#my long fandom life

[doublel27]

Fic Origin Story

Many thanks to @reyesstrand and @marwani-strickland for the tag. Did I think villain origin story when I read it? Yes. Is my life as a fic writer villanous? IDK.

What was your first fandom (reading or writing)?

My first fandom was General Hospital. I began reading and writing fic in that fandom circa 1999-2001 So, you know, before some of y'all were born. It's fine. I'm fine. You're fine.

It was back in the days that you had to join like an EzBoard to post and share fic. yes I'm old. And, and, like a lot of EzBoards were specific to your pairing of choice (I was a member of several) and you had to actual pass a quiz to get inside the ezboard to prove you were a fan of said pairing because antis would infiltrate and sow chaos. Flame wars were a thing and such. I learned so much in those days. I still had dial-up and my chapters were super short. I saved my fic to floppy disks, so...you know...it was a time.

2. What was the first story you ever wrote (even if it was never posted) and what made you write it?

The FIRST story I ever wrote, that I remember, as a fanfic was probably a Little Women fix it fic where Laurie and Jo got married instead of Laurie and Amy and Jo and Professor Behr at like, ten years old. I wrote it one of those hardcover blank books you could buy. I have since reconsidered my position after learning more about Louisa May Alcott and WHY she made the choices she made.

The first story I ever published as a fandom fic was a Jason/Robin sweeping get back together story in the General Hospital fandom (have they been together since 1998 - no, do I think it's one of the biggest mistakes the show has ever made - maybe). Robin was still in Paris and I think she maybe had a secret baby. There were kidnappings, shootings, and many other things that fit a daytime soap fic written by a high schooler in the margins of her notebooks.

I think it's still on floppy disks in my parent's house.

3. What's a pice of advice you would give to your younger fic writing self?

Care less about what other people are doing. Care more about how you treat others. Constructive critism is a gift, take it as it's meant and have your friends read your work and tell you that you NEED A PERIOD or DO YOU KNOW WHAT COMMAS ARE or YOU'VE USED THIS WORD THREE TIMES THIS PAGE or MORE FEELINGS HERE PLEASE or I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS. They make your writing better.

4. What is an early fandom interaction that has stuck with you (be it a nice comment, a friend you made, a fic that got a lot of feedback)

Oh man, there's so many. Some are wonderful, like the reactions to every chapter I posted of those early fics.

Some are things I learned the hard way, like being a teenager who made friends with another teenager and some women in their 20s and 30s and one of them was very much a bully who had us turn on one of the friends we had by telling lies and got us to harrass her. I learned a lot about how to trust people online and how to spot people who might tell lies to play people on the interent like puppets for their own power. It makes it far easier to spot now that I'm old. Also, I remember how very compassionate the woman we harrassed, my friend Dani, was, and she was a little bit younger than I am now. and How she really accepted our apology, told us how much we hurt her, and allowed the two children she'd befriended to do better when they figured out how they'd been played. I hope to have half her grace as a fandom old these days.

5. What is a sentence or two from one of your older fics and a sentence or two from a newer one (if you want)?

For y'all, let's do 3. The first from around 20 years ago, then we'll grab something from 10 years ago, and something from now? Sound good? You do know that by now you're getting more than a sentence or two from me. From Choices - a fanfiction following X2/X3 movie verse -posted on Fanfiction.net on June 1, 2003.

Jubliee stared at the young man across from her. There was something so familiar about this one, something she couldn't put her finger on just yet. Then it hit her, "St. John?" The spark in his eyes, the fire that matched his talent was unmistakable. No wonder the armored car was burning at such a rapid pace.

From Ruined - A Legend of Korra fanfic centered on the breakup of Tenzin and Lin Beifong posted on AO3 on January 5, 2014

He’d asked her to move with him to Air Temple Island and she’d laughed.  Thinking on it now, the sound of it was harsh and cruel to her own ears. 

“Why,” she’d laughed, “when you have all of your Air groupies?”

He’d sighed and steepled his fingers in that serious thinking pose he had. “They’re not groupies, Lin,” he had reproved her. “They are people who have been keeping my father’s culture alive for the better part of a century and they are continuing to sustain it.  What if—” A sadness had entered his eyes.  “I could be the last one, Lin.  There might never be another.”

“Tenzin—”  She couldn’t have brought herself to lie and say that she would ensure that he wouldn’t be.   Lin wouldn’t even suggest that Bumi could miraculously have an illegitimate child that was an airbender out somewhere.   “Then come here.  Live in the city.  You already work here and we could find a good space for Oogi.”

“I want to marry you Lin,” he had said, quietly. 

Lin had looked up from her paperwork and given him a pointed glance.  “Does that marriage include children?”

“I am the last living airbender, Lin,” Tenzin reminded her. “I do want children one day.”

From let me be the one at day's end - a 911 Lone Star (more cow eyes series) fic posted on AO3 on June 30, 2022

Carlos snaps off the radio, unwilling to listen to the continued banter as they joke about this. There’s too many containers of flammable gas in the back of a bus to make light of a bullet ricocheting in there. He pulls out his phone before looking at his mother in the seat beside him. Her brown eyes are wide and worried and he can’t look at them for too long.

When he looks back down at his phone he realizes his hand is shaking. “I’m just—He’s on a shift and he probably can’t pick up—”

And from a personal favorite, You Can Have My Back - a Schitt's Creek Twylexis 911 AU posted on AO3 on October 14, 2022

Alexis looks over the turnouts, which happen to be an unfortunate combination of khaki and orange. The fabric is rough and heavy, which makes sense for protecting one's body from a fire, but there are plenty of fire-resistant clothes that aren’t these ancient heavy things. “Don’t they have, umm, like those cuter black and yellow numbers that are a little thinner?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, princess. Does this department look like it’s made of money?” Ronnie takes a moment to wink at her. “Besides, orange is the new pink.”

“Mmm, totally,” Alexis murmurs.

Ronnie narrows her eyes, and jerks her thumb at the gear. “You know how to put this on in time?”

Being underestimated is something Alexis is well used to. In fact, being underestimated has saved her life countless times where people thought she was too stupid or too thoughtless or too pretty to know her way around a gun or a fancy car or out of a pair of handcuffs. Normally it didn’t sting.

She pulls herself up to full height and sniffs. “I passed the volunteer qualifications exam, didn’t I?”

Tagging: @marjansmarwani @petalwritesx @blackandwhiteandrose @missgeevious @sunshinestrand @strandnreyes @lilythesilly @maxbegone @tailoredshirt @beautifulhigh

Feel free not to, friends, but I'm curious.

