of the original story and then play off of those events with the new content. Even as an established fan, Hi-Evo #1 feels very watered down on its own, but it’s not on its own anymore is it? So let’s finally talk about Anemone.

What becomes clear about these movies is that they are not divided by chronology, but by character. The first movie was about Renton which is why we saw so so little of everybody else even when that robbed the story of needed context and worked to the story’s detriment. I’m telling myself the reason titular character Eureka was not on screen demonstrating her relationship to the world and to Renton despite it most likely being a central element is because they shoved her scenes into Hi-Evolution 3: Eureka, which will not be released for another year or so.

I do feel a bit more forgiving toward these movies now that I understand the format they’re going for, but I think most of my previous criticisms still stand despite that. The character focused presentation may be a deliberate creative decision, but that doesn’t make it an ideal storytelling mechanism. THAT SAID, while a character centric format really harms well developed characters like Renton, it does loads and loads of good for a character like Anemone whose screen time was always hindered by her role as accessory to Renton and Eureka’s story. We don’t get that constant stream of unfiltered perspective from her or really any secondary character, so it’s very interesting to see the world filtered purely through her eyes. I honestly found myself significantly more interested in all the new Anemone content than I ever could have been over watered-down, abbreviated rehashing of Renton’s character arc. I’m much more excited for the last film than I was with just the context of the first Hi-Evolution movie.

Speaking of which, very early on in the Anemone film, the viewer is clued into the fact that this is most certainly AU content, something that was less clear about the first movie. Eureka Seven as a franchise has really been in the 24/7 AU zone for like 10 years, which I think is cool but I also find a little disappointing. I like AU content well enough, but I also think they had a rich world already in the original series and I feel like there are a few more rich veins to explore further in the original world without necessarily needing to wrap it up in a convoluted alternate universe. Not to say I’m against like the AU stuff or anything, I’m okay with it existing, I just want a little more variety in the stuff that’s coming out. Keep up with the AU stuff if you guys wanna but I wouldn’t say no to more backstory and lore, you know? If they’re gonna pander to old fans instead of attracting new ones, they may as well hit me where it hurts. But I digress. Hi Evolution#2: Anemone’s AUness is pretty central to the story it wants to tell, so it has my full attention there.

Alternate universe characterization is something I’ve had both complaints and praise for in the past, and I’m happy to say that in the case of Anemone I have mostly praise. It’s nice to get a glimpse of an Anemone who isn’t like....as unhinged as her original incarnation. She’s well adjusted comparably, which makes her a decently reliable narrator. While she loses some of the edge that people are drawn to about her, she maintains most of the underlying personality traits you would expect of even the earliest incarnation of Anemone. This is an Anemone who had the opportunity to be socialized. You can relate to her and appreciate her feelings more easily than the Anemone viewers are most familiar with. This is an Anemone with hardships, but she hasn’t been pushed to the same extremes as her PoP counterpart. Likely due to the pretty direct narration and background, there’s also a lot more substance to her than PFoR Anemone in my opinion. It’s not really a chore to like her and take interest in her. She feels very natural in most instances. She’s a real breath of fresh air for fans who love Anemone and wanted to see her living with a healthier mindset and some better outcomes. Good on you, Anemone. Four for you, Anemone.

Most of the other characters--Dominic, the scientists, background people, Anemone’s father, new crew members, etc--are all about what you’d expect from either their previous incarnations or the archetypes they’re filling. None of the new characters or secondary characters are particularly developed, but I don’t really consider that a huge fault of it. I wouldn’t expect a 2 hour movie to meander the way a 50 episode anime can, but in times like this when I am with very few developed characters, I am forcefully reminded of what an asset and a strength the original’s depth and breadth of character writing is.

And then there’s Eureka. I expect her to be polarizing in the reviews, assuming at least some people didn’t straight up hate her in it. Everybody may have just hated it, idk.

As I said earlier alternate universe characterization is something I’ve had both complaints and praise for in the past, often both at the same time. What often comes about is characterization that I don’t necessarily like, but because the character has lived a different life I can’t really say that characterization is wrong. I feel that pull in this film quite a bit. Wrathful Eureka is boring to me. Conceptually, it just is. But does that make it bad?

Man, idk, I guess not. I didn’t like it, but I’ll defend it to a degree. In the original story Eureka was born into violence and conditioned to perpetuate violence early in life. The original Eureka Seven has a dense messaging about propaganda and information and the ways in which society conditions people of all kinds. Eureka is a docile character in the original but more and more as we learn about her, we realize that this tendency toward gentleness isn’t just a cutesy character trait of hers. It’s a choice that she’s making on a daily basis, even when more forceful options would be easier or make more sense to her. It’s a choice that has come about from a collection of experiences. Eureka becomes pacifistic because she develops her own ideals about the world. She comes to conclusions about what things make her a good or bad person and she makes the decision to be the person she wants to be. There’s weight to it. That’s something that always really drawn me to her as a character. It’s very easy to blow up in the face of something horrible. It’s much harder to keep a cool head and exercise mercy. I just don’t find the Eureka of this world all that compelling.

That said, I don’t necessarily think this read of her is wrong or even impossible. In fact, I think if this read had 50 episodes of development and justification behind it, I might even come to appreciate it. Certainly if anything could drive her to this, it would be losing Renton, so it’s not exactly out of left field for the character given the circumstances she’s in. I feel somewhat similarly about PFoR Eureka. Only somewhat. Eureka in general is a character who would probably be much more in touch with her anger if she had been raised any other way than she was. Even in the original series Eureka has a passive aggressive streak. She’s probably very fortunate that more productive methods of expressing her feelings were accessible to her before any natural tendency toward aggression was. Angrier more volatile reads of Eureka aren’t wrong or even uninteresting necessarily, but to me a lot of her charm is wrapped up in the reasons she works so hard not to be that type of character.

I also think that subversion and role reversal can be an interesting in AU stuff, so I don’t really fault them for using it here. In contrast to our typical unhinged Anemone, Eureka gets to be the one teetering on the edge so that Anemone can shine and show a little more humanity than she typically gets to. I think that’s honestly okay. I want to see Anemone have her day to be the hero. That’s something I’m okay with sacrificing a little of my preferred characterization for. I see a lot of value in a portrayal that allowed Eureka and Anemone to bond and more directly learn together. I think a lot of fans, myself included, wonder about a reality where Eureka and Anemone could have been sources of support for one another rather than pitted against one another.

That isn’t to say that I’m automatically okay with chopping up the writing in arbitrary ways, though. The thing about the reversals and subversions in Hi-Evo #2 is that they’re consistent. Compare to something like Pocketful of Rainbows and you’ll see what I mean. In that movie Renton, for some unclear reason, is the one who can understand Nirvash even though that writing decision doesn’t really serve the story in any meaningful way because Eureka is still the one who isn’t human and still is wanted by the military for....being whatever unclear thing she is in that film. Renton is no longer childish and is in fact the patient one in the story while Eureka is the one with a stubborn attitude and defined temper. Renton is made out to be more of a coward so that he has something to grow from, except for all the many many times he isn’t cowardly pretty much immediately, and the only flimsy defense of this concept that is that he was afraid of adults with guns when he was a literal child. Meanwhile, Eureka in this film is a much more brash character than we’re used to. Unlike Original Eureka, this one doesn’t want to be led or take orders anymore. She’s a loose canon who takes matters into her own hands except for all the times she cries for Renton to save her both before and after she’s teetering on her own Independence Event Horizon. There are a lot of creative decisions in that film that just plain don’t make sense to me because the writing doesn’t commit to them at all and tends to flounder around between them. I could barely make it through that film because I felt like it was contradicting itself every 5 minutes. It feels less like a new exploration of old characters and more like a bunch of ideas the writing team couldn’t agree on and slapped together anyway. If it wasn’t unclear, I don’t like Pocketful of Rainbows very much.

