#though tbh i write almost every character to be morally grey in some way so i can't claim to have left my comfort zone here | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ktheist · 3 years

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story time: best friend’s best friend.

the fic: best friend’s best friend | m (kth)

!! spoiler alert !!

i didn’t think i would be doing a story time tbh.

mainly because i want to keep the secrecy of why certain characters act a certain way to myself so that my readers would be free to interpret it however they like.

but i don’t think i can keep my mouth shut. this is possibly the very first long, elaborated fic i’ve written. and 23.9k words is huge for me. i think my last longest fic is 18k. not to mention, i took 4-5 days writing this fic non stop. i didn’t lose sleep over it but i ghosted everyone and take breaks only to eat and sleep.

background.

i don’t remember what triggered the idea but what i know is, i wanted to write about two best friends who are so tightly knit that no even time and space can break their friendship. but then once they reunite, there’s bound to be differences and they’re bound to grow into different but familiar people.

ironically, the fic diverges from that plot and focuses on how oc whose walls have grown high enough to touch the skies, navigate through the change as well as the exposure to the new people who are almost as close as she is to jeongguk. and since jeongguk is always including her in his plans, she’s forced to interact with jeongguk’s friends who aren’t the typical fake people she associate herself with.

she approached jennie, jisoo, lisa and rose because they’re daughters of rich families but over time, she realized she didn’t mind hanging out with them, but she wouldn’t exactly call them best friends. they consider her theirs though. that’s just how she is, she keeps a distance with everyone and once someone pushed past that boundary, they’ll be her forever person. first it was jeongguk and then taehyung. but the others (hoseok, yoongi, and the girls) follow closely by. in the distant future, they’ll also be her favorite people.

characters.

i. oc

i think what made it so special for me is that i finally took that leap to write an oc that wouldn’t fit your minimum standard of a decent human. she’s below that. she’s self-aware and knows what her words could do to someone but she does it either way. but her redeemable trait (as every main character should have) is that she doesn’t do it for herself but for what she thinks is best, and often, for someone she cares about. and she can still be dead wrong or absolutely right for making doing what she did though.

she’s also the kind of person that’ll stare karma in the face and a second later, brush it off and move forward to mend whatever karma ruined for her. you know, the kind of person that keeps moving no matter what yet somehow is stuck in a certain space in time (particularly her want for revenge against her stepmom which illustrates her being stuck in the Kang mansion, in her play room where the abuse would happen - this isn’t explicitly mentioned in the fic).

i think she’s what you call a morally grey character who’s neither wholly bad or wholly good. but i’m not sure; all i’m sure is, i want to continue writing characters like oc who doesn’t fit your standard of nice, friendly and ‘guaranteed to receive everyone’s pity if something bad happens to them’ like what main characters are supposed to be (or maybe nice characters were so 2020?).

and at the end, she said she didn’t want to have any connection with her dad anymore but things don’t always go her way. taehyung can start slowly persuading her to go to dinners with her dad with the excuse that he wants to get to know his father-in-law and oc would follow taehyung’s whims because he’s her soft spot.

some may have noticed that oc isn’t as expressive of her love for taehyung. but i’d like to think i did well to portray her love through her actions. like how she stood her ground in front of taehyung’s mom and she also trusts taehyung to know he wouldn’t break up with her because of the mom’s opposition. (even if the mom isn’t really opposed to their relationship bc oc didn’t have much after losing her legitimacy to the inheritance, but more about maintaining a good relationship with oc’s fiancee’s company).

and in the college arc, oc is scared of ruining her ‘cool’ image in front of taehyung bc she already really really likes him and his opinion is one of the few she really cares about. maybe even more than jeongguk’s.

so yeah, she’d do ridiculous things for jeongguk like climb a whole ass mountain and trek the amazon but she’d do realistic things for taehyung to be with him. this is just a small contradiction i toss in to show the types of love she has for her best friend and her boyfriend.

ii. jeongguk

as for jeongguk, he kind of got slapped with reality. he’s been trying to get oc and taehyung to get along by including them in every hang out but it backfired after he realized there are lines that he’s comfortable with having between oc and taehyung - that kinda disappear or change after oc and taehyung get together.

now, he’s the third wheel. before, oc treated taehyung as the third wheel and jeongguk being jeongguk (bfbf-context) didn’t notice that and was comfortable with where they are before oc and taehyung got together.

in my head, oc and taehyung told jeongguk to get lost at some point because he’s always around whenever they’re supposed to have their “date”. it sucks but it is what it is lmao.

iii. yoojin and yena ; the mean girls

yoojin actually didn’t like yoojung because their names sound similar. so that’s why she picks on the latter and yena got influenced by yoojung. later on, yoojin grew distant with oc and yena bc she’s jealous that oc and yena are getting closer (after yena constantly contacted oc to check up on her). oc realizes yena isn’t so bad so that’s why yena was also a bridesmaid while yoojin wasn’t even invited to oc’s wedding lol.

iv. yoojung

she’s a character that was necessary to show oc’s shortcomings but also plus points. it’s true that she feels a bit inferior for her lack of fortune compared to the people she wants to befriend. after she starts working and start hanging out with better people, she slowly gets over her inferiority complex. she and jeongguk met at a client’s meeting and they hit it off from there.

v. jimin

he’s pan and sleeps with everything with two legs. he and yoongi were on and off fwb’s but are still friends even after they stopped. they’re both just not interested in a relationship.

vi. thank you

for those who have read the fic and somehow found their way to here; thank you. i wish you all the most wonderful day ahead. please stay safe and take care <3

#bts fic #taehyung fic #jungkook fic #bts scenarios #taehyung scenarios #jungkook scenarios #bts fics #taehyung fics #jungkook fics #fic: best friend's best friend #story time: best friend's best friend

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lilyharvord · 3 years

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favourite thing about rq? :)

ONE THING???!!! You’re gonna get multiple ma’am cause I have no control.

1. Anything and everything Marecal. There’s a reason they are pretty much the only ship I write exclusively for. I get that people think their relationship is “boring” but that is just another word for domestic to me and I love how potentially domestic they are. (I mean come on, they cuddled for a whole book) They’re entire relationship is honeslty... so healthy in my opinion? While they do chose things over each other, they do so in a very realistic manner, and at the end of the day, they come back after being apart because they realized that they really truly love each other. Also, their initial meeting is the most iconic YA ship meeting of all time. She tried to ROB HIM and then just straight up ADMITTED TO IT? ICONIC. I mean that just kills me every time. And don’t even get me started on that line in war storm where he says “I thought of you before the end. I saw your face in the water.” VICTORIA COULD HAVE ACHIEVED THE SAME EFFECT IF SHE KICKED DOWN MY DOOR AND SUCKER PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE . Dear god Cal did not have go around inventing love like that. 😩 I mean the entire Harbor Bay scene in War Storm still owns my entire heart. SHE WAS PRAYING. MARE BARROW DOES NOT PRAY, but she was praying to Iris’s gods to bring him back even though she was still furious with him for what he did. COME ON. THEY INVENTED LOVE OKAY?

2. Farley/Evangeline: badass women = me likely. And that’s on periodt. Just kidding I have so much more to say about them. So let me get one thing straight, YA does not let girls be “bitches”. They have to at some point apologize to the MC for being the way they are. But in RQ I LOVE how unapologetically bitchy Farley and Evangeline are allowed to be and NO ONE holds it against them. Also, they are given the chance to be vulnerable. I also just love it when female characters who have been hardened by their life are allowed to melt around the people they love and feel safe with. 🥲

3. Cameron. This girl deserve a point all her own. I cannot tell you how sick and tired I was of reading books with 16 year old characters looking up to the MC with googley eyes while rainbow shoot out of their asses because the MC can literally do no wrong. But then Cameron came along and lordy lordy let me tell you that little sarcastic shit became my whole world. She took one look at Mare Barrow and said: “Just because you’re bedding a princling doesn't make you queen of the heap” and I was with her from that moment forward. Also? Such a realistic character. She’s 16? OF COURSE SHE DOESN”T WANT TO BE IN A FUCKING WAR. So of course she's going to be bitter and see the true issues that the other characters have just ignored the whole series. TBH, she is the characters that points out that this shit is low key HORRID and I love that she gets to do that.

3. Chapter 22 to the epilogue of Kings Cage lives in my head rent free. That’s all I have to say on that.

4. Almost every character is grey. There is no morally “right” person. They are all complex and they all make mistakes which is just such a breath of fresh air.

5. There are no unnecessary sex scenes. I’m looking at you Sarah Janet. If there are sex scenes in Red Queen they are fade to black moments, and they forward the relationships of characters. They’re not having sex to just have sex, they’re doing it because it pushes their relationship or their character arcs in a direction or... in the case of Marecal in War Storm, shows how they are struggling to complete their arcs and figure out their relationship (but poorly do it because War Storm was a shit storm)

6. The covers are gorgeous. I will die on the hill that glass sword is the prettiest cover, and kings Cage is the ugliest (and War Storm is on thin fucking ice, it only slides by because the background color is pretty)

7. Mare Barrow as an MC in general. Listen the girl is unapologetically a fuck up sometimes. She gets called out for it, and she also atones for her fuck ups. She apologizes to Cameron, and even pushes her out the door so she can be safe. The girl is allowed be an 18 year old girl okay? I was a stupid idiot at 18 too, I could not imagine being a sort of rebel figure head at that age? Also can we talk about that for a second too? Mare is not LEADING the rebellion, there are people she has to answer to, and she does question them which is wonderful. She is a figurehead, but even then, she isn’t that much of one. I just love that? She’s allowed be scared, angry, bitter, in love, furious with the man she loves, happy, depressed, I mean she gets to FEEL and she responds to her mistakes that she makes. Anyway. Yeah Mare Barrow is wonderful.

And thats all I have to say about that as of right now. (:

#(*ask lily*)#(*shut up lily*)#red queen #glass sword #kings cage #war storm #broken throne #post broken throne #I just love a lot things about this series #even through there are a lot of issues too #this series got me through some dark years of my life #and therefore I will die on the hill it choose to die on

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elizabethshaw · 3 years

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I finally finished listening to Gallifrey for the first time today (and I've loved it so much, I wasn't expecting it to be quite this good but it was AMAZING), so here's some incoherent thoughts in no particular order:

Starting off on a happy note before I get going - Gallifrey is just? So good?? I'd heard a lot of good stuff about it long before I'd even started listening to Big Finish generally, but it really blew me away with how brilliant it is!

I really love how well-defined the characters and their relationships are, and how they all grow over the course of the series. The developments all felt really natural and in response to what each character went through, and very believable in general

I wasn't prepared for how much I was going to love the main four characters either (I only really knew Leela and Romana from watching Classic Who, knew nothing about Brax other than "the Doctor's brother" and "causes problems", and almost nothing at all about Narvin), but I have to say I'm really attached to them all now :)

Leela and her whole arc throughout the series is just amazing. I'd already liked what I'd seen of her in Classic Who (even if I do have... issues with the basic concept of her character and the stereotypes it's based off), but imo she gets taken to another level in Gallifrey altogether. I just love her whole story about grief and healing and learning to find a place for yourself in somewhere you don't seem to fit... and Louise Jameson's acting is fantastic

Romana's arc and growth is also wonderful. Like she comes so far!!! She goes from being unable to admit even that she has friends and just cares about people, to saying that she loves Leela and Narvin in Unity and it really gets me :')

I'd heard a bit about Narvin and his character development beforehand, but it really impressed me how well done it all was? I'm gonna admit that when I was listening to s1/2, I didn't like him much at all, but the growth and changes he goes through as a character are incredibly well written and I have a lot of love for him as a character now

Brax is great. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from him, but he's actually so much fun as a character! (Even if some of his decisions are... interesting, let's just say) I like the unique dynamic he has with the other main characters, and think he also provides a v interesting contrast to them as someone who's a bit more morally grey? But yeah. He's very cool I like him a lot

Leela and Romana's relationship in particular is my absolute favourite in the series, and just. I love them. They both care about each other so much and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I have thought about "There will be a place for you with me. For always. Whatever face I wear." every single day since I first listened to Spirit in November someone help me

I think overall (although I've enjoyed all of them) series 2 is probably my favourite? It's just so incredibly chaotic and the plot and character work tie together so well

In terms of favourite episodes, there's a lot tbh, but Spirit, Imperiatrix, Renaissance, Lies, Soldier Obscura, Mindbomb and Disassembled are all up there (you can see my s2 bias shining through there oops)

Idk if this is a controversial opinion (I've only really lurked around the edges of the fandom so I'm not 100% sure what the general consensus is) but for the most part I generally enjoyed the Time War series?

