#Like did they even do the basic things of setting up each characters motivation start point and end point at the end of each episode

[rongzhi]

Hi! Love your TikTok translations, they help me learn so much. Sorry if you've answered this before already, but as a language student myself, I was just curious about how you got so good at Chinese - is it a native language for you, or what's your background in using/studying it? Thank you!

I think I answered this a long time ago (like 2021 maybe) so I will just tell it again. It's kind of a longwinded boring post that's very self-centric (😬) and also probably not going to have any helpful advice to the average language learner, so I'm going to put it under a read more!

Background

My family is Chinese so it's my heritage language. I did learn it before English as a baby but then forgot a lot of it. My parents speak Chinese at home but I always replied in English growing up. Part of this is because I have a twin sibling and because we spoke English at school, we also started speaking English to each other at home.

We went to Chinese school on Sundays growing up (this is like a community/cultural school; it included other courses like math, Chinese dance, art, pre-SATs (lol), etc, depending on who in the community was available to teach), but I didn't really pay attention so my Chinese was pretty shit for a long time—like broken conversational level shitty, although I have always had a strong comprehension ability. My dad's side is from Sichuan so I grew up understanding a bit of Sichuanese.

The beginning of my "studying"

I don't actually have much of a background studying Chinese in a formal setting. I took Chinese 101-103 in college as part of a language requirement (specifically chose to start with 101 so I could relearn basics, even though my teachers kept offering to place me in higher levels). I really credit my Chinese 101 prof who was also the college's calligraphy teacher for making us focus on brush stroke order and recognising characters and understanding semantic components, which is something other profs did not emphasise (they were more focused on building conversational skills).

Anyway, that was only my freshman year of college because I ended up changing majors and not having a language requirement anymore (boo). I continued studying a bit of Chinese in the intervening years, but I am not a very disciplined person when it comes to self-study, so much of it was just translating song lyrics for my own amusement. During this time, I also started watching some cdramas, but mostly just Chinese web shows, which maybe helped? (I don't think I was watching enough for it to really make a difference).

Fast forward a couple years to 2020 and I started watching more cdramas during lockdowns, including watching 成化十四年 (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty), which I was super invested in for about two years (this used to be a fandom blog lol). Basically, hyperfixation led me to rapidly improve my Chinese; I started translating a few behind-the-scenes videos for fandom friends. In order to keep up with Chinese fans and gain access to more material about the show, I started venturing onto Chinese sites such as weibo, bilibili, and eventually, douyin, which I downloaded around October of 2020 (so this was 6 months into my increased interest into Chinese things). At first, I translated a couple of douyins to share with fandom friends as I had done with behind-the-scenes materials, but for whatever reason I felt like some of the videos I wanted to translate would just be annoying to spam into the chat... I couldn't figure out a way to connect them to the blorbos, but I still wanted to translate them, so I started posting them here on tumblr. That's how my douyin translations started out. This was the height of covid-19 related sinophobia, too, so at some point I started realising how important it was to continue translating douyins, and that motivated me to continue even beyond it just being a fun thing to do. On that topic, it was through this blog that I realised how poorly understood China and Chinese people are, specifically on this site. I feel like that has changed a lot, or maybe that's just a comment on insular online spaces, but I have to think not; since I started translating douyins, I've seen a noticeable decrease in sinophobic comments and messages (not that I don't still get them, but it's lessened), and I think that's also thanks in great part to other blogs on here that were posting/have started to post more content from China to help increase exposure to tumblr users.

Improving

In any case, in the beginning, I did a lot of translations mostly by ear rather than reading captions because my Chinese reading wasn't that good.

It's kind of slowly improved with time and repetitive reading, and over the last three years now, I've also gone through periods of taking notes and actively seeking out some vocab lists or grammar explanations... but it usually comes in the process of trying to translate something. My motivations in "studying" (it's more like "figuring out") Chinese is largely based on the simple desire to know what people are talking about... what they're joking about... what they're ranting about and roasting. Related: I also started reading fanfics in Chinese about a year ago. Some fics have been easier to read than others, but some of the best ones I've read were also the ones that challenged me the most, and which I had to take a lot of notes on while reading. I'll admit! There have been times where I just took a fic and dumped that sucker in google translate and have it read the Chinese to me, so I could just listen to it like a podfic. But even so, I would take notes, because I think my improvements in Chinese are heavily connected to my Chinese literacy.

Reading douyin comments and forums on douban or comment sections on bilibili has been one of the main ways that I've picked up on common phrases and characters. I often write things down but I do so more as a muscle memory practice, because I have never really been the sort of person who reads back notes (this was also how I studied in school, iirc). Branching out and translating things that are written in formal or non-colloquial styles is also a way I challenge myself from time to time, and I do like to look up the etymology of Chinese characters from time to time because it helps me pick up patterns of semantics and phonetic hints when I'm reading (this makes it easier to guess what a character might mean or sound like, even if you've never seen it before). Overall, translation has been the great learning tool for me. I think maybe it comes down to learning styles? I have always learned better from trying to teach others, and I feel like translation works a similar muscle in the mind; translation is about figuring out ways to efficiently communicate a message, and in order to do so, you must be able to grasp the essence of what it is you're relaying.

All this said... And to try and return to your original ask after all my usual Wawa rambling... I actually don't think my Chinese is that good, lol. In fact, there's probably people who follow this blog who are studying Chinese in a more conventional and methodical manner whose Chinese is objectively much better than mine 🤷🏻‍♂️ I mean, if you crunch the numbers, I have really only be self-"studying" for three years. Three years of what is really just vibe-based learning. There's a lot of vocab I still don't know (I mean my English vocab is pretty limited too, sooo.... 😭), a lot of areas that I can still improve on, and am improving on, and try to improve on... when the mood strikes. Again, I am not a very disciplined self-study type.

Maybe this will give any other Chinese diaspora hope, though. I feel like it's never too late for us to start learning. There is probably a seed or language foundation within you already which will make it easier for you to start, and then after that, I think it sort of comes down to finding what interests you and will keep you motivated.

Most of the stuff I talk about on here when it comes to culture or folk art or what have you, I did not know even five years ago! I learned about it because I was interested to find out more. (That's another reason I have to laugh when I get some of the asks I do in my inbox... The stuff I don't answer is dumbfounding at times. You translate a couple of funny videos and people think you're some kind of Tripadvisor cultural ambassador guy! I swear...)

The "study" resources I use regularly are the following:

Pleco

Zh-En browser extension

Yellowbridge (usually to check brush stroke order, since I have Pleco)

Baidu etymology pages / Chinese etymology dictionaries such as hanziyuan

#text #answered ask #about me

[nicosraf]

You inspire me…. Any advice for writing books ?

!! I'm honored u get a little inspiration from me! That's very sweet of you.

I struggle with advice because I've only written about 5 books and published... two-ish. (An old fanfic and ABM, which as you know is basically fanfic). But I think I have some specific advice since I'm revising right now and have a lot of thoughts... Here is what works for me (!):

Outline. I know it sucks but... please try it. (Or you'll end up like GRRM).

Draft without going back to read what you wrote, or at least don't read your unfinished manuscript in full. You will want to edit it. Don't edit it. Yes it sounds bad; yes you used the same word 8 times in a paragraph by accident; yes you can see a major plot hole. Don't fix it yet, maybe write it down somewhere so you don't forget to fix it later. You need to avoid editing while drafting or you will never finish the draft. This is the biggest advice I can give anyone, especially if you haven't written your first book yet.

Give each character a strong backstory, even if it never shows up in the plot. Sounds obvious but sometimes I have to remind myself of this.

Give your characters friendships, not just romantic relationships. Include tender scenes with friends.

A lot of writing is tedious and boring. Drafting is hard, editing is hard. You have to be disciplined. But finding motivation is also hard. Don't motivate yourself using the dream of a fanbase or the dream of becoming famous. You're setting yourself up to be hurt. (Not because any of that is impossible but because achieving it in the way that you dream is virtually impossible.) Motivate yourself using something more personal, if you can.

Re-do your outline after you draft. Why? Because you probably changed things while you drafted, you probably made some stuff up on the spot, character dynamics changed, etc. A new outline is good because you can see the story you actually wrote, which is helpful for editing for plot cohesion, moving scenes, adding and removing stuff.

Your draft is going to be bad. Don't freak out. Drafts are always bad. You're going to want to analyze the hell out of it though. What did you plan, what did you write, what worked, what didnt work, what themes are on the page, what themes should you remove, what themes should you amplify.

When editing a scene isn't working, rewrite it entirely. Yes it's more work. You'll be much happier though, I promise.

The first to second revisions should be for plot and characters and pacing; these should take the longest and be the most difficult. The last third to fourth revision should be about prose. Don't focus on prose when you're trying to fix the plot.

Let characters fuck up unforgivably.

Consider your audience heavily when you edit, but don't consider them when you draft.

I've given this advice before but when it comes to plot devices/objects, you want to give each device a moment of introduction, a moment where it's recalled, and a moment of use. (Ex. A knife is introduced in chapter 1, its mentioned again casually in chapter 7, then it's used to kill someone in chapter 14.) This is mostly to give each object its own arc that feels satisfactory but ur the boss about what works best.

Kill all your characters, but not physically (unless you want to). Make them change so much that, by the end, they would barely recognize who they were at the start.

This is book advice for the type of books that I've written. Things are very different if you're writing, say, contemporary romance, but I think this list is pretty general !! I hope it helps. Good luck!!

#mine #ask #writing

[the-dove-is-recuperating]

In the past few years I’ve been seeing increasingly outlandish takes regarding the MCU’s role in Bucky’s (and to a lesser extent Steve’s) characterization, both in the movies and the comics. They all start from a premise that I generally agree with:

The Captain America movies set up what is in essence a love story, romantic or otherwise.

In view of that love story, Steve’s Endgame ending makes very little sense and was at least partially motivated by the Russos’ homophobic reaction to the Stucky fandom.

The MCU’s portrayal of Steve and Bucky has since affected their portrayal in the comics.

However, people seem to have lost sight of the fact that Stucky as an even remote possibility has only ever been an MCU thing. But because so much of the fandom proceeds from the basic idea that “movies bad, comics good,” I have now seen multiple people claim that the movies made the comics homophobic … because there is still no Stucky in the comics?

As someone who loves Bucky in all his iterations and especially the way these iterations have impacted each other, I just really want to set the record straight:

Stucky is an MCU thing. Soft Bucky is, at least originally, an MCU thing. Bucky as Steve’s only reason for doing anything is … you guessed it, an MCU thing.

You can’t decry the MCU bleeding into comics and simultaneously complain that Steve is still hanging out with Sharon Carter. I mean, you can, but that would be just fucking silly. Steve/Sharon is the comics doing its own thing, without any regard for the MCU! In fact the very reason that CA:CW’s sad attempt at making Steve/Sharon happen failed so abysmally was because Bucky had already taken her place by then.

The original comics’ Bucky was a little kid who (for whatever unfathomable reason) was allowed to fight in WWII. Later on, Ed Brubaker aged him up to teenager and created what was in essence a new character: the Winter Soldier. MCU went further and blended that new version of Bucky with a minor (but pretty revolutionary) character from the 80s: an openly gay Jewish man called Arnie Roth.

Arnie’s backstory, revealed in a two-page flashback in Captain America #270, goes something like this: growing up in New York he was scrawny Steve’s bigger and stronger best friend and protector from bullies. As a young adult he was also ostensibly a ladies’ man, while Steve decidedly was not. Sound familiar?

However, the similarities end there: Arnie and Steve drifted apart before Steve became Cap, and while they briefly reconnected during the war, they did not actually fight together. Plotwise, Arnie does end up filling the same damsel-in-distress slot that MCU’s Bucky does, but his role in Steve’s life never becomes as outsized as MCU Bucky’s. Steve has his love of his life (at the time), and Arnie his.

Moving on to Winter Soldier era, I have now seen people claim that Brubaker aged Bucky up to set up Stucky, and I can hardly express just how patently absurd that take is. Both Steve and Bucky in his runs are almost aggressively straight in that their respective relationships with Sharon and Natasha play a big role in their lives.

What’s more, the early 2000s Brubaker was, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, not free of the period-typical homophobia. In his “director’s cut” commentary he says that his main problem with “Cap in the late 80s and early 90s” was that “they [had] completely sissified” him. Now, what he meant was that it was an unrealistic portrayal of Steve as someone completely unwilling to kill, given what he must have had to do in the war. But that wording is hardly a hallmark of someone who could even conceive of Stucky back then. That he has now, almost twenty years later, liked some Stucky tweets or whatever is completely irrelevant. His views have evolved, and you can see it in his more recent writing too (which I love, by the way). And he must recognize that the MCU Steve and Bucky are different characters from the ones he wrote. You can’t possibly write comics for Marvel and not have made peace with characters having multiple, sometimes conflicting iterations.

#stucky #bucky barnes #arnie roth #marvel #mcu #meta #stucky is an mcu thing #apparently I’m dying on this hill now

[utilitycaster]

hi! I'm sorry if you answered this already and I missed the post, but what are your general thoughts on the party being split for so long?

Short answer: I think it's great. I think the best way to answer this accurately is to cover some of my past complaints about the campaign, and discuss how this split is addressing the vast majority of them. This is also, I suppose, serves as an argument for why it's worth getting caught up with Campaign 3 for anyone who fell off of regular watching.

I'll begin by saying that I understand the desire to have something akin to Campaign 2 but in Marquet: a group of people deeply tied into the lore and fabric of the setting and yet displaced within it, finding each other. I still would have liked to see that story. I do not fault people for being disappointed in not getting that, particularly given what Marquet means as a setting, and this still is not that campaign. But pretty much all of my other complaints have been addressed by the apogee solstice and the party split and so I'm not here to mourn what I know didn't happen, and instead to talk about how the last ten or so episodes have been banger after banger.

I said this elsewhere recently but my issue wasn't that the campaign was building up to the apogee solstice setpiece; it was that it took about 30 episodes to even reveal that was what the buildup was for, and yet, somehow, 35 episodes to finally be done with Treshi. Which meant in turn that the party was constantly kind of shepherded from place to place. Even the sidequests were mostly part of the buildup - Heartmoor Hamlet is a good time, and achieves quite a lot in only a handful of episodes - but it is, ultimately, mostly there to wipe out Ashton's debt which would be a detriment to getting to the main plot. The modular, party-driven nature of Campaign 2 just wasn't an option, since they could have quite possibly avoided the solstice (akin to how Campaign 2 completely avoided the Augen Trust plot and required a drastic reworking of the Lucien plot). But because it started so early, it was hard to get a sense of what would actually motivate the characters so that they could be guided more naturally by hooks they'd be likely to take, since they were doing fetch quest after fetch quest with a wealthy patron (I love Eshteross with all my heart but that kind of figure early in the story is tough to incorporate; more on that later) and getting lore dumped at by NPCs and never really had to scramble or take weird jobs killing rats in the sewers or even share rooms in an inn with people they didn't already know before the story started.

