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sendme-2hell · 1 year

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The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore - Kim Fu

Summary: A group of young girls at sleepaway camp get stranded in the woods by themselves in Canada (sound familiar?). The narrative alternates between what happened in the woods, and a vignette from each girl in their adult life.

Yellowjackets connection: This book is so spiritually similar to Yellowjackets it’s wild. The way that we see what happened in the woods and flash forward to the adults and how it affected them. The way that it's partially about the viciousness that comes out when girls are left alone. The way that hierarchies break down in the woods. I find myself thinking about this book while watching Yellowjackets.

Is it queer?: only a very little with one character in her adult life

My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante

Summary: Elena and Lila are two intelligent girls growing up in poverty in 1950’s Naples. They have an obsessive and competitive relationship. Elena is able to get an education when Lila is not, and their paths diverge here. The entire four-part book series follows their relationship and distinct lives into late adulthood.

Yellowjackets Connection: My Brilliant Friend is about a lot more than just female friendship, class differences foremost. But obsessive homoerotic female friendships and their complications are front and center. The Neapolitan series follows Elena and Lila as they grow into adults and have their own children, so it shows young women and the adults they grow into. Also has themes of trauma, unreliable narrators, patriarchy, jealousy, ambitious women.

If you follow my tumblr you know I will connect anything to MBF but Yellowjackets writers did it for me in the show. They literally said Shauna/Jackie = Elena/Lila. If you don’t remember, this is when adult Shauna has dinner with Jackie’s mom who says she’s reading MBF and that the girls in the book remind her so much of Shauna and Jackie. She meant it as an insult to Shauna but it really is a great comparison. Especially since Lila and Elena def had something vaguely fruity going on (but also for other, spoilery reasons). Elena Ferrante is pretty much the go-to when it comes to writing about complicated female friendships so it is not a surprise that they reference it in the show. If you are obsessed with the Shauna/Jackie “friendship” this book series is for you!

Is it queer? if you consider Jackie and Shauna’s relationship to be queer then yes. There is a lot of subtext and in the later books a little more than subtext.

Cat’s Eye - Margaret Atwood

Summary: A painter returns to where she grew up and memories that she blocked out of a traumatic childhood friendship resurface.

Yellowjackets connection: Women thinking about their traumatic friendships! And how these affected them going forward in life. The girls in this are a little younger than Yellowjackets girls but I think it is still a foundational text about traumatic female friendships and unreliable narrators. I am absolutely a Margaret Atwood apologist so don’t come for me (or do. I love messages in my inbox)

Is it queer?: no ):

Big Swiss - Jen Beagin

Summary: Greta is a transcriber for a sex therapist where she learns all sorts of intimate details of his clients. She becomes obsessed with a client and even starts a sexual relationship with her! She does not disclose her prior knowledge of this woman so things get messy.

Fun fact for Killing Eve fans: It is going to be made into a series starring Jodie Comer!

Yellowjackets connection: This is the only book on this list that doesn’t really flash between old and young versions of a character (a bit at the end). Yet I think it deserves to be on this list because messy queer women and obsession and mental illness. Also now that I am thinking about it actually the main character does think about her childhood in the woods a bit...

Is it queer?: The main relationship is between two women and they have a lot of sex. So, yes!

Trust Exercise - Susan Choi

Summary: Don’t want to spoil any of the big reveals but it’s vaguely about highschool theatre kids and their unhealthy dynamic with their abusive theatre teacher. Trigger warnings for statutory rape and general predatory behavior.

Yellowjackets connection: The reason I put this on my list is because it is about women in high school going through trauma and their adult selves dealing with it. It is about the stories they tell themselves to cope. It is about unreliable narrators. It is about narrative and truth and figuring out what actually happened. The book will not tell you directly, you have to discover it yourself (or read a review that explains it).

Is it queer? no ):

#yellowjackets #book reccomendatons #book recs #queer books #queer book recs #my lists #listen you know i love a good book rec list and this has just been sitting in my HEAD #close followers of my blog are SHOCKED I brought up elena ferrante.SHOCKED #I do truly believe all yellowjackets fans who like to read should read the lost girls of camp forevermore since it is SO similar #the lost girls of camp forevermore #my brilliant friend #cat's eye #trust exercise #big swiss

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rocketyship · 7 months

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That poll is so hard to vote for cause on one hand, it feels like Tiff would fit the best because of her incredibly unreliable narration matching Ted's while it would still be a subversion of the original because of the reason why she's unreliable(rose tinted glasses and extreme devotion to BE as opposed to the stuff Ted's got going on) and her pov on and relationship with BE would just be so fun to see explored and the horror of the situation being a subtle thing thats swept under the rug could be so cool.

But on the other, Evan would also kinda match with the original due to his open emotional distance and disconnect from the girls, AND it would bring a lot of fun, fresh stuff! Seems like Evan is the one who pays most attention to AM, and seeing what's happening there from his pov would be so interesting! He, just like Ellen if she would've narrated could bring up how things like being the only one of the opposite sex and gender in the group and (from what we know from the short story at least) only dark skinned person would like.. idk change perspectives on things?? I'd also love to find out more about him!

Oh, not to mention Naomi!! Having narration that is pretty damn reliable would make worldbuilding and exploration much easier and she's also got that disconnect due to her age and crystal clear memory, being able to see things as they are and were could be really refreshing in a ihnmaims universe and i really want to know what her whole deal is! Being born toward the end of the war must've made quite a difference to how a person would process everything, Ted's whole "I'm youngest so my experience is different because i barely had time to live as an adult before the nukes" wouldn't have shit on someone who wasn't even like... done w puberty.

Ooooh they'd all make for such fun narrators 😭 It's really too bad that writing takes so much time and effort or it would've been amazing to see all three's povs! I still don't know what to vote for or how the results are looking so far but im really looking forward to seeing what the results will lead to!

Maybe you have a character you have the most ideas for or would like to write most? Cause if so, that'd def help me choose what to vote.

Sorry for the wall of text(would you believe me if i said i wanted to write more? This is me trying to show restraint, didn't even write about the potential AM could have as a narrator), and i hope you have a good day!

Okay so first off, I love-love-love this response. You have such fun perspectives on these silly little au characters of mine and it makes me a little sad that you didn’t write anymore cause I definitely would have read it, especially what you were thinking about what an interesting narrator AM could be.

As to which character I have the most ideas for, is such a difficult thing to answer cause well I have so-so many. But I do want to put them out there for you so here they are:

Tiffany: narration wise, I imagine the stuff she says can and does come across as nonsensical and border line trigger happy, however sometimes she occasionally lets something slip that clues into her true feelings and that a part of her may indeed be aware of the gravity of the groups situation, however she shuts it down as she has severe attachment issues and cannot fathom how she could possibly survive without BE. Another thing I pictured is that she very often quotes the bible and other religious texts, as BE doesn’t present herself as machine and genuinely as a divine entity. I also have been toying with a scene similar to the one in the radio drama, where AM is talking to Ted about bumblebees and getting high r something. Where it is set up as the reverse. BE showing Tiff the horrors of what the radiation and world has come to (in a way that is seriously deceptive) and claiming that all she has to do is snap her fingers for it to return. It would definitely read as a story where there is total tonal whiplash from one scene to the next, so that is something to consider.