Like, I think overall the earlier series appealed to me more, but I did still get a lot of enjoyment out of the time war stuff and thought there were some really good stories in there (Soldier Obscura, The Devil You Know and Unity in particular were absolutely brilliant)

I guess my one main issue with that part of the show is probably (and this is something I've seen a couple of other people bring up) that the characters were all so far apart for most of it? Like I understand that the writers were wanting to try something new and were wanting to avoid retreading the same beats as before, but imo the crux of the show's drama is the relationships between Leela, Romana, Narvin and Brax, and the fact that they weren't together for most of the episodes after TW1 meant the emotional resonance wasn't quite the same - the plots were still v good and I enjoyed that aspect, but I did miss them interacting more regularly yknow :/

I think this also ties into my problems with the finale (although apparently bf have confirmed they're making more? so idk if it's really the end), because the story itself was pretty good, but the lack of any real emotion in the few interactions we got between Leela, Romana and Narvin hindered it from having as much impact as it could have, and some of the writing for them in general just felt very off (esp. in regard to Romana). I'm also just. Not hugely convinced by Matt Fitton's ability to write finales from my own listening experience and I think that feeds into it too but yeah

A similar issue that frustrated me a bit tbh was how consistently Brax was left out of the series altogether for most of the time post-s4? I'm not an expert on his character (Gallifrey!Brax is the only one I'm familiar with), but I liked him a lot and having him as part of the main cast of characters was really fun, so it was a bit disappointing that he didn't make as many appearances, especially as I would've loved to see his relationships with the group develop as much as the ones between Leela, Romana and Narvin did

On a completely unrelated note, as someone who's hyperfixated on the War Doctor audios a Lot™, I loved spotting all the little references and nods to those in the TW series. It just made me really happy and the sense of continuity was cool

I got very excited every time they mentioned Ollistra ngl. She may be Awful but I love her

The parallels in Gallifrey are also so good?!?!?? There's so many that I just go completely insane over

The parallel between Romana's promise that Leela will always have a place with her in "Spirit" and Leela telling Romana she'll never be alone because Leela is coming with her in "Renaissance" particularly is just. Yeah. I think about it a lot ngl

Also love the K9s. The bickering between them in the early series is incredible and I wish they'd kept that going longer

Darkel is just the Worst. Honestly think she's one of the most effective villains I've ever come across bc I don't think I've felt that much unbridled rage at a fictional character before. It certainly made watching Trial of a Time Lord for the first time the other week an Interesting Experience

The fact that seemingly all the main four basically adopt Ace as their child is incredibly funny to me ngl

And going on from that, what I'd love to see (and what I know Big Finish will never make :/) is a series set between Enemy Lines and TW1 that's just the gang + Ace messing around and having fun yknow? I want to see them all being happy and making chaos at the CIA

I also find it really funny that at the start of the show, all the characters would go on about how the CIA are Suspicious and Not To Be Trusted, and how the whole organisation is kind of antagonistic at that point, but then by TW1 every single main protagonist is involved with the CIA in some capacity, like. Way to go guys

I hadn't actually listened to The Apocalypse Element, Neverland, and Zagreus when I originally started listening, and it didn't stop me enjoying anything at the time but I have to say certain stories (especially Extermination) make a lot more sense with that context; it should be interesting relistening to the earlier stuff now I have that context tbh

And. Yeah. I am already wanting to relisten again even though there's a lot of free stuff from the BF website on my account which I haven't touched yet oops

Anyway long story short, Gallifrey is genuinely brilliant and I'm so glad I've listened to it

#bethan talks about dw #bethan listens to big finish #idk if anyone is actually going to read this (and if you do i admire you bc it's. long)#but i've had a Lot of thoughts over the past 3 1/2 months of listening so i wanted to get some out haha #usually i'm kinda nervous about posting text here (maybe bc people will actually see it? idk)#but my need to scream about gallifrey has overcome it which is impressive ngl #and fingers crossed the read more works i don't want to clog up anyone's dashes :/

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lochnessies · 3 years

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i feel like the game was really inconsistent with edelgard as a whole and that's what made her so polarizing and controversial. from my understanding, the devs were aiming for edelgard to be a villain and not as morally grey as most perceive her as, but when i first played the game, i honestly did not get that at all, even though i played vw + am before cf. it doesn't help that in cf hardly any of her depth is really explored beyond her trauma.

also, with edelgard, i feel like twsitd was pretty inconsistent as a threat. it felt like the game went back and forth between "edelgard has power over them and is only choosing to cooperate with them for her goals" and "twsitd has power over edelgard in some way that prevents her from going against them" and i feel like a lot of this could have been cleared up if cf was actually finished and we got to see them fight twsitd instead of it being a footnote in the ending. actually, the fact that cf was never finished i think would have cleared up... a lot??

slight additional thing: i honestly didn't get a lot of lore from the game immediately which also made it more difficult to understand the whole situation with edelgard and twsitd. idk if this is my fault as i played it too fast or an actual flaw (i've seen this as a somewhat common take) but regardless... i understand not everything has to be spoonfed to the player, but i feel like some things should have been more explicit sometimes?

tldr i feel like edelgard's writing is so inconsistent that it causes people to discourse over her "true nature" when it's mostly the canon that fucked up and can't even decide what her "true nature" is and no amount of developer's intent changes what the actual game shows to the player.

you see, that’s my main problem with three houses. when it comes down to edelgard they just won’t commit. on one hand they wanted to write a female villain but on the other they still wanted the player to love her. and i do believe the english localization is also to blame for this by washing most of her dialogue that could be considered a red flag away. they really tried to make her seem more morally gray when in japanese she’s more direct. there’s a reason she’s more popular in the west than she is in the east.

twsitd is fucking stupid as a whole in my opinion. they could have just had nemesis kill sothis and the nabateans. there was no need to have a secret death cult when they already have the empire set up to be the big bad of the story. plus it takes a shit ton of agency away from edelgard as a character. instead of twsitd we could have focused more on how her father might have indoctrinated her into believing that the kingdom and alliance were her birthright and how she would have to consolidate all power under herself the way he couldn’t if she wanted to bring the empire back into a golden age.

also, someone pls correct me if i’m wrong, but i’m pretty sure i read somewhere that in the jp script it says that’s she’s the one actually controlling twsitd not the other way around.

you didn’t play anything wrong, anon. three houses has very expansive lore it’s just that the game doesn’t make it easy to piece together the big picture unless you play all four routes. they should have made the lore more noticeable to the average player instead of dropping small pits at a time and making you read shit in the library bc let’s be honest nobody did that on their first playthough

you feel like her writing is inconsistent bc she is. azure moon edelgard is not the same as crimson flower el. i remember when i made my sister go through the routes she made mention that edelgard was wishy washy depending on the route and sometimes in the same one, where as rhea and dimitri were consistent through every storyline.

once again, it’s also kinda the english localization’s fault. they tried to make el something she’s not in the original jp, aka morally gray and they fell flat on their face.

honestly, i believe crimson flower is her ‘true character’ which sucks bc holy shit that’s the route where she almost completely irredeemable. i can’t stand talking to her in cf bc how obnoxious she is and the bad taste she leaves in my mouth.

whenever i say ‘i love edelgard’ i’m only talking about her on azure moon and silver snow. i can’t stand her anywhere else tbh. she’s at her most consistent in those routes and they are the ones where she plays the main villain which is pretty telling...

send your hot takes

#asks #edelgard von hresvelg

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normal-thoughts-official · 3 years

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Fandom racism anon here and yeah absolutely (I didn't realise I had anon on lol)

Because while LOTR has problems within its themes (ie the orcs can be seen as to be coded as people of colour, especially since they ride elephants) the explicit message of the book is evil bad

Because the only people who work for sauron are evil. There are no morally grey people, they aren't misguided or tricked they just are evil and want to take over the world

And yeah I totally agree that this is more of a literal take on like empirical war (is that the word) and that makes total sense considering Tolkiens history

Whereas I would say that the allegories in shaowhunters is way more based on racial conflict within a country itself especially slavery, I can't remember if this is show Canon but is it that they have the warlock tropheys? I remember that in the books magnus talks about shadowhunters hanging warlock marks on their walls? (sorry to bring the books up)

Idk it's very hollow to me, unlike with LOTR though it's a different allegory it's totally irritating to show many of these supremecists as morally misled. LOTR says bad guys are bad guys, shadowhunters says well yeah they did follow a guy which thinks that downworlders are subhuman and should be eradicated but they just made a mistake

I want to compare this to tfatws which while it isn't really fantasy I just feel like it shows how the priorities of the writer can impact the message of the show so powerfully (I know u aren't up to date so I'm gonna be pretty vague)

There's a scene in tfatws where the new white perfect captain America does something bad and doesn't pay for the consequences - done to comment on white privelege and how America condones white supremacy and how Sam is in comparison to that

Mayrse and Robert revealed to be part of the circle! And paid no consequences Shock horror my parents were the bad guys (even rho they were either implicitly or explicitly extremely racist the entire time) also I haven't finished the seires but do the lightwoods ever try to get their parents to face the consequences?)

Only one actual really critiques the situation and the reality behind it whereas the other one is just to centre the white characters once again and present them in a further sympathetic light

AND ANOTHER THING! I was mostly talking about show Canon here and I'm sorry to bring up the books but I literally can't believe I hadn't picked up in this before.

So like downworlders = people of colour, Simon is a vampire so is coded as a person of colour. However in the books in the last one he stops being a vampire and becomes a shadowhunters instead, coincidentally that's also when he starts dating Izzy HOW IS THIS ABLE TO HAPPEN!!????

I mean I know cassandra clare is lazy right? The original seires is by far the worst of all her writings but come ON!!!!! By the allegory has he become the white man!????? These books made no fuckin sense when I read them at 15 and they make no sense now I'm digressing anyways

I don't know man I wrote this ask because I was trying to find some fantasy book recommendations on booktube and SO MANY of them were about slavery or general ly extrême préjudice with à White protagonist to save this 'poor souls'.

