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onthevirgeofdestruction · 3 years

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35 Q’s for Fanfic Writers

From this post

I’m having a shitty, rude alter-y, crap night so I’m just going to answer all of these to distract myself and focus and to not bother anybody just making my own post and putting it under the cut btw, notice to anyone not aware: since I’m moving I won’t likely be updating anything until I’m done doing so.

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!) 3/5? Could use more editing and description and can be weirdly paced.

2. Why do you write fanfiction? Because it’s better than focusing on pain 24/7.

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works? I don’t seem to have a specific narrative voice that people recognize but I’m pretty proud of mostly organic dialogue.

4. Are there any writers that inspire you? as a rule i never look up to anybody for inspiration but there’s some stuff in my ao3 bookmarks I fawn over.

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of? Right now, none of them. It changes normally, anyway. If get too proud then I’d get my ass kicked by RSD if someone didn’t like it so it’s safer this way

6. What element of writing do you find comes easily? Dialogue.

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most? Organic description, poetic language kind of stuff. I can paint a scene but I’m not so great with bring out out a feeling with description alone.

8. Which character(s) do you find easiest to write? Janus and Virgil are probably tied. They both have things I struggle with but I don’t have to go back and do much adjusting of language and tone with them. Though admittedly my Virgil is signifigantly more foul-mouthed than canon and I tend to prefer pre-AA feral asshole Virgil.

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write? Patton. I write him the least, so people can probably tell. I love Patton, I really do, but it’s so hard to keep away from fanon Patton.

10. What’s your favorite genre to write for? Angst w/ H/C obviously. Or if you’re talking about regular book genres, Fantasy. I fucking love fantasy world building.

11. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most? Trauma. I blame Daeram. As if Ayri isn’t a giant Angst Demon.

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about. Slopes. I’m really into it. I’ve got three one shots running right now. Patrons can read the first part of the unnamed cat remus one, there’s also a coffeeshop au tropey nonsense one like eglantine & lycoris, but Slopes is addiction angst. Mmmmm. Virgil is addicted to coke and alcohol and will listening to his friends even be in time? Who knows, especially not me, but there’s already over 30k.

13. First fandom you ever wrote for? InuYasha. Or was it Harry Potter? Or shit, The Blue Sword? Fuck, I’ve been writing for a long time, I really have no idea.

14. What’s your favorite fandom to write for? Sanders Sides. The characters are the perfect dynamic for writing since they exist in balance of each other and the popular, easy to project on archetypes featured are incredibly fun to do basically any scenario with.

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for? Weird storywise? Kingdom Hearts? I can’t even follow the plot anymore. Weird Fandomwise? Sanders Sides. Its simultainiously the fluffiest and angstiest nonsense at the same time.

16. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)? Vampires. Gay ones. Gay Vampires. I also love calm tol and angy smol.

17. A trope you’ll never, ever write for. Any tropes that normalize incredibly toxic behaviour or tropes that are inherantly ableist, but I can’t think of any.

18. Wildest fic you’ve ever written? Incorrigible continues to be complete nonsense.

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in-between? AUs. I mean closest I even have is canon-divergence other than a single short.

20. Gen fic or shippy stuff? I like it when there is gay nonsense along with a plot that is treated as more important than the relationship the most. But I like both. There’s more shippy stuff in tss so i read more shipping action by default.

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!) Anxceit/Sleepxiety, but in general, give me darksides or give me death/j

22. Do you listen to anything while you write? Almost everything I write has a special playlist I listen to to help me write it, but otherwise I listen to my Nyan playlist, an alter is picking the tunes, or a voidfam playlist. I never have music off. When my internet is down I just listen to the songs I own or Anxiety’s theme on loop.

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas? I’m fine with all of them. I love working with prompts but I tend to deviate. And I’ve never done a challenge since I can’t do deadlines and bad things happen bingo never sent me a card and I applied three times.

24. One-shots or multi-chaptered works? I am generally multi-chaptered stuff, but I’ve been working on a few one-shots lately that are much longer than most one shots.

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them! I was originally thinking of doing some little 13-year-old Dreaming!Roman (y’know, the one with a job) shorts but it turns out I just had an alter of that little bastard and that’s why I inexplicably know more about him then I ever even considered. I still might do them after Dreaming is done. But that’s paced so slowly who knows when that might happen. Otherwise I put stuff in my notes and just do shorts of it if I’m like “oh you know what’s cool???” but since I can’t daydream maybe this question doesn’t apply to me.

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try? I want to do more autism stuff, and I’ve had it demanded a few times, but I’m scared of being that explict about it for some reason. Possibly because I might be, possibly because I’m scared of doing it wrong even though I’ve accidentally coded multiple characters autistic. I’m scared of explictly tagging them as such, too.

27. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received? That I can remember off the top of my head? I’m going with one from @a-genz-with-trauma-and-kins. It really helped me out and was just so kind and literally the best christmas gift I got in 2020.

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing? I can handle it alright but Daeram is a little fucking pissbaby about it. Constructive criticism helps people get better, so I appreciate it. I can’t handle critism that is incomplete, though. “i just don’t get it” or “I don’t know I don’t like it” kind of things. If I can’t understand the why to fix it then things get out of control. And then I spiral and RSD for like four days minimum. If it came from an anon or a troll, too, It might not bother me for as long. Things that are just like “this is shit and you should feel bad” just make me laugh. Couldn’t even bother to read it long enough to insult me proper? I don’t care.

29. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out? I have a few times. Mostly in shorts and prompts, I think. I think they turned out okay. They’re not particularly inspired or anything.

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst? Depends on my mood. Am I triggered? give me the fluff. Am I vibin? Angst.

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them! Fuck, fam, no, I can’t, I have so many. I have multiple original stories and some of them have very large casts and like holy fuck. Or do you mean in Sanders Sides fandom? Um, Morgan and Thorn in PD. The lesbian and her himbo dynamic. I love them. They’re dorks. Morgan is strong person with sharp tongue and soft romantic heart and Thorn is just so kind and so dumb and so exciteable he’s like a puppy. They were just filler characters and I got attached to them. Felton even gets redemption for being an ass later in PD, like oof i never intended to include so much OC content, especially for names I just picked randomly.

32. Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less. nope I’m doing all of them because these are fun plea for my new self: 2 gay vampires, 4 humans, 1 braincell dreaming while I wake: trauma child needs therapy and so do you break: big oof, oh dragons, oh why, go virgil go rebuild: virgil is so not okay there’s more virgil to deal painful death: gay teens drink themselves into a new religion stargazing: whoops we didn’t realize people actually cared whole castle: everyone will throw down for kid!patton, even you incorrigible: found family with a shot of psychological horror and crack dangerous instincts: wholesome crime syndacite action slopes: addict gets mugged and thinks that’s just fine with him conflagration: logan avoids everything ever like a champ cat!remus: bored fae shifts gay pining from one person to another caffeine cyptids: caffinated gay panic goes faster than regular gay panic eglantine & lycoris: more tropes than you can toss a shoe at storytime: overpowered virgil also overreacts literally always

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process? an alter and I write together and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen, what I’m writing about, or even what year it is. I often don’t even remember what I wrote. There’s no outline. I have an idea and I pick things at random for it. There’s just notes and an evil gleam in a demon’s eye. The only reason I know more than readers is because I take a long time to edit and some of these stories have fucking alters up in my head who can tell me things. Daeram tells me nothing. The writing demon supposedly has all this knowledge but I have absolutely no clue because he does not talk to me, he just fronts and slams out 9k in a few hours or we cofront to write and I’m like “oh no she didn’t” while typing

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of. i’m fond of the entire painful death series and I tried to find something I really liked without spoilers in stargazing and I couldn’t so here’s a random thing from incorrigble: “So, what do you do with your friends?” Patton continued on with a megawatt smile. “Grand larceny,” Virgil deadpanned and glared at Patton, who was taken aback. Remy and Andy just broke out laughing while Virgil tentatively sipped his still-too-hot-cocoa.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! slopes my dudes slopes i have learned so much about cocaine! like wow! I thought for a minute it was going to end with MCD around 30k but it swtiched from whump to hurt/comfort and I still don’t know if it’s going to be MCD but look at that funky little coke/alcohol addict go, it’s a medical wonder he’s alive! It’s not like there’s what seems to be a little talked about interaction between alcohol and cocaine that causes a toxic chemical to build up in the liver which can result in liver failure and sudden death at basically any moment! Which is part of why it may result in MCD but this time no ghosts! maybe it’ll be h/c with whump elements or maybe it’ll be whump with h/c elements we can’t know for sure

#ayri writes #tw drug mention

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writing-with-olive · 4 years

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How to include a diverse cast

A lot of people are totally on board with the idea of writing a diverse cast for their novel, but when it actually comes to writing it, it ends up looking a little more like

[id: a white background with a collection of randomly placed grey squares, with one blue square /end id]

... and a little less like

[id: a white background with a bunch of randomly placed squares where all of the squares are different random colors /end id]

(why diversity is important, how to include more diversity of all kinds in your writing, and usable advice below the cut)

What’s going on?

I think that the biggest problem is that most of the media we consume doesn’t really have much in the way of a diverse cast. Having all of the characters the same except for one doesn’t equal diversity. Usually, the cast we see is all white, cisgender, straight, athiest or christian, neurotypical and generally an abled person. There’s also mostly men. (Throughout this post, “usual” in quotations refers to the characteristics listed above, as they are the ones most usually seen in today’s media. It is in no way meant to imply that people who do not fit this demographic are to be considered unusual.)