By contrast, any subversions or reversals in Hi-Evolution 2 fell earned enough. The writing choices are for the most part played straight and well justified. The choices are interesting. Unlike literally anything about the lore of Pocketful of Rainbows, I want to know more about Hi-Evolution. I want to understand what Anemone’s mission is and about Silver Box. I want to know why Dewey is so different from the Dewey I know. As much as I complained about Eureka’s characterization, the portrayal is decently justified by the writing. Eureka believes she killed Renton and seems to be privy to other realities where she turned out much happier. She has good enough reasons to be bitter in this iteration.

This film has honestly made me way more forgiving of Hi-Evo #1 and given me a lot of reason to take interest in what the last film might be. I’m going to reserve any big overarching judgement until that comes out in 6000 years, but I’m getting the sense that it might be New Order adjacent, in that Renton and Eureka will have to find one another and possibly revisit places that will be nostalgic for fans.I wouldn’t complain if this becomes the flagship verse wherein Eureka and Anemone form a meaningful friendship because they’ve been denied that opportunity in basically every other telling that exists so far.

Also big thank god the last film will be hand drawn because, I hate to be that guy but the GC looked like shitgarbage. I’ve become very forgiving of CG and Mocap recently but I just really disliked it in this film. Animation is a medium I know a lot about, I know compositing is a tricky job, I respect the work put into it, but...oof. I do wonder if that was a stylistic choice or more of an “oh shit the budget is disappearing” choice.

My final word on Eureka Seven Hi Evolution #2 is that....I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it either but I had a nice enough time watching it. I’m realizing I’m having trouble landing in one particular spot on Hi Evolution #2 because I expect the next film will effect how I judge this one in the same way that this film has affected how I judged the first one. If you’re an Eureka Seven fan who is on the fence about the Hi-Evolution trilogy, I’d say give it a watch. You’ll still love your favorite characters even if they��re a little different than you’d hoped. If you’re still feeling iffy maybe wait a year until the last one comes out and binge them all at once. I suspect the experience might be improved that way. Definitely don’t go in expecting the story you already know, though. Doing that set me up for failure here.

Honorable mention for the fansubber who kept translating 勘 as very rude words describing the penis for some reason? That really enhanced my experience.

#;Eureka Seven Commentary #long post #please tumblr mobile load the cut don't hurt these people #∘⡊ ☾ ˚⊹To Be Continued⊹ — 「 OOC 」#;Hi Evolution Commentary #Hi Evolution Spoilers

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sillyfudgemonkeys · 6 years

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You know, that honestly might be a factor as to why I don't like Anne. Idk why but it always really bothers me when in a game like Persona one pairing is pushed as the canon one or the favorite one.

That's fair. That's been my issue with P3/4, but not so much with P5 (which I’ll explain, but I totally see where you’re coming from).

My issue is more ignoring the fact you are pursuing another person but are still getting hit on (or are forced to hit on other's). I want to pursue Naoto but Rise keeps getting all up on me despite my best efforts. It doesn't help the team basically tell Kanji to go for it (despite Naoto not even considering him in that way), esp when I'm already dating her. And I remember one person complaining about how everyone and their mother talking about how Yukari and Mitsuru are so amazing and asking how it is dating/living with them, but the person was like "I'm dating this amazing girl named Yuko please stop" (doesn't help you can't do anything with Yukari till Aigis joins, and you can't do anything with Mitsuru/Aigis till the end).

The only saving grace with P3 is Yukari is stopped being pushed half way (and you're at least able to reject any feelings towards her till then), and with Aigis it's not until her SL that she reveals actual romantic love for you (other than that you can just be like, bodyguard/platonic love headcanon).

With P5 I felt Anne was the chillest and least pushed Lovers between P3/4/5. Like, dang, she'll say you aren't dating in the actual story (even if you are NG+ and are dating, twice if you count the movie that's missable why you gotta do me like this Anne? ;w; also bang up job Atlus, really showing your ‘you need to play through multiple times to see everything’ you said to work, would’ve been cool if the scenes were changed depending on if you were dating or not but no that would require EFFORT! *screams into an abyss*) Before any other girl joins the game does ask you how you feel about her.....which would've been a good chance to shape the game a bit in small areas but no it's just....doesn't do anything, but you can reject the idea of liking her (and it's not like she's pushing it, it's Ryuji doing it instead, Mr. Wingman over there ready to help.....and then also goes and peeps on your girl).

Ironically I think a lot of people think Makoto is pushed more (so I kinda think your comment is funny cause....of....all those people....lord help me), but.....I don’t think so either. Her scaredy cat moment where Sojiro asks if they’re dating (wouldn’t be surprised if that scene isn’t changed either depending on if you’re dating her >.>) is sandwiched between two other Anne pushing scenes (one of which maybe they were looking at Makoto, but let’s be honest they were all looking at Anne’s legs). Then there’s the car scene (which I assume is just as annoying to Makoto fans as the ski trip cutscene is to Souji/Naoto fans), and....yeah.... I dunno with how the game treats Anne, it feels like instead of pushing a “she’s the main girlfriend” it feels more like “look at this eye candy” which sucks but.....it’s.....at least it doesn’t feel like she’s forcing herself on me.

It’s weird to say the least..... So yeah tldr; doesn’t feel pushed as a love interest, but it feels like Atlus wants to disregard her well being as just making her a “sexy anime girl” (cue Ryuji’s comment, which is ironic but hey P5 is just a game that says one thing and goes back on it about 5 seconds later so haha what even matters anymore ;w;)

All that being said! I do think there’s another, very “we’re not pushing this couple” reason behind it. And it’s because they’re both based off the most iconic thief archetypes. Anne has been around almost as long as Joker (in the eyes of the public that is, but also in concept art too), and was the only girl around for a long ass time so....if there was a face for a “P5 heroine” she’d be the go to person due to how much she was marketed before the others’. Anne is the Catwoman/cat burglar one, and Joker is the Gentleman Thief one. Both have the main colors in their costumes too (can be considered inverted too, esp with the Dragon’s Dogma game). Joker is the MC, and iirc Soejima stated he believes Anne embodies the essence of P5 or something like that. Anne has a very striking appearance, which is opposite of Joker (I stated inverted above, but really she’s the “bright” to his “dark,” legit the complete opposite of him in design). While, ironically, these complete opposites in design is the main common thread between my P2/3/4/5 ships, it’s also understandable from a marketing and non-shipping perspective. So yeah, I joke that it’s a ship thing, but I’m also aware it’s most likely not that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they stick with these two because they’ve just been around together for so long. XP

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writingsofawanderingwonderer · 7 years

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Right. So this is a response to @norbezdraws video, "Should We Fix Our Mad Geniuses?"

Norbez, you asked me for my thoughts on Twitter, so I'm gonna go post a novel of an explanation here, so get comfy in a nice reading chair. :)

If there's anyone else reading this, go listen to the video first, it's really interesting and it poses a rather fascinating question.

Also, sorry for the long wait for my response. ^^;

Also note: Everything I write here is about and from a storytelling and media perspective. Not real life.

