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unproduciblesmackdown · 8 months

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had a hell of a time (good) bit ago watching elemental and feeling things including enjoying a film, great ride, i love a metaphor & anything vignettey (just living life, alongside but also including the [this is about the metaphor] threads), i do love it when a couple of fun people have an enriching dynamic that they enjoy and huaaaghwgh (good) & i liked the premise metaphor exactly as is for what it is for what it did with it & i liked overlaps & resonances w/other experiences i saw ppl perceive. i liked the way i was going oh my god that painting looks the way i feel b/c like navigating a complementary dynamic where what's holding one person back is what helps the other person along, vice versa, no interaction or relationship that develops by like having some [theoretically your trait/quality/behavior] contained in the other person, rather it being an interaction within yourself, such that i was going "i have this interaction Within Myself, right now, in life currently like always and the past years but also past months especially really, it's ongoing, i'm going Oh Goddamn Omg" scintillating to see it externalized as a conversation imagined by others. and also still different / more capacious on both ends than "wow Exactly that." feeling things going ohh my god. music is going for it so Noticeably. hot air balloon scene And track changing me with an immediate Resonance

easier when having fun but i was also like continually so hype gasping about intrigued about pointing at art direction decisions & execution and one especial element i was sooo noting was the use of Color b/c it's Really colorful like rainbow palette nigh constant noticeable saturation, And it was atmospheric, always readily visibly parsed, varying in styles but cohesive. the backgrounds babey, with obvious priority for working with a vivacious orange and/or blue. oh and the related use of Light like different visuals for different glows and just different effects and waugh....i collected mostly a bunch of bgs to point at often for that "look at the color design & atmosphere" but also so much more & foreground things big time too. semitransparent characters like bitch. the physics of fluid dynamics. optics like refraction like my God. i'm mclosing it and that these effects would be sooo prohibitively intensive w/o computer but it's so impressive w/computer and that Stylistic Decisions were made all over, it's clearly not ever simply just "oh this is what it'd 'realistically' look like if uhhh someone was made of fire or water" even as realism Based effects were employed for style and fun and our lives. the use of of course 2D animation / art conventions for style and effect and fun & our lives!!! maybe ember a bit too but wade has a whole like 2D style profile so the [curved droplet] shape always faces the camera, how are we doing that it's so cool & i love to see it. not to mention being transparent but also like clearly not!! first time i've properly thought about how inside of mouth 3D animation has Ever worked lmao

cut so i can go on & on (^ that's brevity up there lol) & post mostly various backgrounds to gesticulate at what i notice abt the use of color like oh my god. and some other things. laughed, cried, lived & loved like for real lol

oh my god

and like immediate intro theme going "oh my god blue and orange making Purple (magenta, pink) oh my god we're doing Additive Light with that holy shit yes"

so extra [!!!] about city nighttime shots especially. and the details of all the building designs, it's all the shit like i haven't even sat and Studied any given shot for all small elements like that but that you know they're There so that it looks this complex and "realistic" like you know the attention & effort is there & you get the Overall Effect baby. also the way purple/green are employed to contrast with blue/orange often. the Glows here, the Bluer upper half and the Oranger lower half that both also have some purplishness to them, the Green bridge breaking it up / spanning this

the colors in closeups even. first of all the expressions styles are after my own heart & got it, and i'm sure i'll go on & on more there. pull mouths down do the m upper lip n lower lip lines combo, you know what i mean, i Love it. wavy flowy design vs more triangular / ending in peaks/corners design for your water vs fire aesthetiques. i think that's [heat creating refraction in the air] effect like lord. the pink blue purple here. the slight shadow framing the pic for better contrast, the pink / glow around ember, wade slightly Glows from within too, the constant wave refraction there. okay obsessed again with both sorta transparent and fluid Figures like you've got the outermost layers. you've got the Inside. you've got the silhouettes and the lines that are "drawn," reddish outlines of flame shapes and constant highlight "outlines" for water so it never "realistically" blends in with everything / just Is clear and is impossible to easily parse. that those silhouettes are constantly Flowing and responding to motion / pressure as well. i can only imagine. oh and the colors again that the Glow for fire is often a Soft gradient, but there's this like, slightly convex polygonal style of "glow" / Light in backgrounds a lot and it works great for style and contrast with the important Soft Glow from fire and even also water, again the slight inner glow there too. and again the mutual [pull mouths down] expressiveness lol so much fun. the Elasticity is fantastic, same with like 2D style Movement like invoking a smear frame for example like fuck yes it's about What Works it's about style & effect & what things like lighting color faces can do that aren't just aiming for "be peak realistic" like clearly it isn't. note the sharper line of shadow in the upper corner with a deeper blue. we framing

oh this one was to point out "look at how you can see the full spectrum rainbow in the wave surface light refraction oh my fucking god" not to mention of course In Motion the shapes, the effect, some bubbles and flow for flare and seeing that constant Light Outline, the cyan leaning aqua that's put in along with the overall slight blue not b/c it's "realistic" but b/c it's what works baby the artistic design choices fuck like hell. and only when i took this one frame was it like oh my fucking god look at these split second flame shames flowing off of ember there above her head especially. all the more stylization required for fire without it being like, "realistically" mostly transparent, overly bright, not very strongly delineated / silhouetted....the shape, color, flow of flames on the "inside," outermost breaking off shapes & "outline" as well augh god. and look at the purples in the background's left side

AUGH the night city backgrounds. pottery burn haha yeah the blue orange AND purple my god!!!! it's thematic ([blue + orange = purple] b/w the blue & orange characters) and it fucks like hell holy shit!!!!!

meanwhile the green & purple here with One orange element getting to stand out / not that much blue either, but more ultramarine style than aquamarine, and LOOK AT THE MOON!!! the surface!!! check out that Polygonal glow around it and the green/purple there too!!!

