#seriously though who relates?? this has to be a universal experience

[storm-and-starlight]

Rodimus and ADHD

I'm gonna start this out by saying that Rodimus having ADHD is something that's been pretty fundamental to my understanding of the character since I first read MTMTE/Lost Light (seriously, I can point you to the exact panel when I went "oh okay this is Canon to me now") but also that I've almost never seen a portrayal that really vibes with how I interpret it? A lot of the fics and fanon I've come across tend to take a fairly... typical view on and portrayal of ADHD where the things that are focused on are hyperactivity and task/responsibility/boredom avoidance, and to me that's not... it's not the, like, the fundamentals of how I read Rodimus and ADHD? It's not the main issues that affect who he is and how he interacts with the world -- those would instead be the impulsivity and the... idk how to phrase it, the "ADHD trauma"? It's really distinct and I'll get to it later.

The impulsivity is fairly easy to get to, and fairly obvious -- the best representation of how it manifests in Rodimus specifically is in the initial description of the Rodpod, where someone (I can't quite tell who from the panel) says "you know what he's like: he obsesses over something, then gets bored" and then it's revealed that Rodimus presumably commissioned an entire ship built in the shape of his own head. That's really what I see as the main ADHD symptom -- the mix of obsession and impulsivity. We see it when he gets everyone to go on the quest, we see it when he tries to chop off his own arm because he thinks it might stop the future from happening, we see it in his plan to stop the sparkeater -- it's basically how he responds to every problem he's presented with, and often significantly more than that, and that kind of impulsivity is very much a noted feature of ADHD. (Being briefly but intensely obsessed with something before losing interest and dropping it is also a really big ADHD thing -- just look at the cycle of hyperfixations that's so common in fandom).

(Also, when combined with his ego, recklessness, and carelessness, you get basically the entire negative side of his personality out of this, which is why I consider it so fundamental to his character -- significantly more so than, say, task avoidance.) (though recklessness, and carelessness are also fairly common with ADHD -- it's related to impulsivity in general.)

The "ADHD trauma" thing is a little trickier to explain: it's basically how I describe the constant awareness that you have screwed the hell up in the past when it's important and you are going to screw the hell up in the future when it's important and hating the fact that it happens and yet also being completely and fundamentally aware that it's something you can never, ever change about yourself no matter how hard you try (because you have tried, in the past, and it has never worked even a little bit). Like, hello, that basically describes my entire childhood and also the lives of most of my friends who also have ADHD. The panel that convinced me that he does have ADHD is the one that basically explicitly describes this, in Lost Light where he and Drift are talking after they return from the Functionist Universe and Rodimus says "Oh, I know what I'm like. That's the trouble. I know exactly what I'm like -- I just can't stop myself," because, like. that's it. that's the experience in a nutshell.

And like, I'm not saying that this is super severe -- he definitely has more self-confidence than is often warranted, but he also does have a lot of self-esteem issues, and I think this is really the root of them: failing, over and over, until you reach the point where you start thinking that it's bound to happen someday and that everyone will hate you for it forever. That's a super common experience with the kind of disability that ADHD is, especially if you don't know you have it in the first place, and that combined with all the smaller traits (the impulsivity, the hyperfixation, and yes even the task/responsibility/boredom avoidance) is what really convinced me that he is an ADHD character.

#transformers #transformers meta #maccadam #rodimus #rodimus prime #rodimus and ADHD #obligatory internet disclaimer that this is my own personal interpretation of canon and you are allowed to disagree with it etc. etc.

[letters-to-rosie]

Minutes to Midnight is seriously and envy-inducingly good! But I just want to say that, when you said "one shot of all time", my mind immediately went to you've got your demons, and darling, they all look like me. And then I got reminded of why it's my personal favorite (other than it being plain good, ofc): the summary. A well-written fic is a well-written fic, obviously, but the perfect summary really adds to the experience. Like how it catches your eye and makes your heart race because you know that an author who can write such a summary... well. They also can and probably did write a fic that blows your clothes off and turns them inside out before sending them to the hamper. It's about the anticipation.

Ahem, so anyway. I started thinking about how few words one needs to evoke an emotional response, and I wanted to share my excitement about that.

ahhhh thanks for the recommendation!!

I'mma use this as a little bit more time to gush over Minutes to Midnight just because, and then gush over you've got your demons as well because oh man. thank you for sending it my way!!

Ekko is my favorite character, but I am also a big fan of making him Worse, and I love how Minutes to Midnight does it in a way that feels so authentic. like I can extrapolate him right away from what we see in the show. and this is the only fic I can think of that really takes it to such an extreme, but again it's done so compellingly that it really feels like a Jinx version of Ekko, even if Jinx remains similarly filled with rage. there are just so many lines I love and I could list them all day but when it culminates at the end, tying together the time themes and the regret and the betrayal it's just... I love it so much

one line for fun: She’s bleeding, choking, underneath him, and he hits her, and hits her, don’t you get it, I could have done this anytime I wanted but I didn’t, I didn’t, I gave you my life and you threw it back in my face, even as she claws at him alley-cat-desperate.

every time I read it, I'm just in my room, actually screaming lol

and now for you've got your demons!!!!

there were also a ton of lines I could have pulled out but then we'd be here all day but

Dark against light - though the light has always been Ekko. i cry She chose him long before he chose her. i cry endlessly Powder never asks Vi her favorite color, because she doesn’t know what she’d do if she didn’t say the same thing Ekko did. a never-ending stream

but man it's just so stunning. like you said, I love how few words it uses to get its story across. getting to read prose that packs that sort of punch is always so special. Powder/Jinx is just so relatable and you really feel her struggles come through. her tangle of confusion and not getting things like marriage really resonated with my ace self (and I always enjoy an ace-spec Jinx). but her crush was so precious I just wanted to hug her and let her be happy with Ekko and maybe my delusional ass can imagine that they are someday in that fic universe lol

and the way the summary gets entirely recontextualized at the end????? INCREDIBLE truly a one-shot of all time. we have to make it an indefinite article now lmao

I got super lucky because the author of "you've got your demons" wrote my gift for the secret santa we just had!! that fic is called Moonlight Refuge and let me tell you if it didn't convey every emotion I wanted, which is the "I should want nothing to do with you but I can't help myself" part of timebomb, and in this one it's mutual and just fantastic. I spent like half my comment writing AHHH because the emotions were just everywhere it was a good time

also hi @cranechel we're in the corner gushing over your fic... I will leave a comment soon but wanted to answer this lol

#asks #arcane #fanfiction #timebomb #ekko #jinx #ekkojinx #go read the fics #they are great #then sign a petition to stopkosa if you're in the us okay love you bye #also if anyone else wants to send me their one-shot of all time plz feel free lol

[threebooksoneplot]

Question for G :)) how was your fanauthor workshop experience? I don't know if I should apply it sounds interesting but at the same time almost no reviews or whatsoever. Thank you!

well I ended up doing it a second time, so I'd say it was pretty damn good! I think the reason there are "no reviews" is mostly due to tumblr's format not really lending itself to that? @fanauthorworkshop isn't marketing itself as a product so much as a pedagogical (educational) extension of the existing fandom gift economy—an exchange where you both learn stuff and share/teach stuff!

this answer is mildly off-podcast-topic and it's gonna get super long and wordy, so it's under a cut lol you're welcome

my Fanauthor Workshop experience

personally, I found the FAW perfect for me. I was at the point in my fic writing where I was getting some lovely comments and glowing praise, but also wishing the world in general took fanfiction more seriously, as a craft to be practiced and discussed, something with both intrinsic and literary merit. @bettsfic's first episode as a guest on Fansplaining really resonated with me and kind of spoke to that desire (it's a must-listen for anyone on the fence about applying to the FAW!!)

but I had never studied creative writing at a university level, and barely knew what a crit letter was. I found the FAW was the perfect way to learn that sort of thing in a low-stress environment! I didn't struggle with feelings of burdensome obligation the way I had with schoolwork; rather I was excited to read everyone else's writing and see what it had to teach me. I also loved having an appropriate venue to air all my writing opinions, lol. I found I was so motivated that I managed to attend every FAW session even though it conflicted with family vacations two years in a row. I wrote crit letters from the lobby of a restaurant in a national park because it was the only place with wifi. I even Zoomed into one session from a random public library in Durango, where I managed to alarm everyone else in the irl vicinity with my enthusiastic discussion of fictional cannibalism (shoutout to the story we workshopped that day, it SLAPPED.)

