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#it's a narrative about fixing problems yourself
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how do i get my character out of the corner i wrote myself in without a dues ex machina😭
How to Not Write Yourself Into a Corner (and How to Write Yourself Out of a Corner if You’re Already In One)
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One of a writer’s WORST fears is writing themself into a corner.
It’s easy to write your characters into death-defying situations…but it’s not as easy to write the actual “defying death” part.
Some writers, in their desperation to get their characters out of a bind, employ the use of a Deus Ex Machina, as mentioned by anon:
Deus Ex Machina: (Translates to "god from the machine") A plot device where a seemingly unsolvable situation is fixed by an out-of-the-blue occurrence. The term “deus ex machina” is a reference to Greek plays, when actors playing a god would literally be lowered into the scene via a machine to magically solve any situation.
Unfortunately, this plot device is often ridiculed by readers, cited as a hack-job solution for a writer out of ideas.
How do we avoid this situation, then? Here are some tips and tricks on how to not write yourself into a corner, and how to write yourself out of a corner if you’re already in one!
Note that these tips may not work for everyone, so make sure to use your own intuition as a writer— you know your story best.
1. NIP IT IN THE BUD— OUTLINES ARE KEY!
I’m sorry to all of you pantsers out there, but the key to prevent writing yourself into a corner is to already have an idea of how each scene is going to turn out; don't make a problem without making a solution! If you keep on top of your outline, you should have no worries about writing your characters into a situation they can't get out of it.
It may be easiest to jot down ideas about a couple of scenarios and then select the one that works best, especially when it comes to dire climax scenes that have a lot of moving parts. 
Check out my posts below for more in-depth advice about outlining!
How to Outline
Plotting for Pansters and Pantsing for Plotters
This advice, although essential, does require a ton of foresight and time to plan…and if you’ve sought out this post, it may mean that it’s too late for preventative measures. The subsequent tips in this post are going to be for people who are already in the thick of it and need a way to save all of their writing progress. 
2. FORESHADOWING IS YOUR FRIEND (AKA “CHEKHOV’S GUN YOUR WAY OUT OF THAT SHIT”)
Foreshadowing: A narrative device wherein a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. It helps maintain believability while subverting expectations and making plot twists.
Chekhov’s Gun: A narrative device wherein a seemingly insignificant element or object in the story becomes useful later on. Sometimes used synonymously with foreshadowing, but usually refers to a specific object.
Examples of Foreshadowing/Chekhov’s guns in media:
The 1981 Quarter (Or Extra Life Quarter) in Ready Player One
“Don’t Cross the Streams” in Ghostbusters (1984)
Winchester Rifle Hanging over the Bar in Shaun of the Dead (2004)
The Rita Hayworth Poster in The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Water Bottle in Bullet Train (2022)
In my opinion, a Chekhov’s Gun is the more refined twin of the deus ex machina; although it may seem like it comes out of nowhere, observant readers or those who go back into the story will realize that this event was set up from the beginning.
Foreshadowing is the key to turning a deus ex machina into a Chekhov’s Gun. It’s spreading breadcrumbs to maintain believability even when unbelievable things happen.
My advice: plant a line here and there referring to the object/element that will get you out of the corner.
These lines can be about a healing potion that a character carries around to save them when they’re at the brink of death, the fact that the city they’re fighting in often suffers from sinkholes, or that a character has a seemingly useless skill. 
However, haphazardly inserting foreshadowing into your story may come across as heavy-handed; make sure it aligns with the narrative beats. Particularly big Chekhov’s Guns, especially ones that “save the day," may require multiple foreshadowing elements.
It can take a lot of work to incorporate the foreshadowing smoothly, so make sure it actually saves you time in comparison to rewriting the whole scenario/plot point.
3. TAKE A BREAK
Sometimes, the solution to your problem may not come to mind because you’re too immersed into the writing process and not thinking of the bigger picture. Or maybe it might just be good old-fashioned writer’s block. Take a step back, reassess, and return with the scene properly re-evaluated. Maybe start a new book or TV show to get some inspiration, or check out one of my posts below!
How to Overcome Writer’s Block
How to Get Inspired to Write and Regain Creativity
4. ASK FOR HELP
Sometimes, it might be best to have another set of eyes on your story! A situation that may seem unsolvable to you may have an obvious solution to a writing buddy.
5. KNOW THAT SOMETIMES RE-WRITING IS NECESSARY
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I know this sounds horrible. It’s something that I wouldn’t wish upon any writer.
Sometimes, however, no amount of foreshadowing can get your characters out of the debacle they’ve put themselves in. Either that, or the work that it would take to insert the foreshadowing would be more than it’d take to rewrite the scene or the plot point.
My suggestion would be to search for the last place that you didn't feel lost, and then cut out everything after that.
(NEVER DELETE MAJOR CHUNKS OF YOUR WRITING! ALWAYS CUT IT AND SAVE IT IN A SCRAP DOC—IT COULD COME IN HANDY LATER!)
Then, take the time to outline the scenario and figure out the solution to your problem beforehand. It will suck, but trust me, it'll be worth it in the end.
HOPE THIS HELPED, AND HAPPY WRITING!
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celluloidbroomcloset · 2 months
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I want to talk about Taika Waititi the artist, because I've been thinking about Boy for two days. (Fucking hate this caveat, but any hate earns an instant block and I will turn off anon if I have to.)
Almost every one of his films is about the power of love to heal. What makes his work more profound is that this is not a naive "love conquers all/love saves the day" narrative. People die. People are hurt. Generational trauma warps. Homes and nations can be broken by their past and their people's unwillingness to face it. Fascism can't be overcome by love alone. Parents can't protect their children from darkness. Children can't escape from what the adult world forces on them. Love is not going to fix all the problems and make all the bad shit go away.
But love can make the world better and survivable. The past can't be undone and the future can be uncertain, but loving others, and yourself, can make life worth living even in the midst of deep sorrow. Some of it is in forgiveness—forgiving previous generations for the harm they've caused (Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnarok, and Jojo Rabbit all deal with this)—but it is also forgiveness without excuses. It's never "it's not that bad," but "yeah, it is that bad, but we have to survive beyond it and maybe laugh about it if we can."
Boy in particular is a fucking primal scream of a movie that still manages to be very funny and very forgiving. Jojo Rabbit is similar but on a broader scale, encompassing an entire nation. The nuance of it lies in the films absolutely believing simultaneously that love can make things better and that love will not fix everything.
I think it's really valuable to have that kind of work in the world.
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dduane · 5 months
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Hope this isn't an ask you get all the time, but how do you track your progress when you're doing editing?
Everyone talks about word goals, and that seems fine for a first draft, but doesn't make sense to me when it comes to revisions. Do you have any kind of system for setting daily goals for your revisions?
Actually, I don't think anyone's ever asked me about this. :) So no sweat.
Briefly: I think you're wise in not attempting wordcounting in this phase of dealing with an MS—or trying to push yourself into a structure so rigid. ...There's this, too: there's a whole lot too much emphasis out there at the moment on trying to force yourself into other people's writing and editing paradigms—so many of them riddled with bar graphs and "demonstrable" daily progress. You need to find what works for you. More words dealt with in a day, sure, that's encouraging in its way. But are they the right words?
Today’s Writer Take that will probably strike some as Hot (and ask me if I care): Some kinds of writing progress are just neither graphically nor numerically quantifiable. And damned to the least TripAdvisorally-acceptable regions of [insert your preferred underworld here] be those who’ve tried to sell people the idea that they are.
(sigh)
Now, for what it's worth: here's how I do it. Which may be useful to other people, or not so much so. And that's fine, because I'm not editing their novels. :)
(Adding a break here. Under the cut: advice + advice = advice, and some images of text I shouldn't be letting y'all see just yet... but WTF.)
Revision for me is a fairly relaxed business—unless my editor has told me WE NEED THIS ON TUESDAY, which thank sweet Thoth on his e-bike is very rare.
It also helps that I like revising. (When I was a kid, I liked liver, too. And spinach. Just call me Miss Outlier and let's move on.) I really enjoy the feeling of the work’s rough edges being filed down and the sparse places being filled out.
And also: second draft/first revision draft is nowhere near as tense for me as first draft. Because, thank God, at least there's a book.
First draft is where I sweat blood and otherwise suffer. While I can see the story just fine in my head, it's not really real for me until the first draft, whole in narrative and action, is complete on paper/in the machine. And till it's achieved at least that level of reality, I can't relax.
But by the time I hit my second/revision draft, I can be confident that any really serious problems in the novel have already been solved—because I'm an outliner. In the outline stage, potential thematic or structural troubles will routinely have revealed themselves way long ago: before drafting even got started, as I first wired the story's bones together. The successfully-executed first draft acts as proof-of-concept for that structural wiring. By the time that draft’s done, it’s immediately apparent whether the skeleton can successfully stand up by itself. And gods is that a relief when it does! You’re tempted to jump around yelling “It's aliiiiiive!" as the lightning strikes around you.*
However, if after submitting that draft my editor's found something structurally or thematically troublesome in it that I've completely missed until this point, my first order of business becomes to fix whatever their notes involve and submit the fixes. Nothing further happens until the editor sees what I've done about those problems, and until I get agreement that whatever intervention I've enacted has now sorted the problems out.
After that, everything happens in bed.
(...casually noting that for a line to use somewhere else...) :)
But seriously: I do my best revision and editing before getting up in the morning.
Some of this is because, for me, the mind's nice and quiet and (theoretically) at least moderately well rested, right after sleep. I might take the briefest glance at my email first to make sure nothing urgent needs attention... but once that’s done, I refuse to let myself go any further down that hole. That early-morning calm is a mental state I'm glad to exploit, and one I jealously guard. On days when I'm forced to do without the working lie-in**, I use a different approach: when there's a pause, sit down and do nothing—no reading, no video, no music, no phone, nothing—for half an hour: then start editing. Routinely, the quiet I need will once more have fallen.
The in-bed-editing approach also works for me because (since I'm working in Scrivener) it's absolutely no big deal to finish a day's editing on a file by exporting a version of the file containing the day's edits to ebook format, and into my Dropbox. From there, in the morning, without ever getting out from under the covers, I can pull that .epub file into my tablet and read it as an ebook, making corrections and notes there.
This is what it looks like (on a page without too many corrections) if the app you're using is "Books" in an iPad. The second image is what you get when you touch on the marginal yellow square of the note to examine it.
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Then, when I'm finished looking over the previous day's/evening's writing and adding notes to it, I go downstairs, get some caffeine in me, and make the changes in the main Scrivener file. (If I was running the project in question on the iPad version of Scrivener, I'd just make the change right there. But who knows when I'd actually get up, then? Better to do it this way.) :)
In the normal flow of things I'll attempt to deal with a chapter or two a day in this mode. (Always bearing in mind that my chapters in early drafts typically run long—often 10K or so—and I'm likely enough to rebreak them later.) This first level of revision is the easy one: catching typos and bad or clumsy phrasings, reworking character interactions that need smoothing out; adding better descriptive passages (with particular emphasis on staying in the visual, audio and tactile senses), etc., etc.
