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minty364 · 3 months

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DPXDC Prompt#148 Part 2

Danny feels himself grow bright red and the two stare into each other's eyes for what felt like an eternity.

“I- Uh… I’m Danny” He finally managed to mutter.

“Damian Wayne, its a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Danny's blush grew even brighter as the next moment Damian kissed his hand, Danny couldn’t help but feel flustered.

After a moment Danny rubbed the back of his neck with his hand and stuttered out, “It’s nice, to meet you too” He could tell how happy Damian was to meet him and he felt a little bad for feeling nervous in the first place. Danny thought Damian was cute and he decided then that he wouldn’t mind getting to know him a little better. First they had to get through the rest of the gala, and soon as he thought about the gala something clicked.

He realized Damian was the son of Bruce Wayne who at the moment was talking to his own parents. He couldn’t help but stare as he let the information sink in.

“Ah yes it looks like Father is talking to some of the scientists that were invited.” Ancients, Danny knew his parents couldn’t help being themselves and unfortunately that meant things like accidentally spilling fudge right onto Mr. Wayne's suite. They watched as Mr. Wayne told his parents it wasn’t a problem and then walked out of the room.

Danny couldn’t help but sigh, “Sorry about them, my parents are a little eccentric. Don’t even get me started on their obsession with ghosts, my dad will not shut up sometimes.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck nervously again as he realized he was rambling a little bit.

“Don’t worry it looks like Father handled the situation well, although I am curious what kind of inventions two scientists obsessed with ghosts create. That’s what this gala is about, we want to support scientists in untapped fields of study.” Danny listened as his soulmate explained things to him.

Danny looked over to see Vlad talking to a thin scientist in the corner of the room. He was definitely up to something, a ball like this had Vlad scheming something with a mad scientist written all over it.

He was brought out from his thoughts as a loud crash could be heard as the wall across the room burst open and none other than the Joker walked through.

Danny tried to make his way to the other side of the gala, strangely Damian had disappeared but Danny didn’t have the time to look for him.

However when he got to the door staying low to the ground the door burst through and more of Joker's goons looked straight at him and he found himself tied up right in front of the Joker.

“What do we have here? A new Wayne?” Joker said as he cupped Danny's face in his hand. Danny couldn’t do anything about the situation and he was getting a little scared considering he didn’t have a proper way to go ghost or protect his soulmate at the moment.

The Joker circled around the tied up hostages laughing, “Of course now the fun begins”

The Joker continued to circle around the hostages thinking for a moment before he grabbed Danny.

He held Danny by the back of the shirt like a small kitten. His obsession was making him wonder if his soulmate was safe living in Gotham. Joker chuckled as he continued to hold Danny.

“This kid will be an example for the rest of you, I don’t want any outbursts like that again, especially when Batman gets here. Do you think Batman will like what I’ve done with the place?” He asked as he gestured around the ruined room. All of the tables and chairs had either been broken or knocked over and all of the food from the dessert and appetizer tables. It was quite the mess. Before Joker could do much else with the teen he had dangling in his grasp something flew out and smacked Joker right in the back of the head causing him to drop Danny.

Danny took that opportunity to get away, his hands may have been tied but his feet were sure free. He stumbled away as Batman dropped down and a fight between him and the Joker commenced.

Danny ran towards the door and as he got there Robin and Nightwing were there ushering some of the other hostages out of the room.

“Right this way citizens!” Nightwing said brightly at them but he seemed to brighten up a bit more when he saw Danny weirdly.

“Have either of you seen Damian Wayne?” Danny asked, he at least wanted to get his number, especially when he was headed back to Amity soon.

They seemed to share a look before looking back at him, “Damian left, he’s headed safely back to Wayne manor.” Robin said but he held out a piece of paper. On it was Damians signature and his phone number. Danny sighed a little annoyed he had left but he guessed it was common to head back home after a rogue attack in Gotham.

“Danny!!” the booming voice of Jack Fenton was suddenly heard and Danny felt himself getting pulled into a very familiar bear hug.

