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blorbosinmyheadcentral · 5 months

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your art makes me explode in a positive way like

im chewing and swallowing it in an aggressive way like

it's just SO good im melting ilove your shading and KEHEKEBEKJDJF

anwayshi hello do you happen to have any headcanons for showtime rolls on the floor and dies

Thank you so much, really appreciate it!

Oh God I don't know if this will read as coherent because my thoughts about Showtime are all over the place. But I'll try to format this the best I can

✨Showtime HCs! ✨

Their relationship starts when they start spending time together.

(The reason why they do so could vary. In Supervised Machine Learning's case, Pomni becomes something of a "tutor" to Caine; They discover that they work well together, and the other's company can be quite pleasant!).

So Pomni and Caine build a weird, but comforting friendship, and all is well.

Then the feelings appear.

Caine is the first to realize he fell in love.

It sounds illogical but hear me out… it'd be really funny--

Ok no seriously I think Caine can actually feel. Keyword "can". He's very much still a machine and it shows in the pilot. But like his inspiration (AM), Caine is also a rogue AI. Whatever his programming originally intended him to do, he probably doesn't follow it as closely now as back when he was created (which is a whole other post).

Caine knows what love is and the extend it can go, since the Moon is so open about her feelings. He just doesn't like the Moon back specifically haha (sorry Moon) :}

All this to say, I do believe this is within the realm of possibility for him. (Not that it's ever gonna happen towards anyone in the show. These are just wishful shippy thoughts).

He might not recognize it as love at first, because it manifests in such a different way from his one reference point.

His friendship with Pomni had gone through phases.

When they first met, he continuously touched her with no concern for how she felt.

Learning from and about Pomni herself led him to come to respect her boundaries (and becoming mindful of everyone else's).

Then they're close friends, and gradually, Pomni does not mind his regular wacky, touchy-feely self. So Caine acts as he had always done before.

Caine expresses his love for Pomni with physical gestures and his undivided attention.

When they teleport to travel to other places, he holds her close so she doesn't get too dizzy; he pats her head to reassure her; he touches her arm to get her attention; he grabs her hands when he's excited about her ideas; he holds eye contact for prolonged periods of time; and he touches, and touches, and touches, and touches.

It's selfish, and so he keeps it buried in his deepest 0's and 1's. But he'd like to keep hanging out with Pomni, having her in his sight, and feel the texture of her gloved hands until the end of time.

Despite all this, to him, virtually nothing changed.

What? He's spending time with Pomni as he'd always been doing, and behaving as he'd always behaved!

It's Bubble of all people that has to point out that, "Hey boss. I think you WANT her!"

Absurd. Nonsense. Preposterous! It is merely a relationship of mutual support and affection between a ringmaster and his trusted, former-human companion. Nothing more.

(Declaring his love to her unprompted didn't ever cross his mind, so there's no way it could be that. Is there?)

Caine finds out that yes, there is.

Pomni had always been a nervous wreck, but her mind state becomes more manageable over time. She eventually adjusts to the circus life like everyone else did.

"Accepting" her fate is a different story. The will to escape, to remember, never really leaves. She's just more careful about it.

So when she starts working with Caine - to improve life so people don't go abstracting anymore, and hopefully find a definitive exit - she's not expecting to end up liking her time with him.

Not that she'd absolutely hate it, either. He's… "okay"… Just-- outlandish, loud, he keeps invading her personal space, he keeps touching her, and it makes her die a little every time.

If he's up to listening, though… it can't be that bad, right?

Turns out that no, it wasn't that bad.

Yes, he is outlandish, loud, he keeps invading her personal space and touching her. But she explains what she means to him, clearly and patiently, and he makes an effort to do better. An actual effort.

Sometimes he'd misinterpret what she meant - the ambiguity of human language - and the new games would go horribly. But little by little, his efforts make life overall better. Something reminiscent of actual, real life, the one they've all forcibly left behind.

And he tries, and he tries, and Pomni finds herself enjoying the process as much as the good results.

Pomni likes Caine's eagerness to learn. His enthusiastic attitude borders on silly, and the absurdity makes her laugh on occasion. When faced with the prospect of a "real" exit, she loves his upbeat optimism.

When she's not hanging out with Ragatha, Jax, Gangle, Zooble and Kinger, she begins to enjoy spending quality time with Caine.

Each one of their hang outs is a new surprise. They make a picnic in the tallest mountain exactly in between day and night. They learn to dance - while floating in the air. "Since you asked, here's a DIGITAL camera! Let's take pictures of the Void for one tenth of a second at a time!"

Sometimes he just comes by Pomni's room, and they end up losing track of time. Just chatting about how things have been, what they could be, and what to do next. Ideas and ideas and ideas.

Before Pomni knows it, she's comfortable enough that recalling his old habits makes her not dread them anymore. So when Caine stands close and lightly touches her arm due to oversight, she makes sure he knows it's all right.

And they keep spending time together, and he touches, and touches, and touches her. Pomni, in turn, feels lighter, and lighter, and lighter. Peaceful, at ease. Dare she say, happy, even.

Life is not perfect. As it stands though, it's good enough. No one has abstracted. No one is at risk of abstracting so far.

Progress is slow, but the research for an exit continues, and she is hopeful. The thought of actually leaving grows closer to reality. But a part of her feels heavy.

When it occurs to Pomni that leaving the Amazing Digital Circus means leaving Caine behind, she is alarmed by how much she'll miss him.

It'll hurt. Badly. So much the thought pains her even now.

The moment Pomni realizes this, she comes to the unexpected conclusion that she may like Caine a little more than she thought she would.

This later leads to an interesting discussion with Ragatha.

By the time Pomni comes to that conclusion, Caine is already down bad.

Neither has any idea that the other is in love with them.

Cue dumbasses trying to deal with their feelings while the potential conflict the escape brings looms over their heads.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk!

#showtime #tadc showtime #caine x pomni #pomni x caine #showtime ship #cherpiet #Really appreciate how their dynamic can blur the line of friendship/romance so easily #Supervised Machine Learning is just. *gestures at all that*. minus the romance #Also sorry for taking so long to answer the ask I am not good at answering asks #I don't always know what to say #I wish I had what gooseworx has. She is a big insp #long post

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raedshadowlegends · 9 months

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Why Lore Olympus and Miraculous Ladybug are the Same Thing but in Different Fonts

Good evening, good day, hello and howdy. I am INCREDIBLY bored and I'm here to go on a nonsensical tangent about two pieces of media that I hate and have dedicated a vast amount of my free time to. This is all in good fun and all of my rudeness is intended to be satirical and/or comical unless indicated otherwise.

Now just to preface, if you know me then you know how much I dislike Miraculous Ladybug. Folks in my circle got to watch as I descended into madness writing a 64k word review on season 5. So I've spent an uncomfortable amount of time dissecting this show.

I have also spent an uncomfortable amount of time engaging with the shitshow that is Lore Olympus. And now my ass is gonna try and compare the two because there's a lot of shit going on here.

None of this is going to matter and it's all in good fun. Like I said, I am bored. And sometimes it's fun to compare stuff you hate.

Now let the insanity ensue. FP spoilers and MLB s5 spoilers below the cut btw.

To get a major difference out of the way, Miraculous Ladybug is a tv show. Lore Olympus is a webcomic.

But mediums aside, these two things still have a lot in common. So for the first comparison, I'd like to talk about the insecurity in both properties.

Insecurity

What I define as insecurity in this context is a piece of media that is too afraid to commit or adhere to a certain tone, story, style, etc. In short-- they don't know what they want to be.

Insecurity in Lore Olympus is a bit more obvious than with Miraculous so I'm gonna rant about that first.

Lore Olympus just straight up does not have a story to tell.