Which is the second part: the party did not really mix that much. Imogen and Laudna came in codependently joined at the hip, and Orym and Fearne were also quite close. Ashton and FCG had a looser arrangement, and Chetney was the only true free agent. So a lot of the time, the party felt like three groups working together with tenuous bridges rather than a coherent party, and they never quite had either the downtime to cohere, or the massive crisis to force them together. This party has actually seen quite a lot of death, but Bertand's happened too early, and while Laudna's didn't quite reset to the status quo, it also occurred just as the Treshi plot had ended and so the timeline was becoming even more accelerated. The seeds of something were there, but they needed something more to actually take root.

Enter the apogee solstice and the party split. This has fixed basically everything:

The fact that the solstice happened means that now we're in damage control mode. There's a clear motivator for the party, but one that they genuinely care about rather than one that requires the DM being like "and THIS NPC wants THIS thing."

It also forces the party to develop those relationships outside of the friend they started with. The obvious first reason is that the groups are split up along those lines. That is not an accident or a cruel joke; that's fucking necessary, frankly, to get the party to bond. As my meta about Laudna and Orym points out, not having their emotional support prior colleague - even by sending - and frankly, yeah, not even knowing they're alive, for certain, is what will make these characters actually grow and change. As we saw, the same is true for Fearne, Imogen, and FCG.

It notably removes the spotlight from Imogen, which is good, because the cool development happens after the character-focused arc, when they can process, rather than during. She's still Ruidusborn, but what that means is very different from what it meant pre-ritual.

Then there's the practical element of travel. This party probably isn't going to be teleporting nonstop, but they did have comparatively fast travel in the form of a skyship from very early on, and in another three levels Fearne will have transport via plants, and Imogen can take teleport as a cast spell the level after that, and then we'll never get to see much of the world...but if you break teleporting a bit? You send them into the middle of the wilderness? Yeah, they're going to need to have those watch conversations that were far too few and far between early in the campaign.

And allies! This party's doing it backwards. They've lost Eshteross; Keyleth's fate is unknown to them; Ryn is a statue; Beau and Caleb's fates are similar question marks. After so much time of having patrons and friendly wizards telling them what to do? They're alone, and they have to survive by their wits and by leaning on each other.

The fact that we've got guests is good both because we get to see different facets of the main cast's characters through their responses to these new companions, and because we're getting to fill some of the gaps in the party (people with more longstanding relationships to deities; people with 20 INT scores). It also pushes Bells Hells, in some way, closer together, by having to assert that they are part of a group with shared experience. And it's just a delight to have them.

This is also just fun for fans in that we're getting to see some of the most wished for locations - the Mighty Nein's time in Uthodurn was brief and very focused, and everyone's been clamoring for Molaesmyr and Issylra. For all that Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein fought world-wide threats, they were largely contained to a specific region, and I think this is really setting the stage for how big a deal the apogee solstice really is, by flinging the party across the world and showing how everyone is affected.

Anyway: love the party split. I honestly would have been happy with one or two more episodes of the other party and am looking forward to a similar length arc for this party, and honestly, even then, it might take a few episodes for them to reunite, and I think they'll all be better for it.

#answered #muthserra #critical role #critical role spoilers #two other thoughts that are personal/hunches and don't fit above #first is that my guess is still that this is the last full-length campaign so pulling out all the stops for locations & guests is smart #(i would love to be proven wrong but. suspect i am right) #and second is that my favorite ships are in the same groups for the most part so i'm vibing

[accirax]

DRDT Archetype Analysis + Predictions

Recently, I was reminded of this post I made a while ago about the repeating archetypes of canon Danganronpa casts (and how I invited people to apply it to their own fangans/fangans they liked). And I thought, hey! I can do that myself with a fangan I have very vocally enjoyed: Danganronpa: Despair Time!

To be clear, I am very much NOT accusing DRDTdev of being unoriginal or ripping anything off. The cast is one of the things I like most about DRDT, and that’s because they’re all very inventive, exciting, and well-developed characters who make surprising yet never out of character choices.

However, I also think that they fit the archetypes I developed quite well. This is for two reasons: one, the dev has almost certainly played the canon games, and therefore may have been inspired by them. The plot (or at least the motives) thus far seem to be strongly inspired by Trigger Happy Havoc, so it would make sense if some of the characters could have been too. And, secondly, I posited in the original post that this assortment of archetypes made for a good and well-balanced cast in general. It’s possible that DRDTdev had no intentions of paralleling anything, and simply came up with the cast that they did because these types of people work well together.

I’m probably disclaiming too hard again.

Anyways, this post is part character analysis and part story predictions. I’ll explain how and why I think each character lines up with the archetype I chose for them, and in some cases, how I think they might follow or defy the narrative staples set by their predecessors. As such, there are major spoilers for all three mainline Danganronpa games, as well as DRDT through Chapter 2 Part 1. Let’s get started!

“The Protagonist can be basically whoever you want. The main attributes they probably need are a generally friendly and sociable disposition (to facilitate FTEs), and enough intellect to survive a Class Trial without too much help. However, they likely harbor some elements of self-doubt and possess an ultimately hopeful attitude.”

(I wish I’d had a less obvious assignment to hook people in, but that's just how the cookie crumbles.)

Well, Teruko kind of fills the role of protagonist by default, because… she’s the protagonist. However, as many have noted, she’s a bit atypical in the role. But, that’s okay! Because the Protagonist is probably the most flexible role of all. Really, the only boundaries on it are the ones set by the mechanics and flow of the game.

Teruko is far less sociable than Makoto, Hajime, or Kaede (or even Shuichi), but the format of DRDT gets around that by not actually having any FTEs in the main story. And, even in the Bonus Episodes, Teruko doesn’t participate. In the main story (especially after Chapter 1), Teruko pretty much only stumbles into conversations, or has someone else initiate them. FTEs are the one point of the game where you have to explain why the protagonist is going out and seeking conversations on their own, so it works very well that DRDT was published in a format where that doesn’t have to happen. The intellect is obvious– Teruko is very possibly the smartest person in the Class Trial, so there’s never any question of whether she would be smart enough to solve any of the mechanics.

The other two aspects aren’t as important to being a protagonist; they’re just common threads that I noticed happened to be shared by Makoto, Hajime, and Kaede. Teruko doesn’t have self-doubt as much as self-hatred, but I think that Makoto’s self-doubt originated from him being a player insert. This was the first time that anyone had ever played a Danganronpa game, so of course they might be a little nervous going into it! However, those who watch DRDT are almost certainly familiar with at least one Danganronpa game before they watch, and beyond that, you don’t even play as Teruko. Thus, Teruko doesn’t need to be someone the “player” needed to relate to at all. It’s one of the many reasons why I think DRDT uses its existence as a video series brilliantly.

The “ultimately hopeful attitude”... has yet to be seen. This is important if Teruko needs to give a big hope speech at the Chapter 6 Trial, but there’s no guarantee that’ll happen. It’s possible that she could get to the Chapter 6 Trial and still refuse to believe in others, likely if she winds up being the mastermind. Or, she could die before she makes it there! I still believe that Teruko could have the hope necessary to fit the standard protagonist mold, but DRDT is full of subversions. I look forward to seeing what happens with her character!

“The Calculating Support aids the protagonist, specifically in the logic department. They’ll bring important deductions in each Class Trial they attend, and tend to have an important role in the story’s plot. Giving them an arc where they open up more and gain friends goes a long way to endear them to the audience.”

Surprised to see Min in the support slot? Probably not. After all, it was pretty clear to me that the Chapter 1 Investigation was meant to tell us that, after Xander died, Min was going to be the real support character of the game.

… Didn’t work out so well for her, but, hey, A for effort.

Being the Ultimate Student, Min is obviously quite smart. She took a pretty active role in the Chapter 1 Trial, despite being the blackened. Being the blackened, however, limited her ability to attend more than one Trial, or have an important role in the story’s plot. That’s not to say she’s irrelevant, though– by being a false support, Min cemented her role in the story as the person to fully extinguish Teruko’s potential trust. Maybe if it was just Xander, Teruko could have believed he was just a bad apple and gone on to trust most of the others. However, after Min ALSO pretended to be her friend and was willing to sacrifice not just Teruko, but everyone else to stay alive, Teruko learned that no one was to be trusted.

I’m going to talk about subversions a lot in this post, both in analyzing things that have happened and things that I speculate might happen, because I think it’s something DRDTdev does quite well. A lot of characters, in my mind, are set up to appear like one archetype in the moment, but then do something different with the role in a creative way. Min is a subversion of the Calculating Support to make you feel the same surprise and betrayal that Teruko did. You think she’s going to be your new best friend, your Kyoko, your Chiaki, your Shuichi, and then they rip her away from you. And it sucks!

It sucks extra because Min also has a quickly implemented rendition of the “opening up to people” plot. She seems really closed off in her introduction, hiding her face behind a book, but helps everyone to bake regardless. She sees that Teruko is trying her best despite her bad luck, and develops a tentative friendship with her and the other two girls in the baking crew. Thus, when she sees her new friend being attacked, she acts on her character development and defends Teruko. Her reveal of this fact in the Class Trial endears us to her greatly before she dies, left wondering how much more sociable and helpful she could have become if she weren’t trapped in this damn killing game.

…Sorry for the downer! That’s just what happens when your new bestie is the Chapter 1 killer.

“The Chaotic Bastard causes trouble for the protagonist in unexpected and complicated ways, and drives a lot of the story’s conflicts. They’re very smart, so as to pose a serious threat to the survival of the group. Their outlandish ways give them a great chance of being the most popular and memorable character in the game.”

Thank god I’m writing this after Chapter 2 Episode 11! It makes putting David in this role much easier.

After all, it was in Chapter 2 Episode 11 that David fully revealed the main way in which he had driven the conflicts thus far– namely, his decision to encourage everyone to share their secrets in the hopes that another murder would occur. In that episode, he also has his second Rebuttal Showdown with Teruko, hitting two for two on that particular mechanic. Given that Teruko appears to be losing the second Showdown until Charles cuts in, I think that more than enough proves that David is smart, and specifically, smart enough to be a legitimate rival to Teruko.

The popularity is… well, already apparent. Although I wasn’t there at the time 2-11 dropped, all the evidence left behind seems to indicate that David quickly skyrocketed to being one of, if not the most popular character after his diabolical debut. You can really feel this role in the fandom’s reaction, I believe. Those who are fans of Junko, Nagito, or Kokichi are excitedly clapping their hands and grabbing the popcorn, whereas those who hated that trio are groaning at the thought of having to deal with one of those bastards again.

If David is meant to be a subversion of the Chaotic Bastard and not just an example of one, I honestly think the most likely way for him to do it is to survive. Yes, he could also do it by dying surprisingly early, but then the game would lack its Chaotic Bastard. Given Teruko’s arc about trusting people, missing out on her greatest antagonist could be a missed opportunity (but also, someone else could rise up to take on the role). Junko, Nagito, and Kokichi didn’t really go through positive growth arcs. Thus, it would be interesting to see what happened if a Chaotic Bastard actually made it to the end and had to change as a person.

Or, he could just actually be the Chapter 5 killer or something! Place your bets now.

“The Jerk might start off insulting the Protagonist, making themself an easy early enemy with their confrontational ways. But by the end of the story, they’ll undergo a character arc where they land beside the Protagonist as a trusted ally. The Jerk has high odds of surviving, due to their innate setup and payoff of personality.”

I’m surely not the first person to draw comparisons between Charles and Byakuya, and I likely won’t be the last. From his role in the Chapter 1 area investigation, Charles has been playing The Jerk pretty textbook. He insulted Teruko, Levi, and Arturo (and Xander and Whit in his introduction, too), setting himself up as an adversary.

And yet, we’ve already seen his character arc start to play out! Whereas Byakuya was making himself more antagonistic by messing with the crime scene, Fuyuhiko was orchestrating Mahiru’s death, and Maki was keeping her true talent a secret, Charles has made a true friend in Whit. He’s already proven to be one of Teruko’s strongest allies, respecting the kind of life she currently wants to lead while trying to convince her of the more trusting life she should lead. Between his newfound fear of blood and the realization that he forgot a good chunk of his childhood, he realized he wasn’t as infallible as he thought, and became a more understanding person as a result.

However… it’s for these exact reasons that I’m worried for him. While Byakuya, Fuyuhiko, and Maki were just beginning their arcs as of Chapter 2, given how much Charles has changed, you could argue that he’s just ended his. As is described above, the Jerk tends to survive “due to their innate setup and payoff of personality.” What happens if we’re in Chapter 2 and the Jerk has already paid off that setup?

It’s why I’m worried that Charles will be a subversion of the Jerk by dying. The Jerk typically has a long-running character arc that ends in survival; Charles has a short-running character arc that ends with a stint as a victim. It’s by no means set in stone (you don’t have to believe in any of this subversion speculation, it’s just my personal musings), but it’s a definite possibility. I get the argument for Charles surviving, as any good Jerk would, but… doesn’t it feel a little too good to be true?

“Whether they leave the game early or not, the Early Mystery sets up a question in the audience’s mind that will have renewed importance later in the story, possibly surrounding the main plot. Because secrets are within their nature, a closed-off and mysterious disposition will make it easier to not give too much away.”

Another role kinda assigned by default. Xander is the first death with a lot of secrets, hence, he’s the Early Mystery. RIP to his eligibility for the Sporty Dumbass.

There are still several questions surrounding Xander after his death. Like, was he guy in the intro? I think so, but, if that’s the case, what was the killing game he was trying to stop? Why did he need to kill Teruko, and, who was the one that wrote that note telling him to do so? What happened to his eye? The motive secrets were released after he died– which one was his?

Well, okay, Xander’s Bonus Episode Visiting Graves made it fairly clear that his secret is probably the “dead parents and siblings” one. But, about that Bonus Episode– what exactly happened in North C and Chariton? How was the Spurling Foundation involved, and what relevance does it have to the killing game? What document was he looking for at “Unnamed Student’s” request? These are just a few questions I’d like to ask of Xander that I can’t without a ouija board.

As a final note, I will add that Xander really didn’t have the closed-off and mysterious disposition that I wrote about above. However, I never said that was a necessity. Honestly, I think it’s much more fun that DRDTdev went down the path of making him so sociable and friendly that he didn’t give too much away. Xander was too busy arm wrestling Ace and fanboying over David; he didn’t have time to loredump!

“The Stalker is obsessed with another member of the cast, often in a romantic manner that the other person doesn’t reciprocate. They’re very over-the-top comedic relief, with silly sprites. In a lighter setting, you could boil this role down to ‘someone whose characterization is unignorably tied to another character.’”

Well, DRDT is definitely not a lighter setting. However, you could still make a pretty good argument that Arturo’s character as it is now would be far less potent without J’s presence.