#xmen #legend of korra #911 lone star #schitt's creek #fan fiction #my long fandom life #doublel27 talks #doublel27 writes #the many lives of doublel27

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Keep hearing people say maribug keep asking adricat if he's ok and he keep saying he's ok instead of telling her his problem but I don't remember it happened more than once in s4 in Rockettear but even then the circumstances of that episode did warrant the "nothing" answer he gave her unless he want to tell her that "nino tell me you let nino and alya know each other identity" which will reveal adricat identity. So when else did she ask? about the thing in hack-san, I think another credit goes to alya since she's the one who bring the topic to maribug who seems to be blissfully unaware that her leaving without telling adeicat that she send subtitute would be a problem.

I didn't get into this side of things in my other post because it was long and I wanted to focus on why Chat Noir's behavior was so frustrating, but this ask brings up the other big reason why the season four conflict was such a frustrating and terribly written plot line. Specifically, the part of your ask where you point out that Maribug seems blissfully unaware that her actions are having a negative impact on Chat Noir until someone points it out to her.

Yes, she is presented as blissfully unaware of this and every other interpersonal conflict we're given in season four. Your ask treats this as a failing on Maribug's part as if she should have obviously realized that she was in the wrong, but that's the whole problem. Telling kids - telling anyone really - that they should just magically know what others need is a frankly terrible life lesson as that's just not how the world works. You cannot just assume that everyone will have the same view of the world as you do and instantly pick up on the same issues as you do. That is the path to easily avoidable frustration and conflict. It also teaches people to assume that their view of the world is inherently correct when that is rarely the case. We often don't know the whole story and the other person's point of view may end up being equally or even more valid. This issue is extremely present in season four as Marinette has legitimate reasons to behave the way she does, which I'll get into in a bit.

If Marinette were written as feeling guilty about how she was treating Chat Noir, then this would be a different story. She'd be way more in the wrong and would shoulder a much greater portion of the blame. But as is? She has no idea that she's doing anything wrong. And until someone takes the time to tell her that her actions are causing harm, she is going to continue causing harm because she has no idea that she's causing harm.

In fact, I'd argue that the Alya thing in Hack San is a point in Maribug's favor. Throughout the episode, we see Marinette sending Alya messages on ways to be a good partner to Chat Noir, proving that she does in fact care about him. And then, as soon as Alya says, "You need to talk to Chat Noir," what does Maribug do?

She goes and talks to Chat Noir, giving him a pretty good apology for the problem she now knows she caused. Because, shockingly, Maribug doesn't actually want to hurt her partner. She also clearly cares about his feelings, making me want to take the season four conflict and tear it into itty bitty pieces because what is the conflict even supposed to be when you write shit like this?

I want to briefly step away from Miraculous and talk about this issue in a broader context via this YouTube short:

This short is from a Vietnamese woman who moved to Germany. Her YouTube channel is about her experiences there, including things like the short above which goes into the differences between what it means to be a dinner guest in Vietnam and what it means to be a dinner guest in Germany. In Vietnam, it's apparently standard for the guests to cook dinner with you where as, in Germany, you're expected to have the meal ready when the guests arrive, making this a situation where it's super easy to come across as rude just by doing what you think is normal.

Society is relatively aware that these types of culture clashes are a thing, but you don't have to be from different cultures to have these types of situations. Every person has their own unique needs and ideas of what "normal" is. The culture they were raised in will affect this, but so will their family, their personal needs, and many other factors. Two people can be raised on the same street and wind up with wildly different world views even though they supposedly share a culture. This is extra true when you add in compounding factors like neurodiversity, which is why it's an exercise in futility to say, "But Maribug should have realized..."

Well, she clearly didn't. And you can't change that she didn't realize whatever you're mad about. All you can do is have someone tell her what she's doing wrong. If she then continues the behavior, go ahead and judge away. But if she immediately corrects it like she did in Hack San? Doesn't that just prove that she truly didn't know that Chat Noir was hurting and would have probably fixed all of his problems if someone just pointed them out to her?

This is only exacerbated by the fact that Marinette's behavior in season four is largely unchanged from her behavior in previous seasons. The only major change is that she revealed her identity to Alya, but as soon as that's pointed out as a problem, she course corrects with an apology. After that, she thinks that everything is okay because why wouldn't she? Chat Noir said it was fine and everything else has been business as usual.

Bringing temp heroes into help as needed? That's been going on since season two. Having these additional members has been vital in multiple battles and there have been plenty of times where Chat Noir took a background role to the temp hero of the day like in Sapotis, Rena Rouge's season two debut. So why would Maribug suddenly think that this dynamic is a problem when it's been working fine for so long? We even had a whole episode about how Chat Noir was still needed in spite of the new heroes back in season three! Or, at least, I think that was Desperada's message? This show is shockingly bad at giving clear lessons.

Keeping guardian knowledge from Chat Noir? That's also been going on since season two and was even treated as a conflict that supposedly got resolved in the episode Syren which was the episode that ended with Master Fu coming to the mansion to talk to Adrien after everything was over.

When I watched that episode, I assumed this meant that Chat Noir was going to be more involved in things like picking the temp heroes. I actually thought this was how we were going to get Queen Bee because I knew she was going to be a thing, but it made no sense for Marinette to pick Chloe for a miraculous. Of course, I was wrong. Nothing changed after Syren. Chat Noir remained nothing more than the comic relief while Ladybug got all the insider info.

To be clear, I think that was a terrible move writing wise, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what they went with. This is the established dynamic. I can't even say that Alya learning Marinette's secret led to something new. She's just taken Marinette's old role while Marinette has taken on Master Fu's old role. This show loves it's status quo and Chat Noir has been at least tolerant of that status quo since Syren, so it's not surprising that Maribug doesn't register that this is a thing that should change and no one bothers to point it out to her even though she has a mentor in Tikki (and Su Han, I guess?) and a confidant in Alya and a whole slew of Kwamis who could also provide insight if they were allowed to do that sort of thing. (Sass and Wayzz were robbed of mentor roles.) Additional blame goes to Plagg because he should absolutely have told Adrien to talk to Ladybug. What is the point of giving these characters mentors who never mentor? It's aggravating in the extreme.

To circle back to the first part of your ask, outside of Hack San and Rocketear, I don't think there are any times when Ladybug invites feedback from Chat Noir unless you want to give credit to the end of Kuro Neko:

Cat Noir: (lands next to her) I've been a really temperamental kitty, m'lady. I didn't realize how much trouble I'd make for you by giving back my Miraculous. Ladybug: (sits closer to him) Just because I don't need you all the time doesn't mean that I don't need you at all, Cat Noir. No one could ever replace you.

