#It's very melodramatic and it's not the same without that interaction OK?

[y-rhywbeth2]

Have they restored Gortash's Durge-specific dialogue lines yet? I kind of want to play, but I'm still holding off until I can do the proper Act 3 divorce arc. What even is the point without "I always liked you too"? What even.

#Listen in my head there is a very detailed nervous breakdown in that study after the fight with a high risk of Durge relapsing. #Going back to villainy - the role they BELONG to - because they still have the netherstones. Their plan doesn't have to be a waste. #Even if Father has disowned them and everyone is dead. #It's very melodramatic and it's not the same without that interaction OK? #I still get jittery from serotonin from that #HE HESITATES #babbling #/durgetash #the garbage men

[fromthedeskofthecaptain]

For anyone who would like to know the contents of the Ghosts Empire Spoiler Special, I’ve summarized the discussion below.

There are two episodes, both centered on series 2, excluding the Christmas special. The first is Martha, Ben and Larry and the second is with Matt and Jim (and is better in terms of how deep they go into characterization and the writing process). I’ll skip the bits that are just chatter.

I’m not going to transcribe it all, but I’ll spend a few posts talking about the key points. I’ll do the second one first, because it’s the richest.

Writing process-

Storylining is done half a series at a time as a big group and then who writes each episode depends on availability and not being engaged on other projects. People will often write an episode because the plot was their idea, but it can work out that they write up an episode based on someone else’s outline.

They knew they wanted to show characters going against type - angry Pat and vulnerable Captain - and that they wanted to explore love between the Ghosts. They wanted to show humanity, add complexity and depth to characters and allow a range of movement into the present and the past. It was harder to write than Yonderland because there isn’t a new character with an “adventure of the week”.

Episode 1 -

The original idea for Pat’s DJ spot was that he would give an intro to Dexy’s Midnight Runners “Come on Eileen” and hum the first few bars, but it turned out to be £1000s to obtain the rights. Jim was so thrilled that it got such a laugh in rehearsal he considered paying himself. They tried a few others (2,4, 6, 8 Motorway) and then Jim improvised “Chicken and Chips” thinking he’d have a lot more tries, but Tom Kingsley moved them on before he could.

(Btw, they had no problems getting Kylie to agree to use of “I Should be so Lucky” because she loves the show! Music Club presented the same problem of having to ask for clearance and pay. Apparently there’s no standardized system so they had to think of something and ask, rather than picking from options with a price list.)

Episode 2 -

They came up with Dante’s plot to give Alison some way of moving through the house and interacting with everyone. They went with the Ghosts natural reactions to partying. Pat was conflicted between fun and the right thing. The plague ghosts and Mick giving everyone the plague was based on a play Matt was in years ago about a village where this happened.

They structured the episode by using the principle “what’s the worst thing that could happen next?” a la Curb Your Enthusiasm and thought the answer was the plague ghosts coming upstairs and there had to be a cause of that. The archaeologist was a good person to deal with the question of how is it they’ve just found out what Mick did.

Mary x Robin came from them thinking someone would end up having some intimacy with someone in hundreds of years without much stimulation or any other people, or even things, to touch. They joked about everyone having had ghost sex(!!) with everyone else at one point. (Editor’s note: I can’t really see this. Kitty doesn’t know what it is, Cap and Fanny are too uncomfortable with it so that leaves Julian, Thomas, Humphrey and Pat, who I suspect is too loyal to his wife).

Episode 4 - The Thomas Thorne Affair

There was an awareness that Thomas’s character could become a “one note joke” with no capacity for development. Jim described him as potentially like Pepe Le Pew. Matt asked Charlotte how she felt about the sameness of some of their interactions. They thought about having Alison just lay down the law as it were, but that would change who he was too much. They needed to “play the same tune with a different dynamic” in Thomas’s arc. They considered making his character a peeping Tom, but thought that would bore everyone quickly.

Episode 4’s plot structure came about because they wanted to promote the unreliable narrator idea. They knew some ghosts would have witnessed Thomas’s death and that, plus familiarity with characters, let them play with the format. Matt didn’t want to have the flashbacks to deaths to be done the same way each time. Pat’s in series 1 was obvious because he “wears his death” (Jim). Jim did an improv of Pat’s death in the writer’s room when they first had the idea of how he died. It worked because although it’s quite horrific, the audience knows he’s ok, in a sense, afterwards, so it can be comedic too.

Matt felt a bit guilty about being front and centre of the story he wrote. The unifying thread was Mike and Alison’s issues with truth / perspective. His death also establishes that some ghosts are present at others deaths.

They developed Thomas by writing about why he is as he is. Matt thinks that because Thomas died “heartbroken and fixated” Mary’s observation that “you stays how you dies” is psychologically true, too. They always knew he died in a duel over a woman, but elaborated it to include dying thinking he’d been abandoned. He transferred this state of unrequited obsession onto Alison. Thomas can’t cope with Robin’s point, re monogamy, about what would he do if both Isobel and Alison were alive.

They still aren’t sure if he’s a good poet - they wrote it so we know it’s bad BUT he can believe it’s good and the audience within the show are a bit confused about whether it’s just confidently delivered rubbish or not. They think he’s capable of good work but gets too caught up in his fixed ideas of what being a good poet is and tries too hard (the implication being that this blocks genuine creativity/ originality). His vulnerability is quite charming (Matt).

The idea of the cousin betrayal was thought up once they started. The first idea was just that Thomas tells a story and others interject to say it wasn’t like that and Kitty would tell her version which the audience would know to be true because she has no guile. The contrast was originally just in Thomas’s grand passion cruelly interrupted story versus the actuality of a not very good poet being deluded about a random woman who barely knew who he was. The twist of the cousin was a spark in the writers room that everyone was immediately excited about and that matches Thomas’s sense of the melodramatic.

(As an aside, they always knew there were different groups of people in the house before the Buttons and intended to use that to explore other stories and characters throughout history.)

Matt is a bit embarrassed that they didn’t really have space to give Francis a proper motivation for orchestrating his cousin’s death. They put in a bit about him appreciating Button House and added a line from Thomas - “don’t embarrass me, cousin” - to suggest perhaps Thomas bullied him a bit. They thought about giving Francis lines about having gambling debts to create an urgent need to marry into money, but that made it too obvious that Francis was a bad guy.

To be continued...

#bbc ghosts #ghosts #matt baynton #jim howick #podcast #empire online spoiler special #writing #thomas thorne #pat butcher

[alvearesss]

Tow Ubukata hates Ginoza Nobuchika

I don’t know about you guys since a lot of you don’t care all that much about Ginoza Nobuchika as much and believe Kougami is the stardom of the series and should be treated as such despite the show introduces a balance for each character to have their own share of screentime unlike other shows and anime who share a habit of favoritism for the main character and leaving no other character a fair share for their own growth and how the progress among the characters themselves and the plot.

Although Ginoza was not the main protagonist of show, he was still an important character, or the tritagonist (the third important character after the protagonist and deuteragonist) followed after Akane. I have yet to make a Kouginaka anayls essay on why Akane and Kougami (or as in the Shinkane territory) cannot progress or even happen without the presence of the senior Inspector and no matter you all want to deny this but it is true, where did you think the direction would go if Ginoza never existed?

Anyways on to this…

It’s not a unheard for me for having such a hatred for S2 and for good reason. One of my biggest pet peeves for S2 is that it’s a rewritten version of S1; everything Urobuchi worked and developed for the series was thrown in the trash to make room for Ubukata’s gory sci-fi and melodramatic scenario and the characters are watered down from their representative personalities in favor of the new environment and drama playing in his tunes.

But to become an exact clone of his former father? why make him a Masaoka 2.0 if the writers knew on producing another season for psycho-pass, look at Tenma for peek’s shake he’s basically another Masaoka 3.0 (are there any other Tomomi Masaokas I should know about? ok, enough with the Spongebob jokes) By the end of S1, Ginoza became more down-to-earth after being rehabbed and no one seemed to realize and ignore the fact he was not only devastated by the death of his father and Kougami leaving them behind and was possibly dying from blood loss as well, he showed no signs of the former Enforcer and lost father in terms of personality and antics by the end of the series. This just makes Ginoza appear out-of-character and it drove me nuts to this sudden character change and haven’t notice it by the first time watching S2.

In Case 2, we finally got introduced to Ginoza’s mother for the first time after years of curiosity wondering what happened to her, we came to the conclusion to the possibility of her being dead since she was barely mention at all and how did that impacted Ginoza as a person. Masaoka said his son have the same eyes when he was younger meaning that senior inspector have took after his mother in appearance. We can see distinguish them as they don’t look that similar

let’s not us forget the horrible same face syndrome from Frozen (a movie so mediocre that it deserves the same mockery as Twilight did back in the late 2000s - early 2010s, good old days)

Ginoza and Sae manage to dodge the bullet on this one

Plus, there is also the Mika-Ginoza dynamic, because why not? if you notice how in both season 2 and 3; any interactions between Kougami/Akane and Ginoza seem nonexistent? In season 2, they barely talk about anything else outside of the workplace and all Gino does is worry constantly about Akane’s hue despite knowing she is capable of handling her hue very well by the end of S1 after putting her down multiple times for her so called reckless behavior. His reunion with Kougami in S3 was a shallow one and to my disappointment, was expecting a soft of teary-like or grounded, hell even Ginoza and Akane don’t have any interactions in S3 now that I think about it. In Case 1, it is revealed he is worried and misses Kougami and talks fondly about him; how he hated himself for not saving him but is proud of him for being strong which made him jealous. Then there’s the hallucination trope that Shinkane fans are madly in love with and it brutally debunks the notion that it’s only Akane but it turns out Ginoza also suffers from hallucinating Kougami as well!

To me, it’s feels like the team had Ginoza rewritten for the reconstruction of the new dialogue for the show and as a someone whom Kougami and Akane never had interactions in the past and as someone is now given the background character treatment.

While the official website does mention Mika is a lesbian and the show implied it by the end of the Rikako arc but it was never explored, her interactions with Yayoi seems more like sisterly love rather than romantic love, because of this, Mika’s orientation doesn’t share the same treatment as Yayoi’s creating the notion she is not a lesbian after all. So Ubukata decided it to throw it over the window because an enforcer for some reason doesn’t have a love interest so how could he pair him with someone not named Akane? oh! tease ship him with Mika! (plus gino is not gay so why not AGAIN lol)

what a lovely hetero couple despite they don’t have a much of an emotional interaction but birds of feathers am I right?

Say what you want to say about the Butcher and how he likes to the tease Ginoza just for angst but at least he managed to write and develop a well constructed character who went from an indifferent detective who doesn’t bat an eye for what happens to the people he loves after combating the hurt of losing them to level-headed guy who now accepts a new method on how to handle criminals after becoming one himself because he still has that special someone (not Mika) can show him that there is a life outside and it is not the end of the world to be demoted, Ubukata on the other hand doesn’t know what to do with him and do not see Ginoza as important as the two main two and decided that it was okay to not respect his former character.

I know it is not Ubukata who is only to blame for this, the entire team as a whole and it’s very shocking how Shiotani and Fukami who worked with Psycho Pass since the very beginning hasn’t called any of this out and went along with the flow because reasons

Sure, he wasn’t killed off for any reason but is demolishing his character worthy of it? Geez, who knows what will happen to him in the supposed S4

#JusticeforGinoza2020

I had to delete my previous post because it wasn’t showing on the tag so here’s a standard edition and enjoy your reading and let me know if you want to add commentary in relation to this topic

#psycho pass #psycho-pass #ginoza nobuchika #mika shimotsuki #masaoka tomomi #akane tsunemori #kougami shinya #anti ubukata #anti ginomika #anti frozen #anti s3

[hellojeffreyjames]

Another mental health awareness month has come to an end. One challenge that a designated period presents, is that it can be hard to navigate for people who struggle to function in a neurotypical culture. It’s hard to parse all the virtue signaling or things folks say just to just participate in the theme of the month. To get ready for all the people to check in once in November, and then abandon them when that dynamic is so stressful they’d rather not have that person check in at all. It can be stressful to interact with people who are well intentioned, but lack an awareness of what being supportive means. It means they may dismiss the idea you have a neurological difference because they view a diagnosis as a defect instead of a part of neurodiversity.

This dullness may not happen, but if that’s the case, it doesn’t have to be forever. It can be a stepping stone towards building cognitive habits and disciplines you need to reduce your dosage. It can be the phase you needed to rewire your neurons. You may be able to build the structures you need to be medication free in a couple years instead of decades.

There are some neurological conditions that make it impossible to do certain things. One can learn the skills to work around that, and make the impossible, possible.  but for many people it’s like trying to learn calculus while bench pressing 200 pounds as someone keeps sticking a needles in your foot and telling you that you have no value and would be better off dead. For me that is not a question of whether or not I could learn calculus like that. It’s whether or it I should.