Similar to David, Arturo’s stalker-hood only comes into play in Chapter 2, once J is revealed as a celebrity. I don’t think he’s necessarily romantically interested in J (moreso in her mom, honestly), but it’s definitely true that J does not condone his actions. And yet, Arturo follows her around, so intensely single-minded that it’s darkly comedic. Both Arturo’s mega simp sprites and intense reactions of disgust qualify for over-the-top silly sprites– I know I’ve gotten some good laughs out of them, especially when paired with the “beneath me!” or “beautiful people~!” voice lines.

It’ll be interesting to see how Arturo reacts to J in Chapter 3’s daily life (assuming both of them make it there) after she betrayed him by revealing his secret. Sonia and Himiko never really had a big declaration of war on Kazuichi or Tenko, and Toko was enough of a simp that she bounced back from Byakuya underhandedly revealing her identity as Genocide Jack. Will Arturo be the same?

Alternately, if J is the Chapter 2 blackened (as many people predict), it would be interesting to explore what the Stalker archetype would do if the object of their affections was suddenly gone. Toko and Byakuya and Kazuichi and Sonia both survived together, and although Himiko survived, Tenko died. Given that Arturo did have more of a character established before he started bothering J, maybe he would just return to that state? I’m not sure what purpose there would have been for building that relationship in that case, then, but I’m sure it would be something. 

“No way around this one: the Horny One is horny. When there’s a lull in conversation, they’ll spout some sexual humor that’ll leave the audience cackling or cringing. They direct their comments at everyone, not one person in particular. If this type of humor’s not your favorite, they can be substituted with different comedic relief.”

Whit… Whit my boy… there is so much more to your character than being the Horny One… you’re not even that horny… I’m sorry…

Still though, I think this is the right place for him. Whit is quite flirtatious, even if it’s not as outrageously sexual as something like what Teruteru or Miu would say. He also has spread his commentary around– not by much, but he’s at least said flirtatious things to both Teruko and Charles, and suggested that Teruko and Xander should be a couple. As far as I remember, he’s one of only two characters to bring up sex by name (source: his and Charles’ FTE), the other being MonoTV (I am NOT scrubbing through the entire series to confirm this is true).

Additionally, there’s the angle that I tacked on to the end: if being horny isn’t the author’s style, they can sub in a different comedic relief. This DEFINITELY works. Whit constantly cracks jokes with the canonical intention to make people smile. Even beyond his role in the story, I think he sees himself as the group’s comic relief. And, sometimes, those jokes happen to be a bit flirtatious in nature. That just helps him fill the role even better!

In terms of subversions and predictions, I think it would have to be giving him a more serious role in the story. None of Hifumi, Teruteru, or Miu really have any sort of long-lasting dramatic weight to their character. Hifumi’s only major relationship is to Celeste, which is played for laughs to show how pathetic he is. Teruteru is gone too soon to have a major impact on a cast that initially dislikes him, even if his tragic relationship with his mother makes a good run for its money. Miu survives the longest, and thus is probably the most important of the trio. But, even still, her relationships with Kokichi and Kiibo don’t lead to her character making any sort of major changes.

It could definitely be a subversion of the silly Horny One trope to give it the seriously important role of being the mastermind. Or, Whit could have his heart jerked around by our resident Jerk’s death, and have to figure out who he is when he’s incapable of laughing it off. Either option seems to project a long run onto his character… so, this analysis is definitely true! There’s absolutely no way that Whit could die early, and no best boy privileges were invoked in the typing of that sentence!

“Although the Sacrificial Strong One’s biceps are large, their heart is the strongest muscle of all. They’re a reliably kind member of the cast whose mental and physical fortitude are instantly likable. To tug at the audience’s heartstrings, they’re often involved in a sacrifice of some sort… willingly or not. But probably in Ch4.”

Look, man: even if Levi doesn’t actually get buff cursed in Chapter 4, it’s pretty clear that that’s the sort of thought we were all supposed to have when we first looked at him. He’s contemplative like Sakura, helpful like Nekomaru, and strives to be a good person like Gonta. He’s the only noticeably muscular member of the cast, even though Xander is very clearly stronger than him.

Not to mention, he already was involved in a sacrifice (sort of) in the Prologue. He was the one to attack MonoTV in hopes of ending the killing game. Sure, he probably wasn’t expecting to get attacked and nearly killed in return, but he also never outwardly regrets doing it, either. Yup! Levi is just a super strong sweetheart who might die, but if he does, it’ll probably be in a totally wholesome way.

…

…

… Subversion time!

Based on literally my own poll, I know that the majority of the fandom thinks that Levi will be the blackened of this very chapter. And, while it’s still possible that Arei’s death could have been a sacrifice of some sort, it seems unlikely given the probably brutal way she was killed (most sacrifices wouldn’t involve snapping your volunteer’s neck, I think). Especially if part of Levi’s motive was the secret that’s likely his, the “murderer without remorse” one. If Levi killed without remorse once, it’s possible he could do it again. And while it’s not like Sakura or Nekomaru seemed to regret what they did much, they themselves were the victims. That makes it a lot more likely that all parties would consent to the situation.

If you don’t think Levi will die as the blackened, there are still other options as well, obviously. Such as Levi Accomplice Theory, my personal favorite! That would be an extra level of subversion to the sacrifice. If he were helping a different blackened as an accomplice, instead of sacrificing himself, he would potentially be willing to sacrifice the others. Given that accomplice!Levi would probably make it through this Trial, he would be faced with the hatred of everyone who knew that he was willing to gamble their lives.

Levi could also not be involved in Arei’s death at all. That leaves the door open for him to still be a real, genuine Chapter 4 sacrifice. Or, let’s say that Ace either dies as the Chapter 2 killer or continues to hate and distrust Levi, pushing Levi to the brink (“why do I even bother?”). He could still become a blackened for selfish reasons abd subvert the stereotype, just on a later time frame.

Or, Levi could just survive! That’s something that the Sacrificial Strong One hasn’t done yet. It’s weirdly easy to forget that’s a possibility…

“The Caretaker takes a role of guidance and leadership for the cast in a stern, parental sort of way. Although they might have some old-fashioned ideals, they’re friendly and reliable. They tend to die early as an easy way to make things hard for the other characters, left mourning someone who didn’t deserve what they got.”

Well, that was easy. Hu definitely plays the role of the mom friend, admitting herself that she needs people to rely on her or else she’ll feel useless. She guides the group in several ways, such as when she advises Teruko to pair up with Charles in the Chapter 1 Area Investigation or gives Nico her support during their outing.

While I don’t think she believes in old-fashioned ideals the same way that someone like Mahiru does, her character is undeniably connected with the past and tradition. She plays an ancient instrument, and chose to go by the name “Hu Jing” to honor her parents and the name they gave her.

Where Hu’s character will go with regards to this archetype (and in general) is an interesting debate. Hu was the second most anticipated blackened for this chapter as per the poll, so if she did kill Arei, it could contrast the “friendly leadership” idea. However, it’s not like Kirumi wasn’t the Chapter 2 blackened– and for somewhat selfish reasons, too. Some could argue that it just means that it’s even more likely that it’s possible to happen, and I’m not totally opposed to the idea. But I want to consider options where Hu doesn’t die in Chapter 2 as well (considering she’s not even my personal blackened pick).

Assuming she (and everyone else I mention; you can remove the others if you think they die) survives into the next chapter, Hu will be in a very interesting place. Given that David has defected, she’s probably the last shot at a leader that the group’s got at the moment, making her a perfect Caretaker. Or, maybe not so perfect: Ace already hates her, Nico may grow offended at her babying, and David will probably be trying to undermine her efforts.

Hu could subvert the expectations of a Caretaker by being more opposed than anyone else was. Although Taka fell from his position as leader, nobody resented him for the intense grief he felt. Some of the boys might have disliked Mahiru because of her gender-based insults, but she was never a publicly opposed figure. Everyone relied on and loved Kirumi in Daily Life, and even after she tried to get them all killed so she could escape, people thought about condoning the sacrifice and rooted for her to escape.

There’s also the matter of Hu's hidden quote, “I want to pay for what I’ve done. But even then, I still want to live.” That suggests that she might do something controversial in the future that she’ll want to apologize for. If she is a more controversial figure, then the “mourning [Hu, who] didn’t deserve what [she] got” might not happen. She could become more of a villain.

Like Levi, there’s also the option where she survives! As stated, the Caretaker is a role that typically dies, and dies early. It would be interesting to see how a level-headed leader would react to the typical endgame craziness, especially in a Trial 6. Would Hu keep her cool and be a figure that everyone can rely on, or would she not be able to handle all the chaos and pop off? A late game finish, especially as a Chapter 4 or 5 blackened, would also be really interesting to explore– the rise and fall of someone who started off only wanting to help.

If it wasn’t already obvious, I really hope Hu survives this trial, because there are a lot of interesting places her character could go from here. In my opinion, she’s probably the character we’ve gotten the least individual focus on in the content so far. I’m speculating that that may mean she’ll be a central figure in Chapter 3, but we’ll see how the end of the Trial plays out.

“The Space Case is a weird but fun character that provides some bizarre comedic levity in dark moments. While they’re generally amiable people, there’s something undeniably weird about them that makes the protagonist hesitant to get too close at first. Their talent is likely artistic or metaphysical in nature.”

Aw yeah, check out that artist going on the art one! #ArtMoment.

Even so, it’s no stretch of the imagination to call Rose a Space Case. Although she’s generally pretty logical, not making the same kinds of bizarre claims that Hiro, Ibuki, or Angie would, her forgetfulness makes her come off as a bit of an airhead. Her thoughts can appear odd, like saying that she was staring at the paint, before she explains herself.

That “forgetfulness” is also the thing that makes Teruko hesitant to get close to her. Well, okay, maybe not Teruko– she doesn’t need any help not getting close to people– but, for all of the others! Rose has notably few friends, and the person who was arguably closest to her, Nico, (probably) betrayed her by stealing the turpentine from under her nose to kill Ace. Clearly, something about Rose is keeping people away from her, and I think it’s how little she appears to be taking the game seriously.

With the focus on her tragic backstory in Chapter 2, it’s also weirdly easy to forget how funny Rose is. She’s the center of a lot of great jokes! Her falling asleep at the table, suddenly throwing black paint all over her masterpiece, and pulling out the smart guy glasses when running her chromatography exercise are all great examples of how she’s still an effective comic relief character, haunting nightmares be damned.

Speaking of, Rose’s melancholy, her “ego cogito ergo (turbatus) sum” lifestyle, is the main way that she subverts the Space Case archetype. Space Cases aren’t supposed to have deep, tragic regrets, they’re supposed to make silly predictions and refer to themselves in the third person…! Angie was definitely more of a force to be reckoned with than Hiro or Ibuki, but even then, the Student Council made her more of a frightening enemy than a pitiable figure. It’s an interesting contrast to give a character who’s so disconnected from reality a backstory that firmly, inescapably ties to it.

Furthermore, the Space Case has never been a killer. Does this mean that Rose could be pushed to kill by the debt that weighs her family down or the desire to preserve her mind before it’s further plagued with despairful imagery? Eh, maybe. I still think that Rose might survive, but that’s a straight up vibe check with no actual textual evidence to point to. Just… watch out for Chapter 3, queen. Ibuki and Angie are rooting for you…!

“Although they have their clear quirks, the Nice One is a generally friendly and normal character that the protagonist can befriend without much issue. They can be important as a relatable everyman that reacts to bizarre events or twists realistically. The main criticism they’ll probably face is being too boring, basic, or underdeveloped.”

Similar to how the protagonist in the killing game doesn’t typically take much issue with the Nice One, I don’t think many people would take much issue with me calling Eden a nice person. A Good Person, even. Haha. Ha.

Like Hina with her donuts, Sonia with her serial killers, or Kiibo with learning to be human, Eden is a little quirky. Her addition of extra sprinkles and the idea to put silly faces on the clock faces endear her to us by reminding us of the cheerful people in our day-to-day lives. Most people could also probably relate to her crying reactions in stressful Class Trial moments or body discoveries. After all, if most of us were really there, we probably wouldn’t have the level head Teruko manages to keep.

Despite it only being Chapter 2, however, I feel like Eden has dodged many of the criticisms of bland characterization that Hina, Sonia, and Kiibo have faced. That’s because in only two chapters, Eden has established herself as a central figure in this story (or at least the story of this chapter). She’s had moments of doubt and moments of pride, tried to reunite the group yet failed to execute her goals, and given Teruko a rundown on her entire worldview. Eden has undoubtedly changed a lot through her relationship with Arei.

If subversions are at play with Eden, I think it’s almost certain that she dies at some point. I know that Kiibo isn’t technically a survivor of v3, but he absolutely could have been. If you come at it from that perspective, then the only archetypes with three survivors in it are the Nice One and the Jerk, and I’ve already laid out why I don’t think Charles is going to survive. Not even the Protagonist makes it out with three survivors…!

Anyways, if you’ve been following my DRDT viewing experience, you probably already know that I believe Eden to be the blackened of Chapter 2. Such an early death, especially one with such a brutal murder method, would be a total blindside on what people would expect from the Nice One. Some people might say that it would be such a blindside that it would be character assassination were it to happen, but I believe that the groundwork has been laid such that she could plausibly be the killer AND the same ol’ nice Eden that we’ve come to love throughout the first two chapters.

Alternately, she could also die later in the story. I think in pretty much any situation, being a killer would be a more interesting twist on the Nice One than being a victim. A Nice One victim would probably be more of a “oh no, they were so kind, who would have done this?”, while a killer would follow more of a fall from grace. I would rather see the latter as a deeper dive into her character and what might cause a nice character like her to snap, but I’m aware that’s just my opinion. Either way, I sadly don’t think Eden will be a survivor of this game. If I’m proven wrong, though, I wouldn’t be mad– the DRDT universe clearly needs more Nice Ones in it.

“The Quiet Victim is a shy or anxious character who may initially struggle to meaningfully communicate with the rest of the cast. They were probably a victim of bullying in the past. While the audience initially pities them, their development will make the audience solidify an opinion in the end, whether positive or negative.”

Anxious? Check. Struggle talking? Check. Bullied in the past? Not only bullied, but overwhelmingly discriminated against as well– triple check. Man, this character analysis thing is easy! (/j)

Still, Nico definitely feels like the Chihiro of their cast, down to the focus on gender and association with a murder in the Gym. While they do still say some blunt things in Chapter 1, there’s much more of a focus and explanation of it in Chapter 2. Thus, I think it’d be fair to say that the writing may have intentionally made Nico seem like more of a Quiet Victim than they appeared to be just to better pull the rug out from under us later. Increase the pity so that there’s more of a WTF moment when they go sicko mode on Ace.