While nothing is inherantly wrong with any of those demographics, the problem arises when all except one or two characters fit all of them. The one or two charcters are less of diversity, and more of tokenism. You don’t want token characters.

So how do I make sure my story is made up of different and diverse characters when my instinct is to make them all fit the mold we’ve all been taught through exposure?

The simple answer is to just.... make them different. That’s the answer that’s posted literally everywhere. However, while that’s enough for some people, it’s not entirely approachable for others. I’ve included a little bit about what marginalized or minority groups are being underrepresented, as well as some steps you can take to increase the overall diversity in your writing. Note that the steps are more of a starting point, but are not the final word in the matter.

Racial diversity

Remember that black and white are not the only two racial groups. There’s Native American, Latino, Middle Eastern, East Asian, Brazillian, Indian, lots and lots of others. The more representation you have racially, the more realistic your story will be.

Approachable steps:

Make sure that it’s clear that your non-white characters are protrayed as such. People tend to assume that characters are white by default, so clarify otherwise.

Make sure that your main cast (protagonists and important side characters) features at least one or two non-white characters for every white character.

Include more racial diversity than just white characters and black characters.

Gender diversity

A lot of people hear this term and assume that it means a balance of girls and guys but it’s more than that. There are also a lot of trans people and nonbinary (not boy or girl) people in this world. People don’t usually think to include diversity in this sense in their stories, but it’s still important.

Approachable steps:

At a bare minimum, make sure to have at least some representation of women.

If there was a character who you couldn’t decide whether they should be a boy or a girl in your story, make them trans, nonbinary, and/or intersex

Make at least one or two of your characters trans and/or nonbinary.

Sexuality

Not everyone will be super open about their sexuality, but no matter what culture, there’s going to be people who are attracted to people of their own gender, people who are attracted to people of a different/opposite gender, and people who fall in between. Some people will not be attracted to anyone.

Approachable steps:

Like with the racial diversity segment, people assume others are straight by default. To combat this, make it clear that your non-straight characters are in fact, not straight.

If you want to have a character who’s attracted to another gender, but also want them to be not straight, make them bi or pan

If one character isn’t straight, they probably have at least a few friends who also aren’t straight. LGBTQ people tend to travel in packs.

Mental diversity

This is one that actually gets overlooked a lot of the time, but being neurodivergent is actually more common than you’d think. There’s learning disorders such as dyslexia or discalculia, there’s trauma related disorders, such as PTSD and DID, and there’s also other things, such as depression, anxiety, autism or ADHD, and a lot of other things. Neurodivergence isn’t a bad thing, but unfortunately it’s so underrepresented in fiction and media in general that it’s often stigmatized as such.

Approachable steps:

If your character had a traumatic childhood or past, it’s possible that they could have developed a disorder related to said trauma. If it makes sense, give it to them.

Make at least one or two of your characters neurodivergent in some way.

Don’t give all of your characters the same thing; instead, mix it up a bit (for example, characters A and B might have ADHD, and character C might have OCD).

People will usually assume a character is neurotypical unless shown otherwise. Make sure it’s clear that your neurodivergent characters are neurodivergent.

Physical diversity

This is another one that often gets overlooked. Most media is flooded with completely fit and able-bodied people, and while there’s nothing wrong with being able-bodied, the sheer lack of representation otherwise raises stigma. Some disabilities are more visible, such as poor eyesight (needing/wearing glasses), amputations, or needing a wheelchair. Others are less visible, such as deafness, weak bones, or heart problems. It’s also important to include people of a range of body types

Approachable steps:

If characters need things such as glasses, hearing aids, cane, or wheelchair, give it to them. Often using these devices in order to get through the world can cause stigma. Stigma doesn’t go away unless it’s disproved.

Include at least a few people who are overweight, underweight, and/or don’t have well-sculpted/toned muscles.

Include at least a few people who are physically disabled.

Religious Diversity

More than 50% of the world is Christian, so it makes sense that so many characters follow Christianity if they follow a religion at all, but it’s important to include other religions as well. Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are all major religions, but unlike Christianity, there’s a lot less representation for them.

Approachable steps:

Make at least 25% of your characters follow a religion other than Christianity.

If your story takes place in another world with a different belief system, make sure to include some characters who believe in it, and some who don’t.

If you already have characters who do follow a religion other than the dominant one, make sure to make that clear.

General Tips:

Remember to research how to respectfully depict characters who identify differently than yourself, and avoid harmful stereotypes.

Make sure that if you only have one character representing a minority group that they have a life that moves beyond just what that minority identity is; avoid making them a token character.

Don’t keep all of your “usual” characters nice and safe while killing off or getting rid of the others.

Don’t bunch up all of the “usual” traits on a few characters, but rather spread it out; at most, you should have one, maybe two characters who completely fit the “usual” description.

#writing #writeblr #writing tips #writing advice #diversity #writing diversity #writing diverse characters #how to write diverse characters #how to write diversity #diverse characters #diverse cast #writing a diverse cast #how to write a diverse cast #olive’s writing vibes

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cryptidcalling · 4 years

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One of my most massive pet peeves is when people complain about things being ‘overrated.’ Like, genuinely fuck off with that. Just because you personally don’t think something is very good doesn’t mean EVERYONE ELSE is wrong and over hyping it. It means the vast majority of them see something in it YOU don’t. That doesn’t make you a bad person or wrong. It’s a difference of taste. It’s when you start to complain that something a lot of people love and enjoy doesn’t deserve that love that makes it an issue. Doing that INHERANTLY implies that people are wrong for liking it. Just let people enjoy things for fucks sake.

#rant #ok to rb #can anyone fuckin guess what I’m talking about? bet you caaannn

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tumblunni · 6 years

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Ok so.. I feel really ungrateful as fuck saying this.. but it kinda bugs me how much perrin being nonbinary just.. isn’t really shown at all.

At least, in what i’ve seen so far, yknow? I watched the first ep of someone else’s let’s play to see if i was gonna like this game, and i like this game SO MUCH that I stopped right there and am downloading it at the speed of light yo!!! My hype is maximum and I really don’t want this to be seen as a hate message or anything, it's just a mild opinion piece about something that bummed me out a little, as a nonbinary person.

Ok so.. again, this makes me sound like an ASSHOLE but I have to say it.. Perrin looks like a boy. 100% of all LPers I have seen have assumed they were a boy. I, a nonbinary person, assumed they were a boy. (And felt like absolute shit afterwards, man I still have to work on my internalized gender stereotypes!)

Now in real life I absolutely wouldn’t go around being some douchebag who tells other NB folk they aren’t dressing ‘right’, or whatever. In real life people can feel very different ways about being outside of conventional gender norms. Some people feel like “both at once” or “neither” or “something else entirely that doesn’t touch either side of our society’s current binary stereotypes”. And regardless of whether you’re agender/bigender/genderfluid or any other type of genderqueer person, your fashion sense doesn’t have to fit any strict rule to “prove” it to people. Some people try and dress in androgenous stuff, some people try to mix parts of both gendered fashion worlds, some people like to wear very neutral baggy stuff as a different way of being androgenous, some people like to wear wild and fun stuff that never had any gender stereotype in the first place/because it helps them feel confident in themself if they have a big brave kind of fashion, yknow? (that’s why I dyed my hair at least, and why I think a lot of lGBT people do) And of course, some people just prefer ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ clothes regardless of not being that gender, and if we can accept that cis women can enjoy ‘tomboy’ fashion then we should accept that trans people don’t have to fit into even more rigid fashion rules in order to ‘earn’ their gender.

BUT this isn’t real life, it’s a videogame

We have a lot more context here, with the context that this is a character designed within a fandom whose previous attempts at NB representation have kinda started setting up a trend. In that context, this is a bit worrying that it’s happened again, and maybe future fangame creators are feeling like they have to do it, or something?

Like the NB protagonist Pluto in Pokemon Uranium.

They’re still someone I deeply love, but their design looks incredibly masculine aside from a side ponytail. If anything their design communicates more that they’re a younger option compared to the other two, or something?

And the two NB protagonist options Ari and Decibel in Pokemon Reborn

Their designs look like more traditionally masculine and feminine-leaning ways of being nonbinary, ykno? And that wouldn’t be bad on it’s own, but let me try and explain what I mean...

A similar issue occurs in the unrelated dating sim Hustle Cat:

Which is generally incredibly progressive and actually the first dating sim I’ve ever seen that lets you play a nonbinary protag! But you still get only two character models to choose from.

Like it’s great that they had two options to aknowledge how not all trans people are the same, but it starts to look a bit.. odd, when those two options are ‘feminine and masculine’ and no form of androgenous is ever an option. or even like.. someone with a ‘masculine’ body build but a ‘feminine’ fashion sense. That would be kind of a stereotypical way to depict a trans character but it wouldn’t just be making a random design that could fit amoungst the already existing gendered protags and then just saying they’re trans. And a lot of people found it weird how these ones seem to be drawn as like.. both on the far masculine end, just a cis man and a trans man.

Like.. even as a nonbinary person myself, I wouldn’t have known these characters were nonbinary if you hadn’t told me. And that leaves me feeling horrible about myself that I judged them on first sight, but I mean this is within a genre of entertainment that’s literally never had any Me in it and i’ve got used to being all ‘no you’re just reading too much into it’ whenever i headcanon anyone as genderqueer...