So again: no way I'd ever bother worrying about word counts, with these. What seems to count for more is giving yourself time to recognize, gradually, at a reader's pace, what's working in the prose and what isn't. Rush—or try to force the pace to a given number of words per day—and you run the risk of missing something vital. To me, at the tracking level, it seems sufficient to note which chapters have been dealt with, and which are still hanging fire. (I can change the chapters' color labels in Scrivener to make this status visible at a glance, if I need to.)
When everything's dealt with on this pass—which if I'm lucky will take no more than a couple/few weeks—I try to take a couple weeks off before dealing with the MS again. Sometimes that's possible: sometimes not. The longer you can leave the book alone to let your perceptions of it rest and reset themselves, the better. Distance—mental or temporal—seems to lend clarity.
In any case, for me, next comes another pass, tougher to describe. Casually, I refer to it as the "Missed Opportunities/Complications" pass. This is a thing that one of the very best writers I know, John M. Ford, used to do. One of his editors (I think it was) came across him working on an MS one time, and asked him what he was doing. "Complications," Mike muttered. "Removing them?" said his editor. Mike shook his head. "Adding them," he said.
In this pass you look for in-novel connections you've previously missed making. Some dramatic moments have their impact significantly increased if you've found a way to connect them, even casually, with previous events, situations, character thoughts, or dialogue. (The cheap and easy mnemonic for this kind of thing: "Say a thing twice, and it echoes. Say it three times, and it resonates.")
Equally, events (and people) may turn out to require more complex backstory than you've given them in your first draft; so this is where you take care of that. And of course there are almost certainly character and emotional interactions that can use attention; fewer words, more depth, more complexity. What things do these people, in this situation, need to say to one another that they haven't? And also, what drama got scamped or passed up on because you were just too damn tired in the last draft? —Because you too, poor baby, are human; and that state can, entirely logically, make you want not to deal with any more damn drama just now. Even though drama is the lifeblood of your narrative, usually, and tying a tourniquet around it really doesn't help. You are the conduit of power into your narrative, and your varying ability to conduct it is always an issue… so you need to keep an eye open for places where the flow may have temporarily failed.
This pass, ideally, might take no more than another few weeks or a month. And again, I'm not sure any attempt at wordcount tracking would do this work any good. Because, again... are they the right words? And to make the narrative more effective, you may wind up removing as many words as you added in previous passes.
Finally, with all things taken together, I usually reach a point where (by myself, anyway) I can't think of anything to do that'll make this book any better. That's where there then comes—and again, impossible to assign a word count to it—a time when you know you're as Done As You Can Be. If you've been doing this long enough, you may even hear a strange kind of sigh in the back of your head, as the book gives up and lets go...
...into the next stage of production. But even then you keep an eye on it… because in my experience it’s rare that any book's ever that easily just finished. Even in page proofs, something may happen to surprise you.
Anyway, that's when I throw the book the hell out of the house—because no matter how much I've loved it previously, by that time I'm usually seriously tired of it—and wait to see whether the editor feels it needs one more draft. (Disclosure: this has never happened. There might be a few notes that need to be handled. But another full draft? Never yet.)
Anyway: hope this is of help to you.
But the heart of it all? Find your own way, and screw the bar graphs.
*That line, too, is an indicator of trouble to come. "It's?" Not "he's"? Tsk tsk.
**Usually sort of 7-9 AM. Sometimes way earlier, depending on the time of year. Dawn comes real early in the summertime in Ireland…
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star-anise · 3 months
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now, hold still—
I'd kill for some resources on body image in the context of disability, chronic pain, and having grown up with a complicated and intense medical history. I think I've exhausted my local library's offerings. Yes, I'm seeing a counsellor who focuses on this, and he's probably got recs, but I'm pacing my cage and lashing my tail in between sessions.
"Body image" has a particular connotation most of the time, because it comes out of the field that deals with eating disorders. Which is great and I'm glad for the people it works for, but its basic principles and assumptions are for completely different problems than the one I have.
I can't track down who said it first, but in my reading I keep coming across this narrative of, "I saw my body as something to be disciplined and controlled, an object only seen by external eyes. Now I've learned to take joy in what my body can do and experience, and to see it as a site of pleasure."
...Sounds fake, but okay.
My body is a site of pain. It cannot do or bear the experience of many things. I have to exercise a huge amount of discipline and control just to get out of bed every day. I can't imagine my body being a visible object that other people might find pleasing; it's incredibly hard to look up from my continual tooth-and-nail fight getting my body to let me live to imagine what someone who doesn't live with all this shit might see.
When I was a child, I learned to hold myself very still. For a hairdresser, or photographer, or a dentist, or someone who wanted to measure my height, or an injection, or a doctor who wanted a demonstration of how one of my joints looked, or an X-ray, or an IV inserted, or a CAT scan, or to have a cast taken off, or a PET scan, or to have a wound treated, or an MRI, or to have a pin pulled out.
And you know, I got proud of that. I felt like a brave warrior in a fantasy novel. I learned to take deep breaths, and take myself in my mind away from the anxiety and unpleasantness, until I could shut down my reaction to it. So that I didn't flinch or scream or cry. Because there was something wrong with my body, and doctors knew how to fix it.
When I was getting assessed for fibromyalgia, this new doctor told me he was going palpate areas in my back, arms, and knees. I get a lot of massage; I knew what was coming. I slowed my breathing, concentrating on the long outbreath. I took myself away from my reactions and thought continually, obsessively, about letting my body droop, weightless, like the moment when your aching limbs meet a solid surface and fresh cool sheets.
"Hm, I dunno," he said. "A lot of this checks out, but your trigger point exam was totally negative. Most people, when I touch those points, they have a big reaction. Some people even scream and jump off the table."
"Well, no," I think I said. "If I'd done that, it would have hurt way more, for like, hours." And I was polite about it, because you have to be polite to doctors; doctors know how to make you feel better. But what I felt at the time, and still feel today, is a kind of outrage I labelled was unreasonable the moment it was born: You wanted to hurt me, and it's my fault for not letting you?
How do you learn how to ask for things, when you've taught yourself to lie still and cry quietly because the nurse who said they'd be right back is helping someone who suddenly needs the help more? How do you express yourself, when you've spent your whole life gritting your teeth?
The problems I have about my body are not about being attractive or thin. They are, however, about being small. Learning to cry less, scream less, and ask for less. About feeling like my body is a burden to anyone who comes to know it, and like that's a burden I can't ask other people to take on unless I'm staggering under the weight of it.
Right now, what I've got is this:
Remember, you weren’t the one who made you ashamed, but you are the one who can make you proud. Just practice, practice until you get proud, and once you are proud, keep practicing so you won’t forget. You get proud by practicing.
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nopanamaman · 3 months
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this has probably been asked before but ... what's been the biggest struggle with writing PAFL thus far? how did you handle any blocks/obstacles in your writing process? i've hit a lot of points where i've been unable to fix or connect plot holes, so i'm always interested in how others who are producing their stories handle these problems
That's a good question anon
It's a bit hard to say now, since the story has been solidified a good while ago... But I think the ending was what gave me the most trouble, even when most of the current PAFL story was already laid out.
I've already talked about the first ending being too dismal for my liking. While I know it could've worked and satisfied a good number of people, to me it felt like it justified Yura's initial nihilistic worldview. Also it left a lot of threads hanging in a way I found rather unsatisfying.
What helped me is stealing. I though about what endings made me feel satisfied in the past, what scenes and moments made the journey feel worth it, even if the conclusion wasn't 100% happy.
As a result, I pulled from a lot of different places for inspiration. While I still have some peculiarities to iron out in terms of how I want the final sequence to play out, I'm far happier with what I have now.
So I guess as banal as it is, look to other things. Don't be afraid to copy shit you enjoy - it's about how you mix and match your inspirations. That's how you make the story your own!
When it comes to plotholes, I got two strategies. The classic: gloss over them and patch things up on the fly later on if somebody notices. Sounds bad, but honestly, if the inconsistency isn't absolutely story- and logic-breaking most people won't care.
Actually, most people won't care even if the plothole is severe as long as the story you're telling is engaging and entertaining enough. So don't beat yourself up too hard about it.
That said, if the plothole is genuinely stopping the story from progressing properly or breaks immersion in a major way, it's best to just scrap that whole chunk of the plot and rethink it from the ground up.
I remember reading something like, "If you're writing prose and feel absolutely stuck on a sentence, just go a couple sentences back and rewrite everything from there." You can totally do the same on a more global narrative scale!
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david-talks-sw · 1 year
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For a lot of fans, the "Jedi lost their way" take really comes down to:
"I never saw the Jedi Council genuinely be kind to Anakin in any meaningful way, so I just filled in the gaps and assumed they were dicks to him".
From there you get the myths that the Jedi manipulated him, only cared for him because of his power, forbid him from seeing his Mom, Mace in particular hated him, etc etc.
Well, quick reminder: in George Lucas' script, Anakin refers to the Jedi as his family.
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But hey, if "not enough evidence" is a factor, how would we fix that?
PITCH: A five-issue comic book miniseries, featuring self-contained tales of young Anakin's interactions with various Jedi - seen from their POVs - about how they all come around to liking him, only to epilogue each issue with events from Episode III.
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Not all of these are fully developed, but just to give you an idea...
Issue #1: Yoda.
Lesson: "letting to of what you fear to lose"
Set only months after Episode I, Obi-Wan is off on a mission, and Anakin is shadowing Yoda, for the day. Both are reluctant...
Yoda is still grappling with Anakin's uncertain future, maybe reeling from Qui-Gon's death and Yaddle's disappearance.
Anakin misses his Mom, and the last conversation he had with Yoda was the elf telling him he shouldn't be scared for his mother (or so Anakin thinks).
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Throughout the day, shenanigans ensue.
Yoda takes Ani to a Council meeting and he keeps interrupting by asking Yarael Poof why his neck is so long, or asking Oppo Rancisis if he ever trims his hair. Giggles from all but Yoda.
Yoda mediates a negotiation between Senators and the subject of Malastare podracing comes up, so Anakin hijacks the meeting.
Yoda goes to Thustra to fight off mercenaries for the King and Anakin tags along, seemingly becoming a burden for Yoda.
However, despite their bumpy start (Anakin being a brat and Yoda being a grump) Anakin and Yoda bond and Anakin's input seemingly becomes the key to the mission's success.
Yoda discovers he admires Anakin's outside-the-box thinking and finds kindness deep in his heart. The issue's narrative voice is Yoda talking to Qui-Gon, noting how similar Anakin and Qui-Gon are.
Anakin realizes that Yoda trained the master who trained the master who trained his master... so that makes him his sort of grandpa! That's so wizard!
Once the task at hand is over, Yoda and Anakin have a moment and talk about the idea that Anakin misses his mother.
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Yoda comforts Anakin, explaining that his mother let him leave the nest, and in life things come and go, things which they may grow to care for. But as Jedi, they must be able to let go of these attachments, when the time comes.
Anakin asks if Yoda ever lost someone he cared about. Yoda answers that he's almost 900, by now. A lot of loved ones of his came and went. Qui-Gon was one of them. Yaddle, too. Another one (thinking of Dooku)... still hurts to this day.
One day, it'll be up to him to be as strong as his mother, who Yoda adds might've made a wonderful Jedi. And who knows, maybe he'll see her again, once Anakin becomes a Jedi himself.