The Shy Victim already has a lot of variation to it, which makes it difficult to assess how Nico’s character might play out whether you think DRDTdev is playing it by the book or running with a subversion. Chihiro was a Quiet Victim who tried to become brave, and became a tragic early victim because of it. Mikan was a Quiet Victim who’s helpful heart led to her accidental corruption, transforming her into an unforgivable blackened for the sake of despair. Himiko was a Quiet Victim who found encouragement from Tenko and solace with Angie, and mourning both of their deaths turned her into a worthwhile survivor. So, what about Nico?

If I had to speculate (which, of course, this entire post is entirely consisted of), I would say that Nico is going for a “Mikan, but better” scenario. Nico’s already had the moral grayness and (attempted) murder inserted into their character, now they just have to reap the narrative rewards. Unlike Mikan, Nico’s character development was internally motivated (well, okay, it was externally motivated by Ace, but that bullying made Nico have an internal revelation) instead of being forcibly enacted by a magical disease. That makes any changes or consequences that occur feel much more fair for their character. Giving them some time after their probable lowest point also gives them time for a potential redemption arc, which could be very interesting to see.

I still guess that Nico will probably die in Chapter 3 or 4, but that’s another entirely unsubstantiated opinion. If they did survive, though, that’d be a W for the nonbinary community, so 👍 Rooting for ya, buddy!

“The Fandom’s Scapegoat is a unique role, being more determined by reception than the actual text. In the story, the character takes some morally gray actions. For whatever reasons, the fandom then decides to hate them, being hypocritically harder on them as compared to others. Their fans, however, will defend them to the death.”

Oh boy. Look, I don’t enjoy putting J here. I don’t want to imply that I don’t think anybody likes J, or that people shouldn’t like J, because that’s not how I feel at all! Honestly, this role is kind of broken, and if I were to make this post again, I’d probably change it.

The role would be titled something more like “The Poorly Remembered,” and focus more on how their writing seems to leave the audience remembering one of their worst, if not their worst, traits. For Sayaka, her betrayal, for Hiyoko, her bullying and whininess, and for Tsumugi, her repetitive plainness and the unpopular twist she heralded. There’s more to all of their characters than just those few traits, but it can be easy to forget that based on how their stories ended.

J still wouldn’t fit that role super well, as there are many more obvious reasons to like her character. Her blunt insults can be funny, her tsundere moments are pretty cute, and you can’t help but feel bad for her as a victim of Arturo’s stalking. Still, I would say that her most prominent character trait is her hatred of all things girly and subsequent denouncement of her mom, which can be annoying to some. I have a personal pet peeve against “just like other girl” types (I still like J enough, don’t worry), so hopefully that isn’t bleeding into my analysis too much.

Still, out of the cast, I think J might fit the Fandom’s Scapegoat role the best. Thankfully I’ve never seen anybody insist that she should just give Arturo a chance, because that’s definitely the wrong move. She did take a morally gray action surrounding Arturo, though, which is when she revealed his secret in the Class Trial. While it was probably the right thing to do, given that everyone will die if the truth isn’t revealed, the manner in which she did it speaks to a potential sadistic side. 

I’ve also seen the sentiment spread that in Trial 2 (and maybe Trial 1 as well, I wasn’t in the fandom at that time) some people believe in swap theory because they would simply prefer J to be dead over Arei, who they like better. Similarly, some people were willing to believe that J could be the killer in either chapter simply because she was the character people were most willing to part with. I am well aware that not EVERYONE who believes in swap theory or J as the killer did it for these reasons, but I am also under the impression that some people did. However, J is obviously not without her fans, and just like fans of Sayaka, Hiyoko, and Tsumugi, those fans will defend her to the death.

Given that the role is kind of broken and can be pretty much anything (attempted first killer turned first victim, sudden third victim who was conceptualized as a survivor, mastermind who was secretly the first killer), I have no idea what to say about J’s future in this game. I think that her remote and her talent are incredibly suspicious for being a killer. I think that her struggles to break away from her mother’s fame, only to be confronted by it time and time again, could make her a very tragic victim or a worthy survivor. I think that the idea of her and Ryan masterminding the killing game together is really fun and interesting. J’s role in Despair Time is a mystery to me, which is great! I can’t wait to be surprised by whatever she has in store in the future.

“The Strange Actor immediately stands out to the Protagonist for their unique, potentially dark style. They’re a mysterious character that deals with themes of lying and/or perceived, strange identities. However, that doesn’t stop them from being theatrical and showoff-ish, recognizable in any scene they’re in."

Dark style? Call in the Horror Fanatic to do the job right!

Veronika isn’t exactly as mysterious as somebody like Kiyo, but I think she embodies the ideals of the Strange Actor pretty well. I think the point is more so that, even if Veronika tells us exactly who she is and what she stands for, we (or at least most of us) still can’t empathize with her. This makes her stand out as a weird character that you could truly only find in a Danganronpa-brand killing game. That sort of vibe is what makes Veronika a good Strange Actor in my mind.

It’s much easier to fit her theatricality and dark style to the Strange Actor than it is her themes. The way she outwardly admires the most messed up of characters and seems delighted at signs of conflict steal the show whenever she’s on screen. The same kind of goes with her various horror-based fun facts (just due to how interesting they are), although that’s a trait that many of DRDT’s Ultimates share. The girl wears eyeballs as hairpins. I really don’t think I needed to elaborate this much.

Similar to the Horny One, I think that the best way for Veronika to subvert her archetype would be as an actually important character. Celeste and Kiyo both die as third killers, and while they’re important in the moments of each of their Class Trials, they don’t really factor into the main plot or the endgame. Gundham is definitely more important as the fourth killer and an important person to Sonia, but he’s overall silly enough that he kind of feels divorced from the main storyline.

Veronika could accomplish this in a few ways. One is with the theory that Veronika is the mastermind. That would be very convenient for the sake of my Color Theory, and a fun instance of hiding in plain sight to have the mastermind be someone who was noticeably enjoying the killing game all along. She could also be a Chapter 5 death, either as the killer (more straightforward) or the victim (but probably in a Nagito or Kokichi kind of way). Being a survivor would also make Veronika an important character, although that kind of feels like too much of a subversion, even for me.

As a final note, I’ll add that, depending on how the story goes, I think Veronika could potentially swap archetypes with Arturo or David down the road. Arturo’s dramatic attitude also stands out, and his focus on appearances fits with themes of identity; David is an Ultimate Public Speaker all about lying and acting in the way he wants the world to see him. Meanwhile, Veronika already kind of stalks Arturo and may continue to stalk David, and I just mentioned how her fate may mirror that of Nagito or Kokichi, two Chaotic Bastards.

Pretty interesting, huh? I bet if Veronika were here, she’d be a fan of this discussion.

“The Sporty Dumbass is a ‘punch first, ask questions later’ kind of character who’s willing to put everything on the line for their beliefs. Despite their jockish appearance, the Sporty Dumbass has a lot of heart, with emotion playing into their characterization in a major way. Basically, a himbo, except with a little more fight.”

If you don’t think that emotion plays into Ace’s characterization in a major way, I advise you to watch DRDT again. Of course, I’d generally advise that people rewatch DRDT because it’s a really good story, but, I digress.

Ace has emotionally overloaded reactions to pretty much everything. He’s super scared when Xander threatens to fight him, super pissed at Levi’s betrayal, and super sadistic when it comes to asserting his power over Nico. We already saw him put everything on the line for his beliefs when he admitted to holding back key evidence (the conversation he overheard between David and Arei) because he was so convinced that Nico was the killer. He leads with his heart, his brains a distant afterthought.

However, just because Ace leads with his heart doesn’t mean he has to be nice about it. And, I think that’s the main way that he subverts the archetype of the Sporty Dumbass: he’s a mean little dude! Leon wasn’t the nicest either, but he tried to get along with people like Mondo and was genuinely interested in Sayaka. He may have been the first killer, but that wasn’t even his choice– he may not have decided to hurt anybody if he wasn’t already put in a life-threatening situation. Akane can be kind of careless, but she had a strong connection with Nekomaru, and was generally willing to lend a helping hand. Kaito is by far the most caring of the bunch, giving his all to motivate Shuichi and Maki while he was still alive.

Ace has no friends. Most people want to stay far away from him, and the few that don’t, he pushes away. He has a lot more fight and general malice than the typical himbo. Thus, no matter what he does, he can’t be a straightforward Sporty Dumbass.

As such, I don’t have any strong subversion-based predictions for where his character would go. We already had a first killer, survivor, and fifth killer, so if we were just picking on what’s straight up the most different, it would be… middling victim, I guess? (Nico already tried their best…) Chapter 3 or 4 victim is certainly possible for Ace, but so is him still being the Chapter 2 killer in my mind. I sort of get survivor vibes from him, although I can’t pinpoint exactly why. I guess it’s just because his character has a lot of room to grow, possibly in a redemption kind of way? Or because it’d be kinda weird for him to almost die in Chapter 2, only for him to die for real a chapter or two later…?

Thankfully, I know I’m not the only one who believes in Ace’s chances of survival, so I know I don’t sound like a clown on this particular point. The jockish jockey boy may be around for a while yet, so perhaps he can have a change of heart.

“The Physical Threat is immediately noted by the protagonist as someone who, whether due to their talent or backstory, is someone who could easily kill others. The Physical Threat’s demeanor backs this up, their severity intimidating. But, don’t worry: there’s probably a soft spot down there just begging to be exposed!”

Now, I know that Arei isn’t actually noted as the biggest physical threat when the cast first meets– it’s Levi, though it should be Xander– but, hear me out. I put Mondo in here even though people were way more afraid of Sakura than him. Similarly, I think Arei still fits this archetype well, even if she wasn’t denoted as the scariest.

Part of this is because the emotions you’re supposed to come out of Arei’s introduction feeling are “disturbed and uncomfortable.” Xander certainly looks that way after Arei’s departure when he calls her “rude and disrespectful.” He and Teruko quickly turn the topic of conversation towards the subject of Xander getting into fights, which is a bit unrelated, but ends with Teruko telling Xander that he should stop getting into so many fights. An underlying message is that Xander shouldn’t get into any more fights with Arei, because based on the outcome of that (verbal) fight, he’d totally lose.

That’s not to say Arei isn’t physically intimidating as well! When I think of Arei’s strength, the first thing I think of is the thumbnail of Chapter 2 Episode 4, the CG where she strangles MonoTV with her own rope. She reminds us in the ensuing conversation that she can toss a bowling ball with ease, and her victory in the arm wrestling competition highlights her brutality. Eden was certainly scared of her once upon a time, although that was once again more in the mental department.

In terms of subversions… well, one department in which she isn’t winning is the death order. As you may have noted, every Physical Threat dies unfortunately in Chapter 2. Assuming you’re of the belief that Arei is really dead, then she played directly into that stereotype. The pattern was probably borne of another way to make the remaining cast fear the killing game. If even the most immediately threatening person can die at the start, then how can they really think they can make it out alive?

I think that Arei improves the archetype of the Physical Threat by having more of a character arc of her own, even in a limited time. Mondo changes slightly by admitting Taka as his friend, but he never resolved any of the trauma of his brother’s death. Peko was on the verge of realizing that she was more than a tool to Fuyuhiko, but her execution got in the way of her being able to act upon it at all. Ryoma very pointedly doesn’t change at all (other than arguably becoming more depressed), which is why Kirumi decides to take advantage of him.

Although Arei similarly got cut off just as she was beginning to change, we at least got to see more of what a changed Arei would be like before she died. That change was very plot relevant, too, as without it, Arei might not have died (sad :( ). There was more time and focus put into her character arc than there was into Mondo’s or Peko’s, even within an otherwise packed chapter. Just another reason to appreciate DRDT’s superb writing and characterization!

-

And, that’s the end! I hope that was as fun for you to read as it was indulgent for me to write. If people really like this, maybe I’ll consider running it for another fangan in the future, like DRA, SDRA2, or Eden’s Garden (although I’d probably need at least one genuine chapter before I write that one). Any of those casts would fit these archetypes worse than DRDT, but, well, that’s what makes DRDT a good starting place for explaining how it could apply to a fangan. I kinda doubt this’ll super blow up, given how long and dense it turned out, but… eh, maybe it’ll ~subvert~ my expectations.

…if you took a shot every time I said “subversion” in this post, you’d be deader than Xander–

#danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #teruko tawaki #min jeung #david chiem #charles cuevas #xander matthews #arturo giles #whit young #levi fontana #hu jing #rose lacroix #eden tobisa #nico hakobyan #j rosales #veronika grebenshchikova #ace markey #arei nageishi #thh spoilers #sdr2 spoilers #v3 spoilers #i wasn't exactly sure what to call this post so hopefully analysis + predictions feels accurate #i really tried to acknowledge everyone's theories in a respectful way but it's obviously tough to talk about every single possibility #and also these are MY predictions so of course they have to rely on what i think #i really hope that all of this makes sense and was fun to read #i tried to make it as interesting as possible :) #my theories #fangan archetype analysis

[butterflydm]

wot deeper dive 2x5: damane

This specific post I am going to avoid any spoilers from the books! I will be doing another post later today that includes those spoilers and related thoughts.

Starting with a bigger introduction to the Seanchan. I love how much the show has worked to set them apart from our familiar Westlands characters. Everything about them -- their clothing, their mannerisms, their accents (their background music) -- all works together to convey the knowledge that they are different from the Westlands characters.

2. We learn some very important things in this first scene:

a. Suroth attacked that village on her own initiative (aka because of Ishamael), which means that Ishamael was having her search for Perrin under the cloak of ranging out for more damane and territory, and that specific attack was not ta'veren coincidence.

b. Suroth is not the leader of the invaders; High Lord Turak is. We also get to really see the dynamics of who is allowed to look at who and who is allowed to talk to who.

c. Ishamael lets Suroth take the fall for attacking the village before he reveals the thing that could have let her off the hook (the Horn of Valere). And Turak is definitely paying close attention to the dynamic between Suroth and Ishamael.

d. Turak, as a 'collector of ancient oddities' was able to open the box containing the Horn of Valere.

e. Loial and Ingtar are dressed up in a very specific and fancy style, and Suroth makes a point of mentioning that Ingtar is a 'lord' (and called Loial an 'Ogier slave').

f. We really see some different levels here, showing Seanchan society. I love the variety of styles! They're all in the same general theme (the shaved sides of the heads for the high status people and the longer fingernails) but they each have their own distinct style. And each of them has their own slave with a parasol and the slaves have individual styles as well -- picked out by their masters, one assumes. And none of the Seanchan sitting and watching the show here have nails as long as Suroth or Turak. Turak is the only one with the fancy gold nail protectors that extend all the way down the nail (Suroth has long nails but no extra protection behind the small band at the finger).

g. If Loial and Ingtar are dressed as some variety of slave, then the people standing behind Turak who are also dressed in that sort of seafoam-green clothing are likely slaves of the same rank. Looks like one of them is holding a tray of pastries, so that tracks.

h. Turak says that their mission here in the Westlands is to unite the people of the world to fight the Shadow, which means that he does not know that Suroth is a darkfriend and it makes it clear that the Seanchan as a whole are not actively fighting 'for' the Shadow. They believe that they are in the right, which is very important to know for their motivations going forward, I think. He's upset with Suroth because she's moving too fast -- Turak wants them to consolidate their position here first and only push out and take lands that they know they can hold (and we know that's true, because we will learn later in this episode that the Whitecloaks have taken it from the Seanchan).

i. The reaction when Suroth's nails get shortened is very telling. It makes it even more clear what a status symbol they are, as Suroth is basically told that Turak isn't going to let her be part of the ruling council again until her nails grow back out.