There are simple things I intend to do every single day and just cannot do them when I’m not on meds. I will beat myself up, tell myself I am a waste of a human life, and a burden to everyone, because I can’t do the even most basic things. I can’t do for those around me what I absolutely believe they deserve from me, and I don’t even have the language to explain why the most simple tasks are next to impossible. How it just looks like me being inconsiderate and selfish. How climbing Mount Everest would genuinely be easier than, say, mailing a letter. 

That’s not an exaggeration. I mean there are chemical differences that make a simple mundane task more difficult than something that includes tangible stress, urgency, extreme physical challenge, and in a distraction free environment. Obviously I’d fail at climbing Mount Everest as an untrained mountain climber, but I would engage with the activity. Taking three coffee cups off the nightstand and putting them in the dishwasher?  Without medication, that might happen if I think about it every day for the next... 2 years. Ok, that one is an exaggeration, but it would be quite a while.

I feel very proud as I watch my friends make life plans and conquer the world, as I formulate my own elaborate 36 step plan to ensure I brush my teeth today. 

If anyone identifies with any of that, to any degree, I just want you to know that you’re not alone. Yes, I also set myself 26 alarms and nine reminders and still did not make it to the post office yesterday. Or the day before that. Or the day before that. Yes, I also don’t know what to tell my family about why I don’t reciprocate birthday cards. Yes, I also feel like I am doing my best to hide and perform happiness and high function.

Have you gotten so good at it you’re afraid people think the performance is the really of how you are doing, and that mentioning your struggles would be seen as being attention seeking or melodramatic? Hey, me too, and I also feel this paradox:  Wishing somebody knew, yet embarrassed that if anyone really new, they wouldn’t know where to begin to support me and I wouldn’t know what to tell them. Yes, you and I both share that fear, that it will only end with a loss of dignity and to be treated like that unstable neurotic friend that folks keep at arms length and never expect much out of. That you’ll be stuck at the “kids table” of life and never be invited to anything that counts. And “me too” about... a lot of other and darker things we won’t get into right now.

We can spend a lot of energy juggling all of these difficult concepts and throwing the balls up so high in the air we don’t realize The massive amount of energy we are blowing through to just make it through each day. We can’t see them all at one time and realize, no one on the earth should have to do all of that alone. No one on the earth can do all of that alone. You are not a failure to seek help.

You are not a failure to seek help.

You are not a failure to seek help.

You are not a failure to seek help.

You are not a failure to seek help.

To stay afloat we keep juggling but if we stopped we would see it fall to the ground and say, “Holy shit I’ve been trying to manage hundreds of emotional, intellectual, psychological, spiritual, and physical burdens that the people I compare myself to ...simply don’t.”  The reason I feel feel like I am at the razor’s edge of losing everything, is because I am trying to do something nearly impossible, and perhaps absolutely impossible to do on my own.

You are not a failure to seek help. You are not dishonoring your body or your mind to take a medicine. You’re not a failure if you need to talk to a psychiatrist. You are not a failure if you believe you have neglected your whole life, for your entire life.  Because I know how hard it is to just make it through the day and still be alive. I know how hard it is to wake up every morning knowing you’re going to make it through this day, by the skin of your teeth, again.

That’s not your fault. The hundreds of things you have to conquer in your mind to make it through every single day - that’s not your fault and I need you to know that I am so. goddamn. proud of you. I’m proud of you because this fight is absurdly difficult. I hope you can trust me in that because at this point I’m an an expert in this fight.  I’m an expert at putting in every last drop of my effort and willpower, just to tie my shoes, get in the car, and drive to work. This fight is not a fair fight. You’ve been fighting an incredibly unfair fight, if not always by yourself, often by yourself ...and that is why I am so goddamn proud of you. 

I am more proud of you than I am of billionaires. I am more proud of you than those people who get to live laugh love their dream life and get paid to travel the world and sample ice cream for their ice cream travel blog. I’m proud of you because I know what you have to do to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you don’t get to sample the ice cream flavors of Bangladesh for doing so. 

So I want you to know, again: it’s okay to seek help. It can be a difficult road but I recommend professional help. Some wonderful spiritual books and friends can’t often fight that incredibly unfair fight.  You are a specific person and a mental health practitioner will be able to understand your specific needs and make adjustments as needed. 

I can’t promise you that I will give you exactly what you’re needing but I am here if you need to reach out and want to know more about getting help. I can promise, that if your friends fail to support you in the ways that you need, it’s not because they don’t love you, it’s because they are not professional supports. They haven’t trained for this. Seeking professional support is the way that we begin to believe we are not a burden to our friends and family. 

Even when you never were, it’s the same feeling of asking loved ones casually about some car issues for years, tinkering with your engine for years, then hiring a mechanic. There’s no one in your life who will shame you for seeking a mechanic and you might be amazed at how quickly your car begins to drive more smoothy. 

Anyone who talks negatively about medication, therapy, psychiatry, etc. do not have your well-being in mind.  they are sales people for their own ideologies. It’s not about you it’s about how you should take natural medicine or trust Jesus. There are people who would rather you buy some supplements and remain miserable than to see a professional and be shown that professional help does make a real difference.  it’s best to avoid those folks for a little while.

You are not a failure to seek help.

I am more proud of you billionaires and  professional ice cream tasting supermodels. 

You are fighting a battle you do not deserve to fight alone.

You are absolutely positively not alone.

You’re not a failure to seek help.

Things can get better.

Things will get better.

In the darkest places, reasons to try, to go on, to keep living, are often often nonexistent. I don’t want you to have any hope that things will change. I’m asking you to place a tiny sliver of trust in these things I’m saying. The best recent to do something different and to seek help is going to be, for no reason. The voices in your head will try to stop you and you must tell them, “there is no reason I’m doing this. But I am still going to do it.” Hope will betray you. Friends and family are not professional supports and will let you down because they don’t have any training.

I just want you to place that sliver trust in how I know road will get smoother. Things will get easier. Seeking help is not failure. I’m not asking you to hope I know this. I am asking you to trust that I notice. And I’m asking you to please keep on seeking help even though the help feel sometimes. The system may be broken but system can be a crucial part love you reconnecting with yourself and your inner resources so that you can create your own path of healing.

I’m so incredibly proud of you. thank you for reading all of this and if you choose to, thank you for placing that sliver of trust in these things I’m saying. And if you can’t do anything else, keep being around people you feel good around. The people that do you feel excepted and listen to with, and if you don’t have any of those let me know and I’ll make sure you do. 💛🤍🖤💛🤍🖤

#mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealth #depression #anxiety #ptsd #cptsd #rejection sensitive dysphoria #rsd #trauma #traumaawareness #suicide awareness #growth #love #support #acceptance #kindness #it's okay to not be okay #you are not alone #you are not a failure #you are not a burden

[iwontstayhidden]

Inadequate.

Summary: After Putting Others First, Logan believes that the other sides have wanted him out of the picture all along. Fortunately, Virgil, Patton, and Roman help him to see how much he is truly appreciated. [We’re gonna address all of the insecure!Logan stuff that's been building up and validate him with Platonic LAMP and wholesome talks.]

Read on Ao3

______________________________________________________________________

Not that any of you care, but I am unharmed, and I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just here to deliver one last fact, and then I will do you all a favor and spare you my company.”

Logan sank out with a heavy sigh. His intentions were to return to some new research on an unusual stellar explosion, but he found himself distracted by recent events with Thomas and the sides. Logan thought that by reducing his physical presence to a text bubble for the latest episode, he would decrease the likelihood of the others becoming irritated with him. But this did not seem to be the case at all, based on the evidence mounting in Logan’s mind. Roman said that he “very much did not succeed” in being less invasive. Patton expressed gratitude that Logan’s factoids (an inaccurate term that set Logan even more on edge) were optional this time. Had they always been so vexed by Logan’s facts? And as his function in the group was to provide logic, did this further imply that they are always aggravated by Logan himself? By his mere presence?

Logan found himself pacing back and forth, an activity he usually deemed futile after seeing Virgil work himself up while pacing countless times. But the more he allowed himself to review previous interactions, the more he became sure of this pattern of detestation. And the worst part was that each of the sides had generously attempted to inform Logan that they did not want to hear from him; did not require his assistance! But he was so caught up in his facts. In sharing everything he knew with those he considered to be his companions. Perhaps he had been mistaken in thinking that their feelings for him were affectionate. This certainly wouldn’t be the first time Logan was fooled by the complexity of human emotion and relationships. His friends had been clear all along…

                          “Logan? Shut your ever-flapping gobtalker.”

                                    “Oh hush, sub-astute teacher.”

                                       “Not a good time, Logan...”

                                    “Oh shut up , nerdy Wolverine.”

                             “I’m afraid this is a benched trial for you.”

Logan felt himself losing physical and mental control as these memories grew louder and more insistent. He backed up, feeling vaguely dizzy, and registered that he hit the edge of his bed.

Simultaneously, there was a knock on the door. “Logan, are you in there?” Virgil. Logan sighed, which sounded like a loud gasp for air. Perhaps Virgil might be useful in this moment, at least for temporarily grounding him and decreasing this budding anxiety. “Yes, you may enter, Virgil.” Logan thought that his response sounded quite normal, a decent cover-up for his current state of mind. He was proven wrong immediately upon Virgil’s entrance. “Are they still- woah dude, what’s up? You look like me at 2am” Logan swallowed, which felt considerably more difficult than it should, considering humans swallow saliva an average of 500 to 700 ti-

Virgil interrupted Logan’s racing thoughts. “Okay, I can basically hear you thinking, and it’s making me anxious. What the hell happened up there? I leave you guys alone for one freaking episode and you come back looking like you’re about to put me out of a job. Who do I need to punch?” Logan offered a weak smile, and Virgil raised an eyebrow. “I am- I’ve discovered- I am experiencing some...unpleasant thoughts which appear to have induced some level of physicalized anxiety” Logan rushed out, looking away. A pause. Now you’ve done it, Logan. You’re the embodiment of logic, this display of emotions is unfitting! Virgil is going to be just as baffled as you are, and he won’t fix it because he thinks you’re a freak. Let him leave now so you can continue to reflect upon how useless you’ve been to Thomas and the others.

“Logan, hey. Can you hear me? You don’t have to look, that’s okay. Can you feel what you’re sitting on right now?” Logan closed his eyes. “Th-this feels like the floor? But I wasn’t- I wasn’t here a minute ago…” Logan flushed, frustrated by his stuttering and rapid heart rate. “Yeah, you slipped down there a minute ago. L, I don’t want to freak you out but it seems like you’re having a minor panic attack. Luckily, you’ve stumbled upon the expert. Heh. Cause I’m...ok, nope, wrong time for dark humor…” Logan willed himself to glance up at Virgil and started laughing in spite of himself. Virgil joined in after a minute of half-hearted glaring. “Okay, deflections unfortunately don’t work in the long-term. It uh, usually helps me to do some deep breathing if you wanna try that?” Logan nodded, guilt tugging at him for making Virgil deal with this.

Afterwards, Logan did feel more in control, at least in a physical sense (he should have thought of that, he knows how to address a panic attack, why couldn’t he just think-) “Thank you for your assistance with this...minor anxiety attack, Virgil. I do feel badly that you had to witness and address it, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I’ll be fine from here since you wish to leave.”

Logan looked up again as he heard Virgil scoff loudly. “What the hell gave you the idea that I want to leave? Did you leave your self-esteem upstairs, pocket protector?” Logan’s breath caught in his throat. “It would be impossible to ‘leave my self-esteem upstairs’, as self-esteem is not a physical entity-” he started. Virgil held up a hand, cutting Logan off. Shouldn’t you be used to getting cut off by now Logan? He wants you to shut up! “I really don’t get why you STILL take everything I say so literally. Seriously though, what’s going on? Do I need to get Patton in here?” “NO!” Logan yelled, wincing at his voice. Virgil raised an eyebrow and left without another word. Logan sighed. Having Virgil’s company to ground him in both a literal and figurative sense had been comforting, but it also made everything more painful. Logan realized more than ever how much he would truly miss Virgil’s presence when he finally ducked out, how much he genuinely enjoyed being around the other sides…

“Heyyy there kiddo...Virgil told me that you’re kinda off right now so I wanted to check in! This isn’t about earlier, is it? You know that we care about you!!” Logan willed himself to avoid snapping at Patton, but he didn’t want to risk being vulnerable in front of another side. “Don’t worry about me, Patton, I have simply realized belatedly that I am-” Logan swallowed, looking everywhere but at Patton“-undesirable as a friend and a side of Thomas’.” Logan finally looked up, and saw what he could only describe as pity reflected on Patton’s face. Don’t be melodramatic, Logan. Just explain that you finally recognize your inadequacy and share your intentions to duck out.

“You can’t really think that, LoLo-” Patton started, at the same time that Logan said “I have realized-” Patton opened and closed his mouth a few times before nodding at Logan to continue. “Thank you for allowing me to finish, it’s greatly appreciated. I have realized that my knowledge is disagreeable to you all, and as that is both my primary function and my singular skill, it would be best that I...duck out.” Logan finished, looking up to see Patton’s eyes fill with tears as Virgil and Roman burst into the room, practically falling over each other.