Which isn't Maribug inviting him to tell her what's up, but she is clearly willing to listen to him and reassure him, further backing up my point about this conflict being some of the worst writing I've ever had to suffer through. If Maribug always fixes the issue as soon as she learns about it, you are not writing a situation where she's clearly in the wrong. You are writing an easily solved communication issue where she gets blamed for something she clearly doesn't realize she's doing wrong and it is so frustrating!!! I feel so bad for her. The next episode is Penalteam, btw, which starts the battle with this gem:

Ladybug: (laughs) Nice scare tactics, but it's not gonna work. Cat Noir and I are the best at soccer! Cat Noir: (Whispers to Ladybug) I don't know a thing about soccer M'lady. Maybe it's time to call the real team?

And basically just spends the whole episode making Chat Noir seems like a worthless partner while Maribug tries her best to make him - and everyone else - feel special.

Oh, and the episode before Kuro Neko? Well, it's technically Ephemeral, but that got magically overwritten so let's go one further back and we get to Dearest Family, which ends with this:

Cat Noir: (grabs a golden paper crown on the coffee table) Since I'm the king, (wears the crown on his head) would you be my queen, Ladybug? Ladybug: With pleasure, kitty cat! Tradition is tradition!

Oh yes, these two are in such conflict and Maribug does nothing to validate Chat Noir. He's in pain every episode and she's just totally oblivious to it.

If that was what they wrote, then I'd probably agree that we needed more instances of her asking if Chat Noir was okay. But it's not what they wrote. If you look through the list of season four episodes, you'll find that less than half of them deal with the supposed conflict of the season (by my count, only 8 of the 24 episodes before the final actually showcase the conflict and they are not in a logical order in terms of escalation as I tried to demonstrate above). The rest of the episodes flat out ignore it or even straight up work against the conflict like when Ladybug says this to Chat Noir in Guilttrip: "I probably don't tell you this enough, but I couldn't do this without you. And it'd be a lot less fun too."

Seriously, what even is this season? What is the conflict supposed to be? Because it sure as shit isn't Maribug undervaluing Chat Noir, if memory servers, season four sees her validate him more times than any other season. And it isn't her guiltily hiding things from him like so many fanfics claim because we have multiple points of evidence that prove that she's completely oblivious that there even is a conflict. So what conflict are the writers actually trying to write?

What's even more baffling is that none of this logically leads to the loss at the end of the season:

Maribug's new secrets didn't lead to her downfall. The only reason she lost was because of the secret that's always been there - a fact that's never revealed to her - and a freaking evil twin! So why did it matter that Maribug was keeping secrets? This is made even worse by season five maintaining all of the secrets, once again begging the question of what lesson were we trying to teach here???

Chat Noir wasn't needed for the final fight of the season, Maribug only needed the powers of a few of the temp heroes to win, a baffling ending to a season whose focus was Chat Noir feeling unimportant. You could scrap that conflict entirely and the ending would not change. In fact....

Adrien quitting to be nothing more than a good little boy who obeys his father would have actually saved the world from eventually being rewritten. If you think about it, the season four final actually punishes Adrien for being defiant. So does season five as, if Chat Noir had quit, his father would still be alive. I thought this show was supposed to be a romcom, not a tragedy. Why is Adrien being punished for being a hero? Is this supposed to be karma for lying to Ladybug with the whole Catwalker thing?

This shit is why I say I'm a writing salt, character sugar blog. I can't get mad at the characters when they're in such a nonsense story where things never logically tie together. They all deserve so much better.

None of this is meant to imply that ignorance is a blanket excuse for hurting others. Nor is it meant to imply that you have to forgive someone who hurt you just because they didn't mean to. There's a ton of nuance around these topics. But season four acknowledges none of that nuance while creating a situation that desperately needed nuance because there was no clear right and wrong here. Should Maribug work to be more aware of others feelings? Sure, but that journey can only start after she's made aware of her faults and no one ever points them out to her. Does Chat Noir need to work on clearly communicating his needs? Desperately, but no one is teaching him that lesson so he remains a terrible communicator who suffers in silence. What impressively bad writing.

#ml writing critical #ml writing salt #adrien deserves better #marinette deserves better #kuro neko salt #my queendom for some good character arcs #and good story arcs #there's just so much squandered potential here #ml fandom salt #ml fandom critical #Adding those tags because I am sick of people holding Marinette to unrealistic expectations #This was long so I didn't add this part of the rant but: #It's important to remember how much we know as an audience vs what Maribug knows #Adrichat is really good at putting up a front that everything is fine #And Marinette knows nothing about his homelife when he's Chat Noir #Plus the show has made this kids kinda terrible at understanding Adrien's home life

[rebrandedbard]

How does the great Sandpiper successfully smuggle 130 children out of the Nilfgaard-occupied territory of Hamm? With the power of a forgotten story, a traditional song, and a masterful lie.

A piece for my upcoming fic, The Piper of Hamm, based on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, next in my fairy tale series.

#FINALLY finished this wip from literally TWO YEARS ago and it only took an HOUR to add the background and stuff #my art #my witcher art #witcher #the witcher #jaskier #The Piper of Hamm fic #I'm basically writing all these fics in order on a sticky note #you can see why I haven't gotten around the the Howl's Moving Castle or Stardust AUs yet because of this #TWO YEARS I had this idea #and it is only now being written #my life is pain lmao #but I've never been invested in a fandom this long so I think I've finally found my forever fandom #and the need to write these aus is still strong #so we'll see them one day

[locusfandomtime]

see the fandom has this thing where the hermits are different species and when they’re part animal/mob they’re a hybrid but nobody talks about the even funnier canon lore that they’re all the exact same species. Their species is hermit.

[long post - lots of worldbuilding and speculative biology below]

Jevin looks like a slime, Doc looks like that, most of them look human, but in actuality they’re all just hermits. The only information we have about this is that hermits are shorter than the average player, some references to hobbits, some references to hermits being hardworking, the fact that gem isn’t a hermit and had to wear antlers to pretend to be one, and that’s it.

I love biology and worldbuilding and this is fascinating to me. When you take into account previous seasons and events and throw-away lines this gets even more insane. Grian and Hypno are acknowledged to not have mouths (and even more hermits don’t have them on their skin). Mumbo turned into a potato. Cleo had snake hair at one point. There are a million other weird things I’m forgetting. You could handwave some of this with an explanation like “hermits are shapeshifters” or “hermits are gods” and that is a very valid and fun take but I think it is SO much funnier if these are just normal things that happen in the hermit species, which aren’t fantastical at all and are adaptations with elaborate mechanics and explanations.

Perhaps hermits, similar to bugs, regularly shed their skin (or a process similar to it) and change their appearance. Some insects change colours/appearance due to their environment rather than genetics, ie macleays spectre stick insects can turn lichen colours when raised around lichen. Maybe the hermits shed their skins on a regular basis, including during their adult life, and this allows them to better match their environment- causing physical changes related to what they have been exposed to. This causes potato Mumbo and medusa Cleo and DM Tango and any other example of a specific skin change. For more constant differences in appearance - maybe life cycles could be considered?

this may be the weirdest thing I’ve ever made. For those that don’t know, “n” is the number of chromosomes, where n is the haploid number, so 2n is diploid. Diploid cells are necessary for sexual reproduction. Of course, a lot of these life cycles are centered around reproduction, as is the nature of a life cycle, but in reality the hermits are in no rush and are happy to stay at whatever point of the life cycle they’re at, this is just an outline of the species’ mechanics.