personally, I approached the FAW with the very specific goal of Having Fun first and letting the writing stuff come second (ie, not putting too much pressure on myself when it came to choosing and polishing my own workshop pieces, and not worrying too much about how they were received.) I still ended up getting some AMAZING critiques and responses to my two (very different) pieces—I was deeply impressed by everyone's insights, how much they were able to pick up on, and how willing they were to meet me at my level. the other pieces we workshopped ranged all over the place in technical ability, from "giohvnsksbnf this writing is so good I'm gonna fucking eat glass" to "this person is clearly just starting out as a writer, but even if their prose has some technical mistakes, their story has Good Bones and their critiques and discussion observations have been spot on."

my big secondary goal was to Make Friends and there I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I now have SO many cool FAW mutuals, a few of which I have hung out with IRL and the rest of which I totally WOULD hang out with IRL if given the opportunity. they're all uniquely creative and clever people who I probably wouldn't have met otherwise, so that's kind of the biggest Win for me. it's so cool knowing I have all these people I could DM out of the blue and be like "hey, would you mind looking over this short story/beta-ing this fic chapter?" and end up with some great insights. there's also an FAW Discord where anyone can kind of bring fandom- and writing-related questions to the floor, as well as share recs and self-promote projects (or in my case, recruit podcast guests who I know have been pre-screened for both their chill lack of pearl-clutching and their basic fiction-analyzing skills, lol.)

I would recommend the Fanauthor Workshop if:

you're a self-taught writer who's done most of your learning in the fanfiction space and you're curious about how writing is actually taught in academic settings

alternatively, you're a writer from an academic background who chafes at some of the more restrictive rules in traditional workshops/you're tired of the irl Guy in Your MFA -types who refuse to or can't engage with your work on its level

you're ok with doing some "homework" (writing two crit letters per week) on the honor system

you're down to read original work in a wide variety of genres/read fic from fandoms you're not in (maybe even fandoms/pairings/characters you don't personally like)

you like what you read in @oficmag

you wish fanfiction was taken more seriously as a craft

your favorite trad-published writers all seem to be workshop alumni (eg: I swear half of my favorite writers are Clarion grads)

you have work you'd like to publish and/or submit someday but you're not sure if it's ready/not sure where to start

you follow writing advice blogs or send them asks

you wish people would leave "concrit" (constructive criticism) on your fics

you wish people would leave concrit on your fics but you're worried they might be too mean or not "get" your work

you wish people would analyze your work and give critique without letting their personal value judgments get in the way (and you're ready to do the same in turn)

you worry your work is too niche, kinky, queer, romance-focused, or "weird" for a traditional workshop (note: but it doesn't have to be any of these things. people also workshopped gen and the equivalent of coffee shop AUs!)

you'd like to hear perspectives that don't come from cishet dudes

you enjoy Class Participation and discussions (or maybe you're no longer a student and miss that kind of thing!)

you think @bettsfic seems like a good teacher (spoiler: she REALLY is)

you like the idea of a creative writing class with no grades or possibility of "failure"

you'd like to meet people you probably wouldn't meet in any other setting, and make some cool friends from other fandoms

if even a couple of these bullet points sound like you, you'd probably get a lot out of the FAW!! I hope the next session of FAW-ers have a blast. I'll be lurkin the Discord rooting for y'all

#asks #fanauthor workshop #anonymous

[readychilledwine]

💜 Get to know me 💜

I figured this is a little overdue. I just wanted to introduce myself a little:

The personal real life things:

My name is Elizabeth, and I'm 27. (Old for the fanfiction writing world to some, the perfect age to others.) My friends call me Liz. I've been reading fanfiction since the dark day of Quizilla, and I've been writing it since high school, so over 10 years.

It started with me writing it for my friends and adding them into stories to allow them to live out their fantasies with characters they loved and adored. After a pretty serious car accident that left me bedridden for over a month last year, I started writing it for me for escapism. The number of stories hidden in my Google Drive is insane, lovelies.

I recently started posting due to my pregnancy, which, according to my partner, only happened because I wouldn't stop reading fairyporn, on here and in books. Fairyporn he now also reads (blows on nails before cleaning them on my shirt.) Due to pregnancy, I've been home more after making the choice to switch my hours at work to allow us to adapt and prep for the arrival of our little.

The stories and writing

I consider myself part of several Fandoms and would take requests for any of the following:

✨️ Lord of the Rings / The Tolkien Universe

✨️ACOTAR and the SJM Universe

✨️Harry Potter

✨️The Bargainer Series

✨️Game of Thrones / House of Dragons

✨️ The Witcher Series

✨️ Percy Jackson

✨️ The MCU

Please just keep in mind, we may not like the same characters, so I cannot promise a mind blowing adventure for every sutuation. I will post a characters I love writing for breakdown in each Fandom if asked for enough.

I will write the following

🥵 smut (please see rules)

❤️ Fluff

🥺 Angst

🥰 platonic relationships

Tropes I ADORE

🥰 Fated Mates

🥰 Grumpy Sunshine

🥰 Mutual Pinning

🥰 Enemies to Lovers

🥰 Friends to Lovers

🥰 Slow. Mother fing. Burn

🥰 Second Chance Romance

🥰 Revenge F

Tropes I dislike (but am open to writing)

😑 forced proximity or marriage

😑 one bed (seriously. Imagine. You've been traveling for hours. No food. No rest. No shower. You're fucking exhausted. You aren't banging the person laying with you. I'm sorry but you're not.)

😑 damsel/daddy in distress

😑 pregnancy

Tropes I absolutely will NOT write:

😞 bully turned lover

😞 step siblings/parent trope

😞 minors in grooming situations

😞 changing sexual preferences due to a bad experience

😞 Tropes relating to me making a known character cheat with my OC/Reader characters - I will write my fake character being cheated on, though

😞 Too dumb to live (I do not like using females as plot points for male characters)

Rules regarding smut

✔️ I will not write smut for characters who are underage in the universe they reside in. Meaning, I won't be feeding the Percy Jackson lovers, Harry Potter Lovers, or some cannon GOT/HOTD lovers smut. I am personally uncomfortable aging up characters for the sole purpose of making a smut scene for them. I do not care if the actor playing them was 18+. Daniel Radcliffe may have been 22 in the last Harry Potter film, but Harry was 17 at the beginning. I am more than happy to do romance with underage characters, though.

✔️ I do not have many kinks I consider hard boundaries, but I will not write water sports, scat play, or anything of that nature. Most other things are fair game. I am active in the kink scene, lovelies. If I haven't played with a kink you'd like written, I have a friend who probably has and will help me. Send me those anonymous messages, and let's bring your fantasy to writing.

✔️ I will write monster fics

✔️ I will write orgies, 3somes, 4somes, all the somes, swapsomes

✔️ I will write ff/mf/ffm/mmf, I will not write mm, simply because I am a female and have not watched two males doing the deed just the two of them. I'd want to do the piece justice and I have no rights to write an emotion/feeling/stimulation I wouldn't understand or have experience with

✔️ I will write dub/con and dark sexual fantasy

Am I open to taking requests?

Do you have a specific question?

Ask me 💜

#aboutme #readychilledwines introduction #rules

[redey3core]

Joy Headcanons

I feel bad bc I've been so busy this week but :] here's some silly hcs for Joy hehe

24 years old.

Italian-American (second generation). Spoke Italian at home growing up.

Parents died in a car accident when she was 6-7 years old. She was raised by Papa Louie after that; her mother was Papa Louie's younger sister.

On the topic of her parents, Joy is a dead ringer for her mother. They look so alike it's crazy.

Gives off the aura of someone who's super confident and outgoing. If she's not at the pizzaria, she's always out and about doing something. Her friend group includes Liezel, Perri and Lisa.

Used to be really into superhero comics after her parents died. She related a lot to the heroes losing loved ones. She grew out of them after a few years, but she gave all her old comics to Roy.

Learnt to cook from her mother. Papa Louie was very happy to have Joy cook with him after she moved in, and it really helped Joy to cope with her grief & accept Louie as her new guardian.

Did competitive gymnastics for 12+ years and planned to be an athlete for it. When she was a senior in high school though, she suddenly realised it wasn't what she wanted to do anymore, hence why she turned down the university scholarship.

After turning down the scholarship, she went through a severe period of depression. She felt completely lost and no longer had any idea what she wanted to do in life. The thought of what could have been still haunts her.

Louie was the one who suggested she take time off to travel around, and he was very supportive of her decision to turn down the scholarship. She left shortly after high school and returned home when she was 21.

