#or maybe from a story-telling perspective this is just where this particular beat needs to be hit

[dribs-and-drabbles]

This is a little something (she says and then writes nearly a thousand words) about Kawi and intimacy and his behaviour towards Pisaeng's affections in Be My Favourite ep 9. I've been thinking about it all week but wasn't sure if I wanted to use my precious free-time to make a post. However, on the cusp of the new ep, I realise I do want to get these thoughts out.

I realised from reading other people's perspectives of the ep that my initial assessment of how Kawi was behaving was perhaps clouded by the 'old lenses' that I was subconsciously watching the show through. For context, I wasn't sure that I liked that Kawi kept pushing Pisaeng away and I even mentioned the dreaded Blushing Maiden trope. After some thought, I realise that my initial judgement was very much influenced by a couple of things carried over from ye olden bl times (which may not have been done away with completely but seem to be on their way out in present times).

First, from having seen so many bl/qls with the blushing maiden trope, subconsciously I guess I still expect to see it because it had been so prevalent. And second, despite the re-wiring my brain has undergone when it comes to Krist, I think I still fell back on the earlier presumptions that Krist was either averse to skinship (particularly with men) and/or wasn't a good enough actor to convey physical intimacy (this, of course, mostly stems from his portrayal of Arthit in SOTUS, which for all we know was how he was specifically directed to act - and which many have interpreted as demi- or asexual, which absolutely has a place at the table).

My conclusions to these realisations is that I need to learn to trust these newer bl/qls that they really aren't going to rehash the old questionable tropes of yesteryear.

I remember some discourse before the last three eps of My School President - when we were worried about the ending - about how Bad Buddy taught us that we can feel safe watching it - "safe in the knowledge that tropes were being subverted, that the usual angsty triggers actually got resolved pretty quickly, that the ep 11 curse wasn't actually a curse at all". And we needed to take that knowledge to help assuage our fears about the ending of MSP. And I think I'm in a similar situation here with Be My Favourite and Kawi in particular.

Staying with Bad Buddy for a bit longer (because, really, when can I ever not talk about it in relation to something else?), I remember feeling a similar disappointment with how Pran was being portrayed in ep 9. I felt he too bordered on the blushing maiden with how he shied away from Pat's advances in his room before Korn came in, before the rugby game, and even when washing up after the hotpot date. I don't see that now because, of course, we know Pran isn't a blushing maiden at all - I mean he's not known as Feral Musky Scented HOE Pran for nothing.

Yes, it took time for Pran to get used to Pat's affections but that was probably because he had pined over this man for so long it was all a bit overwhelming at first. Pran probably needed to ease into letting down his walls, to be vulnerable around Pat, and to believe it was all real. And in the end, when he had gotten used to it all, Pran holds back because he likes to make Pat work for it...because Pat also likes to work for it, because they get off on role-playing - as I've said before, it's like foreplay to them.

I'm not saying this is the same for Kawi but it's a similar situation. I knew this about Pran, and that I was wrong in my interpretation of him, and yet I didn't think to approach Kawi and Pisaeng with the same lens. The lens that so many of you have helpfully pointed out - Kawi is a 30-year-old virgin. This is all so new to him, not only to be intimate with someone but also with a man whom he hadn't even contemplated being with. He's spent 12 years only thinking of Pear (emphasis on 'only thinking' as well as 'only thinking').

@burntsuncomet said it well in their tags: "touch gets very very difficult if you don't interact with people much, so intimacy of normal affectionate touches are tough. Kawi would have to start slow and let Piseang just smack a kiss, maybe hold hands, hug a bit, it's a lot of work before intimacy from touch will be like second nature in Kawi's case." @rocketturtle4 also added that Kawi's "general uncertainty could be very well tied in with his loneliness and, especially, his fear of losing Piseang if he does the wrong thing".

@waitmyturtles offered a slightly different perspective, that almost "everything in this show is totally intentional, and...that [Kawi's] discomfort is totally meant to reflect those accusations from Krist’s past about his clear discomfort in acting out intimacy (especially juxtaposed with how much better he’s done with the intimacy in this show)".

So, all of this is to say that I need to start trusting this new wave of bl/qls - a message I obviously forgot from My School President and which has been proven by several other series this year.

And I need to trust Be My Favourite especially, because, as @williamrikers said, "they've swerved and avoided every other trope so far I believe that they're working towards something here". And I agree. Every episode has been fantastic and I haven't disliked a single thing about the show so far.

On top of that, I need to trust my newfound belief in Krist's acting, because he has pulled out some absolutely brilliant performances in this show so far - so why should I think ep 9 is any different?

#be my favourite #be my favorite #be my favorite the series #I do find it interesting that both eps I talk about are eps 9 of 12 #it's probably just a coincidence... #or maybe from a story-telling perspective this is just where this particular beat needs to be hit #anyway... #this wasn't supposed to be long #ha! #thank you to everyone who contributed their thoughts on my ep 9 post #I am holding myself accountable #and checking the lenses through which I watch these show

[dballzposting]

It bothers the fuck out of me when ppl take things that are in the text not supposed to be serious and make them serious. Taking the comedy action shots of chichi getting mad at her family and using it to make her an abuser creates an entirely different story with entirely different stakes. The innate misogyny of portraying Bulma and Chichi as "bad wives" has plagued the dragon ball fan base for years. These are both women who spent a good portion of their motherhood as single mothers and toriyama hasn't portrayed the results as anything but a set of happy, healthy children. There is a constant problem of portraying these women who are really just asking for the presence and understanding of their husbands as belligerent and delusional and making them active abusers only worsens that. Just literally everything about your post is so wrong and gross and your post about Gohan and Videl burning cigs on his arm is just so fucking utterly asinine that I can't tell if this is some sort of trauma you're coping through with these characters or some weird fetish thing but it's just kind of sad and I think you need to talk to someone.

... Oh dear. What did they drag you through on twitter to make you say things like this?

I know that the best response to messages like this is supposed to be minimal. But I think that that approach is done when it's understood that both parties aren't going to reach the other, or when an interaction is not desired. Since you've sent this off of anon, I don't want to give up right away; and since this is actually the first proper hate that I've received in my 8 years online, this is a special occasion for me!! I have a lot of thoughts about this and I am excited to share.

I will give you my complete response.

I am going to respond to this sentence by sentence, as is dballzposting custom when an ask warrants it.

First, my opening comment: I appreciate that you've written in full sentences, and have not belabored any one particular point. This will make responding easy and efficient. I do think you've interjected more pathos than maybe you intended, but for all of your insensitivity, you've been objective in that.

"It bothers the fuck out of me when ppl take things that are in the text not supposed to be serious and make them serious."

This first sentence is a problem. But I understand where you are coming from. Right off the bat I am going to ask for some patience and grace, because I am going to postulate about your perspective. I don't think that this is what you hate. What you are hating is A.) seeing renditions of an artwork that make no sense to, has no bearing on, and is totally removed from your understanding of the source material; and B.) these concepts specifically, Chichi beating her family and the Gohan & Videl post that you mention later in the ask.

This on its own is not a problem. You are free to dislike, or be bothered by, both. But that's not what you wrote out. I think that what you've done is try to articulate your distaste into a reason that sounds understandable and justifiable, which is a very common pitfall when it comes to understanding and comprehending feelings. Rationalization and I have a long history. I just want to point this out, that your word choice is not the most succinct and pertinent to your feelings. There are two reasons that I find this clarity important:

One: Because what you've described isn't actually hateable. To borrow your word choice from later, it is an asinine reason to hate anything. It goes against the very nature of art. This is literally what you wrote: "It bothers the fuck out of me when ppl take things that are in the text not supposed to be serious and make them serious." What? This is so simply backwards.

Consider: What is art? It's an expression, isn't it? Of passion, of beauty, of fear, confusion, wisdom, worry, admiration - it's the need to create, it's the need to share, it's - YADDA YADDA YADDA! I don't need to write it all out for you. YOU KNOW ART! Don't act like you don't. And you know that such expressions inspire pathways of expression in others. That is all there is to it! It is not anyone's role to preserve an author's intention, and only their explicit intention, when it comes to interacting with their art. It is anyone's prerogative to do so though, if their passion is a formalist perspective. I've been there. It's a wonderful and insightful thing to study art as the impressive work it is, and to only stick to what the author found relevant. Is that the ONLY way to interact with art? I don't need to answer that for you.

Two: Because feeling our feelings in earnest is one of the most important things that we as humans can/must do. When you control them by pinning them to explanations that you think are "justifiable," "valid," "rational," "understandable," or any number of head-prioritizing adjectives, then you are killing your emotional spirit.

I want to reiterate that this rationalizing of feelings into concrete beliefs is a very common pitfall in modern emotionally-stunted man, and I do not blame you at all for it. I just wanted to be clear about how I'm taking your message and how I'm understanding your emotional state, since it does deviate from what you wrote explicitly. I am not going to assume that what you wrote is actually what bothers you, because I will not do you that disservice. I am understanding that what is bothering you is the concepts that you've seen posted on my blog.

"Taking the comedy action shots of chichi getting mad at her family and using it to make her an abuser creates an entirely different story with entirely different stakes."

Yes! Now you are getting it.

"The innate misogyny of portraying Bulma and Chichi as 'bad wives' has plagued the dragon ball fan base for years."

This is where you lose me. Frankly this is a complete red herring fallacy and I am tempted to ignore it. But it is relevant to you, so I will engage.

A.) That has nothing to do with me or my posts. I didn't know about that, I don't see that, and I don't care about that.

B.) I never said that Chichi or Bulma were bad wives. You could not have known that, since you do not read dballzposting typically. I believe you are just pointing out a broader phenomenon to place your response into perspective. OK. It places your response in context, but unfortunately, it is completely out of context in a response to my posts, since my posts do not exist within that context. Because I have never seen that perspective, and because I do not care about it.

C.) It matters to you. So you are responding to it. But this is not a subreddit where you can respond to a community at large. This is dballzposting. You are reaching only me and maybe some users who only care about Yamucha x Vegeta having gay sex, Goten urinal transgressions, and the like.

I understand that you are bothered by, and are responding to, a phenomenon which is evidently widespread. But this is not the place to be responding to that.

"These are both women who spent a good portion of their motherhood as single mothers and toriyama hasn't portrayed the results as anything but a set of happy, healthy children."

I know. I'm here to fix that.

More seriously: Dragon Ball is not a story about family dynamics. That is not the story that Toriyama is trying to tell. He doesn't have time to care about anyone's parenting habits, he does not have the space to imply that they have an effect on anyone when there are space aliens trying to kill everyone. Of course he portrays happy healthy children. He is writing about peace until he isn't. As I wrote previously, this holds no bearing on how people are free to discuss his work, and remember that empty fields are very fertile grounds for discussion.

"There is a constant problem of portraying these women who are really just asking for the presence and understanding of their husbands as belligerent and delusional and making them active abusers only worsens that."

This one is interesting. I really appreciate the strong adjectives chosen here. I do portray Chichi as "belligerent" and "delusional." This is because she is. I am respecting her writing. This is how Toriyama wrote her. He's partial to misogynistic writing himself. But other than that, I think that he also writes really good female characters. He wrote female characters that are strong, unapologetically authentic, fascinating, and weird.

I DO portray Chichi as belligerent and delusional, because she is, and I have always only loved that about her. You would not have known that I have always felt way. You do not read the dr dballz tabloids. But what you did read were those posts that you are responding to, and nowhere in those posts did I imply any dislike or malice toward the character of Ms Chichi. I know this, because I wrote them, and I like her, and would not have written about her in that way.

Still, that is what you saw, because you decided that lumping all unsavory posts that you see online together as a monochromatic monolith is best.

She IS belligerent and delusional, for very complex reasons, same as why anyone in real life is belligerent and delusional. I am very interested in her. I am interested in reading what other people have to say about her. I completely agree that she is just "asking for the presence and understanding of [her] husband." I think that she's never had security. I think that her husband leaves her too frequently. I think that she feels powerless. I think a lot of things, and I am very interested in expressing my thoughts on my personal publicly-accessible blog.

Moreover: What do you mean when you write "active abuser"? What do you think an "active abuser" is? Some inhuman that you can just write off? Do you think that portraying these women as abusers discredits their characters? What about the people they abuse, what if this is about honoring them? Is it more important that we ignore the ugly presence of abuse, and its effect, in order to paint these women as perfectly consumable saints?

Do you see how you cannot win when you play this moralistic game? Ms Chichi is belligerent and delusional and she is one of my favorite characters for it.

This next sentence of yours I will break up and respond to bit by bit.

"Just literally everything about your post is so wrong and gross"

Actually I want to take the opportunity to interject two things here: one, most of what I say on this blog is actually historically technically pretty much bullshit. As in, it does not always come from anything in canon. But Chichi beating her kids actually does come from canon. It actually does have its roots there. We do see her unstable, irascible way and violent outbursts more than once. Like this one actually has some merit. I wouldn't call that "wrong and gross." It's sort of a dballz win actually.

And two: I do not care that deeply about Chichi beating her children. It is not the most fucked up story that I care about. It is funny, it is true, it is piquant when I have something to say - it was not the thing that I thought I would get negative reviews on. There are some deeply disturbing things that I really do care a lot about. I mean, you never even saw the post about Tarble using the DARVO method against Vegeta and turning his soul inside out! I really liked that one.

"and your post about Gohan and Videl burning cigs on his arm"

HEY she smokes CIGARS. Get it right.

"is just so fucking utterly asinine"

I don't believe that this is an astute use of the word "asinine." It was not dumb, nonsensical, or devoid. I felt that it was insightful and bold. I do think that the punchline fell a little flat, only because the act of burning someone with a cigar is not at all comparable with the explosive act of passion that is beating someone with a skillet, so it doesn't actually make much sense in the context of a wounded attachment style. The two don't translate. Additionally, I don't think that Chichi became comfortable with hitting her kids until much later in Gohan's life, when his attachment style was already developed. So I will agree that that post failed to cohere its subtle attempts at legitimacy. Fortunately, that post was tactless and brazen intentionally for the purpose of comedy, so its secondary intentions were less important. That's how we do it around here on dballzposting. Again, I couldn't have expected you to know that, seeing as you essentially just burst in here, so I'm telling you now.

"that I can't tell if this is some sort of trauma you're coping through with these characters"

And so what if it is? Now you've stoked me. I am very passionate about the importance of leniency and forgiveness regarding this.

"or some weird fetish thing"

And so what if it is? Is there a difference between the last point and this one? If there is, does it matter in any practical sense? Does it matter to you?

This point in your message is where you illustrate your lack of working empathy and self-awareness. What if this WAS somebody working through trauma, in an explicit, visible, aware, direct-correlation sort of way? Is this an appropriate way to approach them about it?

What if this was somebody working through trauma in an implicit, subtle, indirect, patient, self-compassionate way? Is this an appropriate way to approach them about it?

What if this was somebody working through trauma in an unaware way, and this accusation would frighten them? What if they were fixated, or what if they found relief in the expression? Is this an appropriate way to approach them about it?

What if this was somebody manifesting symptoms of trauma in a way that resulted in a fetish, what if they did hold an inexorable fixation upon this, and we are viewing a corrupted sexual expression, an organism trying to persevere despite unresolved impacts on its health? Is this an appropriate way to approach them about it?

Would you dare damn art, an expression of something personal and living?

Do you think that art cannot be a way to deliberately or inadvertently process feelings and responses? Have you ever seen art that wasn't that?

"but it's just kind of sad and I think you need to talk to someone."

This last bit is a finalization of your insensitivity and lack of self-awareness. What you are doing at the end here is parroting common phrases and methods that you have seen on the internet. Ending an expression of personal dissent with faux-compassionate words in order to dial back the animosity. Because you don't want to be held accountable for your words, intentions, or feelings. You want to wash your hands of the whole thing, despite making the decision to approach somebody with your feelings.

You hide behind this internet moralism poorly: specifically, you bring up "trauma" as an internet buzz word that we're all meant to care about, but then in the same sentence fall far short of actually showing any real care.

My carping with this is the same as when we started - I don't think that you are being as poignant with your words as you could be. You're not saying what you mean. You do not really care, which is as acceptable as the truth must be, so why pretend to at all?

Here is what I think is happening with this whole message: I think that you think that this is what you really believe in, and you think that you have conviction, because what you really have is a lot of defensive energy stemming from some hurt. So you feel confident in writing this and sending it with your name attached.

I think that it is not standard operating procedure for you to sit in your discomfort when you are upset. I think that you do not know how to feel yourself with grace. I think that you perceive your own reaction as an attack from another.

I think that when you attack, you feel righteous in doing so, like you are attacking against a unified force that has long since been out to get you. But your attack is irrelevant. It is out of context here. I see a lack of ability to understand nuance. I see rigidity and shallowness. I see a lack of vitality.