There are too many random ass plots being added and discarded on a whim for it to be a coherent story. A good way to explain it is kinda like this-- In this episode of LO, something cool new and interesting is set up and you have to keep reading to see what happens! And then nothing ever happens. Or it happens because the audience won't let the author forget so there's a half-assed attempt to wrap up that plot point.

LO is so insecure about what it is, it feels the need to add more and more to make it actually something. But what it is is a hollow story that lacks substance. So all of these new random plot points are kinda like bandaid solutions if that makes sense.

There are so many unfinished/under-utilized plot points that if you were to count out each and every one, you'd probably keel over dead before you finished. There's that many.

It's too insecure to commit to any one of them in the grand scheme of things.

I don't know how coherent all of that was so here's a shitty tl;dr

LO doesn't know what it wants to say anymore so it's just adding more shit to keep the reader "invested."

Yeah ok I think that makes more sense. As for Miraculous...

God. I fucking hate Miraculous.

It's insecure as hell and you can smell that shit from ten miles away. It's insecure with it's premise, I think.

If it just kept to the simple "monster-of-the-week" formula, I do not think I would have written so many words on it's fifth season.

Miraculous (apparently) had a grander story to tell beyond the "monster-of-the-week revert back to the status quo each episode."

But we don't see any of that in full swing till season 3, really. Which is a long ass time to get the ball rolling imo.

It's a little jarring to see the show go from the stupid kid status quo adventures to a heavy and emotional story??? And I say heavy and emotional with the most sarcastic tone possible because the only emotion I feel watching this shit is rage.

Despite wanting to make that shift to a serialized type of show, Miraculous was too scared to stray from the successful status quo format.

To explain a bit more I wanna talk about my review of the season.

While it is mostly filled with rude jokes and incomprehensible jargon, I bring up a lot of points in it regarding the state of things.

One of those things being the show's hesitancy to move the story along.

The fifth season was supposed to be a grand final battle and a conclusion to this story arc. But it was too scared to commit to that so there's way more episodes that are nothing but shipping fodder.

There are many episodes that season that just... feel the same. Just with different coats of paint. "Marinette is trying to date Adrien but she's awkward and clumsy and oh no! shenanigans ensue!" We've been doing this for 8 years.

If they want to tell a serialized story then they need to grow some balls and cut the shit we've seen a million times before.

Their insistence to stick to the status quo makes the writing exceptionally weak downright painful to sift through. It was too scared, too insecure, to stray from its formula.

That's a part of the reason why I think the season is paced so bad. There's so little time spent on the interesting parts of the story because they had to cram in as much shipping shit as possible. So by proxy, there was less time to tell a good story.

Both of these stupid ass properties don't know what they want to be. There are too many things being added and not enough balls to commit to any of them.

Now with both LO and MLB, we can all agree that the writing is pretty shit. Nothing new there. But shitty writing often bleeds into the characters and making them shitty by exposure. Almost like a spill of toxic waste, infecting anything near it and turning into a rotten pile of sludge and chemicals.

So yeah, the characters are ass as well. But I only wanna complain about the female leads for both of these things.

But just to mention Adrien and Hades, they are pretty similar. I won't go into detail but the short of it is, "Character with deep seated issues that could have been interesting, has a lot of potential, but is just kinda garbage in the end."

At least Adrien Agreste isn't monetizing death and has a bunch of shades in his basement doing his work.

Persephone and Marinette

So I always say that I don't like using the term 'Mary Sue' to describe a character. But as it turns out, I use that term a lot. So I'm not gonna lie about that anymore.

These two characters are Mary Sues.

Persephone first

Oh my god I hate Persephone a lot. She just ticks every box on my list of 'THINGS I HATE IN A CHARACTER.'

Which is funny because her character had a lot of promise and heart in the beginning.

I related to her a LOT when I picked up this comic before my frontal cortex developed. I related with her character and her struggles. Especially after the Apollo incident. That really stuck out to me. It was so powerful.

But all of those tiny things I liked about her character were stripped away. Her ambition to study in school? Poof, gone. Her charm? Not charming anymore. That kindness everyone in the story gushes about? I don't even think it was there in the first place.

Truth be told, I do need to reread this comic because the beginning is fuzzy as fuck in my walnut-sized brain. But I can tell you for certain that the way she was in the beginning is not who she is now.

And this isn't the case of a character going through an arc and developing and changing. She's just getting worse and the narrative treats it as a GOOD THING.

"Oh yeah, Persephone trashed Leuce's apartment instead of talking to her husband like an adult. She threatened to kill this nymph but you're supposed to find that endearing." Like, what??? I will not have a story try and get me to believe this is a good thing.

If this were a good story, Persephone's actions in that episode WOULDN'T BE REWARDED. But she's rewarded with sex for being a fucking psychopath towards a random nymph. Wow.

And that leads into my next point-- she can never be in the wrong ever.

AOW? Retconned, not her fault. It wasn't her fault she killed all those people. It's actually Eris' fault because she gave her wrath.

Trashing Leuce's apartment? She was in the right for that, apparently.

Killing people in a famine during the 10 year banishment? That's never explored, we just know she killed people, burned a library or something, and probably shot the president too. But it's fine, she's the good guy.

And most recently (and potentially the most frustrating);

Persephone causes winter.

Not her mother, Demeter, no fuck the myths. Persephone is the one who caused winter actually. AND SHE DID IT ON ACCIDENT SO TECHNICALLY IT IS NOT HER FAULT CAUSE SHE DIDNT MEAN TOOOO UWU She also probably killed a million flower nymphs in that snap freeze but its ok it doesn't matter.

WHAT?

WHAT THE FUCK? CMON NOW.

She's not going to receive any consequences for anything because she is just too perfect.

She's smarter than Athena, prettier than Aphrodite, better than her mother in every way, all the boys want her, she has a perfect body, she's pink, her eyes go red when she's angy, she has the most power of everyone in the world, she's a super rare fertility goddess, she has all the gifts, all the blessings, and none of the development.

It almost feels like a wattpad fanfic.

"My mom doesn't like me so she sold me to one direction and then I became queen of the underworld."

Yeah, I don't like her.

And the same can be applied to Marinette!

A character who is so blatantly perfect, the narrative fucking BENDS TO HER WILL.

She's a creepy ass stalker and has done some weird ass things to get close to this random famous white boy and it's all excused.

It's literally excused.

There is a rule about character backstories. They are supposed to provide an explanation for a character's behavior, not an excuse for it.

In season 5, episode 14 - Derision, we see a bit of Marinette backstory. Some stupid bullshit happens and Marinette essentially says she isn't going to say 'I love you' to anyone unless she knows literally everything about them.

She says a lot in that stupid ass scene but it's basically just saying that all of her stalking and creepy behavior is justified. Which it is not.

Marinette can do no wrong. The narrative won't allow it.

She's perfect in every way. And even when SHE is in the wrong, characters somehow find a way to apologize to her. Either that or she turns a situation about someone else into one about her self.

She's just the perfect character who ends up saving the world.

Fuck having Chat Noir face against his dad in the finale, Marinette has to girlboss all over the place and save the day but then actually lose because the "plot" demands it.

Oh yeah and she's probably never going to tell Adrien that his abusive dad was the villain they had been fighting for months. Do you think that's a good choice? I'll give you a hint; it is not.

It makes Marinette look like a HORRIBLE character but it's painted in a way that makes the viewer believe this is the right decision.

I don't think I need to get into specifics as to why that is wrong and disgusting.

If I had to make a prediction for this show going forward, she isn't going to tell him. It's going to be forgotten and she's going to be painted as the hero.

No flaws, no accountability, nothing.

Garbage character. Fucking hate it.

Both of these characters will never see consequences for their actions. Their bad actions are either excused or retconned out of existence. And that's not how you write a character btw. If you want them to be real, give them consequences. The world should not revolve around them. They should have flaws and issues that should be explored. But apparently that's too much work.