Spent her time in Sakura Bay doing odd jobs and trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. She fell in with a suspicious crowd in her first year there that ultimately helped fuel her desire to become Ninjoy.

Being a pizza delivery girl was NOT her first choice of a job when she returned home, but Louie is preparing her to take over the entire -eria business with Roy.

Still does gymnastics for sport and recreation, but is no longer competitive.

Very strong and flexible thanks to her years of gymnastics.

Close with Roy, although she doesn't believe him when he claims Moe is actually the Dynamoe.

Alongside gymnastics, she's also a very good dancer.

Has problems handling her negative emotions; she tends to bottle them up until she explodes.

Ninjoy

Has been acting as Ninjoy since she was 22.

Began acting as Ninjoy after a significant crime increase in the city. It's gone down since then, but she never let go of the mantle. Part of her was also fueled by the bad experiences she had in Sakura Bay.

Takes her job seriously. A little too seriously for someone who runs around in a ninja costume all night.

Her job isn't always to just catch and beat up bad guys. She also assists with good deeds such as finding lost pets and cleaning the streets (literally). People who have met her via these deeds describe her as being closed off but someone who cares deeply for her community.

Uses the Ninjoy persona to channel out her frustrations and anger, especially when she's beating up bad guys.

Although initially beginning as a vigilante, her values began to change after dating Moe (& after finding out his identity), tilting her more towards an anti-hero.

Only two people know of her identity- Roy, and eventually Moe.

Taught herself to fight.

Feels like she has an obligation to be Ninjoy. It causes her a lot of stress on top of her personal life issues.

The stress of the job leads to her being snappy, no-nonsense and intolerant of anything she deems to be a nuisance pretty often. This includes the Dynamoe.

#shes sooooooo <3 #flipline #flipline studios #papa louie #hollie's headcanons

[craycray-wolf]

So.

I wanna make a bunch of Omori fan content, especially for post-game stuff which I wish to explore when @ask-spirit-mari has reached the true ending segment of the game!

I'd like to share many of my ideas! Sunny is my boy so they're mostly related to him haha. I'd be happy to answer any questions though!

General Sunny headcanons:

My version of Sunny is a Universally Loved one.

His birth name is Taiyo, and Mari was the one who gave him his nickname at a young age. It's stuck since.

Sunny is actually a very emotionally expressive person and his emotions are just stunted in the game because y'know. Trauma.

He doesn't mind speaking, it's just that his natural state of being is quiet.

My boy Snuuy is an absolute bi disaster lmao

Post-game Sunny headcanons:

He eventually comes across the aspiring musician Michael, and both parties are happy to have a familiar face in the city.

He ends up volunteering at the animal shelter, and through his time bonds with a cat which he adopts. I'm still working on details about said cat BUT IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT IT EXISTS TRUST ME

He grows his hair out some and starts experimenting with it a bit.

Snuuy is an absolute sweats and hoodies man and you cannot take this away from me. No seriously he is legit the type to love sweatpants and hoodies

He likes to explore the city and get out if the house. Not only does it feel good to him to finally be out and about, but deep down he's very afraid that he'll coop back up.

Sunny meets lots of new people! Especially in school, where he eventually ends up with his own ragtag friend group. I'm working on details about the ragtag group as well but I wish to establish it's existence.

Via the pooling of many resources, both Sunny and Basil get therapy because holy crap these kids need it, please help my babies 😭 I think it'd be especially beneficial for Snuuy as he's actively working on himself at the end of the game. The rest of the Faraway eventually get help as well, they just prioritized the kids fighting a whole lotta SOMETHINGs.

Basil made Sunny an eyepatch with a white tulip design embroidered (Gma taught him) on it, and the latter happily wears it everyday.

I'm a shipper of Sunkissed, so I like to imagine that happens later on when the characters are adults!

#omori #sunny omori #omori sunny #i love him so much #omori headcanons #omori basil #basil omori #omori something #something omori #omori oc #eventually #sunkissed omori #sunkissed #sunny x kel x basil #kel x sunny x basil #sunny x basil x kel #eventual romance #post game #post truth #tags idk

[jaskierx]

Honestly, I really admire (and am thankful for) the way you manage and handle those back and forth with some Izzy stans, I don't think I have the mental strength to entertain them myself.

I wasn't part of the fandom after season 1 aired, I watched it without engaging much and then kind of waited for season 2 to come out, so I had no idea such a divide had happened between Izzy stans and the rest of the fandom (glad I was oblivious to it ngl). All I know is that I hated Izzy’s guts and wanted him to get his just desert.

So yeah, I wasn’t a fan and I struggled forgiving him when season 2 started because the show was trying so hard to make him sympathetic (which I honestly couldn’t give two shits about at first, I wanted revenge), plus you’re right, Izzy got way too much screen time (which gave Izzy stans ammunitions to say “SEE!! Main character!!!”), but I did end up warming up to him by the time he died. I can even say I genuinely liked him.

BUT the journey to that point was sooo conflicting because some Izzy stans were also doing the absolute most in the main tag, painting Izzy as this angel who never did anything wrong and was terrorized by the monster Ed, and I was like????? Did season 1 happen??? Did I dream the whole season??? Did I watch a version from an alternate universe??? I was BAFFLED. I don't know who is that Izzy they're talking about, but it's not the one on my screen, that's for sure.

Then, Izzy died and the hardcore stans lost their shit (you know what I'm talking about) and they have seriously soured me to Izzy again. I want to like the character we had on screen, and I want to like his redemption arc. He was a great antagonist even if I hated him, and we owed him so much for all the shit he pulled in season 1, but the OTT takes and behaviors from stans I’ve seen have made me give up on him, which sucks. Maybe I’ll feel better about him in a few months, but right now, I can’t stand him, and I’ve blocked his tag everywhere (ao3 included, because, truly, fuck fanon Izzy, fuck him).

Hope it’s not too draining for you though, just writing this felt like screaming into the void, so I can’t imagine dealing with this on the daily. Take care!

hi anon i'm so glad you sent this bc i felt very similarly about izzy in s2. i didn't find him sympathetic at all. i didn't give a single shit that he was suffering from ed being in his kraken era bc he's the entire reason ed ended up like that in the first place. izzy was reaping what he sowed. seeing ed feeling so miserable broke my fucking heart and i can't stand any bullshit takes about 'izzy was protecting the crew from ed's abuse' or 'edizzy invented love confirmed' or whatever other nonsense his stans chose to take away from episodes 1-3.

i truly do not see izzy as a victim. i truly do not see ed as an abuser. sometimes i will start reading a post in the ofmd tag that refers to an 'abuser' and a 'victim' and i get halfway through the post and realise that the op has a completely opposite view of who is who than i do.

and as s2 progressed i just felt worse and worse about it like he was getting so much screentime and popping up all over the place and he'd absorbed a load of traits (from other characters that i'd have rather seen more of) bc the writers had to speedrun making him semi-likeable. i still haven't done a proper rewatch since the finale aired and i'm pretty sure i'll feel different watching it knowing he dies in ep8, but when eps 6-7 dropped i fucking hated every scene he was in and felt like he ruined some otherwise really lovely ed/stede moments like their breakfast in bed. izzy being cheered on for wearing drag and singing - the exact acts that caused him to threaten ed - feels exactly like the very common queer experience of seeing the homophobic kid who bullied you for being queer getting loads of support when they come out themselves.

and the takes that were coming out of the canyon at this time were absolutely wild, especially in relation to ed. people absolutely baying for blood, wanting to see him suffer, wanting his relationship with stede to suffer, wanting him to have to crawl across broken glass to repair his relationship with the crew, all while treating izzy as a protagonist who never did anything wrong.

so ngl i was delighted when he died. but mostly i was relieved that it was going to be over. i walked out of my circus tent with my clown makeup on believing that the canyon would yell for a bit and then slowly quiet down as people who claimed they'd be leaving the fandom if izzy died made good on their promise and fucked off.

and if anything they've got louder and more unhinged and are out here reinventing tjlc and harassing the writers and churning out the most rancid racist posts and writing obituaries that caused multiple people on twt to mistakenly think Actual Human Person con o'neill had died.

and on one hand i'm kind of glad that more people know what they're like now but god i really do feel for any izzy fans who have had their enjoyment of him ruined by the canyon. i really do think it's not the character that's polarising, it's the fandom response, in that most people who come in liking izzy end up either aligning with the canyon or getting so fucking fed up of the canyon that they don't like him anymore. and both of those are a shame tbh because he is very well acted and well written, especially in s1, and i wish i could've enjoyed his scenes and felt the emotional payoff of his death

anyway. sorry for writing you 1 billion words. ily ❤️

#asks #anon #the izcourse #izzy critical #absolutely no sarcasm - i really love that my askbox has become a Place For Screaming over the past few days #it ticks all my boxes bc i love attention and i love talking about my opinions. win win

[kittyandco]

you and hans are the cutest fr. can you tell us a little about your self insert?