You will not feel better until you learn how to tolerate yourself.

Healing trauma requires a self-awareness as well as a self-compassion. It requires that you are able to observe your feelings with curiosity and without judgement. This is also the way of leading a fulfilling and engaged life.

Your message to me is moralistic. It is uncreative and uninsightful. It is purely reactionary: it has absolutely nothing to do with what was actually written or what was actually intended. You just felt, let your feelings be thoughts, your thoughts beliefs, and then you acted. But feeling is only step one.

I took my time feeling through this message. It felt good to do so. Feeling through it made me arrive at a place of security and stability. I was very excited to discuss what I was seeing in this ask. I was very excited and grateful to know unequivocally, and to trust in my perception, that I know what I'm about.

Today, I care less about all of this. You probably care less too. This is the nature of feelings.

My final thoughts:

Reactionary criticism is not real criticism! Your opinions are inconsequential to me.

Your message here is all claws and no wit, and it immediately feels like attempting to reason with an irate wildcat: it is self-assured, it is self-oriented, it is self-defensive, and it does not speak my language. Did you intend for this? Are you human enough to come back from this?

If you can only tolerate sanitized "safe" art, then you have nothing inside that I find to be of merit. I am not interested in your lack of interest for the macabre or damning.

You can find things stupid if you want. But as of now, I do not trust that you think things through enough to have meaningful judgements.

Did you actually read through all of this? You didn't have to. I'm glad to write, even if I only imagine that it's reaching an audience. This is actually a good method of processing your feelings. I would recommend it next time you want to send an impulsive ask!

Goodbye!

#dballz posting #dballz asks

[masschase]

im here to fulfill the random question request 🙏

1. care to spare a teensy Matt x Casey headcanon that we’ve never heard before?

2. if you were to write that sequel, what exactly would it center around? hypothetically of course! wouldn’t want you to give too much away 😉

(also i hope you’re doing well!! 🫶🏻)

Thank you so much 😊

Random questions are always, always appreciated of course but I really needed something to focus on while drawing is going badly 😅

A (not soo teensy) headcanon about Matt and Casey I haven't talked about yet:

Something Matt and Casey really missed on the spaceship was rain. Stilwater and London both get over 100 days of rain and it's one of those things you don't realise you miss until it's gone.

Like, yeah, OK, everyone time jumps to Earth. The Saints go to sunny beaches, they play in the snow, they walk in the autumn breeze. So yes, they do end up out in the rain at times. But something is missing. It's that feeling when you're just laying in bed and the rain is beating down hard on the windows.

Ragnarok, however has a lot of lush forests, and while the exact process is unclear, it's hypothesised that forested regions generate more water vapour meaning more rainfall. So I think it's fair to say that the new planet sees a reasonable amount of rain.

In Matt and Casey's first house on their new planet, they would hear the rain on the windows and it was such a comfort. Missed, atmospheric, nostalgic. It sounded the nicest on the skylight above their dining table though.

So by the time two of three devastating alien attacks had occured, and they were building their new and most refined house, they put their bedroom on the top floor with four large roof windows. So when it's raining they can just cuddle up in bed at any time of day, and just listen to and watch the rain together.

About my sequel fic

So the plot of my sequel focuses on the third of the aforementioned alien attacks. The starting scene is the final scene of the penultimate chapter of the first fic, "An Introduction" (the bulk of that chapter focuses on Casey finally telling the remainder of the team her real name so that's the double meaning for that particular chapter) but from Matt's point of view.

This is a slight change in format; chapters will alternate between Matt and Casey's point of view throughout, with the beginning/end sections being told from various Saints' perspectives rather than the same person the chapter is told from as seen in Out Of Time. My working title is Out Of Focus.

This attack has a similar "attack them before they become important" theme as the first one, but in this both Casey and Matt are being targeted, as due to events in the first story, their names are pretty well-known throughout the universe.

The same "cannot encounter yourself" rules apply as well as Johnny not being able to travel back as it'll alert Zinyak, so the now pretty large team of Saints has to be divided between DC (Matt, Asha, Charlie, Ward, Riley, Jezebel), London (Casey, Shaundi, Pierce, Daniel, Charlie) and the ship (Kinzie, Johnny, Keith, Rhys, CID, Ben). These are just proposed teams and also I can't remember if I've remembered all the 2023 Saints but you get the picture 😅

Obviously as I am more of a romance writer than anything else, there is a focus on the fact FOUR couples are torn apart by this situation, and what is/was going on in their relationships prior to this. Matt and Casey are dealing with fertility issues, Pierce and Rhys are planning their wedding, Charlie and Ward are having some problems and this is practically a trial separation for them, and Kinzie and Riley will maybe find this brings them closer (I've not quite established where they are relationship wise which is why this is vague). I'm not opposed to some Shasha coming into play somewhere too... y'know I had Johnny make a joke about them in the last fic but now I'm actually thinking about it...?

Anyway there's a lot of things at play where Matt and Casey can't tell each others past selves they're together in case it prevents their relationship playing out as it does. I won't spoil all the subplots but yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. A vague overall idea. Much like the first one, I imagine I'll be in the mood to write one day and it'll just happen.

#asks #thank you so much <3 #saints row #sr boss: casey clark #matt miller #post-sriv #sr fanfic: out of time #sr fanfic: out of focus

[all-souls-matinee]

Quick-bite reviews: The Haunting (1963) dir. Robert Wise + The Haunting (1999) dir. Jan de Bont

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been adapted several times over the years. All have made a number of changes to the book (the 2018 Netflix adaptation to the point of being original fiction), but the core story is about a group of people dealing with the challenges of living in a haunted house. Doesn’t get more classic than that.

Something my brother brought up immediately is that the ‘63 adaptation is worth watching just from a movie-making and horror history perspective. It’s incredibly atmospheric, blurring the line between a real and an imagined haunting as the group conducts their academic study of the paranormal. Our protagonist Nell is struggling with mental health issues, and realistic ones brought on by life circumstances and perceived threats to her sexuality rather than the “craziness” we see portrayed so often in movies. That realism sticks for the rest of the cast; Nell is overly sweet and incredibly angry by turns, Theo is a femme lesbian (almost unheard of for a 60s movie!) with a kind heart but a cruel sense of humor, Dr. Markway has an odd confidence to him yet a strained relationship with life outside of his career. Maybe the least complicated character is Luke, a money-hungry skeptic set to inherit the house, but he was also a favorite. The story itself isn’t totally my thing, featuring a lot of internal monologue in voiceover and some weird pacing choices that lean toward the gothic, but the acting and characters really shine and that does a lot for a film. 

The ‘99 remake is one of the worst things ever made... but also totally, totally worth a watch. I was wondering aloud at who saw the character-driven original and thought ‘this needs a killer fountain, it needs a circus room, it needs bone explosions,’ but de Bont made his career on action movies like Speed and Minority Report, so there’s our answer. While the ‘63 adaptation leans hard into the psychological angle of the book to make Hill House into a character, the remake tries to get that same effect by literally bringing the house to life through CGI. I want to say it fails completely where the original succeeded, but I honestly loved the set design and some of the gruesome kills in this one (yes there’s murder now. There’s also a mystery? Like a Scooby-Doo mystery), so we’re at an impasse. All of the changes they made are just kind of like that; shoutout to the sexuality stuff in particular, as the 90s decided ‘yeah, sure, Theo can be a lesbian. That thing from porn where it’s hot when girls look at each other’s boobs and kiss but are also straight.’ The characters really took a beating alongside the premise, but at least Luke is still fun (here played by Owen Wilson, which must’ve been confusing that being his brother’s name and all.)

There is one scene in each movie that I’ll point to as a good summary of both. In the first Dr. Markway sits with a shaken Nell, getting her to open up about the death of her mother, and tells her that she’s too in her own head, that she needn’t frame herself as a martyr and that she’s instead a person with all the complexities and contradictions personhood entails. In the second, Nell is thrown against Rodin’s gates of hell in her nightgown in order to save all the CGI ghosties of the house. A perfect imitation of Christ on the cross.

Buy a ticket? Make the first one a homework assignment and the second one a bad movie party assignment. Happy Halloween!

#halloween #horror movie recs #this was intended to be the last post of the season but i do have two other reviews i had to put on the back burner (life got busy) #so maybe you'll end up seeing them this week

[googledocsdyke]

thinking incredibly earnestly about like why i unironically love bite me (a google slides social media au) as much as i do and why it’s so fucking funny and i think a huge part of it is that it lays bare the process of total decontextualisation that generally is at work within the self-contained world of like, fic in general. like, in many ways most fic is the same fic. i think we can generally agree on this. obviously there are like fics that transform the way you view the source text, or fics that generate their own world and fandom (down to agincourt), or fics with profound complex thematic engagement (so says the sword) or fics that have their own specific cult status (my immortal, twist and shout). but like the reason the fic ecosystem chugs along, the reason bajillions of fics are posted to ao3 every day, is because of the kind of fic that is so clearly based off other fic, maybe just shifted 2 degrees to the left.

like fanfiction IS by and large a repetitive medium that is often primarily interested in working off and re-articulating very widely accepted tropes. think of all the largely identical 15x20 fix-it codas you may have read. or this harry potter au i wrote when i was fourteen years old that could not have ANYTHING less to do with the actual characters dean, cas, or charlie as written in-show, or even like, anything to do with hogwarts as a setting. there was NO reason it needed to be a harry potter au. why the hell were the x-men there? there was no characterisation. the presence of potions homework, and gryffindor dean, and “charlie ships it,” were all just empty signifiers towards a narrative that i knew better from reading other fics than from watching the show itself. actually, i think at this point i hadn’t even watched any charlie episodes, but you wouldn’t be able to tell! because i lifted my concept of charlie wholesale from other fics that asserted that this was her “characterisation” and her place in the story. like it Was a 1600-word exercise in copy-paste, which is what large amounts of fanfiction are and historically have been. and is so fundamental to why we keep coming back to them

and i’m not saying this as like. a normative or “judgmental” statement in any way! i think there’s no point in insisting that all fic be like. deeply grounded in discrete characterisation or a sincere engagement with the complex themes of the original text, or whatever. firstly because a) most people writing fic ARE young teens/young adults who do so as a kind of participatory gesture, a low-effort way to signal their earnest investment in a particular ship or imagined narrative, and b) decontextualisation is like… at the beating heart of what fanfiction is. like most fanfiction is not “literary” (in huge skeptical quotes bc of how contested that very term even is) but it also feels like it’s a mistake to… ask it to be? i’m thinking along the lines of this post, where gothhabiba asks that we “articulate an actual theory of how and why fanfiction is created, its relationship to other kinds of media and writing, and what it does for the people who write and read it,” rather than “arguing about whether or not it’s ‘good’” . because that is truly a moot point!

i think as most of us return for the renaissance, some 6-7 years older, we’re now at the point where we’re able to engage (more) critically with the substantive text of the show, the actual themes it engages and (mis)handles, the cultural context in which it was produced, the texts it builds off of, intentionally or unintentionally, and the critical frameworks we can apply to it. and all of that is like overall a very good and interesting thing!! but it’s also so interesting when paired alongside the decontextualising impulse that drives a LOT of fandom engagement

ANYWAYS. all this to say that like 95% percent of the joy of bite me is how unapologetically ooc it is. like this is the continuous thing i’ve been talking about other people with. you could copy-paste any characters from any broadly popular media into this situation and the characterisation/speech would be no more or less jarring; it would still make the same amount of “sense” from an in-universe perspective. nothing about this au is really about dean and cas so much as it’s about decontextualised figures LABELLED dean and cas (and again, this is not some literary condemnation or smth, the majority of fic does this in some way! i’m just using bite me as an example). we are told to believe that sam winchester, a grown white man & published author, says “yall wildin” unprompted and that kaia nieves tweets things like “oomf famoose” and it’s fucking hilarious. it’s so good. because intentionally or not, it DOES reveal how much of fic, as a genre, is utterly separated from the characters they propose to be telling a story about.

i said earlier today that bite me is a social media au written in a riverdalian fashion, and i don’t just mean that in a general “it’s bad but good but outrageous” way, but more specifically that both bite me and riverdale decide on something objectively absurd and instead of shying away from it or trying to cover up the writer’s lack of knowledge, it faces it head on. like we ARE told unapologetically and continuously that actors live in their trailers when they’re filming a movie, that a hashtag trending for one day is enough to get a magazine writer that hasn’t been accused of sexual misconduct fired, that dean and cas are starring in a gay romantic comedy called fucking trainspotting. and the writer doesn’t/won’t/shouldn’t apologise for a word of that. in the same way that riverdale will look you dead in the eye and say “archie is going to war and world war ii-era combat aesthetics never ended even though it’s 2020” or “jughead got into the iowa writer’s workshop despite never having been an undergrad” and like what are you supposed to do? make fun of it?? the text doesn’t CARE if you make fun of it! it’s light years ahead of you! it’s so totally unconcerned with this “realism” you’re supposedly chasing that the joke doubles back on you.

so like tldr: bite me is emblematic of the decontextualising urge at the heart of your average fanfiction, lays bare its own ridiculousness, and raises genuinely fascinating questions abt what fanfiction as a text is meant to be or do. also kaia and claire fall in love on stan twt. UNPARALLELED media experience

#and that's not even GETTING INTO the way it really uses the smau medium. and like the FASCINATING questions circulating around that. oh my g #anyways congrats if u made it this far and sorry for this but like #i truly am not posting about this fic in a haha let's make fun of this stupid au way #like do i think it is hilarious and is it perhaps unintentionally hilarious YES #but i genuinely think it is fascinating and a great reading experience #sasha.txt #spn #fan studies #NOT sure how to tag this but like yeah. yeah #bite me

[neoyi]

So there were new indie game directs (Day of the Dev and Wholesome Games) and I was basically Foaming Mouth Guy from Avatar because I’m hyped for indie games.

Since I can’t ill afford to shut up about my opinions, here’s a big, fat blog on what particular games I’m either looking forward to, has piqued my interest, or at least curious enough for me to comment on it even if it’s not within my wheelhouse.

Axiom Verge 2: I have no horse in this race, I just think it’s nice of them to let players skip boss fights if they want to for ease of gameplay.

Toem: A Photo Adventure: Some evil genius combined photo snapping and meandering sidequests together into one game, knowing I’d be putty in their hands. There’s actually a few photograph games in these directs, but this one grabbed me because the list of quests you do looks so specific that it scratches a particular itch for me.

Garden Story: Incredibly lovely Mother 3-like graphics aside, this game hits all my buttons: quest-based gameplay to help numerous NPCs, managing the layout of your town, exploration, and RPG-like elements make this one a dream indie game for me.

Vokabulants: For some reason, this game’s setting isn’t doing it for me, but I’m awestruck with their decision to use stopmotion for the entire thing. Rarely utilized, always cool to see.

Death’s Door: I don’t care about birds, but I DO like grim reaper stuff, so color me piqued.

Elec Head: I already knew about this game thanks to Game Maker’s Toolkit’s Game Jam, and I think I have it bookmarked on itch.io, so it’s nice to see this will get fleshed out into a full game.

I haven’t played the Game Jam version, but the minimum coloring (yellow = electricity which is what you need to trigger to progress) compliments the concept well.

Walk: I am a wimpy baby chicken bitch, so I can’t do horror games, but developing the entirety of Walk’s environment to look as if they’re seen from grainy cameras is such a brilliant way to convey the terrifying unknown your player character has to face. I won’t play this, but I am definitely going to watch a Let’s Play of it.

Moonglow Bay: I’ve been excited for this one for a while. All those hours playing the fishing minigame in Ocarina of Time (and eventually Majora’s Mask) and lamenting for the existence of an entire game with an excuse plot to fill out a fish compendium will soon be fulfilled. I’m so ecstatic.

Loot River: What the fuck? What the living shit? How did they animate the water like that? What the shit? What the goddamn hell? It just looks so good!

Recolit: This game has potential to be atmospheric. It also feels like the kind of game that can deliver a Surprise Spooky or two. For some reason, the main character walking through the barely lit museum really spoke to me.

A Little to the Left: A game where you arrange objects until they’re are properly organized and/or structured? Oh-no, who made this game for me?

Yokai Inn: Sold just for the adorably whimsical graphics alone.

Mythic Ocean: Undersea exploration and sea creatures are my jam. Hope this game will fill a hole in my heart that Abzu sadly did not.

Beast of Maraville Island: I see this game and Donkey Kong Country share a continuity through their banana birds.