Anakin smiles.
Epilogue:
Anakin scowls.
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We're seeing Yoda's scene with Anakin in Episode III through Yoda's POV. As he did years ago, Anakin still has problems with attachment... but in this case, he doesn't even tell Yoda anything. So Yoda can only give a general answer.
As Anakin refuses to elaborate on his premonitions and leaves, Yoda feels powerless, and can only hope he was able to help this troubled young man who, day after day, reminds him less of Qui-Gon and more of Dooku. Dooku who died yesterday.
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Issue #2: Kit Fisto
Lesson: "don't try to be some 'Chosen One', just be yourself"
Anakin undergoes a trial that involves swimming. And he grew up on a desert planet. So of course, he fails. At night, he steals Obi-Wan's breather and sneaks out of their quarters to go to the pool and train.
He puts the breather on wrong and is about to drown but fear not! Jedi Knight Kit Fisto and his dashing smile are here to help!
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He shows Anakin how to put his breather on right and shows him how to swim and fight underwater.
Now, this isn't just a pool. It's a pool in the Jedi Temple! So it's filled with a whole lot of marvelous fluorescent flora and fauna, I'm taking Avatar-style stuff.
So the swimming lesson becomes a lesson about the Living Force (who said it should just be Qui-Gon's thing? Lucas certainly didn't), using water as a metaphor.
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The overall idea of the issue is that Anakin is concerned... he left his Mom behind, hoping to make her proud, make Qui-Gon proud, make Obi-Wan proud and live up to this expectation of being the Chosen One... but he's struggling at basic stuff like swimming! How's he gonna be this big time Jedi, one day?
Kit reassures Anakin: he shouldn't aspire to be a "Chosen One". All any Jedi should aspire to be is the best version of themselves.
Next day: Anakin passes the trial, Obi-Wan congratulates him, and Anakin completely misinterprets what Kit was telling him in a hilarious way by saying something silly and cocky like: "I just had to remind the water that I'm the best me there is so it better let me float or else."
Which gets an eye roll from Obi and a giggle from Kit.
(BTW, maybe we can have Nadar Vebb help Anakin swim too! Maybe even set him up as passing that trial the first time round with flying colors to contrast with Anakin, maybe he's an antagonist that comes around by the end, I dunno)
Epilogue:
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As Mace battles Sidious in the other room, Kit Fisto, still breathing, rises to his feet and takes a few steps, intent on helping his friend despite his wound, but collapses... he's not gonna make it.
He turns around, stares at the ceiling. Is this how it ends?
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Anakin appears in his line of sight, looking around at the dead Jedi, shocked. Kit smiles (ROTS novelization reference) as Anakin rushes into the adjacent corridor.
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His last thought is the knowledge that everything's going to turn out alright, now that the Chosen One is here.
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Issue #3: Mace Windu
Lesson: Control your feelings, don't let them control you.
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Simple story. Obi-Wan was captured by a bunch of IG-11 assassins, allowing Anakin to escape and rescue a Senator's daughter. Now, Anakin and Mace are on a mission to get him back.
They make their way through a jungle filled with traps. Anakin is rushing, he's angry at the droids and afraid for Obi-Wan and it's making him do dumb stuff. After it happens a second time, Mace scolds him.
Around a campfire, Anakin apologizes for his impulsive behavior.
Mace comments that it's understandable. He only started being a Jedi, like, 5 years ago. Mastering your emotions isn't an easy thing to do, and in Anakin's case it's twice as hard. Anakin pries: is that why Mace didn't want him to become a Jedi?
Mace hesitates. Then says it, point blank: "yes".
And while he's sorry for being blunt, the fact remains that last week he threatened two of his fellow initiates with a lightsaber to the face.
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Anakin points out that they were bullying him because they were jealous of his skill.
Against all expectation Mace smiles and reveals that he can relate to that. His own classmates would bully him for the same reason. You know who'd step in, in that situation? Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon was like a big brother to Mace, always had his back.
After sighing, with a calmer tone, Mace says he'll have a chat with those students. But Anakin needs to double his efforts to keep his feelings under control, lest he become enslaved by them.
The way he went about it was by developing Vaapad. He demonstrates it to Anakin, whose eyes are filled with stars.
Mace concludes that while he did have misgivings, he has faith that Anakin can find the way to do it.
In the morning, Anakin and Mace storm the castle filled with assassin droids. One of the droids sees they're losing and electrocutes Obi-Wan, hoping to unbalance them. Mace orders Anakin to stay focused, Kenobi can take it! And Anakin does!
Once the courtyard is cleared, Mace lifts the remaining droid torturing Obi-Wan with the Force and crushes it into a ball of metal.
As they walk away, Mace lets out a "good work, Skywalker."
Anakin asks Mace if he can teach him Vaapad-- Mace cuts him off with a "Nope".
"C'mooon!"
"Don't push it, Skywalker."
Epilogue:
In the Chancellor's office, Mace reflects the lightning back onto Palpatine's face.
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The Sith seems out of commission.
And Mace is scared shitless. He almost died, a few seconds ago. His instinct is to run. He uses shatterpoint, tries to sense the future because Force knows he's got no idea what the hell he should do next. And that's when he sees it:
The various ways Sidious can kill him and Anakin.
Stop Mace's blade mid-air and Force Push them out of a window,
snap their necks with the Force,
crush the crystal in his lightsaber and let it blow up in his face.
Palpatine is faking and there are barely any scenarios in which Mace and Anakin are walking out of this room alive. And even if they do capture him, then
Sidious can bribe judges and Senate officials and supposing that doesn't work either, he can
escape any prison, kill thousands of clones in one night and
set up a new power base, starting from scratch.
This either ends now or the galaxy is doomed.
For a full second, the gravity of it all terrorizes Mace... then he chases his fear and musters his courage.
Anakin argues but Mace knows what he must do. He prepares to end the conflict once and for all, like a true Jedi would.
Anakin argues again, and Mace detects something else. Wait, why is Skywalker scared?
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As he falls, Mace realizes the very thing that he feared would happen, a long time ago, has finally come true:
Anakin let his emotions rule him... and it doomed them all.
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Issue #4: Shaak Ti
I was thinking for this one, we can have Obi-Wan bring her in as a sparring partner so she can demonstrate Jar'Kai to Anakin.
I haven't thought of a deeper lesson for this one, I just like Shaak Ti, folks, she's awesome :D
If anyone has suggestions, put 'em in the replies.
Epilogue:
(This one will definitely age poorly when The Mandalorian Season 3 comes out tomorrow!)
Order 66 rages as Shaak Ti protects a group of elderly Jedi in charge of the babies. She takes clone after clone down as she escorts them to an escape room the notices one baby left in the infirmary: Grogu.
Suddenly, she senses an overwhelming darkness approaching this wing of the temple. She thinks fast, she takes Grogu, crosses a corridor where 2-3 Jedi are killed (which is what Grogu remembers in the flashbacks)...
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... and goes to a meditation room nearby. The shadow closes in and Shaak Ti realizes who it is: Skywalker.
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We catch her moments later as she finished recording a message in her Holocron (the one from Star Wars #9)...
"It's up to you now. Don't let our deaths have been in vain. Don't let this be the end of the Jedi."
... then places it in Grogu's pod and hides him in an air vent. She sits on the chair, pretending to meditate.
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The door slides open. Anakin enters the room, senses something in the air vent. Shaak Ti realizes he's about to find Grogu and distracts him: "what is it Skywalker?"
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He stabs her. She falls.
He picks up her saber as he prepares to engage Cin Drallig and his apprentice with two lightsabers, just as she showed him.
A tear rolls down Shaak Ti's eye.
She looks at the air vent, sees Grogu's wet eyes peer through the grate. At least he's safe.
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Issue #5: Obi-Wan
Lesson: Be less cocky, beware of Palpatine, ffs
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Obi-Wan and Anakin are on a mission, maybe they're being chased by monsters, maybe it's in the middle of a firefight, maybe Anakin is trying to stop a train.
Bottom line: Anakin gets cocky and tries to do something incredibly stupid, thinking he can pull it off... and almost dies.
Obi-Wan manages to save him, but that hits him like a ton of bricks.
"I almost lost him."
Anakin's justification? Something along the lines of: he told the Chancellor he'd manage to do a triple flip next time he's on a mission, and that he'd try to catch it on a holovid.
So Obi-Wan loses his shit on Anakin, takes his saber and grounds him for a friggin' month.
Privately, he feels guilty. He almost lost Anakin and it would've been on him. His promise to Qui-Gon would be broken, Shmi's sacrifice, wherever she is, would be rendered pointless... and Anakin would be dead.
He talks to Mace and Yoda, who tell him not to blame himself. Obi-Wan takes this to heart and realizes who's to blame.
He goes to see the Chancellor.
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And it's awkward af.
Put yourself in Obi-Wan's shoes. How do you tell your boss, the leader of the free world, to back off because he's a bad influence on your kid, in the most diplomatic way possible?
But he somehow manages. He puts his foot down and asks Palps if he wouldn't mind being a bit more hands-off.
Note: for one page, we're on Palpatine as he remembered every time he undermined everybody else's lessons. "Don't listen to Windu, your emotions are what make you human." "Still, a bit heartless of Yoda to not even send someone to free your mother. I'm sure they had their reasons." "Trust me, you're definitely a Chosen One, even if Jedi like Master Fisto don't see it."
Then Palpatine smiles. "Of course!" He even apologizes and agrees to step back for a bit, he understands that he may have inadvertently undermined Obi-Wan's authority. My bad, Master Kenobi. My bad.
Back in Anakin's quarters, Obi-Wan enters and sits next to Anakin on his bed. Silence.
What follows is a scene like this one in The Lion King:
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Obi-Wan admits that Anakin really scared him today.
Anakin is sorry, but at the same time, he knew Obi-Wan would be there to save him in case he failed.
Obi-Wan explains that he won't always be able to be there to have Anakin's back. Anakin dismisses that, saying he trusts him.
"As long as we're together, it'll always turn out alright."
Epilogue:
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As their dialog from the previous scene continues, Obi-Wan watches as his Padawan, his ward, his brother, his everything for the past 13 years, kneels in front of the Chancellor on a hologram recording.
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So yeah, that was my attempt at writing Star Wars ^^' Thank you for making it this far!
Why only 5 issues? Well, it could be 6 issues. Could be 12, released monthly. I focused on 5 because I didn't wanna spend too much time photoshopping collages. Other scenarios could feature:
Saesee Tiin teaches Anakin flying maneuvers and finds he also has much to learn.
Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura partner up with Obi-Wan and Anakin. Anakin initially finds a kindred spirit in Quin, even wonders if it would be possible for two knights to do a "Padawan swap", but eventually he sees that - as cool and laid back as Master Vos is - maybe he needs a Master who'll give him a bit more structure than the guy who'll let him stay up late.
Anakin and A'Sharad Hett going through a trial together. #Tatooineboys #arooo #kraytdragonsounds
Here's why I wrote these story ideas down:
There'll always be fans who see the Prequel Jedi as corrupt and arrogant, regardless of how much evidence from Canon or Lucas you provide to dispel the notion.
