every time I have to wade through inane ship wars where people are willfully ignorant to the depth and facets of cloud strife's character, circumstance, and story just so I can find some cool screenshots or fanart my 'cloud is ace' agenda simply grows more potent out of spite

i genuinely think the only reason my uncle's dog (who is a pitbull... on the smaller side but shes still A PITBULL and a medium-large dog overall overall) doesnt show more signs of Not Being Fed Enough despite getting ONE scoop ONCE a day is bc she makes up the rest of her food intake eating the cat food or cat litter or the other dog's food and ALL of that i have to pay for :) when we're already struggling to make ends meet :)

So! I finished my first playthrough of Andromeda Six a couple days ago and I enjoyed it a lot! I had a lot of fun going through the story and I'm really excited for the next chapter even if it's probably gonna be a while till it's out-

I really wanted to ramble about the game here on tumblr so I thought that just for fun I could make a list about what I liked and didn't like about the game! The list will be under the cut :)

DISCLAIMER Just in case: This is in no way meant to be some objective/critical review about the game this is literally just meant to be me rambling my opinion sooo don't take this too seriously. Also story spoilers!!!

Alright the things I liked!!:

The Main Story: I'm a sucker for fun space sci-fi adventures with spcaeships and planets and aliens etc etc especially when the main characters are a group of vagabond rouges (with found family sprinkled in :>) so that was an immediate eye catcher for me. Also the fact that the plot is a "Lost heir has to take back the throne" type deal was really cool too, a little cliche? sure but I never take that as a bad thing

The Characters: Pretty much every single character was a delight to see in action, June was probably my favourite character out of everyone (even though I didn't play his route lmao-) followed closely behind by Vexx and Damon. The entire A6 crew were so fun to watch interact and talk and I always found myself wanting to see more of them. The only character I could say I didn't like was Zane, but everyone else was really fun!

The Art: Not much to say here, the arts just really nice, I wanna see if I can find the main artist on social media somewhere. The backgrounds especially are beautifully done

The 'Nerissa is Alive!!' reveal: After looking through the tags for A6 I saw that this specific plot twist was a bit of a hot topic among the fandom so I thought I'd share my opinion on it too. For the most part, I liked the reveal! I mainly love the fact that the reveal gives way to more drama regarding the MC and their future and how they can decide if they want to immediately revert back to their status as royalty and work alongside their older sister to restablish the monarchy, or decide they think the monarchy was kindas shitty even when Zovack wasn't in charge and they'd rather get to be their own person with the A6 crew. I'm really hoping that choosing to do the latter (which is what I did) leads to a lot of tension between the MC and Nerissa, possibly even a huge fight (Siblings to enemies even?? that would be amazing imo). Overall I think the plot twist could lead to a lot of cool stuff and I'm eager to see what Wanderlust Games does with it

And now onto things I didn't like:

Some of the Writing: Yeah... Honestly even though I enjoyed the game and it's story there's a couple things about the writing I didn't like that much. I won't list everything I found iffy but my biggest gripe is that the game has a lot of tell don't show, don't get me wrong I'm no writing master and it's not the worst thing in the world, but the moments where the characters would just info dump their entire life story in a conversation kinda irked me a bit, I wish we could learn the characters individual stories in a different way

The Pacing: I get that this is a small team limited to a 10 chapter story but tbh I wish the story could've moved just a tad bit slower so we could spend more time in each planet since it feels way too quick and we get limited to only seeing one small part of an entire planet. I also understand that there were probably both out of story and in story reasons as the why we only got to spend such a short amount of time on certain planets, but still, I just kinda wish we got to stay in one place for a bit longer

The Character Design: Okay, so for the most part I think the character designs are all pretty good, I like the clothes and how everyone feels very distinct from one another, overall the game has good character design. It's just that... in my opinion... the designs for the alien species..... are SO DAMN BORING!! The Tilaari I think looks fine even if I think they'd look more interesting if they had at least one alien feature like extra eyes or horns or something, other than that though they look fine. The Kithalpha though... oh my god.... I went into the game reading the description and expecting to see some cool mix of fish and human but instead I get the most bland alien design ever, it's literally just a human but with gills! I didn't even notice there were Kithalpha characters!!!! The game had to tell me that Ayame and the green guy were Kithalpha!!! Other than that I would've never known!!! And that's terrible!!!! (Not to mention that if I'm remembering correctly the game doesn't even say once that Vexx was part Kithalpha, I had to find that out from the Dev's twitter) I'm not even saying that they had to look like some monster alien creature of the black lagoon type thing but the Kithalpha characters couldve had just something anything that made them more distinct! Give them fins or scales or a tail heck ANYTHING FISH RELATED!!!! THEYRE DESCRIBED AS HUMANOID CREATURES WITH THE ABILITY TO ADAPT TO THEIR ENVIRONMENT BUT WE JUST GOT HUMAN + GILLS????? I was so dissatisfied with how boring the Kihtalpha looked that I actively gave my MC more inhuman features despite them being a Kithalpha, fuck the canon Kithalpha look my MC's gonna be a special little snowflake and the devs can't stop me

And Lastly, The 'Nerissa is Alive!' Reveal: So... Yeah. While I do like the twist itself cause of the possibilities, I'm gonna be honest I do agree that the set-up/execution was pretty shit. I don't wanna harp on this too much because this can be fixed as the game updates and gets completed, but still the twist ends up making things feel confusing or downright pointless in hindsight. My biggest annoyance was how literally in the episode right before the reveal we literally get a whole explanation from Vexx describing how he shot and killed Nerissa, like he literally told us how he held the body and saw all the blood but then one episode later surprise Nerissa is doing just fine, there's not even an explanation as to how she survived that (I think I read somewhere that apparently the devs said she was shot through the heart?? Idk if that's true but if it is I- How the fuck did she survive that????) we're just told that K just took her and dipped. Again, this is stuff that can be fixed later on, but it's still kinda annoying

----------

Aaaaand that's about it! Again, don't take this as a critical review, despite my gripes with the game I do still genuinely enjoy it

I'm probably gonna ramble about the game some more in the future, mainly about my MC cause damn did I fall in love with and hyperfixate on him so hard as I was playing. Honestly I'm kinda inspired to create a mini rewrite of the story from my MC's proper perspective without the VN's limitations kinda like how the tumblr account andromedasix did that with their MC

on my knees gripping my head hnngggg i thought abt bellumbeck too hard

tag ramblings are fun and on brand but i have too many disorganized thoughts and tags are limiting.

anyways thinking too hard abt him is an extremely good and fun thing but i cannot draw the way i wish and can't really put my thoughts into fic form so this is very much going to be a fun ramble.

bellumbeck drives me insane we all know this. he showed up in my dream last night as of writing this sentence so he is on my mind, which is surprising bc fictional stuff doesn't usually show up coherently in my dreams but there it was.

it's so incredibly fun to think about bellumbeck. he's such a black sheep of a loz final boss, there really isnt another loz final boss like him in concept or even in 1:1 tone imo. it's so fun to take bellumbeck incredibly darkly seriously.

to be fair bellumbeck is kind of objectively a fairly dark and disturbing final boss on a conceptual level, and it's not really out of nowhere since phantom hourglass has at least a little darkness running through it even if the general tone of the game doesn't really acknowledge or take advantage of it. but if you think about it hard enough even without getting into post-game speculation in regards to what happens with linebeck, bellumbeck is kind of a dark boss and it's great. full on screen demonic possession of a major character with most of the cast incapacitated and link isolated with no escape on the ruins of the ghost ship that started everything and facing a boss that is constantly facing him and both someone he's been with the whole adventure and also the creature that's captured his friends and killed who knows how many people.

it's so oooouuuugghhhh it's so much fun to think about bellumbeck even though it's such a short encounter. it's so... the mystery around bellum, the way linebeck is built up throughout the game and saves link directly before getting possessed, the fucking on-screen vaguely violent possession (i am forever obsessed with the way bellum grabs and tugs on his arms), the way ciela is captured early into the fight, too, the first companion character you meet and, if you had her equipped, it leaves you without a fairy that follows your cursor around for the first time all game, it's very... congrats you and your friends are at rock bottom! good luck getting everyone out of there alive!!!!

of course it's not quite that because this game is geared a bit more towards younger players, but still keeps those streaks of darkness and complexity just simply because they're inevitable parts of this story and it's characters. bellumbeck. i'm talking about bellumbeck. what a soulsborne-ass final boss, huh?

there's only so much a ds game can do in terms of boss animations, but i think a lot about more complicated movements and animations for bellumbeck, so, so much character can be communicated through a boss's animations. in my mind, i enjoy bellumbeck movements with an emphasis on puppet-like flourishes and mannerisms, and an emphasis on weight with how he fights. these two go very well together, and its something i love imagining.

with the latter, an emphasis on weight, would ideally focus on the sword (and im a fan of it being this huge greatsword, reading berserk got me around to liking it because you can do that really well) and how it has to be used one-handed, with bellumbeck leveraging his own weight against it and taking advantage of momentum to use it especially effectively to turn link into a little green and red smear on the wood. attacks blending into each other as he builds up momentum, and using that weight primarily against link, who is a small opponent who relies on rolling around and can’t really stack up at all in terms of brute force.

i imagine this kind of physicality and movement would lend itself very well to bellumbeck also having more puppet-like movements, being a little too tugged-along by his attacks but still retaining his footing, his free arm being just a little too limp a little too often, and his leaning away from his sword side, likely with the intention to properly balance himself out, looks off with how his head lolls unnaturally to that side. the puppetry effect lessens as the fight wears on and bellum gets the hang of the body he’s using, but never actually goes away since he’s not looking to act properly human anyways.

just like... movement flourishes and details that could add a whole lot to the overall experience of bellumbeck that i think about often.

Ever since switching over to Tumblr as my main social media page, I’ve been feeling a lot better. It’s so much easier to avoid toxicity over here compared to Twitter; it’s not that it doesn’t exist here, but it’s not constantly shoved in my face. The suite of posting tools is objectively better, too, between the substantially higher character limit and the tagging system.

It does make me lament the deletion of my first account. On one hand, it was the first social media site I ever participated in, and that footprint would’ve been a nice catalogue of my growth as a person, on a platform that was actually worth something. But on the other hand, maybe it’s best to leave the past behind and continue forging on ahead. I was a different person back then, and while I see value in acknowledging and learning from one’s past, it’d be somewhat uncomfortable to see where I was during that time compared to where I am now—before I grew harder and smarter.

Make no mistake: that growth was—and still is—very important. There was a lot of good and a lot of bad—quite recently, it was skewed more towards the latter, and I contended with likely the most formative period of my entire life. But even considering those tough times, I would never ask to change any of my experiences. Because of them, I am here right now, still standing. I don’t make a big show of my continued fight against life’s cruelties—most of the time, I’m just quietly enjoying the weird things I love, barely scratching the surface publicly. But I think there’s something profound in just doing those things.

If there’s anything for you to derive from my ramblings, it’s this: The indomitable human spirit flourishes in eccentricity.

Your oc Sora Tsuneyoshi stood out the most to me because omg, I am SUCH a hypochondriac and it actually ruins my life. It's the worst thing in the world, but people don't take it seriously. So to see your oc have this problem just makes me so overjoyed!

With their quirk, can they actually cure a disease assuming they know everything about it? I know you said they can control them, but is it permanent? So let's say for example, someone has a chronic illness. Let's take Asthma maybe, or heart disease. Could Sora cure these things? Or just lessen their effects? I'm so genuinely curious on this oc haha.

Do you ship them with anyone? I have 3 ocs who I ship with different mha characters, I know shipping isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I was just interested in knowing! Honestly I'd wanna know any of your oc x canon or even oc x oc ships, you're very good at world building and character creation from what I can see.

I'm the one who sent the snowflake ask so I'll go ahead and give myself a little anon name bc I'm too shy to come off anon for now :,) I'll be 🧼 soap anon if that isn't already taken on your page !

Thank you for asking, I'm always happy to answer! A funny thing I might want to mention is Sora's name always stuck in my head, so even if I forget some other characters names, for some reason their name will stick. (ㅎ.ㅎ )

And you're the first anon to choose a theme on my blog! Thank you! I'm going to create a tag for any anons that choose a character or emoji, so you'll be the first ໒꒰ྀི∩˃ ᵕ ˂∩꒱ྀི১

And I'm glad you were able to relate to my character, I myself (while not a hypochondriac) am a sort of germphobe, but I do have my moments where I freak out and think I'm going to die over something small.