"NOT SO FAST, MICROSOFT NERD" Roman bellowed. "I don’t know where you got such a ridiculous idea, but we certainly don’t want you gone!” Logan adjusted his glasses, uncomfortable. He should have expected this sort of protestation from the others, despite his accurate statements. It is unlikely that the other sides would acknowledge their true feelings about Logan to his face.

“Falsehood. Perhaps you hadn’t specifically considered my ducking out, but I am not daft, Roman. I have noticed your eye rolls and reactions to my presence. I apologize for not arriving at this conclusion sooner.” At this, Logan’s voice cracked slightly. Patton’s eyes widened. “Oh Logan, that’s not true!! Roman and you may have your little arguments here and there but it’s mostly in good fun, right Roman? We totally value all the cool stuff you bring up!” Roman nodded, eyes fixed on Logan as if he didn’t recognize the side behind his insecurities. Logan took a shaky breath, trying to count to four silently. But it was not in his nature to allow false information go without a debate. The voices in his head were pounding, growing louder and more furious, more wild, more hurt. Logan glanced up and met Virgil’s worried stare, Patton’s bewilderment, and Roman’s passionate fury.

“Falsehood, again. As I stated, it took me far too long to recognize that I am….unwanted. But I will not be lied to now in some attempt to spare my feelings...”

“Lo, we are not lying when we say we car-”

                                                      “ENOUGH!!!!”

Logan began pacing again, hands switching between combing through his hair and flailing frantically. “I have compiled specific memories of each one of you asking me to shut up, to exit conversations...for example: just today Roman, you told me that I did NOT succeed in being less invasive, and quite literally slashed my words in half, which Patton thanked you for because you had ‘cut the tension’. Patton, you just said you ‘value all the cool stuff I bring up’, but earlier appeared quite relieved that I had made my presence and voice optional, which you took advantage of by hitting my ‘skip all’ button! I am not useful in providing logic, I am...not useful as a friend seeing as I can’t read social cues or provide joy, s-so….” Logan closed his eyes as he felt tears slide down his cheeks. The barrier had broken. He tried pushing past the others to leave, but a pair of strong arms wrapped around him.

“Logan, I...apologize for what I said earlier. And for anything in the past that has made you uncomfortable. We may have our moments not seeing eye to eye, but at the end of the day you keep me, and all of us in check. You balance us out! And that- meaning YOU- is something we could never live without, you nerd. I’ll admit we have all hit some rough patches recently. Even I, your dashing prince, have been dealing with some...insecurities. So perhaps we have been harsh, and haven’t made enough room to appreciate each other. Especially to appreciate you, Logan. You are...truly amazing.” Logan looked up to see what he could only classify as genuine care and sincerity reflected in Roman’s eyes.

Patton moved to sit beside Logan and Roman, resting his head on Logan’s shoulder. He spoke after a moment, voice wobbly and eyes bright. “Roman is 1000% right, LoLo! And I am so sorry that I didn’t realize you weren’t feeling needed sooner. That is a horrible feeling...But you know what? You are a fantastic friend.” Logan interrupted, “Earlier you said that one can’t learn to care for others from a book, Patton. You were correct-” Patton shook his head, taking Logan’s hand and squeezing it once. Logan...did not hate it. “I shouldn’t have said that. But I did mean it when I said you’re a fantastic friend. You didn’t learn that from a book, Logan. You learned it from being with all of us! You show us you care in all those fun little ways that just scream ‘Logan!!’ And we absolutely love that! And we love you, exactly as you are. You aren’t giving yourself enough credit.” At that, Logan finally smiled.

Patton shot a pointed look at Virgil, who was still standing nearby. “Oh come on, I thought we agreed that my compliments are unspoken??” Several pointed looks. “Fine. Listen...I know where you’re coming from. I don’t think anyone is surprised to hear that I’ve gone through the whole ‘should I be here’ thing on basically a daily basis. But I don’t think Thomas, or these weirdos, or I could function without you. And yeah, you’re not mushy or affectionate in your friendship, which I actually relate to and appreciate because Patton’s hugs are already overwhelming enough-” “VIRGIL-” “-anyway, you show us that you care in other ways. And the fact that we’re saying we couldn’t do this without you means that you are a good friend. We just all show it in different ways.”

Logan stood up, wiping his tears quickly as he approached Virgil. They tried some combination of a hug, back pat, and hand shake before simultaneously deciding on finger guns. Patton started laughing, and they all joined in as Roman yelled “You absolute NERDS” fondly. “Do you believe us, Logan?” Patton asked after they quieted down. “I have reason to believe that these types of things take time to work through, but yes, I do find your words to be genuine and...moving. Thank you all, from the bottom of the heart that I apparently do have.” They all smiled at that, making no comment about the light blush that tinted Logan’s features.

The rest of the night was filled with BBC’s Sherlock, trivia games, and laughter. Once the others had gone their separate ways, even Janus and Remus made an appearance, and Logan found that their chaos was surprisingly comforting. He’d have to unpack that more later. For the moment, he felt content, knowing that while he still had much to learn of emotions and friendship, he actually knew a bit more than he thought. And that was adequate (at least for now).

#the working title for this was VALIDATION STATION #STARRING LOGAN SANDERS #sanders sides #logan sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #platonic LAMP #sanders sides fanfiction #thomas sanders

[gold-from-straw]

Backstage of the Universe - ch6

Charles manages to trigger not only Dirk, but himself - TW for panic attack at the end of this chapter!

Read from the beginning on AO3 if you prefer ^_^

Charles only stopped when he was safe in his room, breathing hard. He caught sight of his face in the mirror, gaunt and pale, and wanted to throw up, smash the glass, drown in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.

Just like mother, he thought, flinching away from the sight, from the memories. But better that than just like father.

He’d thought he was different. All those years he’d spent training young people to embrace their powers, push them further, control better, see what they could do. He’d told himself it wasn’t the same thing, these kids were excited, they wanted to push their limits.

He’d wanted to as well. Wanted to please father, even when it hurt, when the drugs burned, split his fledgling defences down to dust, when he had to push further, deeper, until his head throbbed with the effort.

And if he got it wrong…

He’d seen Svlad’s fears. A sad shaking of a kind face, making way for a grinning nightmare of a man. Good cop, bad cop.

He wondered how many nightmares he featured in, to how many of his students he’d been the monster.

He turned everyone’s attention away from him, hiding in his room like a coward, but surely that was for the best. He wanted to do what was best for everyone, that’s all he’d ever wanted - to help people. But his judgement was obviously flawed. Every decision he’d made led to someone getting hurt. He could almost hear Raven rolling her eyes and calling him melodramatic, but it couldn’t be melodramatic if it was the truth, that if he was turning into his father, the children were surely better off without him.

When the door creaked open, the evening shadows were long across the floor, and Charles startled. He’d been so confident in his ability to hide he hadn’t even noticed his focus slipping, yet another instance of being too bloody arrogant. He reached out to the little figure hesitating just beyond the room, but his power slipped right past him. Charles panicked, pushing harder pushing away.

“He’s not in here, Svlad,” said Erik, and Charles hunched further into his chair, wheeling back further into the corner. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Mr Charles,” Svlad said, walking forward anyway. The sunbeams fell on his thin, worried little face, tear tracks still clear on his cheeks, and Charles turned away in shame, his heart breaking for the little boy.

“Mr Charles, the Universe wants me to bring you this,” Svlad said, holding out a cardboard box, trembling with fear or strain.

Erik followed him in, his brow creased in sorrow for the boy. “Svlad, he’s not…”

Charles released his push on Erik, averting his eyes. He held out his hand for the box. “Sorry,” he murmured, fingers tapping awkwardly on the box.

Erik sighed and crossed his arms. “Have you been hiding in here all day?” he asked.

Charles ducked his head further.

Erik rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Great. OK, Svlad, where to next?” He glanced up at Charles, his eyes shuttered, not letting any emotion show, and that was no more than Charles deserved, really. “He’s been searching around this monstrosity of a house ever since I found him. Keeps saying the universe wants him to find something - that box, apparently. I don’t know how he even knew the entrance to the attic was hidden in that cupboard, but there we go.” He turned back to Svlad. “Would you like to… to find your friends? Or… something?” he asked awkwardly.

Svlad just blinked up at Charles, his thin fingers twisting together. “I… I really don’t know how to control it, Mr Charles,” he said, almost in a whisper. Charles looked up, catching traces of defeat and despair, hopelessness starting to seep through the strange wall against their powers that all these children seemed to have. “I don’t… nothing works. I’m sorry. I can’t make it happen, I swear, I can’t--”

“Oh, Svlad, no, please. I’m so very sorry I made you feel threatened, it was never my intent. I only…” He took a deep breath and put the box down, reaching out for him, his hand hovering over his upper arm. “I thought you might be feeling left out. Like no-one cared for you. You’re always so quiet and hidden away, I just wanted to--”

“Please, Mr Charles, please, the box, please?” He lifted both fists up to his face, hiding behind hunched shoulders and spindly arms.

Erik huffed and picked the box up, dumping it on Charles’ lap. “Open the damn box, Charles, give the child some relief.”

Charles swallowed hard and pushed the lid off the box. It fell by the side of his chair and he clenched and unclenched his fist, as if touching it had infected him with its memories.

“What does he need to do?” Erik asked Svlad.

Svlad bit his lip and shrugged. “I don’t know, sir, I really don’t, it doesn’t… it doesn’t--”

“--work that way,” Charles said softly.

“What?” Erik frowned.

Charles took a deep, shuddering breath. “Nothing. I, uh… Thank you for this, Svlad, it was very… kind of you to bring it to me.” He forced a smile and tried to push the box off his lap. He would burn it later.

“What’s in it?” Erik asked.

He didn’t even sound interested. He wasn’t doing it to be cruel, Charles knew that for certain. He flinched anyway.

“Charles,” Erik said, drawing the name out. A warning? Charles wasn’t sure. The musty old-paper smell carried with it something else, something impossible, because the disinfectant couldn’t possibly have permeated the pages. The strong, sterile scent of the lab wasn’t something that could last for so long. He tried to breathe shallowly, take in less of the scent as he looked down at the papers. Touched the first file, opened it up.

“That was a good season,” he said, recalling his father’s voice, the way he’d heard it when he spoke to Kurt, the two men’s heads bent over this file while Charles sat silently and waited, hoped that he’d be able to go and nurse his migraine alone soon. “They made some major breakthroughs that year.”

He opened the file. Why were his hands shaking? He’d dealt with all of this stuff already, he’d processed it. He knew what they’d done to him was unacceptable. He knew he had a right to be angry with his father for treating him as a specimen, an adorable lab rat and he had moved past it. He was the better man, now, he was… he was fine. Why were his hands shaking?

“Charles,” said Erik, sharper now, and Charles gasped, afraid, what would they do, they’d be angry if he failed them, but no, it was Erik, he was safe, he wouldn’t harm Charles, he wasn’t them but he was angry, and everyone had their limits, everyone was only a tantrum away from slapping Charles across the face, and...

“Charles!” Erik said, leaning right over, holding his shoulders like he was about to shake him, but it felt like he was holding him through thick clothing, like his body was coated with a heavy cloud. He whimpered, and it was so pathetic it only made the panic worse, and suddenly he was gasping for air, unable to get enough into his lungs, his hands shaking and scrabbling and all around him, for miles, people dropped to their knees, forcing air into their lungs and terrified when they couldn’t get it, his panic screaming, breaking through his barriers like it had when he was a child, spiralling out across the miles, all their panic echoing back to him and he was going to die, he was dying, he was dying--

Then there was a voice, and words he didn’t understand, but arms that meant safety and everything he could never have, would never deserve because he was a piece of shit a bad boy and not trying hard enough never working hard enough never good enough no, Charles, listen to me, come closer, focus on my voice, focus on my thoughts alone. Here, I’ll keep you safe here, come into my mind, I’ll keep you safe, you’re safe now.

Tagging everyone who interacted with last chapter - thank you! @slytherclaw134689, @thewritersspeaking, @akasanata, @highfunctioningsociopathsworld, @somebodyfromhell, @longkissgoodnightbatmanandtwofac, @iwillshipyouman and @sparklypoms

#Lyn's Writing #Backstage of the Universe #cherik #Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency #x-men: days of future past #emotional hurt/comfort #kid fic #blackwing #panic attack #tw: panic attack #child abuse

[wandaposting]

I'm new to the comics and heard about house of m from my local comics store, it was recommended to me but after seeing some of your posts I'm interested in what you think? I haven't read it but from what I have seen on the internet maybe I shouldn't

I’ll never tell someone not to read or watch a thing they’re interested in! By all means I think you should give it a shot! unless it’s game of thrones The Olivier Coipel interiors are baller. I’ll always praise Olivier Coipel art. It even has some legit feelsy moments too. Olivier Coipel draws feelsy moments like a master.