Also I was watching guardians of the galexy the other day and realised nearly every movie set in space is just bigger stakes imperialism - planets instead of countries. Literally star wars, star trek, guardians of the galexy 2, avengers infinity war - all are facing genocidal imperialistic villains without actually paying much, if any attention to those effected

Just writing this ask made me exhausted I'm so tired of lazy writing and exploiting other people's struggle. I'm white and I'm trying to be more critical about the movies, shows and books I watch and read but let me know if I said something off here❤️❤️ you gotta get up to date with tfatws man, Sambucky nation is THRIVING!!!!

i'm not sure i agree that the whole "the evil people are evil" thing is a good thing, because i feel like more often than not making the bad characters just like... unidimensionally evil just means that the reader will be like "lol i could NEVER be that guy" and when it comes to racism that is a dangerous road to take because white people already believe that racism is something that Only The Most Evil People, Ergo, Not Me, Can Do, which makes discussions of stuff like subconscious racial bias and active antiracist work become more difficult because people don't believe they CAN be racist unless they're like, Lord Voldemort

which is not to say that racism should be treated as morally ambiguous, just that the workings of racism should be represented as something that is not done only by the Most Hardcore And Evil, but rather as a part of a system of oppression that affects the way everyone sees the world and interacts with it and lives in it

yes the warlock trophies are mentioned in the show, albeit very quickly (there is a circle member who tells magnus that his cat eyes will make "a nice addition to his collection" and then it's never mentioned again because this is sh and we love using racism for shock value but then not actually treating it as a serious plot point or something that affects oppressed ppl). and you are absolutely right, shadowhunters (and hp, and most fantasy books) has genocide as its core conflict and treats it, like you said, in a very hollow way, treating racism as both not a big deal and not something that is part of a system of oppression, but really the actions of a few Very Bad People. it's almost impressive how they manage to do both at the same time tbh

i think you hit the nail right on the head with this comment, actually. for most of these works, racism is SHOCK VALUE. it's just like "lol isn't it bad that this bad guy wants to kill a gazillion people just because they are muggles? now that is fucked up" but it's not actually an issue. in fact, when this guy is defeated, the whole problem is over! racism is not something that is embedded into that world, it's not a systemic issue, it's not even actually part of what drives the plot. the things that led to this person not only existing but rising to power and gathering enough followers to be a real threat to the whole world are never mentioned. it's like racists are born out of thin air, which is dangerously close to implying that racism is just a natural part of life, tbh

anyway my point is, it is never supposed to be questioned, it is never part of a deeper plot or story, its implications are barely addressed except for a few fleeting comments them and there; so, it's not a critique, it's shock value, even though it is frequently disguised as a critique (which is always empty and shallow anyway. like what is the REAL critique in works like hp or sh/tsc other than "genocide is bad"? wow such a groundbreaking take evelyn)

about simon and the book thing: i actually knew about this and the weird thing about this is that, like... simon is jewish, and he's implied to be ashkenazi (calls his grandma bubbe which is yiddish, which is a language spoken by the ashkenazi ppl), and it seems like cc is always toeing the line between him being accepted by shadowhunters and then not accepted by them, which sounds a lot like antisemitic tropes and history of swinging between (ashkenazi) jewish ppl being seen as the model minority myth and thus used as an example by white christians, and being hated and persecuted. i'm not super qualified to talk about this since i'm not jewish and i'm still learning about/unlearning antisemitism and its tropes, and i don't really have a fully formed thought on that, tbh; it just reminds me of the whole "model minority" swinging, where one second simon is part of the majority, the other he's not, but always he is supposed to give up a part of himself and his identity in other to be "assimilated" by shadowhunter culture. this article (link) covers a book on jewish people and assimilationism into USan culture, this article (link) covers british jews' relationship with being considered an ethnic group, and this article (link) talks a bit about the model minority myth from the perspective of an asian jewish woman

it just really calls to my attention that cc chose to make her ashkenazi jewish character start off as a downworlder and then become a shadowhunter. i don't think she made that decision as a conscious nod to this history, because it would require being informed on antisemitism lol but it's incredible how you can always see bigoted stereotypes shining through her narrative choices completely by accident. it just really shows how ingrained it is in our collective minds and culture

and anyway, making a character go from the oppressed group to just suddenly become the oppressor is just. wtf. not how oppression works, but most of all, really disrespectful, especially because she clearly treats it as an "upgrade"/"glowup" that earns him the Love Of His Life

also, out of curiosity, are you french? it seems like your autocorrect changed a few words and i'm pretty sure extrême and préjudice are the french versions of these words, and since u said ur white, that's where my money would be lol

#anti cc #anti tsc #anti tmi #anti sh #racism tw #antisemitism tw #reference #ask #residenthottiesamwilson

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crowstan · 4 years

Text

How I see each house due to my friends

A side note before I begin: I can Not spell, so you will see me using different words throughout this, instead of my usual speaking words that I Can pronounce, so apologies for that lmao. The order of each section will be: ravenclaw, slytherin, hufflepuff, gryffindor, and outliers. The outliers get their own category because I refuse to put them with the rest of the data, you’ll see why.

Ravenclaw:

The people:

Leave her johnny, leave her: A good friend, we talk about stuff sometimes. Usually it’s her talking about legend of Zelda. I quite like her.

A pal: From India. Their English isn’t the best, but I can still understand them. Likes to talk about Disney movies and how Elsa deserves a girlfriend, and has called Disney a coward many times because they most likely won’t give her one.

Great British Bake off: From Brittan. Where, I have no clue. Likes to talk about how the law and justice system needs to be changed, and about her family sometimes, usually when prompted. I have no idea what she’s talking about half the time because I’m American, and that sometimes leads to funny misunderstandings.

Done with school: We haven’t talked a lot, but lives in the same state as me. Is completely done with their schoolmates, their school, the teachers, and with life. Often jokes about wanting to become a 7/11 crypt.

Wholesome: We talked for a while, and then somehow our conversation got deleted and I haven’t been able to find them since. Really like astronomy, and told me cool facts about the horoscopes, galaxies, and even a bit about stars. I miss them :,(

In conclusion: Ravenclaws most likely have a passionate topic they know a lot about, and are eagerly willing to share every bit of knowledge they have to teach you about it. They may even ramble about the topic for no reason and without prompting. They also really like learning for the sake of learning, and usually despise school because it “ruins learning” (source: me, Leave her johnny leave her, Great British Bake off, Done with school). Can sometimes lack common sense and “smarts” in some subjects, but excel in others. Also usually lgbt+ or a huge supporter of lgbt+ rights, and other rights movements such as black lives matter. I generally vibe with them very well.

Slytherin:

The people:

Bestie in the form of three ounces of whoop-ass: My best friend! We talk about psychology, mental health, psychological disorders, the apocalypse, and religion quite a bit. Some defining traits she has is: willing to fight for the smaller/weaker person, has good morals, is a chaotic neutral, a moral grey character, loves bloody anime and vocaloid.

Laid back: No offense to him, but he’s not the brightest. Can be snarky at times, but is usually more willing to let others do the talking and observe. Also may possibly be a people pleaser but I haven’t done much looking into that. Tbh I’m kinda scared of him.

Quakeing: Has adhd. Can sometimes be a dick, but it’s usually not intentional. Is actually pretty good at debate, not sure if she knows it. Is almost the perfect human version “Yes, BUT-” and “So?”

In conclusion: Mostly crackheads. Are also good friends. Some are trustworthy, some are not, just always be cautious.

Hufflepuff:

The people:

Owo?: Very soft. Doensnt really like conflict that much. Will fight you if you’re mean to yourself. Has talked me out of doing various... “Experiments”, especially the kind involving people in any way or involving scissors. Would not let me try to make an airplane out of playing cards. She does encourage my writing, and sometimes likes it. Is very positive.

In conclusion: A mom friend that won’t let me do anything I consider “fun”. Often passive, but cares about their friends, and won’t let them do anything that could result in even a potential scratch. Very nice to be around, hufflepuffs have calm vibes. They simply radiate calm. I have not met one that didn’t, tbh.

The people:

I call them K because I can’t spell their name right and at this point I’m too afraid to ask: Likes to be in charge. We don’t talk much, but they do have some dumbass/crakhead energy from what I can tell. May be a facade. Can be a little hot headed but mostly isn’t, haven’t seen them get too mad. Yet.

In conclusion: Somehow the only gryffindor I’ve met? I don’t know enough of these people to make any actual claims, because it could be a gryffindor thing or a personal thing, and I have no way of telling.

Outliers:

Furry: Hufflepuff. Excluded because they took too long to reply. Also a dumbass. Isn’t into harry potter but says that from what she was told, hufflepuff is the windclan of hogwarts. I have no idea what that means.

An ex long gone: Slytherclaw like me. Didn’t want to put him on the list twice, plus he fucked up all my data. Claimed that he hates anyone who lies, proceeded to lie to me, and then claimed he was doing the right thing. I only cut him off recently. he also frequently talked down to me like I was a dumb child. I did enjoy his company but in hindsight I really shouldn’t have had. Added him because he’s the only person that has the same 50/50 house mix as me.

The shape of friend: I think their house is hufflepuff? They wear a lot of hufflepuff merch, and are really sweet and loyal. Honestly, a good person, too pure. I really like them, even if we don’t talk a lot. Also somewhat shy. Didn’t add because I’m not actually sure of their house, and I didn’t want any of the sections to be inaccurate.

Is this even human?: An online friend. Doesn’t like to stick to one house, prefers to switch houses based off of mood and what they’re doing at the moment. Shouldn’t even be on this list but I thought I should add them anyway. Can barely function as a human, forgets to eat sometimes, has spent a full day and a half sleeping. Honestly, a whole ass mood.

Final thoughts: Most of my friends fit their stereotypes, and have a few bits in common that I, ultimately, associate with each house. This is in no way accurate to each house, as I can sometimes perceive things wrong (Example: this semester in science, in which I thought I understood earths plate movement, only to fail my test because apparently, what I had gathered was incorrect, even though it was what was taught). Anyway, this was quite fun to put together, and I quite enjoyed being able to do this.

#slytherclaw #slytherin #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #gryffindor #im sorry yall

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jess-the-vampire · 5 years

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With how u and others felt about season 4, mostly the second half(i dont hv mucn to say, it made no impact on me thats good or bad compare to other serie finales) how would you write season 4 and its plot lines(especially the shipping). Maybe ull inpire some people to do their own takes

according to your question, you’re asking me to keep all the plotlines the same, but change how they’re written.

alright, fair enough.

Here’s basically all the plots of this season:

Eclipsa trying to win the favors of her people (+ Globgor)

Mina’s whole thing

The Love Plot

i mean, that is the majority of it unless we consider minor detials that went nowhere as far as plot but maybe i can actually give them actual purpose (Like the spell that EATS DIMENSIONS that meant nothing).

it’s hard to believe the show could wrap EVERYTHING up in one season, so that’s not what i’m going to do, but i’m gonna try and see how much i personally feel i COULD give resolution to if i had the same plots, and one season left.

you can probably keep the beginning mostly the same with finding and retrieving moon, though maybe foreshadow mina slightly in these episodes, even if it’s one-off dialogue.

and we can keep moon running a mewman town atm, living peacefully, and coming across mina.

Mina however, should have gotten a flashback episode, i don’t care who she’s telling it to, or maybe even moon is telling it to someone else, that one clip of mina and solaria could’ve been expanded upon.

we could’ve seen how solaria manipulated her and how every one of her pals were killed, making her into a more interesting and dynamic threat, you could even name-drop seth in here, if not just give him a small cameo as a general they face off against.

Also, if we keep the “Moon was behind it the whole time” plot twist, give her a dang better reason then what she gave, and foreshadow it better, maybe because she doesn’t trust globgor herself, maybe because meteora wrecked and almost destroyed mewni, maybe it’s because she can’t fully trust the monsters because she’s worried of what could happen if they’re in power after past destruction like what toffee did.

and don’t easily forgive her by the end, she has a lot of things to make up for for this and you could even use it for foreshadowing if you were going for a s5.

The whole topic about star being a bad gf? Ok, good, because LHF is a good episode (And i stand by that).

What we do after however? We actually have Star LEARN FROM HER ACTIONS.

Because you know what the biggest issue with that episode is? It’s not in the episode itself, it’s the fact the episode blatantly shows us Star is an awful Gf and runs from her issues…and she never actually LEARNS from these issues in the series, the show lets her treat tom badly and then rewards her for it by giving her a new bf undeservedly

Star actually starts to try and be a better GF and person to Tom afterwards, and i mean she actually TRIES and MAKES AN EFFORT, maybe it pays off or maybe it doesn’t but having her do nothing only worsened her character.

Also, unless we’re making kellco endgame, don’t even do it at all, just don’t.

We’re gonna resolve the annoying love plot immediately, out the gate, because dragging it on for so long only hurt the show in the end. You can throw in a conflict near the end if you want but we ain’t dragging it out over and over.

Either star improves and tomstar works out and we do something neat with it at the end, everyone stays single, or we maybe pull a tomco or stomco here.

also, the moon actually does something (Because marco saying it was all bs not only makes no sense whatsoever, but makes all the interesting questions about it seem meaningless).

The moon ain’t meaningless, it actually has a freaking point in the PLOT.

There’s about to be an all out war between the monsters and the solarians (The other kingdoms are fighting against the solarians, because that’d be a freaking GREAT shot for the end of a series).

The evil spell with no name gets sent out and starts causing chaos as well.

And so we can give that dang room at St Olga’s some actual payoff, let’s do my stupid sun-moon-star theory, and those three are the key to stopping the war between them.

