#no art yet but I’ll get on it! maybe flesh out more plot lol

[blo0pkin]

I’ve been working on a Dream SMP Pokémon AU :D

This is pretty lengthy it’s all under the cut.

Okay apologizing now for spelling mistakes. I didn’t have my Pokédex on me alright.

This AU takes place in Galar, but the starting Town is named L’Manburg. And also Circhester is Snowchester

Tommy is The main character you play as. (So when I say you, I mean Tommy. But when I say Tommy I also mean you y’know). He chose a fire type starter, a Scorbunny he nicknamed Cat. He also has a Zigzagoon named Mellohi, a shiny Venomoth named Clemintine, Joltik named Shroud, and a Tauros named Henry! He loves his Pokémon a lot, and makes sure to nickname them.

Tubbo is the rival/best friend! He chose the grass starter, Grookey. He has a voltorb, Deerling, a Spoink he shares custody of with Ranboo named Micheal, a Wheezing, and miraculously, Xurkitree. He refuses to say where he got it.

Ranboo is the ghost gym leader who Tubbo convinces to come with him and Tommy, and get the water stater Sobble despite hating all water types. Also has a backstory with Team Dream, but doesn’t know much due to memory loss! He also seems to have a skin condition causing his skin and hair to become dual coloured. His team consists of Alolan Marrowhack, Lampent, Banette and Yamask!

Dream is the leader of Team Dream, a diabolical team that steals Pokémon! SapNap (fire-type leader) and Gogy (bug-type leader who of which only has Pokémon with the “sleep spore” move) two of the higher-level leaders, think it’s all for the fun of it and for the better of the region but Dream actually has them steal for power!

Tommy and Tubbo go and defeat Dream to retrieve Tommy’s partner Pokémon Mellohi and Cat. The odd thing about Dream is insists on fighting Pokémon himself, sans Pokémon. Rumor says his partner pokemon abandoned him.

Puffy is the fairy-type gym leader! She uses a repurposed water-type gym, so her gym challenge and stuff is all pirate themed. She helps the hero’s periodically throughout their journey! Also Watch out for her Jigglypuff, it knows Sing!

Technoblade is the current champion is the region, and Tommy’s big brother! He uses seemingly only Emboar to win every battle. Technoblade never dies!

He ends up helping Team Dream during the finale, being one of the bosses you have to defeat (he was peer pressured okay!). It is also revealed during that fight he’s where Tubbo got Xurkitree!

There’s also Wilbur, who is Technoblade’s twin brother and Tommy’s big brother, who failed at defeating all the gym challenges and ran away. He started helping the hero’s many times throughout their journey until he moved ahead of them in the gym challenges (The bench trio had plot stuff to attend to). He made a bet with Philza, the flying type gym leader and his dad, that if he lost he wouldn’t try at being champion again for 6 months. He lost. Nobody knows where he ran off to, but when he comes back with Dream (and on his side too) it’s pretty clear his mental health didn’t fair well. He used to have a partner Pokémon, a Nickett named Fundy, but he abandoned him fairly early on in his journey. He comes back to defeat Ghostbur when Dream makes him fight you during the finale! Also Wilbur has a Drillbur and a Timburr simply because I think it’s funny.

There’s Philza Minecraft, the flying-type gym leader and Tommy’s dad. He is the last leader you face before the bracket. His partner Pokémon Corviknight likes to perch on his back and make it look like Phil has wings. Tommy is two Pokémon down during this battle (it’s when Dream has possession of Cat and Mellohi), but he still wins! Tommy thinks that Phil let him win so he doesn’t pull a Wilbur and run off to be a villain.

The regions scientist is actually two people, Sam Awesome, who’s name tag jokingly says AweSamdude, is kinda the R&D part of the lab. He made a little robot furret named Sam Nook that essentially acts like Navi the whole time, bothering Tommy with unhelpful info. Sometimes helpful tho. The other one is Dr. Opsby Ponk, just called Ponk, who gave the Bench Trio their starters! But don’t go to her for medical advice, he’ll just feed your Pokémon lemons. They they grew them herself tho!

There’s also Team Egg. A Team of trainers who’s been mind controlled by a Pokémon egg! The egg won’t hatch, it has vines, is psychic, and no scientist can get even a little bit close without being possessed themselves. The leader of this team is a man who only goes by the alias BadBoyHalo, the dark-type gym leader. During his gym challenge is when you find out about Team Egg. All his Pokémon gained the typing of psychic after being possessed. His second in command is a man by the Alias of AntFrost, a cat-like Pokémon only user, and during the after-game Both Sam and Ponk were effected by the egg trying to study it. And the most bizzarre edition to the Team Egg crew is a man with diamond skin named Skeppy. You meet these misfits periodically throughout your journey, but never really fight them until you defeat Dream.

During the big fight finale, it is revealed that Dream has been conducting experiments to create the ultimate Pokémon-human hybrid. He experimented on Ranboo, the first test on the kid ghost gym leader, and that’s why he has no memory and has black-white skin. His other tests where the Pokémon egg (where it’s revealed a man named Velvet is inside it!) Charlie and Skeppy. And the big big reveal is that he experimented on Wilbur too! He was the only success, being both human and now ghost type! (Nicknamed Ghostbur by Dream)

Dream succeeds in turning himself half-Pokémon during the finale with a big fancy cutscene, but then Tommy gets Cat and Mellohi back along with he and Tubbo getting Zamazenta and Zacian (this still takes place in Galar lol) so he’s defeated! (Tubbo is the one who gets the final hit!!)

Unfortunately, Team Egg is not defeated along with Dream so it’s kinda the after story. After the finale is also when Tommy defeats Technoblade on in the official match and becomes the new Champion! Tubbo loses to Tommy and Techno, but is still happy he even got to try and that his best friends are happy!

There’s also Quackity, the leader of an underground fighting ring. Very illegal but very fancy, but no-one goes there. There’s always a battle but no trainers or spectators! He has one of the failed Pokémon-human experiments named Charlie, a human-Dodosion hybrid.

SapNap is also the Fire-type gym leader, but was also on Team Dream. He left the moment he found out Dream experimented on people, and took Gogy (the big type leader) with him, which ultimately made Dream snap finally make himself half Pokémon. Gogy fell asleep during your gym challenge.

Niki runs a little bakery for Pokémon, and is somehow in every location all at once. Don’t ask her how. The original location is in the same town as Puffy’s gym.

Eret is the curator of the museum, a plot revelant location and she kinda makes you solve a bunch of riddles and tests before he gives you the information you ask for. They show up in the end too, waving a giant pride flag to try and give Tommy’s side some gay protection.

Foolish is a talking Pokémon himself, and takes place of Calyrex. He’s a totem, and your goal in the DLC is the same as Calyrex but you run around a desert. I still haven’t completed the DLC but I wanted to include foolish don’t @ me.

Purpled is one of the trainers you battle in the bracket and kinda takes place of Bede but not a jerk, and is the closest Tommy gets to losing other than to Techno and Tubbo.

Both he and Foolish join Las Nevadas in the DLC. (Oh yeah, Las Nevadas the underground fighting ring is explored more in the DLC.) ((Btw When I say DLC btw I really mean like, Tommy can start it at any point but can also wait until after all the story and after story. The second one is what I assume they did because that’s just how I played Sw/Sh but it’s up to interpretation))

Jack Manifold is another gym challenger, a steel-type user. He’s from the same town as Tubbo, Snowchester! He streams all his Pokémon battles, and is the one who encouraged Tommy to do the same.

#Pokémon AU #long post #dream smp #dream smp AU #no art yet but I’ll get on it! maybe flesh out more plot lol #text #Technoblade #Tommy #tubbo #ranboo #bench trio #philza Minecraft #Wilbur soot #Jack manifold #niki nihachu #purpled bedwars #Skeppy #Badboyhalo #AntFrost #eggpire #dream #sapnap #georgenotfound #dream team #foolish gamers

[itsgoldleaf]

18 and 22 for the ask game, plz

Thank you Anon! 18. I name you writer on the show: What's the first thing you write Season 6? A fix-it for all the weird characterisation in season 5? LOL this is a tough question. I think, yes, I'd ultimately like to write another season but have it be like, a mini series maybe, 4 episodes max? Something to just, make everything better and satisfy my own self-indulgences but also make up for the yawning omissions in the show in general. I would love to write a slice-of-life thing where everyone is back in Pegasus, literally 100% composed of all those small, weirdly away-from-the-action character moments that are dotted around so much in the show that have no plot significance but really flesh out the people and their relationships to one another. I'd give Teyla and Ronon actual respectable character arcs and utilise them as people with unique experiences and perspectives and not just sounding boards for other characters' dialogue. Half the time in SGA it doesn't matter if you give the line to Teyla or Ronon since they get used as exposition-catalysts way too much. I want Teyla and her people to be back in the fore, how USEFUL she and they would be in reestablishing relations with all the other planets and trading partners once Atlantis gets back to Pegasus (especially if they got cut off from Earth again. Okay I'm literally just describing Written By The Victors again here I can't help it!!!) I want her to have genuine friendships with other female characters that aren't just 'we need to move the plot forward with some exposition' (SGA does pass the Bechdel test in a few episodes to be fair but I almost feel that's by accident honestly, I think it's literally always to drive the plot forward via dialogue and never just to have them be hanging out shooting the shit like you get with John & Rodney). I WANT SATEDAN CULTURE PLEASE I want to know more about their art and songs and commerce and world c'moooooon (I'm literally writing a thing about this rn because!!!) Ronon is so criminally under-used as a PERSON in this show oh my god, so I want him to have more to do than just not understanding shit because he isn't unintelligent, christ. Does anyone in the show EVER ask him what HIS favourite song is?! Or what he likes to do?! And also just, I haven't even got to McShep yet, but I'm a slow burn lots and lots of subtext and neither of them naming it will-they-are-they-what-is-this? sort of person so nothing would even explicitly happen until the last 'episode' of this thing I'm apparently now in charge of. The pier scene from the Shrine except a whole season of that mood, where you know what's going on but it's this quiet, understated intimacy that blooms, not in the forefront, just, a nice development of a thing rumbling along. (Yes I would yeet the Rodney/Jennifer thing sorry not sorry, haha.) I went REALLY OFF BRIEF HERE but oh my god I think what I love about SGA in a twisted way is the lost potential (aka thank fuck for fic). It doesn't have to be a big enemy of the week drama for it to be interesting and good and engaging - I crave the small moments, treating the characters with respect and not caricaturing them (looking at you season 5 episodes that shall go nameless unless someone asks me about them at which point I will gladly write a thesis) so yeah, fund me amaz*n I'll write your show for you

22. A fic you would be buried with since it's so good, you'd read it over and over until the end of time. This is VERY difficult to answer because I have a handful that I read over and over and over. Oh man. Oh man! Okay, picking one at random, The Suite Life by Cartwrite. It's literally what I described above almost - this slow paced, slice of life thing that has no huge peril but is this comforting exploration of the development of a relationship with perfect characterisation and real warmth and that is my absolute VIBE for all eternity.

#ask meme #McShep #Stargate Atlantis #Teyla Emmagan #Ronon Dex #John Sheppard #Rodney Mckay #guess I'm writing this then #lets call it a drabble project before I completely overextend myself #might do it for fictober actually #this is fun please send me more!!

[haljathefangirlcat]

MOR mozalieri angst and galadred jb 👀

OH MY GOD ARE YOU TELLING ME YOU’RE INTO MOR TOO SDFGHJKLSDFGHJKLK

... ahem. These are both really short because I jotted them down as a spur of the moment thing  and I have absolutely no idea when or if I’ll actually make something out of them. So I’m just gonna post everything I wrote for them since it counts as “a little snippet” anyway, lol.

The first one is angsty af and entirely the fault of that part of L'Assasymphonie where Salieri is playing with the knife while ranting about his impostor syndrome and his inferiority complex. Uh, and Le Bien Qui Fait Mal, too, but that goes without saying. If it ever went anywhere, it would probably include very pained love/professional admiration confessions, a idiots in love/mutual pining “wait, no, I’m pining for you but you wouldn’t even look at me!” “are you kidding me, I’m the one pining but I thought you hated me!” moment, and PLENTY of hurt/comfort. I have absolutely no idea about anything else, though, because I don’t even know where or when even the scene I came up with is set... which would be a pretty important thing to know, from a practical standpoint, tbh.

TW FOR SELF-HARM AND VIOLENT IMAGERY

He’d only ever thought of what it was like to love like that. To feel the bright-bladed knife plunge and twist and dig inside his chest, tenderly cut through quivering flesh and sinew, saw his ribcage open to open up his heart to the burning beauty and white-hot light streaming in from above. To seek that pain and hide away from that pleasure, and curse the man who was the cause of both while cursing himself for letting him hold such power over him, for loving him and for hating him, for always failing to live up to him, to be like him.

He’d never spared one thought to consider what it might be like to be loved like that. To be made aware that your very existence was a spring of endless suffering for one who claimed to feel an ever-growing affection for you, to be made into an obsession in the black of night and an ivory idol bathed in golden sunrises, to become an inescapable curse. To have that much power, and not rejoice in it or even want it. To not be cruel enough to stomach it.