I’m gonna use bullet points for my thoughts.

- On a moral level, the character should want to change. This is why Rick's capture in Rick and Morty and the protagonist in A Clockwork Orange (I haven't seen this film) are considered tragic. Because even though their capture will save people from getting hurt, they don't want to be captured or changed.

- I feel like drugs and other forms of addiction should be separated from mental illness, and that abuse should also be separated in the character examples list of flaws, because audience members' views on those different subjects could be contradictory.

For example:

Drugs/addiction is self-harming (a character flaw), so viewers may likely say, "Yes, the character should be fixed and have this removed."

Abuse (emotional/physical--and quite honestly, I think these two type should also be sub-separated; they're so different) harms other people who are around that character. This can make characters who have this type of flaw more villainous (Gothel from Disney's Tangled has been cited as an emotional abuser to her daughter) because if they don't want to change, then we as the audience see that as bad and/or irredeemable because they’re hurting people they care about and/or are close to.

Mental illness affects the character's mind. The mind is linked with personality. Therefore, if you "fix" the character by removing their mental illness, do you make the character no longer "them"? Who do they become?

Additionally, many works (such as Hellblade--which I haven’t played) frame the main character’s mental illness as not something to be cured. Rather, the story frames it as a part of the character. The challenges in the story come more from the outside world not understanding the main character’s different perception of the world.

Particularly with mental illness, opinions will vary depending on the viewer (as well as the individual character), as to whether the character should be "fixed."

Also, some examples, like Sherlock, make the addiction a flaw rather than a trait that is required for them to still be themselves/a genius. Sherlock would still be a genius without drugs. The drugs are his flaw[1], not his strength (intelligence). Take away Sherlock’s addiction and he’s still Sherlock. He’s still a detective.

*Footnote: In the BBC series and in original novels' canon, Sherlock supposedly only uses drugs when he has no case to solve. So drugs actually equals "Sherlock is not acting like a genius." BBC Sherlock actually wrecked this idea with the plot holes in season 4, but I'm going off tangent at this point (and at this point, a lot of BBC Sherlock fans--myself included--are currently not considering season 4 to even be series canon, given the amount of plot holes, out-of-character moments, and retcon-ing it contained. Seriously, what was up with that last episode?! THAT GUN DIDN’T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE A TRANQUILLISER! ARE YOU KIDDING M--).

- When I read the title of the video, I at first thought you meant "eccentricity": Characters who act outside social norms and don't follow the status quo/expectations (in an unharmful manner). Quirky characters. Characters who walk to the beat of a different drum. I understand that's not what you meant, but I might as well say my opinion on eccentric characters: It takes all sorts to make a world. They do not need to be "fixed."

- I also think misanthropic characters don't need to be fixed. I have to be clear on this, because SO many writers get misanthropia wrong: It's disliking humanity. Not wanting harm towards humanity. They just don’t want to want to deal with humanity. It's like being a hardcore grump/hermit rather than a jerk/murderer/rude person. A misanthropic person can have strong bonds with other humans, they just don't like dealing with strangers (often because they have been "burnt" before in past experiences) and can be very caring, selfless individuals with healthy relationships. Misanthropes are often the way they are because they care a lot, rather than a little (the latter being the stereotype I see a lot in fiction). Often, you can’t even tell if someone’s a misanthrope just by looking for them. A misanthrope looks at a smoker and thinks, "Why do THEY get dibs on the clean air?", etc. There is a difference between a grump and a jerk.

- I think series like Rick and Morty and BBC Sherlock have mad geniuses that treat their partner badly/questionably, yet we still like them as characters is less because of their “gifts,” and more because we see that when push comes to shove, Rick/Sherlock will act selflessly to protect Morty/John.

That’s how I interpret it anyway.

Rick is showing signs of being more caring (and hopefully less abusive) towards Morty. As Mycroft predicted, Sherlock is showing his heart more by being with John.

Their characters arcs are actually “fixing” them.

Another example of this type of relationship (or a similar type of relationship) is Eddy and her daughter Saffy’s relationship in Absolutely Fabulous. There’s an episode where Eddy protects her daughter from a guy who keeps bothering her (Saffy). Even though Eddy and Saffy constantly insult each other, at the end of the day, Eddy cares about her daughter. We don’t necessarily see their relationship as good, but we understand why they stay together.

And Eddy doesn’t even have “mad genius” nor traditionally heroic qualities. She’s the epitome of a “UK Comedy Series’ Unsympathetic Protagonist.”

Okay, now some character examples:

I'll start off with examples of abuse/addiction that are either BAD, start off as bad/questionable, or in a grey area:

These examples don't inherently make the works bad. I like all of the works listed below. These are just examples of problematic portrayals that we should pause for thought and reflect on.

- Bullet in the Face (a Canadian-American series about a criminal mastermind helping cops track down a bigger criminal mastermind) has Gunter attacking other characters to help solve cases. Gunter is portrayed as a villain protagonist, and most if not all of the characters he attacks are villains as well, making the protagonist ironically less problematic than if the writers portrayed him as a heroic character. The series basically says, “He’s a villain. So he does villainous things.”

- Dirk Gently: (We're talking BBC-2010-TV-series!Dirk, not the original books/other adaptations, nor the 2016 series.) Dirk is a detective who can solve mysteries others can't because of his odd philosophies. He has a partner, named Richard, who he hypnotises into giving him money, uses as a guinea pig (he injects him with a computer chip without warning him), and steals money from him. Yet Richard still stays with him (which is considered to be one of the biggest plot holes the adaptation has).

- Rick and Morty: Rick still continues to be abusive towards Morty, his own grandson. Rick's selfless act at the end of season 2 hints that Rick may slowly be trying to change his ways. Unity's note to Rick when it dumps him also implies that the writers are self-aware that Rick's abusive traits are a flaw, not a "kooky trait," so Rick could be interpreted as a "good" example too, because the series shows the negative effects of his behaviour.

- BBC Sherlock: As I said above.

Okay, now some examples (you asked for) of GOOD examples of abuse/addiction being portrayed in a non-romantic/kooky/positive/problematic light:

- Captain Haddock: In The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws album, Tintin meets an alcoholic who is the captain of a ship. Together, they escape the ship's crew and solve a mystery together. Haddock wouldn't really be considered an archetypal "mad genius," but by being with Tintin, his alcoholism decreases (though never actually disappears completely--writer Hergé liked to portray things realistically). His alcoholism decreases because of Tintin's support and friendship, which is really heartwarming to me.

- Dirk Gently: Here, we're talking book!Dirk. Irony, eh? In the original novels, Dirk is still abusive to his crime-solving partners (he, again, hypnotises Richard into jumping into the River Thames--which is not a nice place to go swimming, unless you like plastic bags and abandoned shopping trolleys). What makes the books different than the BBC series however, are the endings: Every partner Dirk gets, in each book, dumps him by the end of each adventure/novel they have with him because of his abusive tendencies. They don't want to be with him. That paints Dirk’s abuse as a more negative thing, instead of a “quirky” thing.

- Croak: The main character or this novel, Lex, is introduced as a teenage girl who recently developed anger management issues. She lashes out at people, especially at her school. It’s portrayed in an untraditionally human way: She describes it as feelings she knows are harmful, and she doesn’t enjoy these feelings of charged anger. She struggles to stop herself from lashing out. She also takes great care in making sure she doesn’t hurt her sister. (I haven’t finished the first book yet, so I don’t know how her character arc ends.)