They do acknowledge toffee had a point about magic and what it did, but they also make a point that magic wasn’t the enemy, it was the people who used it.

they summon solaria together, and all the dang ghosts queens, and solaria (Who looks ashamed of what she sees in front of her as far as the solarians) breaks their solarian bond HERSELF( because they pledged their allegiance to her), they fall, and so does the dark spell.

and because this show already has a habit of doing dues ex-machinas, how about the three of them, with moon, and eclipsa, and meteora, and then all the other characters, just hold hands, even the ghosts, and use the magic (Everyone just pops up with cheekmarks), to heal those who were injured, allowing for everyone to be able to use magic.

Yes, like we can watch every fan-fav character just have glowing cheekmarks from using magic with everyone else.

Earlier in the season the topic of “Butterflies restrict magic to themselves and how that affects other creatures” can be brought up to prepare for this.

Magic is widespread.

And before Mina gets taken away, if we keep tomstar, they can hold hands and we can zoom in on that as they make a note of how mewmans and monsters worked together and things are changing and all that.

When it comes to Eclipsa’s plot, it’s full of good ideas but lacks a lot of the stuff it seems to build up.

ok, we might be too late for eclipsa, but Globgor i think should’ve been kept a little more morally grey, the guy is a war criminal but he’s just accepted too easily for my taste, i think we needed an episode about his past actions, what happened with shastacan and his regrets. And spend some time after with him making amends with his wrongdoings to do better for mewni and so they are less fearful of him

we can get more insight as to how monsters and mewmans feel about him, what the other kingdoms think about him, ect, if we spend a few episodes with eclipsa talking to the kingdoms to improve their opinion on her.

We don’t need to see all of them, some can remain in the background, and the spiderbite episode was good.

But the show could’ve taken advantage of showing us these kingdoms and learning about them and their opinions on all of this. Heck, you could have one episode with a few at a time where Eclipsa is working on several at once to find they all have differing opinions, we could learn more about the jaggs, the waterfolk, and the johansens this way.

you could have one episode be for the lucitors to not only provide some moon forshadowing, but go further into the discussion about what doesn’t count as a monster and what does and it might provide some tom and meteora babysitting shenanigans that would’ve been cute to see (Especially if he teased marco on it).

you could also mention celena was part demon as well if tom being one is mentioned.

oh and, this would be great set-up for the fight at the end if they are on eclipsa’s side to fight with her.

the monster racism plot, well it’s hard to make it much better cause it’s kinda flakey as is but you can keep some of the messages about the youth being better over time and tbh the sequences of everyone using magic together could really suit the message of unison to save everyone they love and care about.

Also, can we not make the MHC into flat out villains? If they are working with mina, either replace them, or put them on trial, but just…make them less flat out evil.

we can keep meteora’s lesson and such.

as far as mariposa goes, you can bring her in at the end, do a small timeskip, and we see her, and she and meteora are friends.

That or, tom could be staying with star and marco on earth a little before the trip with star and we could do the GBG episode with them as adults fine enough, and maybe tom is either sleeping or hanging with them in the episode.

Tom can be with them for beach day as well, even the tacos episode which could be funny.

also, that trip tom was going on? Yeah, that’s actually at the end or the series, and kelly, marco, and star, and janna, jackie, chloe, and pony come with and see just see a lot of fun vacation pics in other dimensions and with various characters.

this entire post might be full of rambling and i dunno how much sense it makes.

But if i could write a more epic and more satisfying season, even if i can’t wrap up everything, i’d try to do it at least a little more like this.

#star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #svstfoe

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kyluxtrashpit · 6 years

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For the writing game, I couldn't decide which, all the colors please? They're so interesting!

Omg I was so excited when I saw this! You’re so sweet to enable my rambling

Red: What type of writer’s block do you experience the most?

I guess the most common one is I get stuck in transitions. Like I know how this scene goes and I know how the next scene goes, but I don’t know exactly how to get from A to B and it’s one of those cases where I can’t just put a line and jump to it. Scene transitions are one of the hardest things for me for some reason. The second most common for me is probably when my brain is being a shit and won’t let me be productive due to some sort of emotional crisis lmao

White: Are you a supporter/lover of fanfiction?

I mean, kind of obvious lmao, but absolutely. I think it’s great that there are people who are creating things solely out of love for something, and that’s really what fanfiction is, at it’s deepest core. It’s a community of people being so enthusiastic about and loving something so hard that they work their asses of and dedicate time to just… making more of it. For no real external benefit other than some social validation, if they’re lucky. Love and passion are the true motivators and idk that’s just really beautiful to me

Black: Would you want to live in one of the fictional worlds you’vecreated?

I don’t really do a lot of worldbuilding because I find it incredibly boring and I’m terrible at it lmao, but since I always write either canon-verse or modern au, I’m going to treat this as ‘do I want to live in the Star Wars universe?’. And the answer to that would honestly be no. As much as there’s cool stuff, like advanced technology and aliens and maybe I’d be lucky enough to be able to move shit with my mind, there’s also a lot of bad things. A lot of fascism, a lot of wars, and every once in a while some asshole builds a planet-destroying superweapon and blows up a planet (or 5) and like… I could live on one of those, you know

That said, if I didn’t die because the planet I was living on exploded, I would probably survive alright. I mean, my background is in science, so tbh I might have better opportunities there than I do here. While that could mean making chemical weapons or something if the Empire was in power, that’s at least more interesting than customer service at a chemical company lmao. I still wouldn’t choose to live there, but I think I’d manage okay if I had to

[More beneath the cut - my sincerest apologies to those on mobile]

Blue: What’s more important to you: characters or plot?

I mean, they both definitely matter, but if I have to choose? Interesting characters can save a dry plot, but the best plot ever written will still be mediocre at best if the characters aren’t compelling. Personally, I love character-driven stories more than anything. Event-driven plots can still be fun, but I prefer the focus to be on how the characters are dealing with said events, as opposed to them just being passively driven along by them. The best is when it’s the characters themselves driving the events of the plot, but that’s more difficult to execute than it sounds. Regardless, it’s the characters that usually draw me into a story in the first place and that keep me interested. And from the perspective of my own writing, I go character-driven, all the way. Sure, some event might happen that drives the plot sometimes, but I’m far more interested in how the characters react to that event than anything else

Yellow: What’s a common writing tip that you mostly ignore?

In terms of writing advice, nothing makes my blood boil more than those posts that say ‘get rid of this entire class of words’ or ‘if it’s not absolutely strictly necessary to the plot, cut it’. Fuck that shit. If you want your writing to look like Hemingway, sure, go for it, but a) Hemingway is overrated, and b) that’s not the only way to write well. Especially as someone who tends to focus on characters, passages that aren’t necessary to the plot may be necessary to establish characterization. Or they may add some emotion to the story that gets the reader invested. Same with wording choices; more or less words can drastically change the tone or mood of the scene. Are there times when you need to cut words and keep things concise? Absolutely, but any writing tip that says ‘remove every instance of [word] in your document’ is fucking bullshit and you should never listen to it

Grey: What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

Tbh I think every writing tip you see should always be taken with a grain of salt, especially if it’s a ‘never do x’ because there is almost always a situation where doing x is the right thing to do, it’s just a matter of knowing how to do it correctly (looking at you, ‘never use the passive voice’). So really, there are very few I always follow, but I’ll give one that was foundationally helpful for me

Edit in a different format than you write. That can be changing the text size, or the font, or printing it out physically, or whatever. For me, I usually pop it into AO3′s preview function and take notes of things that need changing as I go. It forces your brain to notice things it’s been overlooking for the entire writing period. I only do my final edit this way, generally speaking, but I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful for catching typos and general weirdness in the writing

Orange: How many projects do you usually have going at once?

Because my fics are usually short, I tend to only have 1, but I think I’ve had up to 3-4 before. That’s basically me just popping between documents everytime I get stuck on one until one is finished lmao. But more than 2 gets to be a lot to handle

Currently, I’m really only working on my Big Bang fic, though I do have at least one one-shot I’m planning to write when I need a short break from it

Pink: Which of your characters would become your best friend?

This is so hard because like, I don’t get along with a lot of people generally speaking. I’m also going to treat this as the entire SW cast even though I only write Kylo and Hux, for the most part. And I’m not sure I’d be good friends with either of them. While Kylo would make an excellent self-destruction buddy, I think we’re too similar for the most part to get along. And while I also have an element of Hux in me that’s my anal retentiveness when it comes to organization (not to be confused with cleanliness; I’m talking more about my colour-coded work email and my nested folder system on my computer), I’m also very emotional, messy, and I’m not really equipped to verbally spar with him. I think I would actually do okay with Hux as a boss, not a friend, but with Kylo, I think we’d get along really well until we really didn’t. And then I would be dead lmao

Aaaand none of that was an actual answer. But like, I honestly don’t know? Most of the other characters I really like (e.g. Rey, Rae Sloane, Ventress), it’s because I would have a big huge crush on them which would manifest as my hovering in their vicinity a lot but never actually starting a conversation and then waxing poetic while crying about my unrequited love when I continue to go unnoticed lmao. Which is, well, still not friendship

Maybe Finn… I might get along really well with Finn. He’s one of my favourites as well and I think he’d be really interesting to talk to. Has a lot of interesting views on things, likely a good listener. Hm. I’m still not 100% solid on it, but after far too many words, that’s my answer lmao

Purple: Which of your characters would become your sworn enemy?

Okay, hear me out on this one because the reason isn’t what you think lmao. I’m also treating this less as ‘sworn enemy’ and more ‘person I’d least get along with’ and that’s actually Poe. And the reason is that highly extroverted, extremely friendly people who others call charismatic tend to rub me the wrong way. Like there’s nothing wrong with them, they’re perfectly nice, but they’re just too friendly and my socially-inept, introverted brain always responds to that with DANGER DANGER. And I think he would definitely fall into that category for me haha

Green: Pencil, typewriter, or computer?

Computer. I have written fic by hand before (I also sometimes do planning by hand, just because it can be a bit more visual; Fractured was planned largely by hand when I used to work evenings at a gym and had access to unlimited spare paper), but that’s usually only when I have nothing else to work with. I wrote most of a fic in the Halifax airport on a layover, once. I’ve also done it on my phone, but that’s too fucking annoying lmao. Typerwriters are super fun to use but also very impractical for me; my typing accuracy isn’t good enough

Brown: Do you have a set writing space? Or do you write everywhere?

Mostly I’m at home on my couch, but that’s really cause I have nowhere else to write. I do write at work sometimes (not smut though lmao), but only when it’s slow enough that I can get away with it. And there’s nowhere else I really go where I’m sitting with a computer for long periods of time

Silver: Are you comfortable writing in public places?

I am, yeah. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be tbh. Work is a public place and the only reason I don’t write smut there is because I don’t want to get fired lmao (slacking off is one thing, porn is another). I don’t really ever write in public, but that’s more because I don’t spend a lot of time sitting in public places by myself

Gold: Do your stories usually contain lessons or morals?

Not really… I can’t think of any at least. They always have some sort of closure, though, because I fucking hate open-ended stuff where everything isn’t worked out in the end lmao (or is at least on it’s way there). I’m too fragile for that shit haha

Clear: Do your characters control where the story goes or do youmaintain control?

I tend to write more like an rper than an actual author, based on conversations I’ve had with others, so my characters have a lot of control. That said, if you’ve got your plot and all the major points of it planned out and then you get halfway through and find it doesn’t work because of the characters, then that’s a failure in planning, not the characters taking control. Sometimes things do change and are reworked as you go, that’s the nature of writing, but that still means your plan needed some adjusting, you just didn’t know it at the time. I intentionally leave a lot of room in my plans for the characters (e.g. ‘and then they talk about [blank]. Hux says something mean and Kylo gets angry’ might be my only note for an entire scene), but if you’ve planned enough to actually start writing, your characters and plot should already work together. Characters control the minor details of the story, not the major plot

Tan: Are you open to co-writing a story?