House of M out of context and by itself is fine with some fascinating concepts, though I would advise pairing it with Avengers Disassembled, which takes place before House of M and gives you some of the why everything’s happening. If you’re looking for a dramatic melodramatic Marvel Comics event that features almost every major Avengers and X-Men player, it’s good fun.

If you’re going into it trying to make sense of Wanda’s narrative in the comics, that’s one of the big places where it falls apart. It assumes the following things of Wanda’s character, which previously were not true (i.e. Bendis pulled them out of his ass to support his personal narrative):

Her memories of her “soul” children, William and Thomas Maximoff, were erased, and their existence and de-existence is now some horrific secret the Avengers are keeping for some reason

Chaos magic(1) is a Big Lie; she’s been reality warping this whole time. Her later interactions with Agatha Harkness were self-concocted hallucinations

Also she murdered Agatha Harkness. She’s been talking to the mummified corpse of Agatha Harkness this whole time

Wanda is actually mentally unstable. Because With Great Power Comes Great Mental Instability, especially if you’re a Woman(2)

Magneto was some kind of father figure during her childhood (the part where she starts crying “daddy, daddy,” and the way he takes “custody” and spirits her away to Genosha, you’ll know when you see it), which is supported by literally nothing

1: Chaos magic is later on and off retconned back into existence

2: This was later retconned into the Life Force (never to be used again) possessing her during some deal with Doctor Doom and driving her mad with its power, in Children’s Crusade. Also, sometimes it’s implied that she can still perform the same reality warping feats, other times not so much. It’s inconsistent

And after the events of House of M, Wanda was subjected to editorial limbo from around 2005-2011. As in, no one could write about her. This took a lot of the wind out of her status as a premier Avenger (she’s the second female Avenger after Janet and was more or less treated as such until Bendis Nation Attacked), during a time period when the Avengers IP was gaining steam.

House of M itself features Wanda very sparingly. It’s the Logan and Peter Parker and sometimes Erik show. She’s usually off-panel aside from the climax. The same can be said for Avengers Disassembled: she’s mostly off-panel until she starts wrecking the Avengers to convey how Dangerous and Unstable she is.

So as a Wanda fan who tries to make sense of her narrative, it makes absolutely no sense and only does damage to her character long term. When fans cite how Awesome HoM is for her, their main metric for Awesome is one-off displays of power. Well, that’s her one-off power display, exacted by the narrative needs of Brian Michael Bendis over any sense of agency or iota of personality that Wanda should’ve had.

So without going into dog whistle political terms like sexism or ableism………… I just don’t personally enjoy what they did to her. At all. So I call it garbage klsjdfl. As with all things, it has its high points (the art- nothing to do with Bendis ok sdflkjs), and I still wouldn’t dissuade anyone interested, but……………

I guess I just want people to understand that it saw Wanda Maximoff, the character, as an utterly disposable plot device, and didn’t respect that character in the slightest klsdfjklsjfskl

#wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #house of m #answered #Anonymous

[theoldgods]

CAOS 2 thoughts/reactions/spoilers I guess?

That was at least 50% stressful nonsense, so much so I attempted to spoil myself for the end after about 2 eps because I could not continue watching if Blackwood was going to get even slightly away with it. Which he sort of did but I’m ok with him being on the run for drama in season 3 as long as it means Zelda is well and truly done with his ass. I can’t take a third season of Zelda being weirdly dickmatized by this dude. (I did like how she explicitly was like “I’m not in love with him, I just want power and maybe an occasional dicking and whipping,” which is valid, but c’mon, Zelda, you didn’t seriously believe he really would ever share power with you, did you? That was somewhat unbelievable as a character move and made her seem pretty dumb/naive.)

Other shit I wasn’t wild about

The compulsory heterosexuality that underlies so much of the witchcraft in this world that’s sort of being dismantled but not quickly or explicitly enough for me, really. There will be great moments like Lilith’s speeches or Zelda and Prudence teaming up against Blackwood but then also a continued overall focus on heterosexual romance. How often do these women have to learn that the straight men around them are 150% garbage and not worthy of them until they get their male asses in order?

Relatedly, the continued absence of any f/f romance and the fact that Ambrose lost his male lover and got a female one instead (pansexuality is all well and good but, weird optics when he’s still the only really openly, detailed-ly LGB character in any sense beyond “yeah sure I’ll do an orgy with the same sex”) and the fact that the extremely gay Dorian Gray turned out to be rather evil (or at least a dark shade of traitorous gay, which is always side-eye-worthy if it doesn’t get developed further in future eps)

Shit I liked:

Nick/Sabrina, overall. He’s a messy dumbass but he’s mostly just there to look hot and prop her story and agency up so I’m okay with it for what it is.

The handling of Harvey/Roz and the Harvey/Roz/Sabrina triangle. I always like seeing teen romance being handled with a modicum of emotional maturity and a lack of jealousy, and this was good on those fronts. I’d prefer Harvey and Sabrina to stay broken up for good but I won’t be surprised if they end up back together anyway eventually.

Most of Prudence’s overall story. Frustrating as hell to watch her be continually desperate for Blackwood’s love but they finally acknowledged it wasn’t worth it at the end and I like the idea of her and Ambrose teaming up to get his ass and save the twins.

Hilda getting a bit more development, killing people for Zelda, and a getting a surprisingly nice offbeat but sweet midlife romance with what’s his face the incubus

God!Sabrina was visually very cool to me with the explicitly Jesus-esque and saintly imagery in the church, the Weird Sisters’ emotional reaction to her in that role, etc. Not wild about her just magically curing Roz’s eyesight but eh, it sort of came back to bite her in the ass? 

I love a good “fuck it, let’s kill God” storyline, so I completely dug the HDM-esque storyline there for the last ep. I’d really like a more explicit exploration of what Jesus and the Abrahamic God are in this world, though, since they appear to really exist--is Jesus just another witch/magic user? Is the Abrahamic God just another fallen angel setting himself up as a deity a la HDM? If so, can we please kill him too?

Lilith, like Zelda, had a messy road to “actually, fuck men”-ville. Sort of reminded me of an abusive relationship and finally being able to escape Lucifer by the end? I’d like this independence and antimale attitude to stick around and not just be a passing fad on her way back to some sort of “proper” heterosexuality again. Michelle killed it, though, as always, and her crowning herself (and crying watching the play of her life, and using her rib to make Adam) made me actually quite emotional.

I’m not trans, but I thought Theo’s story was handled about as well as you’d dare expect from a melodramatic teen drama. I liked mandrake!Sabrina’s patronization of him being called out for what it was and also how his midseason prophetic vision shit was all about dysphoria but in a thematically appropriate way? Idk.

What I want in the next season:

Seeing what Lilith is up to in hell, preferably still in Michelle Gomez’s body. (Can we get both Mary Wardwell on Earth and Lilith using the body of Mary in hell for maximum Michelle content?) Seeing her interact with other women somehow (ideally Zelda as her new high priestess).

Zelda and Hilda working to reestablish a coven and church (FOR LILITH???!) and hopefully reform the shit out of it. I’d absolutely love to see witchcraft move away from explicit monotheistic-ish religion/worship and into a more free will type thing, or at least go way more polytheism. You have fucking magic, babes, you don’t need to worship various demons playing dress-up as gods, especially with Lucifer currently imprisoned. (What are the other covens going to do, like....do they even know Lucifer is currently out of service? Could be interesting.) I also want to see what Dorcas and Agatha are like without Prudence and just in general what the remnants of the coven do and how they work with Zelda. 

No more Blackwood/Zelda unless it’s her literally killing him. Just. Enough. Give Zelda someone truly worthy of her thirst. (Preferably a woman, ideally Lilith, but u kno.)

Blackwood fucking dying in some appropriately painful and ignominious way. Yeah, sure, Richard is hot, but he’s a fascist fuck who’s had his run of it. We need catharsis.

Sabrina and co doing cool shit in hell I guess en route to finding Nick. Ideally, them killing Lucifer for good, but I’m assuming he’ll somehow get out of Nick’s body and continue to be an antagonist, especially since IIRC there’s also gonna be a season 4.

Some sort of f/f romance. Sabrina exploring it would be cool, and of course my holy grail is Zelda doing gay-ass shit, but at this point I’ll take just about anyone.

#chilling adventures of sabrina #caos spoilers #zelda spellman

[fanaticalparadox]

Why do you like Yang/Merc so much Adox

OK LET’S JUST DIVE INTO THAT QUESTION SHALL WE. 

It’s obvious from the second you look at them; Yang and Mercury are foils. They parallel each other in basically every way. Silver and Gold, Arms and Legs, Mommy issues and Daddy issues etc etc. But if you go deeper than that, they fit the brand far more than just being mirror images of each other. 

A foil character is one who brings out the traits of their counterpart very dramatically. It makes a character “shine” more, hence the name “foil” character (shining like foil). Examples of foil characters outside of RWBY are Romeo and Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet (Mercutio’s humorous skepticism brings out the melodramatic romantic of romeo) or Peter Quill and Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy (Peter’s goofy nature is made funnier or more obvious in the presence of a very stoic and serious Gamora). 

So this gets into why I love GnG so much. Yang and Mercury are the PERFECT example of foil characters done right, and the way that their respective developments play off of each other is incredibly interesting to dissect. 

Yang’s whole journey from volumes 1-3 to Volume 5 is about realizing that she needs to get more mature and less impulsive. She’s canonically admitted to being aimless and without a direct goal, and she’s always been the most bullheaded character in the cast (outside of Adam. purely for pun reasons). As she grows, she learns to be more calm and less stubborn (outlined by her conversation with her dad in volume 4). She develops a goal; protecting Ruby. And that’s basically where we are with her character. 

So what does Mercury have to do with it? 

Well, Mercury works as a way to truly see Yang’s progress as a character, and vice versa, as we get closer and closer to Mercury’s own character arc. 

In the first GnG fight, during the tournament, you’re really able to see how Yang is super bullheaded in comparison to the very agile and precise Merc. 

In previous fights, like the one with team FNKI, or the one in the Yellow Trailer, this was shown as an asset. Her fun fighting style and her explosive semblance make her seem almost unbeatable. However, in this fight, the viewer is actually able to see some flaws in that argument. It’s obvious now, that this is a weakness. Mercury plays her like a game of cards as he uses that same temper that aided her in so many victories against her, and frames her. He establishes her main weakness in both battle, and as a character. 

And this comes into play when she fights Adam. It makes sense. Her impulsive nature is brought out in that fight, while Mercury’s calm and in control attitude shines brighter. Without that fight, her defeat at Adam’s hands wouldn’t have made at much sense. Her later character growth would’ve felt out of the blue. 

Mercury is also used to show how Yang has grown, in their rematch during the Battle at Haven. 

You are able to see that the tables have turned dramatically. Mercury fights more aggressively, probably because he and Emerald have been knocked down a peg by hanging out with Salem and friends. He has little outbursts every time he’s not in control, something brought out by the way that Yang proves herself to have learned to be more thoughtful. 

I think that even though it felt a bit cheesy with how it was incorporated, the moment where Yang detaches her arm is SO important to both of their developments, because it subliminally shows the viewer exactly where these characters are in their arcs, and how they’ve changed in the past few seasons.

I think that even though Yang and Mercury’s relation to each other as characters and foils is obvious, it’s also the most well written. There is so much subtle, show-not-tell with these two. And even if you don’t ship them, you seriously can’t deny it. These two characters may not interact often, and may not ever end up on good terms, but they are very interweaved in terms of growth, and will probably continue to be that way for awhile. 

I may be overanalyzing this but yeah. It’s for this reason ^^ that I want to see more of them. Not only would they have really fun banter and fighting styles, but if Rooster Teeth continues with the way they’ve been writing them (albeit with some better dialogue) i think that there can be some really interesting stuff in the future. 

So yeah as a writer I really enjoy such intricate character work, and foil characters are some of my favorite things to overanalyze because they can have so many layers and impacts on one another. If these two were in a relationship, outside of the plot/series obviously, they could bring each other up respectively, something that’s really fun for me to write. 

Also I love them both so there’s that. 

#rwby #analysis #rwby 5 #rwby 4 #rwby 3 #rwby 2 #mercury black #yang xiao long #foil characters #in depth #fanfic #gng #gauntlets and greaves

[delos-mio]

Golden Hour - Part 2

A/N: part two is here!! please let me know how you’re feeling about this fic! your feedback is always greatly appreciated c:

-----

When you woke up the next morning, Steve was still fresh on your mind. The way he smiled, the way he smelled…everything about him haunted your dreams. Truthfully, you felt kind of dumb for having such a big crush on a guy you didn’t get a number from. But you couldn’t help yourself—Steve had worked his way into your head. After freshening up and pulling a sweatshirt on, you wandered out into the living room of your apartment with Wanda where she was eagerly chatting with Sam over a cup of coffee.

“Fancy seeing you here, ditcher,” you teased Sam as you grabbed a mug for yourself.

“Hey now! I couldn’t find you when we left. So, who really did the ditching?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrow.