Also, I'm AceAro, so I never really thought about shipping before since romance isn't always my ideal situation, but I'm not against it at all! If anyone were to ship my characters with each other or with an MHA character, I'd totally allow it since they're most likely just having fun (minus the kids, that might get a little weird).

That being said, I haven't thought about how far their quirk can go into detail, as I've been focusing on the other characters backgrounds, so it was left as a sort of template. I actually came up with the drawbacks and limitations of their quirk very recently, so if you have an idea or just want to add something small then feel to to tell me!

Also, I'm going to get rather excited about their quirk, so I'm sorry if I ramble! I'm just a huge biology/biotech nerd ＼_(-ロдロ-)

- Quirk:

Disease manipulation: The ability to control disease inside or outside of a person/animal. Can control movement, spread, division, and others.

✧*̣̩⋆̩☽ Drawbacks / Limits ✧*̣̩⋆̩☽

Physical strain: The ability to control diseases takes a physical toll on their body, causing them to become exhausted or even collapse after using their power too much.

Limited control: Sora can only control diseases to a certain extent. They cannot create new diseases or completely eradicate existing ones.

Moral and ethical considerations: The ability to manipulate diseases can be seen as unethical or even evil, especially if used to harm others.

Unintended consequences: Sora's actions may have unintended consequences, such as accidentally creating a superbug or virus that is resistant to all known treatments.

Difficulty with non-living surfaces: Sora may have difficulty manipulating diseases on non-living surfaces, such as objects or clothing.

Inability to control all diseases: Some diseases may be resistant to Sora's quirk, making it difficult or impossible to control them.

Sora's quirk is highly dependent on their own immune system; if they get sick or injured, their quirk weakens or disappears altogether temporarily.

They experience intense pain and discomfort whenever they manipulate diseases past their limit, making it difficult to use their quirk for extended periods of time.

Sora can only control one disease at a time, and must fully focus their attention on it to maintain control. If their attention is split their quirk's effect can lose strength.

Sora's quirk can be disrupted or negated by various medical treatments or procedures, such as vaccines, antibiotics, or chemotherapy. It all depends on the context.

Their quirk is heavily influenced by their emotional state; if they become stressed or anxious, their ability may become erratic or uncontrollable. This is why they're working on controlling their hypochondriac tendencies, because they can't use their quirk very much because of it.

Sora is unable to control certain types of diseases, such as those caused by genetic disorders or environmental factors.

Their quirk can be dangerous or even lethal if used improperly, and they must exercise extreme caution and restraint when manipulating disease

Sora's ability to control a disease is limited by the pathogen's replication rate. If the pathogen replicates too quickly, they may be unable to keep up with its spread and control it.

Sora's quirk can only manipulate diseases that are currently in their active phase; they cannot control latent or dormant infections.

Their quirk has a limited effect on diseases that have already caused irreversible damage to the body, such as chronic conditions or organ failure. They can only control the diseases, they can't reverse anything the diseases might've done.

Sora's quirk can only be effective against diseases that are currently recognized by modern medicine, and may not work against newly emerging pathogens or rare diseases. However, if they have a steady knowledge of any be disease, they can control it better. Then again, if there's an already established disease that they happen to know little too nothing about, they can't control it at all, or at least will struggle in an attempt.

Their quirk may have unintended consequences, such as creating drug-resistant strains of a disease or inadvertently spreading the disease to others.

｡o♡o｡Uses and Benefits ｡o♡o｡

Quick Explanation: Since Sora's quirk has so many limitations and risks, they normally only use it when absolutely needed, or if there's minimal risk involved. Since they're a well educated medic, they have other alternative methods of treatment.

In emergency situations where traditional medical treatment is unavailable, Sora could use their quirk to control the spread of infectious diseases within a patient's body, potentially preventing the disease from becoming fatal.

They could use their quirk to manipulate diseases in laboratory settings, allowing for more targeted research and development of vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases

In situations where quarantine is necessary, Sora could use their quirk to control the spread of a disease within a confined space, potentially limiting the number of people who become infected.

They could use their quirk to manipulate diseases as a form of biocontrol, targeting pests or invasive species that are causing harm to ecosystems or agricultural crops.

In situations where traditional treatments have failed, they could use their quirk to manipulate the disease within a patient's body as a last resort, potentially saving their life.

Sora could use their quirk to manipulate diseases as a means of tracking the spread and transmission of infectious diseases, potentially providing valuable data for epidemiological studies.

They could use their quirk to manipulate diseases to provide symptomatic relief for patients, such as reducing inflammation or fever in cases where traditional treatments are unavailable or ineffective.

•°•Exceptions•°•

If there is a new disease, they naturally wouldn't know much about it. But if they do, it wouldn't matter if it was new or not, they'd still be able to use their quirk on it

They cannot completely eradicate a disease, they can only control it. There is a loophole, though. Say Sora is trying to help a cancer patient. For those that don't know, cancer cells are normal human cells that mutated and went uncontrolled. Since they can control disease how they wish with enough information on it, they could force the cancerous cells to undergo apoptosis (programmed cell death). Or they could mess with the diseased cells homeostasis or osmotic pressure, and make them burst or crumple inwards. Or they could do the opposite and make sick cells healthy again.

If there overall isn't much data on a disease and they happen to know the small amount that was discovered, they'd still not be able to do anything, since they need a vast understanding of the disease.

They're quirk greatly ties with their mental knowledge and state

To answer your questions, say there's a kid with asthma (like you asked). They can only control the disease, but not the damage already done. If they know a lot about asthma, they could prevent it while the person is near them so the patient can undergo treatment, or thi could prevent it from getting worse if the patient wasn't going to get treatment at the time (with the wide world of quirks, I'd imagine there's going to be numerous medical advancements and techniques)

•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨

Overall, I'm glad that my character was able to make you so happy! I never thought anything I could do would have that effect (⁠^⁠～⁠^⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ

I'm sorry to hear about your hypochondriac issues, but since I don't have any experience with it I'd be glad if you offered some insight as to what's it's like since I'd like to write Sora's character realistically. ( ˙˘˙* )

If you have anymore questions, feedback, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to send in another ask! I always look forward to seeing anything in my inbox, really (⁠๑⁠¯⁠◡⁠¯⁠๑⁠)

I'm thinking about drawing them more often when I have the energy. If I do, I could let you know! If you want to know anything else about Sora or if I post something about them, I could always tag it with your emoji, your choice!

Sorry if that was long, I got a little excited (⁠─⁠.⁠─⁠|⁠|⁠）

Please have a lovely day, and don't hesitate to submit any thoughts! Thank you so much!  

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　( ・ω・)

┏━Ｕ━━━Ｕ━━┓

┃♡ありがとう♡ ┃

┗━━━━━━━━━┛

Discord Convo: Yasha, Essek, Culture, Shadowgast Ramblings

Me: Man I wish Essek and Yasha could have - nvm I'll finish that thought later.

Sibling: I KNOW. I ALREADY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY AND I WISH YASHA HAD BEEN MORE PRESENT IN THE STORY

Me: Stop doing the hive mind thing. it's invasive. i feel violated.

Sibling: I can't help it.

Me: But yeah Essek and Yasha. I find it very interesting because there's actually a lot of crossover in their temperaments, but in terms of physical presentation, they couldn't be more different. They both came from completely different sub-cultures in Xhorhas, and it's like... that temperament among the Rosohna Drow. It makes me think that they learned how to like... Okay hang on this is hard to put into words... Right so from a meta perspective, it reads like Matt took Yasha's basic temperament and applied it to other people of Xhorhas.  Like Yasha was a broader expression of typical mannerisms of Xhorhas (except that Yasha was no longer bound by the modesty of the cultures there, and having been exposed to Molly, was freer with her sexuality after it was stifled in the Wastes in her youth). Right? So with that thought in mind, look at Essek. Essek doesn't have the same trauma Yasha has so he doesn't have the same sort of dysfunctions, but when you first meet Yasha, she does display a casual arrogance/confidence about her power, and Essek has the temperament, but what he lacks is the freedom from modesty. He's extremely withdrawn.

Sibling: Are you saying he's going to become an e-boy? Because there's no promises that under that cloak, he isn't already one lmaoooo

Me: Well, I think it's interesting because this is actually one underrated area where I think Caleb would actually be really good for him and vice versa. It also says a lot about the odd intersections of culture in Xhorhas, because in old drow society, sex was uh... you know, let's not go into that.

Sibling: Just all of the nasty tags from AO3

Me: but my point is that it makes sense that the Kryn dynasty would be heavily influenced by and adopt a lot of the mannerisms and cultural relations from the people of Xhorhas because... they would be trying to distance themselves from the violence of their past by integrating stuff from the cultures they colonized. It makes sense that maybe the nomads of the wastes would impact their mannerisms and dynamics, though you can see echos of old drow culture in the dynasty, of course, with the dens and all.

Sibling: They're doing what the pirates from Wind Waker did once they found New Hyrule lol. "Yes, oh yes. We love technology"

Me: Yeah. So anyway, Yasha and Essek would have been interesting to have more interactions with.

Sibling: I mean, both are good characters? They just didn't have a lot of screentime, and it didn't really seem like Ashley was super interested in exploring her past. It doesn't help that Yasha was essentially silent for all major character interactions lol.

Me: They are both socially awkward, with casual confidence in their skills, and somewhat similar mannerisms, but Essek is very modest but manipulative, and Yasha is very upfront/blunt, and both of them have the guilt thing going on. Going back to Essek and Caleb. I think that their immediate positive effects on each other are obvious, but on this topic specifically... Caleb's only ever hesitant with his affection because of his trauma, really.  You get the distinct impression that he used to be a lot more touchy feely (just look at his early game dynamic with Nott), and while he is usually very polite, he has no problem with being blunt about his sexuality when he thinks he can get away with it. At the same time, Caleb's history with sex and relationships is really twisted and complicated, so he needs a partner who is respectful of boundaries and willing to check what is going on at any given time. In other words, he needs someone who is not like Molly (no offense to widomauk shippers).

Sibling: I mean, that was the primary problem with Molly. They had no sense of boundaries and that was good for someone like Yasha. Not so much for people with trauma related to lack of boundaries.

Me: (text dump) No, Molly DID have a sense of boundaries; they deliberately crossed them in order to make people uncomfortable. THAT was my biggest problem with Molly. Molly knew exactly what they were doing. Taliesin said as much. It's why I never shipped widomauk, because it’s yet another relationship where casual disregard for Caleb's comfort is present. It's why if I had shipped Caleb with anyone other than Essek, it would have been Fjord or Caduceus (but he's a disinterested ace and I respect that) or Yasha (but she's gay and I respect that) simply because they were clearly the ones who appeared most cognizant of Caleb's social comfort levels and such (so basically widofjord is what I'm saying, lol).  This isn’t a widomauk hate thing; it’s just not to my taste because I relate too much to hating having my personal boundaries deliberately treated with disrespect. That's going off on a tangent, though.

Essek, in contrast, needs someone who he can let his hair down with comfortably. Essek seems to only really feel that way around Caleb and Jester. Caleb's the only one Essek really initiates touch with. Caleb's the one who gets Essek to swear for the first time, like Caleb swearing gave Essek permission to do the same just for the hell of it. Caleb and Jester, more than the others, made it clear that he's allowed to be goofy when he's with them.  The two of them joking around with Immovable Object (and Caleb openly participating in that clownery with Seeming and such when he and Essek have so much in common) makes Essek feel comfortable with exploring not having a stick up his ass 24/7, which is exactly what a clearly extremely repressed person like Essek could benefit from in a partner, a person who he can relax around and vent with, because he's very obviously never had that before, or at least not consistently. And how did he get to that point?

It's from a thing about Caleb that is extremely underrated. Caleb, be it from his natural personality or that coupled with his training, knows the value of being openly vulnerable.  It's very clearly NOT something that Trent specifically taught him.  Caleb recognizes that the best way to manipulate people is to be sweet and earnest and awkward and TRUTHFUL about his beliefs and vulnerabilities, but this pays off in ways unintended. Caleb expects it to just be transactional, but people end up genuinely forming bonds with him because of it, and what's more, that he does that with such regularity results in other people responding in kind (which is the goal).  Someone as reserved as Essek could only stand to be vulnerable BECAUSE Caleb made HIMSELF vulnerable first. I think the best thing Liam ever did for Shadowgast was make it clear that everything he said to Essek may have been manipulative... but every word of it was also true, because Essek is clever enough to recognize that honesty.