I might be. I’ve never done it before and the Big Bang I’m doing now is the most collaborative thing I’ve ever done writing-wise. If someone approached me and was really interested in it, I might be willing to give it a shot. I’m not really sure how it works, though. I tend to envision it as basically an rp except it’s planned out beforehand and then edited afterwards, but in all honesty, I have no idea how it actually goes

#this was so fun thank you so much #also you're the only one who sent in an ask so it worked out really well lmao #I think it got a little incoherent halfway through but meh that's just how I work most of the time haha #I love to ramble and thank you again for giving me the opportunity to do so <3 #squire reblogs #ask tag #things I am tagged in #sort of but not really #long post #for the folks on mobile #my fic #because I can

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lethesomething · 6 years

Text

The morality scale of BnHA

Heya Nonny, Alright, so this is one that has been sitting in my drafts for a while. So thanks for making me finally finish it :) And I'm going to be contrite again and start with: to me, BnHA is pretty complex when it comes to morality. Let me explain why I think so.

Mild spoiler warning for the manga (Chapter 133)

Who watches the Watchmen

So this is something @thekuroiookami noted in one of our chats, but several of the underlying themes of BnHA are similar to the classic Alan Moore comic book The Watchmen (it was made into a movie, also). And I like to imagine Horikoshi knows of this comic, and that it is intentional. Watchmen, which I'm sure you can find all kinds of meta on, is about the fall of heroes. Specifically, super heroes. It's about responsibility, accountability. Who watches the Watchmen?

One of the central themes of that book is what it takes to be a hero. It’s about moral decisions. Should you strive for peace, and how many lives are you willing to put on the line for that. That kind of thing. Now Watchmen, is pretty heavy and almost depressing, so while BnHA has similar themes, the moral of Horikoshi's story is very different and so far more optimistic. What they have in common, in a big way, is that morality comes on a sliding scale. So while heroes in BnHA are, on the whole, a force for good, they are far from black and white.

Heroes and villains

Which makes it all the more interesting, that that is totally not how they're first introduced to us.

We initially see the world entirely through the eyes of a young Izuku, who incidentally worships the starkest, truest hero of them all, All Might. He is the literal symbol of peace and I think we can all agree that he's a truly good person, who does his hero-ing for all the right reasons.

The great part is that as we follow Izuku on his journey, it becomes clear that not everyone is quite this angelic.

Good people doing good things for the right reasons

Let's start with All Might, who is the ultimate hero to pretty much the entire cast. He has the power, the drive, the attitude, the looks. Everyone has some story about how he once rescued a thousand people while going 'It's allright'. But then, during his very first meeting with Izuku, it turns out he's not an ultimate hero all the time. All Might is at this point a literal façade. And the façade of the hero world just kinda keeps crumbling from that point.

It's telling, for instance, that some of the 'purest' heroes in this story are the younger ones. Izuku is, obviously, the poster boy here. He wants to 'do good' and he truly cares about people. Slightly more interesting, though, is Kirishima. Because Kirishima is one of the first and only examples of a hero trying to de-escalate a violent situation. That stuff is standard practice for a lot of police forces. The idea is that when someone is acting out, when they're threatening people, you try to talk them down.

That's what Red Riot tries when faced with that tooth guy. Admittedly, he’s already punched him by this point, but the guy also friggin shot Suneater, so I’m calling that a draw. Kirishima also ultimately fails, but at least he tries the non-violent approach, which is notably absent from a lot of other heroes.

Good people doing good things for the wrong reasons

This one is kind of the basis of Stain's whole philosophy. Example: Mount Lady is shown to steal spotlights, to plain profiteer from her fame and looks. That's not really villain type behaviour, but it's not exactly squeaky clean either. Again, it's a sliding scale. Uraraka wants to be a hero for the money, which would be 'bad', but she just wants to help her parents, which is 'good'. There's a lot of moral greyness here. You could, for instance, also put Iida's crisis of conscience in here. He brashly charges in to kill stain out of vengeance, forgetting the part where he's a: not really equipped for this fight, you dolt, and b: supposed to save the other guy. Not a paragon of virtue kind of moment for him there. But does it make him a bad person? No. It makes him human.

Good people acting bad

Some heroes are honest to god good people, but have some unsociable behaviour, or just plain look like hobos (yes hello Aizawa). You can consider this superficial. And then things get… muddied.

Bakugou is an interesting one, because he's incredibly powerful, and very smart, with attitude issues and a past as a bully. Is he a bad person? It seems like he's working on it. New question, which I know tumblr is gonna love: Mineta. He's a sleazy teen who wants to be a hero to get chicks, and who exhibits unwanted behaviour towards women. Is he a bad person? Would you class him as a hero or a villain? And then there's Endeavour, who is supposed to be the number two hero in the country. And he's a shit stain of a human being. Where exactly would you class him?

Bad people and the lives they lead

I'm not gonna do every character here, but I think you get my point. There's a lot of moral grey in BnHA. The same goes for villains, too. I've seen quite a few meta posts on what it says about society that it has a warrior who punches people as a symbol of peace. And how the strict way in which the BnHA universe deals with quirks is what Makes Villains. And it must be said: most of the bad guys in the story are not mindless, and they're not without motivation. Stain really believes that hero culture is out of control. He is the bitter ex-hero. If this were an American comic, he could be the Punisher (ostensibly a hero). He has the drive, the power, the charisma. He just has a terrible way of getting his point across (murder). There's a scale, even on the darker side. Chisaki does horrible, horrible things for something he believes in. He's a terrible human being, but he's good to his men, he gives them something to believe in. To live for. Shigaraki, arguably one of the most petty of villains, wants to mostly cause chaos, but he's also aiming for revenge. His parents died and All Might could not save them. That is super sad, but it is something he could have gotten over, if it weren't for All for One. Shigaraki has been GROOMED to be a villain since he was six. You could wonder how much of a chance he, with his bad guy quirk and his upbringing, ever had.

We're all human here

Where I actually answer the question. You're right, nonny, when you say that the way 'justice' is dealt in the story is too simple. Because let me make it perfectly clear. The BnHA universe may have superpowers, it's by no means a just society. It's not a utopia. It has the exact same issues as present day Japan, only with more explosions and… slime attacks. There are people that don't fit in society. There are those that rebel, there are those that are in it for the money, there are those that use their family and ancient marriage traditions for personal gain. In Vigilante spinoff, which is arguably a grittier version of BnHA, there are those who try to seek justice where regular cops can't do it.

While the public may need to see heroes as larger than life celebrities, what BnHA is very careful in showing us is that every one of these characters is human.

So to finally answer the question: I don't think Horikoshi is trying to write a black and white story. There are links in the very fabric of the manga, to real world issues: to police violence, to sexism, to celebrity culture. While the story started innocently and tropey enough, we are seeing, with every new arc, the deeper issues of this society. We're growing up with young Izuku and learning that the world is not a perfect place. Good people get hurt and die. Bad people sometimes get away with it.

I actually have pretty good hopes that we'll see, later on, the likes of Izuku or Kiri or Bakugou struggle with what it means to be just. The suffocating bounds of the law are already a theme being dealt with in Vigilante - My Hero Academia Illegals (a spin-off which, if you're into this sort of thing, I can highly recommend). So I don't think that's likely to be addressed any time soon. What we might see more of for Izuku and gang, is the boundary between hero and villain. Shinsou's struggle, for instance, with his 'evil' quirk. Or maybe something like a Dabi arc. If he truly is Todoroki's brother, like the theory goes, that could make for some Very Interesting story lines about the consequences of Endeavour's behaviour.

I just hope it never gets as depressing as Watchmen, tbh.

PS: I do a lot of these.

#meta #character theory #bnha #boku no hero academia #long post #i'm sorry #i have many feels about this stuff ok #bnha spoilers

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nelson-riddle-me-this · 6 years

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Rules: tag 9 people with excellent taste

Colour(s) I’m currently wearing

Mostly white - I’m wearing my bathrobe. My mom got it for me and it’s great. It’s not the softest but it’s good and it’s got cool blue and grey horizontal stripes on the bottom. Normally it’s very frustrating for her to try to get clothing gifts for me, but she hit the nail on the head with this one.

Last band T shirt I bought

I’ve never bought a ‘band’ t-shirt. The artists I really love don’t have much in the way of t-shirts and if they do, they look really corny. Like I’m not gonna get a Streisand t-shirt and look like some middle-aged empty-nester out grocery shopping.

Last band I saw live

I guess our evening Jazz Ensemble - it’s professional adult musicians - at my school’s Jazz Ensembles concert. They’re great. As for non-school performances, I think? the last concert I went to was a Brian Setzer concert at the Hollywood Bowl with my mom a while back.

Last song I listened to

youtube

I tried listening to some contemporary pop from the Love, Simon (2018) soundtrack today and it was really difficult so now I’m at the computer enjoying some tumblr-time and listening to my most-chill and most-favorite Doris Day album.

Lipstick or chapstick?

I used lipstick once for my Katharine Hepburn halloween costume last year and - tbh lipstick is so much work - makeup in general. Like it would be fun to be a girl and wear dresses and be super pretty and stuff - but wo-MAN it’s so much work!

So chapstick. The tube I use is some Burt’s Bees pink grapefruit that I really love. This might sound weird but I only have it because a boy I had a small crush on once asked me to hold it while he changed clothes and forgot to collect it from me..

Last movie I watched

I went to the movies last weekend with @adamsberg and another one of my best friends and saw Love, Simon (2018). I really really really really loved it.

I hadn’t even heard of it until a few weeks ago I saw a trailer on YouTube, but I thought it looked great and it was everything I hoped and more. I have this soft spot for angsty contemporary teen dramas like this [The Fault In Our Stars (2014) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) are also in this micro-genre]. While I love my classics, I also love these great movies that are being made here and NOW! Sometimes I feel apart from the rest of the world - and not in a good way. I wasn’t friendless in high school - but I wasn’t anywhere near as close to any of my friends as any of these movie teens are... as accepted and loved as I am to/by an amazing, small, group of my friends now. I have no horror stories, but I don’t have very many stories and that’s just it - I could have had so much more, but I didn’t. Part of it was because I wasn’t out yet and this film so wonderfully explored that. I highly reccomend it - and not just for the good plot, it’s hilarious and an overall great experience.

Last 3 TV shows I watched

911 (2018-present)

Sometimes my mom’s taste in first-run television is pretty bad (NCIS stopped being good like a decade ago) but in this case I am totally on-board. Angela Bassett [WAIT HOW IS SHE 59???????] is an inspiration (I WANT HER CHARACTER’S HOUSE!), the writing and production values are generally very good - it’s a solid, interesting show. Still, can anyone tell me what the deal with that middle-aged white lady (who’s a few years younger than Angela Bassett but lowekey looks 20 years older) who dresses like a suburban mom trying to dress like her teenage daughter - like what’s the deal with her dating that guy in his 20s?

Frasier (1993-2004)

My mom and I watch this show somewhat regularly as it’s on like every flippin’ night on the scourge that is the Hallmark Channel (generally decent reruns, but I hate the channel itself and their original programming is complete trash). In a lotta ways I really love it - it’s hilarious, witty, sophisticated, adult, and has the power to create a real poigniant moment like you rarely see so fully-realized in sitcoms.

It has its issues though. Frasier and Niles (especially in early seasons) can get annoyingly whiny/snobby. I get that their characters are kinda built around that, but there’s a point at which they take it too far and it becomes disengaging. Also it’s a super white-people-centric show (I wonder why Hallmark likes it so much...) so diversity could be a lot better. Still, it’s generally a high-quality program.

Gosh I don’t remember what else I watched last. I haven’t had a lotta TV time lately so Imma use this opportunity to plug...

Stranger Things (2016-present)

One’a my best friends, Grace, introduced me to this show and I absolutely love it. The period’s really well done - not just accurate, but alive and real and relatable. The acting and casting is great. Winona Ryder is a treasure and I have a shameless crush on Joe Keery’s amazing hair and the person it belongs to. The scoring is effective, interesting, and very different from the kind of film music I usually am exposed to (I’m really making an effort to expand my horizons beyond classic orchestral sounds lately). The production values are great - it’s just an amazing show.