And just.. I feel like if you’re gonna just draw another two masculine and feminine looking characters, or just a second masculine one (or a weird two masculine ones that’re labelled male and female with no option for in-between...) then couldn’t you have saved time by just letting us choose our pronouns for the two you already had? like I already play a lot of games headcanoning the protag as just a masc-fashion version of my enby self, I feel like kinda the point of adding a third design would be to make it something the others aren’t already delivering. Look at it this way, you already HAVE two nonbinary characters who look masculine and feminine, just like the player could also play them as a trans boy and trans girl. Pronoun selector box is the greatest invention of our time! So what I’m really saying is not “don’t have super masc NB protags” but just “can we have another option too?”

Oh, but then that’s also been done not-so-well by certain games too.. Awesome amazing multiplayer party game dating sim Monster Prom let’s you choose your pronouns!

...except these are your only character options! All of these are very clearly intended to be read as masc or femme, you’re probably gonna feel dysphoric as heck if you play them as trans, and none of them work super well as nonbinary either. I think pretty much every NB player has always gone for Oz (yellow one), cos he’s the one that’s most capable of fitting that headcanon just by virtue of being perpetually shadowed. Tho still his default is “he” pronouns, his fashion sense is masc and his voice is masc. Still I’m really fuckin proud of the fandom for collectively latching onto NB Oz and using “they” all the time in fanworks, and then the developers being okay with it, like holy shit man you healed my goddamn heart... <3

Still, it makes me feel a lil like this would have been easy to fix? like I’m not saying redraw everything to have them all change bodies/fashion style depending on your pronoun choice, but like.. maybe just not draw them with such super disparate body styles in the first place? like in this style every girl is hourglass and has weird legs out arms out pose, and every dude is a chunkfest with twice as big hands and feet. Like you could have maybe just made two of the characters be a very curvy girl and a very buff boy, and then the other two be more neutral in appearance but still retaining the same designs. Like I think if you just gave the blue girl a baggier shirt that doesn’t highlight her boobs and hips so much, she could easily be my favourite ‘most NB-able’ design! maybe also tone down the eyelash and lipstick effects?

I think probably a similar thing could have been done with the Reborn protagonists? like there’s nothing inherantly feminine about wearing a tanktop and having a fancy undercut hairstyle and such, its just the way they drew Ari that makes them look feminine. I guess maybe that’s a necessary evil of fangames, since they usually use edits of already existing characters from the games? Then again the games have plenty of androgenous characters already, even if nobody is canonically confirmed as LGBT. *shrug*

Anyway

I absolutely am not trying to nitpick and attack the game for not being perfect in this one aspect. i’m still super excited to even see someone like me in a videogame at all, and I’m definately not one of those people who’s like ‘I’d rather have nothing than have something flawed’. I already admire you greatly for what you’ve done for the inclusivity of this fandom, and I hope that my discussion of this stuff doesn’t discourage you from continuing.

And I guess my point is, in summary

What I mean is not “there are no nonbinary people who prefer to dress masculine instead of androgenous”, but instead that when you’re designing a nonbinary person as the only option a nonbinary player gets or the only nonbinary person in the game, with no playable option, it would probably be a little better to draw them androgenous.

Like, you’ve put that NB character into the role of representing all nonbinary people ever, to the hypothetical audience of people who’ve never heard of the concept before and aren’t super educated about the intricacies of gender presentation. And then also rather than using traditionally gendered outfits to aknowledge that NB people have many ways to present themselves... you’ve given us less ways to present ourselves.

Also it’s a little bit odd that you have an NB rival but said “we’re not ever considering an NB player option in the future”. Sorry but I cannot understand the logic? Like.. you know NB people play your game if you wanted to put NB representation in it, but you didn’t put it as playable because... reasons?? I hope maybe that interview was just taken out of context and you meant something more like “it’s not planned for now because it’s a lot of work and the game is still in its demo stage”, which is absolutely an understandable reason and how Uranium and Reborn did it. But Uranium and Reborn were kinda odd for being a world where literally nobody else aside from you could ever be NB, so I am really grateful that your game did add an NB character. And one in a big role!! This is what i mean about how grateful I am and how I feel awful that my bad internet typing skills are making this post come off as more aggressive than intended.. *sigh*

OH and also maybe a tip for Periin? just.. like.. mention their pronouns. It’s really frustrating to watch everyone doing let’s plays of this thing and constantly assuming Perrin is male because their design is very masculine. Even me! Even me was assume! :( So like... maybe just have Perrin actually tell the audience that they are nonbinary at some point, during this introduction? or have the protagonist’s inner monologue mention it, or another character mention it on the way towards meeting Perrin? like I dunno, maybe a Perrin fan npc?cos it would seem a bit more natural to talk about gender if it’s someone saying “wow I admire Perrin’s androgenous fashion sense” rather than like.. a stranger saying “i can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl from your face”.

I can understand how it can be tricky to figure out how to introduce a LGBT character’s LGBT-ness without having them go around saying it to every new person they meet, it’s something I’ve had to fix in the editing process even as a trans person writing trans characters. But just having their gender only be mentioned on missable promotional material outside the game means that a lot of players won’t ever hear about it, and it like.. has zero impact of actual inclusivity on the game. It’s why people were angry about DUmbledore only getting revealed as gay after the series already ended. Him being gay missed all of its chances to make gay readers of the series feel welcome, or have any part of his character be informed by his sexuality. like the plot between him and grindlewold could have been way more effective if it was him losing a boyfriend to the dark arts, just sayin...

anyway whatever, bunni is bad at writing coherant posts in summary thanks for perrin and sorry for whining about perrin, aaaaa

#bunni plays phoenix rising

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maliciouslycreative · 6 years

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Man so I've been slowly reposting most of my old Beyblade fanfics on AO3 and I've gotten a handful of comments. It's honestly kind of exciting because that means there are still a few fans lurking around like me.

She honestly if any of you are like "nobody is gonna read my old fanfics from 2004, I'll just let them rot on ff.n. Just post them on AO3! Even in a dead fandom there's probably someone lurking around just waiting to see them. It is honestly the greatest feeling to hear someone say they remember reading your fic years ago and being excited that they could read it again.

Sure your writing is going to change and improve a lot in 10 years (or even 3 or 5 or 7 or any amount of time really) but that doesn't mean your old writing is bad. Sure there's a lot of things I would have done differently if I'd written these stories now but it doesn't make them inherantly bad. I still love them and am honestly proud to call them mine. I've grown so much since I first posted them and having them there is really a great reminder of that.

#fanfic #i know a lot of writers look back at their old writing and hate it #and i certainly have things that will die with me #but we gotta remeber to be kind to ourselves #and admire our old works for what they are #not what they could be if they wrote them now #and maybe if you really want to rewrite something then just do it #show off how you've grown #but still give a moment to be proud of how you began #because you did great #always remeber that #malicious musings

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scriptautistic · 7 years

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How do I write someone having their first meltdown and they’re already an adult? My character has never had real interaction with others besides his mom, and now he’s decided to go adventuring.

This is a high fantasy story and he’s half orc/half elf by the way.

He went trough the first town fine, but that could be explained as ‘really excited to find the quest board and do my first quest’ single-mindedness. He also has a big dear with him as a mount that was a calming presence. His first quest is to somehow stop some dogs from bothering the farmers sheep; if they were really noisy and he was having trouble catching him, do you think that would cause a meltdown? I also might make them rabid after I look up more about that

I myself am on the spectrum but only found out a couple years ago when I was 19. If I understand meltdowns correctly, I haven’t had one. I hope I never do honestly

I just read the stuff on not making non-humans autistic so now I feel bad for asking about my orc/elf but like,,, he basically is human??? Except he’s green??? That’s pretty much the only difference??? Would it help if I later added a human that was also autistic??!

I’ll answer your second question first. What I have to say is : hey, relax! You have no reason to feel bad. Having their autistic representation be non-human is something we warn our readers about, but we’re not saying it’s impossible to do it or completely wrong. Really nothing is inherantly wrong with it, the issue is that for a very long time, the only representation we’ve been getting was that of non-human characters (usually aliens/robots). It can be damaging to one’s self-esteem if everywhere you look in media, everyone who is like you is not a human. Individually, none of these characters are bad representation (or at least not because of that), but if you look at the whole picture, there’s a problem of balance. This doesn’t mean you have to delete your character, just that it would be good of you to consider in the future making one or a few human characters. Adding one to the same story where your orc/elf character is could definitely help if this is something you want to do!

Now that this is out of the way, I’ll answer your main question.

I think the situation you are describing is realistic: if your character has spent his life in a very quite place with little stimulation and little in the way of social contact, he probably hasn’t had a reason to have a meltdown yet.

The single-mindedness you describe also sounds ok to me, mental states do play a large role in our tolerance and sensitivity to stimulation.

And I also think the loud noises of the dogs + the frustration and feeling of helplessness of not succeeding in catching them could be enough to trigger a meltdown (Especially since his sensory system has already been overloaded before in the first town even though he powered through it, this can “come back to catch him” if he hasn’t taken time to rest. Sensory stimulation can add up and add up until there’s too much and it triggers a meltdown.)

As for how it would feel, first I’ll redirect you to our Masterpost about meltdowns for general information, and then to Mod Aira’s personal account for a concrete example of what a meltdown can feel like.

There are also some things specific to having a first meltdown :

Your character probably won’t understand what’s going on. In addition to being extremely painful, it’ll probably be very scary. He might feel like something is very wrong with him or like he’s about to die.

He won’t recognise the build up, and thus can’t try to avoid it or prepare himself accordingly, by getting to a safe place for example.