I mean, most of this diagram is conjecture… but I think it is interesting to consider! Jevin especially reminded me a lot of slime mould life cycles so this is heavily inspired off that, but also inspired by bug life cycles as well.

If you want to get even more indepth we can consider the gender roles of hermit society (remember that clip where Grian implied builders were housewives and redstoners were breadwinning husbands?). Perhaps we can get meta and consider respawn an aspect of being a hermit as well - are they able to regenerate after death? What is Cleo’s place in all this, being undead? Is arm thickness, where your arm can either be 3px or 4px wide, an example of sexual dimorphism?

but. well. tldr: the hermits being one species is a very fun idea we should be doing more with, i think

#this started out as haha funny the hermits are one species and ended with me making scientific diagrams #decided to call those stages imago. like insects. best fit i could find for what i wanted #please ask me about my thoughts on courtship and evolution and early life stages and respawn and anything else please god #locus fandom time #i should have a tag for my insane antics #locus worldbuilding time #hermitcraft #long post #hermitblr #speculative biology #the ideas here are heavily biased towards slime moulds and insects because. well. autism.

[kinardscoffee]

Imagine how angry those Buddies are going to be at you when season seven ends with BuckTommy still going strong. And imagine how furious they're going to be at you when you and the discord get to gloat about Lou's season eight return announcement.

The POWER you have. Remember that. That's why they infiltrated your Discord to begin with. They're angry, cornered little animals lashing out because they're terrified their delusions won't actually be validated. They see the writing on the wall, and they're fucking devastated.

I hope you take pleasure in that. I do.

Anon, honestly? I do.

AND IT'S ALL I THINK ABOUT AT NIGHT. 🤭

The shit they tried to do was upsetting, and I still HATE that they actually outed people. (I'm not sure what level of hell that puts people in, but whatever. It's fucked up!)

But now that the mayhem has died down... I just have to laugh.

They were in there for 15 hrs and didn't find anything? In fact, pretty sure 8 of those hours they were asleep... I know they got pissed at the lack of access because our discord values our members, and making it a safe place is our most important priority.

There's one thing I haven't shared yet about the situation but considering the same person JUST impersonated me on Twitter... fuck it.

They added me to their "hater" group chat and began to say the craziest shit to me. I didn't ss the actual gc, but I did get the list of all 34 people in there.

It's a nice little 'Beginner's Guide to blocking Bobs' if anyone is interested.

Also, the day we kicked them from the discord, I got this from one of their minions:

And as I'm writing this, (this has taken me like 4 days to finish because of all of this shit). Here's Maggie's Marge profile revamped to impersonate me. (I've already reported her and she's already reversed it back to herself)

I am @ kinardscoffee on Twitter, same as here.

But yes... they are going to be big mad when Tim shatters their dreams of getting tHe gReATest sLoW bUrN oF aLL TiMe!!!

Hold on, buckle up, and use your fucking block button, peeps. Shit's about to get crazier than it's ever been. ✌️🩵

#like wtf is my life?? #all because of a tv show and a fictional character?? #now suddenly we have identity theft and I have to upload my identification to fucking Elon Musk??? #lololl i know he won't see it but still! #911 fandom #911 discourse #911 fandom discourse #bucktommy #buddie #<- only because i think you guys need to know... no hate to you because of the ship #911 abc #anon 🩵 #long post

[oceanwithouthermoon]

"they dont have any chemistry in canon-" WHAT HAPPENED TO SHIPPING CHARACTERS JUST BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT OF A SCENARIO THEY WOULD FIT INTO ONCE? what happened to "i saw it in a dream"? what happened to "i just like them so i put them together"? huh? huh? make shipping fun again

#i dont care if teruhashi and suzumiya never interact #unlucky girl x perfect girl is interesting #i dont give a shit if yumehara got over saiki a long time ago and he had no interest in her at the time either #theyre my two favs so im GOING to put them together #me shipping yumekaiyasusai just because it puts my fav ships and characters together #nobody has ever thought of that ship and i dont give a shit its mine forever #this is also me with kanakasa i fucking love kanakasa (tsukasa x kanade) #and mizunene #saiki k #tdlosk #the disastrous life of saiki k. #project sekai #prjsk #im sure this applies to lots of fandoms im just tagging what i was thinking of and said in the tags #meows post

[felassan]

remember that wild Dragon Age theme park ride (Dragon Age: Flight of the Wardens), originally located in Dubai until it randomly turned up years later (now also oddly-rebranded as "[Not Dragon Age We Swears It]: The Guardian") in, of all places, Skegness England? well, I had to satisfy my curiosity and obsession with obscure pieces of Dragon Age media & archival thereof. and so - actually quite some time ago now - I finally got around to going on a pilgrimage there (which was this whole, like.. heinous harrowing in and of itself, that I will not go into), and I rode it

and to my surprise the original Dragon Age in-ride movie is still part of the ride experience! - complete with references to darkspawn, a Pride demon, dragons, green "rifts", Discount Anders (a Grey Warden[?] mage called 'Eldron'), Discount Yavanna (a Witch of the Wilds called 'Alexia') and Dragon Age: Inquisition soundtrack music. there is also now a new pre-ride movie which replaces the old Dragon Age pre-ride movie as part of the ride's rebranding, and i simply ?¿?

there are also still quite a lot of identifiable Dragon Age props in the fantasy-themed queue-area of the ride (so these must have been part of the whole purchase between parks), including multiple iconic Inquisitor helmets, Grey Warden shields, a Dragon Age dragon (now with DA-dragon identifiable horns.. sawn off??), and several Dragon Age banners, including the Inquisition hairy eyeball, the templar symbol and the Circle symbol. here's some pictures.

[^this image is taken from the video linked below]

I also captured the new pre-ride movie, and you can see it along with the Dragon Age in-ride movie here ⬇️. and so now, with this epilogue to the.. most odyssey of all time, more than two years after the first message about the ride was ever sent to Ghil Dirthalen, this adventure in obscurity and the strange fever-dream meta story of the Dragon Age: Flight of the Wardens era in Dragon Age history is finally complete.