It's funny how both of these properties claim to be about feminism and somehow completely miss what feminism is

Miraculous thinks that feminism means "Girl power! Girls are better than guys in every way!" And Lore Olympus makes no attempt to be feminist at all. Women hate other women, and they don't get a lot of opportunities to explore and express themselves.

I could get into the whole purity culture shtick but that's a shitty rant for another day.

I've been ranting about this for a while and I got the big ones out of the way, methinks. I do want to get into the creators of both of these things but that is also a rant for another day.

Cause if I got into that now, we'd be here a while.

So let me just make a final comparison and wrap things up here. I don't think any of this makes a lot of sense but I hate both things and I'm passionate about it so I'm gonna keep rambling.

Miraculous Ladybug and Lore Olympus never attempt to grow as stories. They are both scared to try new things and to stick with it. Most of the time this results in rushed writing and horribly done characters.

It's so clear that both of these things are desperate to be something great but they just can't put in the work to get there.

Honestly, they both feel like the product of a team of yes-men. Bad decisions and errors slip by WAY too often and it's kind of embarrassing.

These are popular pieces of media and they have the resources to be great but they just aren't.

They're both too insecure to make something of themselves.

It's honestly really sad and I don't want this for either of these things. I want LO to be stunning and retell the myth of Persephone with the respect it deserves. I want MLB to be a serialized show with focus on the lore. Sure it can start as episodic but it can ease us into a deeper story and intrigue the viewer. But I want it to flesh out the world and be an entertaining experience.

It's sad but it's the way it is.

Who knows, maybe MLB season 6 will be good. And maybe LO will have a 4th season and it'll fix all the problems it has.

I dunno.

Thanks for reading this incoherent nonsense.

#This is a really random comparison between media so if you see this and are confused im so sorry #i got bored #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #anti lo #lo critical #unpopular lore olympus #unpopular lo #anti miraculous ladybug #ml salt #ml critical #ml criticism

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autisticandroids · 1 year

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watched 1x14 nightmare today. so there's this moment in that ep that everybody talks about, at the end. this one:

SAM: Well I'll tell you one thing. We're lucky we had Dad. DEAN: (Looking astounded...and pleased) Well I never thought I'd hear you say that. SAM: Well, it coulda gone a whole other way after Mom. I little more tequila and a little less demon hunting and we woulda had Max's childhood. All things considered, we turned out ok. Thanks to him. DEAN: (Turning back to look at Max's house) All things considered.

it's a moment people pay a lot of attention to. because the thing is... dean's face falls, here. he's clearly put off by what sam's saying. he's bothered. and the common reading of that is that there was some degree of abuse more like max's that sam never saw. and that's like. that's DEFINITELY a legible reading of this episode.

however! i actually think this is a place where paying attention to authorial intent leads you interesting places.

so, first of all, what was the overall thesis of nightmare? i would argue that it's sam needs to stop being a pussy and whining about his childhood, some people have real problems. that's why the abuse max experiences is so cartoonishly bad, why the final conclusion is that max will always be miserable and is better off dead, why sam walks out of this experience more willing to empathize with john: the point of nightmare is that sam needs to learn that he could have had it way worse, that in fact growing up a hunter was the best option.

sam and max have a conversation in the middle of the episode that cements this point:

MAX: He blamed me for everything. For his job, for his life, for my Mom's death. SAM: Why would he blame you for your Mom's death? MAX: Because she died in my nursery, while I was asleep in my crib. As if that makes it my fault. SAM: (Looking shocked) She died in your nursery? MAX: There was a fire. And he'd get drunk and babble on like she died in some insane way. He said that she burned up. Pinned to the ceiling!

the point being made here is that sam is lucky. both mary and max's mother died in insane ways. john responded to this by accepting the insanity and getting obsessed with hunting demons. max's dad falls deeper into drink and blames max instead. this is the way to present the miserable demon hunting child soldier lifestyle as the better option.

(it's also useful to talk about how john was probably not intended to be perceived as an abusive father (though of course he obviously is, the writers just don't think anything that isn't what max went through counts as abuse); @restlesshush has a point she likes to make about how no one bothered to tell jdm that john's relationship with salmondean is fraught so he just doesn't play it that way.)

so now that we've established the overall point of nightmare, let's get back to the original point. now, i specifically want to talk about what i think the intent of the text is.

now, the basic formula of supernatural season one is that sam and dean get in an argument at the start of the episode, usually about their father, and it continues throughout. and when one of them fails to argue back, the other notices. look at this moment from 1x11 scarecrow:

DEAN: Sam. You were right. You gotta do your own thing. You gotta live your own life. SAM: Are you serious? DEAN: You’ve always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I—anyway….I admire that about you. I’m proud of you, Sammy. SAM: I don’t even know what to say.

dean fails to fulfill his narrative role, and sam notices. this is the same kind of things as when for example dean becomes more and more obsessed with clinging to sam because he has to in order to maintain the format of the show (i.e. two brothers). character flows from format, instead of the other way 'round.

and here, in nightmare, dean is unsettled by sam's change of heart, mostly because it breaks format, but also because, due to the format, sam (at least in dean's perception) has the character trait of "dad-critical" and it unnerves dean when this changes. that is i think as far as we can definitively say authorial intent goes. nightmare is a sam episode, so any deeper meaning is probably imo between jensen ackles and the fans.

but, if you'll permit me to go a little deeper than authorial intent while still using it as a baseline. here, in nightmare, the tendency to notice sam failing to fulfill his role becomes a lot more interesting. look at that scarecrow quote:

DEAN: You’ve always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I—anyway….I admire that about you. I’m proud of you, Sammy.

dean's disquiet when sam fails to fulfill his role as john-critic is both intriguing and unsettling. it's layered. dean isn't just reacting to sam not following the script. he needs someone to play the role of john critic in his life, because he can't do it. he is, consciously or unconsciously, relying on sam to do it for him. and that's why he makes that face outside the millers' house.

#spn #also the fact that nightmare and the benders are back to back proves that the writers weren't thinking too hard about child abuse

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peppizza-au · 7 months

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Ok, if you don't feel like drawing your story, you can always put it in text form. we won't be mad. i just want to know what happens next

hey, i understand if you didnt mean anything malicious, but please dont do this, guys. even if i change to an easier format, im still not obligated to give you guys content, and ive currently been exhausted with work and other personal projects. i may get it again at some point, but i currently have no motivation to update this blog specifically, and i heavily struggle with motivation already. i honestly thought itd be a miracle if i even got halfway through this story before losing my drive, but i wanted to try anyway.

forcing myself to create for an optional project i started for fun purely to meet demand isnt healthy for me, will result in a dramatic drop in quality for updates, and possibly ruin the story i want to tell. an unfinished story is better than a rushed and half-hearted one.

it really warms my heart how many people love this blog, and im not exaggerating when i say i read and appreciate every single ask (that isnt blatantly mean-spirited). but im a human, not a machine. if peppizza doesnt continue, its for a good reason. if peppizza does continue, it will continue with time. please think before sending asks like this, even though im pretty sure it wasnt intended to be impatient or inconsiderate, it absolutely comes off that way.

thats all for now, thank you for reading.

#ooc #im already falling behind on the many projects and obligations im committed to right now #adding updating this blog back on the list when i cant genuinely work on it would be insanely harmful to my mental health

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snapscube · 1 year

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hihihi ok. so i’m in my last of us fixation mode and i’m being extra silly about it but i NEED to know what’s ur current opinion on the last of us hbo?? also i logged onto tumblr and saw a lot of rly good points defending joel’s final choice and i remember during the last of us pt1 playthrough u had differing opinions so i wonder if u think the show’s differences affect that at all? btw i LOVE ur stuff and cannot wait until u do last of us pt 2 wehehehehe!!! anyway besides all that i just want u to know that u are one of the things in my life that makes it easier to get up in the morning

I still feel exactly the same about the final events as I always have! The show didn't change it for me, and actually being able to remove myself from being in control of the situation in the game and actually just watch the events play out in show format solidified that further. The connection I have to Joel as a player when I play the game really helps me understand his perspective more and stomach the goal a bit more easily, but without that immediate intimacy it puts into perspective for me how kinda monstrous the whole thing is from every angle. Obviously I don't ever lose that sympathy for him, and I never stop understanding why, because the whole point of the conflict is that no one is in the right. Ultimately I think the damning thing for every single person involved is that they removed Ellie's agency from the equation, and I still stand by that. They all should have talked to her. They should have told her the truth. All she wants is for her immunity to matter, and I believe that they may have been surprised at the lengths she's willing to go in order to make a difference, whether it's ultimately the right call or not.