But sometimes, Star Wars transmedia content is used to fix inconsistencies or bolster ideas that were only alluded to in the films, or show a different point of view.
We got this recently with Shadows of the Sith, for example, which helped smooth some plot-holes from the Sequel Trilogy.
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Sometimes, the material around the movies manages to re-contextualize and make the characters or the film itself more endearing, to fans. I mean, that's what The Clone Wars did for a lot of Prequel haters.
And I'm just disappointed this approach wasn't used to help the Prequel Jedi's perception among the fandom.
'Cause these are characters that have slowly been reframed as "the corrupt/complacent establishment" by authors who didn't find them likeable when they watched the films, when they were originally supposed to be "the underdogs who're doing their best".
An approach that was being taken during TCW was "let's question whether the Jedi are really all that good and moral and pure".
Nobody ever said they were, it's just that they tried to be their best selves, but whatever, let's play "devil's advocate", sure. Let's get some new points of view.
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But skip to almost two decades later, and Star Wars has played "devil's advocate" with the Prequel Jedi so much that seeing them in a negative light is now mainstream.
So, now... how about we explore:
The trauma Mace Windu felt when he was actively seeing people he grew up with get shot to shreds by battle droids on the daily.
The ex-Jedi Knights who come back to the Order to help their former family, instead of focusing on the ones who left.
Rael or Sifo-Dyas calling Dooku out on his ideological bullshit and forcing him to face the fact that he's just a crook who talked himself into betraying his brethren.
The young Padawans whose masters went to Geonosis and never came back.
Plo Koon being attacked by a mob because he "looks evil" and both the Republic and the Separatist's war propaganda reflects badly on the Jedi, framed as “baby-snatching warmongers in their ivory tower”.
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How about - instead of focusing on a series set 200 years prior, y'know, Back When The Jedi Were Great™ - we roll up our sleeves and question whether or not the Prequel Jedi were all that bad?
Just a thought.
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qqueenofhades · 5 months
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Do you think part of what makes people feel like voting isn’t worth it because things don’t get better under democrats is because we can’t see what would have happened? Like I see a lot of people saying “well biden hasn’t made america much better so there’s no point” but it’s like they don’t understand that under a republican they would actively do everything they could to cause more harm. It’s like they don’t understand that 1. The president can’t do much, and 2. IT WOULD BE WORSE. like they don’t understand the possibilities. Idk people just frustrate me
I'm sorry, as I know you're just relaying what these people think and not claiming so yourself, but the whole "things don't get better under Biden/Democrats" line to which we are subjected so very, miserably often is a lie!!! It is demonstrably a lie! It is peddled by people who deliberately live in their echo-chamber leftist misinformation bubbles and either don't read the news, don't accept anything less than the Magical Socialist Revolution Now, and don't think partial or incremental progress (aka the only kind of progress that exists) is valid. "Biden hasn't single-handedly fixed everything wrong with America and the world after the most damaging presidency ever to exist and 250+ years of flaws, while other countries actually are their own actors with agency making complex choices, so we shouldn't vote for him" is a bullshit lie and I'm tired of it!!!
(Again. Sorry. This is not directed at you. This is just my frustration with this entire ridiculous situation speaking.)
We have had multiple elections now where people voted for Democrats, which resulted in abortion protections, protections for LGBTQ people, the biggest climate legislation ever to pass Congress/be signed into law (the Inflation Reduction Act), vast improvements in the job market, executive actions both large and small, improvements in labor and the economy, a general democratic system, a defense of the rule of law, a warning against fascism, and everything else that Trump trampled on in 4 years and will finish the job of doing if this godforsaken country is either right-wing-zealot or left-wing-zealot enough to put him back into office. (Like, people. Google is free. You're welcome to look up the improvements Biden has actually made, but that would harm your Narrative.) So much of this misinformation is also peddled by people who are proud that they don't have a clue how the American government works and/or deliberately lie about it: see all the claims that it was Biden's fault for not magically stopping a Trump-stacked SCOTUS, selected for the express purpose of overturning Roe, from overturning Roe. Because the president could just unilaterally overturn the Supreme Court with no problems at all if He Really Wanted To, I guess. Even if that is literally not the way it has ever functioned in history.
All the noxious Republicans in state legislatures passing anti-trans/anti-abortion/anti-voting laws ARE NOT SOMETHING BIDEN CAN STOP. If you're going to criticize him for not doing something, for God's sake at least make it for something he can do (like not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, though I would argue he's already taking a more nuanced approach than the entirety of the American establishment during the War on Terror). And then vote for him when/if he follows it up, not just throw your hands in the air and scream about how you Can't Possibly Sully Yourself (especially when there is some very selective support going on here and a deliberate white-washing of how many orders of magnitude worse absolutely everything else in America and the world would be under Trump. So.)
I'm tired of it. I'm really, really tired of it. I've been trying to cut back on my politics posting because my mental health is bad right now and I often feel like a broken record screaming into the void. But. Yeah. Anyway. Whoof.
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randomshyperson · 1 year
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Fun Classes - Professor!Wanda x Reader [Kinktober]
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Summary: A little fun with Professor Maximoff during class.
Warnings: (+18), dom!reader, bottom!Wanda, vibrator use, heavy teasing and edging. | Words: 1.512k
Kinktober Collection | General Masterlist | AO3 | Wattpad
--//--
The lesson was about some white novelist of the twentieth century, and unlike Kate or Yelena, sitting on either side of you and writing down every one of Miss Maximoff's words, you were much more attentive to other things.
From the outline of the suit on the breast area of the most beautiful woman, you had ever seen in your life, to the way her words seemed to come out shaky and out of breath. To everyone else in the room, Wanda must have seemed excited about the lesson - the way she paused and sighed, gesticulated too much or held the chalk tighter than necessary.
But you knew better. In fact, you were the one who was increasing and decreasing the rhythm of the vibration of the toy buried deep in her under her pants, having the best time in the world while Wanda struggled to finish a class.
You blinked, a smile playing on your lips as your finger slid across the cell phone screen, increasing the frequency almost enough to make Wanda's knees buckle and make her choke mid-explanation.
People noticed, and her cheeks flushed a deep pink. You took pity and turned down the vibration.
"Is everything all right, Miss Maximoff?" It was Peter Parker, from the front row, who asked. Wanda immediately looked at you from the back of the room, but diverted the next second, an excuse forming on the tip of her tongue now that the vibration was weak and allowed her to think properly.
You watched her lie about a headache and end the class with an apology, and soon, the chairs around you began to empty.
Your last name was called out, but you had your backpack on already.
"Sorry, Miss Maximoff, I have basketball practice now. Don't wanna be late." You retorted to the woman leaning on the table, aware of Kate and Yelena waiting for you at the door. Wanda hesitated.
"C-can't it just be for a second? It's important...about your final grade."
You licked your lips, almost giving in because Wanda looked desperate, and thinking about how wet she must feel now sends a wave of heat straight to your core. But you don't fall for it, because Wanda knows very well that your irritation is well founded in her interactions with the annoying and inconvenient Math Teacher.
"Sorry, Miss Maximoff, I'm kind of the star of the team." You joke and she has to hide her frustration because your friends are still at the door, chuckling at your joke. You have a little pity when you see her expression, and offer her a small smile when you retort, "Can we discuss this later? After practice?"
Wanda nods almost immediately and tries to cover it up with a fake coldness the next second. "Come see me after the last period. I'll wait in my office."
"Of course, Miss Maximoff, and please don't fix anything yourself." You tease and she chokes softly, making you smile mischievously. "My grades, of course. I'll think of a solution, don't try to solve the problem all alone."
Wanda swallows dryly, nodding and you offer one last innocent smile before turning away.
–//–
Vibrators can have an unlimited range, which was terrible for someone who had five classes ahead of her.
Wanda knew that you were annoyed with her - rightly so, she may have purposely laughed more than necessary at Professor Simon's comments when she saw you in the hallway - and so she spent the day trying to function normally apart from the insistent vibration in between her legs.
Every time she got used to the rhythm and stopped sweating, you changed the frequency from wherever the hell you were. She nearly moaned in the middle of a narrative about Romanticism in the 20th Century, and had to excuse herself about three times in the same class just to keep from sliding to the floor with the way her knees were giving way.
You kept her on the edge all day, and by the time the last period was coming up, Wanda was practically collapsing.
She dismissed the class almost thirty minutes beforehand, practically laying back against the armchair when the room was empty, the toy still vibrating inside her making her close her eyes and take a few deep breaths.
You took your time to Wanda's classroom. You had the last period free and spent much of it changing the speed of the toy buried in your girlfriend, amusing yourself by imagining her pussy twitching and dripping, always close to climax but never satisfied.
You were not so surprised to find the room empty, although you were impressed that Wanda was so desperate to relieve herself that she would risk being caught by any other student, since there she was in her own armchair, one hand cupping her right breast beneath her blouse and the other clenched tightly in her own lap - her hips moving in the air trying to follow the rhythm of the toy.
You walked slowly towards her, locking the door behind you, and Wanda was so absorbed in her own actions that she didn't hear you - much less see you, her eyes closed tightly as she tried to cum.
You licked your lips, and leaned against one of the front tables, enjoying the show. 
The muffled moans began to sound like whimpers of pleasure, so you grabbed your cell phone from your pocket and give Wanda a reason to scream.
Once the speed was increased to the maximum, she reacted immediately. Her back arched in the chair, and she opened her eyes in shock, her mouth opening in a perfect circle, a loud moan ripping through her throat.
You offered her a corner smile. "Enjoying yourself, darling?"
Knowing that you were watching sent a rush of heat straight to her abdomen. Wanda choked, her face contorting with pleasure. 
"Please, malysha" She begged, fingers moving frantically under her blouse, to tease and squeeze her nipple. You laughed dryly, cell phone in hand to change the frequency again and steal her orgasm once more. Wanda cried, her hips jerking. You bite your lips when you realize she came - The overstimulation must have made her so sensitive to the point that any touch made her come, even with the control off. Your own intimacy pulsed with the image.
"Tsk, you're so easy." You mocked, turning off the toy and leaving your cell phone on the table to approach her. Wanda was panting, trying to recover from the intense climax, but you didn't care much - You grabbed the collar of her blouse and kissed her hard enough to make her whimper. She immediately responded, albeit with difficulty, but you broke the kiss with a bite on her lip. "I told you not to fix it yourself. Do you have a problem with orders, Miss Maximoff?"
She groaned, one hand gripping the wrist of yours that was still holding her shirt. "You were so mean today, malysha, you can't blame me."
"Oh, but I can." You retort meekly, releasing her shirt to bring your hand to her cheek and caress her skin. "You have a whole list of mischief, don't you? Flirting with that asshole, touching yourself against my will, and now cumming without permission..." You committed, brushing your lips against theirs, and Wanda gasped softly.
"Will you punish me?" She teases in a husky voice, and you grunt softly, a reaction that makes her smile.
"What do you suggest, Wands? That I leave you on the edge for more hours? Or mark every inch of your body? Maybe I should turn that beautiful ass of yours the same color of your hair..."
"Fuck, yes to all of those." She retorts pulling your wrist and kissing you hard.