“You did. You left the second we got beer, asshole.” You sat across from them and stuck your tongue out at him.

“Where’d you end up anyways? I didn’t hear you get in until almost 7,” Wanda said with a tiny smirk. This information amused Sam and he whooped a bit before you flipped him off.

“It wasn’t like that. I um, I ended up on the roof of the house with Steve,” you said while you shot daggers at Sam.

“Rogers?”

“He said literally the same thing when I mentioned you last night.” You paused to take a sip of the too-hot drink before continuing. “Where have you been hiding Steve Rogers anyways?”

“He ain’t hiding! I met him during freshman orientation. Clint and I lived in the dorm room next to him and Bucky,” he said as a matter of fact. “He plays baseball, so he’s always at that house. Real good guy.”

“I know.”

“Oh, so you’re the Steve biographer now?” he asked with a shit eating grin, making you flip him off yet again. Then you watched as realization came across his face. “You like him! Oh man, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about him being totally your type. You and your pretty boys. Mhmm, I bet he liked you too,” He shook his head and smiled again.

“Oh, fuck you!” you laughed. “I am mad at you for not introducing us, though,” you said with a fake pout.

“How’d you guys meet then without your charming and well connected best friend?” He was loving every minute of making you squirm.

“I um, well, I saw Billy over pretty close to me. So, of course I freaked out. And I kind of grabbed him since he was the closest to me and asked if he’d pretend to be my date.” Once it came out of your mouth, you realized just how melodramatic you’d been the night before. It was a wonder Steve didn’t run the minute you asked him for such an odd favor.

“You what?!” Wanda laughed, unable to contain her giggles. Sam just stared at you with his dark eyes and raised eyebrows.

“It got worse.” They both stared at you, urging you to continue with your story. “I kind of…I may have kissed him when he said Billy was walking in our direction.” With that admission and the ensuring roar of disbelief and laughter, you grabbed the nearest pillow and buried your face in it. “I know! I know, ok?”

“I don’t even know what to say. Must have been a good kiss to make him stay with your crazy ass all night,” Sam quipped and you launched the pillow over at his smug face. “Did you give him your number or anything?”

“He said to come by the studio sometime. Not really sure what that means in guy speak. Any insight?” you asked Sam.

“Well, he’s pretty closed off, especially about his art. So, I think the boy’s got it bad. I can ask him if you want.”

“No!” you yelled abruptly. “I mean, no.”

“If you say so.” He finished the rest of his drink and brought his mug to the sink before shrugging into his jacket. “Well, ladies. It’s been lovely as always, but I have to get ready for my date.”

“Econ girl?” you asked excitedly.

“Econ girl.” He opened the door before leaning back a bit. “We should all probably start calling her Gabby, by the way.” With that, he gave you a wink and slipped out the door.

----

Steve quietly tried to sneak back into the apartment he shared with Bucky. Generally, he was a pretty heavy sleeper, so he figured it’d be no problem. As the front door clicked shut behind him, another door clicked open inside the apartment. A girl clad in only one of Bucky’s shirts exited his room and immediately jumped upon seeing Steve. He quickly averted his eyes and turned his attention to the ceiling, trying to look anywhere but at the half-naked girl before him.

“Sorry,” he murmured as she quickly padded down the hall to the bathroom.

Steve pushed his hair back from his face and shook his head. Of course Bucky had company. He’d been at the same party last night, and it wasn’t often he couldn’t find companionship if he so decided. He made his way to his room which doubled as a secondary studio and let the back of his knees hit the mattress, flopping onto his back. His eyes fluttered shut as he mulled over the events of the evening. He had walked into a party with Bucky, who almost immediately ditched him, only to be asked by a pretty girl to pretend to be here date. She was very pretty, wasn’t she? Two souls, abandoned by their friends, finding each other in a packed party. He let out a small sigh as he thought about her smile and how unapologetically herself she’d been from the moment she spoke to him. As he was getting lost in his own thoughts, he was interrupted by his door being flung open and Bucky leaning in his door frame.

“Do you mind? I’m really tired,” Steve grumbled, still not opening his eyes.

“You dog! You got home later than me. Don’t think that’s ever happened before,” he said with a smile evident in his voice.

“It’s not like that. You’ll notice, Buck, that unlike you, I didn’t bring anyone home with me.” Steve was starting to get irritated by his roommate’s presence and hoped he’d leave him in peace and quiet sooner rather than later.

“Alright, alright. I’ll let you sleep. But you’re gonna tell me about her when you wake up.” With that, Steve heard his door shut again, leaving him in the stillness of his room. He fell asleep half hanging off the bed where he landed with the girl who kissed him without reservation on his mind.

----

The weekend passed with a lot of idle time thinking about when you could possibly see Steve again. You were really regretting not scrawling your number somewhere for him. It was torture not knowing how to find him again outside of going to the studio, hoping dumb luck would make you run into him. Yes, there was the option to ask Sam for his number, but you already came off strange enough during your first interaction—you didn’t need to scare the boy away with a creepy text out of the clear blue sky.

You made it to Monday morning and somehow managed to make it to your 8:30 am class on time; a rare feat for you. Thankfully, the class was all engaged in a lively discussion of why Susan didn’t make it to Narnia at the end of the The Last Battle, so it was easy to stay alert and engaged. Before you knew it, your professor was dismissing you and reminding you all about the paper that was due on Thursday. You shuffled down the stairs of the academic building, AB as it was affectionately called, and paused once you got to the quad. Normally, you’d head home for a few hours before your afternoon class, maybe to the coffee shop if you were drowning in homework. But you had Steve’s invitation ringing in your head. Was it weird to go see him so soon? But he wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t want to see you, right?

The art building was only a quarter mile from your building, so you made quick work of the walk and tried to hype yourself up, telling yourself that there’s nowhere to go but up after what you put him through on Friday. When you got inside, you realized you had no idea where you were going. You had yet to take an art class while at school and though you knew he’d either be printmaking or drawing, you didn’t know where to begin looking for those studios. After wandering aimlessly for a minute, you saw a tall girl stalking out of a room to your left. You quickly caught up with her and called out from behind.

“Hey! Really sorry to bother you, but do you know where I could find a printmaking room?” you asked with a smile. The girl turned around and shot you a look, removing one earbud from her ear.

“What?”

“Printmaking…where could I find that room?” you asked again, this time less sure of yourself.

“Down that hall to the left,” she said unceremoniously and popped the earbud back in, turning back to the direction she was originally heading and left. You widened your eyes to yourself but took her directions. At the end of the hall, the was a set of double doors propped open and a few tables in a large workspace. There were only a couple students in there, hovering intently over their work. You poked your head in the room and gave in a quick scan, wondering if you’d have any luck finding Steve.

Immediately, your eye was drawn to him. You were thankful he didn’t notice your presence because you were definitely staring. All weekend, you were sure you had a picture-perfect vision of him in your head, but you were abruptly reminded that he was much more handsome than you could dream up. He had traded in his plaid shirt from the other night for a paint-stained grey tee that was about a size and a half too small. You remembered from hitting your chest on his head that he felt muscular, but seeing him in this shirt showed off just how built he really was. His biceps strained under the short sleeves as he delicately carved back layers of his work with an Exacto Knife. There was a backwards snapback holding his grown out hair back out of his face, his beard speckled with a bit of stray ink. You allowed yourself one more moment to admire him from afar before you approached. You thought it’d be fun to get his attention the same way you did the night you met and gently tugged on the back of his tight shirt.

“I was wondering when you’d come around.” You could hear his smile before you saw it. He set down the blade and turned to face you, letting his palms rest on the edge of the table behind him. He looked completely in his element and relaxed, his blue eyes squinting slightly as he looked you over.

“I wasn’t sure if it was really an open invitation,” you smirked before taking a seat in the chair next to him. He joined you and maneuvered his chair slightly so he could have his body turned toward you.

“I promise you, I only say things that I mean.” He lifted hit hat and pushed his hair back before securing it again. You couldn’t stop the heat that started to rise in your cheeks.

“So, what are you working on?” you asked, peeking over his shoulder.

“Well,” he turned to move the board between you two, “it’s a print I’m working on for midterms. It’s part of a series based on deconstructed mixed with hyper-realistic anatomy.” You looked it over and saw the allusion to a ribcage and beating heart. He had meticulously hand carved out every vein, artery, and muscle. It was gorgeous. You sat for a moment and just marveled, not only at what he had created it, but the man who created it. Steve was soft where someone else in his situation would have been hard. He was a gentle jock and you were completely taken by his almost impossible juxtaposition.

“Steve, it’s beautiful. I love it,” you said sincerely, letting your hand rest on his bicep. Holy shit, he was solid.

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” He flashed you that wide smile that made your knees weak the night you met. He let his legs slide out a little and leaned back casually in his chair. “You know, I talked to Sam yesterday,” he said nonchalantly. You immediately felt your stomach turn and looked at him with wide eyes.

“That motherfucker. I hope he didn’t tell you all the greatest hits of my blunders,” you groaned.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Steve chuckled. “He just said he heard we’d finally met and asked if we would like to go with him and Gabby to the football game Friday.” He looked at you expectantly and ran his hand idly over his beard.

“W-we? Sam never asked me to go,” you half asked with confusion.

“Yeah. I think he was kind of hoping I’d ask you to go with me,” he said with a smirk. Relief and realization washed over you. “What do you say? Can you make it through a whole football game with me and Sam?”

“Sam? I don’t know, the jury’s still out on him.” You both laughed a little nervous laugh. “But I could watch a game with you, yes.”

“I can pick you up around 6 if that works for you,” he offered nervously, seemingly surprised him and Sam’s plan worked out.

“You’re not going to make me sit in barf, right?” you asked and bit on your bottom lip, unable to resist picking on Steve just a bit.

“Very funny,” he drawled sarcastically. “Could I—would I be able to get your number? So you can tell me where you live and all that,” he added quickly; you were really starting to love seeing him get flustered. You reached for a scrap paper and pencil and scribbled down your number, sliding it across the table to his large hands. His fingers just barely brushed yours as he took the paper before stowing it away in the front pocket of his jeans.

“You can always use that number before Friday too, if you want,” you said with a sly smile and stood up from your seat, leaving another small kiss on Steve’s bearded cheek. His laugh carried a bit as you walked out of the studio, your feet feeling like they were being carried by tiny, pink fluffy clouds.

You had a date with Steve Rogers.

#Steve Rogers #steve rodgers x reader #captain america #captain america x reader #marvel #mcu #chris evans #steve rodgers imagine #Steve rogers fanfic #captain america imagine #captain america fanfiction #steve rogers au #college au #masterlist #golden hour

[thefarrons]

FFXV is just so disappointing to me

Ok before I go any further I just want to say that YES this is a rant about XV however this is not in any way me forcing anyone to share my opinion on the game nor is it to shame those who do love the game.

Everything I say about the game comes purely from a place of excitement as a fan of this franchise and a fan of Jrpg's in general.

That being said let's get into this.

FFXV out of all the games in the franchise is the one game is the one game I REALLY struggle to see myself ever returning to in the future and again please don't think I'm saying this just to be edgy but I genuinely mean it. The game is in no way a complete train wreck however I just struggle to find anything that I really like about the game. I really don't think XV does anything particularly well.

Story/characters

Not gonna dwell on the story for too long because at this point everyone and their grandmother knows about the problems with this narrative but just to reiterate cutting the story up into a movie/ anime and paid dlc was a GIGANTIC detriment to this game. What square should have done was make XV as best as they could then made supplementary content (such as the movie, anime ect) to compliment XV's narrative. But since they didn't nothing in XV's story makes all that much sense. It's all payoff but no execution.

Luna's death and ardyns reveal should have been much more impactful then they were but because everything in this narrative is so poorly fleshed out you just don't really care and what's supposed to be a "OOOHH!!" moment quickly becomes a "oh ok." That's bad. I've said it once and I'll say it again but Luna's death I's easily one of the most beautiful and cinematic scene in the franchise however the entire scene falls flat emotionally because you the player just either don't feel for these characters, this off screen romance, or barely can even comprehend what's going on.

XV just has this HUGE pacing issue as well and it's just mind boggling how fast and abrupt certain scenarios and events happen and end. Again the transition from free roam in the open world to the Leviathan is such a WTF moment. It begins so fast and ends so quickly and abrupt you can barely even comprehend what just happened so you just forget about it and move on (not to mention the battle itself is shit but more on that later)

Or take the train scene for example. One second everyone's all fake mad at each other (particularly noctis and gladious) and then all of a sudden they get attacked by ardin and then gentiana shows up and is revealed to be Sheva and prompto gets kidnapped and this all happens within the spawn of 10mins (slight exaggeration)

The game just also has a complete tone and gameplay dissidence problem. Take for example when the party learns insomnia has been taken over and that the king is dead. It's a emotional scene (I guess) as noctis has just learned that his father is dead and his kingdom in imperial hands. Now what is noctis and the party gonna do about it?