I don't know what arguments you've seen exactly in defense of Joel's choice, but personally I don't really agree with one I see a lot and I'd expect will pop up again now that the show is over, which is the whole "well who's to say a vaccine would have worked anyway?????" angle. I think, while reasonable from a meta standpoint, completely ignores the intended framing of the story in order to more conveniently justify a protagonist that the story through its entire runtime is trying to tell you is a little bit of a piece of shit. It's pretty clear and safe to assume that the ultimate intent here is that... yes, the vaccine WOULD have worked. Maybe not in the sweeping way they hoped, but Ellie's sacrifice absolutely would have done something. The whole moral dilemma of the situation really does not make any sense unless you give them that as fact imo.

So then, assuming that is true, you have to wrestle with the idea that Joel is willing to take down the entirety of humanity for Ellie. And not really for Ellie, because none of this is what Ellie wanted. The game AND the show QUITE LITERALLY SPELL OUT for us that Ellie really really really does not want to go back to Jackson without finishing what they started, regardless of the cost. Joel's reasons for saving Ellie, while understandable, are ultimately selfish and rooted in his own trauma and having just seen the light at the end of his grieving over Sarah. Again, incredibly sympathetic, but it's selfish. I know we like to joke as much, but Ellie IS NOT his daughter. They share a similar bond after everything they go through, but by the end of the game you can already feel Ellie pulling away from that notion because she's starting to realize Joel doesn't have the same commitment to the idea of her immunity being meaningful as she does, they're only a few miles away and he's already asking her to give up and go back to Jackson with him.

Then, of course, I think what ultimately damns Joel in my eyes on a poetic/storytelling level is his decision to lie to Ellie after it's all over. That's the nail in the coffin for me. It would be one thing if he said "they were going to kill you on that operating table without even telling you what was going on and I couldn't let them do that", but instead he lies to her to make sure she's still able to see him as the father he desperately wants to be again. It doesn't change anything. He tells her her worst fear has come to pass: her immunity, this unexplainable thing that has taken so many of her loved ones from her, is completely useless. Not only that, but now even more people are dead. Including Marlene, who's known her since birth. The only thing his lie changes is the fact that he's responsible for it all.

Anyway, part of what I love most about The Last of Us Part II is how it follows up on these threads and you may be pleased to know that I actually just started streaming the game last night after the HBO finale premiered cause I was so pumped up I couldn't wait any longer haha. So you'll be seeing VODs for that soon :)

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queerbting · 5 months

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ok, i know i'm a couple days late to this... but i listened to hbomberguy's video on james somerton and....... man.

i only really watched 2-3 videos of somerton's dating back 1-2 years ago, and he had long-since fallen out of my youtube recommended, but i think it's important to chronicle why i (and potentially other, especially casually-viewing, queer people) believed him, and how insidious that trust-based belief was/is. for context, i'm gen z, and the videos of his i watched were (paraphrasing, based on memory) on the "rich"/complex/intertwined history of queerness and vampires (+ the monstrous in literature and film), the connection of current unrealistic body standards among gay men to an ideal which started with the "hyper-perfect bodies" of nazi soldiers, and one last video on the tie between queer perfectionism and self-harm in film that i do not remember as well. regardless.

i.... am unsure how much my experience of queerness, especially when i was child/teenager, aligns with other people's experiences, but the majority of the media/social environments i was in, despite how non and/or loving they were, were decidedly non-queer. i was the first currently-living relative in my family to be openly queer/explore queerness as a teenager, and that meant i had to explore what queerness meant/was, on my own. i had a few queer friends as a teenager, but most of us were still coming to terms with our identities and/or had not fully formulated who we were, yet. we're much more open with each other now than we were back then. in short, that mostly meant going online and trying to find and connect with other queer people online, even if i didn't realize that's what i was reaching out for at the time. there were no queer elders around me, or if they were, i did not know they were there. i, as well as the other queer people around me, were effectively isolated from these parts of ourselves irl.

in those circumstances i think it's fairly normative to look for other sources of information, then. as i got older, the queer and queer-aligned people in my corner grew, but i was still used to the format of outsourcing knowledge from queer elders online and when i was lucky enough, in person. i had fundamentally accepted that i did not know a lot about the community i found myself apart of, or at least that i would never know as much as i thought i did (especially when it came to intersectional identities/experiences involving queerness). i had to get used to being wrong, and/or learning about perspectives that i had never even thought of/considered before due to the inherently limited nature of my own experiences.

so, when i stumbled across a video of james somerton's detailing the deep, intertwined history between queer people and vampires as depicted in literature and film, i assumed this was just another part of queer history that i had not heard about/been a part of. i think the lack of transparently cited material, in a way, made me feel like these were novel, true-to-the-queer-experience observations and/or real queer histories that had deliberately not been passed on by wider society, a history that was passed down verbally inside the queer community in spite of those which intended to suppress it. it's naive, looking back on it now (specifically how i took his narrative of queer people at face value), but i don't know how else i could have viewed it given the information/level of emotional open-ness i had at the time.

i thought of the body image video similarly— james somerton was in some ways, was a queer elder, or at least someone who i had established in my mind as more well-versed in "true" queer history/culture than i was due to the vampire video. i had never experienced life as a fat, white gay man from canada growing up with the social pressures of staying in the closet/disassociating from being perceived as queer due to issues of direct social safety. i had never downloaded grindr or seen what gay male social-sexual subcultures were like. how was i not to know that these experiences somerton described, this through-line to a history long past, were not genuine? the nazis were horrible, so why couldn't it be true that some of their aesthetic/social ideals passed on to our own negative performances of gender identity, especially in relation to unattainable masculinity?

(note: im paraphrasing my understanding of his videos here in an intentionally simplistic black/white good/bad manner, but at the time, that's what they meant to me. his videos took advantage, in part, of my lack of knowledge and reinforced/restructured concepts that were harmful and/or blatantly untrue, yet seemed socially plausible to me due to my own pre-existing moral biases)

i was watching other queer youtubers at the time, and (luckily) ended up sticking with them for much longer than i did somerton, but not insignificant portions of somerton's ideas still stuck in my mind as something "true" to the queer-historical canon. i was not immune to his lies, plagiarism, or propaganda. even when he used it to subtly bash other people, including women and other queer identities. i just assumed he knew better about the intersection of social queerness in film/specific historical contexts, and used my personal feelings of queer-communal inferiority/imbalance of information to squash the parts of myself that squirmed with discomfort at some of the things he was saying. maybe women (whether they were queer or not) did actively contribute to the suppression of queer men, and could be automatic bad actors from this point of view? maybe current beliefs on body image and fatphobia in queer male spaces did derive from n*zi propaganda absorbed by american/allied soldiers. i don't know.

my lack of knowledge surrounding queer history/identity in those specific instances caused me to dig my own shallow grave. it feels unsettling to look back on. after looking at hbomber's video, i think some of my own internalized misogyny and biphobia, even back when i was identifying as bi, and my subsequent distancing from those two facets of my identity, were in part influenced by media like the videos created by james somerton. and regardless of how i feel now (as a person who often feels more aligned with being perceived as queer/nonbinary) that's really..... fucked up.