THANK YOU 🥺🥺🥺💖 i appreciate that so much!!!

my s/i has had to grow into herself, so to speak, over the years, kind of like my ship in general. hans wasn't always my number one guy -- it took years for us to get to this point, even though, deep down, i always had a feeling that he would be special to me. so my s/i has had a lot of changes.

back when i first started liking him (a while ago now), i didn't make s/is. i just put myself into the universe and followed my f/o around like a lost kitten 😭 it wasn't until i began to realize just how much i liked him that i began to seriously develop my s/i (and this was around the time i began to write real plots and stories for my ships and s/is, only shortly before i had this blog).

like most people, i take a ton of inspiration from my real life experiences to create my s/is. given that this is the s/i i think about the most because i think about hans & i together so much, i'd say she's the most like me. and like most people, i don't know how to exactly describe myself.

the sense of helplessness and restraint that i've felt through a lot of my life heavily influenced my s/i. it's one of the reasons i relate to hans (and anna & elsa) so much (of course, i didn't really get this insight until i read "a frozen heart" last march, which completely changed my perspective on him and on us as a unit... as in, it only made me go "we're really in it now" 😭 which i didn't think was POSSIBLE).

she has all reason to assume the worst in people and in her prospects, but there's a small light that never dims, even if she can't bring herself to show it to others. she experiences great conflict about this, because she doesn't feel like it helps, she doesn't know where to put this light, and she doesn't know if she's capable of holding it anymore. everyone else sees her as the outcast, the anomaly. too smart for her own good. she's never wanted the things everyone else did. over time, she feels as if she wants to embrace that (kind of like hans, though he's much worse off in many ways).

she's fiercely independent and thoroughly observant, and that doesn't bode well for the situation she finds herself in with hans (with the arranged marriage and all, and given his family and my family's reputations, we would be indebted to and controlled by them... pretty much forever).

she finds herself feeling lonely pretty often, given that she can't seem to relate to anyone around her, which has been my experience throughout my life. and anyone she knows will say "i don't know about kitty, she's so quiet and kind of weird," and will assume just... completely unfounded things. i guess they're right. she spends a lot of her time writing, like i do. alone. but hans was always that one exception. meeting as kids, they became best friends so quickly

she's tired of pretending (just like i was)... which culminates into how she reacts to hans' treasonous actions in arendelle. she's always hoped that they would find a way to be together on their own terms -- that string of hope that strangled her all these years -- and now that he has, now that she has the chance to be with her best friend forever, she's going to take it. she tried to stay strong in her solitude (both incidental and enforced at times), but she's grown vengeful, too. no one has ever tended to her the way she needed, the way she begged for... so nothing else matters. she just wants that one thing: unconditional, mutual, understanding, liberating love

she gives me an outlet for all these things, to explore how, when pushed too far as i often have been in my life, i want to lash out too... but i never do. and with this s/i, i get to, along with the guy who i love that gives me that catharsis just through watching him and reading about him. my s/i is the embodiment of "free my man he did all of it but i don't care" and "he did nothing wrong 😇"

there is so much more i could say, evidence of other things about my s/i interwoven into my posts and fics, but i will leave it here for now!

#THIS IS LONG I'M JUST #YOU KNOW #THANK YOU AGAIN #💕 love is an open door #kitty aesthetic

[random-movie-ideas]

Superman Concept Movie I: Clark's Character Arc

A short time ago, I laid out a map for a Superman series within a cinematic universe setting that would allow for as many major villains and allies to be featured as possible. The first of these was a movie wherein Superman would team up with Supergirl, recently escaped from Kandor, to fight Brainiac who had come to collect Metropolis. This would also follow a possible Justice League movie where Zod's forces invaded Earth, and Clark made his debut as a Kryptonian who landed on Earth years before and who Bruce Wayne had tracked down.

I will now be laying out what I think the major character arcs for the principal characters of each of these movies should be, starting with Clark:

We will start with Clark in a state where he has fully embraced humanity and rejected his Kryptonian heritage, given that up to this point, he has only seen Zod and his conquerors and views the whole race through that lens. This is also reinforced through showing his relationships with Lois, Jonathan, and Martha, which will all be very loving and supportive.

This will change when Kara breaks free from Brainiac and crash-lands on Earth. Clark will approach her ship with trepidation, fearing another violent invader has come to Earth. This, coupled with Kara's current state of panic and sudden development of superpowers she has no idea how to control, will lead to them trading blows in their initial meeting.

Eventually, though, they will cool down, and Clark will realize that Kara is just a scared kid like he was when he first developed powers. He and his parents will take her in, and he will help train her to control her new abilities. As they are training, Kara will fill him in on the real history and culture of their people, at least what she grew up with. Clark will also start to care for and love Kara like a little sister, and they will develop a close, playful friendship with each other.

Their rapport will carry over into a major battle with Brainiac, but Brainiac will prove far smarter and stronger than either expected, and Kara will be seriously wounded, and Clark will return to Earth in defeat. This will lead to a tense scene, where Clark doubts his abilities as a hero and fears he will lose Kara through his failure. Lois, Martha, and Jonathan will all be instrumental here in encouraging and building the pair back up.

Also, somewhere in here, Clark and Kara will put together that he was the baby from one of her memories and that they are cousins, giving Clark his first known blood relation.

Clark and Kara will bond, Clark's hardness toward his species having softened through his experiences with her, and when the final battle starts, they will fight together as a team to bring down Brainiac once and for all. Once they do, they will recover his collection of stolen cities. Clark will have a moment of pause as they prepare to free Kandor, fearing crossing this threshold and actually getting to interact with other Kryptonians for the first time. Jonathan and Martha will stand by him in this scene, reassuring him that they'll always be his family, and they will open Kandor together.

I think this gives Clark a nice solid curve of an arc to go through here, viewing Kryptonians through a lens of fear and distrust after only seeing the worst of the worst, and undergoing a change of heart through a genuine bond of love with Kara, a polar opposite to Zod in a way. I also like that Clark's loved ones also played a major role in helping sway this arc as well.

Next I will cover Kara, then Brainiac. See you then.

#clark kent #superman #superman movie #kara zor el #supergirl #brainiac #lois lane #jonathan kent #martha kent

[princesssarisa]

Autism headcanon: Mimì (La Bohème)

*Mimì lives alone at the beginning and is content to live alone until she finds love. She doesn't seem to have any friends outside of Rodolfo's circle; on her deathbed, her happy murmurs of "all here, all here" creates the sense that the five people present are all the friends she has in the world. Yet she doesn't seem to mind. She devotes herself to her simple daily routine and her few, simple special interests – her sewing, flowers, praying – and is happy this way.

*She's quiet and reserved compared to the other main characters, and in her first meeting with Rodolfo, she seems shy. As he declares his love for her, she doesn't make it clear to him that she returns his feelings right away. Though she sings of her love so we can hear, it's written as an expression of her private thoughts, not spoken out loud in-universe; then she pulls away when Rodolfo tries to kiss her, says she wants to say something but "doesn't dare," then timidly asks to come to the café with Rodolfo, and only then coyly admits her love. (Although it depends on the singer whether she seems to be truly shy or just gently playing hard to get – after all, no sooner has Rodolfo agreed to take her out, than she playfully implies that they'll have sex when they come back.)

*That said, she's not particularly cautious or socially "savvy." Despite the brief shyness mentioned above, she throws herself headlong into a love affair with Rodolfo just fifteen minutes after they first meet, with implied consummation the very same night, and then moves into his apartment. If she had been slightly less naïve, she might have taken more time to get to know him first.

*She has deep feelings about the most commonplace things and finds meaning in them that other people don't. The artificial flowers she sews aren't just a source of money to her, but "speak of love, of spring... of dreams and fancies." And the first sunlight of April shining through her window is an experience she sings of with almost religious passion.

*She doesn't often go to church, but she does often pray to God. Many of us on the spectrum don't care much for organized religion, but invest deeply in own private spirituality.