Great opening scene. Chilling. We learned so much about the Seanchan!

3. The chase scene between Rand & Moiraine and Lanfear is informative in so many ways. We see Moiraine's ruthlessness (she kills the horse and sets up the stable mistress to most likely be killed as a decoy); we see that she knows Rand better than she did when she was trying to convince him to follow her last season (she promises to tell him everything once they are out of immediate danger); we see how lethal and ruthless Lanfear is and how she enjoys causing suffering; and we see Moiraine's cleverness (the entire horse plan).

We also have the beginning of Rand getting devastating news that he needs to process -- last season, he dealt with that by going into severe denial for six episodes about what his father told him and what that might mean re: being the Dragon Reborn, but he's not doing that here. He has to come to terms with the idea that he's been having sex with one of the monsters from the stories that people tell about the end of the last Age but he doesn't try to pretend that it's not true at any point. Both Rand and Moiraine stay more grounded in reality here than they were last season (Rand hid in denial while Moiraine kept leaning on wishful thinking).

And we know from Moiraine's terrible wound last season that Aes Sedai cannot heal themselves with the One Power, so the fact that Lanfear CAN heal herself shows what an immense power gap was here even before Moiraine's ability to touch the Source was taken away. What Lanfear uses to heal herself also looks very different from the weaves of the One Power that we've been seeing all this time (including from both Ishamael and Lanfear).

4. Lanfear checking in with the stable mistress about who appeared to be in charge between Rand & Moiraine and noting that it was Moiraine and mentioning that she must remember how young Rand is. I was definitely thinking that she would probably place the majority (and potentially all) of the blame for what happened on Moiraine and not on Rand. Rand is young! He was led astray by this awful Aes Sedai 'bitch'. He just needs to be led back to the correct path! She can Fix Him (by breaking him). Lanfear can definitely still have her happy ending that she sold herself to the Shadow to get! I love her instant change in vibe now that she's not pretending to be Selene. "Is there anything slower than a horse?" And, of course, we know from the 3000 years ago flashback that they had some sweet technology back in the previous Age.

5. Perrin's scene here with Elyas is so good. We got hints in the previous episodes that Elyas is detached from humanity as a whole, but this scene really shows its... teeth about that. When Perrin realizes that Elyas lied to him and is leading him away from the caravan that kidnapped his companions, he immediately gets upset. He wants to learn more about what's happening to him but not at the cost of losing everything that he loves. Perrin's storyline in season 2 really has been absolutely fantastic.

We learn here that Perrin's eyes are going to completely switch over at some point.

6. Perrin has been getting progressively more and more upset after he realizes that Elyas lied about where he was taking Perrin (and Perrin had even mentioned last episode that he was worried they were going the wrong way and Elyas 'reassured' him by telling him that wolves don't get lost) but it's the mention of his wife that gets him to snap and leave Elyas behind. It must feel like a real betrayal, since he knows that Elyas is aware of his nightmares about Laila's death. That Elyas can know how deeply he grieves her and still dismiss her that way. She's 'not his pack' (she was not a wolf), so she doesn't matter.

7. We do get it fairly clearly stated here that the Forsaken were individually trapped by the previous Dragon and thus will be released individually as well (last episode implied it but now it's directly stated). I will note that for all that Moiraine mentioned she would tell Rand 'everything', she does not tell Rand that Lanfear was in love with the previous Dragon until the end of the episode, when she's decided that he needs to face Lanfear instead continuing to run.

8. I love that Hopper came back to try to help Perrin! I continue to love the way that they are showing how the wolves communicate with each other. Sad note: Hopper's actor doesn't get mentioned in the x-ray that pops up when you pause the show.

I love Perrin touching on the 'they didn't even bury him' idea after we had Ingtar showing respect even to the Darkfriend in the previous episode and giving him a burial. That Uno is being used as a prop, even after his death, to show how brutal the Seanchan are (and! being used that way by the Whitecloaks too, since they also didn't take him down and bury him).

9. Introducing... Aviendha. She gets a good introduction here -- she tries to help Perrin avoid running into the same danger she ran into, into coming into the wrong town at the wrong time; we learn about how dangerous she is (oh, Dain mentions that the last man who touched the cage got his arm broken -- we later see Valda with his arm in a sling). "You can't trust an Aiel," Perrin is told by Dain.

10. Dain Bornhald is another character introduction -- he survives the episode, so it's a safe bet that he'll be seen again. He's quite friendly with Perrin, and also quite observant -- he notices that Perrin is wearing a ring that looks of Two Rivers' make, he warns Perrin about not trying to help the Aiel woman, because he can tell that Perrin is uncomfortable with her being caged up.

There's also a lot of tension between Dain and Valda, once he shows up. Valda dislikes that Dain gave Aviendha water; Dain is amused when the small dog scares Valda (because he's got wolf-related trauma now); and Valda is of the opinion that Dain only holds power because his dad is important in the Whitecloaks.

11. This Verin plotline really is so delightful. It's actually a good parallel to Alanna's plotline in the last episode -- both of them are trying to ferret out information because they're worried about the current situation, and both of them encounter troubling hints that fellow Aes Sedai may be involved with the Shadow. But I love the comradery that we see here between Verin and her fellow Brown Ajah Sisters. Her two Sisters are just so instantly charming and I loved getting to see her talking with them.

12. Nynaeve and Liandrin's conversation is so good. Nynaeve figuring out that, all this time, Liandrin has been trying to recruit her for the Shadow and not for the Red Ajah. Liandrin has known from the beginning that Nynaeve was never going to pick the Red Ajah. But she had hopes about Nynaeve choosing the Dark...

We also get some nice history that expands on the lore of the Three Oaths from another (very biased) PoV.

Nynaeve sees right through Liandrin, though, and calls her out on trying to justify her choices, even now that they've taken her to places she genuinely dislikes.

13. Alwhin, Suroth's Voice, being ordered out of the room with everyone else (by Ishamael!) does imply to me that she isn't aware of who he is and doesn't know that Suroth is a Darkfriend.

We get our first (but not our last!) Darkfriend vs Darkfriend spat of the episode! I really loved that this episode is starting to explore the weaknesses of the Shadow, even as we're seeing how dangerous they are as well. They don't all agree on what they want or what means to take to get there. They hold each other in contempt (Suroth trying to tell Ishamael, leader of the Forsaken, that he's here on her sufferance because she's of the Blood and he's not... what an amazing moment that shows that as much as Suroth is a Darkfriend, she is still very much of her own culture as well).

Suroth is Big Mad at Ishamael for essentially throwing her under the bus. He was the one who ordered her to the village but she is the one who paid the price for it (as much as she calls Liandrin's Ishamael's 'dog' later in the episode, she is also very much on his leash, as he proves here when he yanks on it and she acknowledges that he's above her).

14. The second mention of a fight in the skies; Ishamael says that the Last Battle is going to happen here. Ishamael believes that the Last Battle is about to be won in Falme -- it seems like the reason that he believes that is because he thinks that Rand is about to fall over to their side. That's the first hint we have that he's confident to the point of arrogance imo (we'll get more later).

15. Everything about Aviendha and Perrin's conversation is great. "People shouldn't be in cages". The contrast between Aviendha's formal introduction of herself and Perrin just going "I'm Perrin... Aybara". And then the fight! We get to see Aviendha in action and everyone who might have forgotten about the fight in the cold open of 1x7 likely remembers it now. I love Aviendha's amusement over Perrin trying to be protective. "Perrin Aybara, do you like to dance?" and the confusion on his face every time she says something that he doesn't understand.

16. Moiraine does not tell Rand here that she can't channel (he may have guessed, but she didn't tell him). She only tells him that she can't use the One Power to keep them awake. We know that Moiraine is secretive and I think that a lot of the confusion earlier in the season over whether she's stilled or shielded also comes from both her and Lan being incredibly secretive and only sharing information on a need-to-know basis. She tells Rand about Tel'aran'rhoid because it is an active danger that he needs to stay wary of -- if he sleeps, then Lanfear will be able to reach him.

(I'm also hoping that show-onlys took note of what Moiraine said here and went back and rewatched the red coat sex scene with this new knowledge in mind)

I do not think that Moiraine told Alanna & co that she couldn't channel. All they know is that she doesn't want Lan around anymore and Alanna's plotline in 2x4 was all about the three of them trying to figure out why Moiraine dumped Lan (that plotline made so much more sense once I realized it was an Alanna plotline and not a Lan plotline). I think, out of necessity, that she told Verin & co that she couldn't channel and they likely assumed that she burned out, which is a known hazard (well, Verin may not have actually assumed that, given what she says to Moiraine in 2x2, but she let Moiraine believe that she assumed it). So I think a large part of the 'mystery' around Moiraine is simply because she doesn't tell anyone anything unless she believes that she absolutely has to. Now, luckily, she has realized that Rand NEEDS more information from her because it helps him trust her, so she is telling him a lot more than she did last season.

17. I am also going to note how incredibly similarly Rand and Moiraine are dressed here. The show did that a lot last season too (with the addition that Egwene was also dressed similarly to the two of them in s1, though that wasn't possible this season due to her needing to wear novice whites).

18. I loved the scene with Rand and all the Damodreds. Them mistaking Rand for Moiraine's Warder and her trying to will him to go along with the lie and her despairing, "This is.... Rand" when he reveals that he is not her Warder. Lady Anvaere revealing to Moiraine that she's already met Rand, which does not seem to be information that she shared with Moiraine over their tea session, given Moiraine's reaction. And Moiraine interacting so awkwardly with her nephew Barthanes.

We also get the information that the upcoming royal wedding will be in a few weeks.

19. Poor Rand is just getting so much new information thrown at him. Though at least he's had more sleep than Moiraine, he did just spend all night walking to Cairhien. Moiraine starts out with the idea that they just need to run as fast and far as they can, but Anveare makes her rethink her plans. She gets Moiraine to stop and think about the situation as a whole -- IS Rand actually in danger from Lanfear? If he is in danger, what kind of danger is it? And would running actually fix any of that when they know that she can get to him in his dreams? I think the show did a really good job of showing why Moiraine decided not to keep running here.

20. Verin and Sheriam's conversation is very good, how she feels out the situation with Sheriam and then sets up a reason for them both to need to leave the room together so that her friend can sneak in and check out Sheriam's book. And what we see of the confusion on Sheriam's face here tracks with Verin wondering about the possible of Compulsion later on.

21. Yasicca of the Brown Ajah is absolutely charming. I love her accent. I hope we get to see more of her in the future. If the show continues to follow up on the Black Ajah thread that they've laid out here, Yasicca could be a major player (... or she might be destined to be killed off because she gets too close to the truth. oh, that's sad! I like her so much already and I barely know her!). I also loved that we got to see the writing in the show. Verin is very good about starting conversations and letting the other person finish it, giving them prompts as appropriate.

22. Our second Darkfriend vs Darkfriend spat occurs as Liandrin delivers the Wondergirls into slavery. I do think that Liandrin was definitely holding onto the Power this entire conversation. The way that the damane who pointed out the girls in the village looks at her feels like she can sense it. She also looks mournful when she's caught Egwene, imo. I really like how this episode is showing the cracks in the Dark.

23. I'm not going to get into Egwene's (horrible, heartbreaking) situation too much here because it's clear that the next episode is going to go into a lot more detail.

24. Aviendha and Perrin continue to be a delight. She's very patient with him but she teases him too. We also learn here that she's searching for the Aiel's chief of chiefs, their Car'a'carn. Just a genuinely lovely scene. And Hopper just hanging out with them!

I love that Aviendha doesn't even ask why they're going to Falme. She goes where he goes! She owes him a debt! He'll tell her if he decides to!

25. Elayne trying to be helpful while Nynaeve is just spiky because she barely knows this girl: understandable! Good thing Ryma's Warder found them!

26. A great conversation between Verin and Liandrin here. Liandrin's attempt to ~casually lean~ against the wall when she sees Verin genuinely made me laugh. Verin, of course, is now following up on the thread that she asked Yasicca to investigate for her -- anyone who has left the Tower in recent days. Liandrin makes the big mistake of liars here in that she talks too much and gives too many details.

27. Seeing Moiraine's exhaustion here was so good and so important. She's so tired but she can't sleep! And I really love the conversation between her and Anvaere. We also find out here that their father was kind-hearted and Barthanes takes after him. I love that Anvaere knows Moiraine well enough to tell that she's at a loss for her next move. We really get to see Anvaere's perceptiveness here. And Moiraine trying to figure out how much is safe to tell.

28. Darkfriend vs Darkfriend spat number three. Though this one comes with a side of how much they both are desperately obsessed with Rand. Also, Lanfear & Ishamael imply here that Lanfear's big plan last episode was to reveal her identity to Rand. Given what he says in an upcoming scene ("You want me to pretend to be in love with a Forsaken?"), I'm... uh, not sure that conversation would have gone the way that she wanted. But, yes, Ishamael confirms here that he's our True Believer of the Forsaken/Chosen, while Lanfear just wants her ex back. Lol, the way they stare at their imagined Rand for a while cracks me up.

29. I also think this conversation gives us our second big moment of Ishamael being overconfident to the point of arrogance, in his assessment of the ta'veren five. He thinks that all of them are on the cusp of being broken:

a. that Egwene craves power (though the viewers know from last episode that she wants power explicitly to protect the people she cares about and not for its own sake)

b. that Nynaeve fears her power (not necessarily wrong, but it also doesn't mean that her fear will lead her into aligning with the Dark; an option that she just firmly rejected from Liandrin)

c. that Mat was 'born mine' which is following on a thread that was set up last season, where both Moiraine and Mat himself worry that the world would be doomed if Mat were the Dragon

d. and that Perrin is going to soon be 'more wolf than man' (but the viewers just saw him refuse to isolate himself from his friends and refuse to disconnect from humanity)

And Lanfear believes that if Rand sees that his friends have fallen to the Shadow, that he will break.

The only one of them that's actually under Ishamael's power right now is Egwene, captured by the Seanchan.