It doesn't take long to get hungrier and more desperate, and you take the opportunity to slide a hand down to the middle of Wanda's legs, enjoying the way she squirms, throwing her hips against you. But just when the pressure is what she needs, you move your hand away.
"Let's start your punishment now, then." You clarify, kissing her short a few times, and ignoring her frustrated cry.
"No, please, just make me cum once..." She tries, grabbing your shoulders but you laugh.
"Once more you mean." You retort as you pull away completely, leaving the armchair to reach for your cell phone.
Wanda huffs in irritation and you turn the vibrator back on, at a frequency too low for her to come, but enough to bother.
"How about we go get pizza? I'm starving." You say casually as you tidy up your messy clothes, and Wanda bites her tongue to keep from cursing. You smile, moving closer to kiss her cheek. "If you behave yourself, the reward will be worth it, Miss Maximoff."
Her eyes light up. "Really?"
You bite your lips. "I'll let you choose your prize, how about that?"
She nods, ignoring the trembling of her own body to get up, and you offer your arm to her with a smile playing on your lips.
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gold-rhine · 9 months
Text
Inazuma Rewrite Act Two
Please read part one before reading this. It will make no sense otherwise.
In part one I did setup for the vision hunt conflict, changed Raiden’s motivations, added Rebellion \ Resistance interaction and Teppei setup, added setups to the arcs to Ayaka and Yoimiya. And more!
In this installment:
Let’s Make Player Give A Fuck About Rebellion and Teppei
Kokomi Is Not An Idiot
Delusions Are Not The Aging Beach
Ayaka’s Arc Pay-off
and more!
All disclaimers from part one also apply, I’m not gonna copy paste them.
Raiden Shogun First Duel 
I think we can keep the duel itself mostly unchanged. The cutscenes are pretty good and very cinematic, I don’t see reason to fix things which are not broke when there are already so many broken things
so, Traveler comes to Thoma’s rescue, gets taken to raiden’s plane of euthemia
also mb let’s cut i hate all minorities dialogue and instead like. open disobedience of the traveler to raiden shogun is i think enough to be used as a cause for the duel
The dialogue with raiden changes, we add banter with Traveler where traveler is like but you were pro-change before! and like cites some Transience things we talked about in the part 1.
Raiden gets mad in response, yells “Don’t you dare to mention her against me!” and that’s when she throws Traveler out of  euthemia and prepares the boob nuke
yeah, it’s foreshadowing of Makoto reveal
then the cutscene is the same, Thoma chucks a spear in her face and escapes with the traveler
thoma goes into hiding, traveler goes to join rebellion. bc they’re already in contact with gorou, we skip meandering around and go straight to the goal
First battle
and we arrive directly to the battlefield
there are several problems with rebellion pacing and kokomi characterization, which i elaborated on before. Like, Kokomi in canon only has one battle, which she wins because she hired mercenaries with fatui money. which like! invalidates this whole thing and makes her naive enough to be duped by the bad guys. So we need a battle win which is decidedly due to Kokomi’s genius.
so like in canon, Kujou Sara demands rebellion give her the traveler. Teppei, whos also there, is like no, fuck off! he’s embarrassed to speak out of the order but determined.
Gorou of course gives a speech about not giving up comrades, the fight starts, we have cool battle animation blah blah, and then suddenly!! Kujou Sara has reinforcements coming from behind some cliffs, oh no!! Teppei yells there’s too much of them! We will be overrun! Close up of Gorou’s snarling face, eyes darting, ready to call retreat, close up of victoriously looking Sara, Tenryou reinforcements are running to the battle... 
The water bubbles start rising up and Kokomi appears. She smiles at Gorou reassuringly and does some cool water animation. The hidden spring\waterfall bursts up with water and crushes into the reinforcements, washing them away. Rebellion rejoices, Kujou Sara curses and calls retreat.
i’ve seen people demand kokomi to have like a cool battle transforming into a dragon or smth bc of her origins and draconae constellation, but like this is missing the narrative pacing. the vishap origins only make sense after enkanomya where we learn about watatsumi history AND on the subversion of “oh its pink pastel kokomi who is smart and sweet :3”. Like we need to know her like that first, and THEN the dragon reveal will be cool and interesting.
Rebellion and Teppei overall setup
so, the Rebellion act wanted to accomplish too many things and didn’t structure them efficiently:
make you feel comradery with rebellion
make you like teppei
make you feel like a leader of your own squad, but like you EARNEd it, bc at first soldiers are distrustful and make you prove yourself
establish delusions and that delusions are bad bc teppei died, which is sad bc p.2
 in canon it’s like - have one scene with teppei, do some useless fetch errands for rebels, have another scene with teppei, be assigned swordfish captain and have two quick scenes with two dudes you will not remember
so obviously no one gives a fuck with this kind of pacing
instead, we will combine all of this and more importantly, give it narrative throughline so it doesn’t feel so disconnected and erratic
traveler is already known to Gorou through resistance meet up, he vouches for them, and Kokomi immediately names Traveler as captain of swordfish 2
Teppei is here and he excitedly volunteers to join that squad too
Gorou is like hey its a high risk squad that’s deployed on front lines, and you don’t have combat experience like, at all
Paimon and Traveler step up to be like yeah its fine, we’ll look after him, teppei is like omg thanks you guys :3
turns out he has problems fitting in with the rebels. they are all great ppl, sure, but they are warriors bonded in fights for years and most of them are from watatsumi. 
and he’s like a merchant or a clerk from narukami island. he feels like an outsider and a burden
but now the Traveler is here! they are already buddies from that resistance meet up and Traveler is an outsider too. They can stick together!
Swordfish II
So you go to meet up with your swordfish squad. You are greeted by a buff butch woman who is v no-nonsense and skeptical about your ability to be leader and another woman who is more friendly, but still kinda keeps distance and is snarky
their code names are Xena and Gabrielle for no reason other that we need buff female models like blacksmihs, hoyo. The point is that we need some memorable NPCs to represent swordfish, bc these two dudes that give you shit in canon for 3 second? I couldn’t remember them if my life depended on it
anyway, you learn that the previous captain just died and everyone loved and was very loyal to them, and now they are hostile to anyone who tries to take command.
So we do couple of battle to prove we’re strong blah blah, teppei is useless during a fight and Xena makes fun of him for this, and he’s super embarrassed
after that we walk around with teppei. Swordfishes camp is kinda shabby, they just took a bad hit. So we help the wounded, repair some tents, etc, but most important, Teppei uses expertise he’s got from his civilian job to solve problems
like he knows how to make a great painkiller potion bc he used to sell them. Or he gets an idea to use empty bags from used supplies to cover holes in tents, etc. 
Point is, he contributes.
After all this, Xena and Gabrielle are walking around, and Gabrielle is like wow captain, did you do all these improvements, and Traveler is like yeah, but it was all Teppei’s solutions, and Xena doesn’t say anything, but you can see she’s surprised and appreciative that you’re not only strong in combat, but care for the squad
she nods over the campfire at teppei like “i guess you’re not so useless after all, narukami nerd”
he protests, everyone laughs, its Bonding Time
Kokomi is not an idiot\ Fatui
We’re summoned to go see Kokomi. She’s in deep thought. Rebellion is in dire situation, supplies are running out, she’s sure they will not be able to win another open confrontation, even with her strategic tricks
But there is a new development - she’s being offered a huge anonymous donation. With that money, she could hire mercs to help. But to accept money without knowing the source is too risky, it could be a trap or setup
so she asks us to investigate these mysterious benefactors. bc also there are some vague rumors about some way to get boost to power going around and thats very sus too
bc like no, I cannot get over supposed genius Kokomi just taking fatui’s help blindly and letting them spread delusions around
so we go to the quest to investigate clues, with the swordfishes, its our first srs mission as the captain.
its couple of fights, blah blah. we find some clues and then its the Leader Decision time.
like there are two camps and we need to strike both at the same time, or the other one will destroy evidence and run, but we don’t have enough manpower. traveler is like  can take one camp by myself, and Xena at first is skeptical, but we’ve proven ourselves yesterday so she’s like okay I trust you, boss
everything goes well, both camps are taken and we find evidence that these donations are in fact, from fatui! and they are trying to spread delusions, which are bad and can kill you!
Delusions
I’m not a fan of Delusions working like the aging beach from that movie Old. Like first of all, if that’s how it worked, Childe should at this point look like this
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and Diluc. And Signora. Like I get that these are like low quality delusions, so effect is worse, but you can’t be like wow Teppei turned 90 in 2 days and Diluc stayed babyfaced after 4 years.
second, how is that no one noticed Teppei aging 20 years after each fight. Like it had to happen in front of other soldiers.
And like, why change the mechanics at all?? You use delusion, you get burst of power and take huge hit to the health, that’s it. Low quality delusions take more out of your health, so people using them die faster. They don’t need to age faster at the same time.So that’s mechanics I’m using here.
Anyway, while swordfishes discuss delusions finding (and Xena loudly condemns them), camera shows Teppei being quiet, kinda sus and looking away
Kokomi Mini-Arc\ Swordfish Bonding
we go back and report to kokomi. She’s distraught. The battle is so soon and she doesn’t know what to do!
from pure strategic, emotionless perspective to win the battle she needs to take fatui’s money and close her eyes at some soldiers using delusions. She can trade their lives for the voctory
But as a Watatsumi leader who cares about her people she cannot do that!
Traveler comforts her, but leaves without any obvious decision made and with a heavy heart. 
the night before battle, we gather at campfire with the swordfishes
everyone is kinda doom and gloom bc it’s obvious Rebellion doesn’t stand a chance
Traveler stands up and makes a motivational speech about fighting together, about how they’ve faced seemingly impossible odds before and prevailed, bc everyone worked together, like with Ossail fight
Xena suddenly stands up to support us, she’s like yeah, I didn’t believe in you before, but now I see you’re worth it, Captain!
everyone cheers, Xena punches Teppei into shoulder and he almost falls over like “Even this narukami nerd is not as bad as I thought haha!”
Final Rebellion Battle
So, cinematic cutscene. Sara on one side with obviously more soldiers. Kokomi and Gorou with rebellion on the other side. Traveler is with the Swordfishes and Teppei. Kokomi and Sara shjare some snappy banter. 
mb there’s a duel, but only if combat designers can figure out way to make it cool. Traveler whacking NPC in a row who can do nothing back with a sword 5 times in a row like in canon is fucking boring. Mb incorporate like challenge with Inazuma mechanics like the thunder zoomies or smth.
the battle begins. Rebellions fights fiercely, close ups of our swordfishes.
Teppei is fighting Surprisingly Good For Him. Xena comments on this and he beams up
but the difference in numbers is too much. Rebellions starts being overwhelmed, and then!
Suddenly Beidou and the mercs join the battle! Kazuha is here too. Traveler looks worriedly at Kokomi, does this mean that she’s accepted Fatui’s bloody money??
But Kokomi smiles back. No, she’s had another trump up her sleeve
trail of snowflakes runs through the ground and suddenly, Ayaka appears on the battlefield. 
animation cutscene plays, Ayaka is shown in the past, after Traveler leaves, feeling restless and trapped in the estate. She’s still reeling from Yoimiya’s words and the fact that she couldn’t even help Thoma herself. She feels powerless, a pretty helpless figurehead princess that she didn’t want to be
letter from Kokomi arrives, telling about Rebellion’s dire situation and asking if Ayaka can help
Ayaka is in turmoil, she wants to help so bad, but she can’t steal money from Yashiro commission, that’d be stealing from people of Inazuma! 