because regardless of how i identify and feel today, knowing that part of my perception of self, as well as my perspective on queer people, queer community, and queer history comes from a person who so blatantly rips off, demeans, and misrepresents queer people and women? it feels..... really awful in a way that i can tell hasn't fully settled in my stomach yet.

and i can't help but wonder how many other young adult queer people he convinced as well, even in small ways. i feel like i was searching for understanding and acceptance, belonging in a community i didn't fully understand but wanted to align myself with, and instead i was, in part, taught to subtly mistrust and hate myself and the people around me. to insidiously dismiss and demean queer/straight women and bi people, in the way he did. to give my dignity up, to squash the internal, wary voice in my head in favor to white cis men like him, and remember that they, ultimately, know best/the most of anyone else. to trust their word like it is an untapped facet of academia, or an inherent truth of my own community— of my own identity as a bi person, a queer person, and as a woman. (and arguably my identity as an indigenous person, as it is wrapped in so much of how i love, what i believe it means to love, and how we engage in community)

i flip-flop between the differences for myself when it comes to queerness and bi-ness (queerness and lesbian-ness, as well), then between womanhood and queer expressions of gender (including and especially nonbinary/lesbian expressions of gender), and to think that a portion of what i've been internally wrestling with and trying to figure out for myself has been based off of straight up.... lies and disdain? based off of the hacked-up and stolen works of other queer people, intentionally cut of their personal unique contexts to better suit his own identity as a canadian white gay cis man who felt snubbed by women in high school?

i can't fully articulate how awful that is to realize for both myself and in consideration of the people i love, in all of its overt and subtle forms of influence.

.....and this is all with me only really watching 2 videos from the guy, arguably 3. what is it like for people who has been watching somerton's videos/keeping up with them more religiously ?? i don't know. i just know that is/has been harmful, even in subtle ways, and i wanted to record and chronicle this viewpoint, somehow. idk if anyone will see this post let alone read it due to how long it has ended up being but i hope it is helpful.

i think hbomberguy was entirely right in pointing out the directly harmful effects somerton's videos/actions have had on lgbt creators, i just couldn't also help but think of the negative impact his videos will/have had on younger lgbt people, and the way it influences the way we engage with queerness itself. good night

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valentine-writes · 8 months

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hello, hope this is okay! you wrote angst for miguel, how about spot this time around?

holding my night in your hands.

「 tws + notes: no tws, unedited, bittersweet, not fully angst,, my bad, pre-collider drabble, unhealthy work habits, mentions of burnout 」

「 gn!reader, can be platonic or romantic <3 」

↳ ft. johnathan ohnn/the spot

author's note: (；′⌒`) this is so so short ohh my goodness,,, i am so sorry if u wanted post collider!! lmk if u want that becuz i will 100% do that! was jus in the mood to write up some pre collider johnathan aawuagdhe,,, anyways a little bit of a different format today (☆-ｖ-) i hope itz ok!!!!

johnathon ohnn: perpetually working on whatever the team of scientists at alchemax are researching on. you've always known him to be ambitious, admired him for it even– though, more recently, you've found it to be a cause for concern.

it barely ever stops, the constant clicking of computer keys, the feverish scribbling of notes, the quiet muttering under his breath about whatever's holding his attention hostage at the moment– these habits carry him into the late night, much to your dismay

you know it's not healthy, the way he insists on working himself to death– yet by the way he acts, you're willing to bet that johnathan thinks it'd be an honourable way to go.

"there's no way you intend on living like this forever." you comment idly, mumbling the words more to yourself than to him. frankly, you're unsure if he senses your presence at all, leaning against the doorframe of his room with your arms crossed.

"it's the only way." he mutters back, not looking up. a tired chuckle escapes his lips, even though you know he means it humorlessly.

almost all his life, he'd been working to be something more– to discover something more out of the universe. it was devastating to watch him endlessly toil away at something he won't end up even getting credit for.

it's as if he can sense your disquieted state, before you can even think to interject. he glances up at you for a moment, hesitating before speaking. "...i'm almost done here, anyways–"

"you said that three hours ago, johnathan. c'mere."

you gesture for him to come closer. he sighs as you watch him expectantly. you know all to well that he'd love to stay glued to his screen for a little longer, but he nods anyways.

"i don't know what i'd do without you." he laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. you bite your tongue, knowing exactly what he'd be doing if you weren't there to drag him away for a break. now is no time to be snippy. he's complying at least.

he stand from his seat and stretches, the tension from his long held uncomfortable sitting just barely alleviated by the movement. you hear a few joints in his arms and legs make a few pops and cracks, which makes you cringe ever so slightly and still, in spite of this,

you feel relieved.

somedays he's a bit more stubborn with you. today, he doesn't seem like he even has the energy to put up a fight.

you've seen brilliant people burn themselves out. you're familiar with working yourself to the bone too– and day after day, you try to ensure johnathan doesn't do the same. you continue to insist he takes break, you ensure he's taking care of himself– you do everything in your power to make sure that he's doing more than just survive.

and even after all that, he might not know how much you truly care. but you don't know the half of how grateful he is for you either.

#across the spiderverse #atsv #atsv x reader #spider man: across the spider verse #the spot atsv #johnathan ohnn #johnathan ohnn x reader #johnathan ohnn headcanons #johnathon ohnn #johnathon ohnn x reader #johnathon ohnn headcanons #the spot #the spot x reader #the spot headcanons #tags and more tags and and an #im so sorry this is so short and it took so long </3

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spiribia · 2 months

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player freedom to do whatever the F you want has been a core tenet of GW2 from the start, but as genuinely neat as this can be, I think this is also my biggest issue with approach to map-wide metas. here is a huge event for anyone that happens to be around when it occurs - jump in if you want! - but often these actually pertain to the main story and are intended to slot linearly somewhere in between main story quests, and along the course of the main storyline itself it may not be extremely clear at what point it would be accurate to attend the meta.

let's say you've followed the main story to the Dragon's Lair map (which I just made up) for the first time. plotwise, you must set up camp with the NPCs and make preparations before embarking to destroy the dread dragon - but since you set foot on the new map, you are concurrently seeing information on your screen about a meta with an end goal to Help Bobby storm the Flame Gate and slay the Infernal Lieutenant. "OK," you say, "I don't know who Bobby is, and those things don't sound suited to my current phase of the story, so I don't have the context to participate in this meta yet." shortly after the NPCs may conclude that preparations are finished and the march on the dragon can begin - Quest Complete. you get a prompt to meet with the same NPCs to proceed with the next instance. this could be a traditional single player instance where the NPCs rally and begin their descent. It could just as easily open with the NPCs going "With the battle won and the barrier disabled, the dragon is vulnerable now - let's finish it off!", as though you've missed a step walking down the stairs.

the main story when beelined is full of little discombobulations like this - it's not impossible I've historically just missed out on relevant cues, but I do know with some certitude it's not a uniquely me issue to experience slight "do I know these side characters? when did they get here?" tier stumbles from time to time, even when I have completed the relevant material at the relevant time, due to further factors like multiple branching paths in metas. I understand that the format of GW2's living world is that you are naturally not going to be present for everything that occurs - it moves and breathes regardless around you - but this creates a disjunct with the linear main story About You when it plays it safe and acknowledges extracurricular activities or paths you *may* have done with a certain level of assumed familiarity for these characters and situations.

the game has no way of controlling what the player has broadly witnessed beyond the journal quests themselves, and also has no interest in being the boss of the player over this - yet there is still a structured developer choice of what from this broader content is utilized in the linear story, and how. the narrative may not ever force you into situations where you are exposed to a particular NPC - however, it WILL make you witness the NPC's emotional death in the main story with equal gravitas whether they were your mentor figure or whether they were some person shown in a cutscene for 2 seconds before dying.