- The Jennifer Ann Group’s yearly game jam focuses on creating games that educate people on teen dating abuse. The game Grace’s Diary is a notable example.

I hope this answered your questions on what my thoughts were on this subject.

#series #literature #films

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lotrewrite · 7 years

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8/19 Chat Recap

Same as the previous recap - I'm mostly keeping the comments intact! Putting the more fun/general stuff above the cut:

SNEAK PEEK of the COLORED tarot cards: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jq1lm3nd64sx9d3/AAC5qUDB6EvTK28tqE1zffExa?dl=0

Playlist: I think we really need an official playlist for this? There's no depression in new zealand, yo ho, come on eileen, istanbul not constantinople...POC crossed with AC Black Flag music...XD Backstreet boys in the 90s! ep. 13 playlist has to be mercedes sosa; argentinian singer who had to go into exile during the dictatorship. I’m Henry the Eight I Am for the Tudor episode, plus Pastime With Good Company someone should make a playlist for all the episodes maybe when we're posting the episodes I'll make a music suggestion post each day :) that way people can suggest songs based on the final version

INTROS:

We should try to split them up semi-evenly, but also depending on who the episode focuses on.

1 – Mick?

2 – [Ray] [proposed]

3 – [Nate] [proposed]

4 – Sara

5 – Jax

6 – Lisa

7 – [Stein] [proposed]

8 – Rip

9 – Mick

10 – Amaya

11 – Jax

12 – Gideon

13 – Len

14 – Sara

15 – Stein

16 – Hosts

17 – [Ray] [proposed]

18 – Amaya

19 – Mick

20 – [Legion] [proposed]

21 – [Legion OR Sara]

22 - Len

Thoughts? There's only one Ray one so far, despite him having several Ray-centric episodes. Not sure what we would switch, though!

General Points:

can O!Len change his clothes? He had a beer from somewhere in ep6 I think, so can he have objects? i think it'd make more sense if he's 'full ghost' so to speak; I think he can't change his clothes or interact with objects until later in the season. As much as I'd love for more dress-up for Len, I think he works best as a ghost

Interesting consistency note: Because Anne gave away the spear piece, her life went to hell. That is a terrifying but wonderful thought. we have something similar with Ching and her history, because she also suffers defeats after her spear piece is gone And technichally the ship in new zealand sinks after they take the piece, too They could have had a chance to change their fates but they lost/gave away the spear pieces and thus couldn't

Stephanie Fisher - we should at the very least give her a shout-out for all her wonderful comments. I vote we give Stephanie some kind of award, not just for the comments, but for ALWAYS catching Damien Darhk's name and correcting it!!!!!

just generally, I really love the snarky Gideon we have. And Jax. I love Jax so much this season. and I even like Stein again! I wasn't a big fan of Ray, but I think we've managed to redeem him as well and Sara is actually the badass captain we wanted her to be

Sara's journey is soooo good. Ray here is isolated, but not so terribly self centered like he was on the show. Like, as the season goes, he goes from being traumatized and lonely, to struggling with his identity, to accepting his identity and...I guess, growing more comfortable with himself and others??

Oh, question: Does Gideon still call Rip Captain Hunter and Sara Ms Lance? Or Mr Hunter and Captain Lance now? I think I went with both of them being called Captain

MaryWisdom might just do a German translation; DaughterOfScotland can help

just checking, we're all having Queen Bee use the amulet for her powers, right? Yes

Episode 9 Turncoat was my favorite canon ep and I feel like it only got better Jax and Amaya were so much better here than canon's "cuddle for warmth pwp" I feel like the rat sequence in ep 9 is actually a really great lead-up to episode 10 btw since we're talking about Ray, I really hope somebody makes one of those little things that fly across your screen with Ray and his rocket boot, and maybe the poor rat too XD

Episode 10 Because ep 10 was /also/ AMAZING that intro sequence was gold from start to finish There was so much world-building, character-building, and humor I really liked the villain sequences too There's some great exchanges there! The interactions were really in character! Oh, and the Amaya sequences with the British? PERFECT I love how Amaya continues to question her own knowledge and keeps evolving it was just such a fun ride honestly I think the lead up to Ray using the cold gun worked too? Oculus!Len giving it the tacit OK was such a balm Len is SO BORED he just wants to see Ray totally fail and laugh and Ray screwing up just worked so well as symbolism for his identity struggles also, I am so sad this isn't actually visual/audio because now I want someone to put together a short clip with the Waverider flying away, then pan down to a ship and you hear the "yo ho" song

Episode 11 I'm a bit bummed we haven't been able to fit in Stein singing, but I'll look over it again and maybe we can find a spot Maybe we could get that into episode 11? I've had there's no depression in new zealand stuck in my head for almost two days now btw episode 11, any more comments, or should we go back to it next week once people have had a chance to look it over? prob the best to look at it again tbh

Episode 12 OH MY GOD 12!!! THE TERROR! it was so good KAKO YOU MADE ME SCREAM literally, my phone rang during the Mick scene and I legit screamed the way you worked in the movie references so organically was genius THE LEN REVEAL WAS PERFECT was the ending scene of 12 okay? the scene with Mick and Sara I liked it a lot that was beautiful I knew I was gonna love this episode the moment it was pitched, but you exceeded all my expectations <3 so well done it's perfect That episode is definitely going to turn heads. It is very different compared to the rest and will stand out! perfect for the mid-season finale Is there a way we can make it a real mid-season finale? aka not post for aday or two afterwards? Well, if we start posting on the 1st and it's 22 episodes, with a month of 30 days... if we started on Sept 4 and posted every day, I think we'd end up with it falling on a weekend Sept 4, posting every day, would make 12 fall on a Friday We could then restart the next Monday

Episode 13 I LOVE THE INTRO I like the "did you learn that in school?" mention. Because the history classes suck yes that is a GREAT cold open the episode was really powerful also, the umbrella scenes were hilarious it really was, the tension followed throughout and was quite perfectly cut through with the UTTERLY FLAWLESS umbrella scenes Also, bitching Legion. This is great, seeing as we want them to implode also: the Len and Gideon scene <3 basically everything was fantastic i know we need to add the rip intro scene, but is there anything else you think we should work on? there were a few suggestions, but those are already in the google doc - overall I think it was an incredible episode, and you guys should be proud - you dealt with a really heavy topic really well Quick question to eisode 13... the Spanish they all got the pill, but we kind of wanted to show the other side of it, like what it sounded like to the woman at the bakery Like the Legends go into the bakery - then we see the woman working inside and it's from HER perspective, and there's spanish dialogue and then it switches to english and we're back to the Legends POV If you wanted it from the woman's POV, maybe start the scene with the woman? as in, she's working inside the register, and then some guys come in and buy stuff and then stay with her a second as they walk out and she's kinda wondering what's up, then shrugs and goes back to work then we jump back to the Legends talking in English she picks up on Mick being distracted by something that's not there i keep craving churros every time I look at this episode I loved how you guys mixed in the light-hearted scenes in with all the heavy stuff yeah it was really well balanced RIP EXITS, PURSUED BY MICK!!!