and the use of bokeh. immaculate, not holding back, after my heart. the Purple/Pink additive light properties coming into play!! her reflection is more simply orange(tm) sometimes and i would presume it tends purpler when we are getting [emotionally connecting / recognition of the self through the other] but oh my god heaving overhead like a hero this additive light blue+orange=purple ingenious and stylistically fucking like hell choice. and again their "outlines" working so well while also retaining enough softness/fluidity to be part of them as a whole. everything is so cool

there's the mouth shape i was talking about. you see the slight m upper lip simply n lower lip and resultant (idk like a video game controller?) shape lol. flexible expressive asymmetry. the closeup transparency of [can always see the other side of shirt collar]. green bg for contrast while also incorporating the orange glow. the full spectrum rainbow refraction just also an immaculate and probably characterfully relevant lmao as a bonus. also hell of cute moments wauugh yes, fun, dying thanks

the additive light!!! (how magenta/purple/pink the reflection of Orange is off the Blue like employing what's realistic in another context for what fucks aesthetically & carries symbolism. like wade wouldn't Realistically be constantly [surface wave refractions] but it fucks like hell. also wouldn't be someone made of fire or water but it fucks like hell & embodies a central metaphorical layer to the literal material). also look at that curtain from deep purplish red to deep bluer purple!!! the line of bright blue!!! the glow in the Background with sharper polygonal lines / corners to contrast with the visual effects of glows elsewhere!!! wade default =3 as [wavy featured] and inherent =3 vs ember's more flame tipped => (not pictured)

ohh this one for rainbow color / out of focus usage and b/c it's like how the semi transparency but only So Much + constant outline of Highlights / constant inner glow and visible infusion of like aquamarine / bright turquoise cerulean color helps a water guy stay perfectly Visible / parsable. also besides ember being green, an effect subtly pictured at any given point: like cinders continually rising off fire but depicted so much like Sparkles :') there's so much colors and highlights and choices after my own sensibilities out here like i love a shoulder swoop design that flows right into the arms from the neck from the head. and that's exactly what we get precisely b/c it has so much flow!!! ember's like whole head Flaring out from her neck, terminal points like tips, or sources, of flames. Styles

the bokeh!! the blues and pinks and purples!!!

ouuwaah

UGH obviously in motion the like arcing falling curtains of water, the shimmering....the purple into pink into dusky orange!!! the little bit of contribution of the turquoise light aaa wahooo, ofc what the bridge adds in Composition for this & that previous shot

lmao this is b/c Wavy Scribble Squiggle Mouth again the design choices after my own heart. the constant extra wobbliness to Mouth Outline obviously works great to emphasize [water design] but it also works great b/c i love it

every shot of the background with this beach is gongious like jesus christ. the closeup of sand is like that looks amazing and So soft. look at the wavy swoopy shapiness of the clouds, look at the [in this shot] faintly detectable Polygonal outlines of Glow from the sun. feel free to look at that water like i said every shot of this, wrow. tasked with Pretty Beach Sunset and coming through big time

expressive design contrast, glow contrasts, refracting, silhouettes, those flame shapes breaking off again epic hot wheels style fuck yes....and the bg!!! look at the purple to muted purple pink sky, the atmospheric distancing on layers of buildings that goes from blue to purple!! the dimmer purple / blue / teal on the ground in the foreground here UGH the COLOR USE

ooh i was so Noticing the like, full ultramarine blue here, like it's been used Before in any night environments but the way here it's brighter, making it like "okay yeah night but more Lit Up. also the visual variety of [water curtain] textures there, the area of Pink, the Yellow that hasn't previously shown up too much but might be saved for associations with tension / "danger" lol. also love the "straightup a pool" designs lol wish i was swimming

oh the orange + blue = purple on display here / translating Outlines

amazing sequence and again look at the Purple shadows the Blues the Oranges the Greens!!!! aughhh again like So colorful and so bright but also ofc dimmed, atmospheric, balanced, waughhh!!!

oh my god what can i say. "bisexuality" for one but and also fr like the pink of the sky vs deep purple, lighter with more blue in the water, the streak of oranger light, pink atmospheric haze....augh!!!

speaking of "and then really vivid striking colors in another overall palette we haven't seen before" the teal & golden yellow for this shot was new & noticeable. the yellow of problems, but not too bad lol, looking at that Contrast with the blue on the outer pool edge there. i wanna take a swim yippee....but fr like holding some colors more in reservation, finding new combinations, as Ever how bright the bgs are but atmospheric, non overwhelming of other elements, i Love it

bokeh!!!! colors!!!!!!!

bokeh!!!!!! colors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fucking roy g biv like yes gorgeous. nice tree evocative bridge. composition. lots of lights and colors but the distribution being so balanced, but organic, broken up in all the right ways and all encompassing....the bright orange lights in shadowed blue/purple buildings in the upper left corner, leading down to the path of lights across the center of everything....ugh incredible great

out of focus bg, the lights, the purples, the blue/Green, look at everything on the right side ugh lovely, the slight Shapes of glows, can see that arc in the right side as well, the emotional relevance of all the colors and glows as this bg dims / desaturates a second later

and so similarly here, the Purple, the Glows....like the use of both the perfect balance of soft edges/borders but no sacrifice in clarity

oh and i suppose there's then any amount of spoilers following but like, in part only b/c i point them out as as much but also like. it's about the journey lmfao you see two screenshots, containing some information, well you've seen it all

and to pad that out i'll also note without screenshots about it like bringing in a very like Clear for Compositional Effect sort of Danger Yellow again twice over, with the harshest like chartreuse leaning yellow yet for it, v much a color that it'd just take more effort to fit into a palette / would have to be kind of the color centerpiece, vs the orange/blue/purple here