We are OFK: Tell you the truth, I don't really care about Band Origin stories (I'm not really a music buff kinda person), but I've been waiting for Teddy Dief and co's game for a while. Whether or not I take anything from this game by end, I know I’ll never stop listening to “Follow/Unfollow”, which I have been obsessively playing in the background non-stop the past two days. If they ever bring out the inevitable bandcamp soundtrack, I hope they also include THIS version of the song that played on the Day of the Dev pre-show because it’s just so *chef’s kiss*

Dordogne: The game's premise isn't really doing it for me, but I dig the watercolor approach.

The Gecko Gods: I remember playing the Gex 2 demo decades ago and being mesmerized by the titular character’s ability to crawl on top of walls and ceilings, and being particularly disappointed at how underutilized it was. The Gecko Gods looks to fill in that gap and I'm intrigued.

Tasomachi: It’s about an airship. I gotta. I gotta!

Bear and Breakfast: I like the art style, kind of like a webcomic if it was picked up by Cartoon Network or Netflix.

Sally: MORE airships? Well, this is the indie direct that just keeps on giving, now isn’t it?

Rainbow Billy: Repaint a black-and-white world into color is becoming A Thing in indie games, but the animation and style is just bursting with charm.

Unpacking: I played the demo for this one and it did a decent job hitting my button. There wasn’t anything more to it other than unpacking and just putting stuff in its appropriate place (it didn’t feel like there was much wiggle room - books go on bookshelves and maybe on top of a drawer, shoes goes in closet and nothing but the closet, etc), but it beats real packing/unpacking any day.

Cloud Jumper: THREE games with or about airships? Now you’re just spoiling me.

Teacup: This one just looks delightful. It feels like playing through a children’s book.

Muttropolis: You take pictures of dogs!

Amber Isle: You know, I don’t think I see enough towns and villages in games inhabited by dinosaur folks.

Moonshell Island: Apparently I’m easy to please. I see indie games look this vibrant and colorful (almost pastel, but not quite) and I’m Phillip J. “Shut up and Take My Money” Fry. I don’t even know what this game is about, but I want it.

Lego Builder’s Journey: Okay, this looks nice and the graphics are mind-blowing, but does anything made and owned by the LEGO company actually count as an indie game?

Powerwash Simulator: who made this game for me?

Toodee and Topdee: Oh, this is clever. Perspective games in my head seem to have been relegated mostly to whatever Nintendo did with their 3DS games, but this looks like it captures the spirit of it without the 3D or the eye-strain that came with it.

Apico: I’m getting a 2D open world exploration vibe from this game and I’m down for that.

#indie games #video games #day of the dev #wholesome games #neoyi talks

[princeescaluswords]

First, you have to take into account that anyone can write anything they want, and many people write for many different reasons, there’s no way you could figure out what they all are and their motivation for writing a particular fic or using a particular tag. There are crossovers, AUs, fics where werewolves don’t exist. People are allowed to watch 8 episodes of something and write a fic with their own ideas for characters. And someone saying a character deserves nice things does not in any way mean they never got nice things. And maybe some of them mean ‘more nice things’ instead of ‘different’ nice things. Who knows. Certainly not me or you.

An issue with your statement “And you realize that 998 of those 1000 stories were published after September 8, 2014, which is when Season 4 ended. Apparently the tag should read "Derek Hale Deserves Different Nice Things."” is that you don’t know when writers watched the show. You don’t know how much of the show they watched. You don’t know if they’ve even seen the show.

Your post just reads like you got butthurt and pulled out the soapbox because you don’t like that other people have different thoughts and opinions than you, or don’t like that someone has the audacity to write something you don’t like or approve of.

This question refers to this previous post.

I love how you start off with "you can't possibly know people's motivations for writing" and end with the diagnosis of my motivations, knowing that I'm "butt-hurt." I guess you can possibly know people's motivations for writing.

First, I don't have to take anything into account; it's my blog. But I will, just for you. Nothing I said was incorrect. The thing about statistics is that I don't need to analyze every single individual to talk about trends. In those 1000 stories there may have been individuals who satisfy the numerous criteria you listed but how likely do you think it is that all 1000 authors only watched three episodes?

What isn't arguable and isn't a matter of perspective is that 99.8 percent of stories on AO3 with the tag Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things were published after Season 4 ended. No matter how many reasons you speculate for this, it doesn't change that fact, and it doesn't change the idea that Derek left the show with a new girlfriend, new powers, his money, and a close relationship with Scott McCall.

Are you trying to tell me that everyone who only saw three episodes or only read fanfiction waited until the end of Season 4 to publish? Does that make any type of sense?

And for your information of the now 1012 stories with the Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things Tags, 23 of them are crossovers, 321 of them are 'alternate universes', and only 4 of them are stories where werewolves don't exist. You see, instead of speculating, I investigate.

But here's the thing you miss -- all those people who only watched eight or three or no episodes, which episodes did they all watch to determine what Derek does or not deserve? The ones where he beats teenagers, betrays them, or tries to kill them in order to get what he wants? Or did they only read fanfiction and produce more fanfiction with the same premises, like a snake eating its own tail?

I don't need to divine intent when I can talk about impact. I don't need to interrogate every individual writer who came to the conclusion that the manipulative and brutal white millionaire werewolf stalker who tried to kill multiple teenagers and got multiple teenagers killed and received nice things in canon didn't get enough nice things.

I can can draw conclusions with evidence to support me -- statistics, the incredible amount of racially-motivated Scott hate, and the very fact that 919 of those 1000 stories are Sterek -- that a fundamental aspect of those stories is transforming Teen Wolf fandom from actually being fans of the show to an enterprise prioritizing white secondary characters.

It doesn't matter how many episodes the authors watched or didn't watch if the end result is part of a focused effort to erase a character of color in order to promote a white character that should have been considered lucky to escape jail time. It's still racism.

#fandom racism #scott mccall defense squad #anti derek hale #anti sterek

[glimmerglanger]

I really liked TS - I thought you treated some potentially very icky issues on power and abuse between Ben and Jango with thoughtfulness. Are you taking requests? Because if so I have some! (I also sometimes struggle with fic requests because clearly, as the author, you ended the story where you thought it was best to be ended...but we are greedy creatures...) I’m very curious about the Jedi that Jango delivered as bounty - Dooku? Does that come into play when Jango delivers an ass whooping on Qui-Gon? I would also love to see the first time they’re intimate post freedom, maybe from Ben’s perspective? And maybe a moment when Jango hears what’s happening with the new mandalorians vs death watch? I feel like he would be conflicted, but make a conscious decision to stay out of it. So! Many! Thoughts!

Thank you! I am generally into doing snippets after long fics. I like playing in the space for a while, it brings me joy. I decided to did into Ben’s POV on them getting intimate the first time. 