“Did you have fun at the gala? Your father and I saw you talking to Mr. Wayne's son,” His mother said after his feet were back on the ground.

“Yeah, actually can we talk about that after we’re back in our room?” He wanted to tell his parents he found his soulmate but saying that outloud when Damian was the son of Bruce Wayne sounded like a bad idea.

They headed back to the hotel room and all Danny could think about was how lucky he was to have met his soulmate tonight, even if he was nervous about everything.

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#dp x dc prompt #dp x dc #dc x dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #poor danny #Damian thinks its cute that he flustered his soulmate so much #I feel like I'm bad at this LMAO #how does one write romance?#Please tell me if I'm doing this wrong #I want to write the reveal but I don't want to do it right away #suspense? how do I write that?#Well I tried to do a little bit of action #I love the idea that Danny's so light everyone just throws him around like a ragdoll #Ragdoll theory? I cant remember if there was an actual name for it #anyways I've got to go look for a job now #my asks are open #all my prompts are free to use #soulmates

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theminecraftbee · 10 months

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okay now that i'm no longer trying to keep a project secret from certain people i can complain publicly about a thing i've been losing my mind about:

why the fuck is the evo wiki like that.

listen. i know. i know fandom wikis being decent entirely relies on whether there are people who both want to obsessively categorize things enough to fill out the wiki, with the free time to do that kind of obsessive categorization, and the desire to manage it all as a wiki. believe me, i know. but please i'm just trying to do research please, please at least bigb's page was just Entirely Empty so i knew i had useless information and just left. why the fuck did the mafia's page, by contrast, have this:

a sentence that is actively LESS USEFUL THAN IF IT WERE NOT THERE.

and then grian's page - GRIAN'S. GRIAN'S. THE ONE PAGE I THOUGHT MIGHT HAVE A SHOT OF BEING FILLED OUT. JOKE'S ON ME I GUESS.

BECAUSE IT HAS THIS????? I'M LOSING MY MIND. WHY ON EARTH IS THE WIKI LIKE THIS. WHY IS IT THIS BAD. PLEASE I'M JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT EVERYONE'S RELATIONSHIPS WITH JIMMY AND MARTYN WERE PLEASE,

anyway thankfully i had friends who could help me with their own knowledge and who also found the evo recap but in conclusion i have been being driven mad by this for weeks, thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#evo smp #wailing and screaming. why is it THIS BAD #and like i know. i know fandom wikis can be very abandoned.#it's not like the hc wiki is actually all that good either (especially for less-watched hermits)#but this feels like 'bad because abandoned and lots of blank pages' and more ACTIVELY TRYING TO UN-HELP ME #ITS MAKING ME CRAZY #anyway. ANYWAY. i can FINALLY do this rant publicly because this project had to stay secret until today but now it can be public #.......which is to say hi i'm writing an evo thing don't worry about it.#anyway. the only vaguely useful page was the watchers one and even that one didn't have much detail in the places i actually wanted it #this is a call to action for any evo fans who really like wikis i guess? mostly i just wanted to share these two screenshots #because like. look. me having trouble figuring out who salem was because her page is blank is one thing #getting a 'i can't bother' in the ACTUAL TEXT OF THE ARTICLE is another #once again: thank god my beta found the recap.

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commsroom · 9 months

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eiffel's problem is that he sees every injustice as an interpersonal issue. he doesn't understand how his flippancy or apparent leniency towards hilbert might look to hera; in his mind, it doesn't contradict his support for her. to eiffel, it seems obvious - he is also one of hilbert's victims, hera is his friend, of course he's completely on her side - but he fails to fully grasp how the stakes are different for her.

ep 19: "you need to stop treating this like a joke, officer eiffel." / "hey, i'm the person for whom the joke tolls." / "i get you're scared he put something inside you. but i hope you haven't forgotten emergency code alpha victor. he put that in me." and ep 51: "they're just jokes! they don't really mean anything." / "see, eiffel, you get to have that. they can be 'just jokes' for you because you're... well, you. but we don't get that."