Episode 14 Sara saves the timeline with a threesome XD nuff said LOVED the bit where Amaya realises that Sara is dancing with the King! So fitting, too, because of my episode following with all the Shakespeare :D I think... I think I didn't actually mentioned an abberation? Just the spear piece rip found there Alternatively Rip is using his Time Master skills to find a piece before it ever causes an abberation That was what I was going for. He finds it, or thinks he did ooh. i like that. but if it is that then i don't think you should mention the witchcraft rumors The rumors that she bewitched Henry had been around for a long time already. Thy say that tht's the reason he left his wife and Rip thinks it's related to the spear piece but it's just generally people being shit can I just say, I really loved all the scenes with Amaya and Jax? seconded My only thing to add is, and I think I mentioned that in the comments, that it would be great if you could fit the Legion in somewhere Yeah, I agree with you. I'll put it in that they arrive late and Len is like "I got this", I think Before I forget: can I suggest Sara to narrate the intro? the last one she did was ep4

Episode 15 basically Kendra's Old West incarnation and the New York Riots incarnaton exist at the same time OW!Kendra doesn't have a name, so she *could* be Josephine from the NYR 8 years prior and that would make that Carter Hannibal but then her Carter should be named Hannibal, not Shay :( his name could be Hannibal and then he goes by Shay Or he could've changed his name when they moved out west due to being wanted under his old name Just... don't explain it. Leave it for the reader to figure out. And wonder :P (for what it's worth, I thought 15 was delightful and SO GOOD at actually USING history the way a time travel story should) More next week

Episode 19 I could knight Ystina! that would be AWESOME!

#episode 9 #episode 10 #episode 11 #episode 12 #episode 13 #episode 14 #episode 15 #recap #fanart

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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Kinda fell off the grid with Crippling Arm Pain for a couple of days and watched Asylum, Scarecrow, Faith, Route 666 and the first half of Nightmare in a haze of "ow ow ow ow" and I don't have a whole lot to say about them and their individual moments that relates to season 12 that we haven't already said when anything relevant happened at the time IN season 12 while it was airing...

This whole section of season 1 though, makes a shift in Dean and Sam's dynamic which I think is where they drew most of the angst from for like, the rest of the show, and as usual I'm still obsessed with 12x22 and that very specific message of Sam leading and Dean stepping back and letting him do it. And very specifically where that came from and how as a reversal of season 1 in some ways back to the pilot, Sam gets walked back out of what he gets walked into over these episodes.

Sam perpetually comes back to the sort of "you have to let me grow up" thought like in season 5 & 8 ESPECIALLY off the top of my head before 12, although I think 3 was as well in response to knowing Dean would die, and tbh kicked off the entire arc from 3-5. So yeah, it's been a lot of Sam's lingering feeling about Dean and their dynamic and in 12x22 we see another gesture which I don't think (apart from the endless IMPLICIT trust of just working with Sam every friggin' NORMAL day of the week treating him like an equal when this ISN'T a plot thing) we've had aside from Swan Song, in terms of Big Symbolic Okay You Are An Adult Now Seriously How Are We Still Doing This Plot Oh Right Season 8 Needed Old Angst Warmed Up On All Fronts moments.

(Uh, sorry, I'll pick a fight with Carver about the laziness of season 8 character arcs on my own time because everyone else likes that season and generally it seems the show did well re: audience response to going back to basics and rehashing multiple seemingly resolved character arc things instead of going somewhere new :P Long post 99.9% not about that last thought AT ALL under the cut)

Anyway! In the first part of season 1, Sam is with Dean to find John. And he passes it off as a road trip to anyone who asks, and John is the thing keeping Sam from just meeting up with him and they charge off father & son guns blazing revenge mission - he's disappeared, and then sends them on another hunt when they catch up to where they lost him, also on a hunt he makes them take on his behalf.

For a few episodes Dean can fob Sam off about going to work cases while they look for John but he already kinda knows, then at the end of Phantom Traveller it's confirmed for them that John changed his answer phone to redirect to Dean, and the family business is now his. For Dean that's just like, welp, I'll shoulder THAT burden for my family too, no problem, already got a whole crushing weight there anyway hahaha.

For Sam that makes it a lot more complicated, that John doesn't WANT to be found and he's now effectively trapped with Dean working the job while trying to convince him John is more important, and Dean is convinced John’s orders are more important.

Bloody Mary doesn't have any real resistance to doing the case, and Sam's preoccupied with visions & Jess's death still, so I think his head is still spinning about what he's actually doing and the case doesn't help settle him AT ALL. In Skin, he's the one who makes them backtrack for a personal thing which turns into a case, and he learns the crappy lesson that he can't have normal friends and essentially sees that Dean feels like a friendless freak even if he pretends this is all cool and part of the job, but rather more focus on Sam as the rebellious child being dragged back into the awful family and his own sense of sacrificing normality for the job & revenge from his perspective (looking ahead to how this bubbles over). Hook Man, he offers token protests to doing the case while we start with him obsessing over finding John, and in Bugs it starts with Sam checking for cases in the newspaper while Dean hustles - we know from Bloody Mary Sam has Dean's money and he really is freeloading as a road trip not just in what he keeps telling everyone, but that Dean is allowing him to stay at a careful remove from feeling like he's actually just doing the job again.

Bugs also has all the good family stuff where we finally have Sam and Dean rehash the trauma of Sam leaving, as of course this is all open wounds to them because Sam left and they don't see each other again until the Pilot, so this is a needed and much-delayed conversation directly addressing for the first time not just on screen but ever, between them about Sam going to college and how HE felt in the family, like the outcast who wanted to be normal, and he gloms onto Matt who is having similar issues with his dad that baffles Dean about why Sam relates to it so much.

They're still going over early childhood > Sam leaving stuff in their dynamic and Sam really IS the kid brother on a road trip, and he is treated that way by the narrative in a lot of ways like this (also as in Sam sees this as a distraction and John and revenge is the real story/job/mission so hanging with Dean is as useful as road tripping :P I don’t think it’s just a cute excuse he uses over and over), probably up to Home, where it all starts getting more personal and real.

Sam gets to see Mary with his own eyes for the first time, and they have a bit more of a sense of being in it together and Sam being inducted into the family mythos, revisiting stuff that was very very abstract to him, and for a multitude of intents - writerly from the show and from Chuck and his "narrative symmetry" and the motives from the demons who conspired to kill Jess, that needed to happen to Sam to make it more real to him (in the same way Dean felt all along about Mary dying because that pain didn't go away just because it had been a long time. The point is NOT what Sam says that Dean doesn’t know how it feels - it’s that SAM didn’t but it’s fresh and awful and despite growing up surrounded by grief, fancy learning coping mechanisms from John? Hence, follows in his footsteps, revenge-obsessed).

Anyway! Asylum changes their dynamic now - Sam is beginning to be openly frustrated even before John sends them a case that Dean's dragging him around on the job when they should be getting revenge, and I think he's now still sort of road tripping until the end of the season because of his speech in Shadow about being a person again, and the flip only being demonstrated in 2x02 that he now is the one more dedicated to hunting and doing the job.

And during Asylum Sam vents to the psychiatrist under the guise of complaining about his road trip, presumably similar stuff but less murdery to what he yells at the end, and there's a whole thing with him being annoyed the kids think Dean is his boss. The fight continues in Scarecrow with Dean standing up for being a good soldier - I mean son - and Sam stomps off to find John. 2 episodes in a row he uses the road tripping excuse to vent about being stuck in close quarters with Dean bossing him around when he meets Meg and vents to her as well, but he has his realisation about family when Dean is in trouble and goes back.