Evan: I have come up with so many pasts for all these survivors before they were “rescued” by BE, however one thing to note is that I don’t really think of these characters as just “genderbent versions of the originals”. Evan is one of the key examples of this, as in this au he is technically the original Ellen’s older brother, however he left home when she was around 12-13ish, as he didn’t like the life, college and job his family set out and tried to push him into. Unlike Ellen who was a successful engineer, who may have been a hopeless romantic based on the original text. Evan was and very much still is kind of a massive party animal. I picture him very punk but like the old kind of punk. Like he was the kind of guy to go motorcycling around the country (even into war-devastated bits, cause it was a thrill), he went to underground clubs and concerts, and sure as heck slept around and had no shame in it (both women and men if you are curious). He doesn’t want to get sentimental, he wants to live his life on the edge and BE doesn’t allow that. He constantly tries to upset her, get some kind of intense reaction from her. He tries to escape, he kicks and tries to tear open parts of her internal network. This man has tried to kill Gloria (Gloria kind of deserves it thou) and the only reactions he gets from BE is her finding him cute, amusing, or as if he just needs to be put in a corner to calm down for a bit. Truthfully he is someone who just wants to go back and experience life again, recognising that BE’s utopia isn’t living and refusing to buy into it.

Naomi: I won’t lie, Nimdok is so boring in the og story, and they definitely tried to do “something” with him in the game. I don’t like it, again different ramble. So like Evan, she is a different person. Like you said she has barely started puberty and because of BE neither her body or even her mind has really aged in anyway and she is horribly aware of this. Due to the war she has had her childhood taken from her, but now because of BE she shall never experience adulthood or growing up. Her memory hardly anything particularly helpful. She remembers exactly what BE did to the others when they first got brought to the compound, she has seen what goes down in the labs, she knows what pills are and aren’t sleeping pills, developing a habit where she will pretend to take one and spit it out if she is able to. As stated in the survivors master post, she knows BE’s blind spots and will often go there on her own. Not really to do anything, just kind of sit around. Further more, she and Evan have a way of communicating, number of blinks, which fingers moved when you spoke to them, that kind of stuff. Still she doesn’t want to escape, she knows she’ll die if she does, generally she acts more like a mediator in the group. As a narrator, I did have this idea for a few odd habits she has learned over the years. Example is that she constantly counting, time and routine is import to her, as she notices when something is wrong and that freaks her out. She also has this habit of just staring at the others for very long periods of time, especially Gloria. She clearly remembers seeing her on tv during her old life, and also remembers how she attacked her when Naomi attempted to mention it to Gloria.

Writing does take so much effort, especially for me, cause truthfully I’m always jumping back and forth on what I’m working on. On top of this au and the fic, I’m also in the process of finishing the final script and sketches for a different web comic I’ve been planning for a while, as well as a completely unrelated world building project that I’ve been at for two years now. Anyhow!! Tell me more please

#i have no mouth and i must scream #ihnmaims #am ihnmaims #ted ihnmaims #ihnmaimsloveau #alternate reality #harlan ellison #ellen ihnmaims #ihnmaims am #allied mastercomputer #small artist #horror #fanfiction #ao3 writer

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hms-no-fun · 1 year

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where did the inspiration for cat!dave come from. i love it btw, im just curious where it came from

catdave, like a lot of stuff in the gf3 prologue, just sort of happened. it's one of those things where in writing that chapter, jade grabbed a button that did a thing as a way to keep their villain-narrator honeypot from collapsing, and i decided to roll with it. turning dave into a house cat seemed like a fun gag, especially considering awkweet purrmusk and davepeta and all that. karkat picking up catdave with horror and protectiveness was really funny to me, just like NO HE'S MY BOYFRIEND YOU LEAVE MY SPECIAL MAN ALONE. then i thought, wait, what if a cat had time-distortion powers. what if catdave was like, i'm the hottest fucken kitty that ever did strut, i'ma slow down time and make everyone admire me. that joke alone was enough to keep catdave in, and i figured okay, we'll roll with this for a minute and then reverse it at the end and it'll be a funny anecdote. "hey remember that time dave turned into a cat?"

but unfortunately for dave, this is godfeels. i can't ever just do a fun joke about transformation. if we're gonna accept that jade has a button that can turn people into the animal they secretly want to be, that's gotta have CONSEQUENCES. what is this, fucking rick & morty??? there will be no resetting to the status quo at the end of THIS episode thank you very much!

of course by the time i got to publishing that first catdave chapter i'd figured all this out. dave's sort of defined by his repression and embarrassment at himself and his wants. i've imagined him sticking to his "i don't want to be a hero" thing very closely, and with that just kinda chilling with karkat all the time. (oh there's actually a funny pseudo-continuity error related to this-- in gf1 someone mentions what makes dave and karkat such a good couple. i'd imagined then that davekat were absolutely a totally out gay together couple. then the epilogues said actually no they were still too repressed to actually DO anything, and i decided to lean into that because two incredibly gay men no-homoing together for seven years is really funny/tragic to me from a story perspective. and since i decided to make gf2 parallel the epilogues, it seemed appropriate to fold that back in. i think in gf2 this gets papered over with june being surprised that they hadn't kissed yet? but that's def a thing that changed between fics from my perspective lmao)

so it seemed to me that catdave was a minor analogue to trickster mode- an unexpected jump straight to Personal Apotheosis without the journey necessary to give it any meaning. and that quickly mapped onto the problem of out queer people treating obvious eggs like their own Pet Project, pressuring them and pushing their boundaries even when it IS to some extent what they want. so dave keeps his cat ears and tail because he's a closeted furry with Some Gender, but because his friends all thought the transformation was funny and cute the end result was actually pushing him even further back into the closet. and since i knew that we were aiming towards davekat divorce fever anyway, that felt like the *perfect* dramatic intervention on his character. this is the hardest part of building an ensemble cast drama; giving everyone something Clear and Concise to deal with that can stand in for all their problems, so we can cut right to the chase when necessary.

this process is, in microcosm, the fundamental backbone of godfeels. it's about taking deadly seriously the personal and existential ramifications of extraordinarily silly impossible bullshit.

#catdave #davecat #davekat #homestuck #godfeels #sarahposts

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phoenixkaptain · 8 months

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Random Teen Titans thoughts, 1966 edition:

-nothing can escape Aqualad’s notice. Not giant, noticeable ears or giant, metal conquistadores

-I’m pretty sure TT #1 is the introduction to characters, especially Robin, saying “Quick like a bunny, Kid Flash!” which is just really funny to me

-this happens more often than I thought (I’m rereading these early comics), but Robin almost always explains things when asked. And his explanations are always long and in-depth and he is a giant nerd

-Robin says “What can possibly happen?” because he’s Robin and that’s just what Robin does

-Robin says “Hope there’s nothing more popping from that pyramid!” because he did not learn his lesson the first time

-the villain made a giant, metal conquistadore, but the weird animals with human faces were just incarnations of the beast god. Nobody questions this

-I think Kid Flash practices by juggling with his feet. Otherwise, I have no idea what the panel was implying

-“You’re strictly feom Squaresville if you don’t put down the drags - like you’re cubed, but def!”

“You sure that is English, Penny?”