Ghil Dirthalen: The Guardian??? {Overview. - Spoilers All}

[video source & link: Ghil Dirthalen, posted here w/ permission]

some further notes, thoughts and commentary under the cut -

there's a few seconds missing from this capture of the in-ride movie. for the sake of the curious and completion: in them, you're still in the fort and you see lots of 'Wardens' walking and milling around.

a camera in the ride takes two photos of the riders during the ride, which are displayed on a screen on the way out. you can choose to buy these from the Fantasy Island merchandise store. you know those photos of people on log flume rides? it's like those, only of the four riders in a row in the seats. the photos have Fantasy Island branding on them and fire along the bottom, then in two corners there's a bit of a dragon's head and that's about it. the ride photo is the only Guardian-specific merch available at the park.

some of the queue area props appear to be from random other places. like there was a barrel which had something like "1850 distillery" written on it, which is obviously temporally/thematically and universe-ly out of place (not that that's at all unreasonable given the rest of the rideworld lore, there's totally a way it could have gotten there easily hh, see below), and I guess it's a spare or leftover prop from a Western-themed ride or something? others were generic sword'n'sorcery fantasy props (some of these are from the ride's previous life in Dubai though). there are also some pretty random props, like a dead stuffed roe deer's head on the wall and a.. comically large spoon.

there's music playing in the queue area, but it's not DA music, it's generic ye olde fantasy world music.

some folks there mistakenly thought that the long themed lead-up (it was pretty darn long) queue area with the props was the entrance to or start of something completely different, like a haunted house or maze type thing, or was the ride 'experience' in and of itself.

the ride attendant gives you the option of watching the new pre-ride movie or not. I guess they get sick of putting it on and listening to it 9000 times a day (valid), and also cutting it out reduces queue times as it's about five minutes long. it's screened in a little enclosed room at the end of the queue area. you go in and sit down, they show it to you, then you go through another door to the chair machine.

the in-ride movie is blurry and poor quality. I heard someone else who rode it say that it was so blurry that they had no idea what was going on hhh

Now about the new pre-ride movie. in the linked video, the start of the new pre-ride movie isn't included in full at normal speed as it seemed to be a compilation of whatever random fantasy-themed stock footage the video creator could find, stitched together. but again for the curious and the sake of completion: it starts out panning randomly around SPACE, like at the solar system and of planets and at the Milky Way. for a sec I wondered if it was made up of random old Mass Effect assets. then it shows dragons (FROM SPACE) invading an Earth-like planet where I suppose the Ferelden-y kindgom (formerly called "Noathen", now called "Elvia" or something) setting in the rideworld is now supposed to be set. these invading dragons invade either from space or.. another dimension?? or maybe from the future or both?? [see below], entering through a big green rift. (and they still have the green coloring for the rifts and call it/them "rifts" like in DA, which was honestly so funny to me for some reason). the whole panning in from space start to the movie reminded me a lot of the Easter eggs in the DA and ME games that, while they're just Easter eggs for fun and I don't subscribe to this theory myself (as DA is its own great, self-contained thing), could light-heartedly imply that the planet with Thedas on it is a planet in the MEverse (like the krogan head in the Winter Palace in DAI or the ogre in that ME dlc).

in the pre-ride movie, the kingdom of "Elvia" might have actually been called "Albion", which is the earliest-known name for the island of Britain. (it was hard to make out exactly what the king was saying there) the new pre-ride movie seems like it was made in England and ofc thats a common fantasy setting, so I could see it, especially since the king character's name was something like Aethylswyth, which sounded very "Old English". for me personally, if it was "Albion", it adds fuel to the fire of Caitie's cracktheory/"trying to make this fit"-headcanon for the ride story/lore (see Caitie's original video on the ride's previous life for this), that it's set somewhere obscure and backwatery in Ferelden, which is kinda England- or Britain-inspired. (dont take these thoughts or other thoughts in this post about the lore/canon etc too srsly pls hh, it's just crack for fun and I know tis just an off-brand themepark ride)

on the whole the new pre-ride movie is pretty random. there's a giant in it, but it doesn't look like a DAI giant. (is it his big spoon??) it shows a fortress in part of it which looks a bit like Skyhold if you squint, with the long bridge approaching it as the entrance. at one point one of the dragons that pops up is a dragon designed more in the style of a dragon as they are sometimes depicted in, for example, Chinese mythology and folklore. the "communication device" the king described had me rolling, it's exactly like a Dragon Age Skype Crystal or a working set of eluvians from Thedas.. I wondered if the video creator was inspired some by DAI promo images and took cues from the Inquisitor's green hand/the Anchor, since the king has a green glowing thing on (or in?) his chest. and when the king started listing the elements humans are made of, I was reminded of Fullmetal Alchemist.

also, "through a time rift".. I mean technically Dorian's involvement in DAI DOES show green space-time magic right? Where is this other dimension? ofc I know it's not literally Dragon Age, but it's funny to think about and to try and make it "fit" skhskdhfjhe. is it the Fade? the Void? from somewhere in-between like Tevinter Nights implies exists? or is it the dimension which has Thedas's mundane world itself in it - like maybe the dragons are invading this poor guy's kingdom dimension from Thedas? if so what tf is going on in Thedas?? did Solas' explosion at the Conclave ripple through spacetime and rip holes in the fabrics of other worlds as well - like is Solas out here accidentally causing interdimensional Space Dragon invasions? like, theoretically.. the new pre-ride move does reference the in-ride movie, and in turn the in-ride movie is still Dragon Age (!), so technically the new pre-ride movie IS.. kind of.. weirdly.. canon.

((the pre-ride movie references an "outerworld", implying that even in THAT dimension there's an outer world and an inner world, definitely more than one at least. and back on the dimensions thing, I'm not clear - are the dragons coming from Thedas dimension? or are they coming to Thedas dimension? "they came through the rift, human in form but with powers, the ability to fly [that's Eldron] and the ability to transform into dragon-like creatures [that's Alexia]" implies that the dimension on the other side of the rift - if the helpers came through the same rift as the invading dragons - is Thedas, because that's Eldron and Alexia from the Dragon Age in-ride movie being referred to, and Noathen where they're from is in Thedas somewhere. so some Thedosians have travelled to another world to save it?? Dragons are escaping out of Thedas? but.. from space? but also - the narration is telling us that Eldron and Alexia and the other Guardians brought with them from where they came from, as a gift, incredible advanced technology that the people of Elvia have never seen before. he then gives the example of "this communication device" which could be read meta-ly as meaning the television screen, and of plans to build a machine made of metal and advanced technology (meaning the ride machine you go sit on, which is a themepark machine irl obviously and in the 'world' of the ride, some kind of flying machine). so like.. are Eldron and Alexia from Future Thedas (think Avatar Aang/Korra, when by Korra's time there's like lots more machinery and a more modern feel), a Thedas which has advanced complex machines like idk, AEROPLANES? is that what they mean by "time-rift"? because they specifically did say "time". is that to try and explain the modern machinery? does that mean the invading dragons also came from the future, not just from space or another dimension? the other option: Eldron and Alexia came from alternate universe Thedas, which has more modern technology in it. but Thedosians Time-Travelling From The Future And Also Space And Another Dimension is so funny to me so lets go with that. my headcanon is that on the way to Elvia they also timetravelled through a Westernthemed time period and thats why theres a recent-modern period whisky barrel)).