After that he's immediately smacked with Faith, which is the first challenge one of them has of the other dying, and to which Sam has to save Dean at any close. His characterisation in this whole first chunk reminds me of season 10 Sam a great deal as I’ve recently rewatched it too (he has a "where's my brother!?" line in Skin which has like, the exact same delivery as 10x01's opening, among other little things which stood out to me) but this one episode in particular... Because he does save Dean, at a great cost, even having some very ominous-for-season 10 discussion about the evil black magic spell book and the desperation of Sue-Ann to bring Roy back, all of which made me laugh bitterly when I came through here on my post-season 10 rewatch, because it was pretty much word-for-word Sam's season 10 all in one episode, right down to the freakin pothole in Nebraska.

I think it's interesting Sam is the first one to make an ethically dubious/bad choice to save Dean (dubious since he didn't know it was bad, bad because he doubled down on it after - also looks much worse with at least 10 more years of canon rather than in the immediate moment it's just a bit edgy :P) while in season 2 Dean saves Sam selflessly and after a whole season of feeling brought back against the natural order (something I think is only exacerbating how he already felt since Faith and finding out what Sam did for him).

I think this is a way to tie Sam deeply into the family and make him prove he'd go so far for Dean after all his rebellion and anger at Dean, with Dean represented as the boss and the good son/older brother, that Sam isn't actually going to really stomp off any time soon. He takes several strong lessons in a row about family and reconciliation, starting with the mirror family in Bugs and like, every episode after that except in Asylum because it abuts Scarecrow and is an ongoing emotional arc one starts and the other resolves, again proving to Sam he was wrong and being with Dean and doing the job is more important than revenge. (For now - he still has this choice all season and makes a false analysis for easy conclusion to the story by the writers that Dean's all he has left and he doesn't know where John is, even though they only just talked to John for the first time to get solid proof he's alive, AND Sam thought he knew where he was for the first time as well and only didn't go there because of going back to help Dean).

That all shifts Sam's dynamic from a fairly equal partnership, where Sam was kind of along for the ride, but without being strictly tied into the family business because he was road tripping, he was basically like... a support hunter Dean took with him to not work alone, just, you know, the best hunter Dean knew for the job :P And that changes after the midseason to really make Sam ductaped firmly back into the family business. But once he's there, Dean goes from equal partner to older brother who is ALSO his boss in Sam's eyes (even though Dean's really just desperately following John's orders, and is the one fighting in general for the family business to continue, in an a-political way about Sam's role in it, just that Sam sees him deciding things and feels like it is Dean ordering him around... They have issues about it, basically :P), and once Sam reconciles with THAT he does ethically sketchy stuff to save Dean and doesn't regret it, which is more of a blood pact thing to reaffirm commitment and loyalty.

In Route 666 Dean calls the shots, and Sam plays a trust game with the church thing so they both get in a power play of sorts and Sam teases Dean the entire time about Cassie...

(But this is all Buckleming characterisation, which I tend to find completely backwards, and thanks to watching with my mum, I went from 1x13 to 10x03, and remembered I still want to write a tooth-grinding post about their characterisation because something about it really sets my teeth on edge specifically about Sam and it just occurred to me watching 10x03 that that was how they wrote him in 1x13 and it was vaguely justified there because specific scenario but like... is that just their impression of who Sam is? Anyway in 10x03 there's lines he could have said seriously or whatever but there's like, a Buckleming Face Sam has/Jared uses and it makes me massively intrigued to know wtf tone suggestions they put in their scripts because almost without fail Sam only acts like this in their episodes and the grimace Jared uses delivering their Sam dialogue, even relatively inoffensive lines, is like at least a full 30% of why their episodes make my teeth grind because wtf he never does it in any other episodes with any other writers, it's like he has a separate personality to play Buckleming!Sam?? This is all massively beside the point except to say on realising that I decided that I just cba to analyse that one for personal arc stuff :P)

And in Nightmare, Sam's back to a sort of subordinate role in the power dynamic because he has to prove to Dean his visions are real (I think Dean totally believes him he just really really badly doesn't WANT them to be real but it means Sam spends the first 10 minutes needlessly arguing his case wanting to be believed) and then at the end Dean coddles him with a protective you've got me you'll be fine speech, which again puts himself in the role of protector to Sam.

I feel like from here on out their dynamic is hashed out a bit more firmly with all these specific things having happened in relation to all the main arcs - Sam's powers, the family business, John, Sam n Dean, saving each other from death, the whole lot, which as I said up the top, OBVIOUSLY day-to-day they still act very equally and usually, unless plot reasons, have 100% equal trust on cases and work side by side very well. But long-term, I can see a LOT of character stuff settling on Sam that becomes his pattern of thinking (e.g. the stuff in Asylum & Scarecrow especially betraying how he feels as the younger brother being bossed around) that in the first handful of episodes at least up to Home wasn't an issue or a part of their dynamic and they were going for a brothers on a roadtrip vibe without a lot of these Dire Obligations or Life And Death Pacts and so on.

I think Sam hasn't really been able to get out of this because season 5 was supposed to resolve it, but season 6 and 7 have something constantly wrong with him until Cas fixes him for good, so Dean spends a great deal of Gamble era having to deal with each new thing that happens to Sam, frequently acting with power of attorney to fix him and get his soul back etc for his own good. Sam has a blissful free space in his life from 7x17-7x23 and got to work equally and fairly and without any massive interpersonal drama or whatever with Dean (though for most of season 7 after they reconcile say from 7x09 onwards they have one of their best dynamics with the least interpersonal drama once they let go the Amy fight), and then Carver takes over and gives Sam 1 more year or so of recovery off-screen only to smash it all up with a sledgehammer and regress him all the way back to how bad he was in 8x23... Which we’ve been recovering from for all the characters ever since.

Anywho I said I wasn't going to get all obsessed about that, but the point is that watching season 1 and knowing where Sam is going to be coming from in season 12 about his own personal growth and how HE views it, I can see some interesting stuff because a lot of season 1 is Sam VOICING how he feels about their dynamic, job and lives, because it's the exposition season to get us involved in their lives and there's a lot of telling and explaining hot they feel about this that and the other. Knowing how Sam says he didn't want to lead and so on, his original issues with leadership was that he felt he had a mind of his own and Dean didn't and he didn't WANT to be bossed around by Dean, and to do his own thing. And season 1 subsumes him into the family business, and it leaves me thinking about the ever-relevant 10x05, and how the line about John in "The Road So Far" was that he took away their free will.

I sort of feel like watching season 1, you can see Sam giving ground over and over again in these fights. I know there's more to come, but the important flip next is in 1x16 where it stops being Sam swinging against Dean's position in the family, and goes back to Sam vs John, where it stays for the rest of the season and of course ending in 2x01 with John leaving them on a fight and 2x02 Sam having given himself over to the job and not really getting a break from then on to even dream of something normal until he hit a dog...

So that's all totally different territory in season 1 because there wasn’t much/any Sam vs John stuff in season 12 that I can think of (idk if sharp-eyed Sam fans caught a narrative about it I didn’t see making its way onto my dash), so I think I've watched the parts now which exposition most clearly how Sam ends up essentially following Dean into the family business and in the main arc stuff seeing himself as still being the kid brother being bossed around and made to do it somewhat against his will to have a normal life even if as I say, in general unless this point is being made, Dean rarely if ever acts like this towards Sam and Sam seems to have all the freedom he likes to call the shots in their dynamic because Dean will totally trust him with all the normal parts of their job without being precious about taking his lil brother into fights...