the issue in shut up and listen is eiffel's repeated, if unintentional, microaggressions, but it's also his general use of dark humor as a coping mechanism - jokes he feels justified in making because of how the subjects of those jokes have impacted him. eiffel sincerely believes in treating people equally, but his idea of 'equal treatment' can be idealistic and naive. he has an awareness of interpersonal harm, but he's lived most of his life without ever being confronted with the reality of structural harm - being pre-judged and othered and having his life devalued on the basis of outside categorization.

but the thing about that is that it has happened to him, too. eiffel is an addict, and a convict, and marked as from a lower socioeconomic class than minkowski or lovelace, and those things are the reasons goddard futuristics was able to buy him as prison labor and - without his consent - consider him expendable for medical experimentation. none of that is a coincidence, but he doesn't see the systems at work, only his own actions and regrets. which he then equivocates to the worst actions of people who don't share his sense of morality or guilt.

eiffel's ability to recognize and bring out the humanity in the people around him is one of his best qualities, but... on the basis of his identity, he's been able to live a life where he conceptualizes himself as the default person, and that's been reinforced by the pop culture he loves so much. that's a massive blind spot. he assumes everyone navigates the world in a similar way, and so, on some level, he sees everyone around him as an extension of or a reflection of himself. if evil is always personal, then it can always be reasoned with.

#wolf 359 #w359 #doug eiffel #like. his answer for 'what is your worst quality?'#is a very tongue in cheek job interview answer: 'i empathize too much with others.' but from a certain angle...#i just think it's interesting. he has such believable faults and biases and assumptions about the world.#and the other thing is. eiffel's values are the show's values!! in some way he is also correct!!#but it's the line between diplomacy and centrism.#and the understanding that inaction is still an action that can hurt people. and that there's often not a right answer.#eiffel values the right things as far as the show is concerned #and as far as i'm concerned #but he lacks necessary perspective to really enact those values. decentering himself enough to really listen #while still keeping that personal focus.#i love that line where he says he's going to 'keep debugging his code' because it's so deferential like #'sorry for talking about you like this' and also 'i'm trying to see myself through your eyes.' means a lot to me.#and of course. the dear listeners literally reflecting eiffel while viewing him as the representative of humanity. there's something there #especially with the way eiffel externalizes both his good and bad qualities and projects them onto others #really good show. really good character writing. you know.

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tigergendermoved · 7 months

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Remembering the toxic hellscape that was 2015-2019ish SU fandom and just how much hate the show got is really insane when you rewatch the show after it's been a while. Like the show is good what the hell were any of these people talking about

#do NOT quote me on those numbers i pulled them straight out of my ass #like the ending was rushed and the diamonds didnt get to be fully developed but liek #the whole reason that was the case is there was an entire 6th season planned #and then the show got axed early because rebecca sugar and crew refused the back down on the rupphire wedding.#and even rushedness aside like the point of the show was never that you should hug fascists and forgive people no matter what #the diamond were rose's (and his) dysfunctional family whose personal suffering became the basis for the cruelty of gem society #bismuth in The Real World would have been right to want to kill the diamonds as a force of revolution #but the point of the show is that even the most complicated people are still people who can change. even if you dont forgive them #even steven quartz universe the most loving boy in the world very obviously does not like being around the diamonds. but that is how it is #it was a children's show that emphasized compassion and communication and family as themes. of course steven didnt kill the diamonds lol #i really fully believe the stevenbomb format (which was not the crew's choice or fault) cooked peoples' brains #you had months between major arcs so every wrongdoing by a character had months to be warped and misinterpreted and so no resolution could #ever satisfy fans who were festering with their own opinions for way too long #like these arcs looking back are not that long and they resolve in fairly reasonable manners but they took fuckin forever in real time to #wrap up #and ppl on the internet with no other hobbies than arguing made the fandom suck to be in and gave su a bad name #even if you dont like steven universe i think the amount of vitriol thrown at the show is/was fucking INSANE for what it is lmaooo #people were so so jolly to accuse rebecca sugar (a jewish lady) of being a fascist/fash sympathizer and paint every writing shortcoming or #morally dubious character action as a sign of pure fuckin evil #ok that was a long ass fuckin rant in the tags i am so sorry i'm just kind of opinionated on this matter as i am all matters #i've been rewatching su with my dad lately and this very normal and well paced and fun watchthrough experience has been illuminating #just how insane and uncalled for the hellish discourse sphere around su was/is #i say was/is i have no idea what su discourse is like nowadays. i'm too scareds to look in the su crit tag