I love this interaction and I’m with Garn on this one, sorry, Penny

-Aqualad says “great waves and all that jazz” basically mocking the interjections they’ve all been saying (including him) and I just think that’s funny

-Kid Flash says “Better find a hole in the sky, and hide this egg-beater, Robin!” and no, context does not make it make any sense

-Wonder Girl ties her hair to a tree branch because her grip is slipping. Miraculously, this works

-the image of Wonder Girl holding up Aqualad, who is holding up Robin, who does not seem to notice nor care about his current predicament, is both adorable because Robin has such complete faith in his teammates and hilarious because he is dangling precariously with only an Aqualad to keep him from falling

-Aqualad says “Quick like a bunnyfish- if there is such a thing!” I’m pretty sure he’s making fun of Robin

-Gotham banks have machine guns set up in their walls, in case of burglaries. This explains quite a lot

-Robin says his math mark (his math grade) could be better, and I do not believe him

-Ding-Dong Daddy Dowd’s shop is called Ding-Dong Daddy Dowd’s Hot-Rod Hive: the Hottest Buckets This Side of Dragsville, and I don’t know how to feel about that

-Robin gets handcuffed to a speeding motorbike. He can’t stop the bike, but I just don’t understand the thought process. If Ding-Dong wants him dead, why did he not just kill him? Ding-Dong is a ding dong

-Kid Flash: “I failed.”

Aqualad: “I failed.”

Robin: “We all failed.”

10/10 leadership

-The narration claims that there was an outstanding outcry for Speedy to be added. I don’t know if I believe them. This is only issue #4

-Speedy decides it would be better to break into the Teen Titans’ hideout and set off the alarm, instead of giving them any head’s up that he’s coming. He’s right, it was better

-someone swapped Speedy’s arrows with explosive-rigged arrows and expected Speedy not to notice

-Davey (important character)’s dad tries to intimidate Robin, which was just hilarious. You really think Robin, Boy Wonder from Gotham City (the city with machine guns in the bank walls) is going to be intimidated but a bad dad? Silly

-Kid Flash says “I’d know that beautiful racing form anywhere!” of Davey, and I just think that’s funny

-Davey’s dad is the absolute worst. He made his son cry. He’s such a dick

-Davey says “I’m going like a big-tailed bird, Robin!” and I just don’t understand the relevance

-Davey’s dad decides to be less of an asshole, which is nice

-this exchange between Wonder Girl and Robin:

“He’s cute- cuter than any of you characters!”

“You can bet your magic lasso, W.G., that we will hook up with Speedy again!”

-the Ant is the son of a circus strongman and an acrobat. He and Robin should be pals

-Robin calls Aqualad “Sea Flea”

-Beast Boy can’t be part of the Doom Patrol without guardian permission. He also can’t be part of the Teen Titans without guardian permission (Robin saying “Batman had to okay me!” is funny because who did Batman okay Robin to?) Beast Boy thinks they just think he’s a freak, and runs off to the circus

-I saw a review say that Beast Boy’s arc was too similar to Pinocchio, because Beast Boy wants to “be a real hero,” but I have no idea where that idea came from? Beast Boy doesn’t give a shit about being a hero, he just wants to go somewhere and feel like he belongs

-Aqualad says this: “Holy hagfish, Robin… you figure we can get away with this bit- impersonating circus performers?” which is just funny because he’s asking the circus performer if he can accurately perform in a circus (I don’t think the Teen Titans know each other’s identities at this point)

-Robin calls Aqualad “Minnow”

-Robin says they should rethink letting Beast Boy join the team, and in the end, it’s left up the the audience to decide. As in, us, the readers reading the comic. As I said before, I’ve read a lot of these comics before (up to #43), and Beast Boy does not appear as part of the team in any of these issues. Poor Beast Boy

-I ship Robin and Aqualad, and I can’t explain it. I just find their dynamic, Aqualad questioning Robin and Robin being generally unfazed, is cute. And he calls Aqualad “Minnow” come on

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according2thelore · 27 days

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"you're pretty when you don't speak" + 1, 3, 9, 11 & 13

(i really, really adore this fic, it was one of the first ones i read coming back into fandom after ten years and it knocked me on my ass. i think about it a *lot*)

hello! :)

thank you so much!!! the link to "you're pretty when you don't speak" on ao3 is here! (quick recap: it's the one from blurry wife pov)

1.What inspired you to write the fic this way?

so for this fic, i feared that the second person pov would automatically disqualify it to some folks, but i really thought the fic would benefit from it because so much of sam's anonymous wife is just that: anonymous. she is literally just a vehicle through which to give sam his happy ending, a non-player.

to forcefully give her a perspective, and to force the reader into her headspace was important to me, because so much of her life is completely isolated, even if sam tells her about the life. she is the crucible in which another dean is created, and doesn't even get a face with which to do it.

and i wanted this fic to feel kind of like a montage. things happen too fast to process, and just kind of slip by, like water through your hands, or switching locations in a dream. she isn't given time to process or understand things, and neither are we.

3. What's your favorite line of narration?

yikes! this was hard. i think my favorite line has to be

He smiles at you, and you smile back. He’s nice to look at, in the way that shards of stained glass are nice to look at. In the way that car crashes are captivating, in the way that a tree can be both dead and alive at once, in the way that homes disappear one room at a time.

because it really encapsulates what i feel like sam would be post-canon--eldritch and unknowable, even as he's amicable and has that patina of sympathetic understanding; or

This is my wife, Sam says, proud. His coworkers smile, but they never ask your name. You don’t have one. That’s alright with you, as long as it’s alright with Sam. You’d hate to embarrass him at a work party.

because it's kind of a fic thesis! sam wants a wife, so he gets A Wife. her lack of identity is an issue because it could embarrass sam, not because she is a person. she needs permission to have a name and to have a face and to have her own personality.

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

this fic was originally longer! i had a few sections added in about what rituals/traditions sam has on dean's death anniversary as opposed to their wedding anniversary, and how that impacts his family. i also had a section about how sam begins putting an escalated emotional burden on dean jr, creating a cycle w how dean was treated by john, but ultimately introducing those ideas was too bulky and took away from sam's wife. i was doing what sam's wife was doing! centering him in a story about her! so i ended up killing a few darlings for this fic.

11. What do you like best about this fic?

i really enjoyed writing this one! it happened almost entirely in one sitting. one of my favorite things about this fic is how destabilizing it is. you kind of feel a sense of impending dread, and you want the wife to leave, to escape, but she can't. she is a fixed part of his narrative, and that is her identity. she is a prop; she is set dressing.

that confusion of wanting things but those things being malleable was awesome to write, and i hope i captured the dissonance well!

13. What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

i was actually listing to Unknown/Nth by Hozier when i got the idea for the fic (unrelated by now inextricably linked), so that def needs to be mentioned! i listened to charlotte's and my playlist on shuffle while writing this one, and so a few that really stuck in my brain and i recommend are City of Roses by Sufjan Stephens, Savior Complex by Phoebe Bridgers, Too Close by Sir Chloe (the title!), and doomsday by Lizzy McAlpine. (just realized how relentlessly indie it is, sorry team)

i ended up YAPPING! i'm sorry! but thank you for the ask, and i am so glad and warmed to know that you like it! it's one of my favorites, for sure <3

-lizzy

(send me one of my fics, and i'll answer some questions!)