The most underrated line in Essek's growth as a person doesn't even come from Essek, and it doesn't come from Caleb talking to Essek. I think people forget about this, but during the final conversation with the scourger, which Essek was present for... the scourger asks Caleb why he's bothering with her. And Caleb says (paraphrasing) "I think that I hoped if I could see one hint of change from you, I could believe that we aren't both damned." Imagine being Essek and hearing that. It recontextualizes everything about Essek's growth. The rapid change between the boat scene and Aeor isn't just because Essek wants to be a better person. It's because he wants to prove to Caleb that Caleb isn't damned, because no one has ever done that for Caleb. Caleb is so obviously drowning in his past during the Aeor arc. That sort of hope is something he desperately needed. It's one of the few things about the Aeor arc that isn't botched by the rush to end the series; Essek's consistent determination to be a positive influence on Caleb, for Caleb, was gold from start to finish. Remember too that by the time of the boat scene, Caleb had already met with Astrid and had that disheartening conversation. Essek's efforts to become a better person feel like he's trying to almost unknowingly undo the damage that the recent interactions with Astrid and Trent had done to Caleb's psyche.

... tldr, Caleb is going to teach Essek how to be a manslut... in private... jk but not really.

Sibling: I SAID THAT EBOY ESSEK LOL! Ugh... that final epilogue screwing over my favorite MLM ship... It's not canon. They went and made their own school, and lived forever in disguises to keep the scourgers coming after them.

*That was the end of this part of the conversation.  On reflection, I ought to have noted that Essek’s modesty might not be so much a cultural thing as it is an “Essek trying to keep people away from him like a prickly porcupine” thing, but you never know.  If it is cultural, that may be the result of the dynasty trying to distance themselves to the practices of those who worship Lolth, but I don’t know that Exandria lore has ever said anything about this?  And if it is a cultural thing, is it limited to the nobility, like Essek? One could also argue that the cultural practices of Yasha’s people, with the arranged marriages and such, may have influenced the dynasty’s own cultural formation, but I feel like I didn’t make that clear enough?  Anyway, that’s why it’s a ramble.

I posted 1 254 times in 2021

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For every post I created, I reblogged 2.7 posts.

I added 2 351 tags in 2021

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Longest Tag: 140 characters

#and i think that if you don't necessarily have to bc ppl speak your language and you understandably don't make the effort you're missing out

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Finally I can proudly introduce my hidden baby to the world!!!! 🥰🥰

Including but not limited to:

Certified obsessed idiots

Overly dramatic shirts rip-off

Actual communication

Sex as a coping mechanism

S O U N D S

Rio POV and 23 occurrences of the word “fucking” as a consequence (look, I tried not to)

The author’s  failed attempts at disguising her most recognizable mannerisms

Probably the reason why I haven’t been able to write a line these past two months

Read on AO3

(botr logo by @00gangfriend00  ❤️)

64 notes • Posted 2021-07-15 21:51:23 GMT

#4

Fave gg fanfic writers and why?

Ouuuuh, let me check my AO3 subscriptions, anon!! *cracking knuckles*

So here we go (not in any particular order). Basically my ‘why’s are either angst or crack since that’s what I run on. My apologies to fluff writers, it’s not personal ❤️

elisewrites @elise-jupiterstyle Why: One of the best fanfic writers in this fandom in my humble opinion. Gorgeous writing style, on-point POV characterization, amazing dynamic, dark and poetic settings, and ANGST. Like, a lot.

riosnecktattoo @riosnecktattoo Why: Queen of burlesque!Brio (Beth falling down the piano while trying to look sexy in Heart and soul is a picture that will haunt me for all eternity) but also master of angst and weird obscure kinks that are for some reason my jam (I’m still waiting for this brainplay sequel to beheading, Tay! 🧠🧠)

s_t_c_s @sothischickshe Why: Such a very unique voice and style, bizarre ideas that oddly make sense, delightful humour, hilarious POVs based on the objective fact that Beth and Rio are complete idiots. Also amazing angst when she decides to go down that route.

fireinsideforfun Why: Look. Look. A rational choice is literally the reason why I’m (still) here.

EnsignDisaster @betterhomesandhobbits Why: Absolute crackfic Master! Proper skincare had me howling, and don’t even get me started on the genius that is The goodest boy. One of the funniest writers in this fandom

convolutedConcussion @johnisntevendead Why: It’s just perfection. Humour, characterization, crankiness, lunacy, EVERYTHING, I’m telling you!

MissMaxime @missmaxime Why: One of the most creative writers in this fandom. An abiility to craft extremely cinematic phrasings and hilarious lines that I’m extremely jealous of. Oh, and see also: ANGST. Will I ever stop rambling about Ain’t no sunshine? Probably not.

Niham87 Why: Extremely gorgeous prose, original and funny AUs that I hope will be continued one day, great characterizations and stellar smut.

femalegothic @femalegothic / @bethsuglywigs Why: S M U T. Amazing outsiders POVs. But also a lot of humour and responsible sex pro-tips in the author’s notes.

whiskeyjack @whiskeyjack Why: I’m basically taking an English vocabulary class every time this woman posts something. Metaphors. See also: realistic and physically-rooted depiction of traumas and injuries  u n l i k e  a certain show

septiembre @septiembrre​ Why: Ugh, where do I start??? Amazing characterizations and voices, great writing style, in-character romance, fluttering moments between two stubborn idiots that will make you pull your hair in sobbing frustration and be like “uuuuuuugh! Why are they like this?”

fondful @fondful Why: Dark and poetic writing. Desperate mood. Aaaangst. Or you know... completely random and hilarious bagel AU where people craft penis-shaped embroideries, I mean, you can never know what will come out!

136 notes • Posted 2021-06-03 16:46:25 GMT

#3

any fanfic recs of dean being a dick to beth and rio stepping in?

Hey anon!

I'm so sorry it took me so long to get back at you...

I’m tempted to say that basically every GG fanfic features  Dean being a dick to Beth, and stepping into Beth’s life is literally Rio’s hobby, so the whole Good Girls tag on AO3 is probably a good entry point. However, here is a little selection.

This post benefited from a huge load of help from the amazing @sdktrs12 aka the people's librarian. Mwah!   😘😘😘

the wedding date by civillove @blainesebastian 28k, complete AU where Beth is a guest at Dean’s second wedding and it goes as bad as you’d think

The Sacred Art of Kissing by brokensatellites @emilykolburn 3k, complete A post 2.03 fic where Rio makes a dramatic entrance as Dean tries to negociate his way back into the house

Forest for the Trees by Anijade @anijade 161k, WIP since 2021 A post S2 finale, post Boland divorce saga where Dean is still his whining annoying self and Rio is Rio

Good Sport by fireinsideforfun 12k, complete Dean is a dick with co-parenting and Rio speaks his mind. Oh, and Beth gets to sleep <3

You Should Probably Leave by peachraindrops @peachraindrops 7k, complete 2.09 canon-divergent where Rio actually kicks Dean’s ass for taking the children instead of the Brio breakup

love (where it wasn't supposed to be) by vuccijl  @lilliloves 5k, complete Rio confronts Dean about cheating in general and Beth in particular. Slight roosters fight vibes which is always enjoyable.

Shared History by brokensatellites @emilykolburn 113k, complete A season 1 re-tell with additional Beth-Rio backstory leading to Rio knowing about Dean’s history of bullshit and his patience has limits

Someone Like You by sunshine83 45k, WIP since 2019 A post 1.05 pancake lie canon-divergent fic where Beth and Rio are horny fools until Rio finds out about the cancer lie

a messy situation by freedomatsea 119k, complete A S2-divergent series where Beth and Rio try to make it work while navigating crime and Dean... deansies

Burn You by HermioneGranger1960  @medievaldarling ​ (OMG this is literally me discovering these are the same person!!! <3) 1k, complete A post 2.01 one-shot where Dean pins his infidelity on Beth and Rio gives him a little talk

Do Not Collect $200 by linzackles @mrslackles 242k, complete Rio calls Dean out on his actions (and Beth clearly doesn’t appreciate the ingerence)

Losing game by Niham87 174k, WIP since 2020 Dean is literally the worst, so... (mind the tags, lots of cw)

Filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake by s_t_c_s @sothischickshe 26k, WIP since 2021 Beth pays Rio to provide evidence of Dean’s cheating so she can file for divorce, so technically that would fit the definition

Say your prayers, you’ll need every single one by blameitonmyjuice 5k, WIP since 2019 Established Brio, Dean loses it and kidnaps Beth

blanket me by softbrio @softbrio 2k, complete Dean’s physically abusive to Beth and Rio is shockingly not a fan of it

Ultimately, I feel weird putting it on this post, but there’s also some dick!Dean bashing here:

A part of it brought to you by yours truly 151k, complete

151 notes • Posted 2021-06-19 16:17:11 GMT

#2

💌 your favorite line (or lines) from a fic you've written

Harper, no, we said no fave questions, this is too hard!!!! It actually took me longer to pick a line than to hanwrite it, lol!

Anyhoo, I love literally every line in this fic, but I have a soft spot for this particular section (please ignore how shitty my handwriting is, I have cramps in my hand now)

Milestone asks

159 notes • Posted 2021-09-08 16:03:20 GMT

#1

Tutorial on how to install the floating commenting box on AO3

So for those of us who love live-commenting fics, there exists an amazing script tool created by @ravenel​ and described on this post. Basically the commenting box is floating as you scroll down the text so you can quote/write as you read without incessantly going and returning to/from a text editor.

I made this tutorial on how to install it on either Chrome or Firefox for @missmaxime​ but then I figured I might as well share it here so anyone else who’s interested could use it.

If you’re using another browser than Chrome or Firefox but know how to add extensions on it, then you can still follow part 2 of this tutorial since Tampermonkey is available for other browsers as well.

Step 1: Install Tampermonkey web extension on your browser

(You can skip this part if you’re used to install browser extensions)

On Chrome: Type chrome://extensions in the address bar. It normally shows your installed extensions.

Click on the menu button in the top left corner of this page. At the bottom there's an button linking to the Chrome Web Store. Click it.

In the web store search bar, type “tampermonkey” and select the first result.

You should land on a page looking like this:

Click on "add to chrome" and follow the installation procedure (you'll have to grant a few permissions for the process to fully complete).

On Firefox: Type about:addons in the address bar. You land on a page listing your already installed addons (if you have any).

In the search bar at the top, type "tampermonkey" and enter. It should bring you to another page looking more or less like this:

See the full post

243 notes • Posted 2021-01-17 22:33:12 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

Why EVE is The Best

Heads up. I’m basically gonna sperg about this whole film, so spoilers for this twelve year old film. Enjoy!

Wall-E is one of my favorite films; I would gladly kill and extort to bring the sequel I had in mind to life in any way; animatics would pleased me if nothing else but anyways. I love this film and one of the biggest reasons for that is the character EVE, a character that stuck in my mind longer than most if you can believe. So, better time than any, Imma just ramble about why I love this character. And, before we begin, I’m gonna say EVE is a girl, Wall-E is a boy due to my brain believing they were respectively female- and male-coded for most of my life but do NOT let this stop you from envisioning them however you please. If they’re both girls or boys to you, all power to you. With that said, here we go...

The Design

Now I’m not saying she has the greatest robot design ever; I don’t look at eggs and remember better days when I got to watch that film for the first time in my old house. But Pixar certainly knew how to make simplicity work to perfection. Simple shape, simple mechanics, simple movements. All feeling right at home with her coming from the more advanced future, especially compared to Wall-E where he’s literally a more grounded looking robot. Thematically, this design is fucking genius. A scouter robot with the ability to fly with ease and yet carries a literal arm cannon with incredible fire power. Both expressing how she can have her head in the clouds, observational when necessary, and yet trigger happy amidst the slightest inconvenience or surprise. *MWAH* What the fuck? It’s a great duality where the hard, more logical exterior possesses a sweet and approachable core just waiting to be shown and it’s wonderful seeing Wall-E, this literal block head, fumble his way into having a simple conversation with her. Now I can’t really disassemble how the programming in Wall-E works where they can behave like humans but follow objectives like a machine... but, I can try. With this scene.