30. I find it fascinating that Alwhin, Ingtar, and Loial all appear as part of Ishamael's entourage when he's summoned to speak with Turak, even though Suroth isn't there yet. We get another name -- the Court of the Nine Moons -- and we learn that he's the one who saw the omens that led to the Seanchan mounting this attack on the Westlands.

31. We're only just barely introduced to Ryma and her Warder, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of them (probably next episode). She's going to be able to give them all the info on the Seanchan (that we are going to see played out with Egwene - ugh this collar scene is so heartbreaking).

The sul'dam who collars Egwene doesn't have the facepaint. I wonder if they only wear that when they're actively working as part of the armies or guard. Hmm, but the sul'dam standing on Egwene's other side does have the facepaint, so I don't know. X-ray confirms that her name is Renna. The magic of the collar itself has almost a sci-fi or steampunk vibe. It forms almost like gears. We see a 'leash' of the One Power going from Renna to Egwene and then she puts an actual leash, a chain, on Egwene's collar.

It really is hard to watch.

32. Moiraine and Rand. Going off to a bedroom together. Barthanes and Anvaere have a lot to think about in terms of hot gossip. I really do like Rand and Moiraine's conversation here. Rand's realization of what Moiraine is asking him to do here (catfish one of the Forsaken, as someone put it) is very well done. But, wow, Rand clearly has not had a chance to process any of his trauma from their relationship so him diving right in to confront her is definitely a dangerous choice.

Their conversation in TAR I'll save for when we actually get it in the next episode (I'm assuming). But Lanfear certainly knows how to set a scene.

#butterfly watches wot #wot #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot show spoilers #wot prime spoilers #wot s2 spoilers #wheel of time s2 spoilers #wot 2x5 spoilers

[quaranmine]

Hi, not sure if you remember me, but i sent an ask a while ago saying how i love the Incadescence of a dying light and that i talk about it with my friend and how we both really liked the story and are juts you know discussing it well update to now. we still do that lol. i cant stop thinking about it, i listen to the firewatch OST on the daily, resonating with each track at a time. I love it. I live it. I am enamored. Everytime Im studying Polish (my native language) and revising each epoch for my upcoming finals i cant help but connect themes and motives to that wonderful story of yours. If i land on a fitting topic in my oral final exam (like pop-culture, creativity and arts, certain themes in modern media) you BET Ill be talking about this fic (with all the credit I can give of course!) cause USARWSETDYRVUHUISC I cant get it out of my head. Its such an amazing example of how the media of fanfiction elevates the story to its maximum potential. How knowing the characters makes it so much easier to connect and resonate, even though Mumbo is absent from the majority of the fic, we still feel hurt after finding out whats happened to him. Like, its such an amazing creative medium I love fanfiction and TERSSXEFJNKVCRXSERARXSXERCDJNGIKKDc :thumbsup: oh gosh The Incadescence of a Dying Light. yeah so fun fact i actually had to look up what it means cause i didnt know the word before and oh. oh. oh its so much worse and more painful. really love it, i do, oh i do! I now have acquired (idk how to spell it lul) the never subsiding lust for nature and outdoors and hiking and being a part of it. I love it, you made me regain my love for it. I loved it before, yes, but i was caught up in my own head and had so much stuff i had to do, but now i love to look out my window even more, i love strolling in my garden. i love it. thank you, thank you, thak youuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :thumbsup: So yeah, this fic is one of my faves of all time, i like it a lot, it has inspired me to live more and be alive basically and also. and for the end a fanart of an alternative ending where Mumbo somehow survives and just lives in the forest like a wild animal, living his best life, eating berries (i decided on drawing him eating berries [peace love and plants] instead of chowing down [is chowing a word??] on some rabbit lol) and then grian finds him and its super awkward

HI! Yes, of course I remember you! First of all, had a really wild day yesterday at work, but I read this at soooome point on my phone during the middle of the day and it made me smile :)

This ask is just so??? AAAAAAA???? I almost don't know how to respond, because it's just SO wonderful to hear this about something I created. Like I did that? I made a thing that is sticking deeply with people? I'm just soooo <333333

I like your point about how fanfiction can maximize story potential! I think it'd make a wonderful essay topic honestly. I have thought about this in connection with fanfic a lot--specifically, the divide between original fiction and fanfiction. In original works, you have to make the audience care. You have to introduce me to a character, setting, and story I will be interested in. I've read a lot of negative book reviews that start off with "the author didn't make me care about the characters" (i have also...said this myself about books I ended up not liking.) With fanfic, you skip that step! It lets you jump right in. I don't have to explain Mumbo and Grian's friendship or demonstrate it to you. You just Know. Someone reading it fandom blind would get the implication about how important they are to each other simply by seing the depth of Grian's grief, but for my intended audience, I can do whatever I want because I trust you to already have the background information you need.

The title is from a line I really like in a song (Post Humorous by Gus Dapperton). It just...painted such a nice word picture. Especially for a story about grief death and fire!

I just. Love that this fic helped you regain a desire for nature? That just makes me feel...warm, I guess, to know that I was able to spark that with something I created. I hope it goes well for you, and you get to take many walks. This spring I've been using the trails near my aunt's house (not.....hiking paths. too urban.) much more. I wanted to walk this week but I was too busy lol. I hope you have many wonderful experiences out in the Great Outdoors <3 one of these days, I swear I'll up and move to a place with "better" nature and "real" trails close by.

Also, SKFJSLFJSKFLSJKF your fanart made me laugh so much. I have like. Entertained this idea. Not as an actual or serious part of the story but I was like man wouldn't it just be off-the-wall if he was just vibing Out There 😭😭😭 You've caught the vibe perfectly LOL

this was all around such a special message to hear, thank you SO much!

#fave #save #hc_firewatch_au #quara asks #again <3333333333 #i feel like this response doesnt really adequately express how much this ask means to me i'm just really tired sorry <3 #i lvoe how many people i've induced firewatch brainrot into slfjsklfj

[drdt-headcanons]

I wanna do one HC per character :)

Teruko Tawaki ~ She’s gotten into the craziest trouble before. Like she’s probably been framed for a crime and then let out at like the last second, or joined a gang by accident and then ran away.

Xander Matthews ~ He is a huge history buff and although he doesn’t agree with most things in history, he uses successful tactics other historical advocates used for his own protests and rebellions.

Charles Cuevas ~ his parents were highly against him doing chemistry, and had no idea he was even pursuing it until he won an award in highschool for it. They knew he took chemistry class and aced it, but they didn’t know the hours he spend after school were not actually gardening, but it was him studying and doing high level chemistry experiments.

Ace Markey ~ he tried to be a basic white boy back in middle school to become more popular, but he missed the memo and accidentally ended up dressing like a basic white girl instead 😭

Arei Nageishi ~ she’s definitely a hello kitty girl, but the stereotypical bitchy one

Rose Lacroix ~ she’s drank the paint water so many times by mistake she can’t even differentiate the taste between real water and paint water anymore

Hu Jing ~ Hu can also play a lot of other instruments! Although she prefers and likes the Zither out of all of them, she plays piano, acoustic guitar and cello if her high school needed that instrument for smth or someone around town did.

Eden Tobisa ~ Eden was that one super goody two-shoes back in highschool. She always did volunteer work, had pretty good grades, was the founder or in many activist clubs.

Levi Fontana ~ definitely dresses in women’s clothes. He believes clothes aren’t gendered, but he doesn’t go out wearing “women’s clothes” bc he’s worried that his reputation would be slandered.

Arturo Giles ~ he used to own all the ‘girly toys’ like LEGO Friends, and instead of building the kit, he made all the characters have the most insane, toe-curling, suspenseful drama with each other and he would narrate it and do all the voices.

Min Jeung ~ Min gives the meanest death stare. She would get teased in school for having no social life, but once she stared you down, you’d never make fun of her again.

David Chiem ~ He sets his alarm for an hour earlier than he actually has to get up, because it takes him an hour to get up and motivated and out of bed.

Veronika Grebenishchikova ~ She does insane things to impress people she has a crush on. Once, she made a heart that looked and felt exactly like a human heart and gifted it to the person she liked. After that, her reputation was basically ruined.

J Rosales ~ J definitely had a middle school emo phase. Once she disappeared from the media, she cut her hair, dyed it black and started listening to MCR and acted like her life sucked. The rebellion is still in her, but she’s matured and just prefers boyish clothes and dad-rock more than anything.

Whit Young ~ the biggest pop fan to exist. He knows every popular song, artist, but the catch is he only knows them if it’s a female singing. He couldn’t give a crap about male singers.

Nico Hakobyan ~ only likes cartoon shows that star animals, like Bluey. They also like books that star animals, but they prefer to see the animals animated on screen.

//I didn’t mean for this to get so long but ty and I hope you enjoyed the HCs!!!

:)

#drdt #teruko tawaki #xander matthews #david chiem #eden tobisa #arturo giles #j rosales #j moreno #min jeung #arei nageishi #ace markey #hu jing #nico hakobyan #veronika grebenshchikova #levi fontana #rose lacroix #charles cuevas #whit young #i won’t lie i did the Arturo one as a kid #angsty and fluffy drdt headcanons

[fancylala4]

Hi! I see where U reblogged my tangled crit posts 👀

I dont hate it, it just doesnt hit as well as it should. I prefer the barbie version. And I prefer Disney Rapunzel with ROTG Jack because not only they the same age but i find the parallels a bit more fascinating.

I remember seeing a arrow toy Rapunzel themed at Target, just recently I found out she was going to use a bow and arrow beforehand XD much much cooler than a frying pan!

Which begs to question! Why is the franchise so off with its girl characters? Gothel's entire motivation is staying young, Cass ended up a mess, Ariana is underwritten. And Rapunzel barely has another girl her age to hang out with. It's just Cass.

I get it. I disliked the movie at first because of the movie itself and how badly it was written but I started to hate the movie because of the rabid, racist fans and how badly they treated patf just to prop this movie up back in the day. The fandom is still pretty bad from what I seen.

The Barbie version is one of the best adaptations of rapunzel I have ever seen. It’s so good and it holds up perfectly well today except for the animation of course. If you get a chance, you should check out rapunzel’s revenge. It’s a great rapunzel comic and Disney took elements from that version as well.

I definitely agreed that Jack Frost and rapunzel would make a good couple. I liked them way better than him and Elsa and definitely would be way better than creepy dream.

Oh I saw that now in stores and I wonder why they made it when Merida is right there. I did hear that the series writers wanted her to have the bow and arrow but Disney didn’t like that idea. Probably because they wanted her to be helpless and didn’t want her to be taken seriously with a weapon. I remember looking at some Lego sets and I saw that rapunzel had a bow in a set for the series. So I think that rumor was true. Yeah, I would like the bow and arrow way better than that dumb frying pan. I guess it doesn’t matter since rapunzel wasn’t shown as a threat with the frying pan and it was more Flynn’s weapon in the movie.

Yeah, it’s so weird how this franchise is targeted towards little girls and all the female characters in it is just off and can be really offensive. Gothel is a walking outdated stereotype of many, rapunzel has no flaws, gets overshadowed in her OWN movie and couldn’t even drive the plot of the movie! It’s hard to believe this movie was made in 2010, it belongs in the 50s.

I have limited knowledge of the series characters but is cass the one who they made a villain and has blue hair like she’s some anime character? If so, It’s bad because I think I seen people say that she’s a villain because of how she looks and they turned a friendship into a bitter one just in a sake of something dumb. Do the writers think that girls have to be catty to each other or else it’s unrealistic? It’s a weird choice for a franchise targeted towards little girls. Ariana is the queen, right? I think I reblog a post about cultural appropriation in the movie and they mentioned her name. But really? They could have had a good plot point about rapunzel and her getting used to a good mother after what she’s been through. But they thought it was better just to focus on the king, have him be even more abusive to rapunzel than gothel was (reading her diary, following her everywhere and locking her up in a fucking tower after she just got out of one!!) and say that it’s ok because he’s doing it because he loves her.. I also “love” how the queen basically did nothing about this and just say supportive things rapunzel behind the king’s back like that means anything. Disney really needs to hire women for this franchise because this is just embarrassing and sad in this day and age.

#tangled critical #asks

[idatenjumpfanatic]

I Got Your Back (Begrudgingly)

Loosely inspired by this thread here

Specifically about the Samejima siblings. We all have our own chance to make up backstories for the side characters of the show, but I wanna flesh out what yall already wrote about Gabu, plus some thoughts of mine with those headcanons on the end of this oneshot.

No word count bc I just wrote everything here. Not proofread, so this is basically word vomited before I lose the idea (and motivation)

Notes are that this happened far before the show. Anyways enjoy!

=================

Gabu never did house chores. He was never really fond of them. It was boring, tedious, and above all, not worth his time at all. There were better things to invest his time on, and it was definitely not on those. And besides, Taiga's there to do them instead of him.

However today Taiga was sick.

The older sibling was terribly bedridden, unable to leave his room levels of bad. He said just yesterday that he wasn't feeling well, and then it just got worse now. Gabu would've first thought he was faking it, both have done it before in the past (and neither snitched each time), but the vomiting sounds he heard earlier that morning behind the bathroom door was plenty enough to convince him otherwise.

"Mom, Tai's sick."

"Well, we're still busy at work. Just let him rest, okay?"

"Are you serious?!"

Gabu would've started an argument with his parents about this given the chance, but said parents were too quick end the telephone call before he got another word in. He growled, crossing his arms.

He didn't want to deal with sick brother quite frankly. It's just another chore before school.

Or, I could skip school using Taiga as an excuse.

That thought made Gabu grin. He'd say his poor older brother was down with sickness and he took the liberty to take care of him today, as his parents were really of no use in that aspect, but really he'd just go MTB riding at the trails. Yeah, that'll do it.

Though he needed to wait for a few more minutes to make sure his parents wouldn't catch him.

While he did though, he could hear coughing from the second floor.

Gabu frowned, listening as Taiga's coughing continued for a good few seconds before it stopped. He stayed where he stood even after the house fell into silence. Without even realizing, he was squeezing his own arms as he found himself double guessing.

He stared at the door for a long while, subconsciously humming quietly as he did so. His humming then turned into a grumble, and once he finally made his mind up, he threw his hands and groaned before walking away from the door.

Meanwhile Taiga, he wasn't in the best shape clearly. Every limb felt like lead, and his head was throbbing. It would've been a lot worse if not for the menthol ointment he kept in his bedside drawer, but even then it wasn't enough to alleviate everything else. It didn't help too that every time he wanted or needed to get up he felt like throwing his insides out.

Whatever he got, it was bad.

But still, he knew it was best to just power through it as much as he could. He didn't need to worry about convincing his parents; lately neither would notice if he or Gabu missed school, or if they were even home at all, because neither would be at home either. Sometimes it was for the better, oftentimes it was just depressing to think about, and right now it was the latter.