#ask box #ask game #lizzy answers #devilyouwere

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ginnsbaker · 11 months

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i just binge-read the whole series and I'm losing it.

two characters that love each other so much yet can only hurt because of the current circumstances is my kind of angst

it's such a compelling story and i love the narration between these two 🥲

i'm also dreading Nat finding out the fuckery R has been doing and how she will react. like she knew that something like that could happen; yelena was too eager to start something with r, r was sorta interested but Nat could see how fucked up R was and i'm willing to bet she also knew that R was not done with the self-destructive behavior.

i def understand where Piet is coming from, whatever mistakes he has done in the past and whatever behavior he keeps up even tho he is engaged gets trumped by the fact that his twin sister is in a hospital bed after a s* attempt as a direct result from R's recent mistreatment of Wanda.

i get that he's a cheater, he knows that, he doesn't try to act like he isn't, ofc he's gonna be mad at R, he knows sort of knows how Wanda would feel and he knows that that fact doesn't excuse or make it 'deserved' to be treated like that. i'm just sad for Wanda bc she shouldn't take that treatment and feel like she needs the punishment. what she did was very wrong and fucked up, but in the end she agreed to the divorce, what i think she should've done was give R more time, it's clear that R hadn't fully processed her trauma - from discovering her spouse was having an affair to assaulting the other party of the affair to then getting a divorce (plus moving away, leaving a dog behind, etc.) - no one should expect R to be okay.

i hope that last chapter was Wanda wanting to take some time for herself, they both need to reevaluate where they are in the present, what they want and if it's healthy to pursue it.

also while i do think Yelena and R shouldn't be together I do like that we get to explore the 'could've been' bc as R said it Yelena was her right person, wrong time except maybe that was just R trying to understand her feelings at the time, of not being over wanda yet but feeling something towards Yelena. i don't think it's a case of right or wrong person/timing, it feels more like 'settling', they both like each other so they 'should' be together, it's something that i feel makes up all the 'boring' marriages out there. I'm in no way or shape an expert on love but I feel like a partnership shouldn't be 'easy' in the sense that it feels convenient to just be together, it also shouldn't be all about suffering, but somewhere in the middle where you challenge each other to be the best you can. anyway, I don't feel like that's what Yel and R are for each other.

also pls don't compare what R and Wanda did to each other, they are different things coming from different places; while R was clearly meaning to hurt Wanda and get her 'feeling out' on her, Wanda didn't act that way, in fact it was out of her lacking something within herself and as selfish as it sounds it had nothing to do with R. R's actions have everything to do with Wanda and her complex emotions towards what happened (but they're both So Not Okay)

ps. super excited for more 😃

I like what you said about the last part, that what they've done are not comparable at all. R's was reactive. Overall, it's just sad to see the repercussions of cheating in their lives.

I'm curious, how long did u binge read it lol? It must have been a lot to take because there's a reason why i update once a week, due to the angst.

Thank you so much for reading and for sharing your thoughts ❤️

#ilgoss asks #rougemidnight04

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bluebeerg · 2 years

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if stanley and the narrator arent psychic, then what are they in comparison to the psychonauts world? the narrator def feels more than human if he's trying to pretend to be an archetype. what brings them to the motherlobe? I am enamored by your au and would love to hear your thoughts

I'm honoured that you want to know more !! I didn't think many people would, considering it's Extremely Self-Indulgent and I am used to my interests being Niche (reason why the things that I’ve posted have little to no context hgjfkghdfg)

Okay, so, I think it's important to note that, in this AU, the things in The Stanley Parable happened and are real. Stanley was trapped in an eternal loop. Stanley had died a million times over. The Narrator is... still his witty omnipresent self. These things do not change.

I had thoughts about making twisting TSP to be more cohesive to the world of Psychonauts, but ultimately thought against it. I think they are funny silly as they are :] A guy and his voice against the world

Alright, let’s get to explaining this bad boy a little.

So. What happened? Why are they at the Motherlobe?

This is just a rough and vague thought but, after being free of the Parable (when the Escape Pod and/or Freedom Ending is real and is here), Stanley and the Narrator are met with the outside world. Something something, run into the funny Psychonauts. They think something is up with Stanley, that he is strange, but insists that he is Not psychic, they bring him to the Motherlobe. Stanley keeps insisting his non-psychicness, but the Narrator convince him to just “humour them anyway”. Insert funny shenanigans where the Narrator and Stanley work together to do “psychic abilities”. Again, Very rough and Very vague. ghfdkjgdf

But, looping around to that first question: If not psychic, what are Stanley and the Narrator?

Well, they still are your classic Stanley Parable duo. A simple office worker and, like, god or something. But actually, since we’re on this topic...

Let’s talk about how the Narrator works.

Starting off with communication. This one’s easy. Stanley uses ASL to talk people, but, when speaking to the Narrator, it can be through mind thoughts. In the same vein, the Narrator can only be heard by Stanley. He is inside his brain :] This does mean, however, if someone did some mind reading, I guess they’d meet the funny man. the funny loud man. british

Here’s a big one: the Narrator’s power. In the office, the Narrator controlled, well, everything, because they were His creation. The office and everything in it was the extent of his power, and boy is that a lot of power.

But the Narrator is no longer In the office, he’s not even in The Stanley Parable anymore. This is not something he’s created (The Narrator is aware that Psychonauts is fictional and a game btw). However, he still has Some Sort of power in this new world - this is how they are tricking the Psychonauts, after all. So where exactly does that power come from?

As his OC, the Narrator draws his power from Stanley to exert onto the external world - but that, in turn, takes energy from him. Not a lot, mind you, but I guess it rather depends on size, quantity, and distance from him. This means that what the Narrator is able to do is limited and he has to be considerate about Stanley’s health and wellbeing (Stanley sleeps, and eats and drinks now? Fucking nuts, bro...)

I think the other limitation is that the Narrator can’t... Remove stuff was already previously there - that was already part of the world. He can summon things in, sure, and, while they may not stay around for very long, they are there (You guys sure do love the Narrator as an archetype ghdfjghf), and, he can still interact with the world, like opening doors or flickering lights, but to Truly twist, and manipulate, and alter it... It’d take a Lot.

Aaaand... That’s it. Probably. I have some other thoughts rattling up in this head of mine but... I think that that’s all the basics :] If you read all of this, thank you?? I love to say things about my funny thoughts, and I know it’s not exactly Fun to read Just text, especially when it’s this long, and I, uh, don’t know how much sense it all makes, but thank you :,] i am very grateful

#askberg #groveofgreen #not art #long post #psychic parable au #tsp #the stanley parable #doodleberg #just a little one :]#oh another thing to note:#the office is Still there. they can return at Any Time #the narrator wants to sometimes. stanley doesn't #this is... a really long post. i really hope this makes sense hgdfkjgh #i feel bad if i tag the au as psychonauts because its very tsp-leaning :[#oh jesus this is much longer than expected i am. so sorry #textberg

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mudefrau · 14 days

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son of a witch x rammstein ❤️‍🔥

NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS but there is no musical so let me cope making a playlist. i've been writing this little thing since yesterday; i know no one's music taste matches perfectly so i give up directly exchanging recs with people, but this is what *i* like.

my song picks are mainly associated with liir, trism, shell, and cherrystone and here i explain why (sorry candle, despite being the musician, in my heart you become more relevant in out of oz.)