Last 3 characters I identified with

1.) Simon Spier from Love, Simon (2018)

While there are some things about him I definitely don’t identify with (message me personally if you wanna know specifics- I don’t want to spoil anything), I very much identify with his coming out story and coming to terms with his sexuality on his own terms.

I feel like there are people who will criticize the film based on Simon’s extreme normalcy - like he’s honestly a fairly stock white, middle-class, suburban teenage boy and, aside from his involvement in theater and ‘ya know liking boys he doesn’t do much that would be considered “gay” - but that’s kinda the point of the film. Being gay is just something that is and anyone can be gay - they’re not weird or whatever just for being gay - that was one of my fears - that I would be treated (or even just feel like) some strange unwelcome outsider just because of this one thing.

I had a long conversation tonight with an older kinda mentor’y friend of mine (though I’m more of the mentor) who’s gay and who was having a really rough night. Among the lotta things he said was that all gay men cheat that there’s no true monagomous love in the gay community and like lightning I shot him down with a fervor and wisdom and riteousness that would make Kate proud (wayto blow my own horn).

That’s the exact kind of idiotic prejudice that makes people afraid to come out in the first place. It’s fear that kind of small-minded judgmental behavior which was most responsible for me remaining closeted in high school. It’s a hard thing to explain to someone who hasn’t been there because after you’ve been through it, it can kinda feel like nothing afterwards - all this fear and conflict and it’s really kinda purposeless. You find that people still love you and the people who don’t are really not good people anyway. I wish I had come out in high school, I could have been happier. But I am happy now.

2.) Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Dedicated followers may remember I rewatched this one a few wks ago on what would have been a date with me and my crush until he cancelled. That time I saw Trace and Kate herself through lenses less tinted than ever before, but still she’s there in all her glory and all her not-glory. Tracy is riteous, despises drinking and gets very contemptful of what she views as weakness, such as her ex-husband’s drinking problem or Mike’s cynical view of the rich. I am often that way (in large part due to the second-generation effects of my mom’s own east coast catholic upbrining) which has it’s merits certainly - that specific east coast almost ‘puritan’ toughness (I think Dick Cavett, said Bette Davis and Kate both had it) can be a tremendous source of strength and sense. It can also easily become cold, prudish, snobbish, and condesending. I have tried to unlearn these aspects and I am still working on that. This is kinda what Tracy’s arc is about, learning to be human and be loved and to love others.

Though it’s not as recent, the next one that comes to mind is

3.) Nancy Wheeler from Stranger Things

I already mentioned that my friend Grace got me into this show, but I didn’t mention that I only ever watch it with her. Not that I don’t really love the show - I do - but I like saving it for when we’re together - it makes it more special.

Anyway, more than perhaps any other single character on that show, I identify with Nancy Wheeler. Regular suburban teenager who’s better - not just a regular suburban teenager - she’s aware of the sort of suburban ‘don’t do much with your life ‘cept rasie kids [not that there’s anything wrong with having and raising kids, that’s wonderful] trap. I also found the episode with her at Steve’s house really resonated with me. Barb telling Nancy “this isn’t you” really got to me. Part of me still has an internal ‘Barb’ that kinda ties in with the whole east-coast ‘puritan’y’ morality but there’s also the part of me that wants to be young and just a person and do cool things with my friends and kiss boys and watch great angsty contemporary teen dramas. They both have their merits and drawbacks - the young side has life but can be stupid and reckless - the old side is wise and careful, but can be paralyzing and stagnating.

Books I’m currently reading

I have a whole slew of books checked out that I’m supposed to be reading (for my own enjoyment).

The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard by Leonard Bernstien

I loved his The Joy of Music so I figured I would like this too. He’s a great music lecturer. I’m only like 5 pages in so far.

Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption by Ellis Cashmore

This one I’m a little further on, though most of that was just the introductory timeline of her life with a key notating each illness/medical episode, marriage/actual or rumored romantic relationship, and neaar-death experience (her life is such ‘drama’).

I also have a book about motifs in Hitchcock’s films with the car picnic from To Catch a Thief (1955) on the cover. I haven’t started reading it yet.

And I have some book about Lerner & Lowe, the duo responsibly for My Fair Lady, Camelot, etc...

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This was really really wonderful to participate in. Thank you, my amazing friends, so much for tagging me @adamsberg and @in-the-key-of-d-minor. I’ve enjoyed lots of asks and tag games, but I’ve never felt this good about one before...

I tag

@hildy-dont-be-hasty @tyronepowerbottom @reluctant-martyrs @thevintagious @littlehappyrock @n2ninvisiblegirl @solasdisapproves @hepburnandhepburn and @her-man-friday

If I didn’t tag you but you wanna participate, have at it!

What’m I gonna do, fire you?

#personal #asks #tag game #love simon #gay #the philadelphia story #katharine hepburn #stranger things #doris day #andre previn #jazz

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gingerly-writing · 6 years

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Questions Tag Games

explanation: I’m super late to these, I suspect not many people will want their dashes spammed with my random answers, and I’m not tagging people, so I’ve amalgamated all of these into one post.

tagged by @concealeddarkness13! haven’t spoken to you in a while, hope you’re doing great

1. Would you rather write a more classical hero or an anti-hero as a protagonist? I’d rather write a hero for the protagonist, but an anti-hero as a general character

2. Who is your favorite character you have written and why? Ever? That’s cruel. Out of people that y’all would know, Urial does seem to generate the most emotional reactions

3. How many WIPs do you have? 3 proper ones, currently: Iron Flower, Space Royalty and Piracy Pays

4. Who is your least favorite character you have written and why? To write? Klarion from Young Jutsice fanfic. Motherfucker would not follow the assigned plot. Hate-wise? Possibly Coincidence or Accord, neother of whom you guys have met yet. Those two are a pair of nasty criminals/villains, and they are a little too good at punishing anyone who gets in their way

5. What is your favorite aspect of writing? Finishing!

6. If you had only one sentence (per WIP) to get someone to read your books, what would the sentences be? They wouldn’t because I suck at loglinesss...humourously though?

IF: an entire continent is saved from the ravages of war by the ancient art of sexting via treaty negotiations Space Royalty: ‘she stabbed me? god-fucking-dammit I am so in love with her’ Piracy Pay: you get to chug your drink every time I kill a character

7. If your protagonists fought to the death, which one would win? Protags? Depends if morals were removed, and whether it was on-on-one. Koronis, if not -he’s an emperor with black magic and an entire galaxy-wide army. If it was on-on-one with minimised morals, Ace would stand a damn good chance. Boy is smarter than he gives himself credit for, and very adaptable. Galaxy is also pretty viable. Girl can swing a superpowered punch like she means it, and she hasn’t survived this long on luck alone.

8. Which protagonist(s) would survive the zombie apocalypse? Koronis would. Ace would die trying to save someone else. Solaris would...provided Monarch was dragging him around, and even then they might go down together in a dramatic last stand. Galaxy would be in charge of a small, benevolent queendom. Cleo would, those plant skills would make her handy to any new civilisation. Fact would go down staving off the hoardes so everyone else could run. Rosalie would think she was the weak link of her group, but they would probably keep her alive; L’aura would kick zombie ass.

9. Which is your favorite story you have written or are working on? Space Royalty is damn fun to write -the benefits of extravagant, overdramatic space operas I suppose. Piracy Pays has had a good reception, so I’m pretty proud of that. Hopefully I can keep the momentum going until the end! It is a huge pain o write though

10. Which of your characters is your favorite villain and why? Raph is my evil supervillin crimelord Big Bad and I adore him utterly

11. When do you find is the best time of day for writing? Evening! 8pm-1am

*******************************************************************************************

tagged by the lovely @a-sundeen! this is so old I bet you don’t even remember tagging me, oopsie

1. When you’re describing a new character, what feature do you usually note first? Build, usually, as in their height/weight ratio, muscles/skinniness or lack of, how they carry themself etc. The reason for this is that I often start with the macro ‘impression’ of the character before zooming in on a few specifics. I try to use an interesting description or comparison here as well.

2. Do any of your characters play an instrument or really enjoy music in general? If so, what instrument (or what genre, if it’s the latter)? I am the least musical person on planet earth, so making my characters musical often doesn’t occur to me. Koronis can sing and play the space-piano (forced childhood lessons), and Jade can play the violin, but neither of them are passionate about it. Kolya/Cynosure (the popstar/supervillain) is very very musical, but I skip around a lot of the specifics because I’m a big cheater. He mostly makes anti-establishment and anti-hero music, but he’s one of those artists who strays all over different genres.

3. Which musical artist usually gets you the most pumped to write? Les Friction does good dramatic music and they’re not so well known, so I like to tell people about them when I can

4. Do you prefer writing fight scenes over other types? (This is a weirdly worded question I’m sorry, rip) It’s worded fine, sunshine! And no, I don’t like writing fight scenes because I don’t like the logistics of them. There are too many limbs to keep track of, and then I feel like I’m neglecting their surroundings and potentially useful items in favour of mentally tracking who’s where and what their arms and legs are doing. I cover up for my fight scene weaknesses with too much dialogue, and I’m fully aware of that fact.

5. Is there a city or country you’d really like to write in or about? Write in is probably just where I’d like to travel, so Russia, India and South America (I know that’s general but it’s the only continent except Antarctica that I haven’t been to) are my top choices. Write about…I’d like to sink myself deep into east coast USA to really nail the feeling of Galaxy’s city and her character, and then be able to confidently write about it. I do have a study year abroad coming up in 2020, so here’s hoping…

6. Do you prefer to be warm or cold while you write? Warm! I love blankets and my big fluffy dressing gown, and on top of that all my friends always complain about how hot my house is

7. Do any of your characters have hobbies you’d like to try out someday? Fiction wise, glo-ball from Space Royalty sounds like a very entertaining game, especially when I’m kept safe behind a pod. sodding netball injuries Jade paints and draws, and I’d love to get better at art. Likewise, Rosalie sews, making and decorating her own clothes, and I’d love to be able to do that. Idk, does being a supervillain count as a hobby? I’d love to rob a bank…not even necessarily for the money, just the #aesthetic

8. What is your favorite type of character to write? Villains! And morally grey people. And characters where the POV character has no idea what they’re really thinking, who they really are, what they actually want etc. And, on the flip side, balls of positive sunshine, because they make me feel better about the world

9. Halloween is here! Which character has a costume made for them by their mom? Ahahahahaha can you tell how late I am to this.

10. Halloween is here (again)! Which character thinks the holiday is childish but dresses up anyway? I AM SO LATE. Rosalie thinks the holiday is childish but dresses up in the most elaborate homemade princess outfit ever and entertains all the kids she can find. What, it is a children’s holiday, surely she should be making them happy on their special day…

******************************************************************************************* tagged by @blackfeatherantics who is now @mbovettwrites I think? I hope?

1. How long have you been working on your WIP(s) for? Iron Flower is the oldest current one, and I started it on Christmas Day 2016

2. What song would you assign as your protagonist’s theme tune? I’ll just pick one, and Koronis’ is Young and Menace by FOB. No real lyrical reason, it just reminds me of him

3. Do you have any favourite spots (gardens, parks, cafes, etc.) where you like to write? The sofa in my living room next to my family

4. Poetry or Prose? Prose!

5. Where do you draw inspiration for your writing from? Everywhere! Other people’s writing and prompts and published novels and TV and movies and random stray thoughts and daydreaming and chatting to other writers and-

6. Is there any popular book that you wish you had written and why? The Lies of Locke Lamora because I’d take out the first 100-ish page of solid worldbuilding and backstory that seemed almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the plot?And the domino-effect of all the plot elements knocking each other into action at the end was so clever, it annoyws me that the beginning means I don’t like reccing it to people

7. What’s your planning process when you start working on a new WIP? I daydream about it for at least a few weeks to make sure the idea has staying power. Then I come up with character names, quirks, descriptions etc. finally, I lay out the plot chapter-by-chapter from the beginning to the end so I have a guiding rope throughout the whole process and I’m less likely to get stuck. Of course, that’s when I plan on letting a WIP bloom into being. Some, like Space Royalty and Piracy Pays, start off as short drabble ideas and then refuse to leave, which means I have no concrete plan for them...