Mozart didn’t need to mock him with his brash laugh or hurl cold words at him. It was the softness in his voice that made guilt well up in his gut like pouring venom into a bowl until it overflowed; it was the sadness in his gaze that cooled his heart until he shivered. It was his own shame at himself, washing over him once again in new, sudden, crashing waves for new, sudden, piercing reasons, that brought him down on his knees, brought his head in his hands.

And Mozart, he came down to him. He lowered himself and crouched on the floor to reach him. Put his arms around his shoulders for a moment, then drew back and took Salieri’s wrists in his hands, holding them gently, gingerly. Scared, or disgusted, or perhaps just careful not to stain himself with his blood. It was starting to cool. It felt sticky, dirty.

«Come with me,» Mozart said, and drew Salieri’s hands away from his face. Some distant part of Salieri’s mind felt he should not allow that so easily, but the rest of him just felt tired, so he did. How strange that even though he was the one shaking, his breath ragged and hitching, it should be Mozart to cry. He wanted to laugh at the sight, but found he couldn’t. He could only let himself be dragged up to his feet, and then into a chair when he started feeling lightheaded.

He even obediently raised his hand and stayed put as Mozart ran to fetch warm water, soap, and clean cloth.

The second one is, once again, inspired by one of your fics. ;) Remember when you wrote that artist!Jaime/tattoo artist!Brienne fic where they bonded over Arthurian characters and I was like, “someone should introduce both of them to the concept of Galahad/Mordred because they’d love it so much for their own different reasons?” Ideally, this should be the fic where they actually get introduced to it... if it ever went somewhere.

The basic plot would be: “Jaime was overjoyed when he found out he could pour his old love for all things Arthurian AND his passion for drawing into fandom. His first fanart were all very dramatic, very romantic Mists of Avalon -inspired Arthur/Morgana pieces because he identified with that due to his ‘fated’ relationship with C., but as that started to go sour, he branched out into edgy, purposefully badwrong Arthur/Morgause stuff. Eventually, he found out about Galahad/Mordred and got really into the whole ‘doomed man on the path to making all the wrong choices finds redemption through connecting with another misfit with a high moral drive and noble nature who may have his own issues but believes there’s something good in him for some reason’ aspect of it. That’s when Brienne, budding fanwriter mostly into gen stuff due to romance bringing back bad memories, found his art and unexpectedly got hooked to the whole ‘noble-hearted and justice-loving misfit can’t really connect with anyone on a deeper level until he meets snarky, sad not-so-doomed man who actually sees HIM beyond both the brave knight thing and the ‘will never fit in anyway’ thing’ aspect. Now, they regularly chat through comments and tags and the occasional message. But things get more complicated when Jaime, who actually lost a hand in an incident years ago and had to relearn to draw after that while suffering the ableism of the usual suspects, finds the courage to post selfies on his blog both with and without his prosthetic hand to show the world and himself that the hardships he had to overcome don’t mean he’s less of a person or less of an artist or less in any way. That’s when Brienne goes from finding him interesting and funny and actually pretty charming to finding him HOT. Which scares her a whole lot due to her past experiences. But that’s okay because they’ll never see each other irl anyway, right? Unless they find out they actually live in the same city and Jaime asks her to meet to work on a collaboration they’ve been thinking of for a while but never really got to work on until now...”

And here’s what I currently have:

But then Mordred is staring at him again with those too-green eyes of his, except that this time there’s no mockery or coldness in them, and Galahad’s been warned again and again not to get too close to him and he’s been told over and over that he can’t trust him, but now he thinks that maybe, maybe he really does understand –

 Brienne stares at her screen. She actually described Mordred’s eyes as gray. Didn’t she? Usually, she picks dark gray, or dark brown, or dark. And yet, in this one story, they’re suddenly green.

Okay, time to take a break from revising. She gets up from her chair, rolls back her shoulders, and goes to grab a snack and a glass of water. She tries not to wonder what’s gotten into her – but she doesn’t really need to anyway, because she has a feeling she already knows.

Not that there’s anything bad about it. In a way, it only makes sense. He’s the artist who got her into the ship in the first place, and they’ve had a few pleasant conversations in the notes to his posts and, eventually, in the comments to her fics. So, it’s not that big of a deal if she associates him with these characters. And… well, recently he’s started posting selfies on his tumblr. And fine, she might have some sort of pathetic little celebrity crush – is that even the right term? Is he a Tumblr celebrity? – on him. Truth to be told, it’s not even as pathetic as the crushes she’s had when she was still in school, because at least he’s never insulted her or made fun of her looks, and she’s reasonably sure he wouldn’t even if he ever had the chance to. Which he won’t get, but anyway…

Anyway.

Apparently, the lines might blur when she’s distracted. Big deal.

#wip meme #my fic #otp: on se reverra #janiedean #ask

[keepyourpantsongohan]

Ayesha Liveblogs Naruto Shippuden S20 (Pt. 3)

I wonder if going after Karin’s Tsukuyomi bulb was happenstance or whether Tobirama went “I smell an Uzumaki” and had at it

“Just be quiet for a bit” How dare you speak to your father this way Sasuke, Kakashi does nothing but love you

“EVERYONE WILL OWN A DOG. GO GET A DOG, HOKAGE’S DECREE!“ you’ve got my vote, Kiba

Mirai as a baby is an absolute unit and I love it

Shikamaru, getting down on one knee in front of Temari: Will you not marry me?

You know what. All these dreams are extremely realistic. I buy it. A teenage boy would totally dream about kicking his friends’ asses for fun even if he had the opportunity to do anything in the world. 10/10 believability 

Sai dreams about being told he has a nice smile and being twirled around by Naruto my boooooy 😭😭😭😭😭😭

“[My Sasori transformer] will be the guardian deity of the Sand” Kankuro pls

Omg Temari’s dream is so cute she wants her little brothers to need her

God the fact Gaara’s dream is about having a happy childhood PICK UP THE PHONE RASA I JUST NEED TO TALK

“Madara, don’t you dare talk about the Uchiha. The only one who has that right, is my big brother.” But he did... murder them, Sasuke. That is a thing that happened. My dear. My dude. He done did it.  

Having read Itachi Shinden none of this should be shocking but FUGAKU REALLY YOUR SON IS FOUR WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS

“Listen Itachi, never forget this sight” well he sure won’t now that you’ve given him CHILD PTSD FUGAKU

“We finally have peace, and we must do our best to maintain it” Hmmm.... must you, Fugaku? Is that a thing you must do?

“What is life, anyway?” Damn my existential dread didn’t kick in at least until I was in school, Itachi

Sasuke was such a weird-looking newborn I love him

I wonder how the English dub will deal with the mild implications of inc/est between Itachi and Izumi

Please Mikoto your son is like 6 why are you having him babysit

God I am so used to every version of Itachi having the voice of a grownass man that hearing a child-like voice even when he is 6 is almost off-putting lmao

Full offence Obito but why do you have to be such a little bitch

“Oh good, I knew that you’d be alright” HE’S 6 FUGAKU

Why is Naruto just sitting in a basket on top of his father’s grave??? Who let you do this? Hiruzen what is wrong with you??

“I’m glad that you didn’t die” an accurate representation of Itachi’s social skills at all ages

DFhsdjfhkdsjhfk I love that Itachi has accidentally become these kids’ leader 

AHHHHH I guess that’s Hana next to Itachi I wanna see the cat ninja and dog ninja fight 

“If the fighting can be stopped, I’d like to stop it” Shisui <3 

Itachi’s sweet tooth is so goddamn cute ahhhh what a little nerd

Hhgfkhjfhl SASUKE’S PAW ENCYCLOPEDIA THE PREQUEL THIS IS WHAT I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED

“I mean, [ladies] are clueless” “How dare you insult my woman” Turns out the alcohol this cat was drinking was Respect Women Juice

God I love Minazuki-sensei he’s such a mess

“No they blew away in the wind” guess Itachi hasn’t picked up his snitching tendencies yet lmao

Baby Sasuke has acquired a younger voice too I guess. It is real late in the game to be establishing these lmao

Obito. I’m. Stop???? Please. Is this how Kakashi felt during the war

God I love Shisui the tiny ninja detective they really have left off some of the cooler aspects of being a shinobi in all the wild and flashy jutsu like during the Land of Waves arc when Kakashi kept noticing relatively mundane clues

“Shisui picked up on how I felt right from the beginning” welcome to empathy Itachi

“I’ll hand this intel over to Lord Hokage, and he will deliver a just and fair judgment” I like this ANBU vs. ROOT dichotomy but bold of you to assume Hiruzen won’t ultimately let Danzo do whatever he wants lol

Damn what the shit how does Shisui know who the foundation already isn’t he like 12 

The animation of this arc is nice but also so weird they really did make Itachi and Shisui’s eyes like half of their face

These wholeass adults getting between by two prepubescents lmao 

“A teleportation jutsu has no mass” wait WHAT I have so many questions Shisui what does that MEAN 

“I want to you to think of me as your older brother” HELL YEAH HE DOES

Ffgdfkghkjh what an abrupt voice change between age 8 and 11 Itachi

How many times have they animated these same goddamn Itachi scenes 

Holy shit it’s like they tried to tell the story of the Itachi Shinden novels and then got bored halfway through gfkhgfkhgkjh

“I’m exhaAAAUsted from my mission” Itachi pls why say it like that

“You have the Mangekyo as well?” Fugaku had a friend???? Unrealistic. Blocked

THEY KIDNAPPED NARUTO??? I DON’T REMEMBER THIS IN ITACHI SHINDEN

Genjutsu but I don’t remember that either ?!?!?! Doesn’t Fugaku spend all of Itachi Shinden being emotionally distant and sending Itachi mixed moral messages

Who is the Fugaku hater on this storyboard staff lmao I’m crying

I have a lot of thoughts about this art direction honestly why is everything in the shadows why are the character models so weird why is Itachi suddenly outside in the lightning for his murder discussion meeting instead of inside the council room if you had to shout over lightning people could hear you 

“I challenge you to the high jump” “You’re no match for me” Sasuke you’re the most obnoxious seven-year-old in the world I love it

“There’s something that I’d like you to help me with” a very casual opener when you’re proposing the murder of your entire clan but okay

They really leaned into the horror movie aesthetic huh fair enough 

I have some objections to register about Izumi’s death like both options are weird but at least in Itachi Shinden she wasn’t humiliated by Obito begging for Itachi to save her she had a degree of awareness and it was an impactful if strange scene

FUCK THE TOBI VOICE I KNEW IT WAS COMING BUT I’M WHEEZING

Cute new ED but also the idea of Tobirama giving anyone a fistbump amuses me immensely 

“Who would’ve thought that that scuzzy bearded jerk would’ve been able to use a taijutsu like that” RUDE but also ‘scuzzy’ jhfjghkjhfgj

Omg that’s so funny they literally gave the former owner of Zabuza’s blade the same voice

This doesn’t make any fucking sense how could Juzo have the executioner’s blade when Zabuza would be like 21 when Itachi was 13 oh my god 

“The Hidden Mist doesn’t keep any prisoners” unsurprising but interesting

Is this meant to imply that Juzo is killed and then Zabuza immediately finds the sword and starts a coup because that’s hilarious

Wait how does them fighting the Mizukage make any sense isn’t Yagura under Obito’s control lmao who wrote this

Did Itachi just.... accidentally cripple the Mizukage omg [Zabuza screams in the distance]

Hahahaha I know it’s supposed to be evil but it’s really funny that Kakuzu killed his partner for being too slow

“I wouldn’t know how to cater to your moods” kjfhgkdhfgjh Kakuzu just got wrecked by a thirteen-year-old LMAO 

“I’m not sure what to do with you... whether to kill you right now or find a way to use you” KILL OROCHIMARU, ITACHI, IT’S GONNA SAVE YOU A LOT OF TROUBLE 

Why the hell would Kabuto be hanging out near the Akatsuki anyway isn’t he in a long term infiltration of the Leaf Village lmao or can Orochimaru summon him like a snake

On what basis does Pain decide these partnerships did Kisame and Sasori take a babysitting course or smth

The cutaway without the “This... is art” scene is almost funnier because it implies Itachi just had to flash his eyes at Deidara and Deidara was like, “HELLO AKATSUKI I AM HERE”

“I wouldn’t mind giving you a taste of my art” [insert ninja sex joke about Deidara’s mouth hands here]

Deidara really should not be old enough to be here by this point in the narrative but this entire arc has been wacky timeline wise

Man it must be fucked up to fight a puppet version of your own corpse

“What I really wanted... was to get a hold of Itachi’s body” you are the definition of stranger danger Orochimaru

From what I remember the video games had Kakuzu and Orochimaru approaching Hidan and not Konan and Itachi but I’m game for any Orochimaru erasure lmao

 I’m pretty sure all of that blood was Hidan’s?? World-building whomst

“He licked Kakuzu’s blood” did he though?? Show me his wound Itachi

OMG they’re really heavy-handed with Leaf!Itachi as if we did not just watch a bunch of episodes of Itachi caring about his village like honestly look at this:

Kisame: So even you have feelings for your birthplace, is that it?