the game doesn't seem to want Isolated Pocket Instances For Important Story and Overworld Map For Sidequests. i understand this, and moments where main story is integrated in a massive map-altering event with 50 other players in collaboration with each other is genuinely a wonderful experience when it does land correctly. the main issue is that for me the thrill of these event chains is not necessarily 'narrative i've gleaned from playing through them.' they're loud, dialogue is drowned out, the screen is visually plastered in flashy effects, you're focused on dodging AOEs and healing your ten simultaneously downed comrades. because of the spontaneous nature of these events you may have missed the first 3/4 of the NPC's conversation and so don't even really know what their banter is about even if you can stop to read the chat log for it. there is a meta where rox admits that she is thinking of joining the olmakhan, and if you don't happen to be around her when she says it you will miss that extra bit of context - yet as most other metas do, gameplay wise, this meta encourages players to split up and be in different places, most of which will not be near her.

it's simple enough to talk about these points - i understand it's much harder in practice to make cohesive. as with most mmorpg storylines, there is a jankiness here that i ultimately am willing to overlook because of the rapport the game has otherwise established with me.

it's not even that I mind spoilers, but because so many things are occurring regardless of if you were there for the context or even if you're at the right point of this chronologically at all, the map becomes this morass of random things that you can feel a bit detached from. if you see your main story NPC friend needing escort so they can set up pylons - is this related to a future plot event, or did you just miss the first section of this mini event where they said "I just discovered we have a rat problem in our storage, I need help setting up these rat pylons to repel rats"? are you 'meant' to be here - if not by the game's standards, by your own sense? and for those who do mind spoilers, you're seeing Help Bobby Use Crystals To Shatter The Field Protecting The Dragon Lieutenant on your screen from the moment you set foot on the map.

i'm always in favor of more guidance along optional material - more "(Optional) complete the meta of this map" objectives appearing at the appropriate time, more achievements for completing the meta before proceeding to the next quest, more concrete pointers where

#talks #for a year i keep sitting down to articulate my thoughts on the storytelling and it always ends up five million unfathomable #paragraphs long #i can never nearly explain it all. my I Could Probably Fill a 45 Min Long Youtube Essay topic.

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fandomsoda · 2 months

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sorry if this comes off as rude, but as an aro person. it kind of feels strange that you CONSTANTLY push that aros can be in relationships. just for xvials. like it genuinly makes me uncomfortable as an aro that wants an romantic relationship but feels not attraction. it just feels very like . gross

Ok wow this ask was a lot to take in so please bear with me here as I try to format my thoughts properly-

First of all this doesn't come off as rude, don't worry, but it definitely feels like a stretch though I'm sure this is more misinterpretation… I definitely can say that receiving this didn't feel good in the slightest but that doesn't mean you're being rude.

Secondly, to address what you've actually said, I feel like saying that I talk about partnering aros constantly is a massive exaggeration. And I don't feel like I "push" that aro people can have partners, I simply mention it from time to time and occasionally reblog posts that mention it. I more often than not try to find posts and stuff supporting the entire aro community, I don't seek to zero in on a specific part constantly as all aromantic people are incredibly valid. The reason I have talked about partnering aros specifically in the past is due to the fact that I notice a lot of erasure towards that part of the community, not because I see them as more valid or because they justify shipping.

Thirdly, on that note, I don't talk about these things just for Xvials??? I would never talk about any part of queerness just to push a ship. That's, as you said, incredibly gross and disgusting and objectifying identities and experiences like that is wrong. Xvials is simply a fictional example of two aro people potentially being together, it's not and would never be the sole reason for me speaking out about an identity.

I'm genuinely sorry if you ever felt that I was doing that in some way, I'd be wildly uncomfortable if I was in your position as well. I just never perceived my behavior as coming off that way and would never intentionally do that. If there's any behavior in particular I can/should stop/change, let me know because I never want to send this kind of message.

I'll be entirely honest, I've been anxious to answer this because I'm afraid people won't understand that I'm genuine in what I say and will assume I'm just being performative, especially when it's something as serious as this- I have several posts queued up for tomorrow specifically supporting and shouting out non-partnering aros and I don't want people to think that I only reblogged those things just to cover my own ass or something- pardon that tangent I just figured I'd say that.

I don't really know how to close this off properly and I don't want to invalidate your feelings or come off as too defensive, I just genuinely didn't intend to come off this way and feel like parts of your statement are slightly exaggerated.. I hope you understand.

Edit: ok so this was a very customer-service-y and vaguely dismissive response which I am not proud of. Better response here, it covers the situation in the detail it deserves.

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exitpursuedbyavulcan · 4 months

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I definitely see your perspective with those points! I guess I just find it kind of amusing that fans made one of the only Targaryens who canonically does not partake in an incestuous dynamic, has a non-targ love interest (in Alys which I personally think GRRM absolutely did on purpose imo), and is only devoted to that one non-targ woman for his entire character journey into someone who does engage in it. And ofc that’s totally fine, all writers can do what they want with these characters but it’s just kind of funny. When it comes to that scene about Helaena, that’s also an interesting point because I definitely agree it shows his tendency to gravitate towards doing his duty for his family but I don’t know if that’s a sign of him being a typical targ rather than the writers demonstrating he’s a complete contrast from Aegon in every way and would carry out any expectations placed on him. That’s why it was mind-boggling to me when people perceived that scene as him having feelings for her and created an entire pairing based on that when that wasn’t the point at all. In relation to him fighting for the throne, one could say the main reason for him doing that is to uphold Valyrian values but I also think a big part of that is the fact that Aegon is his brother and he will fight for his family (despite not liking him as a person). To me, I can’t get invested in Targ pairings that include incest because it just demonstrates how these children are indoctrinated from a young age and told about “blood purity” (hence that scene where Aemond talks about Helaena) and that’s just the opposite of romance (to me ofc). Aemond is a really interesting character and I think alot of people tend to misinterpret him. I think when Alys comes along, it will provide more insight into who he is as a character and what he leans towards when it comes to women. Although I’m sure most fans will hate on her since she’s not the typical Targ princess most people self-insert as (as is expected of that fandom).

Ok I'm putting these together because I think they're from the same person, but if they're not, I apologize!

Before I start my responses, I do want to say that I find some of the language you're using (calling people's opinions 'funny,' saying that people with differing opinions to yours 'misinterpret' Aemond, 'the typical Targ princess most people self-insert as (as is expected of that fandom),' claiming you know exactly what GRRM 'intended,' and saying that other people's takes 'confound you') to be very condescending. I'm more than willing to have lit crit discussions, as I enjoy them a lot, but I am not willing to engage when part of your opinions include condescending to others.

Because of this, I'm only going to respond to a few things you said in bullet point format.

People are allowed to write whatever relationship dynamic they want to. If they bother you that much, don't read them. And certainly don't publicly talk about how much you disagree with and dislike them

I don't believe Alys is involved in Aemond's 'entire character journey.' She's a big part of his journey, for sure, but I don't think she's the main part of it. I believe that like everyone else in the story, family, sexism, and the pursuit of power is the main focus of Aemond's story.

I'm not a fan of Helaemond, but I can very much understand why people interpreted that scene in that way. I also do not claim to know what the writers intended with that scene, only that I saw it the way I saw it.

It's totally fine that you don't like targcest. Don't put down people who do.

The way you talk about the other people in the fandom is very offensive to me. We can have disagreements and opposing viewpoints, but there is absolutely no reason to be as rude as that.

Unless you have actual proof from GRRM himself that what you are saying is precisely what he intended when he was writing the story, don't presume to be the ultimate authority. Just saying 'everyone is entitled to their own take' does not mean that what you said was not patronizing and rude.

I hope you will continue having these discussions, but as I said. I will not engage with condescension. I know there are points in your asks that I did not talk about. If you would like to talk about them, you are more than welcome to send another ask or DM me, so long as you are respectful to other people in your message.

You are entitled to your opinions. You are allowed (and encouraged) to discuss these opinions with other people. But you are not entitled to act superior and look down on other people's opinions. The entire point of opinions is that no one is right, they just have their own interpretation.