(but also not to say yellow was never used otherwise....some perfectly harmless golds, paler lighting like just Daytime vibe, constant presence w/fire of course. so the Particulars of a hazard yellow are all the more notable)

the COLORS....look at that orange that pink red the pink reflections the Purples....the just deep slightly slightly purple red in the bg and how like smoothed over / Immediate that background is to just make everything close & present!! the flame textures going!!! water textures going!!! cinders as points of light!! the colors the orange purple pink blue UGHH it's amazing they're really off the shits with it in every scene

spoilers they do kiss about it and i was like smacking hand to forehead like oh my god and they did another "breaking out a new Light thing" when we've glowed and refracted within and without, lit up or dimmed, sparkled, reflected, used further styles in environmental lighting....answer was Lens Flare rainbow refracting glow like goddamn!!! and again like putting In the purple, but also the blue, the orange, the out & out more cerulean / aquamarine that is not gonna simply come from elsewhere in the environment. nice commitment to also having someone smile into a kiss lmao we've all been like i Will make this work. i'm still just like ugh the focus on and variety of Light too, the backgrounds' like soft polygon/hexagon glow "fields," straightforward soft/even gradient glows, wave pattern refraction, refraction also separating light into rainbows, remember water is a lens, stylized light of fire, bokeh, additive color mixing....holding on to & breaking out Cinematic LENS FLARE is fr like ohhh my god they're just fucking On It, got this, here's another effect for you

i also have a gif b/c i couldn't note anyone's fluid dynamics / flowing / Interacting physics enough, and little moments giving that some extra flair are a delight, but holy shit a highlight i'm instantly obsessed with forever, now if there's something and nobody pours themself, i'm out

oh we sloshing!! all the water physics going on here to fantastic effect but also all working within the confines of "and it's some guy." immaculate joke 5 sec later around the "i am Not an inspector" line just What a delight. the vision....the manifestation of effort, craft....i'm not kidding at all i'm like okay forever treasuring [pours yourself] clip and if someone doesn't get it it's like it's called joie de vivre, panache, taking all kinds. some sloshheads out here

again i had a delightful time at the cinema (figuratively. i didn't go anywhere. though i did go "oh fuck re: even the idea of seeing plenty of this in theater format" like i was going oh Shit at visuals and music and every damn thing enough already, can only imagine) i was like bitch i love ppl living life vignettesquely with the emotional arcs aids of metaphor, symbolism. i love the styles and designs and i love paying attention to details and going damn how they'd do that, i love technical shit, noting techniques that are centered around 2D derived visuals, about aesthetic effect & visual purpose....i was going "oh my god same. lately, always, ongoing. oh my god it's me always crying at everything, but also never at anything, and also just sometimes at some things. it's me with the Temper it's me with one like everyone else but not about to let it out at all / not be making room for anyone else's. me like 'just powering through like arghhh' me like 'that, but [a puddle]' liable to spontaneously interact with randos by just doing your own thing, also [dying] and beloathed at that, going with the flow trying to carpe diem it, having these conversations and navigations like just as one person lmao, and also ofc it's different" lol like oh damn okay. and twentysomethings popular with the nebkids like wow in real life....and just having a great time entirely straightforwardly and expecting as much but also being increasingly delighted and surprised and going "wow my aesthetique sensibilities piqued" and going "wow okay a journey" and like Gasp at details and loving the overall effects and little moments and shots and entire deal. did weep repeatedly, when you slosh, when you soggy....delighted a lot, along for the ride having fun for the whole way, so much abt [bummed 20somethings who are nevertheless very vivacious Feeling Things, including About feeling things] and the way that's given sooo much space, Saturating things even, maybe with light & color....i liked it a bunch, [aaaaaa], great time, thinking about feeling things and feeling about it and about thinking about it & so on & so forth too like man hang on a second. and the soundtrack. and the character designs Overall there did i mention?? so cute & fun. wobbly wavy shivery tapering having Flow in the lines / shapes of silhouettes in different ways just like flow in [fluid dynamics] of flame or water in different ways. there's a lot i can say but i just mostly did the backgrounds / color / lighting noncomprehensive slideshow lol. i was very engaged like oh wahoo yippee aaa then mfs let's go and keep going

#i'm big on like rainbow lot of color constant saturation....Yet; Atmosphere / skilled balance in application/usage #i don't have the restraint (or like full knowledge / experience lol) to Use it myself but i Love when i see it used lol. Very colorful here #and i had thoughts & feelings & a good time so that made it easier to be like oh whee AND look at that background. mf we sloshing #nonzero spoilers via largely contextless static images; many wide shots / environments; really doesn't matter much #but i guess if you're like ''i specifically want to know Nothing at All'' like well then there are images in there #like 65% me going ''and look at that purple. oh my God the green blue & blue green. Orange''#b/c like wrow....#pixar elemental #films to whisper to myself like omg. like me. right now #btw it's kind of long post inside there. but For Me; typically so lol #can't say shit in thirty tags!! esp when i had a great time i liked it i was like oh my god #can't even say that shit in regular text which is why i mostly talk about colorful backgrounds lmfao. and even Then!! and so on so forth #and hand over heart like omg when by yourself you're a bit too much; but together; you're a bit too much together ;w;#like wow just like me; me; & still me!!! and not caring about what's all ''too much'' like it's about the me & me actually thanks #(and ofc the premise / central metaphor/conflict there as is; vulnerable cultural identity that needs to be maintained but uh oh)#speaking of uh oh look who's underway in the tags!! i'm heading myself off now lmao. time for half past 3 am Night Sandwich

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hms-no-fun · 1 year

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I hope this ask doesn't come off as rude at all-- and I apologize if it does!-- but as an aspiring writer, I'm honestly really confused by some of the early choices in Godfeels, and I'm curious if I'm just not "getting it". I saw some posts about it pop up in the tag (and they WERE very shitty and rude about it :/), but I'd love to hear your explanation/take on June's big character change immediately post-realization, and especially the... "Trickster Arc", I guess it could be called? The former I get to some extent, but I'm really curious about the choice to do all THAT so early in the story with the trickster candy.