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ifindus · 8 months

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Kaptein Sabeltann and all the antagonists!

#kaptein sabeltann #greven av gral #miriam av gral #grusomme gabriel #maga khan #ngl I'm super proud of this #probably the most complex piece I've done in while!!#might crop out Sabeltann and make just him a picture too #love that they all have their own props too #this is a “villain pic” because Kaptein Sabeltann is sort of the villian too? Just all the bad guys #it's just a nice collection; a ghost - a vampire - a witch - and a sorcerer #and then Captain Sabeltann - no special powers just the most feared pirate and king of the seven seas #I've recently watched the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy too - and with the One Piece live action coming out #my life is just all pirates atm #did actually write a Sabeltann/Langemann fic but in the process of writing another one too #I'm putting a lot of effort into something only like 3 people care about but I'm having so much fun!! ✨

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altschmerzes · 3 months

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one of the wildest like, tertiary characters in my online experience is this one really pissy asshole who pops up every so often on posts about comments on ao3 who is like, really really really upset about how there's a generally accepted fandom etiquette rule that you shouldn't just dump unsolicited criticism on people's fics. this person insists this is ruining fandom, obsessively replies to blogs like longlivefeedback whining at them about it, and insists it is uh. everyone else. who is sensitive and entitled. it's amazing to me every time i'm reminded they exist, but they just keep showing up lmaooo.

#gav gab #can you imagine being that dedicated and intent on being a profoundly unpleasant person #they're like AUTHORS ARE SO ENTITLED AND MEAN AND DEMANDING AND RUDE AND-#like no dude you're being a dick and you're being called on it #if it isn't the consequences of your actions!#like if you want criticism feel free to say so but you are in the *pretty extreme minority* in fandom spaces #and you're just gonna have to get used to that #trust me i'm romance repulsed lmaoooo you'll fucking survive if you're in the slim minority opinion and preference wise #and nobody is Persecuting You Personally by expecting you not to randomly be a dick to people because you think their writing is bad #someone: writers are allowed to have boundaries and you shouldn't be mean to people online #this fucking guy: YOU'RE RUINING FANDOM!!! YOU'RE SO ENTITLED AND HORRIBLE!! YOU DONT SPEAK FOR EVERYONE!!!

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bam-monsterhospital · 4 months

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god necrom really just was:

"oh hermaeus mora has a secret"

okay what's the secret?

"that he erased the memory of another secret from the world!"

um... what was that secret?

"there's another daedric prince!"

yeah, jyggalag.

"what? no. NO. ANOTHER one, oooooooooooooooooooo!"

and nothing happened

#eso #just thinking about this again #the entire dlc storyline #while also making poor mephala's sphere even MORE redundant #everyone just yanking her stuff THANKS eso #“fate” timelines futures and consequences? oh that's hermaeus mora's shtick now #not just the hoarding of knowledge #nope it's gotta be about “fate” too because he has to fufill the cthulhu mythos eldritch abomination quota now #so let's see: we got sotha sil hermaeus mora 'new' daedric prince... azura... who else covers action and consequences?#step right on up!#elderscrolls #necrom #it's bad writing #i'm very tired #SPOILERS #spoilers of nothing happening