Gabu at least was told that he was sick, but Taiga knew his brother wouldn't be be able to take care of him. He loves him, but he's also well aware how incompetent Gabu was when it came to basic things. He once set something on fire in the kitchen when the Four Kings were trying to teach him, and whether that incident was in purpose or by accident the fact still stood that Gabu was no longer allowed to try to cook anything.

Which meant Taiga was left by himself.

Taiga heaved a sigh at the thought, but already accepted it ever since he felt the first signs of sickness. He just wasn't expecting that it'd get this bad. Whatever scolding he'd get for not cleaning around the house, despite his condition, he'd take, but for now he would rather try to get a shut eye and think about the aftermath later on. Food and water he'd figure out on getting later on once his body would cooperate.

He turned to the side where his unclogged nostril was up, pulling the blanket some more over himself as he tried to go back to sleep. That part, at least, wasn't that hard. He didn't even realize that he did fall asleep until he woke up in a coughing fit.

Slowly sitting up, Taiga rubbed his throat once the coughs finally died out. He grumbled to himself, disliking the idea of needing to get up for some water, but alas he couldn't blame anyone but his past self for not preparing sooner.

He was already willing himself to get off the bed, but once he was one foot down he spotted an unopened bottle of water just sitting on his nightstand. He stared at it for a long while, wondering if he actually left it there before. Though, his own body didn't let him think about it for any longer as he felt another round of coughs crawling its way up his already parched throat.

Downstairs, Gabu was still staring intensely at the pot of water that sat on the stove. Through rummaging the pantry, he found the easiest thing to cook: packets of chicken broth soup that was just needed to be put in boiling water. He read through the steps earlier, but he was now met with the roadblock of not knowing how to operate the stove.

During this he heard Taiga coughing again, which signaled that he was awake once again. It only meant less time for Gabu, unless his brother went back to sleep right after. His staredown with the inanimate kitchen equipment continued.

Gabu thought about calling one of the Four Kings, if one of them weren't at school, for assistance, but the thought of asking for help for such a menial task only made his cheeks flush with embarrassment. The Four Kings were by no means judgmental towards him, but the issue lied with him and not them.

Damn him for his issue of either serving his ego or knowledge.

"Okay, think about it this way," he began telling himself, "it'd suck if I have to say I still don't know after all this. And if I figure it out myself, I get to stick it in Tai's face."

Yeah, seemed doable. He grabbed one of the stove's knobs and started experimenting.

=================

Taiga laid still, blankly staring at the ceiling. The water helped for sure, but now his stomach was rumbling. He couldn't tell if it was hunger or wanting to vomit, but either way he needed to resolve it with food first. If he were hungry that was it, and if he needed to vomit it meant he needed medicine, and he couldn't take that on an empty stomach.

The stillness was really him psyching himself to get up despite aching all over. He took a few deep breaths (while hovering his ointment over his mouth and nose), before wrapping the blanket around himself as his slowly got up. Sitting up he could already taste the bile coming up his throat, but he pressed his lips shut as he swallowed it down.

Finally he was standing, despite all odds. He fought his urge to hurry as he took little steps, keeping his eyes down on the floor to avoid worsening his migraine. Though, in the few steps he'd taken he heard his bedroom door creak open.

"Ugh, why are you up?"

Taiga tilted his head up and saw Gabu standing in the hallway holding a tray that seemed larger in his tiny hands, and a mask over his nose and mouth.

"Go back to bed," he demanded.

Taiga stood and stared, blinking in shock while Gabu made his way into the room. Gabu was fast to notice his brother not responding, his scowl behind the mask deepening.

"Hey, are you deaf? Go back to bed!"

He didn't wait this time. Gabu quickly set down the tray on the table before he marched forward and practically shoved Taiga back to the bed, and yet despite his sudden actions he still did them with carefulness.

Taiga didn't give him much hassle though and shuffled back. He didn't have the energy to argue or fight back either, so he sat back on his bed and let his sibling do whatever he was planning to do.

"I called mom in her office today telling you were sick, but she didn't care. 'Too busy with work' as always," Gabu scoffed while retrieving the tray.

"And dad?"

Gabu gave him a half-lidded stare. "If mom's busy then he is too, duh," he replied sourly. He set the tray on the nightstand, adjusting it so that it wouldn't tip over since the table was smaller. From there Taiga could see what his brother brought.

A small thermos, a large bowl of soup with a spoon, packs of saltine crackers, a new bottle of water, and multiple sleeves of medicine tablets.

"I heated too much water so I made tea too, but yeah there's more soup downstairs, just let me know."

"You... made this for me?"

"Yeah, don't overthink it."

Normally making a bowl of soup wasn't much of a feat, but for Gabu it was an accomplishment, and Taiga knew that. He was impressed, actually, that Gabu was able to not only gather all of these, but to make some food unsupervised without burning anything down (at least, he hoped. His nose was a little stuffy at the moment to smell anything burning) as well.

Taiga smiled, picking up the bowl as he muttered Gabu a thanks. The warmth of the broth was welcoming to his hands, he'd been getting the chills so the hot food was such a relief. Before he took a scoop though he realized something.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school right now?"

"And so?" Gabu shot back with a shrug.

Taiga looked at him for a little while before he gave a defeated sigh. No way he'd be able to convince Gabu to try and catch up with school for the day. He went back to the soup, and while he started eating he could hear Gabu rummage through the tablets.

"You're welcome, by the way. Don't say I never do anything for you."

Taiga couldn't help but grin again. "Of course, I appreciate it," he said with full sincerity. Gabu glanced at him but then quickly looked away.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm calling the others though after their class to look after you this time. At least they're more reliable."

The last part fell into a mumble, but Taiga still heard it. He wasn't sure who Gabu was referring to, but he was hoping it wasn't a self-inflicted insult. A bit of a reach of course, but it was still a valid concern for him. He didn't know how to comfort him either, as words often didn't translate to what he wanted to convey; a problem for the both of them, in all honesty.

He genuinely wanted to thank Gabu again, since his sudden decision to stay actually solved so much of his concerns, but he also knew his brother was terrible with handling compliments. So instead, he reached out and ruffled Gabu's hair.

Instantly a complaint. "Ew! Get your sick hands off me, I don't wanna catch whatever you have."

Taiga laughed, though it quickly cut into coughing. While his little brother reached for a bottle, the same thought ran in his mind:

Yeah, it may be hard that mom or dad weren't there when he needed them, but Gabu always was, no matter how much he says he doesn't care. And of course, he'll always be there for Gabu just the same.

=================

After writing that last paragraph I realized that the headcanon of Taiga and Gabu having such a tight-knit relationship prior to everything is so much more devastating considering the events of the show.

I like to believe that the brothers are genuinely close, in tandem with the headcanon that their parents are neglectful to an extent, so blood-wise they don't have much besides each other. Also, I like to think that their parents are rich or at least holds a high status, since Gabu does a lot of stuff he gets away with (particularly with the stealing school equipment incident), but because they work first before their own kids, they've become blissfully unaware of what their children are up to. Which is tragic.

One last thing, I initially titled this one-shot as "Love Language" because I headcanon that both the brothers' love language is act of service (mostly through bossing other people). Seeing how Gabu is so bad at handling verbal compliments, I take it he's more of a "show, not tell" kind of person, and on top of neglectful parents it's more likely for him to pick that up from Taiga.

Also as siblings, especially in an Asian household, verbal show of genuine affection, gratitude, or sorry is difficult to do so at times. Often it's expressed through other means, like food or asking the other if they wanna hang out outside after a fight. Those kinda stuff

#mod writes #gabu samejima #idaten jump #taiga samejima #gabu #taiga #idaten jump fanfic #fanfic #mod speaks #i forget how much i enjoy word vomit writing #minimal plot all nonsense just thoughts pouring out

[all-seeing-ifer]

Wait I really like ats s5 it has some banger episodes, why don’t you like it?

oh man. season 5.

so, in theory, there's a lot about season 5 that I should like. I think it reinvents the show in an interesting way and I love the themes of never stopping fighting even in the face of the knowledge that the good guys are never going to truly win and that the deck is always going to be stacked against them. the fucking dialogue between gunn and anne in the finale? "I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here"? holy SHIT it is so good!!!

I totally get why people like season 5 I do think it genuinely has a lot going for it BUT you DID ask so I will now be presenting Isabel's List of Varyingly Serious/Petty Beefs With Angel Season Five. In No Particular Order:

Spike's a good addition to the show and god knows angel season 5 does more interesting stuff with him than buffy season 7 ever did but it is fucking insane to me how much focus and development he gets while gunn fred and lorne, who have been mainstays of the show since like season 2, continue to get absolute jack shit to do

just generally let's be honest. anyone who isn't a white guy this season is fucked. harmony gets no development despite being granted main cast status illyria gets nothing to do despite being set up as a super duper important addition to the cast I don't even know what they were fucking thinking with eve. etc.

THEY FRIDGED CORDY AND FRED WITHIN THREE EPISODES OF EACH OTHER. AND AT NO POINT DID ANYONE IN THE WRITERS' ROOM THINK THAT MAYBE THE FACT THAT THEY WERE WERE STARTING TO RUN OUT OF WOMEN WAS PERHAPS A PROBLEM

speaking of cordy my best girl of all time, I know people love you're welcome but i'm sorry i remain deeply ambivalent about that fucking thing. like yes it's nice that the cordy we know and love gets to come back for one last hurrah but also the episode basically never treats her like a person with feelings of her own and instead she's just there to motivate angel and then die so he can be sad about it. i can't believe it only took 40 minutes to set feminism back 4000 years

also sorry but did they really think you're welcome was going to be enough to make up for what they did to her in season 4? have you seen season 4? one episode where cordy looks hot and has her tits out and swordfights will NOT undo the damage that has been done

and then they proceed to set feminism back even further by just refusing to acknowledge the existence of their show's secondary protagonist for the basically the rest of the season and also fridging fred in an arguably even more horrific way three episodes later so wesley can be sad and so they can introduce a new character who does nothing

like seriously nothing makes me more rabid in season 5 than the scene in power play where the characters all vote on if they're gonna go through with their suicide mission against the circle of the black thorn and it's just all the men voting on it bc illyria's been incapictated bc I guess in angel season 5 women don't get to have agency even when they're literal godlike demon lords

on the subject of the illyria plotline i fucking hate how gunn gets treated. like sorry all the men on this show (sans lorne. unproblematic king) have done awful shit why does gunn get singled out as having done something uniquely horrible just for a shady business deal he couldn't possibly have known the consequences of. like we know why but still

and on the subject of gunn.... the fact that they wrote a storyline implying that the only way for the only black main character in the show to become smart and capable is for him to have his brain magically altered and NO ONE in the writers room was like HM MAYBE THIS IS A BAD LOOK ACTUALLY. christ i would feel way better about the whole "gunn feels like he's just the muscle" conflict if the show more consistently came down on the side that players does where gunn does actually have way more to offer than being the muscle but has just come to see himself as just The Guy Who Fights. but unfortunately they spend at least as much time writing gunn as Actually Just The Muscle. usually to make wesley look better (i promise i'm not bitter about it)

and perhaps i'd be less annoyed about all this if gunn also got literally anything else to do this season but this is truly all he gets until not fade away

which i guess is still better than fred? like fred just dies. that's it

guys i don't think we shit on the girl in question enough. like it's bad. it's really bad. i'm so glad we're currently in the shit talking lies my parents told me renaissance but can we also start bringing that same energy for this piece of shit

nina's an art student so i hate her by default (<- guy who went to art school <- i am allowed to say this)

despite spike being intended to serve as a replacement for cordy they just straight up don't give him relationships with any of the characters other than angel (and fred for like. one episode) and it results in him just feeling incredibly out of place

just in general actually it feels like the writers kind of stopped caring about any of the character relationships aside from angel and spike and fred/wesley (which they only care about bc it's a reason for wesley to be sad anyway)

the pacing is a nightmare and i do not give a shit about the circle of the black thorn. sorry

and just as a disclaimer i would like to acknowledge that like. ats was always fairly shitty about race and gender this isn't unique to s5 but MAN does it feel like season 5 in particular is just. saying the quiet part out loud constantly every episode

anyway thank you for giving me free rein to just bitch about angel season 5 for an extended period of time this was fun. still i'm honestly glad that you enjoy it like really truly I wish that were me

#ifer rambles #asks and stuff

[walkawaytall]

For the fic ask game:

16. Is there a commonly held misconception about one of your stories that you’d like to correct for the masses? (I know of one and thought you might want an excuse to say it. 😎)

17. What does your editing process look like?

16. So, I think I actually may have touched on this answering number 20 (at least if I'm thinking of the same conversation that you are about Han's motivations in Purpose of Heritage thus far)? And, aside from that, I don't think there have been many widely-held misconceptions -- though there have definitely been different responses to certain things than I expected (like, more than one person saw Reconstitution as a bit of a downer and that was...the exact opposite of my intent with that story...but we all bring our own experiences to the stories we read, so I'm not going to say their reading is wrong per se, just that I intended for the ending of that rather melancholy fic to have a hopeful slant to it, even in the midst of life's imperfections).

Oh! Actually, I though of another one: there are moments in Purpose of Heritage specifically where Leia's straight-up wrong. Like, she is our heroine, our main character, our beloved space princes, but she's also 19/20/21 years old and traumatized and very specifically not dealing with said trauma in healthy ways at least 50% of the time (her eschewing therapy repeatedly is not supposed to be viewed as a super-great alternative to, you know, going to therapy), and there have been moments that people have clocked as Leia being a badass -- and they aren't wrong -- but I also see them as Leia's cool, together facade cracking in a way that isn't good technically.

Like, we love Leia, so the scene at the shooting range where she uses Varner Coy's blaster to shoot a line of bullseyes does feel badass and empowering and a little cathartic because that guy has been a jerk, but it's also Leia losing her cool entirely and giving into an impulsivity that I don't see as a good thing for someone in leadership to do. I didn't stick immediate consequences in there because I'm not writing an after-school special, but...just because Leia doesn't always have negative consequences for a thing doesn't mean that I included it with the intent that it was supposed to be seen as totally awesome, full-stop. Sometimes it's partially awesome, and partially a big red flag. And maybe I should be more obvious about this; I don't know. I just am not writing a morality tale exactly, so I don't want to steer the narrative into an area that makes it feel clunky or preachy.

17. For normal-length things like one-shots or Collateral, a multichapter with chapters that are a sane length (4K-6K words): I write the thing, I read the thing and edit as I read. I may or may not edit while I write; it depends on how long it is, how long it takes me to write, if any parts are giving me issues. (Like, if I get really, really stuck, I'll start on a fresh document and copy/paste different sentences and paragraphs until I can get back into a good rhythm, and in the midst of all of that, editing happens as well). I basically read and edit things several times until I'm either 1. Entirely happy with it (rare) or 2. Tired of looking at it and no longer debating about changing anything (more common).