Seriously love your work, your narration is honestly a big inspiration to me in terms of how meta it gets and how close it gets to communicating directly with both the main character AND the audience!

no rudeness detected at all! this is a great question, in fact it’s one i’ve been kinda hoping someone would ask because i’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot these last few months. but i get the sense that you’re at least a little new here, so uh, yeah, hello, when people ask me interesting questions i tend to answer at great length. so strap in for that after the break lmao. also as a note, there will be some spoilers for all of godfeels here but please don’t let that scare you away, they’re all contextless and, if anything, might honestly make the rest of the story *more* enjoyable as a result.

as far as "getting it" goes, i've talked at length about the how & why of the violence in godfeels in multiple places so i'll try to avoid rehashing that too much here. but one thing i want to emphasize right off the bat is that i never intended godfeels to be an ongoing thing. you talk about the trickster arc happening “so early in the story” but when i wrote godfeels 1 i didn’t plan on writing more. i didn’t even plan on making john trans! my idea of what the sum total of godfeels 2 would be when i started writing it wound up being completely different from the finished work. i didn’t plan to make this thing so long. i didn’t plan for june to accidentally on purpose kill her friends while drunk and then retcon it. i didn’t plan on turning the whole thing into a space opera. it all just happened to me, man. i kept writing because i kept finding more interesting things to say. and it’s important to specify that when i started gf1 i hadn’t written fiction in years. i think if you jumped ahead to godfeels 3 part 1 chapter 8, no matter how you feel about the content we’d at least be able to agree that in the years since 2019 i’ve become a much much better writer. if you want more insight into how my process has evolved, i’ve written so so so much about it, too much maybe even, in the #sarahposts tag.

anyway, now i want to talk about june's "big character change." the extent to which her trickster arc makes sense or feels in character seems to vary wildly from person to person. what always bugs me about "ooc" as a criticism is that godfeels starts six years and change after the end of homestuck. let's remember that the protagonists of homestuck were sixteen when the comic ended. now i want you to ask yourself if you as you were at 16 would think that you as you are now was "in character." or vice versa! probably not, right? it doesn’t even have to have been six years. i was STILL sixteen when i started to get embarrassed of who i was at sixteen!

that should be all i need to say, but it isn’t. and it doesn't really get to the core of the issue anyway. i am not nor have i ever been interested in writing "a sequel to homestuck,” even though it has kind of just become that anyway. godfeels has always been about the meaty existential drama you can tease out through the complicated character dynamics of these fucked up traumatized gods. godfeels has always been my way of analyzing the themes and ideas of homestuck, the existential ramifications of the mechanics of SBURB and the classpects and retcon (let’s remember that i wrote godfeels around the same time that i took over hosting duties on the perfectly generic podcast). godfeels has also always been about me and my trauma. i even used to joke that june was my self-insert character, though i've seen that line repeated unironically by enough people who haven't read godfeels that i've stopped saying it. because it's not true! june is very, very different from me... i just happen to see my life reflected in her eyes.

to immediately rehash what i said i wouldn't, june eg8ert arose out of my frustration with most versions of the june egbert headcanon particularly in the summer of 2019. let's call her "hairclips june." hairclips june is always smiling, usually with smiling friends, she's wearing hairclips and has nonzero tit and is A Woman Now. as i said in my video, while i don't begrudge anyone their comfort food, this simply was not my experience with coming out as a trans woman. and of all the characters, i’d always identified most with john. also i thought, you know, these kids are SERIOUSLY messed up, every single one of them has died multiple times, they've seen things and done things no one should ever have to. and retcon! god, what a mindfuck retcon is.

those are the primal ingredients of godfeels. what if june came out and everyone wasn't chill about it? some folks say that's out of character and, idk, i guess that's arguably true. but i had friends who were very vocal trans allies who’d been in queer relationships who still stopped talking to me after i came out. let me tell you i spent a lot of time fucked up in the head over how "out of character" that was for them, to the extent that i blamed myself for their reaction because surely they couldn't be so out of character. to which one might respond, well, why do this as a homestuck fic then? why not just do my own original thing instead?

and i guess the answer is that i didn't want to and i still don't, really. it's not just about the characters for me. i like the rules of the homestuck universe. i find it interesting how it mechanically reflects being a fictional narrative. and, you know, maybe it's easier for me to process violent intrusive thoughts through a character who is capable of acting on those thoughts and then immediately undoing them consequence-free. retcon is, in fact, sort of the perfect mechanism for exploring violent intrusive thoughts because it lets us play out the fantasy without lasting diegetic harm, such that we can just focus on the existential and moral questions of the phenomenon itself. and like, yeah, that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. but isn’t it still just as valid a topic to explore in fiction as anything else?

like em or not, people have intrusive thoughts. people have violent impulses. sometimes they even act on them. the unpleasantness of a phenomenon shouldn’t dictate whether it is acceptable to depict in fiction-- if anything, we ought to take our instinctive desire to look away as an urgent invitation to look closer instead. as i’ve been wont to say for years and years now, “problematic” implies a problem to be solved. that which is human is inherently complicated. to pretend it’s all good or bad excises humanity from the equation, or at least flattens the range of acceptable humanity. all of which is my extremely soapboxy way of saying (as i’ve said a million times by now), yes, godfeels june is problematic. that is in fact what godfeels is about.