If he has no word to explain what’s going on, he might feel very ashamed, feel like “a freak”, and dread a next meltdown. This is true for most people who have meltdowns, but especially true for someone who hasn’t had them since childhood and knows that “this is something that happens to me sometimes”.

Hope this helps. Really, I would emphasize the fear he might feel and the confusion caused by not knowing what is happening to him.

-Mod Cat

#submission #question #mod cat #meltdowns #representation

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eglentyne-morven · 7 years

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Favorite Divination Tool

If tarot is the only form of divination I use, can I really say it’s my favorite? Pretty much the only thing I got to work with at this point.

I see two ways to divine. The first way, which I would venture a great majority do, is they rely on their own knowledge and understanding of a thing to intuit what they are seeing, and make connections by way of pattern recognition. The second way, is that the person divining has an established link with a deity, or ancestor, or spirit and they work as a medium, their divination becoming a tool of communication, and through that they are able to speak a divine message. They become an oracle.

So in a sense, the first way is little more than fortune telling. By no means is that a bad thing, because I think we have great capability to work out significant insight all on our own. And I think it would be disrespectful to say I have been imparted a gift of reading when that isn’t at all the case. I do not extend a prayer before picking up my cards, and I do not think there is anyone sending me a message through them.

But I think the seeming randomness of the universe has a bizarre way of making meaning all on its own. So when I’m shuffling cards, what comes up is just random chance. We have to establish connections out of all the random we see and experience. We’re already determined to do that, we’ve always done that because it’s an inherantly human thing to do.

But when the time comes for me to make a true connection with some spirit, ancestor, deity, I would hope they tell me “this is how I speak to you” and give me the method. They teach me the knowledge of how to read for them, what their signs are. That’s a massive undertaking, and anyone who has undergone the transformation, mad props to them.

Wicca doesn’t really have anything like that. Well, we do and we don’t. There are living traditions in Africa where people go through extended ceremony to establish these divine links, the person making sacrifice, the knowledge being a literal thing written on their head, ingested and internalized, all to make a link between individual and deity, or ancestor, culture depending. We have our ways, but so much of our knowledge is fragmented. It’s a long road to re-establishing such things. But I’m getting into a whole different subject with this.

So maybe one day I will say I scry and see messages. Or I throw stones. Or bones. Or I read entrails. And at that point it wouldn’t be fortune telling.

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ziracona · 4 years

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The tendency in fandom to take every white girl with short hair, regardless of the status of their canonical interest or lack of interest in women and explicit interest and/or sexual history with everything but, proclaim them a lesbian queen, and then ignore or absolve them of every single horrific act they take in fiction because of this. Is not doing feminism. Women. Lesbians. Or anyone. Any favors. It’s just bad.

Somehow. Some people really do apparently need to hear that...being any specific sexuality...is not a personality trait.

And also. Women aren’t inherantly less vile than men (or anyone non-binary, agender, fluid, etc, else), and whatever bad deeds they do should be judged based on just that—on the deeds, and their context. Not their sexuality, imagined sexuality, or their gender. Becuase none of those things effect whether committing murder is bad. At all. Not even a little. And none of them. Is even a personality trait. Affecting the character’s value as a person.

It’s cool, and good, to see characters with minority identities. And it’s real nice. When it’s whatever you are. But them being whatever. Is not a personality trait. Just a fact. And sometimes. People of any type. Are not good. Pretending any minority status—gender, sexuality, race, disability, neurotype, etc—is a get out of jail free card? Is not. Doing them. Or anyone. Any favors. Personality disorder. Doesn’t make you bad. Also doesn’t make you good. Your actions do. Acting like Amy from Gone Girl did nothing wrong when she date rapes her boyfriend & then frames him for doing that to her & ruins his life, then blackmails her husband who is terrified of being murdered by her into staying with her for the sake of the child she made at a fertility clinic with his sperm without his consent, bc she’s a woman. Isn’t good. Men aren’t more deserving of violence than women. Neither is anyone else. Jane. Left an infant child in an unheated car in subzero weather in a snow storm with zombies around that easily would hear it cry and go eat it. So she could lie and say she already let zombies eat it to bait a man with easily triggerable PTSD who had just lost his family to zombies for the second time into starting a fight. Because he was injured, unarmed, weak, down an eye, and 50, while she was fit, mid 20s, healthy, and armed with a hunting knife. Because she wanted an excuse to kill him without looking bad, because she wanted the 11 year old girl she was co-parenting with him, all to herself. And her immediately responding to the dude throwing a punch by stabbing him in the stomach to escalate the fight from brawl to life or death, then losing her knife, and instead of telling him the baby was alive & she’d made it up to start a fight which could have at any point ended the fight, begging the 11 year old child to gun down her oldest surviving friend with her own hands in cold blood so that she’d get what she wanted? Is evil. As is crying on the 11 year old and using pity as a weapon to get her to stay with her if she gets mad and wants to leave when she realizes Jane staged the whole thing for an excuse to murder, and so is after realizing like a month later that she is pregnant, committing suicide, and leaving the 11 year old that she just manipulated into killing her oldest surviving friend/completely isolated on purpose so she could have her to herself, totally alone in the apocalypse to care for an infant. Jennifer’s Body? Is a fantastic film. And Jennifer didn’t deserve any of what happened to her. But not one single boy she kills during the course of that film deserved it—and explicitly so. Even the guy who could easily have been a meathead jock bully is outside alone crying becuase his best friend just died and he loved him before she decides to lure him off and eat him alive. And acting like it’s totally fine & Needy should have just let her keep eating boys instead of killing her? Is fucked up. None of them deserved to die. And no one deserves death innately more because they are or are not something that is just a factual designator of their makeup as a human. The exchange student was scared and alone and nice, the catholic kid was sweet and Needy’s friend, Chip is a bad boyfriend but he meant well and being stupid doesn’t mean you deserve to die. And this girl ate them alive. That’s not funny. Or cool. Or fine becuase they were dudes. Gertrude Robinson? Chose again and again to betray people who loved her, or trusted her—sold out victims of awful trauma to their worst nightmares. Killed friends in the worst possible ways, like it was nothing. Michael loved her, and trusted her, and tried to care for her, and she without faltering fed him to his worst nightmare and forced him to become it. There is nothing excusable about that action.

Jude Perry? Has 0 redeeming features. Didn’t even stay faithful to her poor gf & was creepy obsessed w Agnes. Literally murdered her co-worker friend just because he was happy, and she wanted to destroy things: that’s it. She didn’t even dislike him. Murdered him because he had a wife and kid and house and it seemed fun, then burned down his house, took his wife’s money, and now checks in on his kid every so often in case he ever recovers from the trauma she inflicted enough to be fun to kill. There is literally nothing good about this woman. Yes. I mean that. Because being a lesbian? Is just a thing. There is no g/b tag, there is no tag at all. Amanda Young? Got kidnapped and tortured and forced to choose between killing a man who couldn’t resist but was conscious to watch her, and letting herself die, and she killed him. Then, instead of responding to that trauma with guilt or responsibility or anger at her captor, joined up with him and started helping him kidnap people just like her. She was not forced, she was not lied to. It does not matter if John was manipulative; she is a grown ass woman and like all grown ass adults, responsible for her own actions and choices. She did not get manipulated pitifully into this—she did not go unwillingly. She volunteered, with a happy vengeance, became obsessed with John and in love with him, despite his complete lack of interest. And she did not even just do what he did. She decided on her own that no one deserved redemption, & she killed them for fun in traps that wouldn’t let them go even if they did whatever awful thing the trap demanded as a price for life, just for the fun and power trip of watching them die helpless & in agony. That was all her, & her alone. She sat in a house full of people slowly dying from organ decomposition over the course of a few hours, for no crime worse than drug addiction—the thing she of all people should have been most sympathetic to—knowing full well at any time she could have saved them and stopped the game, and did nothing. She held a woman in her arms and stroked her head lovingly while she let her die in one of the most inhumane ways possible for the crime of having not been able to break an addition. She got saved by a 16 year old child multiple times, who had done nothing more than shoplift, and stood by while he had to watch a man get his brains blown out, another burn to death in an oven. As his organs slowly dissolved too. Watched the kid kill another human being & massively traumatize himself to save her life. And responded to that by attacking & knocking him out, tying him up, locking him up for days in a tiny safe bound and gagged with an oxygen supply to keep him alive, to be a piece in another game. Left his father, who had shown up to try & save him, to starve to death in chains in a horrible abandoned rotting room, & never even told him his son was alive. Let every other addict die horribly, let that kid sustain permanent damage to his organs that will kill him young, antidote taken or not, took his dad from him, & went back to torturing without a second thought. Kidnapped a woman whose worst crime was being a doctor & dating someone while maybe separated instead of divorced from her husband, put her in a trap that would take her head off with shotgun blasts, threatened her for fun, & then killed her even after she did everything she was asked, because it was more important to her that the old man she was obsessed with think she was special and great, than for the other woman to get to stay alive another day & go home to her daughter. There is nothing sympathetic about Amanda. She’s just not only evil, but too spineless to take responsibility for her own choices & actions, & tries to hide behind a “UwU I am sad & lonely & damaged & having trauma means I can literally torture people to death to feel special & it’s really tragic and sympathetic about me, not evil. Uhm. Some people??? Commit torture-murders?? To cope??” And acting like she’s somehow a victim in this becuase she is a pretty white girl with short hair? Is fucked. Up.

But every. God damn. Time. I see this. Please. It needs. To stop. People go: “UwU pretty girl short hair want” & I go “Ok. I see where u. Come from. Indeed.” But then. They go. “Girl pretty I like. So she was blameless. For this atrocity.” Those words...