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demonsfate · 11 days

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like really just imagine every time you bring up luke skywalker, some asshole comes along and says "achtually he tried to kill his nephew and he wasn't really that great of a guy at all we shouldn't be praising him like a hero ☝️🤓" just imagine if you're trying to browse luke skywalker on any social media and instead of getting mostly just content from the original movies and the comics, you have to run through content of ppl saying the Character Sucks because he stopped believing in the jedi and he tried to kill his nephew and he just ran away instead of being the hero he "supposedly is". imagine constantly being bombarded with hate and/or joke posts that are based SOLELY on one media that depicted him poorly, that wasn't even written by the original writers

#✏️ - ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏsᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ // (ooc)#// i KNOW i already made the skywalker comparison but like.#// that was in an ask full of multiple things i talked about #// i wanted to isolate this point as well as reword it a lil #// just to really hammer in this perspective #// just to hammer how TIRED i am of looking thru jin posts #// and seeing 'jin did WWIII XD' on ANY jin related post #// or seeing 'but miguels sister!!!'#// like GOD. pls ... just let me enjoy the character in peace #// i know those are large actions and they made a big impact but like.#// it was a result of very bad writing and director meddling i just #// i'm EXHAUSTED

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queerbrujas · 6 months

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#finding 'IF style' writing rather jarring after months of not reading any tbh #it's the overexplanation that feels a bit weird #not letting readers infer things or remember things on their own and insisting on pointing them out #and not letting readers interpret characters' tone and actions but having to explain them #i know 'IF style' means very little because each writer has their own style etc etc #but i definitely feel like the medium birthed some Conventions #like how when people say a book 'reads like fanfiction' yknow #and this isn't like One particular IF it's an issue in general i feel #i promise i'm not being a hater or saying anyone's writing is bad i'm just rereading something and having issues i didn't have before #silv.txt

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the-dracologist · 7 months

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At this point, I'm wishing for a "reveal" (retcon) that Zurr is actually an alien consciousness that tricked Bruce into thinking that he had created him. Just to dodge the ableist tropes happening rn

#batman 138 #gotham war spoilers #spoilers #tagging those to be safe #i still need to actually read the arc #gotham war #batman #yes i know this would result in him dodging responsibility for his actions #but honestly I'm on board with just retconning away bad writing #if it was ooc behavior then doesn't count <3

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sparky-is-spiders · 8 months

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Hi! I’m here suffering from lack of good Archivist!Sasha content as well 😭 On that note, do you have any fic on that topic you would recommend? Or just good Sasha fics in general, (or Jonsasha, if that’s your cup of tea)? Thank you in advance 😊

Tragically, I think there is a general dearth of good Archivist!Sasha content (and just about none of it Jonsasha content, as far as I can tell (and not only is Jonsasha my cup of tea, but the ONLY thing standing between it and the #1 OTP spot (currently occupied by JE) is the fact that the Jonsasha that I desperately crave exists in my brain and nowhere else)). Admittedly, I haven't looked very far into her tag yet (I should rectify that at some point tbh) but I've dug around the Jonsasha tag when I first got into it, and I know at least one fic where Sasha drifts towards Beholding through an interest in office gossip.

In terms of Jonsasha Ao3 has:

This very good Sasha lives fic where Jon shows up to Georgie's with an unconscious Sasha and everyone involved is very confused.

These two fics are cute also. The former is by @/suttttton and is them getting together, the latter is established Jonsasha from @/dickwheelie.

Eyevatar Sasha might actually be thinner on the ground (outside of fix-its where she solves everything and her canon reckless curiosity is completely ignored). Ao3 has:

This fic, which is Jongerry with outsider PoV Sasha. Just barely has the implication that she might be shifting towards the Eye (via prying into the lives of her coworkers) but gets a mention through sheer force of Excellent Sasha Characterization. I read this and I feel like I'm reading a fic from a Sasha Understander.

There's also this fic, which looks very promising but which I haven't actually gotten the chance to read yet, so I can't speak to its quality.