there's an extent to which i think this can be blamed on how rooted we are IN june's perspective in gf1 and 2. i don't think people really appreciate the fact that godfeels 1 is john threatening to commit suicide and almost going through with it. that's the context in which her friends react poorly to her coming out; i mean, she's literally sleeping on rose's couch because everyone's so worried about her! i think that, by being completely within june's perspective for all of these events, we don't really get a good sense of the interpersonal dynamics at play (probably because i didn't even really understand them myself until later). instead we just see people who should know better acting like dicks.

i think whether or not june’s trickster arc is canonically palatable to you depends very much on whether or not you've had a dear friend disappoint you so much that you're no longer on speaking terms.

but if we want to reel this back from the abstract philosophical, maybe it’s enough to say that we just have different interpretations of these characters? they’re not monoliths, you know. different people see different things in different characters. some folks get a lot out of hairclips june and that’s okay. maybe i was a bitch about other people’s headcanons back in 2019 when redditors were calling me and my friends abusive pedophiles for liking vriska, but i gave up that fight when the redditors got what they wanted (to harass a group of queer creators offline and out of their jobs). if someone wants to woobify gamzee, whatever man, go right ahead. that ain’t my cup of tea and i personally don’t think that’s very in character either, but that’s why i don’t read it. it ain’t for me and that’s fine. i like homestuck BECAUSE these characters can mean so many things to so many people. is this variability not precisely the thing that makes the postcanon era so interesting?

i have my idea of who these characters are based on who they were in the comic and i work very hard to keep them in character, but i also don't want them to be trapped in amber. i want them to grow and change and become different people, because homestuck itself is obsessed with inescapable absolute archetypes (ie the ultimate self, or the captchalogue system) and i enjoy troubling that. i enjoy swimming in a sea of weird problematic dilemmas. that’s what’s fun about fiction for me, you can think about and write about all the most difficult and even fucked up things you like, and it definitionally cannot cause real material nonconsensual harm to another human being. and yet we get so tied up in the question of harm anyway! maybe that makes sense when talking about marvel movies, but this is fanfiction we’re talking about. this is HOMESTUCK fanfiction. if i were to go on twitter right now and post “homestuck is good” i’d end the day with at least five comments saying “lol no it’s not.” SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE WILL HAVE HOMESTUCK AVATARS. there are few things as cringe as liking homestuck even among people who like homestuck, so who cares? i like homestuck, i like the epilogues, i like hs2, and i think a pretty gargantuan majority of this fandom are subliterate babies. that’s why i don’t engage with them or make much of an attempt to bridge the gap. i think godfeels and its cool little fandom is all the better for how much work it requires of the reader to “get it” as it were. i wish more people would give it a chance, or at the very least not immediately throw me and a lot of my friends under the bus at every possible opportunity, but what can you do? i just write. people will react how they will react. what matters to me is that it stays true to itself as a work, and that it grows with me and my audience and my collaborators. trying to backpedal or soften the edges would just ruin the whole thing, likely alienate my current readers and inevitably invite even more bad faith readings. no thanks!

some folks stop reading godfeels after june's trickster arc, and i can respect that. if you get to that part of the story and don't like it, chances are you're not gonna like the rest of it! and in that sense, i guess you could say i “chose” to have june’s trickster arc happen so “early on” as a litmus test for the reader. as annoying as it can be feeling like i’m constantly having to address this exact issue, i vastly prefer it to a bunch of people hate-reading something that wasn’t made for them. but again, i didn’t know this was “early on” when i wrote it, because i didn’t plan it to happen. i didn’t intend for june to go on a killing spree, she just did it and i as writer decided, you know what? this is way more interesting than what i had planned. and then dirk became the antagonist because, oops, june coming out fucked up all the schemes he has that play out in the homestuck epilogues. and i guess in THAT sense, the palatability of godfeels depends on whether or not you liked and/or tolerated the homestuck epilogues and homestuck^2. these, too, are not for everyone. but godfeels is not a replacement for them, as some folks like to claim (god bless them). i’m not interested in rewriting homestuck or fixing its sequels. ok well that’s not entirely true, i think the epilogues did jake REAL dirty and that’s become a big focus of mine going forward. but even then, i don’t pretend the epilogues didn’t happen. in fact if you’ve read all of 3.1, you know just how cosmically important they end up being.

but this is, i guess, kind of the crux of the issue for me. june’s trickster arc happens very early on in the story, yes, and that’s deliberately challenging on a lot of levels. june spends a great deal of time being challenged by it herself! but folks who stop there (if they even make it that far) often act like the whole story is grimdark wish-fulfillment violence or me airing out my irrational hatred of Boys (????), and that's just not true. i don’t give a shit about that. we get to june's trickster arc at around the 25,000 word mark, out of the current grand total of over 400,000 words. her violence is functionally the prologue, and she spends the entire rest of this story suffering the consequences of those actions. so if i am frustrated with this line of questioning, a lot of it comes down to the fact that if you just read the rest of the story you’d see that i have in fact had all of the same thoughts you’ve likely had. i know people who think i did dirk dirty in gf2, and i actually kind of agree! which is why dirk comes back and has a difficult, complicated relationship with his past self. people complain about certain characters being ooc, which i can certainly understand because when i started godfeels i really did not have a great grasp on them! but also, if you kept reading godfeels you’d know that the tension of whether or not someone is cosmically “in character” is a huge running theme of this story. june’s friends react poorly to her coming out in part because it seems out of character for her! hell, phenomenologically how *could* june be in character after coming out when she barely even knows who she is yet? her whole thing in gf1 is that she doesn’t know who she is anymore! just realizing that you’re trans changes you, changes how you see the world, how you relate to other people. or it did for me, anyway. risk, dare, X, angel dirk, and silverbark are all sorts of caught up in this question. and if you’ve gotten to the end of 3.1 you’ll know about the concept of denexustic radiation:

and that’s just the tip of the metaphysical iceberg. all of which is to say that this is a feature, not a bug. so it’s always very funny to me when people drop out so early on only to complain about the very same problematics that i’ve spent three years and 400,000 words exploring.