Now take this with a grain of salt, the inferencing is more to the imagination otherwise the fun of this movie is tarnished. But from this scene, it’s clear that in this universe robots can show feelings for one another but can’t be romantic with humans because they can recognize human emotions and reactions but do so in an automated sense. The film expresses their curiousity just enough to where their reactions to human things and functions are within reason and yet doesn’t toy with the viewer’s believability. EVE is capable of responding to Wall-E’s advances but doesn’t 100% reciprocate his feelings because Wall-E isn’t her directive (least not yet, that’s for later). Not to mention, she isn’t that adept at romance unlike Wall-E who, by being alone with Earth’s technology, was able to learn and process human romance through the Hello Dolly VHS and potentially other things over the years. So this conversation works with the two having their limited knowledge, we don’t know how much they know, and the film keeps focus on having a balance between somewhat logical reactions and minor impulsive humane reactions that makes them alive but only just enough so it doesn’t feel like them being robots is pointless... Phew. Speaking of which, you know what isn’t pointless? Her motherfucking buster cannon.

Her whole ass arm houses a gun capable of nuking an entire cargo ship in a matter of seconds and it makes sense that she’d have it cuz how can a scouter robot defend themselves but beyond that, it’s just so goddamn cool. Like yeah, I can express how this symbolizes about America and... how they want to fuck their guns or something but who cares. She has a FUCKING ARM CANNON and it’s badass, end of discussion.

The Hanger Moment

Much as I love the moment where the two are in space flying, I honestly say that this moment where the two are in Wall-E’s house during the darude sandstorm is incredibly important. EVE is reasonably taken to his home and naturally, when the lights come on, she looks through the stuff he gives to her. She gets to take it easy for once, things can be quiet after she blew up a whole ship, have a giggle or two at the trinkets he’s collected, with the cigarette lighter being a good tool that’ll be used for later.

She’s curious, bouncy, still a bit quick on the draw, but is nonetheless taking in a lot this robot on Earth has to offer. It’s this and the small 1v1 they had before that is a lovely seedling to not only their connection but EVE’s development on her own, where we hardly need dialogue to show how she’s feeling about it all. And yeah, I’m with plenty of people to say that if this movie was just about the two of them being on Earth it probably would’ve been the greatest Pixar film of all time for many. Fortunately the plot kicks in when Wall-E shows EVE the plant, forcing her to go dormant, thus pulling Wall-E into an adventure on the Axiom ship. And I say fortunately cuz this is where EVE goes from good to great as a character.

The Axiom

While it’s something where we all wish that this film wasn’t the densly plotted, society driven second half, I say the second half on the Axiom carries the film’s themes and character building for EVE to good heights. We enter EVE’s territory, the slick, iPhoney synthetic world where humans have become literal potatoes and everything’s more or less automated. For EVE, the first half of the film lets us see the more playful side of her and doesn’t mind being around Wall-E, but isn’t immediately won over with the concept of love. She’s still goal-oriented and trying to keep the two stuck on Earth would’ve made her arc as open-ended and ambiguous as The Good Dinosaur. Time on the axiom puts her original sense of thinking to the test when Wall-E tags along.

To share the bigger picture real quick, the human element of Wall-E is complimentary to Wall-E and EVE’s humane behavior. To quote RealJims’ honestly flawless analysis, “What better way to show the humanity in a robot than to be among humans that act like robots?” For Wall-E the robot, this works perfectly as a fish out of water story. His time on Earth affects not only a few humans, but other robots like MO and the secretary machine, as minor as it seems.

So when Wall-E seemingly fucks things up, EVE is rightfully peeved. His slip ups especially with the Diagnostics scene tests her goal-oriented nature and patience, to a tasteful comedic strength. Doesn’t mean they now turned Wall-E stupid, the film makes sure the monkey wrenches are only accidents from someone severely out of the loop of things. This leads them and us well into

The Depths of Space

The scene where Wall-E gets launched in the escape pod thrills me with joyfully painful suspense every time. EVE making a mad dash to him as Wall-E madly tries to get out of the soon exploding pod, leading to it exploding and we get this from EVE. The wide eyes of terror followed by the whispering “No”s gives me shivers every time I see it in full. 

Now one could argue her concern was more for the plant getting destroyed, but I say she was more frightened at the idea of both Wall-E and the plant getting nuked. While Wall-E did make her mad, she nonetheless cared about him and wasn’t expecting the tiny bot asshole to send him to death. So it’s like, “Oh no, both my purpose and the one that helped me are both gone.” 

Luckily, thanks to some foreshadowing, Wall-E made it out alive with the plant in safe keeping and EVE seeing Wall-E actually care about her goal makes her beam with joy, being that reasonable spark that brings the two closer together. I mean if your love interest cheated death to help you out, why wouldn’t it? Everything about this moment is what made EVE stick with me long after I watched the film; the emotional journey the director was able to convey with her is so well-built to this point, it’s still amazing how they were able to do it with little dialogue or facial expressions. I especially love the emptiness we get of the two of them in space, where it adds focus to the two of them especially. But my god, that’s only half of it...

The space dance sequence between the two is still one of Pixar’s most gorgeous scenes. The way Wall-E is able to keep up with the fire extinguisher after having trouble in the film’s beginning, the wide shots of space, the lovely glow of the engines, the music. I especially like to think of this scene as a parallel to EVE’s initial flight on Earth. For her, it was that rite of passage after the touchdown and now she gets to share that same moment with someone she’s grown to like or appreciate. Then again, this isn’t the moment where EVE loves Wall-E. We’re close, but we need that one inch to finally show her the truth. That’s when she sees

The Recordings

The moment where EVE gets to see the memories of her time on Earth, including her dormant stasis, is where shit finally clicks. She essentially gets to know how Wall-E felt not only about her, but about love. Even when she couldn’t be there, she sees now that Wall-E cared about her and is able to process what Wall-E processed when he looked at Hello Dolly at one point. Scene also works because getting her directive, or the plant, was generally done and done with, she finally gets time to focus on something else, on her feelings for someone else. This leads well into... the well that leads to...

The Dumpster Moment

The scene with the recordings is where things finally click, but the moment with EVE and Wall-E in the ship’s dump is where it comes together. After getting betrayed yet again by AUTO, EVE’s concerns are now less with the plant and more for Wall-E and thanks to the moment previous, I can totally buy this. It’s teeth gritting seeing her try to rescue a now broken Wall-E from getting ejected into space and losing his energy thanks to a destroyed chip. So when we see her finally toss the plant aside and says Wall-E is her directive now, I tear up. It feels like a genuine, built up declaration on her part; the moment where EVE can rationally return his feelings ten-fold and truly be there for him. But that isn’t all to it, because Wall-E reasonably struggles his way to the plant to show that to save him, they need to get to Earth which means getting the plant back to the core of the ship.

This gives EVE newfound resolve and puts that to the test, where she has to basically defect against AUTO who’s become the physical antagonist of the film. The escape sequence is a bit of a step down since putting humans in danger doesn’t really affect the film’s themes all that well, but I can’t argue that pitting the captain against AUTO is a bad climax. 

The Death to Wall-E

Thinking about this film after so long, it is still pretty fucking shocking to realize how punishing they treat Wall-E in the final act. It’s even more shocking when you realize how the roles have reversed, where Wall-E focuses more on EVE’s goal with the plant instead of EVE herself and vice versa. Then again, I say it’s fair that they did this, to show how much Wall-E was willing to sacrifice for the one he loves which makes the painful wails we hear from EVE feel all the more impactful. Like you’re serious with her as she struggles to accept his death before they reach Earth. And speaking of Earth...

The Finale

Now, I can’t help but argue it’s an unfortunate plothole that EVE is somehow able to fully repair Wall-E in spite of never fixing anything else in the film. Then again, it’s fucking pumping seeing her move quick to put him back together and it’s that final stomp on the heart when, even when he’s fully restored, Wall-E bares no memories of her or anything. You see her desperately try to get him to remember anything only to be met with an emotionless, reset shell. In finally understanding Wall-E’s feelings of love, she can’t really be with him. Until...

True Love’s Kiss Saves the day

I can get scientific with how getting his memories back was possible, but I won’t because the scene just works. It’s quiet, takes it time, and that last eureka moment with the two truly get to hold hands makes up for any scattered logistics. I’d say this is where Wall-E finally gets the love, but the same can be said for EVE, after everything she went through. I’ve admittedly seen a few talk about how the female lead is only valid through the love of another, typically male, but I believe what works 120% here is that the two characters basically have themselves figured out, Wall-E more than EVE, and EVE’s journey is never hindered for a sudden realization to love. She still succeeds in her mission, but the stakes for her have risen once she comes to terms with her newfound feelings and these feelings aren’t out of pocket. Wall-E has his feelings for EVE from the getgo, but dedicates to helping EVE with the goal, even if it means death. The connection they get to have is earned and is what drives the plot. EVE earns what she realizes she wants and that makes her a great female protagonist in my eye.

The Conclusion

Wall-E is a pretty warm movie; a film how the love of two brings humanity to salvation and vice versa. How EVE and Wall-E’s love is synonymous to the intertwining of modern and older technology to shape the world. But honestly, that probably wouldn’t have worked as well without how great they made EVE as a character. Wall-E is great too, but it’s astonishing to see EVE’s journey with Wall-E and show her natural growth of understanding something as warm as romance. Her journey is pretty synonymous to how I feel with the movie overall. The time we get of them on Earth is symbiotic to the time we get in space; we get an intimate journey that expands to a film about society but remains personal and intimate nonetheless. And with EVE, we get this superbly fleshed out character that’s emotive, understanding, and above all gets a resolves that’s awesome to see every time I catch or just think about this film. What else is there to say?

They’re the Best.

tagged by @beguilewritesstuff​

i’m going to change the formatting bcs i’m evil like that and must ramble on, feel free to ignore. as usual, i take these things way to literally and i don’t understand the questions, probably.

tagging: whoever’s into this!

indoor plants or gardens: depends on whether we’re talking in my place, or everywhere. If everywhere, both. If my place, none: i can’t be arsed to take proper care. also i’ve tried to have plants in pots and i tried to Do Things Right and it didn’t work out, so... i gave up. know thyself and thy limits etc

cloud-watching or star-gazing  both yes both, as long as i have proper eye-protection from the sun for option 1.

water or fire ...uuuh.... watching a fire in a hearth etc (i mean, not Nero style, obv) is great? but the ocean too? i don’t understand T_T

paperback or hardcover hardcover: too heavy. but i often use an e-reader.

running or hiking: omg neither. running means dying lungs, Extremely Painful Knees, etc very quickly. Hiking is... idk, everything is bad: i get all the branches in my face, all the rocks start moving when i step on them, etc. Put me in a city and i can walk for hours; put me in nature and i #suffer. i have also been somewhat traumatized by people claiming “Oh come one it’s a small easy walk not even a HIKE” and it was in fact climbing up a small mountain with very narrow, gravely, unstable paths hugging the side of the mountain and if you stumbled, ti meant a fall so SOMEHOW i have become Extra Wary of the word “hiking”

sleeping with socks or without socks although with wouldn’t be a problem. i use a hot water bottle in winter.

fruit or vegetables fruit only if i can use them in a salad, or cook them LIKE a veg.

hanging plants or succulents see above re indoor / outdoor plants. succulents also mean repotting etc; they’re not care-free.

dark wood or light wood both yes both. i have both at home, in the same room.

handwritten or typed typed is way easier to read. ofc if we’re talking postcard, personal letter etc, handwritten is more pleasant, personal touch etc. my handwriting is terrible, btw.

instagram or pinterest: neither. who wants to see my face or what i eat? no one, not even me. pinterest: i don’t even really understand what it’s for apart from thing to filter out of my google & co searches.

braids or pigtails: on me, neither. my hair refuses (because length when it’s short, because it’s not thick enough if not, and in any case it just Won’t Stay In Place)

dc or marvel i’m not super familiar with DC, although Batman is my kind of character.

books or movies why would i choose? my attention span has drastically reduced since childhood, but it means it affects both. 

oceans or meadows: meadows > flowers > sneezing.

forests or fields: see meadows above

sweet or salty oh yeah i’m def not one for sugar.

ice cream or chocolate you... you (person who created this) do know there’s chocolate ice-cream, right? but i’ll go with DARK chocolate. DARK only, 70% cocoa minimum. i can accept salt / pepper / coffee / mint if i MUST, in it. D A R K

hoodies or sweaters: tbh both but a hood is def good at times.

piercings or tattoos: i have or want neither. they’re cool on other people, but i don’t really feel a need for myself. If for other people, both, if for myself, neither.

summer or winter well, the cold is easier to deal with than the heat because once you’re naked you can’t take your skin off, but longer sunlight is good? probably??

boots or sneakers WhaT Am i DOinG How Am i SupPoseD tO KnoW

cars or motorcycles: public transportation ;-) but i have a licence for cars only, not motorcycles.