in the ride's previous life, the explanatory hook was that Eldron made you a special harness or saddle thing with which to ride a dragon, which was what the ride machine was simulating. however now, the hook to explain the machine is that it's a gift of advanced technology powered by carbon, hydrogen, organic matter (Big Oil lmao?) etc. (I enjoyed that this explanatory hook got wackier between eras of the ride's life, much like the whole meta story of this piece of media itself. it was already weird because riding dragons isn't really part of DA. though I don't understand meta-ly speaking this convoluted explanation for the machine. dragon-riding isn't an identifiable or key part of the Dragon Age franchise, so they could have kept the idea that you're sitting on a dragon's back and flying around on that in instead of having this wacky explanation about a flying machine gifted from magical strangers from Back To The Future and it would have been fine. I love it though bc its so absurd)

And Tiny Dragon Alexia from the original ride experience is kinda referenced (unintentionally?) when the king introduces the dragon "Guardian" "Mia", as when she comes on-screen her size or scaling looks small/kinda off, so maybe Tiny Dragon lives on. so now we have Tiny Dragon Alexia, Tiny Dragon Mia, and Tiny Dragon queue prop. it's a Tiny Dragon Conference.

and like I just have so many questions. in her original video on the ride, Ghil Dirthalen wondered at length where in Ferelden/Thedas Noathen could be. where is Elvia? why does the pov of the pre-ride movie proceed downstairs into the room where the king is - like why does the king have his throne in a basement? is he in an underground bunker for safety because of the Space Dragon invasion? why does he say we "climbed" up when we have just gone down into his dungeon? why is the tiny dragon introduced as "Mia" when the tiny dragon witch lady in the in-ride movie is called "Alexia"? does the king's green glowing chest thing work like the Anchor - does he have a chest Anchor.. a Chanchor? where did they get Discount Gandalf from the queue area and why is he exactly like the Ghil Dirthalen Stock Theatre Wizards in her original video? why did they change the kingdom's name from "Noathen" to "Elvia" in the pre-ride movie when "Noathen" was already non-existent in Dragon Age lore? why did they scrub Dragon Age from or avoid Dragon Age in the pre-ride movie but leave the whole Dragon Age in-ride movie intact? are the "Guardians" Discount Grey Wardens? is the king's whole schpeel secretly an evil plot so he that can use our bodies for like necromancy-alchemy? why does the ride run on your flesh and are we about to be sacrificed in a blood magic ritual? do we end up like the husks in Mass Effect after our organic forms are broken down into compounds to fuel the King of Elvia's flying anti-dragon defense tank? is the actor of the king a park staffer who is into larping, or someone's fun nerd uncle who likes DnD? does Caitie not in fact agree that I am very handsome and smart, indeed the World's Most Interesting Guy? 😤 why go to the trouble of sawing off the dragon's DA-dragon horns when the in-ride movie is still Dragon Age?? why are the dragons invading from space anyway like what do they want??? how can I obtain the king actor guy's autograph? where are EA's lawyers? and why is there a giant spoon?

#dragon age #Not Dragon Age We Swears It #bioware #solas #video games #lul #long post #longpost #gpoy #mj and the world #saveserault #mass effect #(shoutout to the DA Archivists) #thanku to ghil for her vids and for permission to post this video here #this whole episode in my life and in the DA fandom feels like a strange shared fever dream. was that real? am i? is Skegness? is DA4? r WE? #lmaoo #skegness the swampy ass crack of england #Fantasy Island - where dreams go to die (but fever dreams live on) #(cant believe one of the pretend Wardens from Ghil Dirthalen's Eldron's fake Warden cult was literally there irl at Fantasy Island. im ded) #and if u are reading this thinking wat the heck fel r u ok its just a rebranded themepark ride like calm down its not That Deep #i grasp ur collar and raise you that #in the time between dai and DA:D i have fully lost my mind #what dragon age does to a guy #while we wait for dragon age 4 this is the plot of dragon age 4 #on my knees constructing elaborate headcanons about and trying to make sense of a Not dragon age theme park ride #surrealism.txt

[moeblob]

lil meow meow (affectionate)

#honkai star rail #lynx landau #the baby cat of the family! the littlest meow meow! #also thank heavens i have to finish commissions so i cant draw what i really wanted to draw which could easily get me canceled #its not my fault her hair style is super similar to another girl whomst i love also #i would absolutely draw a lil crossover parody spoof thing and i dont know the fandom well enough to think im safe #so ill just keep the parody doodle in my head bye #once i understand yays and nays in the game setting ill experiment more with the cast and stuff #but i also fear for my life because i really dont dabble in fandoms in general #and i got REALLY lucky with fe putting up with my art for so long

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

bunch of oc doodles just to prove im not ded sorry lol

Clemmence, the goat-sheep cultleader, and his bloodgod, Muse

W, a teenaged immortal boy half demon who is just try his best

the timetraveler, who is on a infinitely repeating task to find a reality in which his wife does not die

dell, the smelly young adult lil meanie alien boy with daddy issues AND mommy issues

(various, including some small doodles of Dell, and a collage of Grim, the reaper, and his friends, Lady Life, (Mil)Dewdrop, and Morose)

i been going thru some shit lately and just wanted to pop in to remind y'all im not dead yet, most of my efforts have been in writing and handling life shit, sorry for lack of content lately. The next chapter of Readerbot fic is nearly done, though! just a few more scenes, i think. it's nearing a part where Moon really tries to have a heart-to-heart with someone who Literally Cannot Communicate With Him, i think it's going to be fun for everyone involved (and by fun i mean awkward and painful lol)

alright you reached the end, have a bonus doodle, feel free to use this as a reaction as you see fit

#bones of a rabbit #doodles #sketches #long post #oc doodles #bones of a rabbit ocs #doodle dump #babbit speaks #rambling #life update #alright im melting back into th void now lol sorry #also sorry this isnt like. an actually interesting post hfhhf #but here's what my ocs are like outside of fandoms i guess? in case anyone was curious

[bex-inxo]

See you soon QSMP

Thank you and goodnight :]

#qsmp #it's not the end it's just to be continued #can't wait to see what you'll do next QStudios. Quackity and admins #I'll continue creating about qsmp as long as my hyperfixation is here #and to everyone. fandom doesn't die if the comunity keeps creating so don't let qsmp. the first multilingual smp. die until they come back #and if they won't don't forget about it and keep creating #it was the best year of my life and best people i ever met in the fandom #thanks for all qsmp