She glances at her dancing fan and suddenly, a solution comes to her.
Looking determined, she goes to the Kamisato estate treasury and opens the chest of her parents’ inheritance
She sells some of her family heritage jewels and silks to get the money, deciding to use the same privilege that kept her trapped to finally help people 
she also officially announces that she’ll be in religious solitude meditation ritual or smth and instead sneaks off and travels to Watatsumi
she’s wearing that carnival mask that hoyo puts on models when they want to do “disguise”. Listen, if Diluc doesn’t get recognized in this gay little mask, then it can work for Ayaka too
anyway, animation ends with Ayaka springing from the ground on the battlefield and starting her burst, which transitions to her in-game burst animation
Her burst shreds through Tenryou forces.
Ayaka freeze with Kokomi and Kazuha is one of the best meta teams. Sara realizes it’s fucking JOVER for this battle and calls retreat.
Teppei death \ Delusion factory
Rebellion overjoices, Traveler and the swordfishes hug or whatever our animation department can handle in celebration, when suddenly!
Teppei falls down! Everyone gathers around and see delusion roll over from his hand!
oh no! He says he secretly picked up delusion from the fatui camp we cleared during investigation. This is why he’s fought so well today.
We tell him that he shouldn’t have done it, the fool!
He says he wanted to be useful. He just wanted to finally be one of the rebels!
Xena sits down next to him and says “You were already one of us.”
He dies holding her hand, with all comrades all around, instead of alone behind a shed like a sick housecat
Gorou and Kokomi walk up.Kokomi says that this is exactly why she refused Fatui’s help, but this happening even to one of the soldiers is a tragedy
Traveler and Swordfishes of course demand revenge. But we don’t know where the delusions are coming from! we already cleared fatui camps we knew of, we just don’t have any new leads!
Kujou Sara who watched this scene from afar suddenly speaks up
She has intel about possible location of Fatui factory, that she didn’t have time to explore. It’s on Tenryuo territory, but she’s willing to let Traveler pass. Fatui betraying and harming Inazuma people like this is unacceptable to her, even if they are enemies for now.
We’re like but can we trust her?? What if she just captures us?
Kokomi has long eye contact with Sara. It’s very Yuri. 
She finally says “No, we can trust Kujou Sara’s honor”
Sara only lets Traveler pass, so we have a scene of swordfishes wishing us luck and then we leave
Delusion factory quest goes the same. It’s okay, again, not fixing what’s not broke.
We confront Scara, he rants about mortals being bubbles, blah blah
The only dialogue change is when he bullshits about like oh, these mortals are weak and useless, of course they have to pay for power, Traveler argues that Teppei was already useful, he helped with the camp in a way others couldn’t, and he didn’t have to die to prove anything or “pay” for power
Otherwise it goes the same, Traveler passes out, Yae shows up to trade the gnosis
we’re moving to the Act 3!
PART 3
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writingwithfolklore · 10 months
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Hey there, wanted to ask some advice for writing. Apologies if you've written this before. I searched your posted links, but didn't find quite was I was looking for. (I may have missed it!)
Let's say you're revising a scene, and something about isn't working, but you're not 100% sure what's off.
What steps do you take to try and understand why the scene doesn't work? What should we be looking for?
Thanks!
Hi! This is a great question, and something I don't think I've really covered yet.
How to Fix an "off" Scene
There are so many things that can make a scene feel 'off' so it might be helpful to begin to narrow it down or try to pinpoint the part that isn't working.
So first, I would read it out loud.
Stop to take notes if you need to--notice where you're running out of breath, where you stumble or stutter, sentences you read wrong the first time or that aren't making the sense/impact/feel you want them to. Sometimes a stutter is just a stutter and doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong, but sometimes a stutter is from odd word choice. Little things like that can have a big impact on how the scene feels.
The problem may jump out at you already. If not, there are 3 big things to watch out for:
The pacing
I just did a post on controlling pacing here, and here so I won't go too in-depth now, but a good 70% of the time when I rewrite an off scene with pacing in mind, it fixes it. Try rewriting the scene a few times--make different choices, change the weather, change the room, change the people who are there. These little details might just jog something loose here.
2. Intention
A scene may also feel off because the characters are acting strangely or the events are propelling without a propeller. Ask yourself why the characters in the scene are there--both in their purpose to add to it, as well as the 'narrative sense' it makes. Would Character A drive half an hour to join in on this conversation in person? Does their presence add something unique/essential to the conversation?
If it's a dialogue heavy scene, the problem is likely in the dialogue. Think about what each character wants out of the exchange, and how they're going to try to convince the others to give it to them. (Check out more dialogue tips here, here, and here)
3. Placement
It may just be a bad time in the story to have that specific scene. Maybe the flow is a bit off--the last chapter was super intense and now they're suddenly sitting down for tea and the momentum had to screech in its tracks. Try going back and reading what just happened and feel out the transition between scenes--they should have a similar but evolving feel to them. If they are starkly different, that's probably the "off" that you're noticing.
Otherwise, leave and come back to it. There's a chance a scene feels off because you've written it too much and you're looking at it from the lens of the author who knows all, rather than the reader who knows very little and is learning on the fly.
Good luck! Let me know how it goes!
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mllemaenad · 3 months
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The thing about Fallout is ... I don't actually think Bethesda really broke the concept until Fallout 76. I have seen people wring their hands over the Nuclear Option quest in Fallout 4 being incompatible with Fallout's themes, but I don't really agree with that.
There's that tired, defeated sounding voice over at the start of every game, after all: "War, war never changes". And I remember: I remember having to blow up both the Mariposa Base and the Cathedral in the original Fallout; I remember destroying the Enclave oil rig in Fallout 2. That's three whole buildings with people in them, just like the Institute.
While they are role playing games with a lot of choice and consequence built in, the Fallout series does consistently railroad the player in one sense: you are inserted into the narrative at a point where the situation has escalated to the point where you have to go to war. There are many side quests that give you the opportunity to find alternative, peaceful solutions to conflicts – you can fix broken machinery and forge alliances or just shout at people until they calm down, and that all works – but in the main quest, the fight is inevitable.
And that makes sense. The ghost that haunts the narrative of every Fallout game is the morning of the 23rd of October, 2077, when everybody fired on everybody else at once. You ask yourself – "How could they do that?" The scale of the destruction, the sheer number of deaths, the absolute no-win scenario that created for every nation in the world makes it sound utterly unthinkable. But they did it.
You get a lot of historical backstory on how they got there, of course: the over reliance on fossil fuels, culminating in a last minute switch to nuclear power; the collapsing economies and failing institutions; the extreme ideologies embraced by the world's super powers; the horrifying disregard for human life that spread everywhere well before anyone launched those missiles. You see all the off ramps that weren't taken along the way.
But more importantly, you live it, every time. You never set out to fight a war or blow anything up. You're trying to find a damn water chip, a GECK, your father, the guy who fucking shot you, your son. But at the end of the day, you always find yourself recruited, and you always have to destroy something. Then you can see for yourself how it happens. The world had passed its point of no return the day you arrived in it, and you just have to deal with it. War never changes.
But with Fallout 76 ... I mean, it's the problem of a single player narrative in a multiplayer game. The premise is that you are one of many vault dwellers emerging into the world to rebuild, but in practice you are The Chosen One, all over again. The Vault Dweller, singular. If you imagine it as a single player scenario it's not that bad, although it is retreading old ground: the Enclave has another one of their delightful genocidal plans, and in the end you have to turn their weapons on their plague-ridden creations to stop the nightmare from spreading. It's a tragedy, because you are risking this little patch of unpolluted land, where crops can still grow and people can still live – but you're alone with only the resources you've been able to scrape together from the detritus of this fallen society, so what choice do you have?
Except. Well. You are not alone. Not even a little bit. In theory you should have a vault full of fellow geniuses to collaborate with. And unlike other games in the series, your fundamental issue is not that you are dealing with multiple groups of people with such different ideologies that they will never agree. Those people existed, but they are now dead or fled (At least originally; I am aware that expansions have since changed the situation). In theory you are now accompanied by a group of people who should, like you, be focused on doing everything they can not to destroy their new homeland.
And worst of all, because it's a multiplayer game everybody gets a bloody turn. You don't launch your weapons, battle the scorchbeast queen and then fade into a montage describing the literal fallout of what you have done. No, you do the whole thing over again for the XP and the loot. So now you are basically using nuclear weapons for post-apocalyptic big game hunting, and it drives me up the wall.
War never changes. Let's launch the nukes for fun.
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daily-hanamura · 2 months
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I kind of wished that the persona 4 cast wasn’t stuck in a narrative where the main theme is ‘always accept the role thrust upon you and if you don’t like it, just force yourself to like it’. Yukiko actively wants to leave Inaba and create her own life, but is portrayed negatively when doing so, with her character arc involving her accepting the role thrust upon her. Don’t get me started on Naoto. I know you’re the Yosuke guy, and was wondering what are your thoughts on this when applied to Yosuke?
I want you to know that being called "the Yosuke guy" is now my greatest achievement you've made my day everyday for the last week
I do agree with you, and I think it was one of my initial issues with P4 where, for a game whose entire narrative is about being true to yourself, it sure falls back into that tired sense of social conformation a lot. It's grating, right, because it feels like what they really mean to say is "be yourself! but not too much and not in a way that makes other people unhappy and make sure you're still living up to other peoples expectations because that's the real reason why you're unhappy with yourself, you haven't accepted who we want you to be (which is the real you that we've decided) etcetc" and it just undercuts the emotional impact of their self-acceptance (see also kanji and rise). (dw I know P5 also kind of has the same problem, and I can go into a whole thing about the limits of transformative narratives written by capitalist corporations but i wont. today-)
I think with Yosuke though, it's really interesting because his character arc is more so tied to his relationship with Inaba as a place, rather than his fundamental self-perceptions. It's established early on that Yosuke hated the town for various reasons; he's a city boy who wants excitement and connection, but most of the town hates him so he's shit out of luck and it gives him little reason to like the town back. As the game progresses, he starts to like the town -- "it's not about where you are, but who you're with", so it's his friendships (and having people who accept him for who he is) that makes the place meaningful for him. And, at the end of the day, Yosuke did get what he wanted - excitement and connection.
But he's not tied to Inaba.
In P4AU, it's revealed that Yosuke's struggling to figure out what he wants to do in life, but by the end of it he tells Yu that he wants to leave the town and go to college with Yu in the city, and that he wants to see the world and experience more things for himself. It fascinates me because it very strongly implies that Yosuke's arc isn't complete as we're very expressly told that he's still developing. It stands in contrast to the other characters who have effectively been fixed into some role or position (Yukiko as an inn manager, Rise as an idol), and unlike them, Yosuke hasn't been permanently relegated to the things that he starts off hating. He hasn't been written to stay in Inaba or even to continue working at Junes after graduation, instead he gets the opportunity to try things. imo this makes his arc more situational (and therefore layered) - Yosuke's perspective on his circumstance matures, but who he is as a person doesn't have to change, and he's not forced to make a trade-off with the wishes he had at the start.