*While she's a nice girl, she sometimes acts on her instincts in ways that aren't necessarily "polite." In Act II, when Rodolfo has only just bought a beautiful new bonnet for her, she openly admires a coral necklace that he can't afford. A girl with better social skills might have considered that this could seem greedy or ungracious. Ditto for her "observing a group of students" a short time later: Rodolfo might be too jealous, but should she really be eyeing other men during their first date? (Although the moment can be played as anything from "just smiling politely as the students flirt with her," to "happily accepting kisses from a young man who's evidently a former lover of hers," depending on the staging.)

*She's very earnest and takes love seriously. As Musetta seduces the resistant Marcello in Act II, while the other characters (and the audience) all find the scene funny, to Mimì it's sad: Musetta is madly in love with Marcello, yet he refuses to forgive her for having left him. For a viewer on the spectrum, it's easy to relate both to the inordinate seriousness with which she takes others' relationship games and how out-of-step her reaction is with everyone else's.

*Her responses to sensory stimuli are strong. She hates to be cold and loves warmth: she sings worshipfully of the sun as a source of comfort, and her dying words are to express feeble bliss at the warmth on her hands of the muff Musetta gives her. She also loves sweet smells, especially of flowers, and in Act III she can't bear to go into a crowded, strong-smelling space when she's already in emotional turmoil: when Rodolfo urges her to come into the tavern, she exclaims "No, that stench will suffocate me!"

*She's very emotionally sensitive and wears her heart on her sleeve. Nor can she control her emotions very well. When she finally realizes she's dying in Act III, even though she's hiding at the time, she can't process her horror and grief quietly, but breaks down in "violent sobs," which causes Rodolfo and Marcello to discover her presence.

*In Act III, she tells Marcello that Rodolfo goes into jealous rages over the most innocent, meaningless words or gestures she exchanges with other men. While of course Rodolfo's behavior has other motives that she doesn't know, many of us on the autism spectrum relate too well to being misunderstood, to saying or doing the wrong things at the wrong times without realizing it, and to accidentally making people angry with words or gestures that we thought were innocent and unoffensive. Whether we're accused of flirting when we were just trying to be polite, or of being "snippy" or "aggressive" when we thought our tone was neutral, it happens too often.

*She can't bear conflict or rejection. She's agonized and broken by Rodolfo's jealous rages and by his leaving her, to the point that it seems to make her illness worse. Of course any girl in love would be heartbroken, but the sheer raw anguish in her music in Act III speaks especially strongly to those of us with rejection sensitive dysphoria. So does her fear of how Rodolfo will react if he sees that she followed him to the tavern after he left, which drives her to hide when he comes out. (Flawed though Rodolfo is, he probably wouldn't do anything to make Mimì rightfully afraid of him... at least I hope not... but her sensitivity makes her panic at the mere thought of him being angry with her again.) Yet even as she sadly accepts their breakup as necessary, she wants it to be gentle and free from bitterness. Her longing for gentleness, tenderness, and kindness sets her apart from the rowdiness, hot blood, and volatile on-and-off love affairs of bohemian culture. As much as Rodolfo and his friends adore her, she never quite fits in with them.

Now of course in the 19th century, no one would have viewed Mimì this way. As with her fellow consumptive grisette Fantine from Les Misérables, many of these traits can be explained by the fact that she's a poor, uneducated girl with no family, and even more by the fact that she's sick. As @faintingheroine and I have discussed in the past, it's not uncommon for consumptive or otherwise sickly 19th century characters to show traits that read as vaguely autistic by modern standards. But neurodivergent people have always existed, long before there were terms for them, and I personally identify with Mimì for reasons that I know relate to my neurodivergent mind.

#opera #la boheme #mimi #autism #autism headcanon #autism spectrum #fictional characters #headcanon

[thescreaminghat]

atsv thoughts (spoilers)

i believe that even if miles morales knew about canon events and the consequences of breaking them before entering pavitr’s world, he still would have saved inspector singh, because he already knows what it’s like to lose his uncle aaron and to feel helpless, to feel guilt and self-blame and doubt about whether he’s ever going to be good enough as both spider-man and as his parents’ son. so he’s not going to let someone else experience the same tragedy that he went through if he can stop it. and like, isn’t that one of the things that makes spider-man so compelling as a hero? seeing the relatable, fish-out-of-water moments where this character begins to learn, to grow, to love and to lose that love, to develop a deeper connection with their community, remaining in many ways a down-to-earth “everyman” even though they are burdened with an overwhelming responsibility and forced to hide who they are. miles morales isn’t spider-man just because he was bitten by a radioactive spider, he’s spider-man because he has the heart of spider-man, that even through loss he would continue to do the right thing and use his abilities to find a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. like, to an extent i understand miguel’s reasoning (tho him trying to beat the shit out of miles while calling him worthless is essentially begging for some form of well-deserved divine comeuppance in the 3rd movie), but to me the whole point of having the spider society should have been to stick up for each other when spider-people have trouble dealing with situations in their own world (i.e. truly living out the punk values that characters like hobie stand by), rather than engaging in multiverse surveillance of each spider-person to keep them in line and letting their loved ones die for the “greater good”.

also the mj in peter b. parker’s universe should have had some more hard-hitting lines (wow fanfic time!). specifically when peter b returns from the chase and puts mayday to sleep, and him and mj are tenderly watching their baby, he should have asked mj what she would do to protect mayday. and she would say smth to tease peter b at first, like “oh didn’t we agree that she’s under spider-man’s care when im at work?” but then peter b would ask her again, and we can see that he’s seriously considering everything that just happened to miles, and this time mj notices the shift and she takes a moment to think. and then she responds with “i think i would give my whole being, my whole world to keep her safe.” and peter asks “you’d give the world? the universe? including other people with their own parents and children?” and mj replies with “i’d do everything and anything for her, but i dont know if i could be called a good parent if i had to force someone else to give up their happiness.” and peter’s on a roll, he’s plagued by more questions at an answer that could be interpreted either for or against miles’s actions---”what if you had to make a choice, mj? mayday or everything---everyone---else?” and now mj knows this is something much, much bigger, but she’s firm with her answer. “spider-man isn’t driving a runaway train headed towards mayday on one track and a group of old ladies on another, peter. he’s the one swinging outside, ripping up the damned tracks and growing a third arm right then and there to steer the train to safety. and if spider-man isn’t willing to do that, then i sure will.” and that’s when it sinks into peter b that he cant play by miguel’s rules anymore. or smth. idk. anyways yea that’s my ramble

#across the spider-verse spoilers #across the spider verse #atsv #miles morales #peter b parker #mj parker #hobie brown #pavitr prabhakar #miguel o'hara #rambles #yeah idk if this makes sense but yea

[hologramcowboy]

So I decided to look up the Family Business brewery Jensen owns and noticed several things lacking. I apologize for the longer ask but I wanted to see what your thoughts on all this are, as it seems to line up with the fact Jensen's image is a bit allover the place (not really authentic and unique like he was when he was younger), and seems like this translates with how his brewery is being run. 1) I noticed that their menu doesn't really have any standout items, merely pizza joint type food. Every restaurant I've ever dined in had some kind of standout food item or a "signature dish" if you will. As of today, if I were to place an order online all they have are pizzas including a build your own, salted pretzels, a couple salads, and cinnamon sugar pretzels and chocolate chip cookies for desserts. Seriously, where are the pies, cheese burgers, and other SPN influenced food items on their menu? Oh and they need to fix the inconsistency for their hours of operation between their online ordering site and what their website says are their hours for take-outs and such... 2) I did some research for the top rated breweries in Austin and noticed something curious. The Family Business brewery (which was not on any of these kinds of lists) is open only 4 days of the week, yet most of the top rated breweries in Austin are open either 6 or 7 days of the week. I remember in one interview more recently Jensen admitted that they were struggling from the COVID shutdowns and implied they are somewhat struggling still. I did some reading and learned that some restaurants choose to stay closed on Mondays due to lower traffic and therefore potentially costing more to stay open than staying closed. So being closed on Monday with this in mind I can understand, but why also Tuesday and Wednesday? They also are open from 3 to 9 Thursdays and Fridays and 12 to 9 on Saturday and Sunday. Are they hurting for cash so much they can't afford to stay open the other 3 days of the week, or are these people allergic to the idea of working a 40 hour work week? Unless Danneel and crew are using Jensen's name to lure in customers and essentially getting rich off Jensen's back barely putting in any hours to show for it... 3) Based on the photos I've seen of their merchandise, inside of the brewery, etc. I see nothing related to SPN even though this brewery's very name is SPN-related. If I were to walk into this place tomorrow with no knowledge of who owns the place, I would have no idea Jensen Ackles owns the bar nor would I know the influence or story of how the brewery came to be (and the name too). If Jensen's name and SPN career is supposed to drive traffic to their brewery, why does the menu, decor and merchandise they sell not reflect this at all? Literally nothing stands out about this place, it looks like a "normal" brewery or bar to me honestly. The image, the decor, the merchandise, the menu, even the outside of this place, nothing about it would pull me in to walk in and eat and drink. Where's the uniqueness, the authenticity, the story?