8. Do you work best in mornings, afternoons, or at night? Evening!

9. Would you prefer to self-publish or work with an agent and publishing company and why? Agent and publishing company, because I value the help they can provide more than the ability to retain complete creative control over my book (since I’m crap at titles and designing book covers anyway)

10. How do your emotions/moods affect your writing? Not a lot tbh. If I’m very very tired I can’t write anything good, but I’m not sure that counts as an emotion.

11. What’s your favourite line of your WIP/one of your poems? I’ve written both of my current favourite lines for prompts, which were: ‘Time hollows all victories’ and ‘The hero doesn’t die in this one’. I’ve had other favourites in WIPs over time, but I can’t think of them right now

******************************************************************************************* tagged by the ever wonderful @time-to-write-and-suffer

1) How are you so awesome? Genetics.

2) What’s your favorite thing about your writing? The dialogue! Or the romances, which I mostly like because of the fun/cute dialogue.

3) Who’s your favorite character that you’ve written and why are they your fave? This is so mean. At the moment, Raph, because I can’t stop thinking about him and he’s so incredibly dangerous, yet on the low down (like the Mariana Trench level of low down) he has all these cute little quirks that only one or two people know about

4) One of your characters has been placed in the world/plot of a book you love. What happens? Rosalie becomes a Grisha in Leigh Bardugo’s world. She finds a sense of self-worth and gets to enjoy the little luxuries that come with the position.

5) One of your characters has been placed in the world/plot of a book you hate. What happens? X takes the place of Celeana Sardothien. He murders everyone in his path, tells the crown of Terrasen to get fucked because there’s no way he can run a whole government with any level of competance, probably murders Rowan with extreme prejudice, opens the Wyrd gates just to search the universe for Raph and bring him through so he can construct a decent government for Terrasen, would probably sleep with Dorian, would make it his new life goal to highfive Manon.

6) Your characters must fight each other to the death until only one stands victorious. Who wins? Raph. Koronis could conceivably stand a chance against him, but Raph would decimate pretty much anyone else. I think Raph would be able to stay above the fighting for longer, whereas Koronis would jump in just a touch earlier, which would be his downfall.

7) If you could steal a cover and a title from other books to use for your own WIP/s, which ones would you steal? Cover-wise I’d steal the minimalist Red Queen aesthetic, because that sleek shit is the bomb. Title-wise? That’s harder. The Lies of Locke Lamora has some sick alliteration, but I think I’d rather steal the style of it rather than the exact title

8) If you switched places with one of your characters, what would happen to you and to them? I would die, pretty much everywhere. If Rosalie swapped with me, she would slowly come out of her shell and become a fashion designer -not an A-lister, she wouldn’t like how vicious and ruthlessly businesslike you have to be, but maybe making her own high-end clothes in a small shop in London

9) What makes your style unique compared to other writers? Thanks for the existential crisis, Eff.

10) Describe your antagonist’s song number if they were a Disney villain. No Good Deed from Wicked, for Darklight

******************************************************************************************* tagged by the lovely @itstheenglishkid

1. Have you ever realized how similar an oc is to you and felt the need to change them so they aren’t so similar? I mean, Jade from Iron Flower almost shares a name with me, and she’s ginger, which did concern me for a while, but hopefully she’s nothing like me personality wise (or else I’d have to do some serious self-reflection)

2. Do any of your ocs like candles? I bet Rosalie loves pretty candles, especially patterned or strongly scented ones! Anything luxurious that she can’t afford, really

3. Do you normally write settings that are (or are based on) places you know intimately (ie your home town)? Oh god no. I like sweeping Chinese-inspired castles or creaking pirate ships or far flung space universities and man-made planets. I’m really not a contemporary writer though, so I guess this isn’t much of a surprise?

4. What is a book that feels similar to your own wip? Ahahaha, which WIP? Piracy Pays has similar vibes to @boothewriter‘s pirates and probably also @noodlewrites’ pirates (I’m guessing? I haven’t read any excerpts from you I’m sorry). Space Royalty is just weird. Iron Flower is probably similar to a lot of generic fantasy YA, like Red Queen and whatnot.

5. Do you have a dream cast for your ocs? I don’t really faceclaim? Or know much about a wide array of actors, so no, not really.

6. Are you good at story titles? Do they come easily to you? I am abysmal at story titles, holy shit. I mean, you can see the evidence scattered around this post. Piracy Pays and Space Royalty are just placeholder names, but I’m not convinced I’ll come up with anything good to replace them. Iron Flower is alright in that its relevant to the story and fits into the series title (The Flowers of War) but…idk, its not setting the stars alight or anything.

7. Do you ever change oc names once you’ve started a wip? Not often, though I am considering changing Ace’s name because I don’t think ‘Seb’ suits him. Only question, what to??

8. Which people have you let read your work? I mean, all of y’all have the opportunity to read Piracy Pays. No one has read Iron Flower, and I’m stretching myself by letting @rrrawrf-writes @lux-deorum@haphazardlyparked read Space Royalty in its raw first draft stage.

9. What usually catches your attention about a book first? Style? Characters? Plot? I’m quite an easy reader to catch and hold tbh. What makes me love a book is a clever plot. For me, a very strong plot can carry weak-ish characters, but I can never read super deep characters with no plot.

10. Do you have a favourite author? Probs Rick Riordan, or Julia Golding.

******************************************************************************************* tagged by the wonderful @typeaadventures

1. How many works in progress do you have? Properly, three. Iron Flower, which is written (143k) but needs editing, Piracy Pays which y’all are reading, and Space Royalty which crossed 30k about a week ago

2. Do you/would you write fanfiction I used to! I stopped in Y12/13 because I didn’t have enough time to do fic and original writing, and I haven’t really had the time to pick it back up.

3. Do you prefer paper books or ebooks? Either, I’m not fussed. Though if it has a really pretty cover, I’ll be hankering after a paper copy

4. When did you start writing? 14-ish on Young justice fanfic

5. Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with? Not all of my work, but yeah, I have a lovely server and also some irl friends that get the junk landed on them

6. Where is your favourite place to write? At home chilling with my family while we all do stuff

7. Favourite book as a child? Dragonfly by Julia Golding

8. Writing for fun or publication? Hopefully publication, but I know I need to improve a lot first, honing my skills etc.

9. Have you taken writing classes? Not a lick

10. What inspired you to write? Gotta get those stories out of my head and onto the page, man. Gotta get that sweet sweet representation out there too.

thanks everyone! xx

#tag game #about the author #long post

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thatgirlonstage · 7 years

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Now that you're done with TAZ, who're your top 3 NPCs? (I stan Johann) Whose your favorite THB? Have any favorite TAZ artists? (Glowbat rocks!) Have any headcanons? Do you ever plan on writing Fanfic for TAZ? (It actually inspired me to write my first fanfic ever!) Top 3 couples? Do you have any characters who some of the fandom hates but you like? (John, Lucas Miller, Barry, etc.) Are you excited for their next campaign? Who do you think will DM? What do you hope it will be about? -TAZ Anon

Phew okay I’m gonna try and answer each of these briefly so that I don’t clog up your dash with a mile-long post but also this podcast owns my soul now so we’ll see how unsuccessful I am with that

1. Gahhhh probably Lup, Angus, and Carey, but there are so many excellent NPCs - like honorable mentions for sure go to Johann, Lucretia, Roswell, Killian (really I pair her with Carey but Carey’s friendship with Magnus wins her a top spot if I have to split them), Fisher, Noelle, and also Magic Brian for making me almost piss my pants laughing every time I listen back to his death scene

2. Taako, but listen. Listen. All of them are my children and I adore them.

3. I don’t think I’ve waded deep enough into the fandom yet to have favorite artists - I’ve mostly just been going on reblogging sprees of whatever is on my dash or in the tags - but I will shoutout @stardustinjune‘s Hey Brother PMV because holy crap I’ve watched it like eight times and it still makes me cry. I’ll check out Glowbat!

4. I’ve actually been thinking I might make a post with a bunch of headcanons about Stolen Century and/or the years where they had forgotten everything, so I’ll hold onto this for the moment ;)

5. Hmmm well I’m knee deep in Voltron WIPs that I want to get through, and I have a Miraculous Ladybug fic my friend and I have been planning for a while, so there’s probably not anything long form on the horizon. But I might open it up as one of the fandoms I’ll write prompts for which I have a whole bunch of in my inbox that I need to get back to oops

6. Taakitz, Team Sweet Flips, and my beautiful dryad lesbians Sloane & Hurley. Although I do feel compelled to say that while I cried over every member of THB at some point, I was full-on SOBBING over Magnus and Julia’s epilogue, Jeffandrew almighty I was a mess.

7. WHO HATES MY SWEET UNDEAD DENIM-CLAD NERD BOY? WHO? POINT ME TOWARD THEM, I’LL FIGHT THEM

Tbh I like all the characters you listed. TAZ is one of those extraordinarily rare stories that... doesn’t really have a villain. I mean, yeah, it’s the Hunger, but even John had his morally grey areas and struggled for a small piece of redemption by the end. Most of the other “villains” THB fought had been corrupted by the thrall of the relics and it wasn’t really their fault. The ONLY characters I can think of who I actually hate are Edward and Lydia (and even then, I like them as characters, but the way I like Umbridge - fascinating and awful and I thrive on watching them get destroyed). Everyone else, even if they made horrible decisions or did terrible things like Magic Brian or Sheriff Isaak or Lucas Miller, and even John, are not totally evil people. They are COMPLICATED people who made bad and selfish decisions that spiraled out of control. I think Merle’s last scene with John is one of the most powerful and beautiful in the entire story.

8. I know it’s going to feel like a bit of a let-down starting over with a new campaign after they’ve built such a rich world, but I’ve listened to them talk in TTAZZ about the kinds of things they’re planning to try out and I’m really excited to see where they can take it. I think Clint’s idea of doing a superhero-style story could be really fun and different (then again I’m also just such a sucker for those kinds of stories). I have some reservations about him as a GM, since he seems a bit scatterbrained keeping track of his own character sometimes, but perhaps he’ll find a different style game or just the different demands of being a GM will work out better for him. I’ve also, because I became a donor and got the MaxFun bonus content, listened to the TAZ Knights episodes. I know they’re not planning on making that particular campaign into anything long-form, but Justin seems like a great DM and he built a really cool world, so I’d be very excited for whatever he does. Whatever they choose to do though I hope poor Griffin gets to rest, haha

Because this seems like a good spot for it-- Lastly, I just want to say thank you so much for encouraging me to listen to this show. It’s been such an extraordinary experience and I’ve really, really fallen in love with it, to a depth that most shows don’t take me. I don’t honestly have the words to express my gratitude that you shared something so beautiful with me. Perhaps the best I can say is, I’m pretty sure I’ve had at least five separate people tell me they’ve started listening to the show specifically because of how much I’ve said I love it – so by extension, you’ve brought TAZ to all those people as well

#answers #taz #taz spoilers #Anonymous

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ofimaginations-blog · 7 years

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♋ What drew you to this muse? for all of them!

❧ meme - @sebastianshaw❧ accepting

askfrihguhd 90s! You love to make things hard don’t you? XD

ADELLA

Adella was actually my second ever muse I played. She’s originally from a Disney group I was in when I first started RPing and a few of my friends that I still have from that group encouraged me to put her on here when I made this blog (especially considering one of them had her old boyfriend from that group on their blog as well. love you forever alex

ASHLEY SEAVER

So I kind of really love Criminal Minds tbh. I used to watch CSI when I was little with my mom, but sometimes that show could get a bit too graphic or disturbing in the forensics for me. When my mom started watching Criminal Minds though, I latched onto it very quickly. While there is still some graphic stuff, I liked that it went more into the minds of criminals than the forensics stuff. Plus, I just love the characters and their dynamic. My family has almost every season of the show on DVD and I have watched most of them several times.