Itachi: No. Not at all. [Sasuke, I hope that you’re safe.] 

(Me too Itachi 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭)

“It’s been a long time... Saaasuke” could you say his name a little less weirdly please Itachi

You really can’t get mad at Kakashi for teaching Sasuke chidori Itachi like maybe if you would murder less people Kakashi would feel a little less overprotective

God was the only point of animating and voicing these scenes again so that Itachi could mentally apologize every twelve seconds? You know what fair enough, anxiety and depression be like that sometimes

“You still have people who’ll protect you” Oh plot twist Itachi was actually writing a “Nice” list instead of a “Naughty” list and Kakashi, Jiraiya and Naruto are all on it

Oh yeah I kind of forgot that this was all supposed to be like a 5 minute span for Sasuke’s flashback of Itachi’s entire life lmao

You know.... it’s real unclear to me how Obito wakes up from his trance lmao he may not be in a cocoon but he’s certainly exposed to the light

“Be careful. We’re surrounded on all sides by four of his shadows” “Yeah I know that” Yeah, Naruto knows it, but Sasuke’s warning where the Shadow Madaras are entirely for Kakashi and Sakura’s benefit BC HE WORRIES MY BABY BOYYYY

“This chakra is even way stronger than Ten-Tails” I really heard “Tenten” there and I was like, wait what did I miss with Tenten kfhkjhgkjhg

OH GOOD ANOTHER UCHIHA FLESH MOUNTAIN JUST WHAT WE NEEDED

“They’re turned into White Zetsu” I hate this nonsensical bit of world-building it made more sense and felt less weird when they were Hashirama clones like what the fuck

Oh I can’t believe this is making me feel almost bad for Madara did Zetsu really edit the Uchiha Stone Tablet’s Tsukuyomi section to say “Peace Plans” ain’t that how like the CIA entraps people 

“Hashirama... where did I go wrong” We’d need a lot more time than you have to unpack that Madara

“Countless nights passed” I mean. Was it countless nights. Because I think it was. A couple hours. This war arc spans like two days. I have spent more human hours on this arc than they’ve spent ninja hours in this war

“I can’t believe such a person existed” neither can I Sasuke it’s almost like she was invented specifically for this arc

For real Obito no offence but like why aren’t you dead it just doesn’t make much sense khkjfdhkjhgkjh

Hmmm not 2 be that gal but Kaguya’s voice is v pleasant on the ears 

“Sorry to be so rough with you, Obito” Kakashi. You loving, kind, dumb bitch. He stabbed you THREE TIMES in the past two days you really owe him like -1000 apologies

“This is also one of those times where your body just moves on its own” SASUKE CALLED OUT FOR LOVING HIS COMRADES

“I’ve got to get to Naruto” I love your dedication Minato but I feel as though the loss of both of your arms makes helping more difficult

Kakashi is not NEARLY as surprised about this levitation thing as he should be. I think as this point he’s just like. ‘This might as well happen’

All other things aside Kaguya’s really fun to look at damn

Okay okay okay not to look for too much logic in this ninja show but don’t both Naruto and Sasuke have Six Paths chakra why can only Naruto float is a metaphor for Sasuke’s fall from grace

“I am Kaguya’s child” I can only imagine a Game of Thrones-eque shadow flying out the hooha situation

“Just before the seal took hold, she gave birth to me, in order that she could be restored” I can only assume Kaguya fucked Bitterness and Regret and you know.... fair enough

I gotta tell you Zetsu being the primary narrator of this arc is jarring

Tenji seems kinda nice it’s a shame something terrible will probably happen to him

Say what you will about SP’s animation inconsistencies they can animate some beautiful-ass skies

“Is there anything that you desire” Get u a man like Tenji

Fellas is it gay to sit under the stars with your handmaiden who adores you in comfortable silence

“Even now you’re not scared. That just makes me like you more” take a shot every time a man is Like That (bah dum tss) 

“Do Not Touch Me,” wow Kaguya mood

I will clarify I said that BEFORE she exploded the men gkhkjfhgkhh

Tenji, that Aino lady is your subordinate are you really gonna leave her with the creepy That man u are not the man I thought you were

“Just tell him, and I’m sure that Lord Tenji will forgive you” to be fair Aino you could’ve elaborated u were just like ‘yup she killed them’ and left it at that

WOW I RESCIND ALL COMPLIMENTS TO TENJI CALM DOWN DUDE

When life gives u lemons use people as fertilizer for ur infinite lemon tree I guess

Are you telling me 1) Gamamaru has existed since the DAWN OF CHAKRA and 2) He knew all about this Tsukuyomi shit just like. Kept it on the DL. WHAT KINDA WORLD-BUILDING

Okay but for real did the Otsutsuki clan stem like.... all the clans, because there’s the Kaguya clan (through Hamura I guess?), and the Hyuga clan definitely through Hamura, and then the Senju, Uchiha, and Uzumaki through Hagoromo like just how many people did your kids sleep with and for that matter how long ago was this

“A real talking toad! Think people would like it if we caught it and took it home?” Why are Hagoromo and Hamura the cutest things in the world this is the sibling content we deserve

“You’re just a snake oil salesman, and not a very good one” oh I think I love Hamura oh no I would love a character who gets stuck on the moon 

Take a shot every time a woman exists to die and make a man sad 

“She fell in love with the ruler of this land and in time she became pregnant with the two of you” notice that at no point does Gamamaru say they got married can u believe Kaguya invented premarital sex

You know none of this goes against mine and Sloane’s Kagumo theory

“How can you see so far into a toad’s heart that clearly” Gamamaru and Hagoromo’s interactions are killing me

How much time has passed for Hamura’s hair to grow that long

Hamura @ Kaguya: BROTHERS BEFORE MOTHERS

HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED FOR HAGOROMO TO DEVELOP THIS BROW RIDGE SAGE LAND TAKES A TOLL 

Tenji doesn’t even appear in this flashback about love and betrayal it’s just Kaguya being bitter bc her gal Aino died they were in lesbians together

Every so often I’m reminded that Kishimoto has a twin brother and I wonder what he thinks about making the twins fight

“You enabled me to awaken the mangekyo sharingan and rinnegan” how do u even have words for those things. Didn’t they just happen right this moment

Wow this is all very Little Shop of Horrors, Momma feeds the tree with people juice and in turn it wants to protect her from harm

“I split the Ten Tails into nine souls” SOULS? HAGOROMO CAN... JUST MAKE SOULS. COULD HE POINT AT GAMAMARU AND SAY “YOU ARE TWO FROGS NOW” AND THAT’D JUST BE TRUE?

“We won’t be that far apart,” said Hagoromo, just as his brother was about to teleport to the moon

Side note: Maybe ur crops were failing bc without the moon the tides are all out of whack and you know, the moon was apparently just invented right now

“Time passed, and so did Hagoromo” I love this particular literary device

“Time after time I’d approach the reincarnates of Indra and Ashura” okay so we’re supposed to be down for not only regular reincarnation in Naruto but Indra and Ashura ONLY BEING BORN TO THE SENJU AND UCHIHA CLANS REPEATEDLY WHAT WHO WROTE THIS

Does this mean that people Naruto and Sasuke every 50 years????You’d think the Land of Fire would just. Get used to it

“Just with that alone, a thousands years passed” well at least we have some idea of how much time it’s been since Kaguya era lmao 

Ur telling me that this horseshit happened bc Tobirama doesn’t know to leave dead bodies well enough alone

SHHHHH I PREFER THE ZETSU BEING WEIRD HASHIRAMA CLONES

This montage of Zetsu taking credit for everything Madara and Obito did is not appreciated lmao take some responsibility for your actions!!!!

I’m gonna keep harping on this for the rest of the war honestly like where is the ACCOUNTABILITY

“So your teen rebellion continues” LMAO UR NOT WRONG

“I know that this could be our last hurrah, but we gotta give it our best shot” not much of a plan Naruto sweetheart but fair

Tag urself I’m Kakashi’s look of despair at his hormonal students

“And Sasuke? Sorry that my sexy jutsu didn’t work” I was not prepared for the sincerity with which that line was delivered

The Sad Old Man™ energy radiating off Obito is... Immense 

“We’re all ready to die” R U THINKING OF RIN BC SHE WAS READY TO DIE OR BC UR READY TO SEE HER EITHER WAY IT’S SAD KAKASHI

“I want to thank you for helping me out. And for helping Sasuke” “No, there’s no need to thank me” this is the first time Obito has been right about something since the age of 13

“I’m not going to waste time on speeches,” said Obito, in the middle of a dramatic speech 

Minato..... how did you chop the branch.... with no hands to pick up a kunai???????? What kind of yoga contortion was involved

What I imagine the subtext of this scene to be:

Hagoromo: New old son!!!! I am dad now

Hashirama, whose dad was Butsuma: [choking back tears] Okay

Tobirama: I also hate our father

They’re all taking to this “demi-god pops out of the bottom half of dead ex-comrade” thing pretty well but to be fair they’ve had a complicated day

#ayesha liveblogs nahruto shipduden #liveblogging #ayesha talks anime #naruto series #long post #cutting it off here bc it got long #free meee eng dub

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 5: Thoughts on The 100 2x03 Reapercussions

I am very tired and I should sleep but instead I’m going to bring my The 100 rewatch project out of hiatus yet again with Episode 2x03: Reapercussions.

I miss Anya so much!!!!! This is mostly my Dichen Lachman obsession showing but also the way she gives Clarke that ‘yeah, whatever’ look when Clarke says she’ll get her out of the cage... your Grounder fave could never.

The show honestly peaked with S2 and after this it should have abandoned all attempts at edginess because nothing will ever be more Pure Nightmare Fuel than the Mount Weather Grounder Cages.

Clarke/Anya: the ship that almost was.

So when Clarke takes Anya out of the prison room, she opens a door that says “End Containment Area” and underneath that it says “U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Mount Weather Containment Protocol.” And people really thought JRoth made this up omg learn some history.

Considering how they left things (Anya literally trying to kill her and all her friends) it’s actually pretty impressively selfless and magnanimous on Clarke’s part to not just rescue her, but immediately and unthinkably rescue her. On the other hand, Anya feels some remorse for leaving her people whereas Clarke’s like ‘here are some clothes [even though those random bandages are holding up pretty well??], let’s get a move on!’ (I know she intended to come back for them and she was being smart and practical but from the pov of, say, Jasper or Monty, this is cold as hell of her.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: early S2 Clarke is Peak Clarke: smart, sly, practical, brave.

Byrne mentions Earth Skills teacher “Davis” as being part of the search team for Bell et. al. My question: how many Earth Skills teachers did they have lol?

I fucking love this crashed-ship aesthetic omg I forget how much I love it and then I see it again....

“On the Ark, you did anything you wanted, without a second thought about the consequences.” Like mother, like daughter.

I ALSO miss Jasper and Maya. I’m probably like the lone person out there who still remembers them fondly but they were basically perfect because they were sweet but with the potential for a lot of darkness as well, my favorite combination.

WHERE’S MY ART SCHOOL JAYA AU?

So actually fun fact, that isn’t how the art work would have been stored in Mount Weather. They had special containers for the paintings to protect them and like a special cart thing to transport them quickly from their old homes to the bunker I read a book.

No one ever characterizes him this way sufficiently imo but Monty is really quite uptight in a way. Like first: don’t cockblock him man. And second: just chilll. This is probably why he used to smoke weed.

“Trouble? It’s Clarke. Whatever she’s up to, I’m sure she can handle it.” I mean.... he’s not wrong.

Except for the part where she’s covered in dead bodies. But even then...

So I always felt like the main point of the Reapers was as kind of a zombie police force for Mount Weather: to keep the Grounders scared of the Mountain, so they won’t poke around in it too much. Though of course they also collect Grounders, which is helpful, since the Mountain Men can’t walk that far from their home base (and, as stated, they probably want to keep most of that area Grounder-free anyway). But it occurs to me now that a third use of the Reapers is like dead-body collectors? The Mountain dumps the dead bodies out the trap door, and the Reapers take them away and eat them. So gross and efficient all at once. Mount Weather’s motto basically.

Murphy and his creating-a-distraction stones are still one of the funniest jokes this show has ever pulled, though if it were a quicker reveal after “something like that” it would be funnier.

Never mind, Bellamy appearing out of the bush is true underrated comedy gold,

That said, I feel like everything outside of the Mount Weather and Clarke stories here is filler.

Love! That! Ship!

Major Byrne says that Kane is on the verge of losing control of the camp but... I dunno.... everyone seems to be working together pretty well? Maybe if they had diversified the cast a little, not in terms of yet more Grounders but, like, non-leaders of the Ark, that would be more clear????

Okay, well, admittedly, when the Grounder prisoner is brought in they do start a mini-mob, lol. Also one of the delinquent’s fathers is shot, it would be cool if we knew who he was?? ETA: and then he dies and Abby’s like “does he have any family?” lol he just said that his son was one of the 100 so like obviously he does??