Every day. I wake up. Thinking of Janic saying. Iconically. “At least me and Regina George know we’re mean,” and I weep inside. Because I cannot fathom. Or stomach. The lack of responsibility. I will kill. Characters who cannot admit they are bad. Myself. But somehow. They become. Flames. To moths. Of the “UwU pretty white girl short hair. We stan. Victim. Queen. Love her. Never done wrong.” Boy. We all done wrong. Even all my faves. At least once. I think. ...not if we count dogs probably, but people, yes. Ok. Anyway. All this is to say. Characters. Should be judged. Based on what they did. And why. And the aftermath. Not a grouping tag. I don’t mean any of these. Make bad characters. At all. Amy is a great character. So is Jennifer. So are most of them. I have quite affection even. For Jeneffer specifically. But you can like. Character. Without proclaiming. Them perfect humans. Who never did a thing wrong. Or their acts somehow. Justifiable. And ok. And you better stop saying. Ok. Because done. To men. Men do not. Deserve violence. Any more. Than anyone else. No one deserves violence defacto for factors. Outside their control. Wtf. Really people. It’s ok too. For character. To do much bad stuff. And still like character. Villains. And often just complex characters. Sometimes just characters. Do stuff. That is bad. It’s not supposed to be not their fault. Or ok. Also. Women are not a sisterhood. Of flawless beings. Who never hurt anyone or do any bad stuff. They can. And are. Often purpotrators. Of awful acts. And when they are. It is still. Very bad. Still. An awful act. Same level. Even. Of awful. Wild.

In conclusion.

Having short hair. While a girl. Doesn’t make her a butch queen. Who is absolved of all responsibility for that murder she committed. It just makes her a girl with short hair. That did a murder. I’m gonna. Kill someone. Too. And if I chop my hair off. I guess I can get away with it.

#personal #*dances wildly to abba music while delivering speech*#some of you all apparently really need a girl to come fuck up your life bc the lengths to which some of y’all so devotedly seem to believe #women are less evil is astronomical. and let me tell you. from personal experience? a girl can ruin your life. just as easily. and with as #little pity. guilt. remorse. or afterthought. as a man. and it aint any more ok. & you know what? so can a fluid person. or a nonbinary #person. legit anyone. can be bad. or good. and do bad. or good. theyre not defacto worse for coming from X starting point. and theyre also.#OuO not. better.#not everyone who likes or is sympathetic to these specific characters even be like that either like u know what? its possible to both be #sypathetic to a character & not excuse & atand their actions. I like & feel bad for Jennifer. a lot. one of my bros in college loved Jane #from twdg. Not bc she thought it was totally fine she’d been super evil though. its *dances* not that hard actually #also nothin against lovin evil lady characters or evil characters in general. just me or anyone else loving them does nothing to make their #evil deeds suddely ok or vanish into the mist #people have some real trouble w nuance huh. folks like a character & assume that means stanning everything theyve ever done. hate a charactr #and suddenly forget how to factor any outside factors into their view of said person’s actions. its a wild bad ride yo #like i get it. im a girl & ive had plenty of men ruin my life i truly get it. but is there anything truly more detrimental to feminism & to #just treating people decent in general than the WomenDoNoWrong mindset & apologism thrown up like its actually a decent counter t patriarchy #? probably actually yeah im sure there are worse. but its still REALLY not good!! feminism is just a stance that all people deserve equal #treatment & an investment in pursuing that reality. if youre excusing people of horrible actions bc girl & treating violence against non-#women as fine youre not a feminist u actually just suck generally as a person #i also lose my mind how half the characters i see get this treatment aint even lesbians & often explicitly like men yet get both assigned #that & treated like that sexuality is a hall pass for human rights violations. im dyin #this entire thought rant was prompted by reading a post earlier today about bi-phobia & gettin mad about how bi people get treated idk how #spagheti brain exactly went there to here so /fast/ but anyway. same brand of problematic. & i am v tired :] of this :] specifically :]#every time i see that post abt women killers in horror i am like ‘OP hiw are your points so good but all your examples so /terrible/.’ rip #i guess this is just life. and i feel excessively better after screaming jnto the void of my blog #also i get it gertrude robinson wanted to stop the apocalypse but fuck gertrude robinson she has no excuse. nothing could justify what she #did to people who loved her. and shes a well written and layered character whonisnt like just pure evil but she is VERY bad and i WILL kill #her (again) myself if given the chance & i have every right to.#spoilers #again. great charcters. amanda an iconic saw villain. gertrude fascinating. etc. but also. they be doing mad evil deeds & tis not ok

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tumblunni · 6 years

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fuck, that story did so many complex things with morality, i think that’s why ultimately it was his most well remembered story like the basic premise of a unicorn looking for the other unicorns is basically nothing compared to the MILLION DEEP QUESTIONS it kindles in childrens’s brains along the way! and like, the fact that it was even aimed at children despite having so much dark imagery and psychological horror. and how the psychological horror comes from weird places?? like, it subverts and analyzes the fairytale genre and turns a lot of commonly accepted ‘happy ending’ things into absolute burning hell and eighty million other far more interesting plotlines springing from the corpse of the cliche it just killed. I love it. I LOVE IT.

Random examples of stuff that really intrigued me as a kid!

* the whole idea of how it starts off, that this unicorn just legit doesn’t know that anything happened to the rest of her people. she’s lived alone for centuries and doesn’t even know what loneliness is until she finds out that the world has changed while she wasn’t looking, and her assumption that there’s a million other forests with a million other unicorns was false. And like.. her journey is really complex because of it? her motivation is less about saving a family she personally knew, and more about the fear of being forgotten like they were, and like.. ‘do i even have any value if i’m not defined as a unicorn anymore, if people forget what unicorns mean?’ And like the idea of her first meeting other unicorns for the first time and having even mroe challenges to her perception of reality, like thats not even something she WANTS but the same somewhat rude and egotistical sense of honor she has as an immortal is gonna keep her going towards an ending that probably won’t be happy in any way.

* the many many nuanced moments where the unicorn completely fucks up and is generally allowed to be a flawed protagonist, despite existing in a narrative that’s from her perspective and paints her as perfect and her philosophy as the only thing that exists. And like.. how many of her fuckup moments are ABOUT her being this perfect godly figure to everyone else! How molly breaks down at seeing a unicorn NOW, instead of back when she was young and had hope of a happy fairytale ending. How she feels like she isn’t worthy of a unicorn even looking at her anymore, and how it manifetss into screaming anger, blaming this thing for being too late. And how the unicorn didn’t even know that this woman was waiting for her, and hinging her entire life worth on meeting her, and like.. molly isn’t prepared to look at it that way, if anything its even scarier to think that the people you idealise just DIDNT CARE. And how its complex cos i mean its not like the unicorn is bad, either?? She just didnt know what she meant to humans until she got out of her forest and started meeting them. She was so self-absorbed and proud about being immortal without even knowing the reason why magical creatures are considered godly. And its so complex cos the way she figures it out is via the actions of an asshole villain, like seriously its SO SAD that she gets to see little human kids feeling like they have a reason to live just from seeing the false image of a unicorn that the creepy slavemaster witch lady shows to them. the unicorn herself was powerless to be what they needed her to be, and all she even cared about was judging the humans as rude bastards for not being able to see her, rather than thinking about it as it really is, and realizing that its not like they don;t want to, they’re absolutely desperate to...

* and okay just seriously THE COMPLEX NATURE OF HUMANITY! cos she sees all the worst of humans and all the best of them too, and the story doesn’t even draw any conclusions as to whether we’re worth it, it’s up to you to decide

* also it was really deep and complex how becoming human wasn’t just a cliche happy ending for her! it was TERRIFYING! being forced into a new body wasnt even the worst part, it was the loss of identity factor that hit her after she was limited into a non immortal mind and soul. she goes crazy ‘feeling this body die around her’ and gets scared that she’s going to forget her old self, and also scared of going back to her old self because she doesnt know if these things like love are impossible for unicorns and she’ll become unable to feel them anymore. her opinion of herself falls so far from arrogance into outright FEAR! and its so fucked up because being human is hurting her like this yet she’s also kinda idealizing humanity and blaming it for all her positive character development and like SHE’S ANGRY AND SCARED OF POSITIVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT??? it fucking makes my soul weep and then the ending is so fucked up cos she does return to being a unicorn, and no she doesnt stop feeling love for the human guy she fell for, and all her human friends who helped her this far. but now she’s burdened with the knowledge that she will never die and they will, so the story just ends with her running away so she doesn’t have to feel that pain, or burden them with any more pain too. And she’s even more alone than she was at the start, because she knows that none of the other unicorns understand these emotions, they’re all like her pre character development self and she could never be part of their world again. Its complex because these positive emotions and this kinder personality is like.. a curse to her. because at least she didnt hurt when she was blissfully oblivious, and didnt care about anyone but herself. Its like.. was this newfound ability to feel love actually a blessing, if she gets the love but also the ability to have her happy ending is forever lost to her? so really all she gained was the power to be aware that she was suffering all along. and like even if she managed to get magicked into a human again, the story makes it clear that it’s intense suffering for her, its like walking on knives and her personality would just melt away and she wouldnt even remember why being able to love was so new and so important. it’d be just like someone else having a happy ending instead, and her ceasing to exist. But then the story also gives us this very clear binary where all of her personality is very much linked to being immortal, and her only choices are to live forever and be sad, or to die and not even fully be happy because she’d lose herself. and like all she accomplished was losing the option she never knew she had- to live in innocence without a concept of good and evil, and thus never regret. which isnt a happy ending either, but at least she wouldnt KNOW she was in a bad ending...