As for why Ashley Seaver specifically, well – consider this: she’s the daughter of a criminally insane person that was removed was from her life as a teenager and that has shaped her a lot. She has dedicated her life to stopping people like her dad and helping people like her, but the experience has also made her a bit snarky and cynical and given her a tendency to to distance herself from others. She is brought onto a team that initially has trouble trusting her as a probationary member that later becomes accepted as a full member and in being with this group, she begins to realize that they all really care about her and starts to learn to open herself up more.

She is also an underrated character with an extremely interesting set up who was cast aside and largely forgotten way too soon.

I have two main types for characters, my friend. And she hits both of them.

BUTTERCUP

There isn’t really a whole lot to say for Buttercup besides that she is the titular character of my favourite book and movie of all time. She’s the reason my dad calls me princess and says as you wish to me a lot. She is the reason I tried to crimp my hair (with very stupid looking results that thankfully are not photographically preserved) as a kid. She’s a character I’ve had a strong attachment to for as long as I can remember, so I couldn’t not put her here honestly.

EMMELINE VANCE

Emmeline is another character I wrote previously in an RP group. I love Harry Potter and I love the unexplored possibilities of the Marauder’s Era. While I was in this group, I grew very attached to Emmeline and she quickly became one of my favourite muses to write, so when I made this blog it was an easy choice to bring her back here.

FAWN

Yet another former group RP character (a lot of those are/will be on this blog. They’re about half the reason I made it tbh. The other half is characters I wanted to play but didn’t feel I could handle more separate blogs for). Tinkerbell is one of my favourite animated characters, but when I started watching some of the disney fairies movies, Fawn interested me a lot. Her love of animals is something that I shared and is a character that I saw quite a bit of myself in. When we were developing some of the disney fairies for our group rp, my friend and I cowrote Fawn’s bio, taking a lot of inspiration from the area I grew up in and some of my personality traits. We’re far from the same person, but there’s a lot of similarities between us that were used in developing her background for our group universe, which basically meant I had to play her after that and, like Adella and Emmeline, she was one I became very attached to wanted to revive here.

FELICIA HARDY

One of my earliest introductions to Marvel was this Spider-Man video game my dad had and there were a few levels in it that featured a lot of Black Cat. She is basically my first memory of female marvel characters so there’s a lot of love and nostalgia there. Also, I have a thing for morally grey revolving door type characters apparently. It’s not a problem….

HATTER

Another former RP group character. Hatter was the first of the small handful of male muses I have written. Alice in Wonderland has always been one of my favourite stories, I have seen countless adaptations of it, and the many different approaches you can take to these characters intrigue me and make Hatter a fun person to write and develop.

KAREN PAGE

So I never read a whole lot of Daredevil before. It wasn’t that I didn’t like DD, it’s just that he didn’t appeal to me as much as the various X-Men groups, Cloak & Dagger, and some of the other series I read. However, when the Netflix show came out I just fell in love with Karen Page! She’s a character I’d been wanting to try out writing for a while but since I had so many blogs, I didn’t want to start a new one. Then I made this blog basically for the reason of being able to try out a bunch of muses I wanted to play so she was added here!

OSWALD

Another damaged, underrated character! Wow! Are you shocked?! (Also another former RP character).

Wanting to play Oswald came a little bit from Disney Nerd-ness. Does it get much more underrated than Walt’s forgotten first major character?

Plus, I just really loved Epic Mickey and yeah. He’s my type obvs.

ROSALIE HALE

The Twilight novels are my guilty pleasure, okay? I will freely admit this. Also continuing the trend of the damaged. Rose is one of the example I point to when it comes to the side characters in Twilight being more interesting than the main characters. Her history is sad, her love with Emmett is beautiful, and I just love her.

Also fun fact: my cousins and I did a play of Twilight for our families when the first movie came out because we were that freaking lame and I played Rose in that. Why do some of these characters have such embarrassing stories attached to them??

TESSIE

Another former RP character I was very fond of. Tessie is based off of one of Thumper’s sisters from Bambi (underdeveloped side character trend returns) so she’s a little bit more of an OC, but she has been fun to develop. She’s sweet and softspoken and probably a lot more like me than a lot of my other muses.

WANDA MAXIMOFF

Wanda is my favourite Avenger and favourite technically non x-men marvel character (though lbr, axis didn’t happen and she’s still a x-affiliated character). She fits My Type that I described with Ashley, and she’s a characted I relate to a lot for one reason or another even though we come from very different backgrounds. I currently write her as part of an RP group as well and I enjoy playing her there, but as much as I love group RPs and establishing a connected universe, I love the freedom of Indie RP a lot too and wanted to be able to play around with her more in an unlimited setting so….she’s here now too.

#sebastianshaw #answered ( ooc )#ooc ( munday )#so many patterns here omg

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serenagaywaterford · 5 years

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Now back to the show, I am very much in agreement with you on Nick. He’s boring af, writers haven’t done him any favors, and Max so far has unable to rise above the material. He’s an important character, but I don’t care too much. Since I am predicting Fred’s death, I am thinking maybe Nick is spared? Killing off two big characters? Oh, the horror!!

As far as Serena kicking it, I think it’s unlikely, but if she gets a glorious death that she deserves, maybe fighting on the side of the good, I am okay with it. I kinda don’t want her fully redeemed. Conflicted bad guys are always far more interesting in my mind. Plus, I am a big Yvonne fan, so for selfish reasons, I’d like to see her expand her horizons and move on to other great projects. I don’t want the show to drag on, 5 seasons is enough for me. Anything longer, quality may suffer.

-----

Thank god. I mean, the amount of blind Nick/Max worship on this site is just exhausting af. And for some reason they all get posted in the tags/searches consistently and I am forced to see them on my dash EVERY FUCKING DAY (even when I’ve blacklisted the tags!!) but other blogs (like mine, for example lol) can only get like 1 of 10 posts to show up in the main THT tags. Anyway, that’s a personal tumblr gripe tbh.

I really wonder how much of my displeasure and boredom about Nick is because Max is subpar. There’s a certain level basically every other actor in this show is on, and then there’s him... way down below and it’s painfully obvious how out of his depth he is alongside them. I think, if it wasn’t for the talent of the main actors he works opposite (Elisabeth, Yvonne, and Joseph), it would be even more obvious. Also, I do not get the attractiveness thing. He’s not at all appealing to me personally and I can’t find him hot no matter how hard I squint. (Fuck, I think fucking Isaac was better looking! And we all know my terrible opinion about Fred, heh. There is an attractive man!) But then, how much of my inability to view him as hot is due to the fact his personality/character does fuck all for me?

Actor opinions aside, I understand the purpose of Nick. I truly do and I accept it. I can’t denigrate the role he plays in helping tell June’s story. But I still struggle to care anymore (I skip basically ALL Ni*k/June scenes tbh. YAWN.). I certainly got the point of him in S1. He was very important for multiple reasons. But I find him to be a character who seems to get away with being a shitheel and fans just drool no matter what. And god forbid anybody criticise him for anything he has ever done! They have a woobie excuse for every single thing and nothing is ever his fault and he’s “just following orders so he doesn’t die too”. (OH YEAH. Cos that isn’t a historically problematic defense at all...)

At least we admit Serena is a horrible person lol and don’t justify or write-off every single thing she does. Cos, well, Nick has freewill too and he makes many, many terrible choices for YEARS and is completely complicit in Gilead as well, but hey, he’s so hot therefore who cares as long as we get to see him with his shirt off. Him and June are so in loveeee uwu!!!!! UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

But again, that’s a fandom issue of mine, not even a character/show issue. I just feel on the show he’s sort of... past his prime in terms of usefulness. Like, sure, he’s gonna help June escape (AGAIN) and that’s all well and good but like... been there, done that. Even this concept that he’s important because he represents the “brightness and hope” in an otherwise bleak show because ~tru wuv~ just falls flat for me. I think there are plenty of opportunities for longterm slices of hope --- like, I dunno, #resistance, Mayday, the women breaking out of their bondage and getting revenge... like, the entire point of the show, lol. I want women’s happiness without the need for men to be involved in it as a necessity; I don’t want “Men are the reason for women’s true happiness” as a takeaway from THT. As an aside, sure. But not THE focus. Not to mention it leads to “dick is imperative for women to be truly happy” and I just don’t even wanna go there with how problematic that becomes when taken as a generality.

So, yeah. Nick. He’s fine. He’s not a morally good character. He’s grey. Just like almost everyone else in the main cast. But he lacks the complexity of actually morally obtuse characters. While Fred may be becoming more and more cartoonish and 1-dimensional, he still has more complexity than Nick. And, really, the more they flesh out the female characters--even the “evil” ones--the flatter and flatter both Nick and Fred look, especially in comparison.

Maybe this is intentional by the show? It is, after all, a show about women and living as a female in an ultra-male-dominated fascist society, not an in-depth character study of terrible men and their awful ideas/choices.

I am definitely thinking Nick is spared. Probably until the end of the series, tbh. He’s just too much of a fan favourite. Sigh. And this isn’t GoT when you can kill anybody no matter how popular lol. If any male in Gilead survives, it’ll be him. We know that after the Waterford’s house burns down, everybody is fine. (Rita, Nick, Serena, and Fred.) Whether Fred does ANYTHING to Nick afterwards is debatable cos they need him around to be all uwu with June, who clearly comes back into the Waterford’s circle somehow. I would wager not, even though that is absolutely ridic. The amount of plot armour Nick has is atrocious at this point. He actively insubordinate--leaning on downright criminal (in Gileadean terms), sinful, etc etc and Fred just goes, “Oopsie daisy! Oh well!” And it doesn’t even make sense. June, I get. He’s obsessed and possessive. Nick though? Fred really must be the dumbest fucking guy, unless he thinks Nick is an Eye and will squeal on all his (and Serena’s) terrible shit. I dunno. It’s so vague and blah. [And the fact he wouldn’t try to seriously/secretly disappear the dude who’s shtupping the Handmaid he wants so bad is lazy, inconsistent writing.]

(Question: Is Nick actually an Eye? Is that confirmed? From what I recall, he sort of implies he is but we never see him doing ANYTHING Eye-like, and Eyes have a shit tonne of power, do they not? He doesn’t seem to have any pull whatsoever with anybody. We see him working for Pryce, sorta. But again, that doesn’t scream “EYE!” to me. But that could just be because he’s such a weakling. And really other than his hints, the only other suggestion is Emily claiming there’s an Eye in the house--which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.)

If Serena dies, it’d better be on the side of the good--or after she’s done good. I think it’s pretty impossible for her to fully atone or be redeemed, but hey redemption isn’t a line you cross, it’s a journey you take! I also think it’s 99.9999% certain she will not get a happy ending for the character. All that said, I doubt they’ll kill her off in S3 too. (Although it really does depend about her baby and her contract lol. Sometimes actors take time off to be there with their babies/toddlers. But also some don’t and considering her career is finally taking off, I feel it’d just be bad business to take a break.) I mean, I don’t want her to remain a bad guy, tbh. I’d rather her move from conflicted bad guy who does some good things here and there, to conflicted sorta-good guy who does some bad things here and there.

I think Serena’s the type of character that would be impossible to fully redeem. She’ll always be selfish, she’ll always be looking out for herself, she’ll always have some skewed, icky views on things, she’ll always have a lack of foresight, she’ll always need to be pushed to do difficult but good things (lazy? cowardly? I dunno), she’ll probably always waver when really pressured. She’ll probably always make some choices that are not good, or at least not nice. And things that makes us go “FUCK!” I’m just really tired of the flip-flopping and inconsistency of S2. (2x10... ahem.) Going back and forth on things is fine, but going up a cliff slowly, and slipping sometimes, but still incrementally moving forward---and then just jumping off the side of the damn cliff for no reason is just bad writing, imo. (And then somehow expecting the viewers to... just, accept that she’s back halfway up the hill where she was before she jumped in like a week... ugh). Just no more of that, please.

I’m with you on the 5 seasons max. I feel like 4 is possibly even pushing it. I guess my opinion may change (or not) depending on how well S3 is done.

#Anonymous

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