BUT. but. yeah godfeels 1 and 2 are messy. the gf3 prologue is very messy. it’s a serial narrative that has changed shape multiple times over the years, and barring a bit of polish on gf1 around when i started writing gf3 i generally refuse to go back and rewrite things. there’s a lot i would do differently today, but if i had done it differently then the story as it is today would not exist. and i love this story! i might look back on gf2 and feel like it’s rushed and messy, but i know that it was the best i could do at the time. it’s a reflection of who i was as a writer then. i live with the ramifications of that for the same reason i don’t delete the old videos on my channel from before i came out/learned what communism was: because i don’t like to pretend that the present was always present. i’m a different person now, a different writer. i made mistakes, i learned, and i changed. i will continue this process for the rest of my natural life, as will you.

ultimately i guess my answer here is that godfeels is a flawed work written by a flawed person, and the extent to which readers relate to it seems to have a lot to do with how much their flaws overlap with mine. i get lots of people telling me my characters are in character. i get people telling me they’re more in character than some canon! and it’s not that i weigh those comments as more valuable, i just see it as an indication of who my audience is. i’m not writing for people who want more hiveswap, and i’m certainly not writing for people who dismissed hs^2 out of hand. i’m just writing for myself and my friends, and it just so happens that some people seem to get a lot out of it.

i’m gonna close out here by actually finally directly addressing your question with what i think you were ultimately hoping for: some writing advice.

the rules don’t exist. there are things that can make some art better or some art worse but they are not universal. the rules are fake and if you hold every story you touch to those rules, you’re gonna have a bad time. a story is not static and it is never truly yours. you discover it. sometimes you can expand it or alter it in ways but, at least in my experience, doing so more often than not just kills the whole thing-- or at least demands a complete reconceptualization. all of which takes time, and we live in a world where taking time to get in touch with and hone your craft is considered sort of a bad economic decision. but art is what it is and it does what it does and we can either play with it or we can put it in a cage.

what i like about making art is that i am not entirely in control. i have my plans, my schemes, my ideas, but the fun of writing is just putting a bunch of characters in a room together and seeing what they do. quite often they do things i would never expect, that are far truer to their character than i anticipated. my experience has always been that the more you outline a story before you write it, the harder it is to actually write that story. when i know everything that’s gonna happen on a moment to moment level, the whole thing falls dead on the page. but obviously you need to know SOME things! and i’ll say that from the inception of gf3 back in december 2019 to now, very very few of the broad strokes of my plans have changed. if you’ve read all of 3.1 you know there’s a very specific timeline at play in the backstory of a group of characters we’ll be spending a lot of time with in 3.2. there are no questions or mysteries or whatever else i’ve introduced to this story that i did not have at least the sense of an explanation for. but these are simply bullet points that dictate the endpoint of a path and suggest something of the moral/philosophical/emotional arc that needs to occur in order to get there. the real meat of it comes out in the act of writing itself, and that’s what i’m here for. it’s a gamble that doesn’t always pay off, and it does mean that i have almost 80,000 words of material i ended up rewriting or cutting sitting in a doc somewhere, but that’s worth it for me.

if art is to be relevant, it must have the capacity to make an audience uncomfortable. if art is to be essential, it must have the capacity to demand a strong reaction (positive or negative) from everyone who sees it. if art is to be true, it must have the capacity to reflect the disquiet contradictions of simple existence that we desperately wish to ignore in our daily lives. that doesn’t mean everyone has to or should read difficult art, or like it, or make it. but it has always existed and it will always exist, and i think it is essential for writers and critics alike to learn to stop themselves from mistaking a common storytelling method for THE storytelling method. and frankly, most of the art i love most in this world is art that i didn’t particularly like the first time we crossed paths.

and lastly, never forget the inarguable truth that the audience bears quite a lot of responsibility in this equation. you are never, as a writer, inflicting anything on your reader, because your reader can always opt out at any moment they wish. if something doesn’t work, yeah, that’s a problem you can fix. art is a conversation in that way, or at least ought to be. but at the same time, art has no obligation to be perfect, or smooth, or easy to consume. the rules are fake. they exist to be broken. the pursuit of perfection is a dead end. just make shit

okay this one has gone on QUITE long enough lmao i hope there’s something useful in there for you somewhere and uhhhh i hope you enjoy the rest of godfeels if you haven’t already read it!

#sarahposts #godfeels #homestuck #writing advice #problematic art #transgender writing #june egbert #homestuck epilogues #homestuck2 #trickster arc

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annelidist · 11 months

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Any current theories/symbolism reads/other thoughts not yet posted on umineko? I am always trawling the tag for umiposting. Also, have you been spoiled on anything?

i recently finished ep3, which puts a lot of new things on the table, so a lot of thoughts because there's just. so much to think about. beato has been even more of a delight than usual throughout this episode. i was kind of willing to accept her contrition and floundering attempts to better herself as an interesting direction for the character, but the final turn at the end where it's revealed she truly is just unrepentantly, irredeemably awful is such a delightful moment.

i've been thinking a lot about the line that gets drawn in ep3 between becoming a witch and growing up. becoming an adult means letting go of certain dreams, resigning yourself to the possible, and if you do that then magic slips beyond your reach forever. a direct line is drawn (i think by hideyoshi?) between the cruelty of witches and a child pulling the wings off an insect. as the only witch who appears as an adult woman rather than an adolescent girl, beato is kind of an outlier in this regard, but you can totally see that mile-wide streak of immaturity in her nature, the irrationality that keeps her rooted in the impossible. battler is positioned as sort of an anti-witch with his categorical refusal to believe and his deep emotional ties to those around him, but he also shares this nature of being physically adult and intellectually rigorous while possessing kind of a childish personality. they're great foils.