curls or straight hair: i have curls, if that is the question; on other people, idgaf

castles or cottages to visit? to live in? i mean, castles are super expensive to maintain... and what kind of castle? European Middle Ages? even among those, there is a Wide Variety in architecture. if we’re including more geographical & historical areas... 

sunny days or storms: once again, *bafflement* storms are really cool to watch but can be destructive, and sunny days can be too hot or painful if i don’t have sunglasses but are pleasant if mild...

reptiles or birds: as pets neither. i don't want to be responsible for a living thing, and end up not caring for them properly because i’m too tired / not in the mood etc. otherwise, i’m totally cool with both. however... birds are dinosaurs are reptiles (private joke moment!!! @pixelbypixelfanfic​ do you remember that museum). a baby bird pooped on my once, idk if that counts. oh and i got adult bird poop on me too. this hasn’t happened, yet, with reptiles.

disney or nickelodeon: (what about if you’re not the USA) i have never been into what we think of Disney (princesses and THE CONSTANT SINGING), and don’t have nickelodeon here

strawberries or watermelon: well i’m not into fruit or sweet things, as previously established. Watermelon can go into salads, and strawberries one in a while are okay i guess?

essays or posters... i don’t understand. posters go on wall? do you people put essays on walls??? what IS the question *sobs*

phones or laptops or desktop desktop because big screen, big keyboard, separate mouse: more comfortable. if not, laptop. if i’m desperate and far away from both, phone.

glass or stone i drink in glasses, i wear glasses, i have Pretty Decorative Stones. ik, what are we talking about?

dark or light: if it’s a computer screen setting, dark. if we’re in winter and outside, light, otherwise it’s too cold. i need context!!1!1!1!

photos or paintings: uuuuh. i have a few paintings from my grandfather around, but not photos. that's, um. i mean. photos... that’s... old? or are we talking about stuff that stays on your hard drive? i have a bunch, from trips. as long as my face isn’t there, cool; i take them to remember. i’ve found that the action of taking the pic was enough to help me remember, not necessarily looking at them again: because i make the conscious decision of taking the pic, thinking about what i want to preserve,et c, somehow it sets the brain drive into memory mode, at last better than if i didn’t take pics.

circuses or theatres: neither; RL, live shows make me uncomfortable.

reading or writing i do both but i only write fanfic.

dogs or cats i like both, i would have neither.

poetry or novels poetry just leaves me cold. i know, i know, how dare i.

monsters or ghosts why choose?? (shaniac though)

thrift shops or libraries: i like browsing through thrift shops, and i’ve lost my voracious Real Grownup Book reading obsession that i had in my younger years. i like looking at silly mugs and cute objects and sometimes i’ll buy something, and Do Good at the same time when they’re charity shops!

fiction or non-fiction both, although these days fiction is mostly fic.

Hey! I can't seem to find the post you made with all the books references in Illuminate Me and the reason behind it? Is it deleted?

I know that there is an incomplete one floating around in my reply tag, and it should be in the Illuminate Me tag, but tumblr’s search features are so bad that I went back to the original word doc of the complete list, so prepare for that particular storm lol.  Quoted/Referenced Reading List (In Order of Appearance) Shakespeare: Macbeth I opened on a Macbeth quote (‘When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lighting, or in rain’) because I wanted to start with something immediately relatable. Most readers were introduced to more ‘dramatic’ plays through Macbeth. Beyond that, they were introduced to the concept of pathetic fallacy, which I think plays nicely with Tony as a character (a man who is CONSTANTLY imparting emotion onto inanimate objects…and then actually giving them their own emotions) and with one of the core problems in IM, which is deciding the emotions of others for them. I was hoping to get the ‘feel’ of that without having to lean too far into the actual concept. 

Bonus: I picked this quote in particular because of the importance of threes in Tony’s life (his core group of friends, iterations of the reactor, number of times reborn, his bot children VS his AI children, the number of lovers or almost lovers he has in the fic, etc). Milton: Paradise Lost ‘What is dark within me, illuminate!’ is a modernization of the original Milton quote ‘what is dark within me, illumine’ for readability. I actually feel a bit bad about changing this considering how many people think this is the original quote now. This wound up being a central (and title) quote somewhat by accident. I’m fond of it because of how much I liked a different one that I had originally wanted for Tony’s thoughts of the reactor: ‘yet from those flames, no light, but rather darkness visible’. I had originally wanted to start off on a sadder note, one that showed how much Tony hated losing his humanity, and so the flames of Hell and their physics-bending concept seemed thematically appropriate. I had always intended to eventually invert the imagery – instead of Extremis being (to Tony) flames capable of extinguishing light, the reactor would become a water-like blue light that couldn’t be choked or recreated by any of the shadows that pursued Tony in his life. I picked Milton SPECIFICALLY for the imagery of light and shadows. 

But, man, listen. Darkness visible is a great concept, but it’s also tired. It has, as you’ve noted, been discussed to death. So as I was reading ‘Milton’s darkness visible and Aeneid 7’ to refamiliarize myself with some of the broader themes attached to that particular piece of imagery, I wound up thinking about how to invert the darkness itself instead of the overall concept. The flames of Hell extinguish light instead of having to exist away from it. It is a bad that cannot be penetrated by good. 

Instead of chasing away shadows, which would be implied by shining a light ON them, the request Tony makes here is to actually invert the darkness - to have it illuminate in and of itself. It’s becoming something better instead of being removed or forgotten. On the flip side of that, the darkness within isn’t growing as light weakens, but rather under its own force. Two forces equal in nature and origin in a person. It’s a different take on lighting than the one most critics hammer home. Long ramble is long, but this was the basis for using that quote. It grew from there to have many different meanings, however the core has always remained. All in all I’m pleased with it.

EM Forster: A Room with a View Very forgiving even in its satirical takes on human nature. A lot of passages are very therapy-quotable in their urging to accept the inevitability of causing some harm in life. It plays on a lot of the same concepts with light being obvious metaphor for good and evil that Paradise Lost does, but softens them into more realistic shades of human existence. Isaac Asimov: Foundation Continuing on with themes of rigid morality vs the flexibility and romanticism of humanity, we have Asimov, master of machines and the three rules of robotics! There are lots of quotable epigrams in this beast. The quote pulled from this has two readings depending on what you assume of the man who has said it. If you see him as manipulative, there’s an insidious underpinning of killing off your own morals. If you see him as a kind man, then you could read it as foregoing morals in place of empathy. Tony’s therapist loves a very specific brand of double speak that lets Tony work through the conversation purely through interpretation. Tolstoy: Anna Karenina Tolstoy’s prose is lengthy...so so lengthy, but Anna Karenina is worth the read as long as you relate to at least one of its major characters. Frankly, I think you can choose to read a single character’s plot arc and leave it at that. It’s mostly a novel that is interesting, not because of its plot, but because of its study of relationship dynamics. Tolstoy was really invested in picking apart the idea of what makes a ‘family’ and, beyond that, what makes a class. It’s refreshing to see so much of the critique occurring within the lived experience of the characters instead of through a narrator or outside punishing moral forces. Baudelaire: Windows and Benediction I cannot recommend enough reading multiple translations of Baudelaire poems (fleursdumal.org has a wonderful array available). Benediction is a personal favourite. I love me some malevolence wrapped up in religion. Dante: The Divine Comedy There’s a lot of bleak humor in Dante if you look for it. Several interpretations insist of making each piece excessively grim dark, but faithful translations tend to have a hint of humor in them. It works well for engraving War Machine’s spine - a benediction and a mockery of human limitations. I try to pick quotes that not only fit the scene, but would still fit into the context of the grander themes from whence they came...unless I hate the author. Tennyson: The Lady of Shallot “I am sick of shadows” vs “I am half-sick of shadows”. Tony’s expressing more frustration here with being alone and his passive involvement in that loneliness. Another quote I feel vaguely bad about changing, haha. The Lady of Shallot is a very nice classical piece that I’m sad isn’t taught in schools alongside Hamlet. There are some nice Ophelia parallels here. I wanted a feminine influence on Tony’s loneliness and one that is somewhat youthful despite his age. Yeats: Vacillation I fucking hate Yeats as a person. That said, the man can write. The man can REALLY write. His pieces are almost always layered to the point of absurdity and he’s perfect to swiping quotes with multiple meanings. Definitely Tony’s kind of author. Goethe: Faust Speaks for itself and in the author’s notes on its reference.  Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamasov IMO a book that deserves all the acclaim of Anna Karenina and then some. Very VERY Russian in its ethical debates of, as always, religious morality vs free will. Also dips into familial struggles and patricide, because it wouldn’t be a Russian classic if it didn’t contain some deeply buried bitter resentment towards paternalism. I’m going off-script here, but this is a fucking excellent book. I don’t really have words for how much I enjoy how Dostoyevsky explores the concepts that he does. Shakespeare: Julius Ceasar Shakespeare: Twelfth Night Twelfth Night deserves more credit for its development and maintenance of an enigma. Twelfth Night has charisma in spades both because of and in spite of the exceedingly petty actions of some of its characters. It is also a refreshingly simple take on love for the sake of it. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Stephen King: Lisey’s Story I consider Lisey’s Story to be the best of King’s work. The man has his obvious writing ticks and his even more obvious issues as an author. Lisey’s Story contains many of them, but navigates them far better than any of his other work. The monster here is all in the mind and is too vast to truly see or understand. It’s perfectly representative of a creeping sense of inescapable horror. It was fun to flip it on its head with a reference here – Tony isn’t terrified of dying, but he is terrified of his inescapable enjoyment of Bucky’s company. Maria’s family saying is inspired by Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass Armitage: The Death of King Arthur A genuinely fantastic classic tale of heroism, filled with all the drama, tragedy, and sacrifice that you’d expect with strongly feminine undertones. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. TS Eliot: The Wasteland Excellent piece of poetry with many layered meanings and dual interpretations. I can’t really articulate my thoughts on The Wasteland, but I reference an essay at the end of this list that does that for me. Oedipus Rex Rupert Brooke: Safety Not directly quoted but obscurely referenced through Bucky and Tony’s war conversations + Bucky’s conversation about, you got it, being ‘safe’ with his therapist. His poetry is about WWI and is, largely, idealistic. Safety is…not quite an exception to that. His other poetry contains a certain sense of honour and duty, whereas safety, maintaining a seemingly light tone, has nothing of the sort. It is safety in the soul – something untouchable by the horrors of war or death. It treats that as a ‘house’, which leant itself to the article Tony send Bucky. Armine Wodehouse: Before Ginchy Not directly quoted but obscurely referenced through Bucky and Tony’s war conversations + Bucky’s conversations with his therapist. This is also WWI poetry, though far darker than Brooke’s work. It discusses the parts of the heart and soul soldiers lose. It is an extremely good piece AND references Dante’s Inferno. I had to work it in somewhere even if I didn’t want to directly quote it. Meyer and Brysac: Tournament of Shadows Referenced several times over in discussion of war, the great game, and British military history. Beautifully self-aware account of Britain’s insistence on rewriting history after the fact and the tiny hilariously embarrassing moving pieces that shaped what is often considered the heyday of espionage. Murakami: Kafka on the Shore I love Murakami’s response to questions about understanding the novel as a whole. There are no solutions, only riddles presented, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes place. It’s a great lens through which to view the book and individual passages taken out of it. Reminds me of The Wasteland having to be read in totality before you can begin picking it apart, after which each individual piece can be read of its own. Kafka on the Shore, with its musings on the uncertainty of fate and redemption, was the perfect book to outline Tony’s horrifying realization, which he is desperately suppressing, that he might be coming to accept Bucky’s feelings. This quote in particular, while I would’ve used it anyway, is also a great callback to the first chapter and its storms. Chapter 29 is a turning point. Beyond it there are some intentional quote contrasts that are probably more easter eggs than they are anything else. Yeats: A Dialogue of Self and Soul Great contrast with Vacillation. Some parts of self and soul are used in that poem and thematically they are connected and contrasted - self and heart vs self and soul. The symbolism and imagery in Vacillation is really on point and layered, but Self and Soul is peak Yeats for its reversal of the typical ‘the soul is pure and bluntly honest and the body is tainted and bad’ in Christian works. Also Self and Soul’s broader context is scrumptious considering the debate poems history of relying on divine forgiveness and lack thereof instead of on forgiveness of the self. 