Dick around in this open for a bit until coir gets in contact with them I guess.

Oh.

You also just don't even feel the weight of what's just happen as you just barely have a clue as to who the enemy is and what their motivation is. The whole game I knew NOTHING about them empire, their king or whatever plans they had. They were completely off screen the whole game. Which leads me into my next complaint.

The characters.

This is easily my second biggest problem with this game. A lot of people find that the cast in this game is the best thing about it. People find the Bros funny and witty with a lot of banter. I can somewhat agree with this. The cast is likeable and lighthearted which is a good contrast from XIII's moody cast.

Unfortunately a lot of this is ruined by just how one dimensional, corny, underdeveloped, stero typical and generally unimportant this ENTIRE cast is.

Look I'm gonna compare this cast to XIII and before I do so let me point out that I'm not trying to convince you that XIII'S cast is high art or that they are best written characters ever because tldr they're not and their actually pretty simple HOWEVER. Every character in XIII (save fang maybe) had an arc of sorts (and fang at least had a motivation) all the characters in that game have a problem (typically one that involves another party member) and they interact with each other to solve that problem and move on with the main one. You can argue just how "good" all the characters arcs were but none the less they were THERE and the characters did change. XIII had a lot of drama in the cast. Yes some of it was melodramatic and over the top but it was there and the characters eventually got over their differences and worked together so when they start throwing banter around in the second half it actually works considering all they went through previously.

Now back to XV's cast.

I'm not saying the cast needs to have drama between them or that they need to be fighting all the time or anything like that BUT you can't just have me go off the "oh we're just Bros to the end" without any real development or explanation. Why exactly are these guys friends? And what do they go through exactly? One of which is answered in the anime so it doesn't count to me and the other is just kinda non existent to me. During the main story I really struggle to remember scenes in which the party truly bond and have a moment with each other. The game is apparently portraying the plot through noctis perspective but he really don't get any good moments or arcs with any of the characters.

The only arc of sorts that I can imagine is the exchanges between noctis and gladious which in my opinion was some of the cringeworthy and forced scenes in the game. Noctis is trying his hardest to save everyone and deal with the hardships he's facing but gladious for no fucking reason is being a complete DICK to him. Everytime gladiolus opened his mouth I wanted to punch him or at least have noctis do it. Some have said that the reason for this is because gladiolus wants noctis to become a good king or whatever but unfortunately gladiolus doesn't say this until the very end so the entire game the player just thinks of him as an asshole.

And that's just one of many problems. Let's not even get onto promptos little "I was born in a lab" subplot that goes absolutely nowhere (at least in the main game)

And then the side characters.

I mean what's to even say about them? Their bland, unimportant, one note and show up only once. Aranea is the only good side character but unfortunately she shows up only twice and overall has no real relevance to the main story.

But yeah that's just XV's main plot.

A whole lotta nothing.

A lot of people even fans agree that the plot is the worst thing about the game but they say that it makes up for it with it's gameplay.

To that I also heavily disagree.

XV is a horrible story with mediocre gameplay.

First off I'm not gonna compare XV's gameplay to games previous in the franchise or even most Jrpg's in general as gameplay wise XV really shares nothing in common with them. XV is most comparable to an action game so I'm gonna compare it to games like dmc or bayonetta.

What's the end result?

It's shit.

Ok no let me backtrack some. I really wasn't expecting dmc or bayonetta levels of complexity or fluidity however at the same time I was also just expecting something competent. XV's battle system "works" and I mean that just as plainly as I write it. On first impression it looks cool and feels nice but as hrs start to pass you realize just how shallow, repetitive and poorly designed it is and can be.

Most if not all battles can be summed up to this.

*Warp strike and hold circle until you see an attack coming or have a button prompt*

*When hurt pull up the item list and use elixers*

Rinse and repeat.

The game never actually gets "harder" it just throws enemies with larger health sizes at you who can take you down in one hit if they're slightly higher a level than you.

And when the battle system isn't being boring it's bugging out. The camera is god awful half the time especially when in tight places, enemies rarely ever have proper attack patterns and just seem to attack at random making you just fucking give up on timing and just hold square infinitely.

Boss battles are no better if in fact just worse. Leviathan was just an absolute nightmare for me and ifrit was a well. The camera always got lost, the warp strike prompts were inconsistent ect. And if the battle wasn't infuriatingly broken then it was just boring case in point the final battle with ardyn.

Then we have the open world.

If this was what the sacrifice for the main story was then I'm sorry to say but it was most certainly NOT worth it.

The open world is visually appealing and on first impression pretty nice. However once you start really start "exploring" you realize just how boring and uninspired the whole thing really is. First of all the whole map in reality is just a giant circle with a highway connecting it all. Every area is just some boring fantasy locale you've seen in any Jrpg.

Grassy plain area, desert area, volcano area, beach area.

Wow this was really worth the wait I see.

It's wouldn't even be so boring if the games areas at least had some personality attached to them but nope. Not even a memorable tune is herd in this areas just plain ambiance which really doesn't work for this game.

The car was also a disapointment with it's on rails driving and what not only to look tacky and tacked on.

And...yeah.

That's just ffxv to me as a whole.

Just nothing.

#FFXV #final fantasy XV

[maiji]

Thoughts on Grasses of Remembrance (The Tale of Genji through its poetry)

Finally had some time this weekend to sit down with A Waka Anthology, Volume 2: Grasses of Remembrance Part B by Edwin A. Cranston. This book is the last in an impressive and intimidating collection translating a number of major classical poetry anthologies. It’s basically a speedrun through Tale of Genji (if such a thing were possible) filtered through all 795 waka poems written or uttered by the characters over the course of the novel.

Poetry was a Really Big Deal during the Heian era. If you were an aristocrat, not only were you expected to compose decent poetry, you had to be able to do it off-the-cuff appropriate to the occasion. AND to do this properly, you were expected to be able to recognize and respond cleverly to references to a ton of other existing classic poems from memory that people would just mention casually in conversation or writing (kinda like how people quote the Simpsons today lol). This was a prime marker of how intelligent/competent and - no joke - how sexy you were. So not surprisingly, these poems are extremely important to the development of character interactions and themes in the Tale of Genji which has a lot of romance and relationship plotlines. 

However. Translating Heian era Japanese into modern Japanese is already challenging. Rendering Heian era Japanese waka poetry into modern English is, as you might imagine, harder for a bunch of reasons. Considering how dense the actual novel already is, it’s super easy to gloss over the poetry, and some modern translations simply integrate the basic intent of the poems right into the main text/dialogue.

I was really interested in finding something specifically focusing on and analyzing the poetry, and this book appeared to fit the bill.

Short review: IT TOTALLY DOES. If you’re into Tale of Genji, Heian era, classical Japanese history, classical Japanese literature, Japanese poetry, or just love reading translators articulating eloquently while sassing characters or flailing through linguistic complexities, I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK

Long review: blah blah blah thoughts follows, including some quotes/poem for reference.

The book starts with a quick 2 page intro setting the context of the Tale of Genji, then goes straight into the poems. TBH I personally found it more flowery and redundant than necessary (it repeats a few poems that are then explained later). But it’s only 2 pages, we’ll live.

Then, the poems. For every poem (or poems, in the case of an exchange - sometimes a flurry of them with multiple characters speaking or dashing letters off to each other) there’s an intro and summary of context followed by an analysis, including notes on meaning, narrator and character intent, structure, symbols and wordplay. The original Japanese is included in romaji alongside the English translation. The commentary also flags known references to other classic poems (WITH those poems in-line! This is awesome because I don’t have the rest of these books!), and even mentions poem and folk song quotations from the rest of the novel where the characters have not composed new poetry, but are reciting other existing known pieces.

Overall, I have only three real “warnings” about Grasses of Remembrance Vol 2b:

1) It’s very academic and flowery in tone. If you’re not used to it, it can be hard to read. But then again, if you’re not willing to get past that, how are you reading Tale of Genji? lol. In any case, I personally thought the commentary was a lot of fun. Cranston definitely has opinions and can get pretty sarcastic in places, which I found hilarious. Here are a few sample quotes:

“Tamakazura has remarked to herself how superior the Emperor [Reizei] was in looks to all the courtiers in his train (It is a principle with this author that superior people be dashingly handsome or ravishingly beautiful).” 

“The ruefully witty poems exchanged between Yugiri and To no Naishi [Koremitsu’s daughter, the Gosechi Dancer] are rather more to my taste than the soggy ones Yugiri and Kumoi no Kari exchanged on their wedding night. Might it be the case that a totally sanctioned relationship is literarily uninspiring?”

“The old lady reaches for the melodramatic ultimate and dies just as Yugiri’s letter arrives.”

The overall effect is like an exceedingly well-educated, gossipy and sassy ride through the entire novel hahaha. 

2) Minor typos. I noticed some speckled throughout the text every so often (e.g., Tamakazura being rendered Takakazura, Akashi as Asashi, instances of accidental extra letters, etc.). It was pretty clear what the correct spelling was supposed to be, and TBH considering this is the last of a huge-ass series of over 1300 pages I think it’s forgiveable. Maybe a few that spell-check should have caught, but oh well.

3) This book is NOT CHEAP. As I mentioned in a previous post, not only did I not buy the entire collection, I didn’t even buy a complete Volume 2 - I only bought the last half of the second volume lmao. And the Tale of Genji translations are only HALF of this half of a book. The rest is actually the footnotes, appendices, notes to poems, glossary, bibliography and indices (including indices for every poem by author and by first line) for this beast of a translation/compilation project. This includes a lot of additional commentary and other poems and makes for pretty interesting reading itself, even without the rest of the volumes/parts. The price can definitely be scary and an issue for a lot of people, so if you’re interested in it, I suggest try checking it out at your library or on Google Books first. (In fact, Google Books is how I learned of this book in the first place.)

For me, the depth of insight for the poems was fantastic. It gave me a lot more appreciation for the scenes, including the mental state of the characters, plus a million more symbols, metaphors and ideas for my own creative works like the Genjimonogatari illustration series, North Bound and other original stuff. 

It also clarified several fuzzy translation questions I had that relied on specific knowledge of Heian culture and history/evolution of the use of the language and wasn’t easily found in Google searches or online language resources. And even if you’re already familiar with common allusions, metaphors and puns/homophones in Japanese poetry, it’s still helpful to see them all summarized. And sometimes lamented by the book’s author too. SO MANY PONIES EATING GRASS. SO MANY PINES. Especially the pines. (It IS an amazing pun though, especially because it works in both English and Japanese. Pine [tree] -> to pine, matsu/pine tree -> matsu/to wait)

In term of the actual translations themselves, you may still find them coming off a bit roundabout in some cases when comparing to the original Japanese. But overall I find Cranston’s translations more direct/flavourful than how they were rendered in the Tyler translation, partly because of how Tyler chose to juggle his set of translator’s challenges for rendering not only meaning but also more technical aspects of the poetic form. So the imagery ends up being, to me, a lot more vivid. The overall effect usually ends up more colourful, more emotional, more erotic, more cutting, more entertaining, and whatnot. 

For example, Kashiwagi’s suitor’s poem in the Kocho/Butterflies chapter. When reading the novel, I was like, uh-huh, yah, OK. When I read it here, I was like whoa, dude, that’s a little intense lol. Cranston’s translation amps up the connotation of the heat of the water based on the rest of the line. For comparison:

(The original non-romaji Japanese in the samples following are thanks to the Japanese Text Initiative from the University of Virginia Library Etext Centre and the University of Pittsburgh East Asian Library. Their Tale of Genji page has a FREAKING AMAZING side-by-side comparison of the novel in original Japanese, modern Japanese and romaji. Bless them and the people who had to organize and wrangle that text together.)

Original Japanese: 思ふとも君は知らじなわきかへり 岩漏る水に色し見えねば Omou to mo / Kimi wa shiraji na / Wakikaeri Iwa moru misu ni / Iro shi mieneba

Tyler version: You can hardly know that my thoughts are all of you, for the stealthy spring welling from the rocks leaves no colour to be seen.

Cranston version: Hardly can you know / Of the longing that I feel, / For the boiling wave / Is merely colorless water / As it drains away from the rock.

Here’s another example. Oigimi (Agemaki in the book, as Cranston used Wayley’s names for the sisters) telling Kaoru that he’s the only one who’s been actually visiting them and Kaoru is like all riiiight :Db! From Shii ga Moto / Beneath the Oak chapter:

Oigimi’s poem 雪深き山のかけはし君ならで またふみかよふ跡を見ぬかな Yuki fukaki / Yama no kakehashi / Kimi narade Mata fumikayou / Ato o minu kana

Tyler: No brush but your own has marked the steep mountain trails buried deep in snow / with footprints, while back and forth letters go across the hills.

Cranston: Over the bridges / Clinging to the cliffs along / Our deep-snow mountains / No letter-bearer leaves his trace: / Those footprints are yours alone.