The costuming people, like the set people, really are the geniuses of this show. I love Clarke and Anya’s outfits, and Clarke’s hair somehow being both grungy and beautiful like THAT’s the apocalypse style I wanna see.

Also they absolutely 100% would have gotten together in the S2-S3 hiatus if Anya hadn’t been killed off.

“You saved my life because you needed me” IS true but she also did it absolutely without hesitation, even knowing Anya really quite truly hates her, so this speaks either to some foolhardy bravery mixed in with her practical thoughts, or just straight compassion, or both. I guess that sort of is a Clarke thing. She can be a grudge holder (seriously don’t tell me she isn’t: Wells????) but her grudges are NEVER more important than hard-nosed practical problem-solving.

Time for some gratuitous torture. Honestly, I like Season 2, it’s probably my favorite season, but it has some MAJOR filler problems. Like when it’s good it’s THE BEST but then other times it just doesn’t know how to fill 40 minutes so it resorts to pointless diversions (like Bellamy rappelling down the side of a mountain to save a character who is literally never seen again? for some reason?) or just straight out ugly violence for screaming’s sake (Raven’s surgery, Raven’s Grounder torture, Abby’s shocklashing, etc.) Like honestly I can’t even watch this. I’m just gonna browse tumblr until it’s done.

The Arkers really like the concept of “confessing” don’t they?

Like okay I’m not done WHAT IS THE POINT of this? It all but kills the whole Kabby vibe (I still lowkey ship them but sometimes I think...why?), it’s truly painful to watch, and it has no plot purpose AT ALL not even world-building because, lol, we know the writers don’t care to flesh out Camp Jaha in any real way.

Murphy is taking such sad glee out of instigating Finn’s madness/violence. The Luci of The 100 for sure.

This Bellamy story line is boring though I’m sorry. Some of these scenes (the Clarke or Mount Weather ones) I could watch a million times but this is like... kay, I know what happens already. So.

“There are some lines you can’t uncross.” I mean I think this show has actually shown that’s pretty untrue since people get over almost everything pretty fast. There’s always another horrific thing to do and/or experience!

Yeah my bitterness is seeping in.

Anyway when you come into an interrogation knowing what the “right” answer is, you’ll never learn anything, take note, stupid teenager boys + U.S. law enforcement.

Like honestly this Grounder is 500000x smarter than they are. He saves himself and rains gunfire and destruction upon his enemies. (Well, saves himself for a few minutes--but at least he got to cause harm to those he hates!)

“You thought I was the crazy one, huh?” Was Murphy ever crazy, though, or was he just coldly vengeful?

Speaking of coldly vengeful, Byrne could have been a potentially interesting character? Maybe? I’m not really into the type but as I said I want more Arkers wherever I can find them. And Kane needs real opposition. I have sympathy for him to a degree, but I also think he ultimately weakens rather than strengthens himself.

I love when Monty calls bullshit on stuff. “I can’t see Clarke? Try and fucking stop me, bitches.”

Jasper has such a big heart. Truly the emotional core of this friendship.

I like how Kane speaks as if his “diplomatic mission” of adults is so vastly different than Bellamy and Finn just going off on their own I mean, Byrne is little better than Finn? They’re both easily frustrated and fond of torture? It’s just that Byrne understands a chain of command--barely--that’s literally it.

How does it make literally any sense at all to shocklash a person one hour and make her the Chancellor the next? Like you’ve just encouraged the populace to think of her as nothing special, not above the embarrassing public application of extreme pain--but yes by all means expect them to fall into line behind her leadership. I mean I guess this sort of works if she was already somehow beloved (I guess I’m supposed to just believe that?) and now more sympathy has been generated for her--but such sympathy would seem to come at the expense of Kane. It would seem to be the opposite of what he, or really Byrne, was going for with that disgusting display. But whatever memory is a fiction I guess.

And they have this swelling-music romantic eye-fuck goodbye like??? He was just beating you!! JUST NOW!

What I’m getting out of Murphy advocating for killing the Grounder: first, he has a clear, cold, practicality not unlike Clarke, and two, he still thinks of the delinquents as his friends--how sweet. Two days ago he was killing them, holding them hostage, and stealing their ammo before a huge battle but still. Bygones.

This is not a great ep. for Bellamy leadership lol.

Finn executes a man, while wearing Clarke’s watch, in the place they had sex. Seems...symbolic?? IDK it’s late lol.

I miss Nyko a lot but also now that I’ve seen (part of) Slasher I’m not entirely sure I can ever see Ty Olsson in the same light.

Wouldn’t it be funny if they were literal brothers? Because I always assumed this was metaphorical but...was it? WAS IT?

Weird note to end on, I know. If patterns hold, it’ll be another 2-3 months before I do this again but I’ll try to be a little more on the ball about it.

#the year 2019 #2019: fandom thoughts #2019: the 100 s2 #the 100 #the 100 rewatch

[cinnamonanddean]

Halfway Point Writing Roundup

Tagged by: Nobody specifically, but @babybrotherdean posted this and I thought it was cool, and I never wait to be asked anything lol

Current word count for the year: AO3 says 52675 - not bad, I think! I’ve dropped off a bit recently due to some IRL complications that will persist through the fall, but I’m still working on a couple of things here and there. 

Number of stories (including drabbles) posted on AO3: 42. I think this is the most I’ve written out of all my fic archive accounts. 

Fandoms I wrote for (2018): Supernatural. I’ve got a J2 AU fic in the works though - first ever RPF piece. 

Pairings I have written for (2018): Sam/Dean (including Smith/Wesson), and a couple of John/Dean drabbles posted here, but not AO3. I’d like to say that maybe some day I’ll branch out, but let’s be realistic...

Stories with the most kudos/bookmarks/subscriptions (2018): 

Most kudos: Got A Bad Desire. For all the people I see who say they don’t like Weecest...my stats beg to differ. Y’all love it. 308 kudos. 

Most bookmarks: Got A Bad Desire again - see what I mean? 41 bookmarks.

Most subscriptions: Oh wow, a category sweep for Got A Bad Desire. You naughties, I love you. 5 subscriptions.

Story I’m most proud of: From The Beginning. That fic had been a WIP since early last year, when I first started dipping my toe in the SPN fic waters, and I was so happy to finally get the motivation to finish and post it. It turned out just how I wanted it, and got some lovely art from @txdora to really bring it to life. 

My second proudest story this year: Skin Deep. Who doesn’t love a tattoo artist!Dean AU? I liked the rapport I built between the boys, in such a brief time, and I thought the humour was on-point. 

What’s ahead: Not sure really, because of those IRL complications I mentioned above, but I’m not hanging up my writer’s hat just yet; I’ve still got the Wincest Big Bang on the docket. There’s that J2 AU plot bunny that came outta nowhere and won’t let me live until I flesh it out. The Winchester Bros ‘zine that @winchesterzine is putting together. Maybe a drabble here and there. I’m trying not to get involved in too many official challenges, etc, because I find it actually makes me less productive, so we’ll see how things go with less structure and more whimsy!

Tagging: anybody who wants to toot their own horn a bit like me - hey, if you don’t love your own work, who else is gonna?

#this has been 'blather from cinnamon' #tune in next time #beep beep #that's me tooting my own horn #validate my existence #writing stuff #wincest fics

[yaz-the-spaz]

WIP MEME

was tagged by the lovely @beautifulkingzayn -- can’t wait to read all the things you’re working on! (that stripper!zayn fic and the blue is warmest color au sound especially interesting!)

the rules are thus: list all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. This can be writing, art, vids, gifsets, whatever.

oh god.

so. i have a shit ton of things i’m working on simultaneously... 

(it’s a tiny part of the reason, among many others, that i take such long breaks from the twelve fic cause half the time i get caught up working on other shit and then i’m like wait no gotta get back to twelve it’s been way too long lol smh)

but anyway the main thing at the moment, as many of you all know and as i’ll probably ramble on about for way too long is the twelve fic, which is sort of a winter soldier au, or at least that’s what it was inspired by anyway but it’s kind of deviated so much from that and taken on such a life of its own at this point that idk if it can even really still be considered an au of that verse anymore but it features zayn as a brainwashed assassin who goes by the name twelve after being kidnapped and having all of his memories wiped when he was a kid. it’s super triggery and basically involves every bad or horrible thing you could imagine happening to a person happening to zayn at some point until (by chance) he encounters liam, his childhood best friend, who he doesn’t remember in the middle of a bank heist and then later gets assigned to monitor liam b/c the person behind the whole brainwashing child assassin program, aka the director, is a sick fuck. cue liam freaking out and trying to do everything he can to help zayn but having no clue what he’s doing and the other boys finding out and pitching in to help too, along with some interesting side characters both original and non-original. okay i’ve gone on about this fic long enough, onward to the mountain of other ficlets i’m working on smdh…

a sex pollen fic set in 2015 (shortly after zayn left the band) wherein liam gets drugged (sort of) by a fan while out and about in LA with zayn and thinks he’s just coming down with something/getting sick till they get back to zayn’s house and liam ends up begging zayn to fuck him while zayn tries to be the good guy and resist and not take advantage of a naked, drugged out liam

a peter pan ziam/ot5 au featuring zayn as peter, liam as wendy, harry, louis & niall as the lost boys, little mix as fairies, simon as captain hook, and dan wooton (ugh sorry i fucking hate his name so much) as smee (also a name i hate so it works lol), still debating on the mermaids…might make one of them t-swift and maybe throw kendall and gigi in too (and possibly throw in cheryl as part of hook/simon’s pirate crew idk?)…and i also haven’t settled on anyone for tiger lily yet either but i’m open to suggestions for that too if anyone wants to throw someone’s name in the hat. anyway it should be a wild ride if i ever finish it, but got writer’s block shortly after writing the first few scenes and tried to come back to it twice but just couldn’t figure out where to go from where i left off so we shall see…

what else? um…a super angsty bottom liam bdsm ziam fic set during the wwa tour

a drabble wherein liam has a secret voice kink and gets off to zayn’s m.o.m album when he’s home alone

a weird ass fairly oddparents inspired au where liam is basically timmy and zayn keeps coming home to find new stuff in their house and vague explanations as to where they came from (should be posted soon i think)

part three of my outlaws series, which is a ziam prohibition era au series with lots of friendly ot5 feels and some struggles with period-typical homophobia and racism, featuring zayn as a bad boy bootlegger, liam as a good church-going small town boy (at first anyway), louis as a pimp, and niall and harry as his rent boys; in the part i’m currently working, part three, zayn and liam end up going back to liam’s hometown and liam has to grapple with the demons he left behind, including facing his parents (mainly just his mom) who he hasn’t seen in over two years and some of the shitty townsfolk he used to be friends with

there’s also a half-finished ziam five times plus one drabble that got shortened to a four times plus one (and honestly may end up getting shortened to three plus one just so I can get off my ass and finish it because it’s been half done for going on like eight months now and it’s honestly ridiculous smh) but anyway it was originally supposed be the five/four times zayn and liam woke up in bed together and it didn’t mean anything/was just friendly (supposedly) and the one time it meant more

and then there’s the main one that’s taking up my time lately (besides the twelve fic) and that i’m hoping to be ready to start posting soon as well, a slave!liam ot5 fic where the other four come home to their shared flat to find a box with a live boy inside (liam) sent to them by way of a secret organization that calls themselves modest and deals in underground human trafficking, training people to be servants and then shipping them off to groups of people/families whose needs they feel the slave’s skills would match best…it shares a lot of similarities with my twelve fic (in terms of the whole forced servitude thing, brainwashing, and a secret underground org that deals in kidnapping and human trafficking and monitoring people and all that) which was completely unintentional because i actually started writing it around like three years ago now and had completely forgotten about it up until a few months ago when i found it again at the bottom of one of my folders while in the middle of working on twelve and was like holy shit why do i keep writing things like this lmao but then decided to continue it anyway and i’ve been working on it piecemeal ever since and not sure when it’ll be ready to post cause the beginning still needs a lot of work, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer cause I’m really curious and excited to see what people think of it and am kind of anxious/antsy to post it lol

oh and i also have an original fic i’ve been working on kind of piecemeal too, a super angsty fic about an incubus who hates being an incubus and basically tortures himself with sleep deprivation to keep himself from using his powers while also trying to deal with the trials of high school, his abusive father, his asshole of a step-brother (who’s also a siren) and being gay, but ends up falling in love and being forced to kind of come to terms with himself…also kind of delves into what makes someone a monster and how we perceive and define ourselves, and the whole monsters vs. humans debate and which ones are the “real” monsters, etc.

so yeah that’s pretty much it for the most part but i do also have a whole doc full of plot bunnies for like a million other fics (mostly ziam and ot5, but also a few original ones) that may at some point in the future get fleshed out and posted…if i ever get around to finishing the ones i listed here first…le sigh i am a problem child...so sorry this dragged on as long as it did but hopefully out there finds these at least mildly interesting and isn’t completely put off by the fucking dissertation i just wrote about my stupid wip’s

anyway, thanks again @beautifulkingzayn for the tag! tagging @doveziam, @zipplekink, @wlwharrie, and @ohthathurt and i know there’s probably a bunch of other people i could tag but my brain is farting at the moment and i can’t think of anyone else, if anyone sees this though (if anyone even bothers to read it lol) and feels up to joining in even if you weren’t tagged, feel free to participate! i’d love to see what everyone else is working on! (and apologies if you’ve already been tagged or just don’t feel up to doing this)

#tag game #wip tag game #wip meme #ziam fics #my fics #wip's #i am a problem child

[mysticdragon3md3]

md3 watches Demon Slayer ep1-2

Apparently I watched Demon Slayer last month and I forgot to post my reactions. 1:59 PM 8/26/2019

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Episode 1 – Cruelty

Maybe I shouldn't have started watchign this anime with such high expectations.  I had been passing it up for a while now, even though the "demon hunting" genre used to be *my jam* (before my mental/emotional problems had me watching almost exclusively the iyashikei genre).  But then EVERYONE started saying how good this series was.  And I reluctantly went to go check it off my list today.  Just another thing to do.  And I was hoping it would excite me, more than just being a chore.  