CW: typical r+ covers; soaw -typical dark themes

LIIR

of course the song called mutter (mother) had to be in. here, the narrator is conceived in a sterile way & the mother has abandoned him, let alone loveless in the world ("no sun shined on me, no breast cried milk"...) and he resents her. the resentment is a biiit strong for liir & elphaba ("i'll send her a sickness and throw her in the river")...THOUGH it ends with a repetition of "mutter, oh, gib mir kraft" (begging this mother to "give him power" eventually) which is SO them. (as a bonus, the sentiment matches a few of my hcs for shell & melena who died in his birth, hence "abandoning" him from shell's pov)

dalai lama is about fear of flying (the song was initially going to be called flugangst, literally, but the current dalai lama has a fear of flying in planes apparently and they changed it to this more unique title), it's based on a classic goethe poem. in the original, a father and his son meet an "elf king" who attempts to lure his child, the father tries to protect him in his arms just to find out he's already dead. in r+'s song, they meet the "wind king" but it's the father who accidentally holds his son too hard in fear and suffocates him to death. it's one of my favorite songs from r+, really underrated perhaps because it's not their usual style.

hilf mir's (help me) lyrics remind me of the fire of bengda since it's one of the rare r+ songs with fire that isn't pyromaniacally enthusiastic (lol). it's a child alone at home & feeling alone and they play with matches, accidentally puts on a fire and is calling for help; but also sorta trying to find company in the fire (?? it's how i interpret "the fire loves me, the fire loves me not"). this also reminds me of cherrystone-liir: liir SHOULD hate him to death given what he did in kiamo ko and yet cherrystone is (consciously or not) exploiting liir's craving for a fatherly figure so he doesn't. interestingly the bridge burning happened shortly after shell (/ his friends) burnt the scarecrow, i think of it as a parallel.

TRISM

well mein teil is about that one famous consensual homoerotic (?? its been a long time an i don't feel like looking it up again man) cannibalism case in germany. and i do associate trism with eating human flesh even if he's not the one doing it! (the dragons are) and something animalistic about it, about drawing the line between urge and reason, between human and beast, it speaks to me about him. i think that's a big theme in his character, who is used to training beasts and then lashes out at liir like one. because HE is trained like one. (by shell!!!)

SHELL

every rammstein degen sex song fits him and they have *a lot* of those so i'll just pick the iconic pussy. it's one of the rare r+ songs majorly in english because it's the pov of a foreigner, a stranger- just like shell is in southstairs: he's a dandy but he's coming down there for "pleasure" (and well, intel, in his case). the foreigner in question is going to berlin seeking legal prostitution and the lyrics, even if not super violent (compared to other r+ songs at least), show the narrator's entitlement to these women. shell DEF buys prostitution, it's hinted a few times; but the way he presents himself is as if he's the one selling himself. and even if i hc there's a part of truth, all we know for sure is that he's a professional liar.

CHERRYSTONE

waidmannsheil is a phrase to wish hunters success before their hunt. so this is a song about hunting, not necessarily military, about wanting to chase and kill the creature no matter whether it's on land or in sea. according to some interview with r+ it's about rape culture (since the song does specify "young female deer" as the prey), but i believe more than one interpretation is possible and to me it could well be about violence from soldiers in general (which, yes, includes rape).

#Spotify #playlist #son of a witch #gregory maguire #i thought i was going to include something from sehnsucht but eventually didn't a

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souryogurt64 · 1 year

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it’s funny that palahniuk is a little woman hating considering he knows so much about feminism. he brings up ariel levy (feminist author) in one of his books and has a very dark short story called speaking bitterness about radfems sexually assaulting a woman they believe to be trans. just the way it’s written it’s brutal and he def knows a lot about women’s issues it’s just not always written in the best way

Yeah in the Peteryan essay I wanted to quote from a lot of their biggest influences because they're pretty misogynistic. And there's this quote in Choke about how women secretly want to be oppressed by men and their entire identity depends on it. And the book is satirical and I didn't want to include it in bad faith if it was like making fun of this idea, so I was like looking into his viewpoints or whatever

And two of his newest books are like, one is apparently about how women get enslaved by men and then the men can't dress themselves or cook and the other one is about like a feminist that secretly loves romance novels and she gets raped in public in the opening scene and then this like billionaire kidnaps her for sex to sell his sex toys that like make women want to be tortured to death or something and it's like satirizing 50 Shades and Twilight and like dark romance novels or whatever. Anyway all the reviews were saying it was just terrible

I didn't read these so maybe it's like bad for me to point fingers at it but the second one had horrible reviews and then I looked up like what he's said and he was like justifying it by saying that like third wave feminism was bad and had gone too far and is just about women wanting to have their tits out and bringing up the schizophrenic woman who shot Andy Warhol as like an example of feminism going too far. And like first of all that woman had very, very serious mental issues so pick a better example and secondly that happened in 1968 which was over 20 years before third wave feminism and thirdly we have just lost Roe so clearly feminism has less teeth than it did 50 years ago. Grow up

And like I get there's harmful things about these books and there's definitely valid criticisms to be made but like first of all Twilight is like a very Mormon book and large portions of the US are deeply religious or were at least raised deeply religious. And I think a lot of people who are not raised with that kind of belief system just cannot compute it which is fair but part of why those books gripped the nation is because a large portion of women are raised with the belief system that dating and enjoying sex is the worst thing you can do and that it should hurt and be bad and decreases your value as a person to the point where it is very difficult for many women to come or enjoy penetration

And part of why books like Twilight got so popular and like gripped the nation is because there's elements of the story that reduce that sense of guilt by decreasing the girl's ability to like be chaste and leave and never talk to the guy again like they're "supposed to", and every romance novel across hundreds of years from like before Jane Eyre to Sold to One Direction fanfiction is like a widespread phenomenon that contains a lot of the exact same beats because of this

And like you can definitely still satirize those things or criticize them or argue that mass production and exposure to that content is harmful, and personally I think 50 Shades is written very weird and not hot and parts of Twilight like with Rosacoeleene or whatever the fuck her name is are extremely strange.

But Survivor feels so raw in it's depiction of that exact concept regarding being unable to enjoy sex due to religious trauma and how the narrator is obsessed with sex but struggles to be able to have sex because of the cult he was raised in it's just so weird to me that this book is such a hard pivot on that and doesn't seem to think about it or try to understand what it's satirizing at all and the big takeaway is supposed to be that like "regular women with jobs that identify as third wave feminists that want careers and read romance novels aren't REAL feminists and secretly want to be raped" like get a grip dude

I understand that there's another level with like religion and gay sex which is alluded to being what the straight romance is actually about in Survivor but I guess maybe he didn't bother to think about the romance books he was satirizing or like empathize with the idea that women can feel similar things

And also it just pisses me off because it never goes both ways, like with the exception of Pretty Tied Up by Guns N Roses almost every single classic rock song about bondage is about a dominatrix but nobody EVER would seriously make the claim that like ACDC or Van Halen or whatever are closet misandrists because that's just fucking ludicrous but even left-leaning people are so quick to act like being into mild spanking and choking with someone you trust is like the end all gotcha of feminist politics. Like probably at least a slight majority of people fantasize about that sort of thing because they want to be the center of attention and object of desire and don't want to do any work lol

ANYWAY TO CONCLUDE I feel like when Choke came out you could argue the women want to be oppressed line was satirizing masculinity and misogyny like he does in Fight Club but the later books he wrote just like..... make it seem like that line was actually written in bad faith lol

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mostlymaudlin · 2 years

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Hi!!! I adore your fics so much, will never stop gushing over your work. For the ask would you mind answering 5, 9, and/or 13 for Nothing Is Fine (my personal fave of your works)

fjrkgkrghd i adore YOU.

nothing is fine, my first andreil fic on ao3!! seems like so long ago and also just yesterday. i think it is almost a rite of passage for people who love writing andrew to take a stab at his POV in baltimore hahaha.