Obviously there’s a hell of a lot more intervening trauma and I think Carver era does a LOT to Sam to beat him down from a relatively balanced, happy-with-himself-and-the-universe place so to actually trace WHY Sam felt like he did in 12x22 you’d start at 8x01 and begin counting THERE, but looking at season 12 through a season 1 lens is really interesting to me.

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crossgartered · 4 years

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P5R Liveblog (14/?)

Confidants good. (Haru arc end)

[[MORE]]

Mementos...

Baphomet, huh? Guess I'll try Kouga

Oh crap I forgot to resummon my fusion components

YES MORGANA HARU SHOWTIME

Aw, that's it? I thought it was going to be something wild based on what Mona said

This does actually make sense why she needed Mona's help, specifically, though

I really do like how they've changed Ryuji's ambush skill. It's way more optional now, and you get xp from it. And it seems like a persona will get experience if you stealth-kill a shadow that would give you the same persona? That's pretty cool

Oh, a Futaba & Iwai interaction! Not really something I considered, but tbh it makes a lot of sense! I'm down. Found family alllll around

Oh thank FUCK I'm not sure if this is a relocalization thing or if he says something later but I'm so glad that Mishima now believes me when I say that he changed his own heart without any stealing involved

It was really sad that he didn't think he was strong enough to divert from his course on his own. And that he thought I would lie about something as important as that! I'm glad that this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Hopefully

It's too bad Mishima & Ann don't interact much, outside an apology after Kamoshida and a very short exchange during the school trip. I feel like they'd have a lot to talk about. Even if it's them dancing around Shiho and everything associated with Kamoshida. But if they got to talking about Thief stuff, in earnest, without the oh-surely-i-dont-know-what-you-mean, they could have a discussion about bringing out the courage within people's hearts. And requests, too, obviously. Hmm.

Oh what if he interviews her (as Panther!) For his book/documentary?? That a really makes a lot of sense and I'm into it and I want a short fic now

Dammit

Don't worry, Kawakami, I'm rank 9 with him. I have been very counseled.

HELLO YOSHIZAWA

LETS EAT LUNCH TOGETHER YOSHIZAWA

oh she's inviting Maruki as well. Okay I guess that's fine

...DID YOU TELL MARUKI ABOUT HIS OWN GODDAMN PALACE YOSHIZAWA

Oh, good, doesn't seem like you have.

Hooooooooo how are you going to answer this, Yoshizawa?

That's not really very accurate

*Iwai voice* YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL

It still boggles the mind that we never saw her when our hideout was the rooftop. I saw her talking to a teacher about taking care of the flowers on like one of my first days of walking around the school.

Maybe she had a club or something. Or studied somewhere for a certain time and then came up. Or maybe it only took a little bit after the first few days and we delayed enough that we came up after her. Did we really just miss each other those times? Seems weird

...

"This party's totally the best one so far!" Oh dear.

Listen, we know that Makoto's the one who stole the data, but Akechi didn't actually say he didn't steal it from her. I wonder if he also took some info from her? Probably not, but... It's a little weird

It's interesting to me that none of them consider that Okumura's Shadow didn't return to his real self before the Palace collapsed - that he was acting again when he started sobbing, and that he wilfully committed a final act of betrayal

Or that he was maybe a little too caught up sobbing to return before it was too late.

Or that he was hit by a chunk of debris or fragile machinery.

"That said, it's safe enough to say that you aren't the murdering type." Thanks, Sae.

...in the Featherman game, is the player character going to turn into a villain? Bc that's what it looks like. Lol

FINALLY KINDNESS MAX I CAN TALK TO SOJIRO NOW

No, dude, you should be going after her. She wants to hear she's wanted by you.

Yes, good, he comes up to talk to her on his own.

*CLUTCHES CHEST*

Hierophant rank 7 is an absolute treasure

Tfw you need a stat maxed to advance a social link and then the link gives you more of the stat on the ranks afterwards #thanksforthekindnessiguess

Shinya's voice...! It's still. Something. *Sigh*

"...Whoa! The mark of the Phantom Thieves! They hacked this site!" Hoo boy. Your voice actor, kid...they could have done better.

#LetShinyaSayFuck

Sae, you're gonna be so embarrassed when you learn "where [I] learned to handle a gun"

Mishima no

Futaba's canonically into DnD. Hell yeah.

: / Aww. I usually get max knowledge before finals. This kinda sucks. And I was so close, too.

Hmm. I'm don't think Haru managed to say entirely what was on her mind. Is that even her full wish?

Side note, but I'm actually really proud of her for visiting a counselor. She doesn't trust easily, and she doesn't take care of herself on an emotional level very much, I don't think. She kinda bottles it up and then relieves stress by using her axe, whether it's on wood or on shadows. She takes care of everyone else and never talks about herself, and avoids going into detail when people ask if she's okay. She's been raised to be dutiful and proper and there's a stigma on mental health stuff

And despite literally all of that, she goes and visits a counselor. Even if she can't figure out what she wants to say, she did that. I'm really happy for her, even if I'm also a little sad. I hope she got something out of that, even if it was just a moment's respite.

You know, I read a really great fic where the writer did Yusuke's social link but with Ryuji being there instead of Ren. And there was a p4 manga where Yosuke did the Naoki social link instead of Souji. It's really interesting to see the social links interact.

I wonder who would be a good choice for Haru's link. Yusuke would be an interesting choice - they relate on a lot of points, and he has Thoughts on business. Maybe that would change her conclusion at the end, though. But maybe if he's already had his Hope added? Hmm

Makoto would also be an interesting choice. I feel like she would start doing a lot of research and would encourage Haru to research with her. I wonder how good of a listener Makoto would be. The two of them have a nice dynamic, though. It's kind of an easy one. Also, this way she wouldn't have to worry about burdening her kohai - she tries to keep it casual but she does still think about it

Ann and Haru hardly ever interact. I don't know what they'd be like 1 on 1. I'll have to think on it more

I don't think Haru would talk to Futaba about this. Their perspectives are too dissimilar, based on life experiences. Plus, Futaba is a prodigy. They have some similar mindsets - the keeping busy to distract oneself, for example - but I just can't see her talking about this with Futaba 1 on 1. And for Futaba to be there for moral support! That'd have to be a wiretap/bugged phone situation. And lots of texting.

Oh, but Futaba could tell her if someone was doing something shady with finances. She's know a lot about this kind of stuff from when she did Medjed/Alibaba stuff. Hmmmmmm...

Food for thought.

I kind of thought that Ryuji would be the best choice considering how passionate he is, maybe I'm wrong about that

There's also Morgana. But I'll think about that later. For now, let's continue the game

I wonder how they changed her confidant skills. Hopefully they're more useful this time around. With more variety.

#p5r liveblog #p5r #p5r spoilers #persona 5 royal #long post #this one gets emotional at video games

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

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Why I’m only reading books by women this year

My bookcase in my bedroom in my childhood home is bursting full of books that have shaped my education and, come to think of it, my entire life to date.

During a recent visit home, I observed that the overwhelming majority of these books — many of which were prescribed texts during my sixth form studies and my literature degree — are authored by men.

SEE ALSO: Snobbery about romcoms goes all the way back to the 1930s

However, among those books gathering dust, the most dog-eared, well-thumbed ones were written by women. These books were old friends I'd revisit time and again throughout my teens and twenties. Their authors: Virginia Woolf, George Eliot (AKA Mary Anne Evans), the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley, Margaret Atwood, Edith Wharton, Maya Angelou, Iris Murdoch, Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, to name a few.