But so far, the character introduction seemed too stale.  Reminded me of what critics have said about Adam Sandler movies, where the beginning of the movie does too much to show "this is a good guy".  It feels too unreal.  And indeed, I couldn't get emmersed.  But I gave it slack, because this is a Shonen Jump manga.  It's about the action to come, not always about characterization or plot---even though the great Shonen Jump manga can do that too.  And anyway, I'm sure in a manga, these introduction scenes would have gone by faster.  Why was I so impatient about it anyway?  Is it because the first scene was an in medias res with high stakes and high tension, but then we're expected to just slow down for this long character introduction flashback?  Usually, I like getting to know a character, especially Shonen protagonists.  They're usually so endearing.  But I guess Tanjiro hasn't been the typical spunky or even quirky protagonist.  His introduction has been all about everyone else showing how nice he's been to them, how trustworthy he's proven himself to everyone, and his sense of smell.  Even his interactions with his family were very subtle, with most of the proactive, more extroverted interactions coming from his siblings.  Then again, such a reserved protagonist is fitting for a serious toned series. And whave I've seen of this series has seemed kind of serious toned.  

Oh, I see.  Seeing Nezuko's character design and Nendoroid all over the place, never without the scroll in her mouth, I wondered if it was a seal so she wouldn't turn into a monster.  I should have remembered that when I saw Tanjiro's slaughtered family.  My first thought was, "They weren't eaten?  What were they killed for then if they still have all their flesh and blood on their bones?"  It was so the demons could proliferate and multiply.  

2:27 PM 8/26/2019

I mean...It's good.  The direction, the charcter designs, the animation, the story,...But I don't care about the characters yet.  

...Until this scene.  When Nezuko is fighting to protect Tanjiro and earlier, Tanjiro's tactics impressing the Demon Slayer were intriguing.  I mean, it's all signs of some good fights to come.  But I don't necesstarily care aobut the characters yet.

UFOTABLE?!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Well, no wonder the animation is so good.  

...I don't know.  I don't feel like watching a second episode.  Maybe later, to kill time.  But I wanted to be exhilierated right now.  I just came back from being depressed yesterday.  I needed something to lift me up.  And this was all tragedy and horror. It doesn't have enough levity for me, and I really need levity in my life right now. 

2:21 PM 8/28/2019

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Episode 2 – Trainer Sakonji Urokodaki

My computer is still booting up though.  So the episode hasn't actually started yet.  

I've decided to give this series another chance.  I mean, episode 1 didn't have enough levity for me, and I need that in my life, especially from what I spend time on as my "entertainment" and "relaxation".  But I don't ONLY like iyashikei.  I mean, I loved Shonen manga/anime for a long time.  So I may as well give this series another chance and see if there's something for me.  Lest I miss out, especially on the Nendoroids whose preorder windows are halfway through _right now_.  If it turns out I like this series and end up falling in love with these characters, I'm going to regret not getting those Nendoroid preorders.  

2:31 PM 8/28/2019

Reloaded page.

Ok.  Opening scene was comedy, so that's an imrovement.  

BTW, what era is this?  When I first saw these character designs without watching this series, their collars looked like gakuran.  So I thought this was one of those modern setting with old-fashioned demon hunter organizations that made their exorcists wear traditional clothing.  But now that I'm watching this series...Is this early Meiji Era?  

Ever since I first noticed the UFO Table name in the credits, I can't stop noticing how nice the animation quaility is.  

Well, that explains the kick pose in Nezuko's Nendoroid.  

I'll say one thing for this series, it very immediately gives teh vibe of a battle manga.  That tone where characters are thinking about strategy, tactics, and you're guessing how they're going to win the fight, what kind of ingenuity the protagonist is going to come up with, etc.  I missed that.  ...that's right I loved the "battle anime" genre.  It used to be the fundamental subgenre I'd watch, with some other kind of genre layered on top of it...or alone.  Now that I think about it, the only "battle anime" I've really been watching lately, has been "Shokugeki no Soma".  The only other Shonen series I've picked up recently, has been "Dr. Stone" and that hasn't proven to be a "battle anime" in several episodes so far.  (I've been really enjoying it from the first epsiode though.  Even more immediately than "Demon Slayer".)  

I mean, everyone---all the anitubers---keep posting how great this series is, so I'd feel bad if I ended up liking it and missing out on the Nendoroid preorders.  But then again, they all love HeroAca, and I gave that series 3+ tries and just couldn't get over how much I dislied Bakugo (and how hard the series tried to frame him with sympathy).  Sorry, bullies are my pet peeve.

So it's one of those demon/yokai series:  Where the demons have some kind of specific weak point.  The demon's body got crushed, and suddenly it's head in another location died or at least felt a lethal blow?  Reminded me of "By the Sword", the manga by Sanami Matoh.  In that manga, the demons had their soul in a spherical jewel and that was their actual weak point.  (You couldn't even crush it to kill them.  You had to capture it, take it to an exorcist, and they would actually destroy yokai for demon hunters.)  Reminds me of the belief that human souls are in a jewel/ball/tama, which usually gets mentioned in kappa stories, about how kappa will try to grab that soul from out of your butt.  

"This kid isn't going to cut it.  He's too kind and can't make decisions.  He's facing a demon, yet the scen tof kindness remains.  He has empathy for even a demon."  Hey, man.  The fact that he's concerned about the suffering of the person he's going to kill is the whole reason I'm now finding Tanjiro endearing.  Sure, it was nice in ep1 when all the villagers showed how much they trusted him and how altruistic he is.  But my pet ideal is Kindness/Compassion.  If a character can retain that, even in the worst circumstances, even towards the worst people, then I'm hooked.  

I guess sunlight is enough.  Oh yeah, Nezuko was hiding from sunlight earlier in thsi ep.  Well, here's the solution to our protagonist retaining his empathy.  ^__^  He jsut has to last until dawn of each fight.  That's fine.  Shonen heros need to show determination through stamina.  

Listen, if the mentor figure is going to slap our protagonist for preserving his Compassion, while the series frames his "lesson" as advocating for admirable Resolve---as Shonen manga/anime are prone to do---then I'm out of here.  I just hope on the obvious hunch that our protagonist is going to prove him wrong, regardless of his standing/experience.  That's what'll make him a Hero...at least the "protagonist who chooses their own option while rejecting the rigid systems" is the type that plays well in America.  "Rebel without a cause" and all that.  Hard to know which way an anime/manga will go until you watch the whole thing.  

Actually, killing Nezuko if she eats a human THEN killing yourself, sounds reasonable.  1, Nezuko already has shown that killing humans for demon food still makes her feel bad enough to cry, so I'm sure if she did it, she'd want to kill herself.  2, Tanjiro would never be able to forgive himself for having to kill Nezuko and he'd want to die too.  Urokodaki then said, "But that must never happen no matter what.  And you'd best not forget."  So looks like he's not going to be that trope mentor who constantly advocates against Compassion as a weakness, just so the protagonist can demonstrate his resolve towards Compassion, by constantly butting heads with the mentor figure.  Good, because battle anime can spend a lot of time with mentors and I don't want their company to be a pain to be around.  

Lost in the thick fog?  No.  He thinks you're going to get eaten by demons on the way down the mountain.  Man, this series did well to establish that association between night and demons, pretty well, if even a forgetful idiot like me can remember. LOL  

Traps?  Wehn did he have time to set that up?  Isn't he just backtracking?  Wouldn't they have set off those traps while going up the mountain???  Whatever.  

"That's why I'm gasping for air like this and feel so dizzy!"  This series does a good job of inserting exposition very quickly and when you want to hear it.  This is going to be an excellent battle anime, isn't it?  

This smoke portrayal reminds me.  I haven't noted how beautiful this art is yet.  I've noted how nice UFO Table's animation is, but these character designs and artwork in general are also pretty nice.  It's nothing fancy like CLAMP, but the draftsmanship is good, everything is very solid in what it needs to do and does nothing in excess...unless needed, when rendering magical things.  Though the artwork during the ending credits shows nice stylized illustration, and not just any "minimums" of draftsmanship.  This nice artwork is also the reason why I want to know if I like this series, before their Nendoroid preorders close.  Because the character designs make the Nendoroids pretty in and of themselves.  The Nezuko Nendoroid is already really cute, without me even knowing who she is.  But I need (to try) to stick to only buying Nenodroids of characters I OBSESSIVELY LOVE from now on, with my budget the way it is now.  As pretty as both the Nezuko and Tanjiro Nendoroids are, if I don't LOVE these characters, then I'll have to skip their preorders.  Of course if the preorders close and I do end up loving these characters, I'll feel pretty bad.  (But I can rely on rereleases, which are coming more often in recent years, and on Good Smile Company's booth sales, like I did for the "Cells at Work" Nendoroid.)  That's why I've gotta get through this series fast!

Still...The preview just ended, and I'm not raring to binge another episode.  So maybe my wallet is looking safe from Nezuko's and Tanjiro's Nendoroids???  o.o???  I don't know...  Maybe I'm just avoidant because indecisiveness is one of my sore spots and Urokodaki keeps scolding our protagonist about it.  Mabye I just don't want to feel bad, wasting all day on binging anime.  I mean, I really like "Dr. Stone" so far, and I don't binge it.  ...I mean, I don't think?  I may have watched 2-3 episodes in one sitting more than I wanted, so....  Ug.  Whatever.  I've got stuff to do, I can't waste time binging "Demon Slayer", and it has yet to grab me enough to make wasting my whole day on it, worth it YET.  

#md3 watches demon slayer kimetsu no yaiba #reactions #m3watches

[abybweisse]

Tag thingie

I was tagged by @thaliaarche Thanks for tagging me! 1. How has your opinion of yourself changed over the years? I’m slightly more positive about myself, but that might just be the anti-dep med talking. 2. If you had to pick one book to read for the rest of your life, which book would you pick? Can it be a series? Lol, if it has to be a single book, maybe “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. 3. What’s your favorite season? Do you have a particular reason for liking it? Fall, Autumn. I was born in that season, and I like the cooler weather and falling leaves. 4. What’s your favorite thing to do when you want to relax? Drink moscato and/or daydream. 5. Do you consider yourself lazy? Yes and no. If I’m really interested in something I’ll work on it non-stop for several hours. If it’s a chore or boring, I’ll procrastinate like nobody’s business. 6. What’s your view on morality? It’s all shades of grey. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but at least I’ve never killed anyone, right? 7. When are you most productive?
When I’m in full-on “inspired artist” mode or I have a clear outline/list of things to do that I don’t mind doing. Same, but that list of things I don’t mind doing is pretty short. And, darn it, I’m most productive at night when I should be sleeping. 8. Do you have any strong opinions about things most people don’t think much about? Black Butler theories. Black Butler, in general. Oh… and song lyrics, whether or not they are really well-written. 9. How do you handle stress? Well, except for when I don’t. Same. Music helps. So does wine and sleep and daydreaming. 10. What would your ideal world be like? No religion, no racism, no sexism, no other bigotry, and a minimum of phobias. Everyone would be well-educated and have good health care services.