* fuck this movie is so hard to explain and so sad

* oh and!! the harpy was fuckin terrifying!! and all the morality around it was even more so! its the first time the unicorn really fucks up, cos she’s just running on the honor of all magical creatures, which is very far from concepts like good and evil. she has to free a fellow immortal, even if its clear that the harpy is evil and will only do harm. but she doesnt even fully understand evil yet, all she knows is.. like.. fear? and betrayal. she knows that for some reason she doesnt understand, she fears this other person who is like her. and subconciously she recognises the darker side of what an innocence of good and evil can turn you into. but she recklessly chooses to ignore the humans trying to explain morality t her, cos thats just a human thing she doesnt need to care about, right? and then what ultimately surprises and scares her isn’t that the harpy does what humans think are evil, but that the harpy has no loyalty to the one who freed her, and immediately tries to kill the unicorn too. And you even get the sense that the unicorn would have still freed her even if she expected this would happen, its just this sense of duty between immortals because being caged means so much more when you’ll never even have the release of death. And i mean.., that’s kind of a point, too. the story’s one moment of embracing cliches is that it says that the harpy is just inherantly evil and was born evil, rather than more directly placing it as a parallel to the unicorn’s absence of good and evil. how do we know that this thing really IS an embodiment of all hatred, and its not just a lost and deluded creature like our protagonist, whose moral neutrality got pushed down the wrong path due to the difference of life it had once it first encountered humans? i mean, the unicorn encounters plenty of shitty humans too, but she manages to at least find some good ones and like.. she had a starting point of assuming she was a proud and inherantly good creature, which was confirmed even by the humans who manipulated and hurt her. she gets to see herself worshipped by humans, even if its as a way to make a quick buck. and we don’t know how long that harpy was locked up in an even worse version of her situation, and whether the unicorn would have become just as hateful if she hadnt been resuced... Its just kinda lazy to say ‘wow its good that shitty mc fuckface locked up this inherantly evil creature, yet bad that she did the same thing to you’ But still it makes for a really scary scene cos the film really went all out in establishing what a born-evil creature would actually be like, and how fucking terrifying it would be to deal with something that just wants to kill and kill and will kill even if there’s no benefit and no logic to it. It’ll betray anyone who shows kindness to it, and you’re being stupid by treating it like a real sentient being with thoughts and a soul. And thats terrifying. But its also fucking sad. And its the one lack of complex morality in this story. but i guess maybe i wasnt supposed to be a story all about exploring complex versions of morality, but just.. different and interesting ones? so taking the ‘inherantly evil’ trope and being like ‘no, you dont get to use that lightly, this is how horrifying and child-unfriendly that would really be’ is still an intriguing idea in its own right

...anyway its a real good movie also my lunch is burning cos i couldnt take it out of the over til i finished rambling RIP salmon dinner

#blunni thoughts

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tumblunni · 6 years

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oh man the Awkward And Very Bad Homosexuals Are Supposed To Be Funny Scene was also like.. two other kinds of joke in japanese the Big Scary Rapey Gay Man also says he’s twice your age and calls you ‘little boy’ instead of ‘bubby’ (wtf was that translation even meant to be) So hey lets homophobia but also pedophiles! Yaaaaay... and then it ends on an erectile dysfunction joke about the waitress thinking cloud was having a one night stand with that guy and dissappointed him, when he actually had a ptsd flashback, passed out in a bathtub, and the guy was performing mouth-to-mouth so like.. I guess at least they made mr Every Negative Stereotype At Once at least have enough of a soul to not commit manslaughter...?

Aaaand the translator here doesnt say anything about the crossdresser/possible trans woman (?) who is always called ‘big brother’ by everyone and demands you beat her in a squat thrusts contest in her super gym of extra manly men to win her treasured crossdressing set. Seriously, what is up with the stereotype of making trans women act extra manly and gay men act girly?? its so fuckin gender essentialist and weird! like, its saying 'you cant be a real man if you like other men’ and ‘you can’t be a real woman if you weren’t born cisgender’, so I guess the idea is that queer people are really their ‘natural biological state’ and just pretending, or that they’d inherantly be bad at behaving outside of this ‘natural biological state’ no matter how hard they try...? But seriously it doesn’t change the fact that these stereotypes portray trans women as MORE manly than cis men, which just doesn’t fuckin make any sense. “I’m gonna insult you based on your deviation from the norm by saying you are an excellent representative of the norm!” But yeah, I mean, it makes sense if you stop trying to attribute sense to a bunch of raving bigoted assholes. They don’t really care about making a rational argument, they just know that nothing hurts more than ‘you are failing to pass and never will’, even if they’re also saying ‘I’m terrible at being a man, and anyone who acts too much like a man is actually a trans woman! Somehow!’ Plus yeah, the whole point of this whole sequence is the LOL FUNNIE value of forcing a presumed cis and straight guy to crossdress when he doesn’t want to, which is presumeably humiliating and disgusting to all straight men, right?

Man, this whole sequence was so funny to me as an oblivious kid just cos it was A Taboo Grownup Thing I’m Not Allowed To See, and like I guess it is still funny for being so over the top and unexpected for a jrpg. And... like... it sucks so much that this was all ‘wow, one of the first times I can see myself in videogames, even if its seeing myself being a crazy rapist everyone is supposed to hate!’ But.. yeah. Really fuckin outdated and offensive. Its only saving grace is the jokey tone of the whole thing, so you could say it was just exaggerated for the surreal value rather than reflective of the writers’s actual beliefs. Ehh...

#blunni thoughts #poor weightlifting trans lady u deserved better #like can i imagine an alternate universe where all her gym buddies respect her as onii-san instead?#and this is just like a gender neutral gym with a bunch of other weightlifting butch women who totally welcome other LGBT folks #and reassure her that she doesn't have to give up on her interest in sports and stuff in order to be respected in her transition #srsly i super hate the extra pressure on trans women to be super stereotypically feminine or else they're supposedly liars #like fuck if a cis woman is allowed to wear mildly gender neutral fashion or enjoy a baseball then let every damn woman do it!

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Startd reading The Ancient Magus Bride! Here’s my opinions and stuff as of chapter 1- i probably don’t have a good impression of it yet so it would be funny to see how my opinion changes by the end of the first volume!

okay, so.. the premise is kinda worrying Literally all I knew about this is the title and the cover art- so apparantly this lady is married to this cool gentlemanly monster guy and that sounds awesome. BUT I DIDNT KNOW IT WAS THE 'SHIEKH SLAVERY’ ARCHETYPE WTF AAAAA The thing where for some reason some lady is forced into a marriage with some guy, often a really huge and hulking ‘jerk with a heart of gold’ stereotype who’ll hurt her repeatedly before she finds out he’s ~really good~ and then she doesn’t object to being forced into the marriage so its all ~totally okay~ And VERY OFTEN it follows this formula where the woman is a slave and he literally bought her, and its like ‘oh well i have nowhere else to go’ or ‘oh well at least this rape marriage is better than being enslaved in a less polite way’... AND ALSO very often it’s a racist fetish of ‘exotic’ men apparantly all being like that, even though actual sex slavery happens AN AWFUL LOT in america and europe. And many cases of marital rape are incredibly similar to this even if it isn’t literal slavery, and our justice system is stacked against the victims. BUT YEAH its usually an “exotic arabic shiekh” or a “noble savage tribal warrior” or god knows what... like its somehow okay to call an entire race a bunch of savage rapists as long as you say “oooh but i have a rape fetish so its a good thing” SERIOUSLY WHY ARE 75% OF ALL ROMANCE NOVELS SUPER PROBLEMATIC

God, like.. from the first chapter the magician demon guy seems really nice and all, he doesn’t fill the ‘savage shiekh’ part of the stereotype. And its kinda subverted cos he pretty much rescued her from slavery by buying her and then freeing her to do whatever she wants. But its still really sketchy and weird that he’s giving her this one condition of being his bride?! like I mean I KNOW that the way this archetype always goes is that the slave lady does actually end up falling in love with him cos blablabla contrived nonsense lets make up an excuse to dodge the whole question of whether this is rape. I mean ha ha she never actually said no so we never get to know what he would have done to force her into it... *shudder* Please say this series is gonna subvert this trope, jesus christ I mean it DOESN’T FUCKING HELP that she looks like 1/3rd of his height and really damn young cos of the art style! please tell me he’s just extra tall cos he’s a monster, and she’s actually the ordinary height of an over 18 adult...