There's no uniqueness and targetted branding because Jensen started this venture as an easy cash cow. He could have created exclusive experiences for people and made a name for himself but instead he just invested as little money, effort, planning and energy as possible and relied on his name to draw people in. Thatis a very, very poor business strategy.

As for the pizza, as someone who has quite a few friends with deep Italian roots, please let's not call that pizza. Real pizza is a whole different universe and experience and I highly recommend ordering from an authentic Italian restaurant instead.

The food in general takes a long time to reach the customer and that's an extremely bad customer experience, one of many, just check out the reviews and how poorly FBBC answers them without actually resolving the quality side of their attitude OR services. His business is struggling because instead of honoring customers he is all about himself and not focusing on delivering value but rather on what he can easily take with the least money and effort invested.

I 150% with you, he could have created a legacy brand but that would have required quality and soul, something he seems to sadly lack as he is unable to touch upon authenticity.

#jensen critical

[gothprentiss]

i don't think the question "if a story is good who cares if it's written by software instead of a human?!?!" is actually hard to answer because, like, "not me" or "me" are very easy answers, extremely available to all who behold said question. but like, if you're seriously making it a question of literary valuation-- YEAH it's a complex question!

beyond the fact that levels of human involvement will obviously differ across different text-generating machines, which makes it impossible to make that kind of binaristic "instead of a human" claim (which i think. a sci fi writer. should maybe have in their noggin). moving beyond that. at some point what you have to consider is that what we "come to art for" is dynamic rather than static. at another point you will have to consider that making meaning is quite a complex thing for a text to do. what if you redid the new criticism experiment of analyzing unattributed poems (by "good" and "bad" poets) with a human poem and a computer poem (all caveats about human involvement suspended)? what if you made meaning out of the computer poem? what if the meaning you made out of the human poem wasn't the meaning that the poet was trying to put into it? what then dude??? what if the postulation of human intent behind a text is precisely that illusory?

in some ways, this whole argument is just a new development in the ongoing fear of automation, rather than making life easier, making humans either obsolete or expendable in most of the organization of life & culture & the economy & so on. and i don't think it's unreasonable for artists to fear that an already saturated and unprofitable market will become even less profitable in a situation where bad-faith and aspiring artists alike can quickly and easily generate what they labor to achieve, e.g. how said sci fi novelist might insist on the importance of human involvement and perspective in creating a text; neither this kind of thought nor this kind of commitment are necessary* for an ai generated text (*though they might be present, in the same way that a human might write a morally bankrupt text). but the desire to create a hard line about art ('it's about other people's perspectives') doesn't meaningfully produce that hard line. at a certain point, this kind of technophobia is just conservatism rather than a meaningful theory of art and response.

i feel like this reflects what was, at the outset, a clearer argument-- 1) that's not art because a person didn't do it more or less by hand; 2) humans should not be displaced in their craft by computers, which will happen due to various different kinds of cost/benefit analysis-- getting lost in the desire to have a more transcendent claim (art is the product of the human mind). there are a lot of problems you can have with all of this, but at least the primary forms of this argument seemed more honest. the universal version of the argument, on the other hand, verges on the absurd. the binaristic notion of man vs computer makes it factually wrong in ways that are going to multiply as the possibilities for ai likewise proliferate; the idea that what we get out of a text or other work of art is, meaningfully, a clear relation to another person's mind is likewise pretty out of touch with reading as a practice. and it's like, you know, one of the cool things about art is that often your encounters with art (good, meaningful, bad, unenjoyable, etc.!) make you rethink what art can do and be. insisting that ai art has nothing to contribute is just closing yourself off to that. given that ai currently can and no doubt will make art which you could find good or enjoyable, this kind of falsifiable claim is also just stupid to make; the conflation of taste and pleasure with moral and political action effectively bottlenecks two broad streams, and many people will, at one point or another, hit that bottleneck and do some more complex political negotiating than you are. you don't find it good, they do; saying BAD louder doesn't overcome that fact. because it is, at the end of the day, a complex question, one which requires you to articulate a whole host of values. sorry that what a theory of taste and judgment asks of you takes more than 280 characters tho

#this shit makes me grumpy. your judgment and interactions with art are dynamic and trying to automate them is wacky #like go watch blade runner and maybe thatll help. read some barthes. don't know what to tell you #also while i'm here. computer generated text vs like. that old annoying greenblatt line about talking to the dead #at a certain point all you have is the act of reading. the hand tracing shapes endlessly on the page... the endless tissue of signs.... #yeah just go read death of the author. jesus

[lifesteal-headcanons]

Something Small Part 4

except it’s probably not small bc its 1am my anxiety is wack and I’m losing the plot bc of it, anyway

So in MC universe, there’s this thing where every almost single player will always have a type of death that hurts them the most. It can be from very common deaths like anything fall damage related to somewhat specific like burning to death whilst fighting another player/mob. It does get a little bit funky when things like cave spiders, witches, withers and ect get brought into the mix though. Anyway! There is a tendency for a lot of people to claim that they don’t have “one”, and for it to immediately break out into argument. It tends to be dismissed on the claims of “it probably isn’t here yet/or happened yet” or just out right lying. It’ll also piss off the people who believe that the Painful Deaths are meant to be reminders to Players that just because they respawn, doesn’t mean they’ll respawn forever and that one day they will have a Final Death and finally meet Lady Death. It’s also believed, somewhat on the flip side(? Kinda like a branch off ig?), that the deaths are meant to be Her way of ‘telling’ Players to rest.

Painful Deaths are strenuous as HELL on Player code/data. Unlike a regular deaths, you essentially have a coin flips chance of respawning with some sort of injury from it. And if there’s still no physical injury? Still have to deal with the leftover echos of pain from it, not to mention forms of fatigue and exhaustion. It’s not uncommon for someone to experience their Painful Death and then to crash for upwards of a week after the fact. Not including if they die from it repeatedly. Oh and forgot to mention, potions will not work in repairing these injuries; You actually have to rest and actually bandage them an shit. That’s also kinda fed into the ideas of “when you experience your Final Death, it will be in the form of your Painful Deaths” and “If you experience your Painful Deaths too much, you’ll experience a Final Death”.

Now, otherwise, the way a Players code chooses its Painful Deaths is kinda unknown. For some, it will be stemmed from trauma, it’ll be based of fears, some hybrid based thing (like water and endermen), and for others it’s nonsense. A player can (unfortunately) have multiple. Also experiencing Painful Deaths too much, while having a chance of leading to Final Death, can also lead to permanent injury if you’re not careful. Whether from stressing the code out too much, or from being an idiot and not resting afterwards. Also, think of the chances of not having a Painful Death similar to that of never having a headache in your lifetime.

Okay, so back to LifeSteal because I kinda just went fucking crazy w/ the world building and lost the plot(again).

Because of how strenuous Painful Deaths are on the body and the fact that they can lead to permanent injuries and potentially disabling a person, there are rules around it, which are taken seriously. Intentionally causing Painful Deaths to another Player on the server is a BIG Fuckin No-No and will lead to consequences like a serious talking to and bans. While it will mostly be accepted as okay if something happens in the heat of battle and or on accident, it’s still an accepted policy that the two players talk it out and that the heart (generally) gets returned to the injured Player. Parrot will not mess around with things like Painful Deaths, as he tends to lean into the more ‘religious’ mindset that even one Painful Death has a chance of being someone’s Final Death. Painful Deaths will actually be talked about at the beginning of each season, to remind and let Players new and old, what someone’s Painful Death is and to also let others know if they found out mid (or outside of) season what it is.

And a small list of painful deaths, because I haven’t figured everything out quite yet:

Zam’s is things related with Withers (-minus the skeletons). While withering normally feels like hell, if Zam gets hit with it from a wither, he swears it’s 20 times worse. Whether he dies from withering away or from an actual wither blast, he’ll normally have to deal with a combination of either cold pain, numbness, or straight up no sensation in his limbs or chest, on top of any potential broken bones from the blasts. He learned this at the end of Season 2, and while managing to hold it together during the fights, ended up passing out afterwards. Even if it didn’t actually kill him, he was still out for quite a bit and in agony for awhile afterwards.