speaking of battler, i cannot get over how fucking stupid his arguments get in this episode. it's perfect. he's started just making shit up and it rules. umineko is a battle anime about debate club, and battler has finally realised that debates aren't won by being correct, they're won by being better at debate. "mysterious mechanism x." dickhead. i love him

last battler thing, i'm fascinated by that brief moment where his rejection of beato is forms an actual magical barrier against her. just super interesting to me that the things battler is capable of as anti-witch are still couched in the visual language of magic. his rejection of magic is still a kind of participation. i guess that kind of contradiction is fundamental to what battler's doing here, given that he relies on the red truth, a magical conceit made up by the witch, in his rhetorical struggle against the existence of witches. just very interesting to me

i also really really like how eva and rosa are written in this chapter but this post is long already

re spoilers: i have been spoiled on a bunch of miscellaneous things like the designs of upcoming characters, battler's dickhead cape, and the existence of multiple kinds of coloured text, but nothing important in terms of plot. currently i'm at the very beginning of ep4, so approaching the halfway mark by word count. also some completely contextless Beato Facts like her and battler apparently turning out to be cousins and her being [taking this one with a massive pinch of salt because tumblr users will say it about anything] transgender

#bones.txt #asks #umineko

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crystalelemental · 16 days

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Now for the other half of the Nexomon Extinction bit: story, characters, creatures, etc. The non-mechanics. And this? This is, I think, their stride.

To clarify: we are currently through the Drake Isles. My wife started in on the Frozen Tundra, but had to double back for levels due to some team composition changes. Everything I'm talking about is only up through that point. I'd say "please don't share future details," but the Nexomon tag here seems to be like three people, and the Reddit forum hasn't updated in two years, so I'm probably safe. That said, I'm about to be that spoiler for everyone else. Yes, all three of you.

The story's pretty good! The first game was mostly fine, if goofy. The netherworld section had a great conclusion that really set things up nicely. Omnicron was released, but waited for your return as its rival; the strongest human against the strongest Nexomon. You win, and can destroy him, leading to the inevitable extinction of all Nexomon. They kinda leave off there, though, with the post-game being "His children also came back, but you can find them with this radar thing." It's contextless acquisition of legendary monsters though, nothing story-based occurs.

Extinction picks up 1000 years later, where the central conflict seems to be that these major beasts called Tyrants are awakening and fighting each other for dominance, in a war to find a new king to replace Omnicron. Humans are pushing back, and have dragons that are made to hunt these Tyrants, in order to prevent a sort of second coming of Omnicron that could wipe them out.

Your role in this is that you're a starting tamer going off on your quest when you are attacked by a dragon and have to find shelter. This kicks off a chain of events that sees you join the guild to fight against the Tyrants, and also to owning an egg that will one day hatch into a Tyrant. Things go as they go, fighting different Tyrant masters and eventually learning some really fun stuff about some of the major players being perhaps a tad extreme. It's a really interesting pivot, and I really enjoy how things are framed.

Cast is a lot more dynamic this time too. Not that there weren't interesting ones before, but I feel like a lot of it existed to be goofy. This time around, they're a little more...established? Or maybe I just find them more interesting. Amelie is fascinating, I like her a lot. There's a scene talking about how her life's work could go to waste if she doesn't take action, and the response is just a calm "If it could be undermined that easily, then what good was it? Let the best course win." Her motivation really is a sort of "good for the people" mentality, regardless of her own standing.

The children of Omnicron are back, and we get a bit more resolution about what's going on with them. Specifically, confirmation that the player character from game 1 did go back to defeat and imprison each of them, and they're really salty about it. It's interesting, because neither of them are particularly hostile anymore, just dissatisfied with their circumstance. I do like that both of the children we've met have kinda come around to you, at least mildly. Nadine in particular giving you advice on how to not die implies some level of interest in what you're doing. Given that Deena is currently standing against the current antagonist, it would be interesting if all the children aligned on this one. They're bastards, but I do love a good domesticated villain.

The creatures themselves are good to great. I like a lot of the creative work on these designs, and in particular love the amount of cats. Lunabelle is my favorite design in this series so far. I'm also a big fan of Malitress, Madamusa, Sirnympha, and Floreina. Some of the dragon designs are also really cool. I don't generally like standard dragons, but the dragons that don't strictly look like dragons are my jam. So big fan of the Psychic and Ghost dragons. The starter designs are all really strong, too. Even the ones I didn't love at first really grew on me. I think, by and large, I like this set of Nexomon better. There are a few designs I really miss, but this is a good batch.

I have been very satisfied with the general experience of the game overall. It's been great.

#nexomon extinction

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amegeddon · 1 year

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I wrote an abridged as hell from memory version of TFOTA and then google translated the shit out of it last year so here's a little compilation of funny parts because why not

I have yet to do one for The Stolen Heir but I have done the main trilogy + the little spinoff one that followed Cardan.

Idk if anyone wants the full thing instead of just contextless bits from it but if anyone does then feel free to ask and I'll post (I can post the translated and untranslated versions btw)

Anyways, this probably contains spoilers for the series but it's also really hard to understand without prior context so idk, read at your own risk I guess lol.

"Stupid Judd, speechless in the clouds, very rich on one of them, but androgynous, would not admit in the second half of the book ... apple"

"Cardin also loved Baywood, so he was quickly kicked out of the band. You understand)"

""I'm Crazy About You" is an old-fashioned group that asks enemies in the 80's to make a film about a boy, but yes,"

"he embarked on an FBI trip led by one of Cardan's brothers"

"Bad locks."

"Cardin's career failed miserably. Is he stupid, even if Judd can't solve it, maybe he can help solve problems?"

"The Rock once fooled Judas because he dragged him to a party at his home while digging in a camp. house."