Unfortunately I've only gotten into Sasha fairly recently (especially as compared to Jon, who my brain latched onto in a deathgrip from the start), so I haven't gone through her tag yet. A scroll through the Archivist!Sasha or Beholding Avatar!Sasha tags pulls up a lot of fix-it and J//mart, which isn't really what I'm looking for from the concept. I'm sure there's more out there, and if/when I find them I'll come back to this ask probably, but I lucked into Reverse Nighthawks (I was on a Jongerry kick).

But god every day I wish that I could write romance and/or longfic, because about a year ago I read a Jonmichael fic that, when discussing alternate universes (where Jon ended the world) it's revealed that he once did an apocalypse out of love for his Archivist, Sasha James. And it was one (1) single line, but it struck me so hard because god. A perfect concept I think. The potential dynamics of Archivist!Sasha/Assistant!Jon are enthralling to me. Jon destroying the world (or helping her destroy the world? Cute date night I think: bringing about armageddon with your eldritch monster partner) for Sasha... anyway mostly I mentioned that one because My God if I have to live with that tantalizing AU rotating in the background of my mind 24/7 so do the rest of you.

#also I'm very sorry how much this was About Jon #I really /do/ love sasha it's just that jon lives in my brain literally all the time #I am incapable of making a single solitary tma post that is not like 50% about him #not a Single One #every character and relationship and dynamic must somehow include jon to interest me. I struggle to care about jon-less anythings #it's a Problem #anyway I really really love sasha and want to write her one day but I need to finish my JE stuff first #the thing is the sasha in my brain is in zero other places #I extrapolated some stuff from canon to create a Blorbo but I don't think many other people interpret her the same way #I have some sasha and jonsasha stuff lying around somewhere but the gist is that I think sasha should become a morally questionable eyevata #who feeds the eye by invading people's privacy ''accidentally.'' based on her actions in the s1 finale she's probably a good person usually #but is reckless when protecting those she cares about and ESPECIALLY when curious and I want her to be a lil freaky with it #too tired to string my sasha thoughts together properly but they're mostly about how she should have a fun corruption arc #I want her to end the world in s3. I want her to have extremely difficult and complicated feelings about leaving the institute. about being #an eyevatar also. I think she didn't get enough screentime to say a lot for certain but she has enough interesting and complex things in he #brain that she could offer an interesting perspective if she survived or was the archivist. I also think she and martin should've switched #places. sorry martinlikers but she had more stuff going for her and also her perspective would be unique and interesting instead of yet #another 'the Eye is Bad.' that's actually the jonsasha thing I like the most. reading her statement and there's so many parallels between #her and jon. I think they'd compliment each other in a way literally no other jonship could manage #anyway sorting tags #jonsasha #asks #thank you for the ask btw!! I am. VERY. passionate about this subject. sasha has so much potential and stuff going for her but I get so #bitter because nobody is willing to engage with the stuff I find most interesting about her. probably another reason it took me as long as #it did to get Attached to her. I spent too much time with fanon sasha who's had the potential and complexity and points of interest #stripped away so that she can fix the world for jm to get together which is so much more boring than whatever the hell was wrong with her #(affectionate) (I like my characters a lil weird and fucked up. a lot weird and fucked up even)#ok veryvery tired need to stop rambling and think about sasha some more.#oh wait one more thought actually she's autistic and trans (projecting but also. like. tell me i'm wrong) thank you and goodnight

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roguemonsterfucker · 9 months

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my mom says i'm not allowed to die until we can both finally see Thrawn live action for the first time

#i'm not doing great though #mentally or physically #my mental health is probably worse than it's ever been in some ways #my anxiety is so bad that i'm having near constant tics that are actually kinda hurting me #and i feel really sick #just fucking awful #i don't need to see thrawn live action #they'll just ruin him anyways #(the writing not the actor - i'm fully confident they got the right guy to play him i just don't trust the writers)

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heartbeatbookclub · 2 months

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It's 2 am as I start this, and I feel the need to put pen to paper on this thought, so to speak, because it's something I think about with relative frequency.