Kaoru’s reply つららとぢ駒ふみしだく山川を しるべしがてらまづや渡らむ Tsurara toji / Koma fumishidaku / Yamakawa o Shirube shigatera / Mazu ya wataramu

Tyler: Then let it be I who firsts ride across these hills, though on his mission, / where ice under my horse’s hooves crackles along frozen streams.

Cranston: In the sheets of ice / Covering the mountain streams / My steed crushes / Such letters as form my reason, / My first, to cross as a guide.

In other examples, Genji’s “*throws hands in the air* I give up” poetic reply to Suetsumuhana about how she keeps using Robes of Cathay/Chinese cloak imagery in her poems in the original Japanese alongside the translation cracked me up even more. And one of my favourites is a pair of poems between the future Akashi Empress (as a child) and her birth-mother the Akashi lady. It’s really sad, sweet and cute all at the same time and completely flew under my radar when I read the novel originally.

The poetry analysis for the Uji chapters is especially intriguing. The plot pointedly pits Niou against Kaoru as opposing personalities with particular similarities and contrasts that drive their relationship with each other and with the woman they’re competing for. Especially in the latter half of the story, a lot of their poems, even ones written independently (i.e., to Ukifune), are specifically composed to highlight those attributes and play off of each other.

Finally, it’s also super interesting to see my experience with the narrative changes through the lens of the poems. Obviously, as I mentioned, some things I easily missed without paying as much attention to the poems in between the rest of the story. But also, some prominent characters have very few poems, so the narrative shifts away from them. Meanwhile, a number of otherwise very minor or usually overlooked characters stand out even more, thanks to the fineness, loveliness, resonance, and sometimes just sheer consistent presence of their poetry. This book definitely gave me a lot of additional perspective on the Tale of Genji, and enhanced my appreciation of the novel and the skill behind its crafting!

#tale of genji #genji monogatary #waka poetry #a waka anthology #grasses of remembrance #edwin a. cranston #royall tyler #japanese #translation #japanese tranlation #heian period #kaoru chujo #oigimi #agemaki #kashiwagi

[valamerys]

some notes on POV

I wanted to type up a little rundown of quick n dirty writing tips based on things I see a lot in fic/ amateur original manuscripts, and, uh, it turned out that they all revolved around POV. Nailing point of view in fiction writing is both crucial and one of the least intuitive building blocks of writing to learn: an understanding of POV has been the only useful thing i took from my college creative writing classes, and god knows how long I’d have stumbled along without it otherwise.

So! I am saving you, baby writer, the trouble of slogging through a miserable writing class with a professor who’s bitter as FUCK that genre fiction sells better than his “sad white man drinking” lit fic novels. Here are some assorted writing tips/ common mistakes and how to fix them, as relating to POV:

(this turned into a WALL OF TEXT so i will be using gifs to break it up)

> “I watched the ship tilt” “he saw the sky darken” “she noticed flowers growing on the rusted gate.” no. If the character who felt/saw/noticed etc is your POV character, whether in first or third, then this is called filtering and it takes the reader out of the story by subtly reminding them of the separation between the POV character and themselves. in most styles of writing, this is bad, not to mention it unnecessarily complicates your prose. try again: “the ship tilted.” “the sky darkened.” “flowers grew on the rusted gate.” Readers will instinctively understand that the POV character is witnessing the story happen, they don’t need to be told it.

I’m not telling you to never refer to your character “watching” something, of course: “I watched the birds dart around for hours,” isn’t filtering because watching is a notable activity, here, rather than an unnecessary obfuscation of the “real” thing happening. But understand how phrasing can jar readers momentarily apart from the character viewpoint, and use it with intention.

> Close Third Person POV still requires you to be mindful of your POV character. this is a rookie mistake i see allllllll the time. “Josh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers,” is a sentence in Josh’s POV. “Stupid” tells us how he feels about the tears, “beautiful” tells us how he feels about the display. ok. all good so far. BUT.

“Josh cried stupid tears at the beautiful display by the dancers. It was everything he’d wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography. Martha had to suppress a fond smile at his reaction; he was always so sweetly emotional after the curtain fell.”

Do you see what’s wrong with this paragraph? The first two sentences are Josh’s POV, and then the third one suddenly becomes Martha’s. A lot of amateur writers don’t even realize they’re doing this, which in its most egregious form is called “head-hopping,” but it’s disorienting and distracting for the reader, and makes it harder to connect with a single character. In multi-person close 3rd POV story, the POV should remain the same for an entire chapter (or at least, for an entire scene/ segment,) and change only between them. If you’re new to POV wrangling, watch your adjectives/ interiority (we’ll get to that in a second) and think “which character am I using as a lens right now, and am I being consistent" every once in a while until you get the hang of it.

> Related: let’s talk about interiority. Interiority is a more sophisticated way of thinking of a character’s “internal narration,” IE bits of prose whose job is not to advance the plot, set tone, or describe anything, (although it CAN do any of those things as well, and good prose will multitask) but to give us a specific sense of the character’s internal life, including backstory, likes, dislikes, fears, wants, and personality. In the above example paragraph, the middle sentence “It was everything he’d wanted from this production, from the lighting to the costumes to the exquisite choreography” Is interiority for Josh. It tells us that not only did he love the show, he’s very familiar with this art form and thus had expectations going in; likewise, listing the technical components is a way of emphasizing his enthusiasm while pointing out that it’s informed, implying that Josh himself is intellectually breaking down the performance even in appreciation.

“That’s a lot for a throwaway sentence you made up for an example.” Well, yeah, a little interiority goes a long way. Interiority is what creates the closeness we have to POV characters, the reason we understand them better than the non-POV characters they interact with. It’s particularly key in the first couple chapters of an original work, when we need to be sold on the character and understand the context they operate in.

If readers are having trouble connecting to or understanding the motivations of your character, you might need more interiority; if your story’s plot is agonizingly slow-moving (and you don’t want it to be) or your character is coming off as melodramatic, you might need less. It’s not something you should necessarily worry about; your amount of interiority in a WIP is probably fine, but being able to recognize it for what it is will help you be more mindful when you edit.

(Fanfic as a medium revels in interiority: that’s how you get 10k fics where nothing happens but two characters lying in bed talking and having Feelings. Or coffeeshop AUs that have literally no plot to speak of but are 100k+ long.)

> try not to describe the facial expression of a POV character, even in third person. rather like filtering, it turns us into a spectator of the character when they're supposed to be our vessel, and since it's *their* POV, there should be other ways available to communicate their emotion/ reactions. There are ways of circumventing this, (the example sentence where “Martha had to suppress a fond smile” is an example) where their expression is tied up in a physical action, or something done very deliberately by the character and therefore becomes something they would note to themselves, but generally, get rid of “[pov character’s] eye’s widened” and “[pov character] smiled.”

so that’s what i got! go forth and write with beautifully deliberate use of POV.

#fanfic #writing #writing advice #POV

[toushindai]

2001 English Liveblog

Almost a full week after the book arrived, here’s my liveblog!

Oh, the cover colors online were greener than this! This is more in line with the Japanese one.

"For the first time in my life, I smiled in the presence of someone else" Don't lie you melodramatic little rat you were a happy child. Though I always thought that referred to smiling for Elmer specifically--which would still be a retcon, most likely, given that in 1709 Monica doesn't know the details of Elmer's past and thinks Huey doesn't either.

まあいいや. This is 2001, where everything gets retconned from.

Nothing special done with 拙者, though that doesn't surprise me.

I suppose I'm required to have an opinion on "Let me just say this," huh? I was going to say it's unwieldy, but it's actually fewer syllables than あえて言おう is, isn't it? Other than that, I think I'll wait to form an opinion. Like I've said before, my only impression of the phrase comes from his how Nile uses it, so I don't really know what it sounds like to a Japanese ear.

If I&M don't meet Elmer I'm going to go to Narita's house and sing badly at him until he explains himself.

OK but how does Feldt know about radar

Sylvie is described as 16 or 17 here but about the same age as Niki in 1711 and Niki is described as the trio's age in 1705...

まあいいや

And see, these two aren't "Let me say this" but they're not あえていおう either! They're both variations. 👍 the toushindai seal of cautious approval.

"I saw something interesting on my way out" could u be... more specific

Good translation of 共喰い, that it specifies both directions. I think--given the way the rest of the volume plays out--you're meant to believe here that Elmer chose to be exempted from eating until the epilogue clears that up.

Hm... I thought there was something here in the fan translation that I disagreed with, but whatever it is, it didn't make it into here because now I can't remember what it was.

I love Fil. I love her however you spell her name. If you want someone angry about that one you'll have to go elsewhere because Fil is how I spelled it when I first read it, before I started interacting with the fandom.

Maiza is very ace. Or just immune to the wiles of his dead brother's girlfriend. Or both!

Why do the AA alchemists make such a hobby of declaring which of them is worst in various ways? Or is that just Sylvie's hobby mostly...

I know I'm on the record as being in favor of adding dialogue tags when the English is not as clear as the Japanese about who's speaking, but let's talk about how "said" is not a bad word

WHAT A GOOD FONT for Elmer's...whatever you call it

I feel like... guy doesn't belong in narration

There it is. The Elmer Description. The single Elmer Description for use every time he appears

Gorgeous

Girl you were not an alchemist tho

まあいいや

"You know nothing works when Elmer gets like this." He was a fucking menace on the ship, wasn't he.

It's time! For the rooftop conversation!!

......that thing about tigers and butter doesn't make any more sense when someone else translates it for me, does it.

Ahh, no, leave that as badgers in the same burrow? Elmer is totally the type to translate idioms literally と思うけど

Oh th ank god, I had this horrible feeling for some reason that 嘘じゃない would end up as "I promise!" and that would have been hella inconvenient for Mad Religion

Ahhhh I was hoping it wouldn't be "I ate Fermet"... I know most of y'all pronounce it without the final T but technically it should be there so this rhymes awkwardly. But we haven't been using devour, have we. So here we are.

[extremely retconned voice] fermet would never

まあいいや

What a good

[conspicuous lack of Firo]

"glamorous bombshells with hourglass figures"...Lucrezia

"Elmer's lips warped cheerfully" is such a good way to describe... him

Spruce... it up a bit

I see you there, pun

You're definitely a resident of Liar Town

Do we have "eyes swam" in English? In the sense of looking back and forth, I mean, not with tears.

Fil is so incredibly precious

I mean honestly was Maiza ever happy three hundred years ago?

Right, about Bilt, I never knew why it was Bild in the first place because the katakana definitely have the t sound, not the d sound.

I just remembered we don't technically know Victor at this point in time. ...We'll meet him in 2018, won't we! If YP's current pace turns out to be sustainable.

"You say that like it's easy" I mean you can literally call him on the phone. You can do it right now. And Elmer's aware of it.

"Somewhere in there, I learned about those things" It's nice of you to not tattle on your counterfeiting best friend but I am so completely convinced that it was Huey who had to explain the economy to you. I will not allow this thought to be taken from me.

"Inwardly, he somehow understood that this was Elmer's true nature." Only took you three hundred years.

Let's stop kidnapping Sylvie! No more kidnapping the women. I've decided.

Love how "gave the water to his own son" is "the worst possible outcome" and then... *glares at Huey*

Ten billion? Ten billion, sir? Maybe not ten billion.

Mr. Narita yes we understand that this particular book is inspired by video games. You can stop calling attention to it now.

Nn, there's really no easy way to get the tone of 君が死んだら、俺は笑うよ？ right, is there? For the disconcerting casualness I wonder if it should be something like "Oh, I'll smile when you die!"...

Young husband?? I mean I guess that does say 青年... But he's like, 90 at this point.

Elmer, you should probably protect Fil from Huey tbh.

the Fils...

"How d'ya like them apples?!" oh my god I want Ronny to say this to Elmer please please please please I want it PLEASE

Yeah he's definitely thinking of Huey specifically. 苦笑だし。 I’m still so curious about whether Huey knows about this little deal, though, because like... yknow?

I’ve thought about that way too much.

"I took this chance to designate 'since I've got the opportunity' as a diabolical phrase." Oh my god... sir...

Didn't he say that about DRRR!!'s title actually...?

"In the future, I'll write more standalone volumes" You're a liar.

I forgot to say this when it first appeared but Nibiru is honestly a transliteration I don’t like. It looks very... fakey Japanese. The rest of the names, and “Let me just say this,” I’m relatively content with. Feldt I like a lot.

#baccano! #baccano #novel day

[sixmorningsafter]

Chapter 14 Review - Intimacy and evasiveness in equal measure

Thank you so so much for this chapter; you are freaking awesome. At this point, your fic is longer than most PhD thesis. You’re completely bonkers, in the absolute best way. Please never change. Seriously, the level of interactivity in this fic is such fun and thank you for encouraging that. Some of the recent fancasts have been beyond amazing.