[just2bubbly]

ok hear me out, 'The Black Dog' is wolfstar coded and not just because of the literal connection with Sirius Black and his animagus but in general. The Dog is very obviously Sirius and the way she goes on building the first verse of long lost friendship and relationship- "I am someone who until recent events shared your secrets with" and that's easy to tell Sirius and Remus were one half of the Marauders and they were friends, lovers and obviously shared everything with each other. The location is the Marauder's Map and it could possibly be a memory that Sirius can't get out of his head while being in Azkaban that relates closely with Remus who is having the same flashback but at a bar or in a deep emotional capacity when he sees a black dog that reminds him of Siri. "She's too young to know this song" is Tonks (no offence to her but ye) the age gap is there, she was there when Sirius was alive and it was a visual representation of Remus choosing her above him. When Remus steals glances at Sirius when he thinks no one is seeing for 'old habits die screaming' and now he doesn't know what to do with this for he feels Sirius is too lost in despair. Post Azkaban Sirius is "moving through the world heartbroken" and with desires of having a friend in Remus if not a lover. "And it kills me, I don't understand"— is very clearly the chaotic mess inside Siri's head as he takes over his life after 13 years of imprisonment. "Now I wanna sell my house, and set fire to all my clothes," is perhaps the disdain with Grimmauld Palace and his past that he tried so hard to escape haunting him like a full circle. "This tail between your legs, you're leaving" is again his untimely death, too soon and a life too short with great regrets and glorious moments.

You can't tell me this song isn't about Sirius Black

#ttpd #ttpd era #ts ttpd #the tortured poets department #taylor swift #sirius black #song lyrics #the black dog #remus lupin #wolfstar #remus x sirius #harry potter fandom #marauders era #the maruaders #nymphadora tonks #remadora #im just looking too deep at things but I have had this theory for a long time now and I'm not gonna shut up about it #also the line “you deserved a brave man” what a hard hitting line #I'm not sobbing at the reference you are #woah it's unbelievable my good life can't have it with this much angst #I need to read a fic over this matter #as soon as possible

[ao3-shenanigans]

If I’ve not been posting much, assume I’ve been taken over by a LongFic™️

#my life has been consumed #and also work + school #but holy cow it’s so good #fanfiction #ao3 #archive of our own #fanfic #fandom #long fic #ao3 shenanigans

[suntails]

I’m going to paint you a picture of modern communication, and how it is fundamentally broken.

Let’s look at one friend. You chat pretty much everyday, and mostly talk to this person on twitter and discord, with occasional tumblr DMs. That’s three places you talk. But that’s actually not true, because you also have each other’s priv twitters and talk there as well. That’s four. Now account for, let’s say, one post reply per account per person, in addition to your DMs. That’s eight. But that’s ALSO not true, because not only do you talk in discord DMs with each other, but you’re in a friend group server as well! And you talk in those channels together! That’s nine.

This is one friend.

Now look around you. How many friends, how many mutuals are you in contact with. A few, a handful, a dozen, more? How many accounts per person do you have, how many places can you send each other posts, devolve into separate topics and conversations? How many people text you as well. Friends, family, coworkers? What do you do day to day around catching up, what IRL commitments will rip you away long enough to let the pile build again?

I can’t do it. I cannot live an actual life in the real world and balance this much interaction, it’s crushing. I reply to a friend’s post because I’m interested in the subject, I want to have a discussion! I WANT to talk about it with them, but I immediately kick myself for adding another conversation to the pile. Day by day, I ignore messages for hours on end and watch mountains pile around me, to reply en masse at the end of the night to let the cycle repeat. I wake up to six discord DMs and as I clear the third, the first replies back again.

We weren’t meant to have thirty simultaneous conversations. We weren’t. And you know in your bones that the number isn’t an exaggeration.

#hush catríona #this is essentially copy pasted from my twt last week but made a touch more coherent #iiiii spiral about this pretty regularly. i think this is the 4th or 5th time ive gone on this spiel bc its agonizing #i feel horrific guilt for ignoring messages for so long. and its absolutely voluntary. but i cant FUNCTION like this i cant DO it #i have friends where we talk Every Single Day and i LOVE them so much. so unfathomably much. but it KILLS me #hell take my roomie for example. one of my fav ppl in the world. we text- twit dm- discord dm- ig dm- reply to posts. thats five right? #i guess!!! but we also LIVE TOGETHER. i see them in real life and talk to them out loud with my voice and its still this much to add on!!!! #and i feel like nobody else talks abt this shit and it makes me feel crazy. am i the only person completely debilitated by this??? #i dont want this to come across as like ‘boohoo we get it ur sooo popular’ that is NOT what this post means #i think a lot of ppl big acct or small. fandom or otherwise. talk to a dozen ppl online. and i dont get how anyone copes #this is agony. and every single time i ever make a post? its another opportunity to add to the pile #i only reply to comments on posts on twt and this is why. i cant DO it i cant keep up. i see every tag and im so grateful but i cant ever #reach out. i cant add to the pile. theyre already taller than me

[kakuusei]

Ever since I joined the Survey Corps everyday has brought a new farewell. But you understand don’t you? Everyone you meet will be parted from you one day. I know it’s difficult to accept. It’s hard to stay sane, living like that. It’s painful. So painful. I know that. But even so, we need to move forward.

HANGE ZOE

#shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #snkedit #shounenedit #animangaladies #anisource #fyanimegifs #dailyanimatedgifs #animationedit #dailyanime #chewieblog #userbbelcher #aotedit #long post #tw blood #tw flashing gif #my edit #fandom #park romi did such a great job giving life to hange #i lost it when bauklotze started playing #gosh i have no more gas left in the tank #SPOILERS!!!

[greenerteacups]

thoughts on Ginny and Harry as a couple?

There are a lot of people who find their romance in HBP forced. I don't think it's forced so much as underwritten, and the books don't get the chemistry quite right (though the movies certainly don't, either). There's potential, but they just don't get enough actual scenes of substance (besides Harry thinking she's pretty or feeling jealous of Dean) for a lot of readers to buy that they're not only in love, but deeply enough in love to break up, get back together, and wind up married.