"he does know that Locke goes back to Book 2 and somehow enjoys smoking."

"Judd says, "Why am I Dunbar more than him?" Yeah and Nekasia says she's like an ambassador because you like having a daughter now she's not okay, should my mom talk to her?"

"Kadan should be ruled in the land of the fish, that is, the fishing system."

"Only members of the royal family at Greenbury announced the impending destruction of the United States."

"Judd looked up nervously: "Wow ... what a beautiful donkey.""

"Oh, no twins,"

"Cardan was about to take responsibility for something (probably because they were stupid)."

"destroy the part of the palace with the snake. I think some people ate at this point,"

"so I grabbed him a little bit and then cut off his head"

"stating that if he did not apologize he would do all the work on the fish farm,"

"Nothing really interesting happened to the terrorists."

"Carden decided that it would be better for him to get drunk for the rest of his life, so he drank heavily, talked at the door several times, went downstairs, cried down the stairs,"

#tfota #the folk of the air #cardan greenbriar #jude duarte #holly black #folk of the air #jurdan #the cruel prince #tcp #the wicked king #the queen of nothing #how the king of elfhame learned to hate stories #btw go follow oreoskys they helped me tag this (you are my saviour tysm)#also follow onthehuuunt bc they offered emotional support when I couldn't figure out what to do for tags lol

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pb-dot · 9 months

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Contextless Spoiler Tag

There are few things I like more than writing about or talking about my novel The Clockwork Boy, but luckily for today's tag, passed on to me by @mrbexwrites, one of those things happens to be being cryptic.

Rules: share something (text, photo, song lyric) that could be a spoiler for a wip but without context it’s not

With this in mind I tag @robin-writes-a-lot @rickie-the-storyteller @bardic-tales and @covenscribe ever so gently

Without further ado, here's contextless Clockwork Boy Spoilers

You got me in a spin but everything is a-ok

The Darkness, I believe in a thing called love

Triangle man, Triangle man

They Might Be Giants, Particle Man

#hearts in clockwork #the clockwork boy #writing #writeblr #tag game

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undertaleofficial · 1 year

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This is my called shot, if Deltarune continues to follow Live A Live (spoilers of LAL below)

All things in brackets are things that happened to Oersted from LAL which may not be applicable to Deltarune's variant on it but it's worth noting the exact circumstances just in case I'm right

A single new party member will be added every chapter [and the previous members who aren't a part of the hero triad like Noelle may not recur as playables in the Dark Worlds ever again until the finale where they could potentially be used one last time to face off against the final boss].

The seven revealed chapters will turn into nine chapters. (Likely 6 and 7 will be released together as supposedly the final chapters, but it'll actually be revealed that 8 and 9 are unlocked when 7 is completed like in LAL.)

Kris will kill someone important (most likely Susie) after being tricked/forced into doing it and then framed afterwards.

The perpetrator of this would have to be Ralsei as he is the only one so far who matches up with Oersted's wizard ex-friend who frames him (and Ralsei is also literally called 'prince of the dark' which is incredibly similar to the title used by the big bads in LAL, 'Lord of Dark').

To back this 'traitorous Ralsei' line of thought up since it's very controversial in the Deltarune fandom, Ralsei is the one who taught Kris how to use their 'proceed' ability in Chapter 1's jail segment and he mentioned it at least once before that with very odd, specific wording to include it. He also is aware of the metanarrative as directly shown in Chapter 2's genocide route when he's upset that the narrative won't move on to where it should during both scenes with Noelle and Susie, yet he does nothing about the route itself. Unless his awareness of the metanarrative is extremely limited to the point he can't see any of Snowgrave happening somehow, that makes him incredibly suspicious on its own.

Also, while not proof exactly, Oersted's final boss forms in LAL directly inspired every one of Asriel's final boss designs in Undertale (even Omega Flowey)... this may explain why Kris (a knight, like Oersted) takes the role of Oersted and Ralsei as Oersted's ex-friend (also a wizard) since Asriel's story is not really similar to Oersted's and Asriel is still a good person when he loses Flowey's emotionlessness.

Somewhat related, one strange thing about Deltarune's Darkner prophecy as foretold by Ralsei is that the Angel is excluded from it despite its continued existence in the Light World's version of the sigil. This could be willful doctoring on Ralsei's part or just unknown to him, but in my opinion it's likely that there is still an Angel, who is someone other than the triad of heroes and decides the fate of the world similarly to the Angel of Undertale.

Kris kills Ralsei in a fight to the death after Ralsei tries to use his full power to destroy/take over the Light World.

[Kris's love interest (Noelle?) commits suicide after learning about the two murders Kris committed, without being aware of the context behind them. (I think this is the most likely bit to be removed/changed since I also think Noelle is the real Angel of the prophecy and is the most likely person to be the true protagonist after Kris turns regardless, especially if Susie and Ralsei are both dead by this point, but this mayyy be relevant somehow anyway since she's crushing on Susie.)]

Kris becomes evil[/a Lord of Dark specifically], presumably due to the contextless backlash of killing Ralsei and the victim they'd been framed for.

Kris will be killed by the combined forces of the rest of the party members [after Kris has become the latest incarnation of hatred like Ralsei before them], thus saving the world... but at a great cost, and with the knowledge that any person has the capacity to become filled with hate and evil as it is said in LAL.

This is just my best guess of what Toby is going for with Deltarune's finale using Live A Live's finale as an outline. Undertale's pacifist route was the antithesis to Live A Live and I think Deltarune may be the reoccurrence of Live A Live, possibly regardless of route as indicated by the game's central theme (and the fact that Toby has said there is only one ending). It probably won't be exactly like I've said but most likely similar in some instances (some characters may be switched around, the exact contents of the story events might be altered compared to the LAL counterparts, etc.).

#yes its another essay from me today my friend #live a live spoilers

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