Branzy’s is just regular tnt, however he doesn’t remember it. They don’t even remember mentioning it to the other members at the beginning of Season 3. They were in for a hell of a surprise when they died to Ro’s tnt, much less when Ro apologized for it and gave the heart back later on. Branzy, while definitely having some issues with pain, had more issues with dissociation and such after the fact. Accidentally or not, cheating death still has consequences

Clown’s is dripstone. It was not happy to learn about this. And is one of the reasons why it wants to get back at Zam and Vitalasy so bad. Petty or not, it did use its time spent resting plotting how to get back at them. Per its own words: “they didn’t know, which is fair, I didn’t either; however it still hurt like hell and hey! It’s content”. It has said that the pain feels red hot and that it feels like there’s still bits of stone imbedded within its leg despite (luckily) no physical injury. It definitely still had some leg issues after the fact though.

Not so sure about Parrot, I am thinking something kinetic energy related cuz bird.

McClutch is an odd bag. I can’t decide between the death being so hyper specific that it’s almost impossible to get or him actually not having a painful death.

And for the others, I haven’t ‘found’ one yet that actually works or fits. It’ll come eventually though (… or not. I procrastinate like a mfer).

I also apologize if there’s any large gaps between the paragraphs?? I don’t know if that’s just some sorta visual bug on my end or if it’s actually still going to appear when I send this in. Also if there’s any typos. Either way. If you could please give me an anon name or something, I’d greatly appreciate,,, but uh I started writing this at 1:10 AM, it’s now 3:40AM. Imma head out-

That’s it, that’s the ask!

#whoa. /vpos #ask #headcanon #lifesteal smp #branzy #clownpierce #princezam #parrotx2 #mcclutch #nix’s faves

[asachuu]

Alright, BSD/AO3-related “confession” time, although this shouldn’t have really become a confession.

While my works over on AO3 are occasionally quite dark, the full extent of which is entirely subjective, yet still one I could describe as such objectively, I do sometimes try to water a lot of it down out of fear I’m starting to sound “edgy for the sake of it”, as nonsensical as I personally find that description. Though I’m aware the thought process goes against what I personally believe on these matters, I still don’t want anyone to look at anything I write and assume it’s nothing but a mindless pile of brutality treated without proper seriousness and/or something to exaggerate for “no real reason”, and I often find myself worrying whether or not it’ll come off as such, even though I understand each author has their own visions and motives, me included, and not everyone will assume those correctly, nor will people ever universally agree on them, enjoy the content or even have the willingness to accept the mere existence of art that isn’t pure or sanitized, therefore one shouldn’t feel anxious over this when nobody owes any sort of explanation or justification for their creations to strangers anyway, but…let’s just say I’m still trying to get past that. Unfortunately, I suppose spending too much time around audiences who consider going into any type of ever-so-slightly darker territory in one’s works as an act only terrible, cruel individuals would do may have had its long-lasting effects…but I digress.

There was one work which was initially meant to be entirely unfiltered, “uncensored”, if I should say so, and that work was meant to be what would eventually become both A Second Chance and No Retakes, given the two are merely two varying iterations of an alternate universe I wanted to create for the ship I’m writing about. I suppose it’s the third, never spoken about version of it, and although there are four to five total versions as of today, this one in particular had almost made it through, had I not completely washed everything I were to include away just a few days before I got to writing my “first” fic. In fact, it was precisely the fully clean version which became A Second Chance; the series is essentially only different in its beginning, past and subsequently the way said past would affect what was happening, yet the more general events stayed intact, unlike No Retakes which is still not being too truthful to its original introductory disclaimer as of the last update.

Now, I felt like I had to tidy this one up, and if I am to be honest, it was mainly thanks to my only “enthusiastic” audience at the time always focusing on any sadder element of my writing and pinpointing how much it ruined the whole work, which was…a rather demotivating experience, aside from all else I could say about it. Considering this was a work I would be posting publicly with the intention of actually having others see it and associate it with this chain of accounts instead of someone’s random throwaway I could just ditch at any time, and not only that, this would also be something of great personal importance to me, I didn’t want to discard what I assumed to be my only chance at making something I could look back and be satisfied with. There is certainly far more to this story, but all that is to say, I didn’t want— and frankly couldn’t even afford— this to be dismissed as someone’s “horrible” work with such “unnecessary cruelty” in it, or however else it would have been described.

Even after a long time, after I had started publishing far more “risky” things, such as my whole Rimlaine-related series, and detached myself as much as possible from an audience which would ultimately never find any enjoyment in what I actually wished to be creating and would only serve to bring me down or make me dislike my own content, there was one thing I didn’t change my mind on, and that was feeling as though I still wouldn’t have been able to write the original concept of the ChuuArt series/fic/etc. I had in mind, even after everything I had written by that point and even after many chapters of No Retakes. In fact, I changed my mind a mere four weeks ago, which is the only reason I’m writing this.

If you’ve never heard me describe what the original consisted of, I’ll have to slightly disappoint you this time as I definitely don’t have enough confidence to actually state what it could have been, but as is probably very obvious, it wasn’t for the faint-hearted. I feel as though it’s no exaggeration if I say it was far more dark than every single Rimlaine fic I have ever written combined. I don’t believe I ever considered it “unreasonable” or any other such descriptor, not even when I was too afraid to write it, though— in truth, I sincerely believe both A Second Chance and No Retakes are extremely unrealistic and don’t represent practically anything I had been envisioning. Right now, I’ve decided to see if it’s possible for me to rework the outlines for the latter as it’s obviously very far from done and nobody apart from me would know what the original was meant to be, steering it a little bit closer to its long-lost predecessors, but even if I do manage to pull this off, the concept has been lost from the very beginning, and nothing can replicate it unless I somehow wholeheartedly try to overwrite people’s memories.

Of course, not stating it directly doesn’t mean I can’t imply it, and I will have to, just for the sake of what I’m trying to get at. The initial premise was always having Arthur survive the events of Fifteen, that much is obvious, and while there is one other version of the AU in which he survives on his own accord without any interference from the Port Mafia, the rest of them did require him to fall into the organization’s hands. Now, here is where I feel like ASC/NR completely fail at being anyhow logical, and this has hit me more than ever recently, though I’ll explain why afterwards, despite being somewhat confident that you could figure it out even without my input from here.

Naturally, there is absolutely no reason for Arthur to have been entirely safe and intact until meeting Chuuya in any iteration (…maybe aside from that one exception, but I think you’ll get what I mean more specifically), and no horrible living conditions I place him in are even remotely comparable to what I believe an organization such as the Port Mafia would do to a traitor if he were to be kept alive for any reason instead of immediately assassinated, as implied in Fifteen. I will give off somewhat plot-important spoilers here for No Retakes, so please beware, but NR tries to give some flimsy reasoning for this as I seemed to have become more and more self-aware of it while writing the initial outlines— I thought that perhaps, if Arthur regained his memories and could have potentially held some valuable information about other organizations, it would have made sense to try and keep him alive and well, and while it would have definitely been more straightforward for any PM member to just…let’s say…“standard-mafia-procedure” the information out of him, nobody would have had any reason to do that if he’d either been completely unconscious or he forgot everything again, right…? And one more “spoiler”, although it’s been slightly hinted at in the fic itself already and I heavily regret giving it such little relevance— even that much didn’t sit right with me, so he doesn’t escape entirely unscathed, but nonetheless, all of it is extremely tame, in my opinion. (Spoilers end) It feels more like a last resort to attain more realism points which simply aren’t really there, or so I believe.

The original, however, went all-out with this “realism” I so speak of, and I’ll just say that every variation of this AU has a five year gap between Fifteen and its present at the very least, but in both I’ve written about so far, Arthur isn’t particularly conscious for any of those five or more years. In that version, for one reason or another that hasn’t been properly worked on before being discarded and turned into one of the newer ideas, he’d been reluctantly kept alive, but not a soul would have given him the luxury of just leaving him be for ages until he would have most likely rotted away like in ASC, or until he’d woken up again like in NR. I believe everyone can have their own interpretation of my words here as I don’t even know how I would type this out in the first place, but essentially, at that point, Chuuya wouldn’t have simply carried him away for the sake of it or been tasked to watch over him, it’d be more of him just outright saving whatever was left of his life. I’m sure that anything one could imagine here would also lead to an obvious difference between how this AU’s Arthur would act, as opposed to both AU versions of him currently existing, yet to write all that simply felt…wrong. Not wrong because it didn’t make sense and felt like a pointless gore fest— the complete opposite, actually, but wrong as in, according to my mind and my mind only, something “too dark for AO3” or the BSD fandom as a whole. I probably would have had the tendency to overdescribe it as well instead of letting the reader make up their own mind, which would have added onto that factor, and I was too worried to even dare venturing there. Some of it certainly also had to do with fearing I wouldn’t be able to pull it off as a more amateurish writer, but it wasn’t the main driving force.