This might be because Yosuke is Atlus' favourite character of the contrast between Yosuke's city background and the rest of the Inaba folk. There's a guy in the school who talks about how most people who finish high school in Inaba just go on to get jobs, and very few actually leave for college and beyond. It's something deeply realistic and reflective of human geography IRL, because that's very common in small communities. A fear of the outside world because of how isolated they are (and Inaba kind of is - remember how Yosuke said they barely had cell connectivity up until recently) means they tend to look inwards instead of out, so there isn't as strong an awareness of what else there is out there and a belief that your options are basically just that (it also makes it all the more impressive that they have surprisingly well-traveled teachers). Yosuke, on the other hand, is very much connected to the internet and the outside world, and he also tends to think about the things that he's missing out on more tangibly.
It makes for a very interesting parallel with Yukiko, who had grown up in Inaba all her life and also expresses that same interest in wanting to go out and see the world. Yukiko's idea about the kind of options that she has is weirdly limited for someone who is supposed to be at the top of her class. When you meet her at the bookstore, she talks about getting a job license so she could leave town, and her first thought was interior decorator (do you even need a license for that? it's not a chartered profession unlike an architect or interior designer, but things might work differently in japan). And maybe she does have a genuine interest in it so I'm talking shit, but it also feels like it's a job that she's aware of only because of the ryokan. As far as I could tell, we don't actually see her express any interest in, say, furniture themes or colour swatches and fabric textures in the way Kanji very clearly does. Her world view, like everyone else, is bounded by the reach of her experience, but because Inaba is so small and cloistered it impedes her ability to imagine beyond that. Even when she's thinking of leaving, her options are still limited to her experiences at the inn. I'm still really salty about how she decided to stay at the ryokan in the end, because something much more satisfying in my opinion would have been for her to get the opportunity to try different things elsewhere in the world, and if she decided that the ryokan was the right thing for her, then, well, fine, I guess? Or some cliche like exploring other inns elsewhere so she could bring that knowledge home. Especially since she had the support of her family and the inn staff, it makes her narrative feel more like an acceptance of her lot in life, rather than a genuine realisation that yeah, this was what she wanted, which was what the game wanted us to think, except it's not convincing. Instead, it just feels like a weird stagnation because her initial wish of wanting to see the world beyond the ryokan was not satisfied.
But hey, guess who does!
Yosuke gets to learn how to make the best of a situation, but ultimately, he's not beholden to it. He - and his writers - understand that he's not done growing, so he doesn't fix himself to a role that he doesn't like. AND IT'S GOOD. I just wish everyone else got that opportunity.
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jonathan-samuel-smith · 3 months
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TW bipolar discussion and nonconsensual kissing, mental health discussion
So about Saturn Girl kissing Jon without his ability to consent to it: I get that she isn't actively deciding to mind control the people around her, but she does have a choice in the matter. Her family wanted her to stay home until she could control her mind control powers, but she didn't want to and left. To me that's like if I noticed I was manic (not hypomanic) and didn't go to the mental hospital... Like I can't control my bipolar but I have the choice to stay away from others when it would harm them. That's not even a good comparison though because my judgement isn't clear enough to consistently do that when I'm manic, whereas she is at baseline and is able to think rationally. I wouldn't blame someone with bipolar because they have no choice, but I'm just saying the obvious choice would be to keep yourself away from others even if it's not fun for you. I feel like I can blame her, because she has a choice.
I do sympathize with her, but I really think she's hurting others disproportionately to the distress she feels stuck at home, and that's not okay.
If you look back on the events with the knowledge that she can't turn off her mind control, you see how manipulative she is, especially to Jon, and she does high-control group tactics: love bombing, isolation, guilt tripping, not letting him have rest alone where he would have time to realize he didn't want this.
I don't like the JonDami narrative that Jon was an asshole for leaving Damian in the past or was running away from his problems, because in my view he was dragged into a cult and I can't blame him for that, especially because he was extremely vulnerable at the time. I also don't believe Jon would have left in the first place if he knew up front that he couldn't bring Damian to at least visit him.
Jon had been in a state of fight or flight for around 6 years (not just talking about the volcano because there was also his verbally abusive grandpa and their deadly adventures and being trapped in space, and then him struggling to survive on the streets and trying to find a way home after he escaped) and the first time he really got a chance to cool down was when he was talking with Damian. He really needs a long break, therapy, and medication because what he went through can't be treated with therapy alone as the stress has chemical effects in the brain that need to be adjusted.
The writers don't care about how Jon should be extremely hypervigilant and defensive and anxious. I guess that's just not brave enough for a superhero, nevermind that leaving the house and getting treatment for these things, learning to trust again, and letting people help you is so much braver than punching guys when you have superpowers. It's natural to fight when your fight or flight is activated in a protective manner, but doing the logical thing when every signal in your body is telling you not to is really damn hard. The only coward is DC for giving Jon trauma and not actually writing a traumatized character.
That all being said, Damian clearly doesn't see how Jon is being manipulated, probably because his head is full of self hatred & doubting & repressed desires to ask Jon to stay, and thinks he needs to go against his abandonment trauma by swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction in his speech. With his c-ptsd and abandonment issues I can see him becoming bitter towards Jon for going to the future.
That could make for a really complex fanfiction, don't you think? The conflict coming from their unique life experiences and traumas, and them learning to understand each other like they're always doing. This misunderstanding of intentions born not out of something dumb like hearing the wrong thing or being unclear in language, but from their different points of view.
My jondami au where Jon leaves the legion early is calling me lmao "Isaac we have more problems for you to fix~"
That being said I have no exclusivity to these ideas for writing.
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so i just found some old interviews of spop, especially ones after the finale, and i just wanted to dissect some of the interesting parts:
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the crew themselves keep reinforcing the idea that only catra saw adora for who she is, when the show itself says otherwise multiple times. catra, who mocked adora for never being a true hero, who kept hurting adora because she resented her for being she-ra, who kept saying that adora has a hero complex and that she is full of herself. that catra “motivated and inspired” adora?
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“i wanted their romance to be the central arc”
this explains everything. the fact that they took an existing show with an intriguing fantasy world and so much potential and then reduced it to “cute lesbians kiss haha”. if you're gonna write a show about romance, do that. you don't have to butcher an already existing series for that.
“it reveals how that arc has been built”
what arc? is the arc we're talking about in the same room as us? because from what i can see, they put in zero effort to make c//a's development even halfway coherent. catgirl tortures hero for four seasons, gets saved by said hero and joins the good guys, continues torturing hero. how is that an arc?
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so.. they have the right idea here. catra and adora did indeed need to take their time away from each other and deal with their problems. but did they? adora came close to building her self-esteem and realizing that she didn't have to take responsibility for everything around her. but then all that was reversed in s5 when she was forced into a relationship with the same person who ruined her sense of self-worth in the first place.
catra.. doesn't even try. the closest she got to moving on from her past was during her time in the crimson waste but then she ends up spiralling even deeper into toxicity, adding more and more into her list of crimes. in s5, she is shown to reflect on her relationship with adora but does she learn anything from it? nope. she continues abusing and berating adora, she continues giving adora mixed signals and relying on adora to do all the work in the relationship.
so the crew seemingly had the right idea (although i'd say they still shouldn't get into a relationship, even after they've worked on their issues) but never followed through. instead they gave us a lazy and rushed redemption, where the wrongdoer never works on their flaws and instead puts all the blame on their partner. amazing.
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so nate himself admits that not all of catra's actions were justified. but then, why does the show try to justify them? why does the show justify catra abusing adora by implying that it's because adora abandoned her? why does the show justify all of catra's toxic and abusive behaviour by blaming it solely on shadow weaver? if catra's actions cannot be justified, the narrative should keep her accountable, which they don't.
secondly, i'll try not to assume the worst of nate's personality from what he said, and just get to the important part.
“It's other people's decision to forgive you, that's not a given, but also there are ways for you to fix what's broken. You have to work hard to prove yourself again, you have to actually actively fix what's done, it's not as simple as a sacrifice.”
i'm so confused. the way nate says it, you'd think he applied all of this to catra's arc. but he didn't. “it's not as simple as a sacrifice” but a sacrifice was all it took for catra to be forgiven by her victims. she doesn't work on herself, her apologies were shallow, and she continues repeating the same mistakes. “it's other people's decision to forgive you” yet every single character forgives catra immediately and none of them are allowed to stay mad at her.
how could you write such a bad redemption and then talk about it as if it had all the details and nuance it was lacking? again, when speaking, nate seems to have the right idea of how to write a redemption arc. why did they fumble so badly when it came to actually executing it in the story? the only answer i can think of is that none of the writers in the crew are good at writing.
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anonymoushouseplantfan · 11 months
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Is it me or was the birthday post with Archie reaching for the Diana pic a bit of an eye roll (in that they've already played that hand)? Also, I agree with your comments and one of the readers regarding the miss on getting a balcony money shot pic. It looked like a lot of commotion up there. Lastly, I feel like the hike pics were panic shots... do you agree? Love having you back, Plant!
They’re settling back into old rhythms—playing the Diana card, responding with pap walks, leaking through “friends,” sending out friendly journos/biographers with new anecdotes, re-releasing old pics.
It’s a bizarro-world version of royal pr. This is what you do when you’re a royal and you can’t just go out and be yourself. You have to do it tangentially.
But they aren’t royals anymore. They can release a new pic of Archie and not have a pseudo-staffer post and old one. They can go to the Lakers game and hand out with friends and not have the biographer talk about traybakes. They can post pics of Archie’s birthday party on a friend’s insta and not have to leak lemon cake details to People and the DM.
I’d say the whole thing is a panic move. They told their “truth” with the documentary and the book but that completely shattered their relationship with the family and their royal-adjacent cred. Now they need a new post-royal image, but they don’t want to work with the British press who are the real masters at that kind of narrative building. They’ve worked with the US press (The Cut, VF, and Variety), but it hasn’t been successful. So now they are doing the kind of stuff the royals do to build a narrative in the British tabloids, but without tabloid cooperation so it’s not working either.
I feel the root of their problem is that Meghan’s “you can be both” bs simply doesn’t work. You can’t be a casual Cali/Montecito royal. You can’t be a New Age Los Angeles High Anglican. You can’t be an activist royal Duchess. You can’t be a “beloved family member” who rants about getting the smaller Sandringham bedroom. You can’t be multiracial Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. Those things don’t coexist.
That’s why their pr consultants are telling them they have an “authenticity” problem. Their image is totally incoherent.
And they don’t know how to fix it. That’s why they are panicking.