This takes place roughly two years after the ending (or three years before the coda). Jangobi. SPICY. Not Safe For Wizards. Mentions of past trauma, but no major warnings. It’s mostly Ben thinking, honestly.

~~~~~~~~

Ben relearned how to want things slowly.

Sometimes, on particularly bad days, he wondered if he’d ever known how to want things in the first place.

He couldn’t be sure, one way or the other, and, really, it didn’t matter in a practical way, so he left the thoughts slide away. Instead, he spent his time learning what kinds of food he wanted to eat, what kinds of teas he wanted to drink - he no longer had to rely solely on what was brought to him - and how he wanted to sleep…

He learned how to want all those things. Basic things. Things other people probably knew how to want automatically, and--

Sometimes, his head got so loud, so noisy with memories of why he didn’t. The weight had a way of pressing down on him, crowding into his throat and his chest, smothering and thick. He learned, before they ever landed on Yulion, that Jango made that go away.

Jango felt things...strongly. He had since the first time they met, when he broadcast a need for help so clear and sharp that it had cut through everything else. He’d felt like a drowning man, thrashing around desperately.

Ben had been taught how to help those drowning, in another life. Received warnings that, if you got too close to a foundering soul, they could push you down, as well, unintentionally and in a panic. Those drowning often drowned uncautious rescuers. But that wasn’t a good reason to allow someone to perish.

Jango had radiated a desperation for help, so Ben had helped him.

He still did, sometimes. But there was something...below that need for help, ever and always. Ben didn’t have words for exactly what it was that he felt from Jango, as they lived together. But it made his chest warm and achy. It chased away the tightness in his throat and the memories in his head that made him want to pull himself to pieces.

He could press close to Jango and feel, with certainty, that he was wanted. Safe. Secure. Jango used the word ‘love’ for how he felt. That felt like a good descriptor, Ben decided, eventually. It was...warming and wonderful. Ben wanted to pull it all around himself some days, some nights, after nightmares.

Jango seemed happy enough to let him. When Ben requested that he keep feeling that way - haltingly - he always went still, and Ben could feel him trying to modulate his surface emotions and it was--endearing. Ben could not find a way to tell him that the underlying base of what he felt didn’t change, anyway.

Perhaps someday he’d find a way.

He hadn’t, by the time he realized he was learning how to want other things. The realization slipped in slowly, as the two year anniversary of their arrival on the planet eased closer. He found himself watching Jango more, as he cooked or cleaned his weapons, found himself aching oddly as they spoke softly together after getting Ani to sleep, found himself breathing faster, when Jango curled around him - body and feelings - in bed.

They’d been married almost a year. He’d expected, at first, that Jango would become impatient with waiting for him. But he seemed content enough to...handle things himself. Ben felt it, distantly, when Jango touched himself in the fresher, the twist in his emotions and wants a shining kind of beacon.

The first time Ben idly imagined joining him, his cheeks flushing at the thought, he ended up standing outside, staring up at the sky and dragging a hand back through his hair. Ani followed him out and insisted they play tag, which, at least, thoroughly took Ben’s mind off of matters.

But the thoughts recurred. The wants returned, even when Jango wasn’t feeling any particular wants at all. Which meant, Ben was increasingly sure, that the desires were his own.

Ben shivered, considering the scope and breadth of what he felt. It was...strange. But not unpleasant. His gut flooded with warmth, the next time he leaned in to kiss Jango, something they did, occasionally. Ani was sleeping, safe and snug in his bed, his presence in the Force gone slow and peaceful with dreams. 

And Jango felt--so good, his mouth and his hand, curved against Ben’s cheek, his wants and emotions curling out between them. No one else had ever felt the way he did. It was one of the reasons Ben had so much difficulty classifying the emotions he picked up.

Those thoughts fled, in the moment, as Ben settled closer, warm all over, fingers tangled in Jango’s hair. They’d been on the couch. Ben had been reading, he thought, before he started kissing Jango, and--

And he couldn’t recall why he cared what he’d been doing. Instead, he tilted his head to the side, changing the angle of the kiss, and Jango made a sound against his mouth, shifting a little closer and then checking his movement. 

Jango pulled back, blinking a few times and turning his face to the side. He cleared his throat and said, “I think I’m going to hit the fresher,” like a code, as though Ben didn’t know exactly what he planned to do in the fresher, and--

“Don’t,” Ben said, the word slipping out as he reached out, curling fingers around Jango’s wrist.

“Ben,” Jango said, his voice thick. He glanced over and said, eyes all dark, “I’ll come back. I just--”

“I’d like you to stay,” Ben said, wetting his bottom lip without thinking about it. “Or--for both of us to go. Maybe to your room.”

Jango stared at him for a long beat. “You want to be held?” It was a fair question. Ben often did. 

His heart beat a little faster in his chest and he said, feeling a flush creeping over his cheeks, “No. Not really. I want--” He shifted closer, slid his hand over Jango’s thigh, and Jango sucked in a breath when Ben found him hard “--to help with this.”

“It’s--that’s--” Jango swore and visibly marshalled himself. “You don’t have to. I’m perfectly capable of handling it on my own, so--”

“I know I don’t have to,” Ben cut in, and there was a giddy kind of joy to hearing the words and knowing they were true. He could feel that Jango meant it. “I want to. Do you want me to?”

The question felt silly, for a beat. He could feel how much Jango wanted, could feel what he wanted; hands on skin and mouths brushing together and soft gasped sounds. “Yes,” Jango told him, swallowing hard, “I do--” And Ben leaned towards him, and his fingers were in Jango’s hair, then, his mouth sliding against Jango’s, warm and welcoming.

Jango wanted, so badly. Ben felt it, shivering as Jango slid a palm up Ben’s thigh. Ben managed to get a hand under Jango’s shirt, on warm, familiar skin, as Jango rasped out, “Ani could wake up.”

“I’ll know if he does,” Ben murmured back, reassuring. Ani felt deeply asleep. Content and safe. “Please.”

Jango made a ragged sound, and Ben was willing to admit that perhaps adding the please had been slightly unfair. Jango wanted him to have the things he wanted. And that was--heady, as Jango pulled him into a kiss, one Ben was delighted to melt into, the pair of them slowly sliding sideways, until they were sprawled out on the couch. 

It didn’t take much effort to undo the closures on Jango’s slacks. He was hard, his cock familiar when Ben curled fingers around him. Jango made a ragged sound, kissing across Ben’s cheek, to his jaw. Jango’s beard rasped against his skin, a flare of sensation as Ben shifted his grip, tilting his head back, aching, thinking about the best way to bring Jango off and--

“Do you want--” Jango broke off, shoving up on one arm, eyes dark and breathtaking. “Do you--” He shifted his hand, fingers dragging down Ben’s stomach and, oh. Ben had barely realized he’d gotten hard, himself. “Can I…?”

“Please,” Ben rasped out, again, and took Jango’s wrist, pushing his hand further down, enough that he could rock up into the pressure. Jango swore, quietly, and tugged at the closures on his pants, radiating want and--

Feeling someone want, more than anything, to make him feel good was something Ben had not been able to imagine, a few years ago.

It made his spine arch, made him groan, made him hard and aching and wet and--

“Gonna take care of you,” Jango rasped, and kissed him again. Ben nodded, half-senseless all at once. He could feel that Jango meant it. Jango had meant it for so long. Tried and succeeded and--

Ben buried his fingers in Jango’s hair, when Jango shifted down his body, bit his lip to muffle the sounds he wanted to make, somewhat, at the touch of Jango’s mouth over his skin. He was so close to the edge already when Jango licked across the head of his cock, mouth warm and hot and unexpected and--

Ben felt himself rock up; he felt electrified, throbbing and so full of wants and demands from his body. For a moment he wondered if Jango had somehow learned how to read wants, too, because he bobbed his head and slid a hand between Ben’s legs, thumb brushing back and forth, so perfect.

Ben went off like a shot, like the blasters Jango had insisted on teaching him to shoot, barely able to strangle out a sound. Jango swallowed, and Ben made a ragged sound, feeling good and achy at the same time, inside of his body, a whisper of other wants getting louder.

He set them aside, focusing enough to hear Jango breathing raggedly down by his hips. He’d turned his face against Ben’s thigh, muscles tense, an arm stretched back. Ben managed to raise his head enough to watch Jango jerk himself hard and fast, emotions flashing over all hot and good and buoyant when he came.

For a moment, they just slumped there, breathing heavily. “Oh,” Ben managed, finally, tingling from head to toe. 

Jango snorted, cheek still pressed against Ben’s thigh. He shifted, wiping his hand on his shirt and then, with a little frown, pulling the shirt off and mopping it across Ben’s stomach. He asked, voice all warm and thick, “Was that...what you wanted, Ben?”

“Mm.” Ben nodded, trailing touches over Jango’s skin. “Yes,” he said, and then, learning all kinds of things, “I want to do it again.”

Jango’s head snapped up, and Ben couldn’t help but smile at the expression on his face. Jango said, tone darker, “You…?”

“Now,” Ben told him, “I want to do it again now.” And Jango made a hoarse noise, falling into him, kissing him while Ben wrapped both arms around him and just...felt, for a while.

#glimmer replies #ask me anything #transactional states #jangobi #spicy #not safe for wizards #mentions of past trauma #no major warnings for this snippet #pls read all warnings before reading the series itself

[siswritesyanderes]

This is a series of asks bc, while I do LIKE all the charas of Fantastic Beasts individually, much of the romantic pairings dont sit well with me. By that mean the messy love polygon w Newt & I think I finally figured out why & I'd like another's opinion on it. For starters, Newt's attraction with Tina is too fast for me considering he was friends w Leta, got expelled out of Hogwarts for Leta, carried Leta's photo in his case, & basically loved her for YEARS. But this is all undone by a [1]

jaunt in NY having met a woman, who he admittedly went on a huge adventure w, over the course of maybe a few weeks. He's so taken w her she replaces Leta's photo w her own &, after refusing to go to Paris for Dumbledore, leaves immediately once he finds out she's there. I just find this unbelievable. I can rationalize it from Newt's perspective where Tina is a fresh breeze sweeping into his life on (percieved) unrequited pining, but this is my conjecture based on my understanding of Newt. [2]

The audience shouldnt be left to rationalize endgame couple of the mc on their own. & the whole thing w Leta is so messily handled I dont think they can save it even if they bring her back in FB3. How she feels for Newt vs Theseus & unresolved lingering affection, etc. She & Newt were SO important to each other & we SEE that & they dont HAVE to get together, but they need proper resolution bc they have actual history between them. God Leta in general deserved so much better. [3]

But my main gripe is that this love polygon serves no purpose to what I believe is the main selling point of FB: the world. HP having love stories makes sense bc we're following the story of a boy as he goes through adolescence & his journey through that via school is part of that, which is why the romance feels fitting. It's a very personal story. FB on the otherhand is the best peak we have at the wider wizarding world beyond school. HP introduces the world of magic, but FB rlly expands it [4]

To that end Jakob & Queenie's relationship is the only one I find myself liking, bc it's deeply tied to the world setting, the series' biggest selling point (in my opinion, should have said this earlier). It underscores the attitudes of the period & the conflict they face feels suitably substantial & not like filler. There's a moral question between them of are they worth it? And how far should they go to be together?

Imma be real hear & say FB2 was rlly Queenie's movie & they should have been ballsy & just make Queenie the mc for FB2, bc her story was actually considerably more important to the overall development of the story than Newt's, which mostly came off as a rushed & a tad clichè soap drama. & making it about Queenie I think builds more room for good conflict & independent narrative for Tina that would serve her chara better. [5? 6?]

If I bad to be REAL ballsy, I'd say my big issue w/ the relationships in the FB series & how it enhances or impedes the main story & what I believe to be it's biggest attracter (the setting) could have been solved if they made Newt's romantic interest a muggle. It attaches a deeper meaning & relevance to them & the story so it felt more deeply that they truly moved WITH the narrative rather than beside it but I guess Im just picky. Thx for putting up w this! [Final]

(My response below the cut.)

Yeah, pretty much all of this is right.

Regarding the Tina thing, it was definitely rushed, especially since there was literally nothing romantic between them in the whole first movie, except maybe the end part where they're stumbling over their words. Despite knowing how movies work and knowing that they were the male and female lead, I still found that completely out of left field, because they don't really share any interests and I didn't feel like they felt anything in particular for each other before that. She really wants to be an auror and feels really intensely about it; he just wants to travel the world and write about magical creatures and take care of them. I don't see a lot of compatibility there, and the movie didn't really do anything to reconcile that gap.

Jacob and Queenie made sense, because they actually sowed some seeds for it. It's not even about the fact that they both like to cook; they showed an interest in each other throughout. They noticeably like each other. Newt and Tina never really had that, to me, so it was bizarre for her to become his primary motivation in the second movie.

Queenie's trajectory in movie 2 overall bothers me, so while I agree it would have been better if they'd centered it more around her, I definitely think they needed to drastically rewrite pretty much everything she did. Enchanting Jacob at the beginning never sat well with me; I usually only have to say this in the Descendants fandom, but if one half of the ship is magical and the other half isn't, we can't have the magical one enchanting the non-magical one for romantic reasons without addressing what a violation of trust that is. Like, Jacob would be justified for never trusting her again, over that. Also, the fact that she apparently holds it against people if they think bad things about her is not something I would expect from someone who has been a Legilimens as long as she has, and not a detail I like, at all. Especially since it was used to give her justification to be mad at Jacob after she enchanted him in the first place. I find it sad, because Queenie was definitely my favorite character in the first movie. (Also, joining Grindelwald was a nonsensical thing to do. I can only assume she's there to spy on him or something, because it makes literally no sense.)

As for Leta, I really don't like how that was approached. First of all, I don't like how their mention of her in the first movie was "She was a taker; you need a giver," because once we actually met the character, that only made me resent Queenie for representing her that way. Leta deserved better in pretty much every way, and they definitely shouldn't have killed her off like that. I find the whole situation really iffy from a racial standpoint. The first black character to be written three-dimensionally in all of HP lore, and they make sure to preemptively tell the audience that she's a "taker", kill her in the same movie we meet her, and manage to trivialize her death by turning it into a little "Who was she saying 'I love you' to?" mystery. I like her relationship with Newt and Theseus, and I'd definitely want to see more of it.

Yes, it definitely would have been better, thematically, if they'd made the love interest a Muggle. (I'd honestly say they should've paired Newt with Jacob, but I know they're unwilling to do that. That would be kind of cool, though, to see the movie shaping up with two male characters and two female characters and have the men end up with each other and the women just live their lives as humans.)

With the story they ended up telling, though, I don't think that is needed; since Queenie is already dealing with the wizard/Muggle storyline, Newt could have a different conflict. Maybe his love interest should be a werewolf or something, to tie in the wizarding world's unresolved dislike for "half-breeds". And if he were in a relationship with someone already regarded as a creature, the wider wizarding world might take a different view to his studies and look down on him a lot more. Idk, a thought.

And then, with Leta/Theseus and Grindelwald/Dumbledore (if they were willing to actually deal with that), they'd pretty much hit every controversial beat they've got: wizard/Muggle, wizard/"half-breed", interracial, homosexual. Credence and Nagini are both creatures, kind of, but I still like them together, so their relationship doesn't have to tie into any theme; it just has to be developed way more.

On the whole, Crimes of Grindelwald felt like they skipped a movie. It feels like they needed a middle installment to make these relationships happen, instead of jumping from "Do Newt and Tina maybe have feelings for each other?" to "Newt loves Tina and Tina is possessive enough of Newt to be outwardly upset with him when she thinks he's engaged to someone else," and creating a whole relationship between Credence and Nagini that we see none of.

The fact that Queenie and Jacob were done well in the first movie gives me a fair amount of goodwill for them, but that goodwill only offers enough cushioning from the botching that movie 2 did that I'm near-indifferent to the ship, now, instead of actively opposed. I'd like to see things improved, but as it currently stands, I'd be just as happy seeing them end up not together as together. The fact that Leta's relationships with Newt and Theseus were more interesting than any of the aforementioned makes it that much more ridiculous that they killed her. What ship am I supposed to care about how? If I can't go into the next movie delusionally hoping Newt and Leta will get some moments, or enjoying the Theseus and Leta content, then I'll just be sitting there waiting for Credence and Nagini to share a screen, and who knows when that'll happen?

#long post #fantastic beasts and where to find them #crimes of grindelwald #newt scamander #leta lestrange #theseus scamander #jacob kowalski #queenie goldstein #tina goldstein #credence barebone #nagini

[meruz]

any advice for comic layouts?? i really like the way you do ur comics

this is a really interesting question!! and it took me a lot of thinking as to how to answer.... I don’t know if I can give advice per se because I feel like I’m still figuring out a comics process myself, but I can try to walk you through what I’ve done thus far

Lets take this one page comic..

my comic process tends to be 2 tiered. once I have an idea of what I want to draw, I have a brainstorming/sketch phase where I will essentially just jot down whatever layouts and images first come to mind and experiment with them, making a bunch of drawings that have minor tweaks (shown above as Draft 1).You can see I really wanted to sell the deadpan expression in the last panel so I sketched out a couple different iterations. And I wanted to explore what the latte art would look like and how it would transform. A lot of this is not very well drafted, just ugly shorthand just to see what resonates with me visually. I generally do this on paper (often with pen) so I don’t feel the compulsion to fiddle with any particular drawing too much. less focus on perfecting and more focus on iterating.

Once I think I’ve got a good idea of the visuals, I’ll bring it into the computer where I can copy paste and move things around with transform tools in order to come up with a rough layout. My thought process kind of goes like this

I know I want the 1st and 4th panel to hit hard so I prioritize them in the layout and make them break the gutters. the other panels I keep contained and focus on pacing/contrast to tell their story. I think a comic page can generally have only one or two big moments before it becomes cluttered so it’s important for me to establish those first and work around it.

Similar goes for a slightly longer comic.

The process remains pretty much the same. This one is a scene adapted from a videogame cutscene so I’m working from a bit of a script and a bit of the cutscene compositions. I spend a bunch of time at my sketchbook brainstorming and I figure out pretty early on I’ll probably need two pages between the dialogue I want to fit in, the set up of the threat, and the big line drop. I know I want a panel where asch is standing in the middle of the room surrounded by enemies so I do some sketches to test out his silhouette and try to figure out if I want him to be half turned to the camera or fully turned when he says his big line. By the end of it I’m starting to piece together a layout.

Thought process is as follows:

Every piece of art has to be planned around the format through which its consumed and for comics on the internet its either a scroll or a click. I’m posting this comic in two pages so I want to plan for my impact to be made on clicking from one page to the next which spurs me to put the close-up at the head of the 2nd page. Since I want to build tension up to that reveal I consciously decide to make most of the panels on the first page small and obscure stuff like faces so things feel rushed and uncertain. for comics small panel = fast and big panel = slow. in terms of how the reader processes the information. I save the single big panel on the 1st page for the establishing shot of the conflict and add in a panel at the bottom to start the proverbial drum beat for the 2nd pg reveal.

I make the 2nd panel on the 2nd page a big one to let the page turn line ring in the air and also to solidly establish how the perspective of the battle turns when you realize the character’s resolve.

Of course, I didn’t think any of that stuff to myself as I was making it. I think a common misconception I want to dispel is that, contrary to how it appears when people break down comic pages, few artists will explicitly plan out the way your eye is supposed to move across the page. I think more likely is that if you read a lot of comics and you draw a lot of comics you form a visual (non-verbal! often unconscious) understanding of what has impact and what will create tension and which speechbubbles to read first. And putting it to paper is just trial and error coming off of that instinct. Maybe. I don’t know.

Sorry this is really rambly. And I don’t really have any advice... I guess if I had to sum it up... be aware of what you want the reader to focus on, where you want the reader to gasp and where you want them to laugh. what you want the reader to know vs not know. this sort of stuff should inform your decision making the most.

Also don’t take my advice. There’s a lot of people who are way better at this stuff than me. I recommend reading comics you like and studying them! And heres some resources also I guess

- Understanding Comics/Reinventing Comics/Making Comics by Scott Mccloud

I specifically had Making Comics on my shelf (one of my RISD classes forced me to buy it lol) but the others are great too. I think some may look at the Scott Mccloud books and call them basic but that’s just another way to say /fundamental/. They’re great at explaining the bare bones of comics and entertaining to boot so always worth at least a look, I think.

- Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Menstre

This book is less about comics and more about general visual storytelling... iirc Mateu-menstre mainly does storyboarding professionaly. But it’s a great overview of the composition of visual storytelling. This guy is also like a perspective extraordinaire.

- Wally Wood’s 22 panels that always work

This is just this one cheat sheet image but it’s worth studying. Wally Wood was a Silver Age american comics artist who made this page with his assistant in part to coach younger Marvel comics artists.

OK IM DONE TALKING :’ ) happy october everyone

#Anonymous #yet another longass blog post I guess #shut up meru

[themadauthorshatter]

OH MY, GOODNESS!

RED SCHOOL UA HEADCANONS/STORY!

Sorry for not picking this up earlier. This part we are focusing on Arc 2: where the RQ cast meets the SGE cast.

Sophie is über excited at meeting the crown prince, but Agatha is less enthused because she's a realist and doesn't know HOW the RQ crew is getting over to the SGE.

Tedros and his friends are ecstatic they're meeting the Nortan princes. They even wonder if there are more than just Cal and Maven.

The students are all on the hot topic of Nortans visiting, though Agatha is pulled aside by Hester, Dot and Anadil, who all express their anger and impatience at Sophie, who won't shut up about Cal in particular, even though he's betrothed. Agatha assures them everything will be fine when Sophie sees that Cal and Evangeline are an item. (Yeah right. Marecal all the way.)

In Norta, it's rumor city among the Silvers, who aren't exactly looking forward to entertaining a bunch of school children.

Our main three in Norta are talking about their upcoming excursion to the school in the Endless Woods, Cal being apprehensive to leave Norta practically unguarded for an unspecified amount of time, but excited at the idea of seeing new lands, Maven just not wanting to go because it seems like a waste of time, effort, and resources, and Mare not exactly sharing her thoughts because she'll be even further away from her family than before.

Evangeline is not amused. At all. She's just playing along until they get back and never have to deal with the students of the School for Good and Evil again.

Regardless, they don't know what could be there, so they need to make sure they're not potentially making any new enemies by this complete accident on Tibe's part. Or, that's his thought process at least. And he's only told Cal this information, as, from what he can tell, the SGE isn't Red and Silver and instead use magic, a concept only found in fairytales. With an entire school of teenage witches and wizards and warlocks, and maybe a dragon or two, assuming this place is prestigious and in the higher end, it's better to make an ally rather than an enemy. And the idea of warring aginst school children does not sit well with Cal.

In training later, though, Maven and Mare see that Cal is absolutely faking his excitement at least a little bit, like 58% faking it. It shows when Arven pits him against Evangeline, Sonya, and Elane.

He ends up nearly burning all three of them alive, lost in wanting to get the fight and group training over with so he can be alone and think his thoughts.

Silly, Cal. Maven is paying attention, and asks what's wrong.

Cal brushes it off and says everything's fine, but Mare and Maven know better, Mare having seen what liars look like and Maven knowing Cal for all his life.

Cal tries to a go about his day and ignore whatever he's thinking, which is difficult to do because Maven's following him. He turns and Maven stops, simply explaining that he's going the same way as Cal. They continue walking, but Cal notices that Maven's not really going anywhere, content to follow his bother. This results in a chase between the two of them, Cal jogying before speinting to shake Maven off his tail, succeeding when he loses Maven down a hall, as in he ran down the hall partially before hiding behind a wall and watching Maven sprint right past him.

Maven only realizes he got played when he can't hear Cal anymore.

He and Cal don't meet up for the night.

He talks about this with Mare, and brings up that Cal's avoiding him.

TV/Graphic novel perspective, over time we see Cal get followed by both Maven and Mare, though over this time Cal grows more agitated and looks more annoyed and tired as they continue to try to see what's wrong with him. Maybe we even get a gag of both Mare and Maven spying on Cal from behind a wall, hiding behind it when he looks over his shoulder, and then continue their spying when he looks back, confused, annoyed, and agitated.

After a week, Cal catches Mare and pulls her into a room before leaving and telling her to wait for him.

He returns with Maven, who's over his shoulder, trying to remain calm, because Cal's stronger and bigger than him, and even tries, in mild panic, to negotiating to not beat him to a pulp, because Cal looks ready to murder them both.

He sets Maven on his feet and tells them both very bluntly to stop following him; not only is it freaking him out, but his soldier instincys are going haywire and he will not heistate to attack them both, which he doesn't want to do because it won't end well.

Mare and Maven apologize, but, being concerned despite herself, Mare asks Cal what his problem is, seeing as how he's avoiding both her and Maven.

Cal gives them a tired look and takes a breath. "Fine."

CUT THE THE SGE!

Tedros, Tristan, and Chaddick are hanging out together away from the Evergirls, though Chaddick does admit that the girls are looking nice today(16 year old hormones, am I right?)

Tedros isn't listening, balancing his sword on his fingertips.

Tristan, arguably the most feel-y of the three, wonders if or when the Silvers will arrive.

Tedros doubts they will, but one can hope.

This turn if pessimism confuses both Tristan and Chaddick, and Tedros happily explains:

They're all just students. What would royals and nobles want with a bunch of schoolchildren? They don't even have magic, don't believe in it, don't know it, just don't have any magic. The closest thing they have to magic is their silver blood, and not even THAT is magic because of how limited it is.

That, and Sophie and the Nevers will probably drive them all away.

Speaking if Nevers, Chaddick admits how weird it is to see them getting showered and clean, presentable in case the Silvers arrive as a surprise visit.

It is odd, but it's in their best interest to play nice with everyone, and that unfortunately includes a very babbly, and planning-to-be-flirty Sophie.

Speak of the devil, Sophie emerges from the trees to find the trio, specifically Tedros, who she wants to talk to.

He leaves, lying that he has some homework to do.

He's really going to find Agatha, who's reading to pass time and get her mind off all the gossip.

They have a rocky conversation about the current events and even wonder what silver blood would even look like, if they ever get the morbid chance to see it.

Agatha asks why he's talking to her and Tedros sighs that he just wants to avoid Sophie, but also wants to be around someone who's smart.

She smiles and asks if he thinks she's smart, sort of silently teasing him as he stammers and tries to come up with a save for the tongue-slip.

He spots Nicholas behind her instead, eyes wide and red as he raises an axe over his head, aiming for her.

Tedros, thinking quickly, tackles him and throws the axe away, which knocks Nicholas out of his daze.

Tedros shouts at him, "What the hell was that?" but Nicholas only looks around, very confused as to how he got into the trees or even got hold of an AXE.

There's confusion all around as Nicholas stumbles away towards some friends, muttering about a headache he now has and how sore he now feels.

Agatha and Tedros only exchange glances, worried and confused.

Was it a curse? A hex? A spell? And how did he get a weapon from the Doom Room?

CUT BACK TO NORTA AS CAL HAS JUST FINISHED SPILLING THE TEA! All three are sitting in a triangle on the floor, because it's close to night time and, because I'm a sucker for parallels in a story, to establish that despite the age differences between them and the students, and the experiences Cal and Maven had on the war front, they're still kids too.

Mare fights the urge to dry heave and Maven only hums at how Tibe is actually paranoid enough to consider war against a bunch of kids.

Cal admits that, yes it is ridiculous, but he's still unnerved. It doesn't help that they're dealing with people who have magic, which is stronger than Silver powers, even Mare's lightning is possibly no match; magic is all encompassing while their powers are limited to one "element."

Mare, in an attempt to alleviate the atmosphere, wonders if everyone will even BELIEVE what Norta says about these kids, as magic doesn't exist in their world.

Cal admits he does not believe in magic. It's not that he's heartless, he's just seen too much to know better. As much as he'd like to, he knows that it's nothing but slight of hand and tricks to fool the other person.

Maven agrees, except he's known because of Elara, but he gives them an explanation closer to what Cal said, only changing that he saw a magic show and saw how the tricks were done to fool the crowd.

When they ask her, Mare admits that if she believed in magic, and if it was real, it would have made things different for her and her family, she also inwardly admits that she'd make things different for all Reds as well.

After a moment of silence between them, Maven asks Cal if he's heard anything about them leaving and visiting these endless woods, and Cal shrugs, sighing that it's all speculation and in the air. If they do go, it will be both brothers and their betrotheds, Elara, Tiberias, a few other High House children(Elane, Sonya, Olliver, and Ptolemus), and a few guards, one of them being Lucas. Volo Samos and the rest of Tibe's council will stay behind to keep Norta in shape while they voyage to the School, stay for a little bit, and then come back, assuming things go okay and don't take long.

WE ALL KNOW NOTHING EVER GOES RIGHT IN STORIES😈

Either way, they all take a breath and leave the room together, Mare hoping Lady Blonos doesn't scold her for being alone with both princes. Cal tells her not worry because they'll cover for her, saying they had a bet and Cal won. Maven mutters, "By default," and he and Mare jog away as Cal chases them, yelling that they'd better explain what that means before he gets his hands on them both.

TIME JUMP/FADE TO THE DAY THE NORTANS LEAVE FOR THE ENDLESS WOODS, THE FADE HAPPENING WITH A PAN TO A WINDOW AND THEN GLIDE DOWN TO THE DOCK!!!

Mare sighs up at the ship before boarding, noting a very anxious Cal looking over the walkway as he himself walks aboard, Evangeline striding ahead of him.

Maven chuckles that Cal's always been a scaredy cat around water, even if he doesn't want to admit it.

Mare admits that while Cal is acting like a child, it's actually a smart move to know yoursl own limits and weaknesses.

From his place higher on the ship, Tibe gives Mare a, "Well said, Lady Mareena," and admits he may have underestimated her ability as a strategist. Maybe her time around Cal and the other High House children is rubbing off on her.

Mare fakes a thank you and notices Maven looking away.

I have not forgotten how Tibe isn't as loving as Maven; no amount of tragedy is going to negate neglect.

Mare tries to back up the now crestfallen Maven, but Elara calls for her son, asking to speak with him alone, mother to son.

He agrees and walks off to meet her, looking back at Mare before he does.

Tibe watches them walk off, and we get a glare off between him and Elara before the Queen leaves to speak with her favorite son.

Once they're gone, Mare asks how he can stand a bitch like Elara. She gets they were arranged to marry, but two people cannot hate each other that much.

For context, Mare's been here for about 4 months. She's visited her family only twice and has had a lot of time with Silvers and dealing with Tibe, Elara, Evangeline, and anyone who isn't Cal, Maven, and Lucas.

Back on track, Tibe semi-scolds her that, as a lady of the court, she should know better than to be mouthy towards him.

Mare, kind of fed up with his BS, folds her arms and counters that as a princess and his future daughter-in-law, they should be comfortable with each other enough for her to ask such a question.

Tibe gestures for her to come closer and she approaches, close enough for Tibe to sneer at her that if she thinks he's letting Maven, his son, his boy, marry a Red rat like her, she's more of a fool than all of the Scarlet Guard put together.

Lost in her anger, Mare asks which he's more afraid of: Telling Mare the truth or having his court, and the rest of Norta, Red and Silver, find out their secret.

With a glare down, Tibe congratulates her on how she's picked up verbal combat, and that she's a good learner. He then admits that the two of them aren't very different.

It offends Mare DEEPLY and she asks what that means as Tibe begins walking away.

Another bit of context, there are two sets of stairs to the upper level of the ship, a left and a right. In a fun bit of camera work/detail for anyone paying attention. Mare would walk up the right hand stairs to meet Tibe and, when he walks down the stairs, he walks down the left hand stairs and Mare follows him, the two walking back to the deck, so Mare basically walked around in a big circle. Just a cool thing I'd add, maybe it'd be symbolic of her situation or of some kind of cycle, I don't know. If you have any ideas, feel free to tell me.

Back to the story, Tibe explains to Mare that they're trapped by who they must marry, or have married in Tibe's case.

Another small detail, on the upper level, Mare would be on the left hand side of the screen/panel and Tibe would be on the right, but on the deck they're sides change, Tibe being in the left and Mare being on the right.

I'm a sucker for small details, so sue me!

Back on track for reals, Mare's VERY confused because she thought princes, or kings, could choose who they could marry. Tibe agrees that, yes, that usually is the case, but the reason he couldn't really choose was because there weren't anymore Queenstrial participants for him to choose from.

"But you have two sons?" Mare ponders.

Tibe shakes his head and asks if she REALLY thinks ending an alliance with Volo Samos of The Rift is a good idea, based on what she's seen from his daughter, Evangeline, half-joking that he's glad Cal is her betrothed and a simple friend of Ptolemus, who's shown how much of a berserker he is. (Yes the Scarlet Guard attack on the Summer palace still occurs.)

Mare asks what he'd do if that was the case, and Tibe chuckles, saying he'd renounce the throne and give it to Maven instead.

The two only chuckle, not comfortable enough with each other to fully laugh, and then Tibe admits that while he isn't sorry for needing to keep Mare a secret, he is sorry that she's alone, and forced into a life she never wanted.

"If you're so sorry, then why not let me go home?"

"Lady Mareena, the high houses would end us both."

For once, Mare can't really tell if he's lying or not, but doesn't get a chance to ask as Tibe returns to the top deck, Cal walking around the desk to Mare. He notices that his father is walking away from her and she looks a little distraught and very confused.

Cal looks between them and asks what happened and Mare simply answers that she and his father were just having a talk before leaving to her room/cabin

It's going to be a long ride to the Endless Woods

This is Part 1 of Arc 2, they do say the second act is the longest.

Keep your eye out for Arc 2, Part 2, because THAT is where things pick up even more

Anyway, Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading!!!!

#red queen #school for good and evil #red school #ua #au #mare barrow #maven calore #tiberias calore vii #cal calore #elara merandus #tiberias calore vi #tedros of camelot #spohie of woods beyond #agatha of woods beyond #sge tedros #sge agatha #sge sophie #evangeline samos

[jake-marshall]

TGAAC: Adventures thoughts

So I finished game 1 last Saturday, and took a brief break from continuing so I could write a fic centered around it (won’t mention what character because ~Spoilers~), and will now continue on to game 2 starting today (albeit, I did start a little of game 2 last week but was so burned out from having marathoned Case 5, I didn’t really vibe with it so I’ll probably just start over).  Here are my, as well as my wife @morpheusdreamt ‘s (who watched parts with me) thoughts on the DGS/TGAAC 1, under the cut.  LOTS OF SPOILERS INCLUDED!  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

The Adventure of the Great Departure - discounting the fact that it’s the first case and therefore also a super-hand-holdy tutorial, I felt this was one of the stronger first cases in the whole series.  I really enjoyed Jezaill and Hosonaga, and just Kazuma and Ryuunosuke’s dynamic as a whole, even though I knew what was coming.  My complaint about this case was that it felt way too long for a first case - which, I mean, I get in hindsight because of needing to include the right amount of development between Kazuma and Ryuunosuke to make Kazuma’s death effective and to make it more believable that Ryuunosuke takes over as the main lawyer.   But also, it wasn’t satisfying to out Jezaill as the murder (even though I know she has a role in the second game) and then come to find out she probably won’t be punished for it. This lack of satisfaction became a sort of prevailing theme for me throughout the game. The Adventure of the Unbreakable Speckled Band - again, another tutorial case that felt way too long.  I’m pretty sure I was drinking the whole time I played this case, with Sholmes being the one to drive me to do it.  As with the first case, the characters stood out for me way more than the case itself. My favorite part of this was watching the bond form between Ryuunosuke and Susato.  As much as I also like Nikolina, I found this case overall to be fairly forgettable. The Adventure of the Runaway Room  - first of all, I haven’t replayed this since completing the game (and therefor completing case 5) but I feel it’s almost necessary to do so to fully grasp this case?  Which is, after having completed the game, something I really like about this case in particular.   I thought McGilded was a fantastic character (and not just because of his resemblence to Handsome Jack :p), and I knew we’d meet Gina and Van Zieks in this case, but I was still thrilled to have it happen.   Upon first playthrough, this case was like the others, extremely frustrating in the sense that I wasn’t really getting anywhere?  That the plot wasn’t going anywhere?  I mean, at least for me, I really had no clue as to how involved McGilded was in Mr. Mason’s death, so kudos to the writers in keeping me guessing.   Overall, this felt like a filler case until you get to the end and realize, oh shit.  It’s not, is it?  And then I wished I would’ve paid more attention to some details, so it’s definitely worth a replay. The Adventure of the Clouded Kokoro - But no, this is the filler case!  And I know some of the characters show up in the 2nd game, but oof.  There was very little I enjoyed about this case on an individual level, and I’m not one to get super salty about ~this is problematic~ but the consistent inclusion of joking about domestic violence made me uncomfortable.   Soseki was a fun character, but the Garridebs and Beates felt over-the-top, and, again, the fact that the attack was actually an accident just made this case feel like, ??? It made me wary of starting the 5th case.  I felt, there’s nowhere I’m going to come away from the game liking it more than “just alright”. The Adventure of the Unspeakable Story -  Let me start by just saying that this is one of my favorite cases in the entire series. So the only things I knew about this case going in was that Gina was the defendant and that Ashley was the killer, but I didn’t know anything regarding motive or his background, or Gina’s whole ordeal with McGilded. Both of their arcs spoke me to quite profoundly.  I thought Gina’s development and her fears and insecurities surrounding trust were so relateable, her self-loathing and resignation to never having anything in life go her way just because of her class.  Of her needing to look out for herself because no one else will, at least not without wanting anything in return.   Like dude, I was crying when she finally accepted Ryuunosuke’s offer to defend her. I don’t really see it brought up (and maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough) about how heavily it contrasts with Ashley’s story, of them both coming from a poor background and both clearly suffering from abandonment issues and how it’s molded them and their perspective on the world and the people in it.  I thought Ashley was so compelling, even though he starts off as a sort of caricature (which I gather was the intention).   His absolute contempt towards McGilded (and clearly at himself, by the end) was so palpable for me, and left me thinking about him and the case for days after completing it. I liked too, that for as many AA cases where the killer will be like “I’m so much ~smarter than you~”, Ashley actually does a pretty good job of backing it up, that it’s more show than tell (his making the deal with Gregson and the fact that what broke most of his testimony was the Skulkins and not things he himself said)  as it tends to be the other way around. I still want to know what went down in the bus between his dad and McGilded.  I have this terrible feeling that Mason went there to tell McGilded to leave his son alone and that he wouldn’t sell the disk.  Which would make it all worse, lol but I’m fine with that. Unless Gina undergoes some sort of terrible devolvement in the 2nd game, I can safely say that she and Ashley have become Top 10 all time AA characters for me, and that’s saying something considering how long and how deeply I’ve loved my faves from the original games. Anyway, getting back on point to the actual games and not just meta on the characters, I liked the pace that Case 5 progressed at, and how it had some expected twists and turns (like Sholmes’s appearance) that weren’t made any less enjoyable by being predictable.  And I didn’t find it terribly difficult but it was still outrageously fun (minus the stereoscope mechanic which I know is just a fucky misfortune given the game was originally designed to incorporate 3DS functions, which are obsolete on the Switch).  I just thought that Case 5 felt like everything that was right in the original series, both gameplay wise and story/character wise. Despite the fact that it hangs on a massive cliffhanger -__-  But luckily i don’t have to wait two years to play the 2nd game, lol. Maybe my opinion of this game will change after I play the 2nd game, but overall my feelings are that it’s enjoyable enough and if you like Ace Attorney, and you’re more invested in the main characters/their development you’ll like it/probably even love it.  For me, the fifth case and it tying together with the third case, specifically the affects it had Ryuu, Van Zieks, and Gina makes the rest of the game worth playing, but the rest of the cases are not as individually satisfying as many of the other cases in the AA series.   I would still recommend this, however, based on how eager it’s made me to want to play the second game opposed to just feeling like I went through all that for nothing (which is sort of my experience when I replay AJ or DD now, not that I still don’t love them).