Now, anyone could sit here and tell me that my reason was complete bullshit, and I can’t believe I’ve only arrived to this conclusion myself so late. What led me to it, you may ask? Simple— Bungou Stray Dogs itself.

I’ve drafted this very post those four weeks ago when I changed my thoughts on these matters and just edited it to make it fit recent events, but at the time of writing this initially, I was only on chapter 40 of re-reading the manga, and that has been enough to convince me none of my fics, not even the original AU I had in mind, are “too edgy” for anything to do with BSD (and AO3, of course, I think that site has seen it all). Though I firmly believe no such thing even needs some kind of “justification” to be written in the first place, as for my observation, all of my harsher ideas would still be reduced to mere dust if compared to that or the light novels. There is not a single thing I could have ever written that would have gone “too far” by my own anxiety-driven standards, and even if I genuinely took that entire concept and wrote it to the full extent I’ve had in my mind, it would only be dreaming of being on par with something like Atsushi’s backstory or Q’s treatment, both of which are basically at the mere start of the manga. If not that, it would absolutely pale in comparison to the entirety of Stormbringer, for example, and if one was to put it simply, the amount of missing limbs, dead bodies, torture, on-screen and described gore in this series would make my own concepts…I want to say laughable, but it’d actually make them just a tiny bit more BSD-worthy.

Nothing I’m writing feels like BSD itself from this perspective, and I understand that I’m writing fanfiction— I’m in a space where people don’t always want to match the mood and tone of the media they’re making their own spin on, and there is not a single thing out of place if I make any of my works more toned down, peaceful and whatnot, but at the same time, there will also be nothing out of place if I don’t. Honestly, this may be somewhat clear already, but I don’t want to write works which are fully sanitized, clean and light-hearted only, and while yes, I believe a couple of those exist on my page, those aren’t meant to be the majority as that was never my goal to begin with. I didn’t even have one at first, but when I both actually tried to think of one somewhere along the way and reflected on all my old drafts and notes, the answer I got was to make the opposite of what I look for while browsing AO3 myself, ironically— as I don’t usually spend my time reading much, not even on there, I only ever read short fics that I can go through in one sitting which don’t leave me thinking about anything surrounding them and I feel as though I’ve read them from their true beginning to their true end, with the plot being only what was in the 4000 or so words I skimmed through rather than something much different, something I’ve only looked through a window into, and, simply put for what I think is my case, something far more pretentious than that, of course. Hopefully, there is no need for me to clarify I clearly do enjoy the shorter, less complex fics and am in no way trying to devalue them, they’re just not what I personally would like to write myself— I would be delighted if someday, I could feel as though I have created something which has a full, proper story in itself, and additionally, seeing as it’s BSD fanfiction, absolutely not have this story be one in which you could almost believe all the characters are regular office workers with rather mild problems in their lives. The only thing which is closest to this, yet which still fails to meet the former criteria, is probably all to do with Rimlaine that I’ve written, but that was not the initial plan, and now I’m seeing that it didn’t really have to be this way.

Not that I regret it too much, seeing as I could fix this if I truly wanted to— No Retakes was mostly born out of late regrets after I’ve fallen in love with that version of the AU and spent months wishing I had worked on it from the very beginning instead of having a thousand separate worries about it, all before I realized there were more people encouraging me to write it than people who would have insinuated I’d already written a ChuuArt AU and another “similar” one wasn’t necessary anymore. I could undoubtedly go back and show everyone one more of the originals, the one which would have rivaled every single work of mine in terms of just how dark it would have been, but I’m not sure whether it’s my ongoing WIP or general exhaustion stopping me more here, aside from the fact that I simply don’t have that much of a desire to do it when I could still try and pray to salvage said WIP a little bit and find a middle ground that doesn’t require me to start another project I will inevitably have no time to work on without getting too worn down.

Anyhow, I suppose I’ll get to looking through the outlines again, perhaps cut out some chapters on the way if I can and hope not to add more by accident. For better or for worse, while the reason should have probably been a bit different, I’m glad to be a bit less willing to censor half my works now that I’ve at least realized what media I’ve actually been using this whole time, and I’m hoping it will have some impact going forward as I really want to write what I alone want to write, not what people who don’t even care about my works want to see me create.

#text post #asachuu #all that being said I think reworking the outlines properly is sadly a bit too hopeful #I’ll see what’s doable at least

[nefelegies]

sry if you’ve answered this question before but will you ever continue your neocities comic ? :3 I whole heartedly love it ever since I discovered it a year or two ago

no don't worry i haven't! putting a cut because this is an extremely long and non simple answer read at your own peril

the reason the comic went on hiatus to begin with is actually that i was starting to feel really weird about the high school setting??? this may sound stupid but shinji was a character i first created when i was 16 and given that i'm now 21 it was just no longer a type of story i related to much or felt compelled to tell. especially now, almost 2 years into the hiatus, i am almost done with my undergraduate education as well, so it becomes harder and harder for me to bridge the gap in my writing. i also feel like the maturity of certain themes i wanted to write about are ill suited to the setting.

additionally, after taking a few months break from writing during a period of time when i was very very unhappy with all my work, i kind of exploded shinji as a character and changed a fair amount of his personality & character motivations. i felt like the way i used to conceptualize him was kind of juvenile compared to how i wanted him to come off, and i felt like i was not setting myself up to do a good job with his personality. if i was to pick the comic back up as it currently stands, not only would i have to contrive in a time skip to get to where i want (that being the characters in college) which would really mess with my previously established pacing and how the events are meant to build (because if the action is supposed to escalate over a few months, why even include all the buildup from 3 years before? just feels like a false start), but i would also have to mess with the tone and stylization of dialogue and how shinji is portrayed in a way that would, again, make the beginning of the comic pointless (imo) because it wouldn't contribute or relate at all to the meat of the story.

another sticking point i have had in restarting has been a kind of silly one-- i have not lived for any significant period of time in japan, despite visiting the university in sapporo, so i feel like i know woefully little about the life of a university student in japan and what that looks like day to day, which would seriously get in the way of a simply aged-up reboot. to the extent that i wasn't sure what the point of keeping it set in japan would even be. like what am i making a commentary on if i'm writing about a college culture i know nothing about? i feel like i would much rather satirize or criticize the college culture in the united states, since that's where i'm studying. also:: the highschool setting was originally meant as a satire on wish fulfillment slice of life manga (including american wannabe webtoons) that is needlessly set in highschool, but in one of those "satire requires clarity of purpose" type crises, i think i felt like i was moreso parroting tropes than saying anything meaningful about them, and the character of shinji was undeniably created out of 16 year old weebery and the fact that i was studying japanese in school and wanted to practice my kanji on people's names 😭.... so i guess to sum THIS point up, the idea of a continuation or reboot puts me in a weird place with regards to setting, as i don't see the value of me writing about a university experience im not familiar with and don't have much way of ever knowing intimately. even though i could definitely still use the lens of general anime escapism and wish fulfillment when writing about a college student, i just don't really know if it's my place at all to be criticizing this phenomenon as someone who doesn't live in japan if that makes sense. like at that point why am i not just writing about american twitter users with hentai addictions who i have much more close and personal interactions with

finally, and this is not so much a major factor in my thoughts here (somehow) but is worth mentioning: the comic was primarily written during some extremely stressful months-years of my life, and i honestly struggle to get in whatever the hell headspace i was in when i was writing it. like what was going on in my brain. a lot for sure

that being said, i really miss writing osk. having a project like that to work on was really nice! i miss the characters (especially the revamped older versions that no one has actually gotten to experience :( ) and i miss how much it forced me to create. i have not stopped thinking about it at any point since i went on hiatus to be honest and i'm just really stuck on where to go. i cant continue it in its current form (i would be unhappy with it) but i can't think of a good way forward either, and even if i restart it completely (which is POSSIBLE and maybe even the most likely option) i really can't figure out how to tackle the setting.

this is probably not the answer you were expecting i am very sorry it is so long. i just have been stewing on it for a while and really wanted to get it all down in one place

#ask #not art