It was fun to give this poem a double meaning in IM as both hugely ominous and ultimately pointing to the later forgiveness Tony receives from himself through the divine (if the soul stone can be called that) in the heavens (space!). There’s also another fun twist to ‘who can distinguish darkness from the soul’ in its contrast with ‘what is dark within me, illuminate’. To take that a step further, Vacillation was the beginning of the path of forgiveness for Bucky (understanding Tony’s heart…somewhat literally as he slowly gets closer and closer to the reactor itself), while Self and Soul is a final step (re: Bucky being presented the final hurdle of Tony deciding to move forward alone). Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha Hesse is wonderfully blunt at times. I gotta admit I love German takes on spiritual self-discovery because they always seem to tend towards much more straightforward answers than other countries. Hesse’s relationship with Buddhism in literature vs his lived experience is also really intriguing. Anyway, Siddhartha, in its humanizing of Gods, is wonderful contrast to the consistent imagery of the untouchable and unknowable forces of good and evil in previously quoted works. It has stopped bringing humanity to the divine and has started placing the divine within humanity. Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey One of the ultimate poetic epics. Now that we are nearing the end, I’m going overtime with making the grander themes of this whole piece hit home. A lot of IM was built on a foundation of poetic epics, of heroism, and a bit of Greek tragedy. The Odyssey embodies all of those things beautifully. It also suited Thor too well to pass up. Yeats: An Irish Airman Forsees His Death Ah, Yeats. Very blatant foreshadowing here that is keeping with the foreshadowing from Self and Soul. Fate has, up till this point, been a bit of a question. It has been ‘when will it come to me’ and ‘how will I avoid or overcome it’. Now fate is a set point. It is knowable and present. ‘I know I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above’. This goes for the true onset of Infinity War and for Tony’s feelings towards Bucky – when he had no one, he allowed Bucky in after essentially promising himself he wouldn’t. If that’s not an accidental admittance of love, nothing is. Henley: Invictus Absolutely fantastic poem. Continuing with the heavy fate themes coming into this climax. Now that Tony knows his fate, truly knows it, he is choosing to take it on directly. Agamemnon (Anne Carson’s Traslation if you prefer a more modern language approach, Lattimore is you prefer a classic) Agamemnon is forgotten all too often in the world of poetic epics and it’s a damn shame. I cannot say enough good things about it. I always wanted to use lines from Agamemnon in a Tony fic because the Cassandra parallels were too perfect to resist. The chorus in this play was also a perfect narrative device for interacting with something of a hive mind. Yeats: The Wanderings of Oisin Another poetic epic. Nice contrast with The Odyssey, The Death of King Arthur, and Agamemnon. Here the dialogue is between an aged hero and a saint looking into the hero’s past. It has the kind of reflective and aged mood necessary for this stage of the story, but is actually a poem I sortof hate. The line ‘And a softness came from the starlight, and filled me full to the bone’ is absolutely gorgeous, though. Some final inspiration pieces:

The Penelopiad 

The Iliad 

House of Leaves (for surrealism in the final chapters) 

Dante at Verona (used in an author’s note as an intentional jab at the dull uninspired nature of the this particular take on Dante. Repurposed quote, essentially) 

a broke machine just blowin’ steam by themikeymonster (great character study of Bucky) 

Frank Kermode’s essay “Eliot and the Shudder” (inspiration behind Tony’s entire interaction with literature)

Fanfic Asks 5

This one is for @louthestarspeaker who asked for D U X, @misssquidtracy who asked for H M O and @janetm74 who asked for W. Thank you for your kind questions ::hugs you all so much::

-o-o-o-

D. Do you prefer gen or romance?

If you asked me this two years ago, I would have said gen. Now…I see value in both. There is something just nice about having a couple who know each other so well that they can just fall into each other’s arms at the end of the day.

But I’ve always been a fan of bromance, two guys who will do anything for each other whether they are related or not. I’m a child of eighties TV and grew up on those kinds of relationships. Kirk and Spock are a prime example (yeah, I know they are from the 60s, but I didn’t exist then and the most of the movies came out in the eighties) .

Which leads onto the question of slash. I do read slash, but not so much in this fandom beyond a little Virgil/Brains. My heart truly lives in the friendship or family department. Even my ship could be considered monogamous happily ever after. This is not because I have any objections to one night stands or flings or whatever anyone enjoys, more of a case of I enjoy it (and Virgil’s character calls for it).

I’m a long term fanfic reader and have stumbled across a lot in my time in fandom. I just choose to read what I like and let everyone have their fun their way. I like a little whump, comfort and loyal and devoted friends. I guess I love the idea that people can stick together through anything.

As for writing, I like a challenge and will step outside my comfort zone time to time just to see if I can do it. However, you will always find a brother hanging around when Virg gets injured :D

 U. Do you prefer AUs or canon compliant fics?

I’m pretty open to all sorts of things…except for character breaking. If the character isn’t in character then it is no longer the character.

::chews nails worrying if I’ve broken Virgil’s character beyond redemption::

If it is well-written and hooks me, I’ll read pretty much anything (within my limits).

Writing…AUs require a lot of world building. My AUs tend to be branches off canon that diverge away, taking the built world with them. Things like coffee-shop AUs are a bit beyond my interest level (especially since I don’t drink coffee).

Marks & Wings is my first completely AU fic series. I did have to do some world building, but they are basically the Tracy bros with wings (except for Gordo, he is considerably different). To be honest, I use that universe as a place to write when I’m completely stuffed. The writing is more sensory than my other fics and I can just get arty farty and play with words.

But, as always, whatever I feel like at the time is what gets written.

 X. What fandom have you written the most fics for?

That would be Thunderbirds fandom. According to Ao3, I’m at 132 Thunderbirds fics with 750,000 words. Reactions plus a few other fics/chapters are yet to be posted.

That is over twice my combined other fandoms, heading toward three times. In two years.

You guys have just inspired me so much. Look what you’ve done! ::hugs you all like crazy::

 H. What is the longest fic you’ve written?

Written in 2003, The Asgard Sequence at 80,000 words (I thought it was shorter at 75,000 ::frowns at FF.net::) was my third Stargate SG-1 fanfic. Full of cliffhangers, it basically whumps Jack O’Neill within an inch of his life while exploring the Asgard people. Lots of plot written by the seat of my pants and nowhere at the quality I’m achieving today, but it remains my most popular fic on FF.net and I still get the occasional comment even 17 years after it was published. It was a landmark fic for me.

The question is…is there enough plotline left in the Kermadec Fic to overtake it? I don’t know. Possibly not, but we’ll see. I do have the tendency to ramble nowadays :D

 M. How do you come up with titles?

Write fic first and work out what to call it when at least partly written. I usually look for something short that sums up what the fic is about combined with an inkling of interest that might help draw the reader in. Sometimes I structure the fic (if I’m planning it) in a certain way that leads to the title.

Here are some working titles versus the final titles just for a little fun (the file names are all that remains – first name first, final name second):

Scott and Jeff – Suits

Riguadagnare – Il Mago

Virg and Gordo – A Good Day

The Visitor – Sky Candy

One of the brothers being ticklish – His Part

Marry Me – The Proposal

Hold Still – Lucky Shot

Gentle Showers – Gentle Rain

The Glacier – Access Denied

Tired Virgil – Tick Tock

Tropical rain is warm – Warm Rain

Veggie’s shower fic – To Hurt Us

Just a few from my computer. I still have several that don’t have titles at all.

 O. Is there any fandom you’ve been into that you haven’t written fic for? Why not?

Definitely. I’ve read:

Farscape

Avengers

How to Train Your Dragon

Arrow

Stargate Atlantis (did start a fic, haven’t finished it – also roleplayed a bit as Rodney McKay)

Sherlock

All the Next Gen Star Trek series (did dabble a little, but never finished anything, my heart lies in TOS)

There are probably more that I can’t think of at the moment. With the exception of Farscape and the Trek series, all of the above were read in the last ten years. They were simply relief from motherhood really. I love fanfic in general, hardly read anything else nowadays, but I wasn’t in the right place to write during my forays into the above fandoms. I was also very focussed on my professional art business.

TAG hit me at a point where I was struggling, in desperate need and I went down like a ton of bricks.

 W. Have you ever written anything that you are embarrassed by today?

Considering the thirty years since I started, sure, there are some fics that are a bit crappy. Heh, I still write crappy stuff from time to time ::eyes Reactions and kicks it with a toe::

But embarrassed? I may have been when I was younger. Especially outside of fandom. But now…I’m a perfectionist who has come to terms (mostly) that my stuff is never going to be perfect. All my stuff has had its purpose and is a step up the learning curve – that goes for everything.

Having said that, I do find myself hesitating to mention the one or two slash fics I have written in the past in other fandoms.

Mentioning that I wrote for Knight Rider gets the oddest looks. I wrote two slash fics in that fandom, but they are close to what I write here in content and plotlines.

I have also written a few explicit scenes in this fandom (of varying quality ::rolls eyes:: ).

Mentioning fanfic outside of fandom has its challenges and when it comes to the above mentions, these are likely not the ones I’d highlight to my workmates (though they all know I write fanfic). I had to stop myself from posting a link to Gentle Rain on Facebook a while back because while I’m happy with its novelish length and content, it does have that one scene…

So, yeah, maybe a little wary of what other people might think of things content-wise. Writing-wise, I’m fairly confident, except when I get the wibblies ::eyes floppy Virg and John…just John…no other Tracy gives me as much strife as Johnny::

-o-o-o-

Thank you to all the wonderful peeps who asked me all these questions. I hope I haven’t bored you silly with my answers (or scared you off with the last one ::chews nails:: ).

I also hope I haven’t missed anyone. Poke me if I have and I will apologise profusely and answer asap.

::eyes word count on questions:: Well, I’ve written 3,500 words about myself ::gulp::

And it is heading toward 1.30am with work tomorrow.

Nutty

(saluting off)

director's cut top guide? I don't have a section in specific pick your favorite I guess I love the whole thing

Awwwww thank you. 💗😊 For the compliment, the interest, and the guidance.  Additionally thanks because I just discovered I didn’t update this fic in October like I thought I did! It’s still in the status it had in July. So uh. I’ll be getting right on that. ˋ( ° ▽、° )

I think I’m gonna go with a passage back near the start, in the first half of chapter 4, the one where Tifa’s getting Vincent out of his coffin. I like how it came out and it’s pretty important, and if I’ve rambled about it at all, it wasn’t recently.

-

There’s a push-pull effect fundamental to this scene–first physically, with Tifa moving and destroying actual barriers, and Vincent repeatedly attempting to withdraw. But also on the level of Tifa attempting a series of verbal sallies, which Vincent initially rebuffs and then ignores by vampirically pulling the covers over his head and generally putting the passive in passive-aggressive.

But after telling her to go ahead and set the building on fire with him in it, Vincent gets his lid on and settles on being inert, and Tifa gets to do a monologue.

There are a lot of speeches in this fic, honestly, because of the precedent set by canon/the kinds of characters I’m working with, but most of them are nowhere near this long, and even though Tifa’s trying to achieve a specific rhetorical objective here, they’re generally not quite this honest.

“It’s easy to decide to die,” she told him, at length. “It’s easy to stop fighting when there doesn’t seem to be any hope. I know.

“But you’ll always regret it. You know that. If you’d been brave enough to choose Lucrecia over the Turks before Hojo got his grubby claws into her, maybe none of this would ever have happened. If she’d been brave enough to choose you sooner, it might have been okay. Not choosing is almost always a bad choice. If you come out of hiding, more things will happen—things that can’t unhappen. I know that’s frightening. But things happen without you, too. When you’re not there. When you do nothing.”

Tifa rocked back on her heels. “You can’t make the world go back to the way it was before, get back the same happiness or hope from your memories…not even if you could wind back time.”

Here Tifa is combining her intimate knowledge of Vincent’s circumstances with her own situation to create a sort of…weaponized empathy.

She can’t afford for Vincent to not listen to her, because she refuses to either give up on her mission or kill him, so when the normal approach fails she falls back on contingency and proceeds to run absolutely roughshod over all his personal boundaries.

Now, being able to wield future information against people this way is one of the major features of this general genre of time travel story, particularly when (like Tifa here) the traveler had level-ups, but didn’t get to carry them into New Game Plus. Tifa later uses it against Tseng with no artfulness whatsoever.

But that kind of blunt, bludgeoning use of intimate knowledge is a power game; it’s not how you treat a friend. So Tifa spends a lot of this speech, especially the opening, drawing connections between her experience and Vincent’s, exposing herself emotionally as much as can reasonably be managed without going off on any Tifa-centric tangents.