5: What part was hardest to write?

this whole fic was very hard for me to write because i was NERVOUS. i had been playing around posting little stuff here on tumblr, but this was the first time i was gonna like, throw something out into the andreil ao3 tag.

i really like writing canon-adjacent scenes, and i think in general what is hard about them is putting a spin on them so that they feel like they're doing something other than the original. for example, this fic mostly takes place in the hour or so before neil gets to the hotel. once neil arrives, the narration takes quite a few steps back, because the reader already knows what happened there. but everything else in the fic gives you the context for andrew's actions in that scene (according to me, lol). so, aside from my own anxiety, that is always the hardest part of this specific type of fic writing -- making choices that allow your retelling of a scene to feel original.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

there were many moments where i wondered if i should tone andrew's ferocity down. i wrote most of this in one sitting, then took a week or two before finishing it, and in that time i read a lot of other andreil fic. i was new in the fandom, so i guess i was wondering how my take on andrew fit in alongside the general "fanon" of it all -- namely, andrew's stoniness in a lot of fic.

i decided to keep andrew extra feral, and im glad i did, because i still agree with myself lol. i think i set a tone for myself back then where i just let andrew have as unhinged of an inner monologue as possible, and that's what makes him so fucking fun for me to write. i wonder, if i had taken a different route in that fic, if i'd still be as hooked on writing andreil as i am now.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

hmmmmm i dont think i had a specific playlist yet. but this is my general andreil playlist, and most of those songs i've considered to be andreil songs since i finished the series. if i had to pick one song for this fic in particular, it would be thunder clatter by wild cub -- it doesn't necessarily capture the manic energy of the fic, but it does kind of get at that bone-deep, "you're THE person and i dont know what to do without you" desperation that andrew feels.

Sad hopes I'd hidden under Tangled inside of me You spoke like broken thunder Deep into the centre of me

notably, though, i had NOT yet heard habit by spectre jones, which is the most andreil song to ever andreil. def accompanies this fic well, though!

#my writing

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app-oh-sigh-oh-pieces · 7 months

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there is no perfect version of 999

I originally played 999 as part of the Nonary Games edition on Steam. I really enjoyed it, but I found the Adventure / Novel distinction annoying. In Adventure mode, you can see the art better and almost all text is voiced, but you're going to miss a lot of context. In Novel mode, you get more context, but you're going to be sitting there reading in silence a long while.

The port of VLR handled this better by deciding how the game would display for every line of dialogue in advance.

I tried to watch a playthrough a voice actor did, hoping the narration would help the experience, but they turned on Adventure mode immediately and their cohost kept stumbling on puzzles in a way that was painful to watch. But in the comments I saw someone say that the DS version handles this split better, with one screen being Adventure and the other being Novel.

And checking out the DS version, it is a lot more straightforward to follow in that aspect! No worrying that I'm missing something important, no text covering up the picture, no... voice acting, no... checkpoints, no... auto-advance...

Okay, seems like there are some tradeoffs.

My ideal version of 999 would have:

High-def text for ease of reading

Flowchart unlocked only after you've reached an ending—it would show branch points off of what you've currently seen, but not where that branch point goes until you've gotten there

Auto-advance toggle (holding down a button does not count, that's physical work)

Adventure and Novel either displayed simultaneously or swapped intelligently

FULL voice acting. Narrator too.

The narrator being voiced is important to me because this game has a lot of wordy exposition and frankly, if I wanted to read a novel, I would prefer to read a novel—the ink and paper type. I found it legitimately difficult to stay engaged for the long stretches of time between escape rooms, even though I cared about the plot, because my options were to click a button every time I finished reading a line (oof ouch my hand) or to hope that I processed the text in the time it was on the screen.

But wait, isn't there a good reason in-game that the narrator isn't voiced?

Yes, there is. And I know that reason. But I think I have a solution.

Major spoilers under the cut for the true endings of Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward.

The reason the narrator in 999 isn't voiced is because the voice itself would be a spoiler for a major twist. The game is narrated by the child version of Akane Kurashiki, and even if a player didn't work out that it was the same voice actress, it would still be deeply odd, not knowing the twist, that it was being narrated by any child.

But my solution bypasses that entirely: Recast old Akane from VLR with an actual older woman using a naturalistic voice, and use the new actress for both 999's narration and old Akane's VLR dialogue.

Why old Akane? Well, time is already screwy, so why would an older version of her be any stranger than a younger one? An older person sounds like a suitable narrator in a way that a child doesn't, and it would be easy for players to assume the devs just wanted someone who wouldn't be mistaken for a member of the cast—Lotus, the oldest woman, is in her 30s-40s.

Why recast? Because a narrator needs to sound like they aren't putting on a voice, and no shade to Cindy Robinson, this wasn't the direction she was given, but I can tell she doesn't naturally sound like an old lady. And you'd want to give people the closure of hearing the same voice in the next game to cement that it really was Akane.

But what about the reveal? Excellent question. When the reveal happens, the voice acting switches to child Akane and continues for the rest of the game. In my dream version, upon clearing the game you'd unlock spoiler narration and could replay with child Akane the whole time.

A similar thing in reverse could be used to voice Sigma in VLR, though you'd only need to swap his dialogue voice and not his narration (because he still is mentally a young man).

#nine hours nine persons nine doors #zero escape #virtue's last reward

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sierice · 2 years

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Thanks to the ToA discord, here's some hcs on Meg's baywatch bestie Lester, from this post:

P.S: Some of these points are stuff @spideogbeag and @ferodactyl had sent on the ToA discord, so all of Fero's points will be started off with the pretext [By Fero], and Spido's points will start off with [By Spido]

Meg attends the mythology class in school, and when she comes back she tells Lester ALL about it

Next thing the students know, Meg's baywatch friend Lester is their mythology teacher

Apparently the previous teacher had quit because they were moving elsewhere, which is...weird. Another thing Lester mentioned was how inaccurate the myths they were learning were- how does he know that???

Turns out Lester is just his middle name, his first name is actually Alfred- Mr.A for short (Also, see what I did there?? Fred??? From TTC???? Eh????)

To get Zeus gets off his back, Apollo says he's just performing his duty as god of knowledge and also making sure that the mortals know the right mythology

[By Fero] As a teacher, Apollo picks up the book, looks at the description and sighs. One of Meg's classmates looks at the new teacher and the book's description and asked whether he was Apollo because he def looked like him

[By Fero] Sometimes interactions like this happen between Meg and Apollo:

Apollo (spies Meg not having her hand up): Yes, Meg?

Meg: (glares at him)

Apollo: Can you tell me the year I- erm- Apollo slayed Python?