#the great ace attorney #tgaac spoilers #ace attorney #leanne plays aa

[duelofthefatesmp3]

i DO actually wanna know how youd make kotor 3 !!!!!

this ask has been sitting on my inbox for so long on PURPOSE! i wanted some time to re read the revan book + watch some swtor gameplays so i could give a concrete answer about why the book and swtor arent satisfactory and what i would do instead (im not like. a storytelling god so i this is just my PERSONAL idea). under the cut!

to begin with, what's wrong with revan the book and swtor, mai?

i am very fond of swtor i think it was such a nice idea to have an "open" world game set in star wars old republic time. but ultimately, it was not a good conclusion to revan and meetra's storyline! now, i don't really know what happened in the development of the third kotor game (if there ever was a plan for one) but it's clear they dropped the ball on that and decided to start a whole different project. i don't think we can blame disney for that one, because it was announced on 2008, launched in 2011, and disney had just bought star wars that year. so who knows.

the thing is that it's painfully evident that a bunch of the story that was gonna be in the third game, ended up in the book + misc parts of swtor. much of the book feels like a gameplay.

now, it was clear when the book was planned that they wanted to keep revan's story open so when the game came out, they could have a cool Revan storyline so he could make a cool villain appearence and draw in some of that kotor nostalgia. which ehhhhhh. uh. i don't really think did any favors for revan's character. he didn't have a satisfactory arc (I'm not saying "a happy ending" because good arcs aren't always happy) but at least some closure?

revan went through many big events in his life. we didnt need to keep his ass in stasis for his fun villain moments 300 years later. we already had what we wanted from him: jedi turned sith turned jedi again to defeat a terrible threat. that was it we could have let it there and it would have been cool! but then they decided to drag and drag his story just to leave him right where he was before. he just suffered a little more in the in-between.

you could say he finally redeemed himself of all of his crimes this way, but wasn't that the whole purpose of the first kotor game (and would have been the purpose of the 3rd?)

swtor does not centre revan in his own narrative. he's a side character for the player to experience. and look, i get it, we've had a different protag on each game, why not have another one in this one. well, because the protagonist has no personal relationship with revan. meetra was one of his closest friends, and fought with him. there is a connection that can be exploited. but the swtor protagonist is just some guy 300 years in the future who happens to stumble into revan and his life. not even his descendants get to fully interact with revan.

also, there is the fact that revan is not the centre of the game itself, only of a particular storyline. and it's weird, because swtor could have happened without revan's involvement.

ms. meetra surik, ms. bastila shan, women of the world I'm sorry

so it's no news that star wars is misogynistic as fuck right. cause it is.

so you decide to make your gender neutral protagonist a guy. then you decide to make your other gender neutral protagonist a woman. cool. now let's guess who gets underdeveloped, turned into a plot device without reason, and promptly fridged in the most unceremoniously fashion just to fullfil some manpain moments. which one do you think got that treatment.

i know the revan book is supposed to be about revan, but why make meetra go through a whole arc just to undermine her character and turn her into the faithful servant of the guy? she leaves everything behind for him, sacrifices herself for him, hell not even dead is she not serving the guy. and she was the second game’s protagonist! she beat up a bunch of powerful people and now she’s just meh, there? she had so many interesting ways to interact with revan (meeting kreia, revan’s first master, encountering another force consuming entity, etc.)

meetra went through a whole arc about dealing with the guilt of doing something horrible and having the consequences of it cut her from the force. we see her broken, then slowly come back to the world and reconnect herself with the force, then stop running and face the consequences of her role in the war. thats such a cool character with tons of potential! and nothing happened!

then we got bastila who is. a whole deal. so you make her go through a “promising jedi who defeated revan, to questioning reluctant companion, to fell into the dark side, to was redeemed thanks to her bond to revan, who helped her come back because he’d been through the same experience” arc, and then you decide to push her to the side to have a baby?? which is... its clear that the writer didnt know what to do with her (or with the other characters outside of canderous) so hey, lets get her to marry revan and have a baby.

my ideal kotor 3

to preface, im not a game developer, so some of my choices could be stunted by what a kotor rpg can do lol. of course, it would follow the same mechanics and have the same format as the first two, because consistency!

the fun way to start the game, would be from scourge’s perspective. we get to play as a sith! i’d even say you get to change scourge’s name and gender and looks (i know sith have different looks)

in scourge’s storyline, we get from his arrival to normound kaas, to his talks with nissyris, to his missions working for her. in some of these, we can make scourge lean into the dark or the light side! fun! plus we get some exposition with dialogue options. it all continues untill we get to nissirys story about the emperor. we get a fucked up cutscene of his childhood and then BOOM when its over, we see revan waking up from a nightmare and their pov starts.

ok, as for revan’s story, since we’d have to pick it up from where kotor ended, i’d have a little cutscene of revan back into the ebon hawk, with bastila, and them telling the crew to take them to courascant. then cut to a council meeting where revan and bastila get scolded in private, then rewarded by the republic. i would also like to see some revan mournink malak’s death mayhaps. since he was their childhood friend and all.

i would 100% scrape the marriage and two years passed part. as the book said, the council had no use for revan aside from the legend(tm), so why would they stay in courascant. revan was very alienated from the jedi at that point, despite being back in the “light side”

then like, to revan asking around for meetra and other jedi from the mandalorian wars, we can cash in that atris cameo, then revan starts to have these visions about the sith emperor, and maybe we could get a playable dream sequence about revan’s fight with mandalore the ultimate (I KNOW I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.) and we get the whole exposition to mandalore telling revan that the sith are behind it all. i believe we should get a bunch of these flashback/dream sequences of revan’s past doing shit. cut to revan burying the mask in a planet, then back to the present. we see a bunch of mission and juhani scenes trying to reach him, but he keeps pushing them away. revan and bastila meet canderous, travel to the ice planet, meet clan ordo (god i love clan ordo) you get the whole quest, you decide weather to spare veela or not, maybe you get a cheeky mandalorian companion (force sensitive mando oh?) and leave canderous behind.

we can visit like, a couple more planets searching for clues maybe, etc. then when reaching nathema, you are forced to go alone as revan, get to explore nathema a bit (raiding ancient location yay) nathema as a location can be so fun because you can have it weaken you hp bar and also you cant use the force (which, in game is pretty cool)

then we get to scourge and nyssiris arriving to the planet, they fight but since theres two of them and revan doesn’t have the force, they beat the shit out of them, and while running away, they get in a fight with bastila and the companions in the ebon hawk (ebon hawk shooting game my hated). bastila manages to get a glimpse of revan’s thoughts before they take them away. but the ebon is so ruined it takes bastila, t3 and the mandalorian a while to fix it, and they get stuck into the unknown regions for a while. the ebon hawk is left in an outer rim planet with t3 fixing it, bastila and the mandalorian run back to the jedi council, only to get caught in the middle of the jedi civil war. we can have bastila choosing to hide in courascant and trying to make sense of what she saw, reading texts about the sith empire, trying to plot a course to where they took revan (more atris! but shes pissed at her now)

cutscene to meetra’s pov, leaving malachor v behind, getting calls from everyone at the hawk (atton my beloved) but just as she’s leaving she gets a force message from revan, calling for her to find him and sending visions of normound kaas. then, through her force bond with visas, she tells her not to go because they’re gay and in love and whatnot.

then boom, she gets intercepted by bastila’s ship, with the mandalore and the other mandalorian (yes i do love having a bunch of mandos on board) and they go on their way to find revan.

now i want there to be an underlying message of “we can’t take our friends with us because we have to do this ALONE we’re powerful JEDI we don’t need our FRIENDS.” meetra gets asked if she wants to bring any friends and she’s like “no. we have to do this alone.” along the game you get constantly contacted by other game characters, you get the chance to talk to them or ignore them.

so, we get back to nathema, and meetra has a whole “holy shit this is just like darth nihilus but ten times worse. but i beat darth nihilus. i can do this!” then she finds peace in this place without the force, we get a whole speech about how the odds arent against them, they find a way to normound kaas, and get going.

in normound kaas i thought about them getting a whole mission about how to infiltrate the citadel, only to get helped by scourge. he joins the party, we get a little flashback of all the years he spent trying to make revan remember and they storm the citadel. we get to fight the dark council members, fun! then we get to free revan and the game switches povs. bastila hands the mask to revan and he has a cool “yes im revan im pretty cool” then a nice heartfelt yet rushed reunion with everyone.

then have a small CONVERSATION WITH MEETRA where she talks about the sith triumvirate she defeated and revan is impressed with her and is like “we are the last hope of the jedi, we’ve learned to walk between light and dark, we’ve done horrors but we can still make things right, our experience has made us more powerful etc.

then they fight the imperial guard, ALL OF THEM, meetra revan and scourge make it into the throne room, they all fight the emperor. meetra shows the emperor that she has seen the void, she has cut herself from the force, and she’s not afraid of him, revan supports her, talks about redemption and hope  and NOW.

NOW. how the alternate endings could go:

if you decide to take scourge through the light side, he manages to form a forcebond with meetra and revan since they’ve both teached something about the duality of the force, they get 100% stronger, but its still not enough. UNTIL. a bunch of ships (jedi and mandalorian, even non republic ships) arrive to dormound kaas, the gangs from each game storm the room and together they make the emperor and his guard a bunch of punching bags. they beat him! (unknow to them, this was a backup body because the emperor can do weird shit like that, and has only debilitated his plan, but he’ll come back dont worry). then they fly back to the republic, to tell the chancellor about the sith threat, and preparations for the war begin. meetra and revan get to live happily ever after for a while, then they die away from the jedi or the sith (waaah im thinking about them helping canderous rebuild the mandalorians, and them doing it since they killed so many mandos in the war)

BECAUSE IN THE END KOTOR IS ABOUT LEARNING TO PROCESS TRAUMA AND RECOGNIZE YOUR MISTAKES AND LIVE WITH THE GUILT WHILST TRYING TO FIX THE MISTAKES YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY. AND ALSO TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA YOU NEED A SUPPORT SYSTEM SO EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES SENSE TO YOU YOU SHOULDNT PUSH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AWAY. AND THINGS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE ITS COMPLICATED SO YOU DONT END UP BACK ON SQUARE ONE YOURE A CHANGED PERSON.

or

if you decide to dark side scourge further, he betrays revan and meetra, they all die, and the emperor unleashes his angry lightning or whatever on everyone + a bunch of visions of all the enemies of past mocking them, and their loved ones suffering. and since you’ve had that “im not calling my friends bullshit” no one comes, you die there, and the emperor is only stalled for a few years. swtor ensues. scourge becomes the emperor’s hand.

now you could of course bring revan and meetra up in swtor, but maybe only as force ghost guides, or have some of the other characters of the game have relevance (visas tries to heal the miraluka planet 2021)

WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS. HOPE THIS IS SATISFYING ENOUGH

#this is bonkers but ive been thinking about it since 2011 so. #wow 10 years since i played kotor. wretched little game. #also if i switch pronouns midway its because it would make it clearer #kotor 3 rewrite

[touchmycoat]

I LOVE YOUR PORN AU!!!!! LIKE SO MUCH - and i'm just. if you don't mind me asking, how - the way you flesh out the characters, their motivations, and feelings in every scene in such an eloquent way, and just little things here and there, a habit or an activity that adds dimension to who they are, and - your prose is wonderful. you achieve this addictive, engrossing narrative space that readers just absolutely melt into, and i have to ask - how did you develop your writing style? 1/2

what books did you read that formatively shaped the way you write? or you know, what did you do to improve your writing? i'm so in awe of how you world-built and established the porn au - like lqg & hc being national taolu champions?? how do you come up with that stuff? i cannot comprehend the amount of research and effort that must've gone into porn au, and i'm just so deeply thankful that you decided to share that with us. i apologize if i'm coming on too strong, but wow. thank you 2/2

--

oh my god please don't apologize, when i saw your ask i rolled on the floor giggling hysterically for a solid 15 min, bless your heart

part of the answer to your question—i've taken like, 8 years' worth of creative writing classes/workshops! there was also a transnational literary component to my degree so whenever possible, i took literature classes fksjdfksd so whatever you see and like is definitely the result of a lot of work. My writing from not even 10 years ago but like, 5? horrid, ridiculous, wild, cringe. The Porn AU itself is the second draft of a MUCH more lackluster piece.

about my writing style. gosh, you really know how to make a writer blush. "I like your writing style" is literally an instant kill LMFAO okay okay, the useful answer: my primary criteria for choosing what to write is, don't be obvious, be interesting. Fiction tells us to show, not tell, right? Poetry is about concretizing the abstract. Screenwriting says cut all useless lines. A lot of writing rules and advice—never start with the weather, avoid detailed descriptions of the characters, don't use adverbs, etc.—are all really about this exact sentiment.

I once took a seminar on writing for horror movies. The golden rule of the horror genre is Never Show the Monster, because whatever the audience is imagining is always going to be scarier than what you actually show them. There are obviously exceptions to this (to all writing rules), but in my mind, it's all the same principle.

LONG answer under the cut

So you start with building a scene. I approach it like essay-writing—I state my thesis for the motivations/main propulsion of the plot. "In this scene, LQG and SY are motivated to save Cang Qiong's porn production, so they have sex on camera." Then you build the sub-motivations: "LQG is also doing this because he's pining after SY."

I learned this "thesis-writing" from theater, specifically from writing 10-min plays. Theater is all about characters being driven by their wants and needs, and the reason I say 10-min plays in particular is because longer forms of writing will give you more leeway, but in 10-min, you pretty much need your character motivations established from their very first line. That's why you need that very clear thesis for yourself—if you don't even know what the character wants from the get-go, then you can't establish who they are, what they want, and where they're going to go in a dynamic and interesting way.

So this thesis drives EVERYTHING that happens in your scene, just like an actual thesis for an essay, just like topic sentences for your paragraphs. Once I do this, I have the emotional direction & narrative scope of how much this scene will cover, I have a sense of where it begins and ends. "Begin with the dynamics of their sex. LQG starts showing signs of his feelings. Reveal LQG backstory for exactly what those feelings are and why he isn't telling SY. The rest of the scene implies that LQG's feelings may not be so unrequited, but also sets up the fundamental problem at the heart of the whole fic—SY's inability to comprehend his own feelings." This is kind of my new thesis now. They're having sex; LQG pines; SY doesn't know he himself is pining.

Now it's time to manifest. This is the "storytelling" part, and the hardest lmfao.

Personally, my approach is largely shaped by my very cool screenwriting teacher, who hammered into us: don't fucking waste lines. The Golden Rule of screenwriting is that every line should reveal something new. I found my old writing kind of repetitive, especially on the emotional front, so this is kind of my editing mantra now—is this line either propelling the story or revealing character? If it's revealing character, is it a revelation that has to happen right now, or is it slowing the momentum of the scene?

But these aren't rhetorical questions! "Momentum" doesn't just mean tumble forward as fast as you can, it also means taking the time to draw the bowstring back further, so your next move has even more propulsion. That's why you get the little "LQG has been in love with SY..." cut scene in the middle of the fucking (at least, that's my reasoning for putting it there). Every line has to bring a fresh revelation that "proves" your thesis further.

