#i need to actually write the fifty fics that exist to my brain otherwise all these thoughts will never see the sun

[jade-of-mourning]

sorry sometimes i think about mako and my heart hurts so much. this kid raised himself and his brother on the streets in homelessness and utter poverty from eight through fifteen, promptly after seeing the violent death of his mother and father. he turned to the triple threats because they couldn't survive as a pair of wretched kids without any adult support, and the environment forced him to turn into the exact character that killed his parents in a terrible twist of irony. and after sheer-fucking-luck hits and they aren't homeless anymore, their livelihood wavers on the outcome of what's a literally game to everyone but them; and after things are finally starting to look up and their team is going places and things just might be okay, his gradually stabilizing world unceremoniously expands and everything goes to shit.

and the city that chewed him up and spat him back out, ruined him as a child and took away his ability to stay afloat in a true sense of normalcy as an adult — when it's on the verge of destruction and falling to pieces before his eyes, he gives himself to save it with the full expectation to die. he went from the kid who didn't and couldn't care about anything outside of himself and his brother, to finding redemption for his younger self in his police work despite its injustice against him, to willingly sacrificing himself to a world that had never loved him.

he's a desperate people pleaser, socially and emotionally stunted for the adult he had to be as a kid, unable to navigate interpersonal relationships easily yet still trying his damned hardest. he's intensely and entirely devoted to the things that matter to him and for so long it was only him, bolin, and ensuring their survival — yet by the end, that devotion has expanded to protecting the rest of the world. he starts out entirely self-reliant and ends in trusting the people he cares about to know their own needs, to be able to take care of themselves, to be okay without him despite having spent so much of his life defined by his role in others' well-being.

just. what the fuck i'm such a big fan of this fictional guy and i'm unashamed about it at this point. also let him cry please (if you won't i'll do it i'll let him cry)

#lychee's brain trash #mako lok #mako tlok #sorry for the shitpost i don't do a lot of those i realize #how tf did this guy not had a massive break down in canon at any point #nd like;; he never shows resentment for the unfairness of it all #he doesn't ever use his past to excuse any of his choices/actions that are influenced by it #which is pretty intrinsically linked to his relationship fumbles #he just quietly holds himself accountable and probably mildly despises himself haha #as much as i don't care for the love triangle it really does make complete sense in accordance to his backstory #anyway this is just a roundabout way of me expressing my salt at people writing him off as a malicious asshole lol #i literally cannot articulate the intense complex things his conjured up existence makes me feel #this does not even scratch the surface there is SO MUCH #i need to actually write the fifty fics that exist to my brain otherwise all these thoughts will never see the sun #trust that one day the avatar!mako au will emerge from my drafts;;; #and. you know. that one shot i've had in wip for the past 2.5 years #and the four other oneshots that will probably never be converted into actual words

[leonawriter]

I realise every so often that I tend to ignore/forget about Shelke? 

Like, I’ll refer to Deepground events and all, but when it comes to actually including her and the others in my fics, I just... brain completely overlooks the possibility.

I think there are a few reasons. 

The major one is, I don’t actually like the characters of Shelke and her sister Shalua. It’s sad, but they... never really got me invested in who they are, not really? I’ve never had any real, lasting emotional engagement in their stories. 

It doesn’t help that I’m not a big fan of their designs, either. I mean, girl who looks like she’s a nine year old who’s actually nineteen, who has no reason to look like she’s that young - look at the shaky pseudo-science behind it, it’s shakier than an old BBC sci-fi set! None of the other Tsviets are stuck in ageless bodies! - and a scientist who dresses in.... uh.... those aren’t even clothes, they’re just underwear and belts, what the HELL design team, what were you ON.

They also don’t really sell themselves well. Not to me. Shelke never really owns her new emotions and emotional connections until the, uh... last fifteen minutes, maybe? The last quarter of the gameplay featuring her? The epilogue? It’s hard to connect emotionally with someone who would like to pretend that no, none of this is actually real for them, and they’re going to insult the people who are helping them frequently!

I can understand Shalua being the way she is to a point, but also, there’s just... her design is really distracting (in a sense of ‘why, oh god why, this is entirely unnecessary’ every time I see her) and she looks completely - or almost completely - unaffected by Most Things. She has a few lines that she tends to repeat about Shelke being her ‘reason to live’, but... she doesn’t really come off as anything much more than flat to me. I know she appears more in Before Crisis, but even knowing some of the things from there, she still feels like a character who was only half cared for - especially with how she was kinda fridged in order to advance her sister’s storyline! Literally, she sacrifices herself and gets stuck in a healing tube that gets... lost? I don't even know. She’s never seen or heard from again.

The other major thing, I think, is the way that no matter how SE tries to put it, putting the mind and/or memories of some guy’s love interest in the body of Shelke, who as said before, ‘body of nine year old, mind of nineteen year old’, is incredibly skeevy and uncomfortable. Especially when it’s Vincent. 

Like... I don’t care that Shelke may or may not have some sort of longevity thing going on? I don’t know? But for one thing, Lucrecia’s still alive, dumbasses, and for another thing, you’re going to push her feelings into a kid who’s still a damn teenager no matter what, even taking her mental age into consideration, when Vincent’s either in his fifties or mentally nearly thirty? That’s just WEIRD. Even if Vincent politely says ‘no’ and backs away enough for Shelke to sort out her own feelings on this, it’s still really damn weird.

So... on the one hand I don’t feel emotional attachment or investment, so it’s hard to remember that she’s even supposed to exist at all, and for another the idea of writing a character who has that emotional baggage is just... no. 

And like, if I need to say where she is, it’d be incredibly easy to say she’s just. Somewhere else. It’s been enough time since the final events of DoC in most fic that she could have started working with the WRO, or she’s off following Vincent around, or she’s in Wutai with Yuffie, or she’s... I dunno, doing her own thing? If I feel like the plot needs her, I’d find a way for it to work. But unless she’s needed, then I as a fan writer don’t have to include her.

And I’m saying this because I recognise when people don't include characters who should by all means be in certain situations or with certain people and they aren’t there, I get annoyed; I also get annoyed when female characters are sidelined for bad reasons, or no reason at all. So, my feelings on these two here are personal, and if need be I’ll work around it, but otherwise I’ll only do what actually makes me happy.

#ff7 stuff