Extra Questions: 1.) What’s one story that you want to write/create but won’t (or haven’t yet)? Besides my story (about Aby) that just sits there, I have an idea for a sci-fi series of novels about a group of kids who overthrow their entire society in order to save their species. I have the title for the first book and have written numerous drafts of the start of chapter one and have fleshed out some characters and plot points. That’s about it… in the past five years, at least….
 2.) What’s an interesting moment of self-discovery in your life? When I took the Myers-Briggs test and getting INTJ made everything I do make sense all of a sudden. Not that everything I do is sensible, but now it makes sense why I do the things I do.
 3.) Dream job? Either getting paid to analyze literature, song lyrics, and art… or evolutionary biologist. 
 4.) What’s a book/movie/show that has had a large influence on you? Individual book would be “Brave New World”. Book series would be Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and Black Butler (it counts). Movie examples would be Watership Down (though it’s also a novel) and Amadeus. I find it harder to be strongly influenced by shows, but M*A*S*H, Big Bang Theory, and Stranger Things come to mind.
 5.) Has music ever changed your life, or at least your outlook on life? Music gives me life. It’s a major source of happiness and stress relief for me.
 6.) Imagine you’ve become an established author/artist/creator. What would you want the fandom for your works to be like? Discussing written works and theorizing about it/analyzing it, maybe creating fanfics that would work within canon. Creating fan art that is true to canon. Commissioning artwork or crafts from me.
 7.) Same scenario as #6. What would the fandom actually be like? Some would actually do the things I said in #6, but the rest would create weird AU fanfics and fan art/edits. There might be shipping wars or people creating discourse over characters’ gender and sexuality. The hardest part of it (for me) would be seeing just how out of character my characters could become in fanfics or fanon. Others would try to get free art/crafts out of me. Basically, it would look like most real fandoms, like for Black Butler. LOL!
 8.) What’s a subject that you think should be taught in schools but typically isn’t taught at all? Analytical thinking. I once took a course called Theory of Knowledge (in high school). We learned things like identifying the different marketing methods used in advertising (testimonials, propaganda, etc.) and also learned about inventing languages (say, for the purpose of fiction writing) and a bit about game theory and the pros and cons of selfishness versus altruism.
 9.) What’s a subject that you think should be taught differently in schools from how it usually is? Sex education. In some places it’s barely taught at all. My Health/Sex Ed teacher in junior high was fired for having us role play characters with different POVs/life experiences than our own. Some total homophobe jock in the class complained because he’d been assigned to role play a gay person in a skit. The teacher also wasn’t allowed to explain how to properly use a condom (he wanted to use a banana for the demonstration) because the school wanted the focus to be on abstinence… not safety. Damn. He was hands-down my favorite teacher that year. Well, him and my biology teacher.
 10.) Are there any patterns in your interests/works that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to an outside observer? Intricacies. I’m interested in things that might seem simple on the surface but are not really simple at all. I like deep symbolism and hidden references. I like biology because in many ways it can seem simple, but it isn’t. And evolutionary biology and population genetics are crazy complicated. That’s my bag right there. In my own works, I’m influenced most by authors whose works can be read on different levels.

I’ll tag @akumadeenglish @white-queen-lacus @t-stray @thedarkestcrow @the-previousearl-reborn @shinigami-mistress @into–the–abyss @guarddogclaudia @midnight-in-town and @sakimichan Of course, anyone else can answer these, and those I’ve tagged don’t have to.

[starlight-academy]

developing characters is hard

so i realise i still have a jillion unanswered questions in my inbox and like, i’ll get to them, but first i wanted to get some thoughts down on some stuff that’s been on my mind lately. i can’t guarantee they’ll be very coherent? but i wanna at least put it into words to help get it straight in my own head and also like, make it known that this is stuff i’m taking into consideration

this is about my (questionably successful) attempts in creating a racially diverse cast

okay so first like: this shit’s hard and it doesn’t really help that I’m White and also that i initially went about it in kind of a backwards way. i feel like a lot of my faults in this regard have been due to me trying to tack cultural backgrounds onto a stupidly large cast of already existing characters in kind of a hurry

lemme elaborate on my process. so i have a group of 30-odd weird alien kids, right? they already had names and personalities which with a bit (a lot) of tweaking could probably come out resembling a group of 30-odd weird adult wizards. now i was eager to get started with the starlight rp, so i didn’t really leave myself a whole lot of time to flesh out these fleshy human versions of my beloved fantrolls. i had plot shit and game mechanics shit to work out too (and they weren’t exactly a flawless work of art, either). my brain was kind of on overdrive

you’d think it’d be easy to figure out human headcanons for your own characters but honestly, a lot of the decisions i made were pretty arbitrary. some of them i already had pretty clear mental images for but most of them i really didn’t

so, for a lot of them i started with the name. i wanted to avoid the entire cast being all Whitey McWhitename but i also wanted them to be more or less recognisable as their original troll counterparts. and like, this might have been okay if i wasn’t rushing it, but i was rushing it, and so i ended up with a fair few a) inaccuracies and b) token-ish kind of racial identities, and it was all sort of a mess

i’ve changed a few names already. vered is ezra. hari is rani. luka and marie both have two surnames as per mexican naming conventions. etc etc. there’s still a lot of shit i gotta work through, though. here’s some of it

* as i understand it now, using magic is generally considered a pretty big no-no in islam. this discovery affected two of my characters: thana (torcht, the librarian) and banu (formerly professor avci). banu is the bigger issue since she is an active user of magic, so my first thought was to just make her a non-muslim and leave it at that, even though she’s from turkey which has a muslim majority population, but this feels like kind of a lazy solution. i’m also considering making her indian rather than turkish, since somehow there is only one indian character?? so that change could kill two birds with one stone, i guess. now that i’ve said it i’m kind of leaning towards that

thana is probably safer, i think. hopefully. having her being totally hands-off regarding magic feels totally compliant with how she’s already been handled in canon, at least. kinda sucks that she’s also the Only Muslim by necessity, but it at least feels like something i can work with and expand on during the story

* aarluk (formerly yakone) is a character i’ve wrestled with a bunch. i imagined him as inuit (at least, partially) from the get-go since it seemed like a logical transition from his old fantroll self. i wasn’t really aware at the time of the history regarding indigenous people and boarding schools (i.e. native kids being sent to government schools for assimilation purposes). and like, starlight academy isn’t a boarding school per se, it’s a university, but the idea of a native kid staying abroad at school for three years wasn’t really sitting right with me

i don’t know how much of the “boarding school” vibe actually translated? like, obviously most universities have dorms that students can stay at, so it’s possible that i’m exaggerating the problem. regardless, aarluk for the time being is half-inuit. he will be living with relatives nearby rather than at the dorms. i hope this will alleviate the major potential points of discomfort

* my other asian students are kind of all over the place at the moment. taeko and lily are japanese, celeste (who wasn’t even in the original rp) is chinese, mandy is korean, rhiannon is vietnamese, boy howdy it all feels very hollow and token-y. if i were going to change any of them i’d probably make rhiannon chinese; her surname is easily translatable and personality-wise she’s a good contrast to celeste. not sure yet if i’ll keep mandy as-is

it also kinda bothers me that most of them have western names, lol. i shamefully don’t really have much figured about their backgrounds (particularly for mandy and rhiannon) so this is something i could easily fix later down the line when i have more shit nailed down

* the group of third-years feels like, super white. only banu and mandy are definitely Not White. i don’t know if anyone’s really gonna look at the third-years in isolation but it’s still kinda tempting to change one or two of them

* maybe more jewish characters too? ezra and prof neuman are the only ones i have right now. maybe i could make one of the whiter characters jewish as well. i’m not sure yet

* i also just, gotta remind myself that trying to represent Everyone is completely unreasonable even with a cast of like 40 characters. i should be focusing more on fleshing them out and making them feel real rather than filling my Diversity Checklist(tm)

god why do i have like 40 characters. why am i doing this

is anyone still reading this?? i doubt it but hey thanks for reading. if you’re in a position to give me feedback about any of this stuff (or on anything i haven’t covered/haven’t thought of? that sticks out to you) i’d appreciate it lots. i’m trying my best but i still have a lot of work to do.

#i don't have a good tag for this #meta #?

[redscullyrevival]

Fool’s Quest: Fitz and the Fool Rundown

And now we wait together @sonnetscrewdriver!

Plot/Setting/Narrative

I’m so embarrassed for my son Rap-a-taskal. 

Getting ahead of myself here but take a chill pill kid. 

Calm your Tellator tits. 

Actually, screw it! lets start at “the end”:

I’m officially caught up now and I’ve been digging around the internet lurking on forums trying to soak up art/discussions/opinions I’ve been avoiding for months.

And the most interesting fannish thing I’ve uncovered is how lots of people are treating Tellator and Rap as two different people - I’ve read several discussions and threads where Tellator was being thought of and referred to as almost like a parasite or something.

I personally didn’t get that vibe when reading Rain Wilds. 

I don’t view Rapskal as an innocent bystander taken over by an insidious and other entity, but I can totally see how folks can see it that way so power to them I suppose.

Time and Parenting really come to a point at the end of this book, bounded tight within the thrill of having these two Realm of the Elderlings character axis’ finally meeting!: 

And we the reader are, now, FAR more knowledgeable about the magics and histories of the Realm than any one character present! Funny how time and managing our narrative children will do that, huh? ;D

I’m of the personal opinion that the Elderlings are going to be too thankful and indebted to Fitz to really head the level of retribution Rapskal will demand - but that doesn’t mean Fitz won’t make matters worse with his paranoia and how he expects to be treated (Fitz’s “I-deserve-to-suffer” self loathing really reeks in this book and I have no doubt it will harm more than help in the early stages of Assassin’s Fate) 

But oh! I can’t wait to see my Elderling darlings and Six Duchies nerds mingle more! 

And yes, I do think Rapskal will continue to be an asshole. 

I’m invested in Rapskal though and I can’t wait to see what his deal is and how he’ll affect the story. 

I don’t know about y’all but I feel Rap is being set up to have some big part to play - but I’ve no clue if it’ll be direct or indirect lol. TIME WILL TELL!

If I had to guess right now (and I’m going to because why not) I’d guess that at the moment Rapskal probably struggles, that he is antagonistic, because he is outside of the narrative’s “Reflection & Parenting as Change” theme and may never fold into that current because of his choice to skip adolescence via-memory stones. 

Rapskal doesn’t have a lot to reflect back on, or maybe the issue is he has too much memory or doesn’t reflect at all and only looks forward forward forward. And we know he isn’t a parent as Nortel told us.

Frankly I hope Rapskal can learn from Fitz and/or Amber, I’d like to see him fold back into the narrative flow rather than swim decidedly against it (not that he isn’t uninteresting for doing so, quite the opposite really).

Maybe Rapskal will find something to reflect back on? Maybe he’ll refuse? 

But enough about Rapskal! 

THYMARA’S WINGS ARE SO BIG NOW. *gasp* I love her. 

Do you think when our Six Duchies party leaves Kelsingra they’ll ride down the Rain Wilds River on Tarman?! 

*muffled screeching*

Okay okay okay I’m sorry, back into a Fitz and the Fool Rundown not Kristie has deep love for Rain Wilders Giggling.

Fitz

This dummy. 

Don’t get me wrong; temperament wise this older Fitz is still my favorite but he’s also so full of grief and self loathing he’s practically useless mid-book.

And that’s fine, Hobb as always does a great job with making me understand Fitz.

But still - OH MY GOD.

You’ve done a lot wackier and intensely strange stuff than admit your daughter is the result of your BFF, your wolf-brother, and yourself’s souls mingling Fitz! 

You even come to terms with that fact, even if simply choosing to ignore it for the most part that still means you’ve acknowledged it - you’re willing to painstakingly mine information from any and everyone but you don’t tell Beloved about your daughter’s dream journal?

Um??? WHAT???

Wake up dude. 

Just poor decisions left and right. 

Needless to say I was very frustrated with Fitz for a while but we worked through it. 

Oh my god I friggin’ cried when Starling sung her Epic and Fitz was recognized by the court though, oh man that was so satisfying and mystifying and wondrous. 

I’m glad Fitz has for the most part gotten over his issues with Amber and the Fool’s various identities and seems very accepting of Ash and Spark. 

Bee

Nooooo!

I mean, “No” to Bee still being on her own but mostly “No” about Bee slowly being blocked out of the narrative perspective! 

NOOOO

I’d be fascinated to find out how long she was in the Pillar. Based on the narrative we read and assume she’s wandering about around the same time Fitz and company are but we’ve been given nothing in evidence of that. 

INTERESTING

Stay safe my little piglet! 

The Fool

Yes.

YES.

I’m very intrigued to learn more about Beloved’s dragon blood transformation and what knowledge will come with it.

What will happen if the dragon is truly dead, who will guide their transformation? 

ME THINKS FITZ

But, uh, yeah.

While it was uncomfortable I was rather happy that Fool got angry at Fitz and had no trouble telling him to step off. 

I wasn’t very pleased with Fitz myself at the time, I was a bit smug about him getting a tray full of food plopped in his lap.  

Well done.

I really hope to witness more of Ash and Spark and The Fool’s bond! 

Beloved has been alone for so long, has had the opposite later life to Fitz and his massive family. 

And what better than taking in and giving shelter to a son and a daughter? 

Good stuff. 

Shun AKA Shine

CALLED IT.

Oh Shine, you poor dear. 

Shine will become an asset to Nettle, I imagine, and I desperately hope she heals and that Kettricken can guide her well and that court does Shine good. 

I’m livid and just overall done with Chade, I’m serious.

I feel as though I’ve given Chade benefit of the doubt over and over again and it isn’t like he is an evil person or claims to be something he isn’t - but uuugh what the hell?

If you’re mister cloak and dagger spider web master maybe reel in some goddamn self control and think ahead on the consequences of your personal actions instead of just those of your King and various eyes within the kingdom, come the fuck on dude.

What an idiot sending both his children to a grieving Fitz and for not following up with any information for his children OR for Fitz.

I’d be so upset if I were Shine, I would’t be surprised if she drugs him.

It’d be poetic in a twisted away. 