#asks #hotd meta

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aleniksimmer · 9 months

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Miraculous the movie

Final thoughts:

-if you watch it alone without any prior knowledge of Miraculous it feels extremely random, the characters are flat, the powers blurry, their objectives kinda lost in the songs, which are there but don't really clear the situation or move the plot forward

-if you watch it knowing the show it does make even less sense, the powers are completely fucked up, sometimes the suits protect them, sometimes not, the characters feel a very faded copy of what they're supposed to be and most of the times the plot doesn't plot, things just happen cause it's fanservice and "a laugh for the kids", it really feels like a fanfiction in which the author was focused in a couple of scenes and then tried to connect them together even if they don't work. Conflicts starts and are closed at random, there's zero build up, as I said before it all feels like it happens because the "author" wanted it to happen but not because the story makes sense developing in that way through the characters (as it should be with a well written story)

In the end, I enjoyed some visuals, I enjoyed some 3d models, but in general it's not something I would want to watch again, it feels uneventful and it does feel like you just have to be a casual/passive spectator. There's no foreshadowing, no messages between the lines. They tried to make the line "save a life, save the world" meaningful but it really gave nothing.

Last very personal opinion, as a hardcore fan of Frozen movies and shorts, it feels like the animations/camera angles/songs were heavily inspired by that and classic Disney in general instead of focusing on the canon material. I get they wanted to retell the story in a shorter format but it didn't quite deliver the intended result for the mentioned reasons.

Spoilers

So I finally decided to watch the movie cause I need something lighthearted rn, and a few seconds in I'm hating how they are presenting the miraculouses "they were only given to heroes but the butterfly is the most evil one cause evil butterfly ohhhhh" like the fuck did you just smoke Fu? Seems like Zag didn't really watched the show and had this vague idea that the butterfly miraculous is EvIL. It would be a long watch. I will edit this post each time I have to say something.

I'm a DIE HARD fan of musicals, like half of my songs on Spotify are from musicals, I have playlists of Disney songs. But this?? Seems Zag watched more Anna from Frozen than the actual show. I know Mari was very insecure in the beginning, but this is all over the place, and the dialogues, they are so detached (and I don't want to shit on the animation, but for fuck sake she wants to be a fashion designer, her whole room is pink, her sketches are colorful but the best she can imagine is a gray smoking and a white dress?? Not even a hint of color?? And she stops in front of a white dress?? For frick sake she's Marinette not "I love a sterile environment with bland people" Gabriel Agreste). And I'm 5 minute in. God save me

At least I can relate to the flute scene. What a vile instrument c_c

Ahh I don't know how to feel about them using that tune and those scenes that resemble so much the parts of the show that make you heart skip a bit in a context that feels so less deep. I think I'm missing the build up to the crucial point.

The long hair?? Gabe with the long hair?? I'm crying 😂😂

Oh come ooooonnnn. They give Nooroo a fuking bad reputation like this. And it doesn't make any sense design wise. If the butterfly is the worst of the worst why does it have a random place in the circle of secondary miraculouses. I hate it.

And now the jewels fly. Okay. OK. I need to forget about the show.

Ok. Now I'm 100% certain that Fu is high on something.

No Tikki, the butterfly is lost due to Fu and you perfectly know what it is capable of? Otherwise you wouldn't call it the eViLlllll.

So, what did we learn today. The gargoyle is there to do nothing, no objective, no plan, no correlation between the emotion and the akumatized result. Gabe should want their miraculouses but apparently the akuma is just trying to play with them through the city? Why sneaking behind? Why attacking CN at random and then going around? Why staying in Notre Dame and just make noise in the beginning? Second, the yoyo is doing all the work, God forbid Mari learns how to use it. Just make the yoyo do the job and LB is just there like a sack of potatoes. Everything is so random.

Who needs heroes when you can crush the akumatized person with a train, right?? Also that poor akuma got fried to death just to make the batman symbol.

He keeps making fun of her, treat her like an inferior but he's in love?? I'm face palming hard right now. Also, a fucking God of destruction apparently has a digestive system he can't control. Nice. Really really nice. So funny. Ha ha. 😑

He really went for that disney villain vibe..

I NEED a figurine of them on the moon.

I am weak for Ladynoir, ok? Ok. Don't care much about the song but how they interact now it's adorable. They're dancing. My poor heart. 😭

Really, hawkmoth decided to become batman.

And now he's a Jedi, ladies and gentlemen!

Oh, the flying superman shot was really missing now.

Physically and canonically everything doesn't make any sense but okay. God feels like a fanfiction.

Show Gabe would have laughed maniacally and grabbed that ring without any second thought. Oh well.. This is anticlimactic.

So.. Are we finally going to see a lucky charm at the end of the movie ooooor... Nope, just some dust and Elsa building skills.

NOT EVEN THE KISS??? YOU DIDN'T EVEN GIVE US THE KISS??? YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE A SEQUEL OF THIS?? Like what, Mayura and the other 3 heroes? Oh for God sake. I would prefer this investment in the quality of the show animation than in this.

#miraculous awakening #miraculous the movie #Is it spoiler?

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galactic-pirates · 18 days

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Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

Thanks for the ask! :) :)

19) Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it. Part of me wants to skip this and substitute another question but I am working on some art for the Librarians exchange at the moment. That has to be secret but I don't think it's too much of a #Spoiler to do one line like

"Librarians win with what they know - not magic!"

36) How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

I'm quite fond of song titles to be honest. Not usually lyrics, or not formatted as such anyway.

Another place I have looked for titles are episode titles. Not for the show I am writing for usually, but from any show I have watched and liked. I used to keep a text file with a list of titles I had seen that I liked, and when titling a fic I checked that list first to see if anything fit.

Sometimes there is a line in the fic, or the prompt that inspired the story, that just demands a certain title.

As for the one I'm most proud of? Monstrare, Monere perhaps. A Warehouse 13 oneshot. The actual fic itself I am a bit meh about after all this time, but the title and summary I am like "I wrote that?" I also really like and the Sins of Atlantis. Totally self-indulgent ridiculous fic which I enjoy more than I should. It uses the same episode title structure as the Librarians show (I did that for all my prompt month fics that year, which I loved). I particularly like this one though as I feel like there's so many layers to it. Sins - so evocative, so many questions. Atlantis - how? why? I don't know. It was fun.

(Under the cut for the writing advice because despite making myself stick to just one point, I still went on a lot. Oops.)

28) Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing? Ooooh boy ok. The answer is both lots, and nothing, because writing is very individual. I can advise based on what works for me but it's so much a YMMV situation. I always feel like any writing advice needs to be prefaced with this.

So I don't write an essay (and I probably will anyway) but I will stick with just one point so it's not thousands of words. It's actually something I read once and no it isn't the classic "I can fix a bad page not a blank page" (which is also good advice btw). It's actually a point I super hated for a long time and that is probably why I have forgotten where I read it, so I apologise for the lack of attribution. The quote was something like - "Write what you want to have written, not what you want to write." Now that's crazy talk right? Well yeah, and I hated it, but I see the wisdom in it now.

Now a personal anecdote to illustrate the point. Writing fanfic brought me joy. I loved the plots coming together, how I could sneak in references. I don't know if this is egotistical to admit but I still re-read my old fic sometimes - I was my own intended audience - and I love it. However, I have original novel ideas. I have a dream of publishing. It's a future that I would like to build. Possibly just a fantasy but it's a dream that I've held for decades and it scares the hell out of me. Writing novels is hard. It's facing the fear of never being good enough every day, and making myself do the work anyway. Writing fanfic is so much easier and (for me) it became a way to self-sabotage.