For Purpose of Heritage, I did an unhinged and probably short-sighted thing where I wrote what was originally two chapters, decided I preferred them together, and combined them, setting a precedent for myself to write chapters that are 8K-10K words long (and that is legitimately where I've felt each chapter has a natural stopping point -- like, I'm not padding stuff to get to a certain word count. Most of the chapters, I suppose, could be split in half, but we're so far beyond that at this point, I'm just resigned to writing giant-ass chapters until this project is complete). I used to reread everything every time I set out to write a new chapter to try to ensure I didn't go off-the-rails tonally, but when that became too cumbersome, I think you were the one that mentioned having your phone read what you'd written aloud, and I use that not just to review past chapters, but also to edit (so, thank you for that suggestion if that was you, DP!). It helps me identify clunky wording and sometimes straight-up inconsistencies.

So, I usually write and edit as I write, then reread the whole chapter and edit, have my phone read it and mentally dogear what needs to be looked at and edit those pieces when I can, and then read it another time and occasionally have a beta reader (thanks for the times you've helped with this, by the way!) assure me that I haven't gone off the rails entirely if I keep worrying about one particular aspect, edit again with any beta reader suggestions in mind, and finally publish when I'm either as pleased as I'm going to be with it or I can't bring myself to read it again. I do usually try to make sure there is at least a night where I ignore the chapter entirely before doing one final editing pass-through before I post. Giving my brain a chance to not think about it helps me catch errors I missed on earlier read-throughs, and also usually helps me realize that I haven't, in fact, written a pile of garbage.

Thanks for the questions! Sorry these answers are so dang long!

fanfic writer asks

#my asks #fic writer asks #fanfic writer ask game #fanfic writer asks #fanfic writer ask #ask away

[ecoamerica]

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#ACLA24 #ACLA24Leaders #youtube #youtube video #climate leaders #climate solutions #climate action #climate and environment #climate #climate change #climate and health #climate blog #climate justice #climate news #weather and climate #environmental news #environment #environmental awareness #environment and health #environmental #environmental issues #environmental justice #environment protection #environmental health #Youtube

[vodid]

How do you plan your stories? Do you actually have a sheet where you write anything down? And if you do, what do you put in it?

Cause I’m planning a story and I have no idea of where to start 😭

I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO ANSWER SOMETHING LIKE THIS BC I'D LOOOVE TO REDIRECT YOU TO SUNA SCRIBBLES' AMAZING WRITING ADVICE TAG because it has helped me SO much

here's a tldr(ish) for how i approached writing a fic. we'll use my blitzbee fic as an example:

come up with a scene you really really want to write for the fic. for me, it was the first meet of blitzwing and bumblebee arguing on the cliff in chapter 2. write everything that comes to mind with that scene and do not worry about making it fic quality. important actions, dialogue, setting, etc. make typos! make mistakes! make it silly! you'll rewrite it later

when you write out a scene, you may get hints of a plot (such as conflict characters can work through, whether internal or external) and character portrayals + interactions. from the example above specifically, we have a) bumblebee is big sad, b) the autobots don't like bee for some reason, and c) blitzwing is so weirded out by bee's big sad that he doesn't want to immediately kill him. all of these can be expanded upon, so from that:

write out the main characters' traits. their strengths, weaknesses, secrets, fears, quirks. anything. then write out reasons why they may have these traits and how it's important to their character development/conflict. make it fancy if you want!

i have more things in this part, such as motivation, the actual development/struggle, why he helps the other and why he lets the other help him. these are bullets a lot more in depth (and spoilery) and were added after i wrote this:

write out a basic plot. start middle end, if you can. you do not have to figure out every little thing (i didn't!) just a general idea of where you want to take this story. it does not have to be set in stone either. after all, my fic has six plots written out. four of them are drafts (lovingly titled Plot X, Plot 2, okay a more sensible plot and basic plot) and the last two are other important plots (overarching plot and trauma plot!) i have been actively revising these as i write the fic itself and with each plot written out, they increase in detail — let it happen! make all sorts of notes, whether in an indented bulleted list under each point or comments on the doc itself. i have 32 comments on mine full of notes!

if you're stuck here, studying the shape of stories by kurt vonnegut really helped me figure out a direction. also making the plot points written in silly ways took a lot of pressure off to get it perfect! while i may not reference the shape as much anymore (especially since the plot i wrote with it is outdated) it still gave me a really good start

and a side note, the overarching + trauma plots are to help guide me through the main plot. overarching is in the background, controlling and being controlled by the main plot's events, while the "trauma plot!" is for figuring out blitzwing's trauma. how did he get bpd? why? how does it affect him? how has it and others added more trauma? this is basically a glorified character past section lol

at the bottom of my outline doc, i have a section for future scenes i want to include. i have notes/comments on various spots and plot points that all have scenes attached, but these are the ones that are more detailed and need their own space. exactly like the first scene blurb in the very first bullet (which is actually at the top of my outline! i haven't deleted any of my past notes, even if they're outdated) actions, dialogue, notes — throw it all in there!

so after posting a chapter, i tend to take a break a few weeks long (or however long others need) to get back to the drawing board, making sure everything is up to date to prepare for the next chapter. it also really helps (for me personally) to have a buddy to rant to. i figure things out best when i'm talking to someone, or acting like i am, and can get feedback on it! ..or just let my brain figure itself out bc man have i gotten stuck on certain points before lol (see: trauma plot! and thats not even half of it)

it's not something that works for everyone — it didn't for me a year ago! but once you let go of rigid formatting and needing to have EVERY little thing figured out from the get-go, and just start typing what you want — with a little semblance of organization (at least labeling which is what) — you can go pretty far. but if not then maybe at the very least, it can lead you to a technique that works best for you.

true tldr: it's good to remember that anything relevant? write it down. doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be functional. you want it to be easy to reabsorb if you forget the info

anyway tysm @morethanmeetstheass for all your writing advice :') its really helped my writing and my confidence 💖 i hope my post here can be as helpful to you anon 🥺

#sometimes it is good to figure out the plot n stuff before you go posting #but for me the change as you go livin' like larry approach has worked best :] #vulnerability fic #fanfic

[halfmoth-halfman]

Okay so-

Adding to the conspiracy board, let’s tackle the basic questions:

Who? - I like the fellow conspiracist’s idea that Valeria is the mole considering her canonical betrayal, but if we know Moth, there is a good chance there will be a twist. So, besides Valeria, who has a motive to turn against 141 and be okay with attacking Canary? Tough question, because everyone has known each other for a long while at this point. They’re allies. It’s also a possibility that an outside person blackmailed or bugged someone to frame as a mole so true puppeteer can be let of scot free. ‘Tis a mystery!

What? - Mole. Little blind scamper with big nose, toothies, and fingies.

When? - Someone betraying 141 would have had to premeditate long before meeting the members and had to plan on putting on an act for years, meaning there has to be a motive greater than their friendship with 141 (as the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed, people internalize their roles and become characters they are not). Going back to timing, someone has already struck 141’s Canary. It is highly expected that another attack will come, possibly bigger and more elaborate to take down their target (Canary, or 141 in general?)

Where? - Where is the root of the operation taking place? Right under 141 would be suitable if it really was a mole who played a character to win friendship with the members, but there are still too many variables to come up with any solid clue of the physical setting the mastermind is residing in…

Why? - Again, motive. Another question: why did they choose that specific method to stir up 141? Also a very vague question…

How? - How did this whole thing start up in the first place? Another vague question…

So many mysteries, Mademoiselle Moth…

oooo bestie you're putting in work here

alright, let's break this down:

who - valeria is a very good, very safe guess like she's already got that reputation of betraying people from canon, but you're right i do love me a good twist!! and you're right that everyone has known each other for a while, they're allies, but we have to think how long is that going to last if they start feeling like the 141 can't protect or isn't protecting their own people??? it could be an outside person using blackmail or bugging someone, or maybe that's how it started and now that price has kinda dropped the ball when it comes to protecting his own, other people are starting betray the 141??? maybe there isn't just one mole??? 👀

what - agreed. big nose, teefs, and fingies!!

when - this is very plausible, but it could also be something that happened after meeting the members?? maybe someone not happy with their place in the 141 or wants to take over the 141 for themselves?? it would have to be planned very meticulously so they wouldn't be caught, so it would need to be someone patient or possibly two someone's so it would be easier to plan. canary has already been attacked, by someone who, as far as we know, isn't affiliated with anyone the 141 knows. this could've been a staged attack, or possibly a hit that wasn't successful?? maybe it was planned that whoever attacked her was meant to kidnap her since she was getting close to price??? but was it meant to be an attack on her specifically, or is it someone trying to get to price using her??

where - the entire gang is really a collection of gangs with different safehouses, headquarters, clubs, etc spread all over. it might not even be a key member of the 141 who is the mole but someone in one of these outside areas stealing information from their respective boss?? there's no telling where the root of the operation is taking place...yet.

why - a very interesting method, to stir up paranoia and discourse within the gang. but everyone knows john price is a powerful man with very loyal people around him, and the best way to get to a man like that would be to break down the foundation upon which his throne sits.....

how - how did it all start?? who knows?? everyone in the 141 has a laundry list of enemies, it could really be any reason which is what make this life so dangerous.

so many mysteries indeed, and hopefully there'll be plenty (not all) answers in the next chapter!! 💜

#scatter-mind001 #moth answers #answered #this was fun #i felt like a little detective with my red string #laying out my conspiracies for all my coworkers #cod ask #private

[libraryofbaxobab]

March 11, 2024:

This book comes out in June! I requested this ARC from the author via BookSirens so I could review it early! Cause I'm like that!

First, the premise: the last 4 contestants on legally-not-The-Bachelor, their basic-ass bachelor, and a camera crew go to a spooky mansion in the woods to film the season finale, but somebody has ulterior motives and shit gets weird.

Yes please! I love reality TV in horror novels. Weirdly, the characters in this book act more reasonably than I'd expect from characters in a reality show like this one. Also I strongly suspect the behind-the-scenes is not even close to how shows like this are made, BUT if that part was totally accurate none of this would happen and we would have no fun. I suggest we let it slide.

Positive notes:

The Scary Thing is pretty unique! There is eventually a physical being which is cool but I mean more the process and mechanism is pretty out there. It's telegraphed early, but why it's happening is left ambiguous

Interactions between contestants was so much fun. There's alliance, intimidation, attraction, paranoia... very cool watching their feelings toward each other constantly shifting

Great character arc as one overly-dependent woman becomes more powerful & confident but watch out!

Catharsis at having some of the contestants lose interest in the bachelor and start noticing each other. Everyone has always wanted that to happen, right? Not just me, surely

Camera crew polycule

Negative notes:

The writing is pretty unpolished. I understand this ARC is uncorrected, so hopefully most of the typos are cleaned up by time of publication, but there were a LOT of them by the end.

In a few places it was very unclear what the characters were doing/ talking about/ reacting to, which were likely just misedits that took out crucial scene information. At some points the narration seemed uncertain on exactly how many people had died, misplaced details like that.

Neutral notes:

I found it interesting how often the narration referred to the contestants as "women" vs how often the characters referred to them as "ladies." There's something there

There's not the kind of creepy progression I expect from a book like this. The bizarre tree-themed house is a fantastic setting and has some very good secrets, but scary happenings don't escalate in a familiar pattern

This results in a definite "feel" with this book. Like you can just tell it's a little unusual. It tastes like it didn't follow a recipe. Your mileage my vary on this: you could love it for its less-formulaic vibe, or you might prefer a more tried-and-true experience.

Overall, this is a tough one to review because on one hand it's rough around the edges and I can't say it's objectively great... but I feel some pressure to be kind to an author who likely won't get a lot of press. And here's the important thing: I did enjoy this a lot! How does it stack up to books in the same vein? I like it less than Hide by Kiersten White, but WORLDS better than The Holy Terrors.

7/10 #WhatsKenyaReading

#whatskenyareading #books #reading #horror #Grim Root #the bachelor #reality tv #the groom #competition #competition show #dating show #dating #relationship #lgbtq+ #lesbian #gay #it's gay #gay girls #sapphic #bisexual #ARC #marriage #ceremony #tv #television #plants #trees #forest #woods

[thistleandthorn-events]

HEADCANON EVENT

Stonewall Prep is hosting a Head Canon event in an effort for everyone to get to know each other a bit better.

February 22nd - March 1 will be the time frame for an online question-answer sessions. You’re all encouraged to dig down deep to be able to answer these with more than one-word answers. Take from the list below and send to another student for them to answer. In turn, you will answer those sent to you. We are offering 10 points for each completed answer (again, remember we’re not looking for one-word things here). Little rule here: If you get an ask, you need to send one. These answers will need to be PUBLIC in order to count.

OOC:

Alright, so basically this is a Headcanon event. Answers should be well thought out and at least 3-4 sentences to count - some kind of explanation. The answers that are just “yes/no” or single word/sentence answers will not be counted.

FOR POINTS: Set up a masterlist with the links to the asks and post the masterlist link in the channel set up in the OOC server. We have some ideas to get you started below, but we will allow for vague additional questions. We are looking for questions that allow to think back in your character’s backstory or build head canons for characters - NOT like normal anons that are specific to a person or event. If you get one, SEND ONE (or more). This only works if everyone is participating. They can be anon or non, so please send them out. Also, use this opportunity to send things to people you don’t normally talk to. These asks can be played off as well, so keep that in mind.

Here's some to start you off:

Who is your hero?

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

What is your biggest fear?

What is your favorite family vacation?

What would you change about yourself if you could?

What never fails to make you really angry?

What never fails to make you sad/emotional?

What motivates you to work hard?

What is your proudest accomplishment?

What is your favorite book to read?

What makes you laugh the most?

What did you want to be when you were small?

If you could choose to do anything for a full day, what would it be?

What is your favorite game or sport to watch and play?

Would you rather ride a bike, ride a horse, or drive a car?

What would you sing at Karaoke night?

What is the one "household chore" you have to do yourself?

If you could hire someone to help you, would it be with cleaning, cooking, or yard work?

If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

What is a skill you really wish you had?

Have you ever had a nickname? What is it?

Do you like or dislike surprises? Why or why not?

 In the evening, would you rather play a game, visit a relative, watch a movie, or read?

Would you rather win the lottery or work at the perfect job? And why?

Who would you want to be stranded with on a deserted island?

If money was no object, what would you do all day?

If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to?

How would your friends describe you?

What is the best gift you have been given?

What is the worst gift you have received?

Aside from necessities, what one thing could you not go a day without?

List two pet peeves and why

Where do you see yourself in five years?

If you were a super-hero, what powers would you have?

What would you do if you won the lottery?

What's your favorite zoo/aquarium animal?

If you could go back in time to change one thing, what would it be?

If you could share a meal with any 4 individuals, living or dead, who would they be?

What's the longest you've gone without sleep (and why)?

Why does the cup you drink out of matter - and what's your favorite?

#tntevent #events #hc #hc event