BUT ANYWAY, BEYOND THAT It does look really good aside from that :/ I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know if I should judge it this early on. i mean I don’t even necessarily know if its gonna play the premise straight or subvert it? and the demon guy’s design looks really cool and he’s all nice and fancy nobleman, and the worldbuilding has already got me hooked! the protagonist apparantly has hidden mage potential and that’s why he decided to save her, and he’s gonna be mentoring her to become able to use her magic. And seriously this could have been so good if it was just a platonic mentor student relationship like that, gah... and its really sad with how she got kidnapped and sold into slavery cos someone found out about her powers, and apparantly she didn’t fight back because she was suicidal and felt maybe this was for the best?? and then she’s found some of the first kindness in her entire life when this guy took off the chains and gave her a warm bed and food and freedom. And then just GAHHH it tries to present it as a comedic chapter ending that he wants to fucking marry her?? How is that not a sad betrayal ending?? “I’m regaining my faith in humanity cos this is the first time someone’s done something nice for be and hasn’t been lying- oh wait actually he just did it so he could get in my pants.” Thats fucking depressing. Seriously PLEASE say they somehow avoid the fucking rapey implications here... Like the only damn story that’s ever done this right is disney beauty and the beast! Give me that! At least that!! :<

anyway ANOTHER INTERESTING WORLDBUILDING is that apparantly her magical potential is a super rare version that’s basically like a summoner? its really dumb though, they say the name of it is “sleigh beggy” “you’re a sleigh beggy” like.. WHAT. Really should have changed that in the translation, that’s just a completely nonsensical mishmash of english... But yeah the interesting worldbuilding is that apparantly magical creatures can sense her power and they flock to her to seek out her help. And some of them seek her out to manipulate or kill her, the demon gentleman dude saves her from a bunch of cutesy fairies who were trying to drag her to the underworld! ...which in retrospect DOES NOT MAKE SENSE, cos we’re shown clearly that she’s been able to see spirits her entire life and logically if she survived this long she should have already had experience with like.. at least one bad one, ever. Why is she a total noob getting easily tricked, except so that he can save her? :/ Man I’m probably being way too critical just cos the premise is such an inherantly shady one that takes SO MUCH effort to pull off in a non gross way... I HAVE MY HOPES, MANGA PLEASE DON’T BE THE TERRIBLE

...also the design for the evil fairies was really cool, and what we’ve seen of other monsters too. At least even if it turns out bad, the art is great!

#blunni thoughts

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tumblunni · 7 years

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How do I write an autistic villain without demonizing autism by accident? ;-;

I’m not really sure why you’re messaging this to me. I’m really sorry but I’m not an expert on like.. political stuff about autism stereotyping, just because I’m autistic. And it depends on which country you live in, I know that america has a far more visible sort of cultural presence for stereotypes, due to the whole Autism $peaks controversies. I dont live in america and I’m not super smart or anything, so yeah this is a disclaimer that this is just my opinion and you should probably research answers given by other people too. And maybe ask people about the specific circumstances of what you’re writing, like the context of the setting of the story and what the villain is like, etc. I’d be happy to chat to you about that if you need help! (but again, im no expert, lol)

ANYWAY!

My opinion on the subject is that having an autistic villain is perfectly fine, as long as you’re not villainizing autism. Like...* Don’t make the autism the reason theyre a villain.* Don’t make people scared of them because of the autism, rather than because they’re a villain.* Don’t treat their autistic traits as scary or inherantly villainous.* Don’t make anyone insult them for their autism and act like its justified because they’re evil.

And similarly its bad form to do any of that stuff in regard to any sort of minority really. An example that always bugged me is how Excellus from Fire Emblem Awakening is scary and evil because he’s a murderous monster, yet everyone in the game constantly insults him for the fact he acts ambiguously gay/transgender/effeminate. Like, there’s way too many jokes about people finding him ‘disgusting’ because of some random thing he can’t change, like a sexuality, race or mental illness which plenty of non-evil people have too! It also lessens his impact as a villain because the characters barely even address the actual villainous things he does, and he doesnt seem to have any motive at all. They just ride on the whole ‘the audience will find him gross’ thing as a crutch and forgot to bother writing a good villain.

Oh, and your concerns are indeed valid, yo! Sometimes it is important to think about the context you created a character in, even if you didnt intentionally create any negative messages within your writing.It’s just that the case where a character will be seen as villainizing [minority trait] for being a villain... that’s kind of only in a very specific circumstance? its just that this specific circumstance is very very common in mass media nowadays.It’s ‘The Smurfette Principle’.If you only have one character of a minority in your cast, its easy for an uninformed audience to pick up messages that you’re saying ALL members of that minority are the same as them.If you only have one autistic character and he’s the villain, then you might accidentally be villainizing him. In a world where autistic characters being villainized for their autism is already very common, people could just assume you made them autistic for the same reason all those other writers did- because they think it’s ‘scary’. It feeds the stereotype even if you didn’t conciously intend it that way.

So a very very easy way to fix this problem is just to add multiple characters of a minority into your story, filling various roles from villain to hero to helpful npc. or anything you can think of!

Another good quick fix is to have your villain be autistic, but portray their autistic traits as sympathetic/relateable/a humanizing aspect of them. Not just portraying it as something neutral that doesnt make them scary, but going out of your way to add some scenes showing how they’re just like anybody else. Or even making it one of their redeeming traits!It doesn’t have to outright be something like ‘yo being autistic makes me inherantly good and childlike’, which is a stereotype all to itself, lol. But you could show them experiencing predjudice from another character, in a way that makes the audience sympathise. Honestly having a character attack them for being autistic instead of being a villain would be a good way to do this, as long as that character is actually shown as being wrong for what they’re doing. Or simply showing the villain having common autistic traits, facing common problems, doing common everyday things... that can be enough to portray autism positively. Have them shown doing this stuff outside of the situation of them being villainous. It makes them feel more human and less of an abstract symbol of evil. And because these small glimpses of normality are lightening the mood, they become seen as a positive aspect!

KIND OF AN OFFTOPIC TANGEANT SORRYJust my personal experience as an autistic kid experiencing this story... I personally headcanoned Cyrus from pokemon as autistic. Not because he’s ‘scary and emotionless’, but because his backstory was relateable to me as an autistic person. It’s said that his parents were emotionally abusive, and that he had nobody to turn to because everyone thought he was ‘a creepy kid’. And he was able to find solace by obsessing over repairing machines in his bedroom, and apparantly has trouble understanding people because they can’t be fixed as easily. Stuff like maths and science are kind of a stereotypical Special Interest for autistic children to be given in fiction, I guess because it makes you seem more intelligent when you obsess about that instead of video games, norse mythology, or collecting tiny novelty spoons from around the world XD (Yeah i was a weird kid.)So yeah sorry I went a little offtopic there, but the point is that it might have been by accident instead of intention but that villain has a lot of traits that read as autistic. And when i first played Diamond and Pearl I actually disliked him a lot because of that, I felt like they were villainizing someone who seemed relateable and potentially redeemable. I mean, he seemed pretty depressed too! Give that man some therapy! But when I played Platinum and got to learn his backstory I started to feel like the writers actually did want us to feel sympathetic to him, because of how all those ‘scary’ traits were presented so sympathetically. Like.. the backstory isn’t that he became evil because he was an autistic kid who did creepy things like obsess about machinery and suck at social contact. No, he became a villain because he was abused by his parents, him being ‘weird’ is just intended to make it clear here that he didnt deserve it. It makes him pitiable, it makes him relateable, it makes you feel so much more frustrated that nobody listened to him and saved him from that hell, and nobody even seems to remember him fondly, just because he was ‘weird’. And hell, even his ‘emotion is evil’ philosophy seems very relateable to me as an autistic child. It seems like he learned to seclude himself to avoid angering his parents. That’s the impression I got from his final scene in Platinum, where he finally acts angry at you for beating him, then gets angry at himself for expressing emotion and forces himself to go back to how he usually talks. I get a bit pissed off whenever I see fans of the series claim he actually IS emotionless, lol! This scene made it clear to me that this is just a guy who WISHES he was emotionless, somehow seeing it as the only way to be free of pain. Someone who struggles to deal with his own emotions, or feels like he’s disgusting when he expresses them. And this is VERY relateable specifically to an autistic kid who suffered from an abusive parent! “Quiet Hands” is a kind of common concept that autistic kids might experience, that’s the name for a popular ‘parenting technique’ that really fucks people up. Focusing on making your kid never ‘act autistic’, rather than actually helping them understand things. ‘Quiet Hands’ is specifically about slapping or smacking your kid whenever they show stimming behaviour. (Hand flapping being a common way this symptom can manifest.) We’re taught never to be too loud, and to always always have to restrain ourselves to avoid embarassing our parents. We have to try and learn how to act like ‘normal people’ and become scared of harmless parts of our own brain just because theyre ‘embarassing’, leading to even worse emotional problems as an adult. i mean seriously how is it logical to tell a kid who has troubles with social interaction that they shouldnt even practise it?? Plus its a huge mess to teach these kids to do way more emotional labour than neurotypical kids are expected to do, and then treat them like they’re below average intelligence for not being able to do twice as much as everyone else...

ANYWAY! That’s a thinG! Sorry I went rambling off there about how a particular fictional character touched my heart, lol!I just kinda wish he could be canonically autistic, or if I had similar canonically autistic characters to relate to, instead. So i think having more autistic villains can’t be bad, we’re so badly in need of more autistic characters in general! And villains have a unique perspective of being able to hit our emotions the hardest. I think its easier to cry over someone who has a sad backstory of how they became evil, compared to anything else!So yeah what I was trying to say before I went offtopic is that if the backstory is ‘became evil because autism’, then people will complain. But if the backstory is ‘became evil because someone mistreated them because autism’ then that’s a good way to make people sympathise with autism. Aaaaand I’m bad at explaining this, because autism XD Well, i mean, my personal symptoms and lack of diagnosis til I was an adult means that I’m still working on learning how to communicate correctly, I don’t mean every autistic person writes terrible tl;dr advice posts that degrade into pokemon XDOh man i feel embarassed now, you asked me such a polite question and I didnt know how to answer it very well...I just hope maybe I inspired you to go out and do more research, rather than putting you off with my nonsense!