This is going to be more of a personal musing on my experience with Doki Doki Literature Club, and why it had such an impact on me when I first played it, as opposed to any more concrete analysis, so I guess you can keep reading if you want to know more about me as a person and my overall personal relationship to it.

Something I think about often in reference to DDLC is its status simultaneously as a satire on visual novels and all of the tropes therein, as well as a love letter to that genre, explicitly. It's very readily apparent if you've played a good few "weeb" visual novels that it very much fits that bill. I think my first experience with it makes it especially funny in that respect.

To give context, I first experienced Doki Doki Literature Club like a month or two after it came out, in a Skype call (shows how old I am) with 2 or 3 of my friends. During this period of my life, me and this small group of friends spent lots and lots of time just hanging out in Skype calls like this, doing whatever we pleased, spending time well into the next morning just enjoying each other's presence and seeing what fun shenanigans we could get into on the internet.

One frequent passtime of ours was playing visual novels. Not just any visual novels, no; we went looking for the most low effort, mediocre, low hanging fruit of visual novels we could download for free. The goal wasn't to enjoy a good story, the goal was to find something amusingly bad, whether in cliched, awkward, lazy writing, or in sheer absurdity. I still do this sometimes, though it's admittedly with a different thought in mind now.

I don't think this perception we had of visual novels, being that they're typically sloppy, cringe-inducing messes is necessarily uncommon even now, but it was especially common back then. It was "weeb shit", simple as, but even deeper than your typical weeb shit. The perception was something like watching High School DxD unironically; it's just weird.

And I don't really think the perception of visual novels being that way is necessarily inaccurate; there is a very low bar to entry to actually creating a visual novel just by the nature of the medium, so really, anyone with enough passion for a project and time on their hands can make one. As a consequence, there are a few egregiously bad visual novels, there are a few really excellent visual novels, but there are a great many just sort of okay, somewhat mediocre visual novels, and lots of visual novels created with not so honorable goals in mind.

And one thing we really enjoyed was just exploring what existed in the depths of unpopular visual novels slipping through the cracks of what people saw. For most of it, we were making fun of it, but there were a lot of points where we found stories which were mediocre, but ended up really enjoying our experience with it. I think an important thing to understand with that lower barrier to entry is that it enables people who really are passionate about telling a story to tell a story that has a lot of heart, and you can see all of that heart as a diamond within the rough of the actual construction. Even in VNs with more polish, typically there are still cracks right around the edges, where you can see just a little bit of the humanity that goes into it. It's sort of magical.

And Doki Doki Literature Club was an odd edge case, which successfully played with all of my perceptions of it. DDLC is probably the only game whose story is reliant on a plot twist where I actually went in completely blind. By all appearances, it was a silly little visual novel made with no sense of irony, and I spent a great deal of time laughing at its contents, completely unaware that they were in on the joke.

And my perception of it being this way I feel like colored a lot of what happened next when I looked into it. I forget exactly when our playthrough ended--we didn't make it to any of the deeper stuff, I watched a Let's Play for that--and I forget how the whole series of events following that went, but somehow or another, I learned of some of the true nature. Namely I saw what happened to Sayori.

It reminded me of Corpse Party, when I actually thought about it.

I'm not going to go deep in depth on all of my thoughts about Corpse Party nor any of its history, but to be frank, Corpse Party reeeally sits in that realm of "mediocre, but lots of heart" to me. I don't really think Corpse Party is very good, particularly elaborating on a lot of the lore, but I really enjoyed it when I first experienced it, and it's still something I occasionally like looking back over. It's deliciously dark, and is extremely effective at creating an oppressive atmosphere out of what's ostensibly a collection of happy warm anime character tropes with little serious personality outside them.

So when I say that Sayori's death reminded me of Corpse Party, I mean that the way it paired playing the happy warm visual novel setting straight with extremely grim subject matter was done well.