Being displaced in time and separated from everything you cared about is relevant, here. And she’s also able to bring her personal experience with feeling helpless and trapped–not by the sort of clear antagonistic obstacle you can batter down with your fists but by the certainty that every possible course of action is Terrible and Wrong and so you can’t act, because you can’t choose–she specifically frames it in terms of having to decide between binary options, because that’s how we’ve seen her experience it wrt i.e. ‘talking to Cloud about how his brain is weird.’

The experience is similar enough to Vincent’s, especially his not-initiating of important relationship conversations with Lucretia at the beginning, for these terms to work for communication purposes, but it’s very definitely Tifa’s experience being mapped onto Vincent’s here, and proffered to ameliorate the inherent violence of what she’s doing.

Her coping mechanism for that trapped feeling, though, is to distract herself with Doing Something Constructive that allows her to avoid the issue without feeling like she’s stuck.

There’s a certain extent to which allowing time to process or grieve is important, and Tifa is bad at allowing it, largely I think because she’s very aware of the danger of getting mired in paralysis and ruminating on the bad thing until it’s all that exists. Vincent more than anyone else in the cast is defined by his choice to identify with his trauma, and while Aerith is the one most defined by trying not to do that, Tifa’s far enough to that end to create a conflict in viewpoint even when nothing vitally important is at stake.

I also included a dialogue ping to the place where she talks about this in the Advent Children movie, though if you’ve been following my opinions on ffvii any time at all you probably know I have so many problems with thedecisions made with Tifa in that film. Even the parts that areconsonant with her established characterization require her to have rolled back mostof her development from the OG.

The part where she doesn’t come with Cloud on the rescue mission shebullies him into is so utterly backward and the opposite of her establishedbehavior and values and just basic logic that I have to sort of write around it,because I can’t accept that it happened. But if we ignore that bit, and the amount of self-centeredness in the harangue, some elementsof the interaction have potential.

Because if nothing else it’s the most explicit verbal treatment in the Compilation of the recurring theme of people being ‘stuck.’ Not by bars and walls and certain death, but by the prisons inside their heads.

“But…there are still possibilities. Still things you can do to make the world better. Her choices…they weren’t your fault. But whatever you’re blaming yourself for right now…lying here until you die won’t make it better. The biggest sin of all, to me, is not trying to make things better.

“You aren’t a monster, Vincent. Nothing Hojo did to your body, nothing Lucrecia did to bring you back, could make you one. As long as you have your mind, you decide. And it’s what you decide to do that makes the difference between a human and anything else.”

She’s hitting hard, here: call to action, absolution, extremely targeted personal affirmation, clarification that she really does know what’s up with him, new information that Lucrecia was involved with his current status, and finally, optimistic conceptual framework imposed on the situation, since Vincent certainly isn’t capable of that himself.

This treatment of Vincent’s situation vis-a-vis humanity is, of course, also very relevant to the ensuing plot-central question of what Sephiroth is, and whether he has the power to make good life choices. Which Tifa is not nearly as sure of as with Vincent, since while she stands by the principle that it’s a matter of choice she knows for a fact that Vincent can make good ones, but has certainly never seen evidence with Sephiroth.

And then of course there’s Genesis, who would love to get everyone to accept that his sins are a function of what rather than who he is, and drag down with him anyone he can reach, and who by his very effort to sell the idea makes it seem less likely.

I’ve excerpted only Tifa’s dialogue and some of the tags from the rest of the passage, because her narration gets lengthier and isn’t what I’m focusing on for this commentary.

She waited. But the man in the box didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. “Lucrecia is still alive,” she told him. “Preserved in crystal. Hidden away. You two really are a pair, aren’t you? And maybe you’re both right to be concerned—she’s got Jenova in her, and you’ve got those things that replaced your Limit Breaks. But they don’t control you.”

[…]

“They don’t control you,” she repeated. “Hojo doesn’t control you. You can choose to do nothing for the rest of your long life if that’s what you really want. But it’s not your destiny. And it’s not what’s right.”

‘It’s not what’s right’ is an interesting line in retrospect, because Tifa’s saying it within a framework of denying Vincent’s reasoning that there’s something somehow virtuous about closing himself off from the world, so he can’t do any more harm. Specifically in the context of assuring him that he has control over his actions, and his Limit Break things don’t.

But in the overall argument, about how his power of self-determination relates to responsibility to the world, it can also be read as a moral condemnation, the suggestion that there is a specific thing that’s right, and Vincent isn’t doing it.

“Sephiroth is an adult now,” she said [….] “They put him in the Shinra military. Made him a General.”

[…] “If Hojo and Jenova have their way, he’ll become a monster soon,” she confided in the coffin. “Maybe there’s no way to change that. Maybe it’s too late for him. Maybe it’s his destiny. But it’s not too late for the rest of the world, not yet. I know that much. Everyone who has the power to fight him has a responsibility to try.”

That’s where her speech winds up–rather abrupt return to her earlier, blown-off argument about Sephiroth imminently killing everybody and how Vincent should help. He doesn’t do anything. He continues to be a box.

So then she punches her way into the coffin.

“What are you?”

She knew it wasn’t her feat of strength that had impressed him, though he probably appreciated the rhetorical force of it.

I really like this line. Describing ‘punching open the box someone’s hiding in at the climax of an inspirational speech’ as a rhetorical device is the kind of thing I find very funny, and I got characterization of both of them and story advancement into the sentence too.

“Tifa,” she said. “Tifa Lockhart.” She held out her right hand. “Get up, Vincent Valentine. The world isn’t done with you yet.”

He let her pull him up onto his feet.

Some obvious symbolism there, fitted into the very important fact that this worked.

Getting Vincent out of his coffin has been the only thing Tifa’s attempted so far in the story that has turned out more or less exactly as planned. Not entirely easily, and not following a step-by-step plot because that’s not Tifa, but without random factors interceding and requiring her to recalculate wildly, make decisions entirely on the fly, and draw up a new set of plans in the aftermath, either.

In a way, the Vincent recruitment section microcosms the fight Tifa’s having with the universe throughout the fic, in her efforts to make things line up so she can get a better outcome to this nightmare scenario she’s been pitched back into: direct, physical actions are persistently vital and necessary, but her real success must always hinge on her particular knowledge, and ability to apply it.

Apply it specifically, thus far, mostly to getting people to take her seriously and do as she says. Because she’s been placed in a position where as useful and important as her personal power is, it’s not the right tool to rely on for her central task. That has to be tackled via community building, in a context that intensely disinclines her to attempt such overtures.

Which in turn invokes one of the several great dichotomies of Tifa’s in-game characterization–the periodic tension between her social impulses, to bind and soothe and promote bonding, and her…reactive impulses, to seize the world in both hands and find something to fight and do and change, so she doesn’t feel helpless in the face of all that is evil.

The parts of her character arc in the game that aren’t actively about Cloud seem to center around being forced to face that both these behavior patterns (especially in their role as coping mechanisms) are capable of being not only inadequate but actively, harmfully inappropriate to particular situations.

And then coping with this fact, and continuing to inhabit these parts of her identity in ways that turn out constructive. E.g., choose caring for Cloud over leading party to do anti-Shinra things that have only the vaguest prospect of actually averting the apocalypse; successfully retrieve his mind from the Lifestream. Help punch Sephiroth to death and stop him from holding back Holy; world saved.

If you try really hard to get a personal moral for Tifa out of the OG that isn’t pretty sexist, it might come down to something like: realize that you might be acting wrongly; then, act. Stay afraid, but do it anyway.

And, optimistically: perhaps you do not have to choose between your faces. Perhaps they are both allowed. Perhaps all of you is allowed. Perhaps you are enough.

One of the things Tifa and Cloud share is needing so desperately to be enough.

In a way that’s a feeling that unites the entire party, in their various ways, except maybe Aerith, depending on how you interpret her relationship to the obligations of being the Last Ancient. But Tifa and Cloud are about the same age and come from the same context and share a major trauma, so it looks particularly similar in them.

And of course there are also ways it looks especially similar between Tifa and Vincent, because they’re the most hopeless romantics in the party. 😆

Comment Cooperative - July 29

Welcome to the Comment Cooperative!

This thread follows in the spirit of the Concrit Commune but has one major difference: reviews in this thread are for giving happy fandom feels to your fellow fanfictioneers.

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hi there, just saw in the tags that you didn‘t like endgame. would you like to expand on that? i am curious to know other people‘s perspective. personally, i liked it. it has flaws, yes, but to me it was enjoyable. if you don‘t feel like answering, that is fine :) have a great day!

oh wow. you really wanna know? okay, but on your own head be it. :o

i’m just joking, i’ll go easy, or at least give you the digest (a vicious lie) version. if you want to see the full extent of my derision and vitriol, you can go to @lowkeysebastianstan, which is the blog where i’ve tried to limit this too. but to give you the not at all short and not so sweet of it, here goes. (endgame spoilers obviously).

the first thing that really set me off was the ending, more precisely, what steve did. it made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and hit me closer to home than most of my followers here since bucky and steve are my fave characters, and the only ship i really have. now, i never thought stucky would become canon, not even a little, i didn’t even hope for it. sure, the representation would’ve been awesome, but there’s no way marvel could’ve done it justice, so it was just as well it was never gonna happen. what i hadn’t prepared for was to what extreme extent they were terrified of the ship and the effect it would have if they were to let it be even a hint that could be interpreted as some emotional connection between them, for 3 films they’re built bucky up as the most important character in steve’s life, he’s risked his own life to save him, he basically eradicated hydra during wwii fueled by grief for him, he was prepared to die for him in tws, he fought his friends and gave up everything for him in cacw, and then he just? leaves? to be with a woman who died of old age and natural causes after a long fulfilling life with another man and family of her own. who specifically told him to fucking move on in tws? yeah, sure. and do not get me wrong, i adore sam wilson, after bucky, and the real steve rogers, he is by far my fave in the cap verse (saving a few spots for my bp and cm peeps in the mcu, but we’ll get to them), and he is the superior choice to pick up the mantle, no doubt about it. (okay, a little doubt, they teased sebastian with that shield for 8 years, they based bucky on the brubaker storyline where he becomes cap, and so i do feel a little torn bc no matter how happy he must be for his friend, and him and mackie are good friends, he must be a little disappointed? but who knows, maybe they’ll do something with that in the series, which would be stupid af bc that would negate the positive leap in representation, and mackie deserves it too, so who the fuck knows, i’ll probably not be around to keep track anyways, and can you tell im rambling), but for steve’s last words to be to sam? while bucky stands and watch in the background? like??? i could go on in (more excruciating) detail, but that was why i linked the blog, there might be a point or two about this on there.

but that was just the start. all through the movie i felt disconnected and uneasy, they made some really weird choices, but i don’t think it was until nat took the plunge that i knew i had an absolute dud on my hands. 

the mcu has done a lot of things right, but their treatment of women is NOT one of them. and oh boy did they go out with a bang. first is the obvious implication, he got to live bc he had “more to live for”, and she didn’t have a family, and ye gods we know she can’t have kids, so why should she live? 