Meg: Well last year and thousands of years ago. How am I supposed to know when exactly?

[By Fero] man slips up so often that the mortal students are like?? besties???

They notice that Mr.A knows a LOT about the god Apollo, except he doesn't seem to justify Apollo's actions, instead agreeing that his actions were terrible even if they weren't

[By Fero] One of the students ask whether he was a big fan of the god Apollo and he laughs and says "Not the biggest fan of my past actions"

The students have a secret club on figuring out more about Mr.A because he has one of the most craziest lives they've ever heard of

Their current goal is trying to get stuff out of Meg, because they KNOW that she knows this guy- but she never budges

They pile up lots of candy to bribe her with. She still doesn't budge

Things about Mr.A that are just straight up Not Normal that they have noted down:

Randomly becoming the new mythology teacher- what happened to the previous teacher?

Personally know the rich twelve year Meg McCaffrey, the sole inheritor of the mansion 'Aeithales' in one of the real posh part of Palm Springs

Sometimes talks in the first person when narrating myths about the god Apollo

Knows a weird amount of things on Greek mythology. like he is straight up saying it like some sort of personal family drama of his

Goes from one place to another REALLY fast. One person claimed they saw him in his office at 9 am. Another claimed to see him on the opposite side of the campus at 9:01 am

Has REALLY weird "family members"???? Whatever, his brother, Mr.... Henry? is pretty cool, so it doesn't really matter- even though he's pretty weird himself. Some say that they saw him fly off the ground- but that's impossible! ....Right?

Mr.A also part-time nurse of the school, he doesn't do it for money though- weird

Can somehow always tell when you're lying. Luckily Mr. Henry claims to be a master at getting past his brother's lie detecting skills

Sometimes when Mr.A is unavailable, this one lady called Ms. Olive takes class instead

She too, claims to be related to Mr.A

She's a very good teacher, but a lot more uptight than Lester- but still nice at teaching.

Mr.A teaches them how to sneak past her strictness though. Next time Ms. Olive comes? She's in for a wild ride

Update: Yeah.... Ms. Olive stomped out the class. Who knew she didn't like spiders?

[By Fero] While correcting essays Mr.A sees an incorrect thing, frowns and writes >:( I did not do that

Some students are talking and one of them says something and the other one goes "Apollo please don't give this person the gift of prophecy" and Mr.A just passes by and says "I heard that"

[By Spido] Sometimes he gets off topic and start talking about old exes of his, and the kids are all confused cause "He dated someone named Oscar Wilde??? Who happened to be a poet??? something isn't adding up here???"

"I'm sorry he has CHILDREN?????!?!?!?!?!? MAN'S F*CKING 20 OR SOMETHING"

The Olympians watch this ever day from Olympus like it's some sort of reality show

Sometimes they come in to participate in the chaos for themselves, sometimes they don't

Mostly it's just the second gen Olympians, but this one time the school got a guest speaker who claimed to be a marine biologist who ALSO happened to be Mr.A's uncle- and good f*cking lord why does he know so much about fishes-

There was a lot more, but if I put it all into this one post it'd be pages long, and wouldn't really make much sense as points XD, so I've just put a few of em- once again, credits to @/ferodactyl and @/spideogbeag for many of these <3

#HOOH boy that's long #long post.#long post #trials of apollo #lester papadopoulos #meg mccaffrey #pjo apollo #toa #mine #apollogists

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janus-stanus · 2 years

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4 theories on who's telling the story of ISWM

I wasn't planning to make any more In Space With Markiplier posts before Sunday's explanation stream, even though I've now seen everything in both parts (pretty sure anyway). But I started typing this out when I was supposed to be writing something else, and at a certain point it felt like a shame not to finish and share it, so, here.

The main things I'm looking for each of these theories to address:

The storyteller’s motive for:

- Telling a story with Mark and Y/N - Making Mark be the bad guy while Y/N takes so much of the blame for most of it - Having choices that in some places repeat / are meaningless and all ultimately lead to one happy ending

Implications for Mark’s apology (is it genuine? is it coming from Actor!Mark or just Engineer!Mark?)

Why Dark isn’t here, but Celine / Ms. Whitacre is

None of the theories are bulletproof - in fact, each features questions without definitive answers. It's just meant to get ya thinking.

Before we start, two assumptions all of these theories are making:

That this is all still happening inside the Manor or the Manor dimension or whatever. If not, then I don't see how anyone could be "telling the story" as it were.

As alluded to above, that Ms. Whitacre is Celine. Between their similar costumes, Dorene referring to previously being married, and her almost calling Damien her brother... that's either Celine or someone impersonating her. It raises a lot of questions, which some of these theories will have to tackle, but I feel like it's safe to assume. This is about as direct as Mark's hints get.

With that established, let's get to it (beneath a read more, cause boy is this long)!

1. The manor entity itself

It has the power for that

It’s making Mark the “hero” but also torturing him, which sounds like what this demonic entity would do

It’s also doing the same thing to us, because we’re its new favorite, or at least someone new to manipulate who literally can’t leave

The spooky voice behind the door has been theorized to be the house, and this makes that easy

Dark’s absence would presumably be because he left the manor, in which case, good for him

Why would it revive Celine / invent Ms. Whitacre as a character? No clear answer.

The house’s opinion on giving choices is also not something we can easily determine, considering all three projects take different approaches to it

This theory would mean that Mark probably didn’t stage his apology… but would the house let him have that genuine realization and reconcile with Y/N? It def fucks with his mental state via thousands of years worth of anger turning to guilt, so maybe.

Why does it give a happy ending? Does it know that Dark is gonna use the crystal to start Heist and rip away that ending? Was it planning to rip that ending away anyway, to tell a new story?

2. Actor!Mark

The assumed answer, for good reason (we see him behind the scenes in part 1, his whole stated goal in Damien is that he gets to be part of endless stories where he’s the hero, and he is also the fictional version of the guy who’s actually telling the stories)

This is also the only option that really explains the times where Mark serves as narrator for the slideshow endings (the ones leading into go to the light + the Mack “ending”)

Would he make himself the bad guy in order to give himself a redemption arc? Does that mean he actually feels bad for what happened in WKM/Damien and this is his way to deal with it? Or is he just giving us what he thinks we want to see? Or, is this what he thinks he needs to be freed from the house? I mean, that’s how parole works, right? You need to show good behavior?

For someone who wanted Dark to be the villain to his hero, he sure did leave Dark out of this one entirely. Then again, his appearances in both heist and date were without Actor’s consent either, so while it’s a question worth asking, it’s not an inconsistency.

On the other hand, there sure is a version of Celine here. My initial Celci theory was that she was a manifestation of Mark’s feelings about Celine generated by the good old house while Ms. Whitacre was actually Celine, but I’m convinced now that Celci and Ms. Whitacre are both actually Celine, largely because of how they’re specifically given the same eye makeup, so… why would Mark include the person who, last he saw her, axed him in the chest, in a prominent and neutral to positive role? Is it a way to subdue her? How did he manage to grab her and not the rest of Dark?