Really, there were only a few other examples of this kind of media I could think of that really effectively utilized the exact kind of gut punch that DDLC did. Everything about the way the game framed itself around it, up until the final plot twist, really did feel like they were just elements of a visual novel playing themselves out. Sayo-nara really sets that tone for me--it still gives me chills sometimes when I hear it, because it sounds perfectly like what a "Bad Ending" theme for that kind of ending would likely sound like. It plays itself remarkably well into creating the setting, it really effectively feels like it is a normal visual novel falling apart at the seams.

I think that, more than anything, is why DDLC made such an impact on me when I first experienced it (which is remarkably different than the kind of mark it leaves on me now), it played so effectively with a genre I was so familiar with, and simultaneously played "mediocre visual novel with lots of heart" straight while also completely knocking "deep and terrifying existential horror" out of the park.

It's hard to truly describe, but there's just so much that feels so right about DDLC just being as it is. There's such a unique quality to the way it's written, to the way it's constructed, that goes down to its bones. It feels like that exact brand of junk food media you go to visual novels for. You don't necessarily want to think too deeply about the characters, or the setting of the story, or any of the deeper themes surrounding it; you just want to experience a nice story with some anime girls.

And then it yanks the rug out from under you, and makes you think it's junk food media with a side of deep and disturbing horror.

And then it yanks the second rug out from under that one, making you realize it's something much, much deeper.

I think something else it really appealed to, to me, was just that sense of being on the edge of the world which most indie games of that sort always give me. There are a shitload of examples I could give for this, but this sense I'm describing is the opposite of the sense which games like Undertale give me. Undertale's world feels lived in, it feels like it exists in a much, much wider concept of a great, sprawling world where billions of people live.

DDLC feels like you and the 4 girls in it are the only people in the universe. There are all of these environments you inhabit which ostensibly have other people who pass through them, live in them, there are implications of people, but inside this world, there's only you.

I think it just appeals to my desire to be transported to a complete other world for a little while. A limited space, where only things important to this experience exist, for this pure feeling of emotional catharsis. And that's something a lot of these sorts of simple visual novels appeal to; the goal isn't necessarily to tell some deeper story, it's just to present beats as they happen. DDLC takes that, and plays with it, both in a textual sense, as though these fictional characters exist and are somehow aware they're fictional, and in a meta sense, by directly playing around with your expectations and the way the entire thing is framed.

Or something like that.

Fun fact 1: Doki Doki Literature Club (specifically Sayo-Nara, still one of the few songs I can play entirely by memory) is what got me to start learning piano. I taught myself to play, and started mostly with the DDLC soundtrack (Which is very simple to play by ear, by the way, it's pretty much entirely C major.)

Fun fact 2: What initially inspired this thought was this video, which really reminded me of other visual novels we/I played that would utilize this particular style of music.

#musings #it's hard to really put into words the vibe i always get about it #it's something i'd really like to just capture in a bottle and keep stored somewhere #there's something to it that's inextricably tied to a lot of what my life was like when i was a teenager #there's a lot which is tied to what my relationships with people when i was younger is built on #there's a lot which builds the kind of person i am today both in writing and in personality #we're sort of just on this earth to experience shit #and this sure is something to experience #i think this is why i typically have such a 'meh' opinion about a lot of specific details to how things are constructed in fanworks #like dialogue and actions not being perfectly suited to how it would be written if it was canon #and i'm not saying i write like canon or that those are bad because they're not canon or anything like that #it's just like #i want SPECIFICALLY more of ddlc. so if you aren't specifically more of ddlc and are instead your own thing i'm not really that interested #not typically anyway #i feel like i'm losing a lot of what i want to say in translation #but i hope i've sorta conveyed a lot of my thoughts on the matter #as a visual novel i really enjoy ddlc and it really does play its genre well #and also as a story outside of the visual novel part i enjoy ddlc a lot #more regular analyses & thoughts coming soonish.......#shout out to me as a teenager lying on the floor listening to sayo-nara and feeling The FeelsTM for hours

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