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arteastica · 8 months
Text
Early in the morning, especially when it rains, and a little before noon. (4)
erwin x fem!reader
chapters: (1) | (2) | (3) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | (9) | (10) | (11) | (12) | (13) | (14) | (15) | (16) | (17) | (18) | (19) | (20) | (21) | (22) | (23) | (24) | (25)
summary: I basically took Isayama’s work, forced it into a romance story, and made Erwin the love interest. Commander meets cadet and they fall in love (not instantly though)
notes: very berry canonverse (but some events were modified to fit my narrative), wasn’t intended to be this long, but it all is in the details right?
content warnings: smut where it fits (or where I make it fit. Also reader is NOT underage, so likewise, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, please.) slow burn (I really mean it. I’m not olympic diving into any form of smut for the first chapters). no angst. I dislike angst. I would never. I could never. (Although angst can be somewhat subjective so take it with a grain of salt?)
wc: 2.5k
“Everyone is to be positioned at fixed intervals, to extend the message relay range as far as possible.”
At the Survey Corps headquarters, time seemed to pass rather quickly. Two weeks had already gone by, and with them some of your insecurities. The more familiar you got with your job, the more comfortable you felt in your position. And the commander’s words had proven to be true: your days had grown repetitive indeed. But that was something you didn’t feel the slightest need to complain about. In a world where one moment you could be at home making breakfast, and the next, in a titan’s stomach, you found reassurance in the predictability of your job.
Every day, you woke up early, washed your face, walked into the office, disposed of the spent candle, replaced it, prepared the commander’s work space, received a thankful smile in return, brew his morning tea, received another one, organized his mail, wrote responses, then sent them, then trailed behind him, paused for lunch, then trailed behind him some more, sat at your desk, wrote reports, organized them, brought him his evening tea, heard a ‘thank you’, double-checked you had replaced the candle, asked if he needed anything else, got a ‘no’ followed by another ‘thank you’ and the respective smile that always came with it, bid him goodnight, wrote a diary entry, went to bed, and repeated it all over again the next day. Exhausting? No, not for you. Repetitive desk work happened to be your area of expertise. Oh, and once a week, you attended meetings like this one.
“A black smoke round will be fired as soon as an abnormal is sighted, which they will be since the area is full of them.”
From the secluded corner you liked to stand in, you listened attentively as the commander went over the formation one more time. Your eyes drifting from his face to the now familiar expedition plans that were laid out on the wooden table. Every morning, there was a new scribble on the paper, and it was getting increasingly difficult to see what was underneath. But maybe it was just you. Neither the commander nor his captains seemed to have any problem seeing through all the additional lines and hasty handwriting.
“And it’s primarily the forward recon soldier who will encounter them.”
The forward recon soldier. You checked in with your notes before fixing your eyes back on the table. Ever since you noticed it one morning while organizing his desk, you had been wondering if there was a particular reason why the commander assigned only one person for that position. The third column, however, was marked as multiple.
“Anyone who sees the flare should fire the same round to relay the signal”
And when the commander sees it, he’ll fire a green smoke round, and show the formation where to go. Impressive. The formation looked impressive enough on paper, but you wondered how it would look in real life, under actual life-threatening circumstances. And with the expedition quickly approaching, you were surprised to discover in yourself, even though slight, a tinge of excitement at the thought of seeing it all play out in the field. Impressive. The commander was really something. You thought as you watched him. Firing that green smoke round would be nerve-racking for anyone, knowing so many lives depended on whether you made the right call or not. A slip in judgement, even the slightest one, could mean his soldiers wouldn’t live to see another day. And yet, there he stood: solid and resolute.
Impressive, indeed. To think such complex strategy had been devised entirely by one man. Sleepless nights working tirelessly on his project. No, not his. Humanity’s. So many nights spent under the candle light, leaning over his desk, so focused, so determined. Just as he was now. And you couldn’t help but notice that the rumors you heard in the capital never mentioned how attractive he was. Sapphires instead of eyes; neatly combed hair, fair and trimmed short at the sides; well built and broad-shouldered, yet elegant and sophisticated. If one didn’t know any better, one could have assumed he descended from royalty.
“What do you think?” A question with your name attached at the end took you by surprise. The commander was talking to you. “I’ve noticed you’ve been staring at that one spot in the paper since the meeting started. What’s on your mind?”
“Sir, I-” the short woman with strawberry blonde hair, whose name, you had learned, was Petra, gave you an encouraging smile “I just think the third relay, the one in the third column, would work better as a one-person position” you explained, leaving your self-appointed confinement in the corner of the room to join them at the table “I mean, because of the place it is located in, I- I think it is unlikely that they will encounter a titan before the others” you said as you tried to focus your attention on the commander only, doing your best to make it past squad leader Miche’s sniffing and Captain Levi’s dead eyes. “And in the event that they do, I think it would be more efficient to use a strong soldier for that position, instead of multiple of average… strength” you continued, trying to convince yourself that ‘average’ wasn’t an insult “that- that way the strong soldiers could deal with the situation alone as a one-man team, and we would be able to send more people to the peripheral positions and support those who are more likely to find titans, like the recon soldiers, for example. I believe this way the chances of survival would be slightly higher for everyone” you concluded, relieved to have reached the end of your intervention “It’s just my opinion, sir.”
After, what you estimated, had been a century of the commander contemplating the paper before him, he finally grabbed his pencil and wrote something in his small black notebook. Then, he moved on to the next topic.
-
“You’re not one of many words, are you?”
“Sir?” You looked up from the papers you had been organizing.
“Strange. Something about you also tells me you are quite fond of talking. I can’t decide.”
Oh, you talked. Inside your head. There, you never shut up.
“I used to think it was an innate ability, you know, being able to choose one’s words intentionally” the commander told you as he drew his signature on a report “But one author I read once, said it was actually an acquired skill. And now I can’t decide either. But whatever it is, I respect that” he looked up and smiled softly “Today, however, was the first time I heard you string more than two sentences together. And I must say, I would be delighted to hear your input more often.”
You liked that. Very much. So you smiled back.
“Nanaba told me they had never heard a recruit speak so much for a first interview.” You had to pause what you were doing “She admitted she was overwhelmed at first, but then grateful, because, after such descriptive self-introduction, she knew exactly where to place you.” Did he know about all the things you told them? “I confess that, knowing that, it was starting to concern me, that you may be scared of me. That’s why you never talk. Am I that scary?”
Not scary. Intimidating maybe? But definitely not scary. So you shook your head lightly.
He smiled, looking a little bit defeated by the continuous silence on your end, and then said “In the future, share your ideas with us. There’s value in them. I won’t keep you any longer, you may go.”
But you didn’t move, instead you took a deep breath and opened your mouth. “I think that paper is a mess” you pointed to the formation plans “There’s so much written on it, and it’s getting difficult for me to understand what’s going on underneath. I mean, I understand because I saw it before it turned into the chaos that it is now, and because I go to the meetings every week, of course. And your explanations there are always very detailed. I think you’re great at explaining things by the way, you could explain chess to a titan. But I was just thinking, the other new recruits may find it rather confusing too. When we present the plan to them next week, they’re only gonna see scribbles and doodles and lines that go in all sorts of directions. And they’re gonna be left to wonder if your son grabbed his colored chalk and wrote on it while you were sleeping.”
He looked down at the paper, then back at you, and then threw his head back laughing.
“Very good. I’ll work on that tomorrow. Thanks” he concluded, seemingly satisfied.
“And also” he said as you were almost at the door “I don’t have a son.”
And you found yourself smiling back complicitly.
“Good night, commander”
-
You opened the map and when you saw it, it made you smile. The forward recon position was no longer a soldier but a squad.
Like hell you were going to let him rewrite the plans. This was the whole point of you being there, to take over trivial stuff like this so he could focus on more important things. So you showed up even earlier the next morning and started working on it.
When he opened the scroll later that day, his eyes immediately went to find you at your desk.
“Scribble on it as much as you like. I’ll make a new one when I see it starts getting messy” this time it was you giving him the reassuring smile.
-
“Erwin, it was about time you cleaned up that thing. It was starting to upset me.”
“It wasn’t me, Levi. The new recruits will be here” he pointed at the space between the wagon defense squad and the support squad. “They will be moving with the spare horses, as well as relaying signals.”
The one month anniversary of your enlistment had arrived, and the day of your first expedition beyond the walls was quickly approaching. As you had expected, the atmosphere at the headquarters had gotten more and more hectic. That week’s meeting had been significantly longer. They had taken hours going over each one of the soldiers individually, and deciding their positions in the formation.
Captain Levi’s squad was already in charge of Eren, so you assumed they would continue to serve that role for the expedition as well. But the commander hadn’t specified so, neither revealed their exact position yet. Not during the meeting, at least. You didn’t understand what was the reason behind all the secrecy. Did he suspect something was off? Was he worried someone might hurt Eren? If so, who and why? Eren’s name, however, wasn’t the only one missing. You couldn’t find yours anywhere on the paper.
“The forces this time are significantly smaller than in previous expeditions, we should concentrate on getting back with minimal losses. Any questions?”
“Yes, sir” you raised a hand “What is going to be my position?”
-
“Commander, please”
“I’m not risking losing my assistant to a titan” he said while opening the door to his office “I need you here, not in a titan’s belly.”
“If a titan grabs me I’ll scream for it to unhand me.” Not even you knew if that was supposed to be a joke “Unhand me, monster.”
He chuckled as he sat at his desk, still not bothering to look at you. “I can guarantee you that’s not the way things work out there.”
“I know those plans like the back of my hand. And that too” you said pointing at the map scroll he had just placed on the table. “Commander, I swear, when I close my eyes at night, I’m only able to see that thing. I’m forever haunted. By that and by your scribbles.”
“All the more reason to stay then” he looked rather amused, and for a brief moment you were tempted to ask if he derived some sort of enjoyment from the situation. But you settled for listening instead. “In the event we all perish out there, there needs to be someone left who’s able to pass on the knowledge to the next soldiers.”
“All the more reason to go then” you said as he gave his full attention to a pile of reports. What was he even doing? You were supposed to organize that later. “If you perish out there, so will my intentions of going beyond the walls. Because I’m not following anyone else out there.”
He put down the papers and finally looked at you. And something about his demeanor reminded you of that night.
Are you ready to die if I ordered to? But the memory didn’t make you think of him as much as it made you think of your past self. What would she say? How would she feel knowing that all it took was one month. One month working under Erwin Smith, and you were already begging to be taken on a suicide mission. Talk about unexpected.
“Commander, back then you said all the new recruits would join you in the expedition beyond the walls” You added in a composed manner, watching your tone the whole time because the last thing you wanted was to sound whiny. You knew that wouldn’t help. You needed to make him understand it was not an impulsive plea. Because it really wasn’t. You wholeheartedly believed you could be of some assistance out there. Maybe not fighting titans but helping with provisions, running spare horses, anything he needed. Him or anyone. Plus how would you call yourself a scout if you never, well… scouted.
He remained silent. So you took it as an indication that you could keep going.
“You said you wanted to hear my ideas. I can’t tell you what I think if I’m here and you’re miles away.” you stepped closer, the front of his desk meeting the front of your thighs. “Please, let me go with you.”
He stared back at you. All amusement seemed to have abandoned his eyes. But beyond that, it was difficult to guess what he was thinking. After a while, however, he spoke again.
“You’ll take the position to my immediate right.” You released the stiffness your muscles had been holding. The spearhead. Through your relief, you tried to go over the plans in your mind. “Don’t stray too far apart and keep your eyes open at all times.”
“Yes, sir” you didn’t try to hide the contentment in your smile.
-
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