Now I owe fanfic a tremendous debt because it has broken through writers block, it has given me soooooo many ideas that I have mutated into something else entirely. Don't ever think I don't respect fanfic but I'm chronically ill and I only have a limited amount of spoons. I have written novel-length fanfic and pouring weeks/months into a fanfic, was weeks/months I wasn't spending on my original work and I hated myself for that. I was writing something that I really wanted to write but even in the middle of the process I was sometimes like "what am I doing???" and questioning my life choices. I love my fanfic ideas and I get so nostalgic sometimes for the ones on my list that I never got round to writing.

Fanfic was something I desperately wanted to write, but it was not what I wished to have written. It brought me short-term joy for long-term anguish if you like.

So my point - my writing advice - is essentially a riff off "life is short". Be damn sure before you invest so much of yourself creatively in a story (whatever that story might be), that you won't get hit by regret later. It's so easy with fandom events: exchanges, bingos, prompt months etc. to get bursts of inspiration and giddy FOMO, only to get months down the road and wish you hadn't happened that earlier WIP.

We all have a story to tell right? So don't write what you think will get you kudos/comments. Write what is in your heart to write. Not some surface level impulse, but what you will be proud to have committed to a year down the road.

I can't bring myself to regret any of my fanfics. Hell as I said I enjoy reading them. But I had to stop so my energy could be focused in a direction that brought my longer-term peace, rather than short-term joy.

Fandom can be a fickle place, and also playing in someone else's sandbox can turn to ash. When a show has gone in a direction I can't follow, or when there's drama in the fandom, it has stolen my joy. I suppose what I'm really get is with writing, it's a creative journey, it's pouring so much of your soul into something. Protect your mental health. Invest yourself wisely.

Write with joy.

#I answer things #sam talks writing

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ronanlynchbf · 1 year

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hi, i wanted to ask what did you mean by the og format of the dreamer trilogy being discarded (in the tags of that opal story post you make about a week ago)? i keep missing all the behind the scenes info on these books :(

HIII hello <333 i'm putting this under a keep reading cut because it ended up being quite long

so in a tweet i think? or actually it might've been a fansign event of sorts i don't rlly remember which one it was but anyway maggie said that originally the dreamer trilogy was set to be further in time, with all the characters in their 20s, and the moderators (worst part of tdt imo) were never actually intended to be in the story AT ALL, from which we can conclude that the story of tdt would've been different bc if u eliminate the moderators there's LOADS of stuff that would change. maggie also said somewhere that - especially when writing greywaren - she had a lot of anger inside of her over being so sick that she put in the book initially but eventually scrapped and redid for some reason or the other (personally i think cdth & mi touched on that anger & frustration she felt abt being sick, but i can't rlly see it anymore once i get to greywaren). maybe she felt it was too personal, maybe she was advised to change it idk but she described it as "an angry draft" or something like that and mentioned having to rewrite a lot throughout tdt after that first greywaren draft/outline. she didn't rlly go that much into detail and i don't remember everything, but considering what she did say and what she implied, the dreamer trilogy originally had a different look and format and setting and outline/story even and tone and also different titles!! the og titles she was gonna go with was this:

which i personally think are very cool and also all corresponding to each other, like the three titles are in the same theme whereas call down the hawk, mister impossible, and greywaren have little to no correlation. ANYWAY i don't have any actual links to when she said this i'm soooo sorry but like bottom line. the dreamer trilogy's story was originally different (though maggie didn't specify as to how or how much difference there was) and sans-moderators, it was more heavy and raw on how tiring and hard and frustrating the reality of dealing with chronic illness is, the characters were originally all supposed to be fully adults (adam was also originally more in tdt but that was also cut), and the titles (and i assume overall theme/tone of the story) were different, so the dreamer trilogy that we now have is likely quite far from the dreamer trilogy we could've had/maggie originally wrote. i for one would LOOOOOOOVE to see the original draft of tdt even if all the books are published already and the story has basically come to an end (i personally believe that, had maggie stuck with the og outline, the epilogue would not have been what it is now, which like. atp i'd take anything over an "it was all good" ending four years later but maybe that's just me) OK ANYWAY this is wayyyy longer than i had intended it to be but that's what i meant with my tags; there's nothing in the world i'd love to see more than that original angry draft of greywaren that maggie changed to - i presume - satisfy the masses, genuinelyyyyy would give anything to get that version in my hands but either way i hope i explained it sufficiently!!! and i hope u have a great rest of the day 💗💗💗 ❗

#sorry this is a bit late i went to bed early last night & didn't see this until now!#hope i explained this well i feel like it's so rambly and incoherently formed i'm sorryyyy 😭#dreamer trilogy #💌

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contraspem--spero · 4 months

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ok im curious what do you think about mizuki akiyama, the character who is heavily implied if not canonically transfeminine/trans female?

not a malicious question

Hi anon! I'm grateful you seem to ask in good faith, so I'll answer even though I don't normally entertain fandom stuff on my blog.

I'll also be using they/them for Mizuki going forward even though I personally don't agree with that but I assume you would be more comfortable this way.

My short answer: I don't really care about them. I like Mizuki's design, some of their cards/focus songs slap, I liked the rooftop friendship storyline, Mizuki&An interactions and their character overall, but I have no personal stake in the The Big Secret storyline. I don't have to morally agree with every media I consume. I can (and do) enjoy things with non-binary or trans characters in them; that fact doesn't make me doubt gender critical or radical feminist ideas.

As of right now, it's only implied* they're transfem; for as long as it's not outright stated in canon I will keep hc-ing Mizuki as a gnc guy who faces isolation and bullying because of it, as did I for dressing in "men's clothing" and not wearing make up. Which might also be canon just as well in the future.

Mizuki never answers the question of why they dress the way they do with anything other than "Because I like it", which actually aligns the gender critical idea of clothes and make-up and nail polish etc having no gender and how both men and women can both dress however they want (whilst simultaneously being aware that some of traditionally female/feminine clothes are purposefully impractical, financially draining, or outright harmful to your body and it's no coincidence; the gc idea of people having the freedom to do whatever doesn't necessarily go against the feminist idea that patriarchy is the reason those roles and practices exist in the first place and are actively harmful to women and girls as a class), and honestly? I like the way that is written.

Maybe the message proseka writers intended to send wasn't "Mizuki is trans because they dress like a girl and being forced into male roles makes them depressed and transphobia is bad", maybe it was "Mizuki is simply a boy who likes pink and dresses and cute things and maybe we should stop bulling people for being different that the rest". Or maybe I'm dead wrong and they will be confirmed as transgender later down the line. Who knows. It makes very little difference to me anyway because they're not one of my favourite characters and that's that.

*whilst they're being referred as they/them in the official English translation, we should be very, very aware that English translation is oftentimes inaccurate and occasionally even harmful/blatantly wrong and is prone to buying into popular fandom headcanons (e.g: calling Nagi An's Aunt officially whereas in canon their relationship get no label and are much more complicated than that; unnecessary Tsukasa Angst in Saki's even where he most likely refers to Saki being lonely and not himself; the whole Spojoy Kanade honorifics blunder, while understandably untranslatable, was handled very poorly). Plus it's the only way to make the entire storyline to work in English as Japanese language has no pronouns and we can't judge based off that. Leaving out the pronoun issue we're left to judge based of... Clothes and song lyrics. *Shrugs*

**I also feel like Mizuki's storyline was done very dirty in general by proseka event format because it feels so. painfully. stretched out over three years. It seriously lacks the pacing, but that's my issue with N25 in general; they're moving a little bit too slow for my taste save for Ena.

#personal #I also like the way their depression is written #it's quiet and invisible #just slowly fading away in the background despite their family trying to support them like it can't be helped #vs. Ena's explosive and self-hating vs Mafuyu's actively seeking to harm herself #Mizuki and Kanade's issues are much more similar to that regard except I'd say Mizuki's is slightly more passive #the 'I cross the road without looking' kind of depression #it's very interesting and realistic and i feel like their arc portraits it in the most respectful way from the n25

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