Gabi: “the level of interactivity in this fic is such fun” - you mean how I take fifty fucking years to respond to reviews that legitimately make my life!?!?!?!?! THAT LEVEL OF INTERACTIVITY!?!?! LMAO, gurl, can I just say before I dive into any of this that this review literally made me go back and edit some parts, that’s how helpful it was, and yet here I am, answering it an entire CHAPTER LATER!? For some reason the feedback for fourteen was really slow at first and then all of a sudden like 10 giant reviews came in at the same time, and I just took way too long to get around to all of them and kept answering the short ones first (because they take less thought/time), and then once I was done answering the short ones I was drained because I’m weak and wouldn’t survive the winter. BUT HERE I AM. Ten years later. Ready to friggin go. LET’S DO IT.

Firstly, I can’t believe you stopped before the Steroline sex! Rude. I would have been devastated (melodramatic OTT much) had you not given us one of the best SC kisses ever. Honestly, I think I might have sighed a little out loud. And after Stefan’s stupid assed, jealousy mental meltdown, Caroline demonstrates exactly why he has no need to be jealous in one sentence - “Damon could do all those things without it once being intimate.” It’s really obvious that ‘intimate’ is a mental thing for Caroline, I loved watching the switch click in Caroline’s mind from non intimate to intimate. Oh Caroline - you poor silly girl, you’ve got it bad!

Gabi: So, the plus side of answering this once 15 is already up is that I don’t have to feel bad about blue ballsing anyone anymore, muahahaha. Steroline sex is officially up and out there and there’s no taking it back now. Re: 14, though, love alllll of these insights and the particular moments of theirs that you choose to compare and contrast. They’re both stupid levels of in denial here, but the good news is the end of 15 and hopefully the majority of 16 is a bit of a new era for them - one where they actually try, I don’t know, communicating? It’s going to be wild. 

The part where they are watching YouTube videos together and eating Caroline’s secret food stash (naughty Caroline keeping treats from the other inmates of 2B - tsk, tsk) was very sweet and surprisingly intimate in it’s own right. I love how they have elements of easy friendship that they don’t even seem to recognise. I’m very interested in how their sexy timez are going to go because they could be hot, sweet or kind of silly/jokey or maybe all three. I think it’s going to get intimate whether Caroline likes it or not; Stefan may even bust out some of his Disney Prince romance vibes. I’m so intrigued as to who their third wheel could be.

Gabi: I really enjoyed writing that scene for exactly that reason - that somehow, these two super awkward people with a bunch of confusion and tension between them keep finding themselves in random moments of easygoing camaraderie, and all it really takes for that to happen is time and/or a distraction. I’m trying to hint at a possible future for them that doesn’t have all of this drama, that’s actually driven by a genuine enjoyment of spending time together and light-hearted banter and a warm hum of affection, but their poor coping/communication skills from their past experiences are just getting in that way of it. And hahaha, re: sexy timez, now you know! Disney Prince romance vibes definitely happened and Caroline, well... had some conflicts with it. As for the silly/jokey thing, I wouldn’t rule that out just yet for future scenes.

I know you are trying to achieve balance between your characters. At this point, I feel I know a lot about Stefan, Bonnie and Caroline, but with Damon, he’s still a mystery.

I both love and hate that we don’t know more.

Love - because I know you are being all clever and writery and keeping it from us on purpose. That having us see Damon through the other characters’ eyes is a clever way of 'revealing’ titbits without revealing them. Even Damon’s internal monologue is super evasive and kind of shallow (compared to Bonnie’s about him which was downright hilarious and completely nuts especially the hitman, Bonnie the world’s most boring mark lmao).

Hate - because I am such an impatient spoiler seeking nut bag, I need to know everything! Look honestly though, if you had told me before this started that I would actually be interested in Damon as a character himself, not as Bonnie’s boyfriend or Stefan’s brother, I would have scoffed at you. See Gabi, this is the power you wield. Use it wisely! Mwah ha ha.

Gabi: SOOO it was definitely still in the typical evasive flashes-of-insight format that Damon’s PoV tends to operate in, but I think 15 hopefully gave you a little more of what you were looking for regarding him? His guard was forcibly down for a bit, and his head went more into his complicated relationship with his mom, and part of the reason why I didn’t tie his panic attack fully up in 15 was because I’m carrying that arc into 16. There’s definitely aftermath, there’s definitely Bonnie the Hufflepuff making him feel unsettling things and think more about his life, and there’s also some Kai/Damon stuff that’ll have echoes of Damon/Tyler. So much more Damon ahead! And GURL, you don’t even know how happy it makes me to hear that re: ‘if you had told me before this started that I would actually be interested in Damon as a character’. That’s like the biggest compliment to me for some reason, like it gets me so hyped, so thanks so, so much for telling me! It’s tough to get people to like characters even when they’re blank slates, so getting someone to actually come around to someone they weren’t about before is like YAAAAAAS. 

In all seriousness, Damon didn’t deserve the kicking he got from Stefan in the opening scene. Sorry Stef, that was uncalled for even if Damon did start it. While this scene was all about Stefan’s pov and his reactions, Damon’s evasiveness is totally in character. Even though he’s oh-so-not-bothered, Stefan’s assessment of him has to smart a bit. I hope these two crazy kids work it out. I need my drigh!brotp back together. (Quick aside about Stefan – I hope at some point, he’s going to fess up that it wasn’t about Damon, Bonnie, Caroline or even Elena. It was about his own feelings of insecurity. It’s like Bonnie’s rampage of self-destruction as the person most hurt by this is himself. It’s actually very canon Stefan.)

Gabi: He definitely didn’t deserve it, and I wanted to write it that way because I wanted to show that Stefan, like everyone else in this godforsaken headache of a story, is a flawed character who gives into emotional reactions and insecurity sometimes and acts out. Like I really wanted to make it clear that Stefan was in the wrong there, and I really wanted to do it at Damon’s expense because at the shallowest of glances, Damon would be the guy you’d assume can be asshole sometimes and Stefan would be the guy you’d label as the patient, understanding saint, and 14 chapters in, I really wanted to flip that. As harmlessly trolly as Damon can be to Stefan about Caroline, turns out that Stefan is the one who drew first blood between them, you know? And I think you’re totally right about the oh-so-bothered-but-not-really thing re: Damon - he’s been called terrible things his whole life, so he’s learned how to let them slide off him like butter, but even butter leaves a trail, you know? They definitely add up to a perception he has of himself that’s probably darker/less flattering than it needs to be, and Bonnie absolutely confronts that in 16. She’s kind of like, ‘hey, newsflash dark and twisty, you’re a good guy’. She has a little speech I’ve written out that I really like. Lots of feelsiness coming in 16, man. Including Stefan insights and realizations about insecurity!

I’m still super interested by Damon’s two identities. Are the two different dates of birth significant? Him not mentioning anything after Bonnie fessing up to poking in his wallet - evasive much? So he doesn’t take his Fell ID out normally? I need more details, here, stop trying to kill me.

Gabi: lololol, got a little more of this in 15! I’m not sure how much was obvious from the story because Damon’s thoughts about his past always come out super jagged when I write them (and obviously I know the whole thing ‘cause I’m making it up, lmao), but I think I gave enough to kind of explain why he had that ID on him? Maybe?

Bonnie telling him all about her sex dreams had him speechless and I loved that. Yes, he was very much – that’s ok Bon, sexy daydreams are fine, but I still think there was an element of him being chuffed about it. That was really cute; I liked that his reaction wasn’t to grab her and lay one on her - she did that instead (oh Bon, you saucy minx). I loved their kiss, so hot; I really like their connection, it has a more brutal honesty to it than Steroline’s. By that I mean that Caroline lets Stefan get away with more introspection because that’s what suits her, whereas Damon pushes Bonnie to lay out her soul for him because he really wants someone to do it back to him, deep down. I may be over analysing this and be completely wrong.

Gabi: LMAOOO, ‘you saucy minx’ - she really is. And Damon is all about it. And no, you’re 100% spot on in your analysis of the two ships, assss usual - I think that’s a brilliant way to put it. Damon doesn’t wonder as much about Bonnie because he pushes, in more ways than one, till she gives him answers. He’s confrontational. Blunt. And Bonnie needs that, because her insecurities and problems are so deeply, deeply entrenched into her that they’re basically covered in layers of cement. You can’t slowly uncover that, you need a jack hammer (vs. for Caroline and Stefan, the wounds are still a little too fresh and shallow for a jackhammer to do anything except make it worse. They need the gentle discovery). Damon’s a bit of a paradox in that he’s either 100% blithe and flippant and dgaf, or he’s 100% blunt and real talk, and generally he uses the first mode to evade and the second mode to investigate. Problem is, Bonnie’s a bit of a jackhammer herself, and I think 15 was the beginning of the tide shifting to Damon being the one under the spotlight. And we’ll see how he likes that moving forward. Payback’s a bitch.

Did I detect that Damon might have a slight bird phobia? A dove in your shower is never good, but he seemed more than a little nervous. Also how is his hand doing? Dr Bon needs to follow up her patients better. I am kind of surprised how prompt he was for Kai’s dinner. Does Damon have immaculate time keeping? Or he is genuinely terrified of Kai? I guess I’m kind of struggling to find Kai scary, a bit loopy, somewhat odd, but I was really surprised that Damon would be scared of him (I have blanked out the crossbow in his face episode). We know he can handle himself in a fight (thank you for that Caroline) and he’s survived that gunshot as a child. Damon strikes me as being hard as nails (except around Bon) - Kai should be a cakewalk. Does he recognise something in Kai that he might have experienced in his past? Chapter 15 should be illuminating - I really hope we get plenty from his pov. I can’t wait.

Gabi: You did and it was totally unintentional. I actually went back and read over the way I’d written it after this feedback and totally got the same vibe (it was meant to be humorous but definitely came across as a little deeper than that), so thanks so much for pointing this out! I did a few little edits that I think put forth a more accurate picture of both the bird reaction (annoyance, bafflement, Damon in general being a growly diva) and his immaculate time-keeping (which was definitely supposed to be the focus more so than any actual fear of Kai, which, lmao, I think 15 makes pretty clear doesn’t exist). I think I could maybe argue that getting attacked by a dove in the shower could carry a bit of trauma from his basement-with-rats days, but even so, he’d hide that, so. Edited and more accurate thanks to bomb feedback!

ANYWAY, THIS IS ONCE AGAIN 600 YEARS LATE but oddly, it was kind of fun answering it with 15 already written? In any case, I’m so friggin’ sorry it took me this long to respond, and your feedback, as always, is one of my fave things about writing this fic because it’s always so hilarious and insightful. Thanks so, so much for this review, and hopefully 15 delivered the things you were after and 16 will deliver them even more. LOVE YA, BABE!

#reply #six mornings after #review #14 #lmao first I wrote '16' #and then I wrote '15' #and then I was like WAIT NO '14' #yikes #submission #anyway this was rad and still makes my day so #thanks so much babe #janet's the best

[lizasweetling]

ok political for like 2 sec only

I don’t like to write/interact with the politically leaning side of tumblr much, mostly cause it can turn poisonous super fast, but one of the people I follow posted up a... I don’t know how to describe it aside from a really inaccurate interpretation of conservative’s thinking.  or maybe ‘un-nuanced’ would fit better.

I’m going to gloss over the things she said were the case that are not (that conservatives are frightened, superstitious, and kinda stupid to paraphrase) and instead explain, as a moderate that leans toward conservative and is registered Republican-

Republicans/conservatives are not actually on average worse people than democrats/liberals-

it’s a difference of perspective.

you remember the post that made the rounds recently about the interplay between toxic masculinity, complementing men, and catcalling? That same relationship is in effect here.

Consider: person A lives in a home with unsupportive, stupid, or otherwise parents who cannot or will not encourage and nourish them as they grow. They have few or no outside sources of aid, due to their parent’s isolating treatment. person B lives in the opposite situation: their family unit, is close knit, honest and loving without condition, they are a part of a wider network of people that show outward evidence of being able and willing to help in an emergency.

A will, naturally enough, conclude that the state of things is awful and align themselves to transformative improvement- they’ll become a liberal and fight to evolve the system. B will, equally as naturally, conclude that the world seems to be operating decently, it’s better to proceed slowly, so as to not destroy existing solutions- they will become a conservative and fight to keep the system the same or moving very slowly.

that’s a bit of an oversimplification and obviously it doesn’t cover all cases (and doesn’t cover culturally dependent conceptualizations, which also has massive differences between the two groups, and is a major source of exception to this general trend)  but that is the base reference for about 80% of when a conservative seems like they’re being heartless- deep down, among their base assumptions of life, it boggles their mind that someone could really have nowhere to turn, so they assume that it’s just the subject being too proud to ask for help, or too melodramatic about their relationships.

and yeah, that cultural assumption doesn’t reflect reality and it is good when a conservative hunts down that assumption and makes a note that it doesn’t always apply, but it’s not as simple as ‘conservatives are just inferior’

#I feel like this is a bad thing to post here #tumblr- near as I've seen is not friendly to people who are not loud liberals spending all their energy on political trend tracking #I'm not loud #nor liberal #and definitely not political trend saavy #but sometimes #I have the answer and I want to answer #so please don't be mad at me