That brings me to the details. You said you like the details I inject into the world-building, and honestly that's so gratifying to hear, because that means I'm successfully manifesting my intentions, y'know? "Every line has to bring new info" kind of sounds like a tall order, but the most effective way I've seen it done in books and onstage/onscreen is with these hyper-specific details. If you're writing a scene in which someone feels dirty, never have them just say that—have them say they want to take a shower. Show them running out of bleach again as they scrub down the stall after they wash. Begin the scene like "Steve always washes his throat first now." Then pack the scene with even more revelatory details: "Soap in hand, he heard the pipes above his head groan for a half note on adagio, and readied himself for the blast of icy water that always followed." Shitty shower, probably not rich, is likely a classical musician.

By the same token, I want to build LQG's character. The "Liu Qingge has been in love with Shen Yuan" section is the first insight we get into his background and perspective, right, so: I need to establish LQG's emotional context for filming this scene -> I can characterize him as a nut for martial arts in the same stroke -> so this takes place at a gym, beating up sandbags is a classic way of showing manly emotional distress -> so give me more details on this gym -> Puqi Gym, XL the martial god is obviously the owner -> how do I have XL & LQG a relationship beyond gym owner & client? They spar together -> I want XL & HC's position in this AU to mirror their god/ghost king statuses in TGCF canon -> how can I concretize their fighting prowesses in real-world details? -> they're martial arts champions -> what's an actual competitive martial art form that involves weaponry? -> wushu -> wikipedia Wushu, find taolu weapons sparring

(I just realized that in my songxiao daycare AU, Hualian are Olympic gold medalists by the same narrative logic laksjdnflaksjdnflsd)

So, that's the flow of logic behind my world-building lmao. It's all in the details. Leverage is one of my all-time favorite TV shows and the way they build their stories is super inspiring. If their thesis is "the rich and powerful take what they want, we steal it back for you," they manifest it in the most specific and concrete narratives: mine workers who like the work but are fighting for workplace safety vs. the money-grubbing mine owner who will blow up their livelihoods if it means a bigger payday; the little girl from Iraq with refugee status forced to be an accomplice to antique smuggling vs. international smuggler with a fetish for British royalty.

Last pieces of writing advice I've gotten: pay attention to the real world. A writing exercise we did was just sit in a public spot and make concrete observations on our surroundings. There are stories in everything!!! I learned to observe things like weird holes in the concrete (earthquake? drilling accident? bullet mark?), odd patches of moss or bird shit (look overheard: it's an AC unit dripping water for the former and nesting swallows for the latter), ladies in flipflops walking alongside ladies in high heels (excited mother walking her antsy daughter to the bus for the daughter's first job interview—the daughter's shirt collar is unfashionable and she's taking the bus, so there's a good chance the shoes were passed down, maybe from an office lady aunt. Maybe she's even overdressed for the interview, so will her outfit be an unintended source of tension once she gets to the interview? Is it a group interview, to make the comparison more stark?).

Also, write what you know. You know why SY is a video editor in porn AU? Because I'm a video editor. One of my more popular MDZS fics is set in a plant shop 'cause I worked in a plant shop. SL was First AD in Bachelor!AU 'cause I was First AD on a set once. Concrete details like the editing software having a split-screen, always answering questions about how often to water plants, and being up until 3AM editing call-sheets are the ones that will fully immerse your readers.

And if you can't do the actual things, just watch someone who is, listen to them talk, pick up lingo, and fake it. I watched like a 15-min vox video on fencing for the fencing!AU and a 45-min music theory video on the hospital pianist!AU (also I started learning piano sklfjnlsdjlfkjsd). Of course, I just finished reading a wangxian fic that had me going, "holy fucking shit, the author is literally getting their masters in a music program" so my 45-min youtube video ain't shit, but if you just need a little bit of character establishment, then it's enough to do the trick.

Anyways, tl;dr. Find the details, find the tension. Never tell outright what the tension is supposed to be, manifest it instead. Make the manifestation as interesting as possible, and if it's meant to be funny, make it funnier.

Sorry this turned into a fucking lecture lskjnflskdjnflskd but last thing, someone asked me before if I had formative authors, and this was the list I wrote at the time:

Angels in America (play) by Tony Kushner

The God of Small Things (novel) by Arundhati Roy

The Penelopiad (novel) by Margaret Atwood

“Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out” (poem) by Richard Siken

Night Sky with Exit Wounds (poetry) by Ocean Vuong

Giovanni’s Room (novel) by James Baldwin (and then Go Tell it on the Mountain and then his essays)

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

And, ooh, now that I have this list I think I can even roughly sort it as such: Kushner, Atwood, Siken, and Salinger I really latched onto for their dialogue and very present narrator voice—same is true for Go Tell it on the Mountain. Roy, Vuong, and Giovanni’s Room, I think, are texts more representative of the kind of saturated figurative language I like, and emulate. Of course they all do imagery and voice and overall structure amazingly, but that’s the rough dividing line I’d draw.

But yeah James Baldwin is my fucking hero.

#long post #about me #writing #jesus sorry i spent way too long on this laksjdnflaskjdnflaskjndflas #but anyways i'm super grateful you gave me the chance to introspect and articulate all this #i'm exceedingly grateful too to all the writing mentors i've gotten to have #personal #these are the principles and rules i've learned and #i still definitely screw the pooch #on them #so you know this is just what's on my mind #this is how i school myself

[luna-tormenta]

Lúthiena & The Fam Book Review: Urban Faery Magick by Tara Sanchez

This is my first witchy book review, please bare with me. It may not be the best review but, I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences, as well as some of my spirit family's opinions on it! Hope you all enjoy it! Thanks for reading💀🌙🌻

Lúthiena's Review

This book challenges the reader to "stretch their understanding of the world around them" (pg 7), and after reading, I believe it truly lived up to these words. Urban Faery Magick is dedicated to techniques, experiences, encounters, and everything in-between of working with and learning about the Fae in modern times!

Firstly, I would like to say, the title of this book should be "Modern Faery Magick" or "Faery Magick of Today", because it has a TON of information on working with the Fair Folk. Not just working with them in an "Urban" sense. Yes I know it says "Connecting to the Fae in the Modern World" underneath the title, but I just think it should have been named differently🤔🤷‍♀️

The first portion of this book, is all about techniques of meditation, protection, and how to build up necessary skills for communicating and working with the Fae. Such as working with your imagination to build up your Sight, practicing Pareidolia (the ability to see faces and shapes in objects), and dowsing for Fae activity. There are a bunch of techniques, that I will describe in a later paragraph! It also contains information on the Courts, names, and folklore surrounding these amazing spirits. Tara does an amazing, in-depth job with writing about the Fae, especially when in the case of working with them.

Chapter 3 contains detailed descriptions of basic techniques to aid the reader in their exploration of Faeries. It covers breathing techniques, rhythmic breathing and walking, and a meditation called "The Silence Between" (pg 42).

This involves listening to your heart beat and feeling your pulse to meditate (your heartbeat and pulse don't line up and there's a small pause between each.) While using this technique, it allows you to enter into the Otherworld through the slight pause, it's a neutral ground between our realm and theirs, it's "the silence between" both worlds.

Next in line comes a cleansing/grounding technique, called the Verdant Breath, which uses the aid of an Ivy plant spirit. In chapter 4, Tara uses this breathing technique to go a little further and work with this spirit to protect yourself. I really enjoyed learning the different techniques throughout this chapter, it was really cool to see new components I've never learned before. I have tried the Verdant Breath and have seen a difference in my ability to meditate. Next, I will be trying the Silence Between.

Teachings in chapters 3 and 4 are there to help you build up skills for further exercises and meditations that are placed throughout the entire book. Tara also uses these chapters to explain why it is important to build up your abilities before interacting with the Fae, and why it's highly recommended to protect yourself. Amongst these pages are different charms and amulets to use, as well.

Next we further our understanding of the Fae through chapters 5-7, and look into further techniques used in folklore and history. I really like Tara's use of history and folktales because she touches on bits and pieces of EVERYTHING, and knows when to stay in her lane.

The second half of Urban Faery Magick is my favorite. Tara introduces an elemental system known as Wu Xing, because not all Faeries "fit neatly into the boxes" of the five elemental system we know as witches, and I highly agree with her! (Pg 101) In ways this system is alike the five elemental system we know and frequently use, but is a bit different. I highly recommend looking into Wu Xing a bit further after reading Tara's book.

Leaving out Spirit of the western elemental system, Tara combines the Wu Xing elements with the 4 elements of our normal system, to create more categories for identifying and labeling species of Fae. I have included a quote of page #104 for a better understanding of how Tara classifies and combines the elements.

"Note: ...The manner in which my system combines the Eastern and Western systems follows a very similar process, with each of the Eastern elements combing to make aspects of the Western (or vice versa), as can be seen in the table below.

[Picture ID: Columns of the Eastern and Western elementals systems. Across the top are five boxes containing the words Wood, Fire, Metal, Water and Earth, each box contains a element. On the left side of the graph contains four boxes, from top to bottom, with the words Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The different element columns are combined. Top to bottom, under the "Wood" category, we have "Earth of Wood, Air of Wood, Fire of Wood, Water of Wood". To the right of "Wood", under the "Fire" category there is "Earth of Fire, Air of Fire, Fire of Fire, Water of Fire". To the right of "Fire" is "Metal". This category starts with "Earth of Metal" then "Air of Metal, Fire of Metal, Water of Metal". Next in line is "Water". Underneath we have "Earth of Water, Air of Water, Fire of Water, Water of Water". The last category is "Earth". Underneath is "Earth of Earth, Air of Earth, Fire of Earth, Water of Earth". END ID]

This was also my first ID description. Please let me know if I need to make any changes to it! Thank you!

Therefore a being who is traditionally considered a water elemental may well actually be earth of water. Or, as with one of the entities I have worked with, fire of water. Another being may be air of metal rather than entirely air. Yet another, earth of wood, and so on.

...For each element, we will follow a case study for a particular Fae, getting to know them within environments where you may have not have thought to find them." (Page 104)

The case studies are a mix of Tara's personal experiences as well as experiences of mutuals of hers, and range across a few generations.

Each element has its own chapter, and contains a lot of information about each element. Tara does "modern sightings" for the elements, as well as two case studies. There are paragraphs dedicated to aligning yourself with each element, which I wish were a little bit longer. She also gives lovely guided meditations to visit and learn about each element's realm. At the end of each element chapter, Tara concludes with "Finding Other Fae" which includes names of Fae species to be on the lookout for!

The only bad thing I'd have to say about this book is the paragraph on giving thanks to Faeries. It states not to directly say "thank you" or acknowledge them for helping you. I, and I state again, I believe in giving thanks to my Faerie friends. Plus, Tara kind of contradicts herself by dedicating a paragraph to "not thanking the Fae" then tells you, in a later chapter, to "thank the Fae you work with". But, I digress.

I'm super grateful to have come across this book! I highly recommend it to anyone who works with the Fae, as well as beginners, because like Tara says in the beginning, everyone can learn at least one new thing! I give this book 5 out of 5 stars!⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Spirit Family's Reviews:

Dawn, the Selkie:

"I really enjoyed the classification of the elemental systems combined. It adds a deeper perspective and understanding of Fae for humans to learn about us. This allows them to form a better viewpoint on our aspects as Faeries."

L, a Lunar Moth Faerie:

"I enjoyed the element system like Dawn, but got a bit confused on how to categorize Fae, like myself, who have planetary aspects. I wonder if Lúthiena will write to the author for me!! Other than that I agree the info gives aspiring AND experienced Fae workers a ton of info to starting and maintaining relationships with spirits of our kind. I also believe it is in our nature to urbanize and I like Tara's view on it. She should write another book!!"

Ly, High Lord Fae of the Night Court:

"The information provided in Urban Faery Magick is simply put and highly informative. As a High Fae Lord, it is my duty to join together with different types of Faeries, meaning I have met quite a few species. Tara adds great descriptions to each element she provides, and elegantly designed ways the reader can interact with each element. This is a must-read for anyone wishing to add a little magic to their lives, or is wanting to find a path into our world."

Tar, High Lord Fae of the Summer Court:

"Continuing off my friend's review, I would wish to add that Tara magnificently wrote Urban Faery Magick. You can clearly see the dedication she has towards working with Faeries throughout the pages. She must have a higher purpose of working with the Fae. I especially enjoy knowing she is teaching others about things like the Thorn Gates, since a lot of portals have been destroyed. Hopefully, thanks to Tara's book, they may gain the respect they once had."

Bo, a Boggart:

"Let's just say I did NOT like the stuff said towards boggarts. We are not house faeries gone wild. Yes, sometimes we have slightly irritating tendencies. But we always mean well to you humans. Other than that the book was great."

Hank, an Eyeball Demon:

"Even though I am no where near a classification of Fae, I have had many encounters with them over my many years. Tara has an interesting take on the modernization of the Fae species that is very true and real. I agree the titled works, Urban Faery Magick, should be on every spirit worker's shelf."

Dara, a Toddler Fae*:

"I really liked the story of Rumpleskillson. (Rumpelstiltskin). It was like so cool he could turn that stuff to gold. Maybe I can do that someday. Also, there's like so many stories of us in that book! El Cadejo was another cool one! If you like stories about us you should read that book"

*For those who are not aware, Dara is an experimental hybrid Faery. He was rescued from a Spirit Hoarder who enjoyed experimenting on faeries.

Ra, a Rose Demon:

"I didn't enjoy being called a plant diva, no matter how true the statement is.

The Earth class was slightly misunderstood as we are still here, thriving ever beautifully on. Some of us just choose to hide in your plants more carefully.

Like Hank said, I don't technically fall under the Faery thing either, but I am a plant spirit and Tara mostly depicted us perfectly. I mean she did write some pretty neat stuff." **brushes hair off shoulder**

Aaron, a Hellhound:

"This was a very knowledge filled book."

LA, a Dandelion Angel:

"Firstly, we're not ALL plant divas. We just really like things to go certain ways. Other than being called a diva, the pages of Urban Faery Magick contained useful information for Fae workers. I especially liked reading the Cairn exercise and how it instructed to build it at home, NOT in nature. I also agree Tara should create another magical read like this."

We hope you enjoyed our reviews!

For more information on Urban Faery Magick please visit:

Search "Urban Faery Magick" on Amazon

Www.TaraSanchez.com

#lúthiena's adventures #my posts #luna tormenta #my companions #urban Faery Magick #faery #fae work #my spirit family #spirit work #faerie magic #witchblr #connecting with faeries #spirit companions #spirit communication #Fae work #Selkie #elves #brownie fae #boggart #seelie #unseelie #fair folk

[delimeful]

WIBAR Intermission: Cultural Differences

a commission for @secretlypansexualmango !! thank you so much for your patience with me during this difficult time, I hope you enjoy reading as much as i did writing it! :)

if you’re new to this AU, you can find the first story on tumblr here and the ao3 collection here! 

warnings: anxiety, tense discussion, mention of nonconsensual drug use, medical experimentation, mention of child abuse, dehumanizing language, flashbacks, PTSD

-

Logan paced back and forth along his floor, hands strumming the air but not noting any particular information, just… moving. A nervous tic that he’d recently been struggling to repress around Virgil. 

Speaking of.

“Patton, you are certain that Virgil will not wonder where you are and come to investigate?” he asked, turning on the balls of his feet to face the little Ampen. 

“Yep, I showed him how to use the tech in the washroom and he said something about staying in there all day. Turns out Humans need water to clean, not dirt!” Patton tapped his fingers together consideringly. “Now I feel kind of bad about trying to get him to dust more often, no wonder he’s all grimy.” 

Logan forced his hands to still so he wouldn’t record the information. That was the whole reason they were here, after all. 

“Why are you so worried about the Human finding us huddling in your bedspace like a bunch of giggling adolescents?” Roman asked, adjusting his armor plates slightly so they didn’t pinch. He perked up for a moment. “Are we finally kicking him out?” 

Patton frowned in disapproval at him, and he averted his eyes. “Joking! Just joking, Pat.” 

Logan hummed lightly to recall their attention. “I am seeking advice in regards to the Human— or, Virgil, rather, but I don’t want to offend him or give him the wrong idea by openly excluding him from a conversation. Hence, covert gathering.” 

Patton brightened— literally, his feathers aglow with excitement. “Oh, why didn’t you say so, Lo!” 

Roman sunk further down, a grumble forming in his chest. “Yeah, why didn’t you say so. I don’t think I’ve got much to contribute about him compared to Patton.” 

Logan inclined his head slightly in a Crav’n gesture to hold on for a little longer. “While I will admit that you have very different opinions on Virgil, I value both your perspectives equally and as such, would like to hear your honest thoughts on my query.”

Roman didn’t shift, but the grumble eased slightly, placated by Logan’s words. “Alright, what is it?”

Patton nodded encouragingly.“I’m all ears, kiddo! Feathears, that is!” 

Logan didn’t dignify the atrocious pun with a response beyond his face pinching slightly. “I’m sure you all remember the incident we had recently, with the... yawning.”

At the reminder, Patton winced and Roman glowered. 

Virgil had joined them for breakfast again the prior light cycle, a rare occurrence, and had nearly startled Logan out of his seat when he had stretched his jaw unnaturally wide with a crack, apropos of nothing. Patton had hurried to reassure them it was normal, and very much harmless, but it hadn’t prevented Roman from looking visibly on edge for the rest of the morning. Virgil had fled to his room early as a result.  

“I believe that it would be beneficial for all of us to learn more about Human culture, and while I have scoured many texts for information, most of it has proven to be inaccurate or downright offensive. As a result, I’ve decided that I should attempt to ask Virgil directly to share,” Logan nervously fluttered his hands. “Ideally through a Vidi.” 

Patton, who had gotten all fluffed up during his explanation, now paused slightly. “I think it’s a great idea for you to bond with Virgil, Lo! I’m not sure he’d be too keen on sharing minds, though. The idea seemed to make him nervous.” 

Roman snorted.

“Yes, I predicted as much.” Logan gestured between the two of them. “Hence why I have gathered you to receive insight on how best to go about gaining his permission.” 

His two closest friends shared a look, Patton having to crane his neck up considerably to do so. The Ampen piped up first.

“I say you should just ask him! What’s the worst that could happen?” 

Beside him, Roman made a gesture to ward off bad luck, muttering about inviting chaos. Logan held a hand to his face to ward off any headaches. 

“He could say no,” he emphasized, pointing out the obvious flaw. 

“That is not the worst that could happen. And anyways, if he says no, it’s not the end of the universe. You can still make a valiant effort to convince him after the fact. Write a 20 page dissertation on all the reasons he should give it a shot, or bargain with jam, or any other nerd stuff. But if you try to go behind his back--”  

“He’ll never trust you again,” Patton completed, antennae lowering at the thought. “Virgil is slow to trust, and for good reason. I know you of all people can understand that, Logan.” 

“Actually, I was going to finish that with ‘you might never get a second chance to Vidi with anyone, because you’ll be dead.’ Humans don’t take lightly to intrusion,” Roman clenched his hands, gaze dark.