#im sorry this is incoherant and bad #i didnt know what specifically was making you worry so #i tried to explain all the common problems and solutions i've seen from different villains #if this didnt help would you mind sending me another ask with what i got wrong?#or more info on your villain so i can figure it out a bit more #i hope your storywriting is going well and you have a great day!#A Nonny Mouse #ask

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Bwoop! Cathedral tower defense ideas! Havent really made much damn progress on this game since I havent got a design for the protagonist yet, but at least now I have designs for two of the party members. (Thanks @summon-daze!) So for now lets just have some rambling ideas for potential sidequests you could have with these two!

BRIEF SUMMARY TIME Amity: Protagonist. A gruff and badass wandering priestess whose homeland was destroyed in the war. Now she’s joined another church in a foreign land and is dertermined to defend it against the demons, and never let that tragedy happen again! But she has to win the trust of these strangers first, and teach them how to survive... Florin: First and only party member you begin with at the start, deuterogonist, cute sidekick of sass and pep. He’s a plant type demon who’s haunting Amity for reasons unknown, and refuses to leave! Now she’s stuck trying to get rid of him, while he insists on being annoyingly helpful yet comically lazy at the same time. Also, as an incidental fact, he suffers from narcolepsy. Malachi: Optional party member, and the only other demon in the cast. An adorable little choir boy who doesn’t seem entirely aware that he’s become a demon. It’d be cruel to judge him the same as the others, we need to keep him safe! He’s quiet and cuddly and comically oblivious. What do you mean humans don’t enjoy eating rocks??

THUS, SIDEQUEST IDEAS

* Multiple different attempts to get rid of Florin, which all inevitably fail and end up causing him and Amity to become closer buddies. TFW you try to exorcise a guy and end up frolicking through the fields of friendship~! * Similarly, it could be fun to have some silly plans to trick him into being less lazy. Predictably the answer is just gonna be ‘when you’re nicer to him, he actually wants to put in the effort’, but that doesnt mean we cant have some fun shenanigans in the process! * Amity sneaking around trying to spy on Florin and find him doing something evil. He’s GOT to be here to pull off some ultimate plot, right?? Lol, 90% of their friendship is just Amity being suspicious as heck and Florin rudely persisting in being harmless. * A plot where somehow they actually do get separated, and Amity begins to realise how helpful her lil demon sidekick has actually become, and how much she genuinely appreciates him as a friend. Could possibly be that instead of being gone, Florin is ill with some sort of demon sickness and you need to go on a grand quest to save him? or maybe he’s been kidnapped by a villain who wants to use his powers for nefarious purposes, and accuses you of doing the same thing because why on earth else would you pretend to care about this monster? (And then when you rescue him you can have the grumpy excuse that of course you only did it because he’d be dangerous as anyone else’s sidekick. No affection was involved at all!!) * Mysterious flowers are appearing around the cathedral, and Amity starts to suspect that Florin is setting up some sort of evil demon plan. But she actually discovers that this is a sign of how much he’s genuinely begun caring about the other npcs, he’s been paying attention to their troubles and secretly giving them the flowers he thinks they’d most like, without wanting to take any credit for it. So you get a sassy friendship scene of Amity blackmailing him by threatening to reveal he’s been being nice! Thus florin gains the bonus skill of opening a little flower store. (And blushing himself to death every time anyone says thank you) * A conflict between Amity and Florin, where she accuses him of just being lazy as always, but this time he really was trying! He started off not caring about anyone, and only working when it benefitted him, but now he’s working his butt off and has become really self-concious about the fact he’s not really able to keep up with the rest of the party. And so he ends up talking about his narcolepsy problem with her, and if they have enough friendship points she starts being more considerate and trying to help him out with it. And maybe unlocks a longer quest chain of improving the home base’s medical facilities? * Florin hibernates in winter, everyone has to cope without him and realises how much they miss him. Like a repeat of the earlier quest where he’s kidnapped, but this is a new perspective on how Amity feels about it now they’ve been close friends for a while. And also how everyone else around the church feels. Maybe a plot of them all deciding to write down letters for him to read when he wakes up? And maybe tensions getting high when some sort of disaster happens, and Amity is like ‘oh god i dont want to have to tell Florin that this place fell apart without him’. (With it being up to player choice whether you include the bad points in the letter, or try and hide it from him.) * A potential bad ending for Florin, and how things continue afterwards. I think he’d be one of the characters who (initially at least) doesnt die when defeated in battle. If he’s taken out, he’s just near-mortally wounded and recovers after a very tense period where he’s in a coma. And then the plot explores everyone’s feelings at almost losing him, and his own feelings of uselessness now he’s too injured to go back to the fight. And because malachi can become like an adoptive brother to florin, they can still have a happy ending together even if florin has been removed from the party like this. He retires to take care of his lil bro full time, and he doesnt worry about feeling useless when he knows he’s got someone who thinks the world of him. And Malachi can inherit some of his skills and equipment since now Florin can devote all his time to tutoring him into taking up his former place in the army. * Oh, and of course Malachi’s recruitment sidequest! You’d first encounter him as a feral rock beast in a dungeon somewhere, and there’s a conflict between Amity and Florin because she believes this thing needs to be destroyed and he insists that they can redeem it. He can sense it’s a demon, and its got to be corrupted if it’s going wild like this! But Amity believes that demons are inherantly evil, so this one’s behaviour isnt unusual like florin thinks. She’s aknowledged that florin isn’t evil, but she still feels he’s an exception amoung demons! But eventually she’s convinced to take a chance on florin’s convictions, because its rare for him to be so un-lazy about something, and to defend something even at the risk of his own life. So they manage to find a way to purify the monster, and find out that it was a very young child, underneath all that scary rock armour. So if they’d slain it without a second thought, they would have committed an unforgiveable sin... * Malachi’s next sidequest would be convincing him to leave the ruins and come home with them, while exploring the dungeon to try and find out what exactly happened to turn such a sweet kid into a demon. (Not to mention the fact he was absolutely crazed with corruption!) I don’t wanna spoil the ending to this, but I have a lot of Sad Ideas for this charrie, hee hee~ * A potential plotline that once Malachi joins the church base, he could have trouble making friends with the normal human children. I Had an idea of a bully character who’d get redeemed and ultimately become accepted as his friend after a big ol sad apology scene, and then they become this misfit buddies duo. And the ostracization from the other kids doesnt hurt as much when he’s got this tough former-bully lady defending him against her former-comrades. * And he also grows closer to Florin as theyre the only two demons, and florin was the one who saved him. Plus they both enjoy sitting buried in the flowerbed and eating dirt! I think the relationship wouldnt start off this close though, Mal would initially be scared of Florin. Since he doesnt know that he himself is a demon, he just thinks florin is the only demon and he has much the same fears as Amity once had when the story began. But it could be more comical, because its inherantly silly when you have this kid with giant horns yelling ‘ITS A DEMON’ and hiding behind the couch XD And eventually he does grow to love florin like a parent, but he’s still comically oblivious. He just decides that florin ISNT a demon, of course! He’s just... a little more green than other people!! * Possibly a plot of everyone holding a funeral for malachi to cheer him up, since he never had one when he died as a human. But since malachi doesnt comprehend the whole concept, he’s just like ‘when normal people get put in the ground they sleep forever, why did i wake up? is it because i never got tucked in like they did?’ And then it could be funny like bender’s fake funeral in futurama, but also a bit bittersweet and sad and heartwarming. * Sudden panic! Malachi accidentally calls florin ‘dad’, and florin FREAKS THE FRICKLE FRACK OUT! ‘I’m not a good influence, amity! aaaaa!!!’ Worries too much about not being good enough, maybe comically tries to change his personality into a generic sitcom father and malachi is like ‘wtf’ * Possibly a plot about malachi and florin bonding as demons, and figuring out what being demons even necessarily means. I’m thinking florin might be a bit scared by seeing how malachi can sometimes hulk out and run on pure instinct. Its such a huge contrast that this sweet kind child can have such bloodthirstiness inside him, he doesnt understand how malachi seems to enjoy fighting. And he doesnt understand how malachi can think he can control it! He gets a bit scared that this means the fighting side of him is the real side, and the childlike side is just a front, just a lie like everyone says demons manipulate everyone. And does this mean that florin himself is the same? Is he just deluding himself that he can be good? So the resolution is florin being able to accept that both parts of malachi are still malachi, and its completely possible to have both sides without being evil. It is indeed in the nature of demons to fight, but they dont enjoy destruction or evil, its not like holding back some horrible monster who’ll murder everyone you love. And florin has always been holding back this side, he’s been afraid of using his powers too much, worrying he only exists to kill. Malachi helps him accept that his powers have equal potential to heal and to harm, and that it IS possible to control them, that the choice between good and evil is indeed his own choice. At the same time this helps malachi accept that he is indeed a demon, and cope with remembering his horrifying backstory. Knowing that he isnt alone, and that demons dont have to be evil, he’ll be able to be okay, and he has this other demon friend who can help him though it. And they’re able to work out the whole Fearsome Demonic Instincts by doing some playfight sparring together like total dorks XD If you’re worried about your sense of control, then never using your powers wont help! Gotta actually practise! * Possibly florin officially adopting malachi as his son, and its possible for the player to expand out and make more bases once you’ve fully upgraded the cathedral. And maybe florin could become the boss of this new place, and turn it into like an orphange for malachi and others? it could be a big sign of his character development that he’s come this far! Also it could just be hilarious to imagine how baffled travellers would be. “Aaaa there’s a demon and he’s... looking after small children??” “We must rescue the small children from that horrible demon and take them to the orphanage!” *knocks on the door and its florin again*

#cathedral tower defense

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