Why did Chade hide Shine from others as well as from herself? What was he thinking, that she’d have to become less shallow, vain, and self-centered before he’d bestow upon her the depths of her lineage? 

Chade moans about being denied learning to Skill because he was a bastard but zip! he seals up his bastard daughter’s power because ??? 

????!!!!!

ANYWAY 

I’m glad Shine is safe and that she and Bee came to a functioning relationship even if not one ripe with mutual meaning and growth.  

Lant

Chade-light 2.0 and I aren’t hitting it off so well but I’m trying to keep a level head about this sassy lost child.

His biggest sin is that he is boring. 

Or, well, I think my real issue with Lant is that he’s young. 

So young. 

Oddly young.

Older than Per or Ash or Spark yes but younger than them somehow; he doesn’t see, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t seem to even think for himself.

Rolling about in his self pity that he can’t bang his sister doesn’t help endure him to me either but you know, I’ll take Riddle’s advice and let time and space do it’s thing so maybe by the time the third book comes out I’ll have cooled on Lant. 

Ash/Spark

OH SHIT.

I love themmmmmm.

Oh my god.

I’m really really really hoping that Ash, Spark, Per, and Bee are going to be Gen 2 of Elderling mayhem and stories. 

That’d be golden.

Smart as a whip and willing to make their own choices, that’s Ash and Spark. 

Brilliant.

Perseverance

Talk about stickin’ to your name!

Per is a sweetie and I really need to stop but I can’t help but see him as my son Charlie. 

Which is amazing - but gutting at the same time lol.

What have I done?!

Per is perfection and I really hope Fitz does right by him and of everyone traveling now I feel like Per will help Fitz the most as far as his inner space goes. 

Per has a understanding and relationship with Bee outside of Fitz’s understanding of his daughter and I think Fitz’ll need to hear about that and mine Per’s perseverance as their quest wears on. 

Highlighted Passages

I smiled as the royal family passed, tears of pride stinging my eyes. Our doing, the Fool’s and mine.

“Vengeance?” I asked quietly. “It’s a poor motive for doing anything. Vengeance doesn’t undo what they did. Doesn’t restore whatever they destroyed.”

“Sometimes thanking someone is more important to the person giving the thanks than the one who receives it.”

“I thought you had come here in fury over what I did to you as we passed through the Skill-pillars.” He stepped back from me. “Oh, I’ll leave that to Nettle. If she hasn’t blasted the skin from your flesh with her words yet, you’ve that to look forward to.

I could not think about it at the moment. I tried so hard, but there was just not enough time or enough of me. And trying was not doing.

Safe. As if “safe” were more important than anything else.

With the instincts of all bullies, they knew that eventually she would have to emerge. Then, in the way of their kind, they would peck her to death for being different.

“Ah, Fitz. I can always trust you to have some sort of bizarre problem that breaks my ennui.”

She breathed as if she had run over nine hills. I stared at her. She had been a stranger, a lover, a nemesis, and a betrayer to me. And now she was my historian.

“Why does understanding come so late to us?”

War and hardship had hardened them; I understood that, but it did not mean that I wished to see my own folk mocked or disdained that they were not likewise hardened.

But all fires, of wood or grief, burn down to ashes eventually.

“Doing something stupid and reckless is not a better proof of your love than doing something measured and powerful.”

“Keeping a child from harm is not the same as rearing one.”

“Steady, I’m pregnant, not ill.”

Both logic and love anchored me where I was and doomed me to the suffocation of waiting.

“Every one of them has witnessed what the Servants have done to their fellows. And each has chosen to serve them rather than defy them. Every one of them is more treacherous than you can imagine.”

Once one knows what heartless people can do, it cannot be entirely forgotten. It always remains among the possible things that can befall you.

“Put it behind you, and think about it again in twenty years. Whatever it was, you can’t change it. So stop clinging to it, and let time and distance do their work.”

“I always fail the people I love the most.” “Say rather that you judge yourself more harshly than anyone else ever has.”

“No soup! Anything I can bite and chew. Or crunch! Is there anything crunchy?”

 “That I guessed,” Malta said knowingly. “When first I saw him, I felt as if I already knew him.” She smiled at me as if we shared a jest. I smiled back, without understanding.

“Worrying doesn’t solve anything. I know that. In one way I know it but in another it seems wrong. It seems that if I don’t think about all the things that hurt, all the things I’ve done wrong, then I don’t really care.”

#realm of the elderlings #year of book #fitz and the fool #fandom talks

[itsgoldleaf]

I posted 446 times in 2021

46 posts created (10%)

400 posts reblogged (90%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 8.7 posts.

I added 132 tags in 2021

#stargate atlantis - 38 posts

#mcshep - 31 posts

#rodney mckay - 18 posts

#john sheppard - 14 posts

#goldleaf's writing - 10 posts

#ask meme - 5 posts

#pacific rim au - 4 posts

#ronon dex - 4 posts

#fictober21 - 4 posts

#stargate - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i do hope it’s a good show but i’ll have to wait for the whole thing to come out and spin a wheel to decide which service i’ll subscribe to

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

18 and 22 for the ask game, plz

Thank you Anon! 18. I name you writer on the show: What's the first thing you write Season 6? A fix-it for all the weird characterisation in season 5? LOL this is a tough question. I think, yes, I'd ultimately like to write another season but have it be like, a mini series maybe, 4 episodes max? Something to just, make everything better and satisfy my own self-indulgences but also make up for the yawning omissions in the show in general. I would love to write a slice-of-life thing where everyone is back in Pegasus, literally 100% composed of all those small, weirdly away-from-the-action character moments that are dotted around so much in the show that have no plot significance but really flesh out the people and their relationships to one another. I'd give Teyla and Ronon actual respectable character arcs and utilise them as people with unique experiences and perspectives and not just sounding boards for other characters' dialogue. Half the time in SGA it doesn't matter if you give the line to Teyla or Ronon since they get used as exposition-catalysts way too much. I want Teyla and her people to be back in the fore, how USEFUL she and they would be in reestablishing relations with all the other planets and trading partners once Atlantis gets back to Pegasus (especially if they got cut off from Earth again. Okay I'm literally just describing Written By The Victors again here I can't help it!!!) I want her to have genuine friendships with other female characters that aren't just 'we need to move the plot forward with some exposition' (SGA does pass the Bechdel test in a few episodes to be fair but I almost feel that's by accident honestly, I think it's literally always to drive the plot forward via dialogue and never just to have them be hanging out shooting the shit like you get with John & Rodney). I WANT SATEDAN CULTURE PLEASE I want to know more about their art and songs and commerce and world c'moooooon (I'm literally writing a thing about this rn because!!!) Ronon is so criminally under-used as a PERSON in this show oh my god, so I want him to have more to do than just not understanding shit because he isn't unintelligent, christ. Does anyone in the show EVER ask him what HIS favourite song is?! Or what he likes to do?! And also just, I haven't even got to McShep yet, but I'm a slow burn lots and lots of subtext and neither of them naming it will-they-are-they-what-is-this? sort of person so nothing would even explicitly happen until the last 'episode' of this thing I'm apparently now in charge of. The pier scene from the Shrine except a whole season of that mood, where you know what's going on but it's this quiet, understated intimacy that blooms, not in the forefront, just, a nice development of a thing rumbling along. (Yes I would yeet the Rodney/Jennifer thing sorry not sorry, haha.) I went REALLY OFF BRIEF HERE but oh my god I think what I love about SGA in a twisted way is the lost potential (aka thank fuck for fic). It doesn't have to be a big enemy of the week drama for it to be interesting and good and engaging - I crave the small moments, treating the characters with respect and not caricaturing them (looking at you season 5 episodes that shall go nameless unless someone asks me about them at which point I will gladly write a thesis) so yeah, fund me amaz*n I'll write your show for you

22. A fic you would be buried with since it's so good, you'd read it over and over until the end of time. This is VERY difficult to answer because I have a handful that I read over and over and over. Oh man. Oh man! Okay, picking one at random, The Suite Life by Cartwrite. It's literally what I described above almost - this slow paced, slice of life thing that has no huge peril but is this comforting exploration of the development of a relationship with perfect characterisation and real warmth and that is my absolute VIBE for all eternity.

22 notes • Posted 2021-09-20 18:45:28 GMT

#4

The Rod-Straight Highway by goldleaf

It’s a heated tactical retreat, really. Shrubs, ruins. Gate, over there, somewhere, Rodney had waved his arm vaguely and almost got his fingers shot off.

***

I did it! Another Fictober prompt in October!

This one is for prompt 8: This is it, isn't it?

22 notes • Posted 2021-10-31 19:44:01 GMT

#3

The Golden Hour by goldleaf

John sits down heavily having retrieved more drinks; they slip and slop on the little tray he’s liberated from one of the locals and he’s loose and giggly in that way that he gets which is never and he doesn’t seem to notice or care that his thigh is pressed up against Rodney’s and Rodney thinks, I’m not drunk enough for this, and downs his (worryingly fruity) drink in one swallow because he might as well make a start.

***

Fictober Prompt 11: "I swear, it's not always like this."

22 notes • Posted 2021-10-10 18:49:24 GMT

#2

Hello friends please grant me the strength and I mean really send those vibes out into the aether because I’ve still not rewatched Vegas since like 2014 and I just need the emotional fortitude okay because it’s been so long that it’ll be like watching it for the first time again and i can’t HANDLE IT

28 notes • Posted 2021-09-27 21:21:57 GMT

#1

I've found myself drawn back into the SGA fandom after 8 or so(?) years. Is it cheating to ask for your tumblr crushes? Or at least some good SGA McShep-leaning blogs/authors to follow?

Sorry for the delay in replying Anon! Welcome back to the fandom! (I say, having been here ten minutes.) OH MAN like, my entire friends list are some excellent McShep/Atlantis folks and my dash is a wondrous cornucopia of content on the daily! @a-storm-of-roses @alienfuckeronmain @carsonsweebabyturtles @cassiope25 @hewwwwkayyyy @mckaysrodney @sparrowsarus @atlantis-scribe @dedkake@perfica @chaos-monkeyy @frankthesnek TO NAME BUT A FEW of the insanely talented people gracing my screen at any given moment whose blogs I recommend clicking on if you're in the market for beautiful fic and art and discourse and posts and that sweet McShep and Atlantis content we all not-so-secretly crave <3

59 notes • Posted 2021-10-04 20:35:03 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#I did the thing #Inadvertent reccing of my own fic there heheuhaueh #none of these results surprised me I don’t talk much but when I do it’s sga 👍

[icouldbemoreclever]

1, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13, 16, 19, 24, 27, 29, 39, 45, 49, 50 ^_^

Yaaay!

1. Your first OC ever? If you want to get technical, when I was really young I used to givepersonalities to my crayons and act out stories with them (they were just namedafter their colour). Even now, those stories kind of influence my feelingsabout certain colours. Out of OCs that I still currently have, Enre is the oldest. I made her in grade5. After crayons I graduated to other writing utensils. One day I found apencil case full of non-standard pens, markers, etc. There was one pen thatlooked normal but when I took it apart, someone had replaced the regular inktube with one from a silver gel pen. That inspired me to build the character ofEnre, who spends most of her story wearing a suit of armor, disguised as a man.

4. A character you rarely talk about? Probably all the minor characters from my old roleplay :P I kind of can’tfigure out what to do with them. I think some of the ones with the mostpotential are a family of shapeshifting aliens. The first one to show up wasHart, then later is “brother” Lumo. They’re from a planet with no sun, so theycan’t open their eyes if there’s any light around (maybe in dim artificial lightthey can open them a liiiittle). Hart ran into someone who could create dynamictattoos and so had one installed that could serve as a navigation system whenhe can’t open his eyes. It’s a black hart lined with blue (rather large, on hischeek). Lumo later got one of a yellow sun lined with red. Their blood isreally acidic/poisonous. Human language is difficult for them so they both havea stutter and don’t use contractions.

5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be? I was thinking about this last night and I think I would say Kye. I’m trying towork on good drafts of her novels right now, and I really like her story. (Enre is sighing with relief in the background because she’s already well knownin her own world and doesn’t want to be)

9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else? Possibly, like if someone wanted to turn a roleplay into a cohesive story Imight let them use whichever characters were mine in that roleplay (we’d haveto work out conditions though).

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”? Pentel! Unkillable optimist (I mean, until the roleplay got really dark...) He’s addicted to chocolate and it makes him really hyper and childlike. He’sgenuinely kind to all of the people he meets.

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs? Off the top of my head the only one I can think of is Kemuri. He doesn’tnecessarily go out of his way to make trouble, but he’s a shapeshifter whosegoal is largely his own amusement so it happens anyway.Other than that, Kye causes all sorts of trouble because her truest joy is tobeat people up.

16. Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)? Lambda wishes it was her (she graduated med school dammit!) but I think itwould actually be Heaven, since he was a child prodigy after all (and graduatedthe same med school at a much younger age)

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why) Th-they all do!Since I haven’t mentioned him yet, I’ll say Carmine. He’s labeled as anintergalactic terrorist for his efforts to free his race from slavery. He wasborn into a privileged home, but because of his race had to be hidden from theoutside world. In an accident involving a rare artifact from space, hisadoptive family was killed, exposing him to the rest of the town. He was set tobe hanged, but the artifact cut the rope at the last minute. Unfortunately, italso killed all the people of the town.He spent a long time in isolation before finally leaving to begin his missionof freeing his people (he believes that’s what his adoptive father would want).He carries a lot of guilt for what happened and believes himself a murderer. Ofcourse, it doesn’t stop him from murdering people during his activities.Eventually, he meets another freedom fighter who is more of a pacifist. Theyget along about as well as you’d expect.I came up with him in middle school and he means a lot to me because of thechanges he’s gone through over the course of the roleplay. His character growthalways felt really organic. It has always been really easy for me to relate tohis feelings of isolation, being tainted, and not being able to connect withother people. He also gets chronic headaches just like me. We ended up sharinga lot of traits, even if it wasn’t intentional.

24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?I would probably meet Pentel, so he could give me some chocolate and also be myfriend (he would!!)

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?So many of them… let me try to remember the ones that specifically came fromsongs…A lot of Carmine’s creation was influenced by Easier to Run and Faint by LinkinPark (it was middle school!). Likewise, my character Kiri was heavilyinfluenced by Figure.09 by Linkin ParkWhen I fleshed out Jeice’s character (he’s the other protagonist in Enre’sstory) I was really influenced by Audrey, Start the Revolution by Anberlin.My character Kipper came entirely out of the song I’m With You by Avril LavigneKasane was heavily influenced by Perfect by Simple Plan (man, sounds so basic…)Joey and his sister (I forget her name… they were from a comic I stoppedworking on cause my art wasn’t there yet) were created through the song Joey byConcrete BlondeI had a character that hasn’t been named yet that came out during The Only HopeFor Me Is You by My Chemical Romance. Still don’t know much about him though.Kimoura came out of Into the Night by SantanaTwo so-far unnamed characters from Drove Me Wild by Tegan and Sara. The onlyway their dynamic really works is as Loveless fan characters but… do I reallywanna write fanfic?I felt like I had more characters who came directly from songs, but it’s lessthan I thought. I think mostly it’s that the character’s development is ofteninfluenced by songs, and most of my characters have a “theme song”.

29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned houseIt’s kind of Kye and Riven’s job to do that – they fight the paranormal.

39. Introduce any character you wantWhile Enre is a soldier fighting on the side of the Penns, Jace is the leaderof the Coeur revolution. He’s young, practically still a kid, but he’sambitious and he thinks his side can win. His people have been enslaved foryears and they’re ready to rebel against their oppressors. Ambitious as he is,the revolution is also personal – recently married to the love of his life, howcan he build a family with her under the yoke of slavery? (that sounded more like a plot summary, but there you have it!)

45. A character you no longer use?Most of them from the old roleplay. Some of them I don’t even have intentionsof repurposing for a different story. Probably the most useless of them isCopper (typical perverted anime stock character lol). Actually, I forgotPrimer, who served as the first captain of the Five Star (he was murdered, soof course I don’t use him anymore). I miss some of the ship staff like Orca andNarwhal. They’re background people that had a very specific role.

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memesPyry/Peter because he’s a teenage boy. Probably one of the only ones who wouldbe exposed to memes in canon! (Now I’ve got the bad idea of making a tumblrblog in character as him…)Shinto would probably get a kick out of memes if she ever saw them. I think she’dreally like gun. She and Karaoke would have a great time rick-rolling theirentire squad.Chance would probably spread a lot of classic art/history memes. He’d show themto Enre and she’d be like “I’m illiterate.”

50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you wantI want to talk about how Carmine is bi!!!! Like, I think about this a lot but it means nothing to anyone but me, haha. Carminetravels with a sort of partner-in-crime named Sky who is a common gay. Alsototally in love with Carmine, but Carmine is the most oblivious unobservant assin the universe. In the roleplay, it’s painfully obvious to everyone else thatCarmine is in love with Taki (the captain of another ship) but that he won’tget together with her. His emotions are kind of vulnerable so he turns to theonly other person he can trust, Sky, and they eventually get together. Ofcourse, Sky KNOWS who Carmine truly has feelings for, and bets him to ask Takiout (Carmine can not turn down a bet). This, as you’d expect, backfires as Takiis offended he asked her out on a dare. But he is forced to confront his truefeelings and eventually does confess to her (they later get married). Sky isboth sad and happy at the same time.Technically if you want to use the split attraction model, Carmine isbiromantic and homosexual but whatever. I don’t give a lot of thought intodefining a specific sexual orientation for most of my characters but the twothat I know are most definitely bi are Carmine and Cruz.

This ended up really long of course, but Iwanted to say thanks for asking and giving me a chance to ramble on and on!

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Owarimonogatari Season 2 [Mayoi Hell]

I was hoping at first that I’d get done with my rewatch of the whole series up to this point before this came out, but I guess that sure didn’t happen, lol. I’ll get back to it eventually, once I have the free time for it. But for now I’m just gonna watch this now that it’s out. I’m already kinda late for this as it is.

I’m going to try and do this in a semi-liveblog-y way where I’ll binge-watch each part while giving my thoughts after each individual episode and then post this once I’m done, but if that ends up being annoying I might switch to only writing up my thoughts after I’ve completed each arc. Which also applies to the main rewatch. Doing it like an actual liveblog where I keep pausing it to write about it got really annoying really fast, so yeah.

It’s good to be back with this series after waiting nearly a year and a half, after Koyomimonogatari came out. I feel like I’m not really as into it as I used to be, which is why the idea of doing an entire rewatch is sorta daunting and might potentially fall apart if I lose interest, but it’s still nice to finally get to see the conclusion of the main story.

Anyway, spoiler-y thoughts under the cut. [And for the record, I’ll try and make posts for Hitagi Rendezvous and Ougi Dark over the next two days or so]

PART ONE:

I’m glad I have a good memory for stuff I’m into, since even with the fairly intense recapping going on it’s still kinda vague and there’s still so much going on in the series as a whole that this is building upon. There’s probably stuff I’m forgetting, but I think I’m good. I’m at least aware that the whole premise here is that Araragi got murdered by Gaen in an attempt to restore the spiritual balance of the town, and now he’s stuck in Hell and has to get back out.

Seeing Hachikuji again is as wonderful as I expected, even if it immediately reminded me that the fanservice with her character is one of the many things I kinda have to glaze over and look past in order to enjoy this show. There’s no point denying that. This is definitely a guilty pleasure sort of show that I’d be hard-pressed to recommend to most people. But even so, Hachikuji is great. I’m clearly less enthusiastic about her character than other people are, but I still like her as a character.

It makes sense, but I wasn’t expecting to get a literal walk down memory lane. Huh. It’s a nice way to make the story feel all full circle in time for the final arc, I guess. It at least helps remind us all that Araragi is the sort of person who would have kept doing the things he chose to do even if he could go back and re-do them. For better or worse. I’m glad that Araragi acknowledged that he fucked up pretty bad with Nadeko in general. He really, really did.

I’ve been kinda thinking about this for a while, but this whole arc is making me remember that I’ve always kinda struggled to get an exact grasp on Araragi as a person. I’m not sure why. Maybe rewatching the series would help, but something about his personality and world-view, or at least how he articulates it, feels weirdly difficult to get. But there’s still parts to his character that are pretty incredibly obvious, like his incredibly low self-esteem and his self-destructive heroism. I feel like I probably understand him more than I don’t, there’s just this weird feeling of distance involved, especially when he monologues about justice and stuff.

Of all characters, I wasn’t really expecting Tadatsuru to come up again, given how short-lived his screen-time was. Huh. I’m intrigued by the idea that it’s part of Gaen’s whole plan to have Araragi return from Hell, and that him dying somehow erased his vampirism. Is that, like . . . a legit, permanent thing now? Is he just not a vampire anymore? I feel like he still was when we saw him again in Hana, but I forget.

I guess we’ll get to her properly later, but I’m glad that we’re finally going to address the topic of Ougi. She’s been such a huge part of the story for a while now, so finally getting an explanation of what she is will be nice. I think I’ve already been spoiled on it a bit, so I won’t get into it until the show does.

The art in this arc already is kinda off the charts. This definitely seems like one of the more exceptionally dialogue-heavy arcs, so I guess they had room to just go completely nuts and do what they want, especially since it’s literally set in Hell so they have an excuse to use some surreal visuals. I’m glad we got a whole section with Hajime Ueda’s character design style. It always looks really good. I also just love how incredibly different pretty much every scene looks. Though in an almost opposite direction, I really like how the scene with Kiss-Shot was done to intentionally look like the beginning of Bake when we get the flashback to Kizu. That was kinda trippy, in a cool way.

It’s at least immediately confirming what I’ve been thinking, that Zaregoto just feels way more lifeless than the Monogatari series in terms of artistic direction, but that’s a rant for another day.

Before I move onto the second half of the arc, I should also say that it’s nice to get another Mayoi OP, even though hers have always been low on the list of favourite Monogatari OPs. The visuals were really nice, though. I hope we get an OP for Hitagi Rendezvous, but I heard that we won’t, so that sucks. Unless we get one in the BD release. Thankfully we’ll at least get an Ougi OP for the last arc of this. I’m still hoping that we get an actual Araragi OP when Shaft eventually adapts Zoku.

Oh yeah, on that note, the fact that this is seven episodes long in all REALLY makes me sad that they couldn’t have just added a Zoku adaptation onto the end and aired this as a regular one-cour anime. That would have been so much more convenient in every way. OH WELL. Hopefully it won’t take them too long to adapt Zoku, even if it probably won’t happen until next year. And then we’ll have Off Season and Monster Season to worry about. I wonder how long they’ll keep the series going before they cut their losses.

PART TWO:

I was, uh, not expecting basically everything in this part. Wow. So we finally got proper backstory for Tadatsuru, and learned what the heck was going on in Tsuki. I didn’t think Nisioisin would bother ‘explaining’ Tsuki, I figured it’d just be left as a kinda weird and out of the blue part of the story. But now it makes sense. So the whole time Tadatsuru was operating under orders from Ougi to kill Araragi, while also operating under orders from Oshino and Gaen to get killed so he can go down to Hell in order to help revive Araragi once he gets murdered later on. Huh. I also wasn’t expecting the entire deal with Tadatsuru being some kinda puppet master who had already died and was living through his dolls. All the focus on doll imagery in that part was kinda disturbing.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Oshino in the flesh again, in the present day. It’d be great to see him again. I’ve kinda missed him.

Also in terms of mysteries I didn’t think would get solved, I didn’t expect that the park name would be resolved and turn out to be so important. Wow. I feel like they’re setting up a plot point there, or at least furthering an existing plot point, but it’s hard to tell. It’s probably just a cultural difference, but it’s kinda difficult sometimes to understand the importance and relevance of shrines in this series, and what happens when they get relocated/destroyed/renamed/etc.

For some reason I kinda didn’t remember that Tadatsuru always saw Araragi as an enemy because he works with an apparition, so I guess it was a good thing we got reminded of that. We spend so much time with apparitions that I kinda forget that the specialists are literally trained to kill them, pretty much.

It was nice to see Hachikuji try and give Araragi a motivational speech about how he deserves to be resurrected. Her line about how he ‘loved being alive’ kinda got to me for some reason. But then of course that scene also got unexpectedly weird and funny.

And of course the major twist was that Hachikuji got taken out of Hell as well, which I did not see coming at all. Huh. I’m also kinda surprised that nothing bad seems to have happened, and that it actually benefits Gaen’s entire plan of action. I kinda expected it to be something that’d have an obvious downside, but maybe that’ll come up later.

I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with Kiss-Shot being there at the end in some weird hologram-y way, but I guess it had to do with the Yume-Watari sword. Although there’s also the fact that it really does seem like Araragi’s vampire aspect literally got erased, so maybe that changed things with Shinobu. I forget exactly how their link works, though, so I’m not entirely sure if him losing his vampire nature would help or hurt her. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

I wasn’t exactly expecting this entire arc to end on the note it did, but I guess it makes sense. I kinda feel bad for Araragi, though, getting killed, literally sent to Hell, and revived along with a friend he thought was dead, all in like an hour or so. And now he has to immediately take entrance exams and worry about how he’s going to have to help Gaen in her whole war with Ougi that’s being set up. He deserves a break.

Which is probably why Hitagi Rendezvous is, apparently, about him and Senjougahara going on a date. That’ll be cute. People have been complaining that they haven’t gotten enough screen-time as a couple yet, and I kinda feel that way too, so this will be nice.

Also on the note of Senjougahara, it sounds like whatever subs I was using decided to adopt the Vertical translation and call her ‘Senjyogahara’ which still just looks so fucking weird to me. I really dislike that was of romanizing her name. It’s not a big deal or anything, but still.

#murasaki rambles #monogatari series #owarimonogatari #owarimonogatari season 2 #just gonna use both tags to play it safe #I think this ended up being shorter than my other rewatch posts so that's nice #but this was just two episodes long so eh #not sure yet if I'll keep doing it this way or just talk about each entire arc at a time