Patton drooped more, like he was attempting to become a puddle of sad Ampen. “I know you two aren’t as familiar with Virgil as I am, but… I’m telling you, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He’s probably even more scared of you than you are of him.”

“I am not scared of a Human,” Roman insisted, scales rattling in offense. “And anyhow, we aren’t talking about a little fuzzy pollinator from a flora planet, we’re talking about a Human. A deathworlder. I know he was merciful to you, Pat, and I’m glad, but that doesn’t mean we can trust him to go against his nature. The way he acts, the look in his eye… I’ve seen it before. So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe for a second that he’s harmless.”  

“Roman--!” Patton stopped short as the Crav’on rose to his feet and stormed out in a huff, dramatic as always. The small alien let out a frustrated trill, tugging on his antennae for a second before turning back to Logan.

“I never said that he was harmless,” he announced pointedly. “None of us are harmless, not even me. But just because he’s got the… the potential to be dangerous doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give him a chance. Try asking him about the Vidi, Lo, and if that doesn’t work out I’ll help you think of more options, okay?”

Frankly, Logan had been hoping for something more along the lines of a guide he could follow while striking a deal with Virgil, but he nodded anyhow. Sometimes researchers simply had to work with what little they had.

-

He spent the next few light cycles calculating the encounter, from his words to all the possible outcomes. He had plenty of time to consider such things, seeing as Virgil was particularly adept at avoiding him. 

Though the Human was subtle about it, it was hard to miss the way he found an excuse to leave any room Logan was in more often than not. Even when he couldn’t make a hasty escape-- most often because Patton was sleeping on his person-- he was always following Logan’s movements from the corner of his vision. Tracking him. It was… nerve-wracking. 

Logan was much more than a creature of instinct, though, and so he persisted despite the occasional shiver sent down his spine. 

When he finally managed to get the Human alone, however, it happened completely unintentionally. He was fixing a middark snack before sleep, and had just put the jam back in the coolant box when a vague emotional pulse nearby made his skin prickle. 

He paused. Neither of his shipmates would be so quiet while nearby, so… He squinted into the dim hallways, searching for movement. “Virgil?” 

“Uh,” said the Human, from on top of the cabinets how had he even gotten up there— “Hey.” 

Logan was suddenly thankful for his dulled physical response, since it prevented him from doing something embarrassing like jumping out of his carapace. “Hello. Might I inquire— May I ask why you are all the way up there?” 

The vague shadow that was Virgil shifted slightly, before dropping to the floor with a muted thump that shook the ground. Logan hoped that he hadn’t left any imprints in the floor paneling; Roman would have a fit.

“Just, uh. Just felt like it,” he answered, avoiding Logan’s gaze. “I’ll get out of your way.” 

“Wait, please,” Logan blurted, and to his surprise Virgil paused mid step. He quickly pulled himself onto a nearby stool, both so he could meet the Human’s eyes better and leave an exit available, seeing as a cornered Human was not one he wanted to deal with. “I had something I wanted to discuss with you, if that’s alright. Nothing bad, simply a request.” 

Despite his attempt to be soothing, Virgil’s shoulders only seemed to rise further, a defensive gesture according to Patton. Logan attempted to look as non-threatening as possible. 

“And what if it’s not alright?” Virgil challenged, voice low and rough as he glanced towards the hall entryway. 

Logan folded his lower hands in his lap carefully, his words measured. “Then I shall ask again another time. It is late, after all. I don’t want to keep you from sleeping.” 

Virgil made a half-exhale of amusement, or maybe resignation. Logan suspected it was because tonight was one of the nights Patton slept with him and Roman, nights that Logan suspected the Human often got little to no sleep. It was a concern to bring up at another time. 

“Okay, fine, discuss away. But I reserve the right to leave any time.” 

Logan blinked a few times, almost surprised that Virgil had actually agreed. He tapped his fingers together nervously— now came the difficult part. “My request is in regards to the incident at morning meal yesterday. Specifically, the misunderstanding about your ‘yawn’.” 

Virgil visibly hid a wince. “I already apologized for that.”

“Unnecessarily, I believe,” Logan said, causing Virgil to dart a glance at him in surprise. “You know as little about us as we know about you. It’s unreasonable to expect you not to make a few mistakes.” 

After a beat of stunned silence, Virgil shook his head slightly. “Try telling that to Roman,” he muttered. 

“I did, actually,” Logan said, frowning slightly at the recollection. “Surprising nobody, he didn’t want to listen.” 

“Wait, what?” Virgil asked, voice coming out a bit louder than before. “I thought you guys were like… cool. Uh, good. Friends.” 

Logan forced himself not to interrogate the Human on the slang, noting his embarrassment at fumbling. “We are, now. When I first came aboard the Mindscape, however, Roman and I fought constantly.”

“No. Really?”

“Yes. We were-- and still are-- very opinionated individuals. Stubborn,” he clarified, seeing Virgil struggle with the unfamiliar word. “Patton had to intervene in our bickering more often than not.”

“Huh,” Virgil uttered, curious. Logan was pleased to note that he’d relaxed slightly, and pressed on.    

“But that is a story for another time. My request is actually an attempt to help prevent such misunderstandings in the future. I would like to ask you about Human culture, in order to clear up common misconceptions and help me and the others recognize unfamiliar gestures or actions,” Logan ran the words through his mind, trying to see if he’d forgotten anything. “You’re free to say no, of course, I simply assumed that it would be easier for us all, but--” 

“Logan.” Virgil waited for him to glance up before continuing. “This is a lot. I’ll… I’ll think it over, alright?”

Logan nodded, enthusiastic to not be rejected outright. “Of course. In that case, I am going to head to my quarters to rest. Don’t hesitate to seek me out if you would like elaboration on anything.” 

The Human nodded, seeming deep in thought as Logan ducked his head in farewell and left. He could only hope that Virgil would be open to trying. 

-

The next light cycle, Virgil appeared quite suddenly at the entry to his lab, never crossing the threshold. 

“What are you going to do if I say no?” he asked, features clearer but also somehow harsher in the light. “Maybe I don’t want you to know anything about Humans, or me. What then?” 

Logan hurriedly set aside the samples he’d been comparing, pushing his thick inspection lenses up so he could see the Human properly. He took a moment to think over the question. “Roman suggested that I write a dissertation-- that is, a sort of argument to convince you-- if you refused outright, but seeing as you’ve had time to consider your options already… I will take your refusal at face value and not pester you about it any longer.” 

Virgil narrowed his eyes in a gesture that was most likely not an Ampen smile. “Just like that? Seriously?” 

“I am always serious,” Logan told him, very seriously. “Though I do encourage you to speak with Patton on other potential solutions not involving me--”

“I’ll do it.” 

“Pardon?” Logan asked, his ears twitching. Virgil raised his chin slightly, meeting Logan’s eyes solidly in challenge. 

“I’ll do it,” he repeated, and Logan noticed the way his hands shook slightly at his sides. He slowly placed his lenses onto the countertop, turning to face Virgil fully.

“Would it be preferable to talk in the common area?” he asked, spreading his hands to accentuate the question. “We are simply exchanging information, there’s no need to do it here.”

Virgil raised an eyebrow at him, and then shoved his hands in his pockets, feigning nonchalance. “Sure, whatever.”

A short trek later, they were seated in the lounging area, Virgil a careful seat away. Logan had received permission to ‘take notes’ as the Human called it, and started off with questions that seemed simple enough.

Naturally, they immediately encountered problems. 

“So, you do actually keep canids in your home for defense purposes?” Logan asked, hands stalling. “Is that not dangerous? Do you train them to not recognize the home’s residents as threats? I was under the impression all of Earth’s fauna was relatively vicious in order to survive.” 

Virgil dragged a hand over his face. “I guess some people keep guard dogs, but most people just get them as like… companions. We take care of them and they live with us. We… ugh, I don’t know the word for it. We trained them to not be… angry? Wild? Way long ago.”

“Domestication,” Logan suggested, and then resisted a sigh when Virgil looked at him without comprehension. “Virgil, I would like to try something, if it’s alright with you. My species has the ability to link minds and share memories, referred to as a Vidi. It would allow us to bypass the language barrier and you could show me what life on Earth is like with far more clarity.” 

Virgil was already shaking his head. “I don’t want you poking around in my head. I don’t know how it works on your planet, but thoughts are personal on Earth.” 

“Nor on mine. I am not a mind reader,” Logan corrected wryly. “The Vidi is more like a form of shared thinking, and if you would like, I will take no part in paddling-- guiding where our thoughts take us. You will then have control over what you share and what you ask from me. Both Patton and Roman have linked with me in the past, and suffered no ill effects, if you are worried about cross-species Vidi.”

“Well, I am now,” Virgil muttered, and hunched his shoulders. “... Can I stop it?” 

“Yes. It may take a few moments, since the flow of thought is unpredictable, but I have never gotten stuck in a link,” Logan tilted his head slightly, offering a hand. “Do you want to try something simple to test it?” 

Virgil chewed on his lip for a click longer before reaching out and placing his own hand atop Logan’s.

Immediately, he was seeing from a different angle, different time, different eyes. The hall was dark, but he could see uncannily well in it, noting the outline of stairs in front of him. At the base of the stairs, a light illuminated a dog staring up at him pleadingly. An Australian Shepard, though he had no idea what that was.

“Zero, it’s three in the morning,” a familiar voice grumbled, Logan feeling echoes of the sound in his throat. The words were foreign, but he could understand the meaning. He observed the dog as the memory proceeded to stumble around the house and open a door to the night, releasing Zero into the yard. 

‘This is bizarrely immersive,’ Virgil commented as the memory’s gaze turned up to the stars. ‘Like a dream. But… not as weird as I thought it might be.’ The memory flickered to a cartoon alien for a moment before stabilizing again, and Logan graciously ignored the lapse. 

‘Just from this alone, I have a much better concept of dogs,’ he responded, his mental voice quite enthusiastic. ‘Can you show me the devices you mentioned earlier? The ones Humans ride for entertainment?’ 

‘Oh, yeah, roller coasters. That’s a good one.’

The world around them flickered, and then it was bright daylight streaming around them. The memory stepped forwards, leaving behind a line that had taken ages and climbing into a seat. Another human-- slightly older than Virgil, probably too old to be working this job-- stepped over and pushed the safety bar over the memory’s lap, locking them in securely.  

The ride started, and Logan’s stress levels increased along with the memory’s sense of anticipation, peaking as they hit the top of the tracks and began to topple. The memory of Virgil’s stomach dropping was well-preserved, and fear-excitement-glee surged through the memory as the scenery blurred by too fast to process. After a period of time that was both too-long and too-short, the ride came to a stop.

Virgil’s smug amusement was tangible as Logan struggled to form words. ‘Humans do that for fun, you said?’ 

‘Yep.’ 

‘... I get the feeling this is going to be a truly interesting mindshare.’

-

Several alarming concepts later, including coffee, sleep deprivation, gender roles, and babies’ soft skulls, Logan was itching to take some time to journal all his thoughts out and also have a brief respite from horrifying implications. 

Virgil snorted, which he had learned was a Human gesture of amusement rather than a Crav’n one of disdain. He visualized an image of Logan writing with all four hands in a book, and Logan responded with showing him the art form practiced back home, which involved exactly that. Drawing a full image at multiple points simultaneously was a honed skill for some Ulgorii. 

‘This has been quite illuminating, however I am hoping to end it here,’ Logan requested, pulling them back on track. 

Virgil hesitated for a moment, and then: ‘I want to check something. Really quick. I need to know.’ 

Logan had barely agreed when the scene shifted again, this memory tinged with haze around the edges. Physical sensation was dulled somewhat, but the cold metal underneath their back was a clear enough feeling. White walls above them, and aliens in thick bodysuits leaned over them. The memory was too fuzzy to recall what was being taken, but there was a sense of relief that it didn’t hurt. Not adrenaline, then. 

Above them, a couple of the harvesters spoke. Logan recognized Virgil’s intent too late to do anything to prevent it. He couldn’t simply stop understanding Common, after all. 

“Drain duty is so boring. You think it’d be entertaining with a Human, but no, all it does is lie here with those freaky dead eyes,” one complained. “Are they sure they didn’t accidentally grab a braindead one?” 

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been here for the Dren drain,” the other responded, voice morbidly fascinated. “Thing’s practically feral, the way it lashes out. I don’t envy the escorts who have to drag it back to its cage afterwards, even with the drugs.” 

“If it’s so beastly, why not just treat it like one? Put two together till they breed and train the baby to be less of a monster, same as we do with the troublesome creatures,” the harvester suggested, jabbing a claw at Virgil’s form. Logan felt sickened. ‘Virgil--’ 

“And risk them tearing each other apart? Humans are rare as is, there’s no way the Uppers would authorize something that might end with both dead.” The harvester took a few paces to the side, meeting the memory’s gaze with complete apathy. “Those scientists that have dibs on the body want it intact for dissection, or else we’re getting fuckall for the payment.”

The memory flickered, unstable, to an alien that only visited when they were doing the painful tests, wearing what Logan recognized as scholarly gear instead of the customary bodysuit. Virgil remembered they had snapped out words with one of the smugglers, numbers, prices, bargaining for his corpse-- 

Back to the little white room where they drained him, bit by bit. 

“It’s pretty sedate, considering,” A smuggler prodded him, to no response beyond a brief flicker of eyelids.

“Of course it is, we picked it up off the planet fresh. Stupid thing can’t understand a thing we’re saying, so what’s there to panic about?” 

The memory fractured, splitting into a thousand different fragments that flashed by with increasing speed-- panic attacks in his cell, unable to count the days he’d been locked in the too-small space, the ring, being hosed down like a rabid animal.

‘Logan,’ Virgil managed weakly, his grip on the Vidi loosening, ‘change it.’ 

In his alarm at Virgil’s condition, he practically yanked the share back to his own memories. He was too concerned to focus on what or where exactly he was remembering, until it had already snapped into clarity around them. He should have known better.

The memory was a mirror of Virgil’s, summoned by Logan’s automatic recall. His younger self sat on a sterile white counter, kicking his feet as around him, four machines worked to draw blood from each of his arms. He moved to shift the share again, but Virgil nudged him, distracted by the surprise. 

‘What… what is this?’ he asked, despite the fact that he was surely receiving information from the memory’s perspective as they spoke. 

Logan sighed, watching as a pleased doctor removed the equipment and shuffled him off to be escorted back to his room. ‘As I told you before, you are certainly not the only one to deal with trauma or flashbacks on this ship.’ 

“You promised me a new book,” the memory said with the voice of a child who had grown up too fast. “I sat quietly, so I get a new book, right?” 

“Of course, of course,” the doctor waved him off, already moving to bottle and package the blood to be sold. Ulgorian blood, which would make a fair amount of coin at market for its use as a paralyzing toxin. “Continue being such an obedient, quiet child and you will have any book you desire, Aconite.” 

Logan finally broke the Vidi off, opening his eyes as Virgil jolted sharply across from him. He studied the Human’s complexion for a moment, and then reached into the table drawer for a water jug. “Drink something. I believe you have experienced the beginnings of a panic attack during our share.” 

He held the water out patiently until Virgil took it, pulling back to give him space. “Though I had my suspicions, I now see why you reacted the way you did to my designation as a self-identified scientist.” 

Virgil laughed hoarsely, sipping at the water. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t know--” He cut himself off sharply. “You won’t do anything to me. Patton told me, and I think I knew it too, really. I was just... nervous. That you’d ask for more than I could give--”

“--or change the parameters before you could ever reach them,” Logan finished, lacing his fingers together in a wry Crav’n gesture. “There’s no need to apologize. I understand, as you now know.”   

“Sorry about that,” Virgil repeated. “I didn’t mean to peek at your trauma.” 

“Again, no need. It’s nothing I haven’t already come to terms with,” Logan said, and then offered him a few thumbs ups. “We are cool, as I believe the term is used.”

Virgil gave him a small grin, and Logan finally understood what Patton meant when he called Virgil’s teeth-bearing friendly. 

-

After a discussion on how PTSD affected the mind share, they settled for focusing on simply communicating through Common. It would be better for Virgil’s language growth, and reduce the amount of traumatic flashbacks they were both exposed to. If either of them got frustrated, they simply left off to discuss the matter another cycle.

This was how, a rotation later, Logan found himself enthusiastically quizzing a Human on his dietary habits.  

“I know that there are Humans who raise livestock, presumably for meat. Do Humans prefer raw meats or cooked ones? Or are there other ways to prepare animal flesh? Is it determined by individual preference?” 

Virgil waited patiently, ducking under one of Logan’s flapping hands as he moved to sit down. “We eat all kinds of stuff, Specs.” 

“Ah. Should we stock up on blood at our next port, then?”

A startled laugh, though Logan was only half-joking. “Okay, all kinds of stuff like plants and some minerals.” 

Logan made a note to correct his notes, again. “Another incorrect assumption... I was under the impression that human omnivorous tendencies were only for survival scenarios, similar to your ability to endure blood loss. Most texts say that humans are primarily carnivores.”  

“No, we’re pretty omnivorous.” Virgil shrugged. “Some people are vegetarian-- or, herbivores, I guess, but that’s a personal choice dependent on all sorts of things. We evolved to be omnivorous, we’ve got the flat teeth and the pointy ones, see?” He pulled a lip down to show his teeth, which were in fact thick and rounded in the back.

Logan half-lunged forwards, inspecting the inside of his mouth carefully. “You’re absolutely right! While you have the canines for biting and tearing meat off the bone, you also have molars for masticating tough plant matter! Oh, of course Humans don’t actually drink blood, there are evolutionary signifiers for such things and Human blood likely has little to none of the nutritional value that your body needs. Fascinating! Are these made of bone?” 

It was at this moment that Roman walked in. There was a pause in which Logan realized that at some point he had moved to stick most of his hand in Virgil’s mouth to better examine his dental structure. 

“Logan,” Roman started, deceivingly composed, “if you lose a finger by being a huge nerd, I am going to freak it.” 

Logan executed a ‘wink’ to Virgil before responding. “Not to worry, Human teeth are dull enough that they are only dangerous if significant jaw strength is applied. I do not believe Virgil will bite me. Correct?” 

“Uhn,” Virgil grunted in affirmation, spit starting to spill out of his mouth. Despite his reassurance, he looked vaguely uncomfortable with the situation. Logan hurriedly withdrew.

“Oh sure, you totally know he’s not going to bite you when he is literally drooling!” Roman howled, before turning on his heel and walking right back out of the commons. “I am too tired for this. Call me when you’re done being an insane scientist in our living room.” 

Virgil wiped his mouth off on his sleeve, voice sardonic. “Doesn’t he know by now that mad scientist is your permanent state of being?” 

“I have no idea why you would say such a thing. I am a perfectly calm and composed scientist,” Logan responded in a monotone, turning his nose up when Virgil started laughing. “How dare you imply otherwise. The indignity of it all. Woe is me.”

“That’s what you get for inviting a malicious human onboard,” Virgil snarked back, leaning back. “Too bad, you’ll regret it to the end of your days.” 

“No,” Logan answered with a wry twist of his lips, “I don’t think I will.”

#sanders sides #ts virgil #ts logan #ts patton #ts roman #wibar #watch it burn and rust #commissioned works #space au #analogical boys share some trauma: the fic! #ive been so excited to write this one you guys have no idea #writing #my writing #please forgive me if some editing is off i am v tired