That's not to say I don't see the appeal. There's a very cool scene in Book 5 where Harry's doing a woe-is-me-Chosen-One act, and Ginny effortlessly puts him in his place about it by reminding him that she was possessed by Voldemort at eleven, which is a rare glimpse into her character and also a great synecdoche for their relationship — Ginny is a grounding presence who, like Ron and Hermione, isn't going to be awed by his past adventures because she knew him before they happened. In that respect, Ginny's probably one of the few women Harry could feasibly wind up with, because he only ever seems comfortable around people (let alone girls) who can see past the Chosen-One schtick and treat him like a normo (see: Ron, Hermione, the Weasleys, Luna, Hagrid). True to type, he doesn't get interested in Ginny at all until she's ditched her celebrity crush and ceased to view him as an idol, because in his heart of hearts, Harry wants to be a normal boy, and it's stressed over and over that part of what he likes about his relationship with Ginny is how normal it feels. He kind of has a horribly supercharged version the celebrity dating problem: after the Battle of Hogwarts, anyone he meets is going to know him first as Harry Potter, Chosen One, Boy Who Lived, and Actually Fucking Resurrected Messiah of the Wizarding World, which is... I mean, it's possible that there are witches out there who could get over that, but Harry's not an extroverted guy, and I'm not sure how he'd go about finding them. Ginny's the one who's been there since the beginning, doesn't need anything about him or his past explained to her, and actually likes him for who he is.

When you look at it that way, it's not surprising he married his high school girlfriend. She's one of the few people still alive who doesn't see him as a demigod.

#in general I was never one to ship harry with anybody #what I wanted for him was a long quiet life and plenty of therapy #maybe some dogs. i think harry needs dogs and deserves them #The other obvious solution ftr — though not one I think Harry would take — is for him to marry a muggle #though again. you'd run into the problem of how you explain All That #which harry doesn't like to talk about and probably would want to talk about even less as an adult #plus also: harry loves magic. like he loves it loves it #the muggle world for harry is permanently connected with the dursleys and it would take years to break that association #which I just don't think he's going to invest #Harry post-BOH is moving to Hogsmeade or wizarding London or some other magical neighborhood and staying there forever #by the way this post is not anti Harry and Ginny! no hate on the ship I've seen versions of it that are very cute #but I just think their love story needed Sauce #there are also some really interesting posts I've found in Deep Fandom crackship blogs about h/g as Harry's sublimated desire for Ron #now I don't necessarily buy that reading. I don't think Harry is in love with Ron in the original text #I do think he LOVES ron and projects that love onto the Weasleys very quickly ginny included #and I think Ron is his soulmate platonic or otherwise in every universe #so marrying Ginny has like. Implications. vis-a-vis Harry's status as a Weasley and adoptive brother[in law] of Ron #like it's a full-circle moment where he becomes officially legally a member of Ron's family #which I do believe JKR had in mind. even though that basically means ginny's wedding becomes kinda... actually... about her brother... #it's weird basically. my final verdict is I wish H/G had been written by an author who was more interested in Ginny for Ginny's sake. #greenteacup asks

[the-gayest-sky-kid]

I'm not the biggest fan of Oda, as many here already know. That comes from the INCREDIBLE disconnect between the fandom version of him as opposed to the canon. I see often on Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, etc etc. this treatment of Oda as some great force of pure good, and furthermore this scene as a grand bit of final wisdom. So right now, let's talk about his death scene.

The anime puts it like this:

"You told me you might find a reason to live if you lived in a world of violence and bloodshed. [...] You won't find it. You must know that already. Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side that saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity. [...] Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same to you, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know... but that'd make you at least a bit better."

And the light novel puts it like this:

"You told me if you put yourself in a world of violence and bloodshed, you might be able to find a reason to live… [...] You won't find it. [...] You should know that. Whether you're on the side that takes lives or the side that saves them, nothing beyond your own expectations will happen. Nothing in this world can fill the hole that is your loneliness. You will wander the darkness for eternity. [...] Be on the side that saves people. [...] If both sides are the same, then choose to become a good person. Save the weak, protect the orphaned. You might not see a great difference between right and wrong, but… saving others is something just a bit more wonderful."

I want to break down what bothers me in these. This portion especially.

You told me you might find a reason to live if you lived in a world of violence and bloodshed. [...] You won't find it. You must know that already. Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side that saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity.

You told me if you put yourself in a world of violence and bloodshed, you might be able to find a reason to live… [...] You won't find it. [...] You should know that. Whether you're on the side that takes lives or the side that saves them, nothing beyond your own expectations will happen. Nothing in this world can fill the hole that is your loneliness. You will wander the darkness for eternity.

I think we often forget that Dazai is still a suicidal teen in Dark Era, and that he's one that's held on to the hope he'd find something for all this time. I dont disagree with the fact he must know he won't find anything in the mafia already. But Oda misunderstands a lot of fundamental parts of Dazai, which lead to this scene being devastating.

Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side that saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear.

Whether you're on the side that takes lives or the side that saves them, nothing beyond your own expectations will happen.

The thing is, Dazai DOES find things he doesn't expect. He meets Chuuya and Chuuya surprises him! He meets Oda and Ango and they fascinate him!! He meets Kunikida and Ranpo and everyone else and he finds them interesting!!! He gets proven wrong, he gets surprised, he has NEVER been infallible. And he's incredibly hopeful too, as stated earlier. He held on to the hope he'd find something for the past 3 years despite how horrible of an environment the mafia was for him, and he still tried his hardest to save Oda. To tell him that not only would he never find anything here, but anywhere else he goes? It's kind of.... well, shitty.

And there's another thing about this line I have to point out, something from a couple pages earlier.

"But he's different. He's sharp-witted with a mind like a steel trap. And he's just a child—a sobbing child abandoned in the darkness of a world far emptier than the one we're seeing."

"He was too smart for his own good. That was why he was always alone. The reason why Ango and I were able to be by his side was that we understood the solitude that surrounded him, and we never stepped inside it no matter how close we stood."

Oda believes that it's Dazai's intelligence that isolates him. While this is true, it's only true to an extent. Look at Ranpo, who was also isolated because of his intelligence. He doesn't stay that way, despite not having any peers. Ranpo found his place with Fukuzawa at the agency, and there was nothing stopping Dazai from also finding his own.

Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity.

Nothing in this world can fill the hole that is your loneliness. You will wander the darkness for eternity.

And I don't know how to explain this to people, but telling an emotionally distressed teenager that he's going to be lonely forever is, erm, kind of bad? Especially when the person he thinks understands him the most is like... dying in his arms.

Oda tried to help Dazai in his final moments, I'm not trying to discredit that. He gave Dazai his advice and Dazai chose to take it, because he knew Oda was speaking from his own experiences. But Oda's words were still harmful to him, regardless of how well meaning they were.

#bsdrewatch2023 #my one bsd analysis long post wahoo #sorry for the haterism im fed up with can do no wrong angel fandom odasaku #give me flawed oda!!! #dont get me wrong guys i love this scene but i love it a) BECAUSE IT *IS* DEVASTATING #and b) because dazai choosing a better life for himself is really beautiful to me #but the entire oda was a shining light in the mafia and he guided dazai with his goodness in these final moments narrative IRKS ME #SO MUCH #so here we go :) #caps cw #longer post #long post