(see, if the bw movie wasn’t in the books, i’d completely get it, if it was to give scarjo her life back, and she wanted nat to be good and dead, sure. actually, when i first watched it, that’s what i thought tbh, that the bw movie was cancelled, so. but it’s not, so she will return. and since that the case it’s just fucked up that they yeeted her off the roster. and sure, some of the bw movie was always gonna be set in the past, but tbh? i don’t see much point in prequels for dead characters, you know that whatever happens won’t affect the outcome for the character at all, and i usually find them completely void of meaning. that might just be me though). and of course the fact that she died the same way gamora went didn’t help. (gamora’s death was maybe the single worst thing in aiw, she was fridged, not for the advancement of one man, but for two (thanos and quill) and it.just.shouldn’t.have.worked.thanos.cannot.love! again, mcu and women? not a good match.) 

then of course, it comes back to steve and how much he doesn’t give a crap about the people close to him in the present, we never see him care or grieve for anyone but peggy, and he could barely spare two tears for nat before it was all business again. and the rest of the team? i think clint cared a little, and banner threw a chair, but that was it. no memorial, not burial, no nothing, it was like she never existed, and she died saving the world just as much as tony, he couldn’t have done jack shit without the soul stone. 

and speaking of women, shuri and okoye? before the trailer dropped i was sure shuri was in this, that we’d get to see her lead in her brother’s stead. i actually did a short lament on this already, here.

carol was terribly underused, after all the oompf about her being there she was barely a blip. but the haircut was fantastic, and the best part of the movie was when she returned at the end.

then there’s nebula and gamora (again). at first i was actually quite pleased that they sort of found a loophole to bring gamora back, but then i thought about it (yes, sometimes i get seduced by the flashy colours too) and yeah. sure. a gamora is there, but she’s void of all the things that makes her interesting and all her development is just gone, everything “our” gamora achieved and experienced is gone, three films worth of arc is worthless. so what then is the point of getting “her” back? i don’t care about this person, i don’t know her. are we gonna see quill just harass her the next film, bc you know, she’s been with him, so why shouldn’t he expect her to just do that now? tbh i wouldn’t be surprised, but now that gunn is back maybe he can save it? not that i’ll be around to keep track though.

then nebula. nvm that time paradox, that’s a whole other fuckfest i’ll get back to, but we had to get to see her get killed too, didn’t we. by her sister, the only person in the world she loves. fucking fantastic, i cannot control my enthusiasm. 

and no, cool as it was, the a-force surrounding parker is not enough to bring this home. it was a cool sight though. (see? i can see the good.)

then of course it’s peggy. a woman he knew for a few months back during the war. (sure they knew each other longer, but i’d say, even if you’re very generous, they can’t have spent more than a couple of months in each other’s company, and they kissed once). who they stripped of all character development and autonomy so that steve could go back and get his “damce”. everything she achieved, every good thing that happened to her, her husband, her family, her advancement in shield, all gone. bc steve must have his happy ending, no matter that she told him to move the fuck on in tws, who cares. 

and then there’s sharon. yeah, they forgot about her, didn’t they. i mean, i was never really on board with that, the whole aunt/niece thing was a bit too weird for me, and this was way before i shipped stucky, but that doesn’t matter. bc they did that, they had them kiss within days after peggy’s death (oooh, look how he cared for peggy), making it clear that this was the beginning of something. (also marvel and several of the actors treated emily like crap, oh yeah, i remember, doesn’t help either.) 

(gods i said this would be short, didn’t i? imagine if i could’ve spent all the words i’ve spent ranting about endgame on my latest chapter? good grief.)

then there’s their so called lgbt representation. 30 seconds of a character that had a total of 60 sconds of screentime in tws lamenting his dead lover? well. i. they wanted credit for that. i just.

then there’s thor. they negated every ounce of development he had in ragnarok, this also goes for aiw, wasn’t happy about that, and made him completely ooc, he just spends his time drinking ab\nd playing fortnite of all things? bold of them to assume that will still be a thing in 5 years, but also? thor? THOR? neglecting his people? his friends? the world? thor? then they of course made him fat, haha, so they could add fat-shaming to the list while they make light and fun of his drinking problems, his grief and his ptsd. awesome. the funniest. 

then there’s clint. that they just randomly made a killer? just, like a straight up murderer? okay then. and still nat deserved to die. excellent.

then there’s banner. okay, i don’t think they fucked him up as bad as the others, but it’s still strange he would risk his intelligence to become hulk full time, but you do you.  

rocket and rhodey were the best things about this damn disaster, just putting it out there.

then there’s tony. i mean, we knew he was the main protagonist, and im not objecting that, (even if i think it’s really strange he’d be born in 1970) but idk. that was strange’s plan? all that for that? and pepper just went, eh what the hell, just die, i can raise this kid you wanted. (i know, i know, she’s her mom, she cares), but it was just so flat. and idk. i mean, rdj wanted his life back, just as evans, but i’d want to see that switched, that tony get to retire and steve sacrifice himself to save the world. tony could still be the deciding factor in strange’s plan even if steve delivered the coup de grace. at least he cared enough to show an emotion™when peter came back, which was more than steve bothered with. jfc they fucked up steve.

then there’s the time travel. okay, a few things about the 2012 thing. they put him in the elevator, and then, instead of having him just kick the crap out of the agents, they reference hydra!cap? the biggest shitstorm in the comics in the last two decades? like what the actual fuck? then of course there’s the americas ass thing, which, again, that’s steve, cares about his ass but not his friends! (but at least 2012 steve cares about bucky, maybe he’ll save him a couple of years early, back to the future steve will just live out his life knowing bucky is getting tortured somewhere in siberia, good times.) oh! and i guess they have their loophole to get loki back too, great, they’ll probably just forget that he’s not in the main timeline, bc who cares. 

and the fun just keeps coming with the time travel. oh they tried with some crap explanation that no one can make sense of, but here’s the kicker. they can’t either, they don’t even want to try, they don’t even agree with each other. 

+ +

how did they know to meet up in wakanda or wherever, the dustees? did strange send a memo? not just the ppl in the soul realm or wherever they were, but all the others too, like valkyrie and hope. time and place just magically popped into their heads? and what happened when they all came back? or some came back, bc obviously a shit ton of ppl died at the dusting, like the pilot of a 747 gone? plane goes down and such, ppl really dead. and where do they reappear? where they disappeared? aka those passengers that got dusted comes back mid flight? fun! and what about the ones that moved on in their absence? what happens to the ones that come back when their wives and husbands are remarried, when there’s no place for them in their old lives. did all of peter’s classmates get dusted, or did the rest of the class graduate without him, i must assume that all of those in s:ffh did, otherwise some would be in college by now, yeah?

and that’s another reason their watertight time travel is leaky af, there’s no way to get the logistics to work. the only option as such would have been to go back to 2018 and fix it, to reset time, bc otherwise there are just too many holes, it’s just not possible. but they can’t do that bc then they’ll undo all the things that happen in the future that the characters don’t want to lose, like tony’s kid. 

oh, i know, it’s a superhero movie, but im strange like that, i expect a modicum of internal logic in all my movies, the bitch that i am. 

okay, im gonna leave it there, ive run out of steam, and i want to gif a set. there’s a few things more, but i think you’ve gotten the gist, that i’m not a fan of this movie and a short (lol, so sorry, nothing is ever digest with me, i should’ve warned you) list of reasons why. honestly this is the first time i’ve really don’t a more general account, ive pretty much stuck to steve and that crapshute, there’s a lot of other blogs that concentrate on the other characters, i’d list a few, but i don’t have it in me rn, pop me a msg if you’re interested, also if you’re interested in some real meta, this rambling rant isn’t something that people should be exposed to honestly. 

avengers: endgame was a shit movie and no amount of “he’s worthy” and “avengers assemble” is going to fix that, BUT if you enjoyed it, i don’t think less of you, obviously everyone is different, and i envy the hell out of you, i sorely wish i could’ve liked it too. the russos directed what is by far the best movie in the mcu imo, tws, and they had us all fooled, even if we probably should’ve seen it coming after iron man 4: civil war.

hope you’re having a spectacular day, sorry you had to read this if you did, and and thank you for making mine better, i really had a rant in me needing out. (you’d think i’d run out of hate for this by now, but nah.)

thank you for the ask :) 

11 questions answered & asked, SKAM edition

Rules:

Always repost the rules!

Answer the questions given to you by the one who tagged you!

Give 11 questions

Tag 11 people!

Thank you for the tag @canonicallyanxious!  I sat on it for a while because some of these are hard for me considering I’ve only watched the original and s3 of Druck.  I’m not even remotely capable of being objective about some of these questions. Anyway, let’s go!

Favorite non-canon queer hcs for any of the characters? Just one??? I have a lot.  Vilde is a lesbian is my biggest one, of course, but we all cut our teeth in this fandom on that one lol.  Magnus is not straight and has the biggest awed crush on Even and is lowkey jealous of Isak.  Noora and Eva are soulmates and will work that out at some point.  Sara and Leonie are pining future girlfriends.

Most iconic music moment?  Uggghhhhh, again trying to pick just one is harrdddd.  Okay, so I’m going to go with ‘o helga natt’ of course.  That whole scene was amazing but the music pushed it to another level.  ‘None of dem’ as the intro to Sana and her season was also inspired.  The whole vibe worked so well and of course the lyrics.  Then ‘Magenta Riddum’ in Druck -- it worked off the scene so well and made the entire thing feel so much worse than it already was and the point where it cut off was perfect.  I know a lot of that probably doesn’t count as ‘iconic’ but those are the things that instantly spring to my mind when I think music in this show.

Most iconic cinematography moment?  Now I’m a sucker for pretty cinematography and I could ramble at length about everything I find really pretty in these shows.  But iconic???  I dunno.  I always come back to the rainbow light playing over Matteo’s face in that one shot that’s really disorientating because the camera is in such an odd position before it starts to move.  Or (and this is more a series of moments not just one) maybe the ones where we’re not necessarily told that Matteo drags David’s pictures round like a lovesick puppy but we see it.  They move around his room, and the one he pulls off his wall comes back all scrunched up but still treasured.  I dunno.  I just love that one thing you can do with cinematography is show something and enhance a scene without having to have the characters say anything.

Most underrated clip across all of the SKAMs?  I don’t know????  I think most of the important ones are already pretty rated lol.  But maybe the one in s4 where we see Sana start to pray for the first time and it’s so beautiful and peaceful and it looks so gorgeous and you feel how much comfort it brings her.  I don’t even know what it’s called, but I do love that one and you don’t tend to hear much about it.

Favorite dynamic across all of the SKAMs? Can be romantic, platonic, antagonistic, or anything in between.  Again, I can’t pick just one.  Isak and Even and Matteo and David are givens of course.  They are respectively what hooked me on each of these shows.  But I also love Isak and Sana, Matteo and Amira, Isak and Jonas, Noora and Eva, the Druck boy squad, The Druck combined squad, Eskild and Isak, the Skam girl squad.  Just so many.  These shows are really good at friendships and creating believable dynamics.

Favorite scene from OG and favorite adaptation of that scene?  Well, we’re very limited here because I have literally only seen one season of one remake.  So we’re going with something from s3 of course.  I guess I’m going to go with the kitchen scene in the original (not my favourite, but it’s up there) because I love the ‘morning after’ scene/s in Druck so much.  The first of course is David telling Matteo he’s trans and is the direct correlation.  It’s so very very different in a lot of ways but one thing both scenes have is a lot of trust and vulnerability and also some hesitation and stuff left unsaid and unknown.  Then there’s the morning after in episode 10, which works in terms of being after both couples have slept together.  And that’s just one of my favourite scenes from either show.  The conversation and the banter, how loving they are with each other and yet how stupid and messy they can be with each other too.  And the bits with Laura in the kitchen and how they echo Eskild and Noora: both couples open and out with their close ‘family’ in a way they haven’t really been before.

Are there any clips from the OG you think a remake did better?  I don’t think so???  In Druck’s case, I think what they do really well is adapt the scenes to fit their characters and situations.  So are they better?  Nope.  But I like that they don’t just transfer an exact copy but let the characters dictate the way they will adapt certain things.  They do some direct copies and imo those are often the weakest scenes.  Now, do I hope that s4 does some things better?  Oh yes.  I have some scenes from that season that need fixing asap.

Any clips from the OG you think cannot possibly be made better? Pause.  That scene works so well and I can’t imagine it being able to be bettered.  Again, I’m glad Druck didn’t even try.  What they did worked for their characters while not transferring the bits that genuinely just wouldn’t have worked.

If you could choose any characters from any of the SKAMs to be part of your squad, who would you choose? David, Isak, Matteo, Even, Carlos, Eva, Chris B.  I can’t pick Sana or Amira even though I love them because they’d scare me as friends and I’d just be tense all the time.

Which character do you think is most likely to end up becoming a cat parent? Hmmmmm.  David maybe.  It fits his aesthetic and also Matteo is half cat anyway.

What country do you want the next skam remake to belong to?  I don’t know.  I have no preferences.  All I ask is that they adapt it properly to their own culture and don’t try to exactly copy what the original did. 

Okay, so now for questions of my own.  This is the hard bit!

1. What clip or clips would you rec to someone to showcase what Skam (or your fave remake) is about?

2. What food has Skam or a remake made you want to try?

3. Which character’s social media do you think reflects them the most?

4. In a similar vein: favourite social media post?

5. Best use of music in each version you’ve seen?

6. Characters from each version who should be friends?

7. Do you have fanart or fanartist faves?  Rec some?

8. Which squad do you want to join?

9. A clip that hits you in the emotions (can be happy or sad)?

10. One thing you’d like to see changed from each season? (sorry to those of you who’ve watched them all!)

11. Something from Skam or any remake that you think will stick with you forever?

I know lots of people have already been tagged in this but I’m tagging anyway.  If you feel like it: @canonicallyanxious @hjertetssunnegalskap1 @floraflorenzi @annahmariag @drucksideblog @wehave4ever @heihallohadet @thevintagepinkdoor @driftovertheedge @nessauepa @newyearsirresolution