But, after studying English literature at university, something turned me off reading for many years. The vast majority of books I read during my studies were penned by male authors, and more often than not, they told stories about male characters. I was hungry for a woman's voice, for a story that resembled my own life, for pages that read like the inside of my mind. But, my university studies didn't provide the nourishment I so desperately craved. Fast forward a few years and I had pretty much stopped reading altogether. "You don't read," my best friend said to me last year. How had I, a former bookworm, become so far removed from something that defined the first 20 years of my life? I didn't know how to rekindle my romance with reading.

But, something happened earlier this year that changed everything for me. During a lunch break in early March, I wandered over to a pop-up bookshop called Like A Woman in east London which was only stocking titles penned by women. The shop was set up by publishing house Penguin Books to coincide with International Women's Day — but it was during an interview with its creator that I realised that this wasn't just yet another stunt by a brand. Zainab Juma, creative manager at Penguin and the creator of the bookshop, told me that female authors account for a huge swath of literary fiction's commercial success, but they're grossly undervalued when it comes to awards. "The majority of the bestsellers on the literary fiction list last year were written by women, but out of the 114 Nobel Prize laureates, there have only been 14 women. Fourteen out of 114, that's bonkers," Juma told me. "Women make an awful lot of contribution without necessarily the recognition that goes with it."

Prizes aside, research has found that books by male authors are more likely to be reviewed by critics at esteemed literary publications like the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. British-American novelist Nicola Griffith analysed 15 years of literary fiction awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, among others, to look at the gender breakdown of winners. The results showed that between 2000 and 2015 "not a single book-length work from a woman’s perspective or about a woman was considered worthy" of a Pulitzer Prize. "Even when women win prizes, it is generally for novels about men," Griffith told me over email. "So do we see much progress in terms of more novels about women winning prestigious literary prizes? Perhaps a little, but not much. Not nearly enough."

Incidentally, women also account for two thirds of those buying novels in Britain, but male authors and narratives still dominate literary criticism. So, who's responsible for the cultural devaluing of women in publishing — an industry where women dominated the bestsellers list in 2017. Griffith believes that gender bias in education is to blame.

"If I had to point at a single culprit, I'd say education. That is, the standardisation of syllabi, and therefore canon/s," says Griffith. "If we grow up reading and being examined on books by and about men, and if we watch film and TV by and about men, how can we avoid internalising the understanding that women are less interesting and prize-worthy than men?"

"Prize jurors are people, products of our culture. Women and men on prize juries often genuinely believe they are choosing the objectively best book. The problem is that we all grow up being taught that 'best' = male," she adds.

In 2017, a mere 30 percent of set texts prescribed by GCSE specifications are books written by women. These shocking statistics have sparked petitions and campaigns for more female representation in school syllabi — curricula which inevitably shape students' perceptions of what is considered the very best literature.

We, as readers and writers, are not necessarily in control of what educators choose to include in syllabi, but there are some things that we can do to affect change. "What *readers* can do is easy: buy books about women, read them, and talk about them," says Griffith.

Griffith wrote a response to the 1983 book by Joanna Russ How to Suppress Women's Writing outlining what we as readers can do to make women's writing more visible and more culturally appreciated. "The single most important thing we (readers, writers, journalists, critics, publishers, editors, etc.) can do to improve the visibility of books by and about women, and to secure that visibility for the future, is talk about them whenever we talk about books," writes Griffith. "And if we honestly can’t think of books by and about women 'good enough' to match those about men then we should wonder aloud (or in print) why that is so."

After visiting that book shop the day before International Women's Day, I made a pledge of my own. For the next year I would only read books by women, about women. There began a journey of rediscovery of my love of reading, of returning to the thing I used to love more than anything else. Of course, I'm not advocating feminist separatism here or permanently entering into another echo chamber. For me, this is more about redressing a historic imbalance in the books I've been taught to value since my education began. It's a recalibration.

Since making that decision, I've read so many books that made me want to shout about them from the rooftops.

Image: rachel thompson

The first book I read was Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, an account of the year following the author's sudden death and a touching reflection on the reality of grieving for a loved one. Next up was Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, a beautifully relatable memoir about navigating relationships in one's twenties. Continuing in my theme of devouring books of essays, I read Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley, who's one of my absolute favourite writers.

Next up was Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay, a necessary text to emerge in the post-#MeToo landscape. Then I read The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy, a book that was infused with so much raw emotion I found myself welling up on the Tube. On holiday in France I read The Pisces, which was a fast and fun summer read (who doesn't love a bit of merman erotica?). As I fell back in love with reading, I noticed that I no longer viewed reading as a chore, as something I didn't have time for. I now read whenever and wherever I — in bars, on public transport, in bed, in the breakout space at work.

Image: rachel thompson

I milled through Florida and Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and loved it so much I instantly bought her previous book, Eileen. I read Heartburn by Nora Ephron and adored every page.

Then I read What a Time to Be Alone by Chidera Eggerue, She Must Be Mad by Charly Cox, The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer. The next book was perhaps my favourite one I've read in years. A book that felt like I was reading my life on a page, my innermost thoughts spelled out in letters — Normal People by Sally Rooney. Not for a long time have I read such realistic renderings of the intricacies of human emotions and relationships. I followed that immediately with Rooney's brilliant debut novel Conversations With Friends.

As summer turned to autumn I sped-read Crudo by Olivia Laing, then moved to the dark The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, and The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy. The latter book of essays was a beautifully written rumination on what it means to be a writer and a woman. I'm now reading Putney by Sofka Zinovieff and am finding it gripping and disturbing in equal measure.

Image: rachel thompson

I'm not alone in my mission to read only women writers this year. Some are choosing to read books by women of colour. Jalisa Whitley, founder of equality organisation Unbound Impact, told me she decided to only read books by women of colour this year "because we're often not discussed in the 'must read' books lists."

"Looking at my own Goodreads list I realised how male-dominated it was and wondered how that framed the way I saw the world," she says. "I wanted to widen my frame of reference and expose myself to different types of stories that centre the experiences of women in ways that are layered, complicated, and represent the many ways we show up in the world including but not limited to our roles as wives, mothers, and love interests."

Whitley says she reached out to people on Twitter for ideas of what to read and she ended up getting hundreds of book recommendations. "I could literally just read women of colour for the next five years," she says. "I've been exposed to AMAZING books including: When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan Cullors, Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet, An American Marriage and Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones, The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez, In the Country by Mia Alvar and so many more." She says that in this political moment these books have afforded her "community" and "comfort" as well as making her laugh, cry, and "re-energised for the resistance."

What are your favorite books by women of color? Need some fire recommendations to round out my goal of reading 50 books only by women of color this year. Bonus pts for international writers #wellreadblackgirl

— Jalisa Whitley (@JalisaNichole) August 12, 2018

I, too, share this feeling of re-energisation. I will forever be grateful that I chose to go on a walk that lunchtime in March. And I'm glad that I got to meet Zainab Juma, whose insights prompted me to question the types of books society tells us are more worthy of our attention.

Ultimately, this has been, and continues to be, a lesson in exercising choice over the pages I put in front of my face. What we're told to read by our teachers, professors, literary critics, and even our friends are not necessarily definitively the best. If we amplify the voices of women writers through reading them, sharing them on social media, and recommending them to people in our lives, we remind readers that women's writing is essential.

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