3. Darkiplier (Damien)

We see him outside of the story in the post-credits scene, so it makes sense on that front while explaining why he isn’t there for the rest of it (though otherwise he may just have seen how many the universe was gonna end and said "fuck this"). He also exists on a level above the story in Heist with how he inserts the codes into other videos

That being said, he also says in Heist (which is post-this for Dark) that games aren’t his thing. So why would he tell this story, one where Y/N and Mark are partners? To give us a chance to torture Mark? …or, he just lied about the games thing. He is, let’s not forget, evil.

Only giving the illusion of choice is consistent with him in Date

Is Ms. Whitacre meant to be an avatar for him, injecting himself into the story? If so, why appear as an old lady who’s pretty obviously Celine, and not have any kind of Damien analog? Otherwise, I guess she just showed up on her own accord… which is more believable if Dark’s involved in the fabric of this story than, say, Actor!Mark. Speaking of…

Why have Mark, or a version of him, give a seemingly genuine apology? Just to see if we’ll fall for it? To force Mark to feel guilt? Or does Mark (this version of him) break the script with this apology?

The happy ending also feels very out of character for Dark to give us. Unless, like I mentioned in the house section, he’s letting it happen just to rip it away.

4. Celine / Ms. Whitacre

I don’t think this is the most likely, but right now it’s my favorite

So the idea is either that she’s telling this story while “asleep” (subconsciously accessing the manor's power), or she got booted out of Dark somehow and left in the manor (like us) and is doing this in the meantime (cause if Actor!Mark can manipulate the manor’s power for that, she sure as hell can)

Sure does explain why she’s here. Dark presumably chose not to meddle, or wherever she’s at he can’t access.

All the stuff she does that breaks the rules of the universe / makes her out of place (appearing where she shouldn’t, having new voiceover dialogue in the beginning of part 2) makes total sense if she’s the one telling it

(also means she’s almost certainly the one who tells us “don’t give up” in part 1)

It’s in character for Celine to offer “choices” that aren’t really choices (consider WKM, where we had the choice to be either brought back to life or stuck in limbo, which the Celci ending is a thematic variant of)

Def makes sense that she’d have Mark be the cause of all the problems but be too arrogant/ignorant to realize it for most of the duration, and also that there are so many endings where he perishes/suffers

But, would she have (or allow for) Mark to give a genuine apology, and then have a happy ending for him and Y/N? Well, if we look at Ms. Whitacre and how her perspective has changed from the Celine we knew, to the point where both she and Old Man Mark say similar things in part 2… I think it’s possible that, in the long time this story loop has been playing out, she’s gotten over her desire for revenge, and this story of hers has kind of morphed into a what-if redemption story (with her change in perspective shown by there being both Celci and Dorene as her avatars). Like, the kind of ending she’d like to believe is possible, where Mark realizes his fault and apologizes, and Y/N gets to have a life

(this works whether Engineer!Mark is Actor!Mark being pushed to this point or a nicer version of Mark invented by her for this story, which is nice)

(and it gives extra weight to him quoting her when he realizes he was in the wrong)

If this is Celine’s story where she gets her closure, then that explains why we never see her in future stuff

The main question this one raises is why she includes Y/N and has them take the blame for what Mark caused for so much of the adventure. Maybe she’s trying to turn us against Mark? But if this is shortly post-Damien for her, which occurs right at the end of WKM, then she should feel safe to assume that we also hate him. Is it meant to put us in her shoes, to help us understand her perspective? To teach us something?

Bonus point 1: I saw someone point out that, in Let Go, there's a moment where you can see she has the #1 Captain mug that the Captain gets given in Hold On (the one she actually gives you here is the buh-bye! mug, and hers has a Bandit quote on it). If she's the storyteller, I like to think of it as her having had the prompt on hand for you to get in the good ending.

Bonus point 2: Most of the significant new characters in this story that exist in multiple timelines and aren't a part of the Invincible Crew are women (or assumed to be). There's "Lady", the Bandit, and even the Wug that works with "Lady". Now, tell me, who's more likely to tell a story with multiple strong female characters who are ultimately sympathetic taking the spotlight: Actor!Mark, or Celine? (Yes Heist has the Scientist, but it also has all those other characters Mark plays, and the Hermit, and etc. etc.)

Bonus point 3: funny coincidence that Celci’s name is an anagram of the name of the narrator character played by Arin (Cecil). Like I know he had his name first and she’s named after Celsius, but, still.

That's all I've got! I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on these theories :)

...

Except, that's not it. Because I gave it a day and had two new thoughts. One short and probably insignificant, one... Not.

First - there is one more potential candidate you could argue for being the storyteller: Wilford. Based on a) the power he demonstrates over the wormholes (even those his are a different color) and b) the computer the universe seems to run on using "Warstache OS". That being said, there is, like, no other evidence for this, and, more importantly to me, it really doesn't add anything to the story. Actor!Mark, Dark, or Celine being the storyteller all have implications for their characters. Wilford, on the other hand, is at this point defined by his consistent brand of apathetic chaos in the face of the constantly shifting madness of the universe, and telling a whole sprawling narrative like this with a clear ending and lesson/moral doesn't line up with what we've seen from him. So, while I'm bringing it up for the sake of completeness, I don't think it's a genuine option.

Now, for the actually plausible thing:

5. Celine theory v2

Last night, I was thinking about Damien (the video) again, as ya do, and two things in it got me thinking.

A) When Celine says in Damien that she’s done some horrible shit and used people to keep Damien alive... what could she possibly be referring to, considering all of Damien happens while they (in our body) are still in the manor?

B) I had the random realization that both Damien and Space have crossover with WMW - in Space we get to see why the second Wilford was there in the background of that one shot, while in Damien it’s the pink flower and the quotes from a little later in WMW that cues Damien off to things repeating. So, while I'm at the point where I firmly believe there is no one true "timeline", only each character's perspective on the series of events... it does seem that, from a certain angle, WMW, Damien, and Space are happening around the same time.

So. What if, instead of Celine telling the events of Space post-Damien when she's supposed to be asleep...

She's telling it during Damien? And, to tie it to observation A, her telling of this story is what’s somehow keeping Damien “alive”? With the infinitely dying colonists and crew* being the people she claims responsibility for "killing", and us (and Mark?) being the ones she "used"?

*(Consider that the bodies in the water in Damien could be the same as the corpses in Space - the house reusing “actors” for Space).

Your first question in response to that is probably, how does this keep Damien alive? Well. We could say that. Maybe, just maybe... MatPat was right actually.

Or, since he's not, and DA has to factor in somewhere as long as we’re still pre the very very ending of WKM...

Maybe focusing the manor's power to tell a story centered on Mark and the DA allowed Damien to slip under the radar… until Actor!Mark burst in.

(Also, since Celine keeping Damien safe is framed as her keeping him "asleep" while she's forced to stay "awake", consider that part 2 of Space literally finding a story to tell to help us go back to sleep.)

And then the endings of Damien and Space happen at the same time or one right after the other, meaning that, potentially, Mark and Celine both say their "I'm tired" lines at the same time. And then the cabin floods as the universe explodes for the last time, and the DA gets to smile at the big glass window that takes up the whole frame showing the new planet, while they’re being kicked out of their body into the glass mirror that takes up the whole frame. And, hey, maybe the reason Dark/Damien even kicks us out is because we became pals with Mark when he wasn't looking.

This does mean that there are 3 distinct Celines existing at the same point in time (Celine, Celci, Dorene)*. It also raises questions about Actor!Mark and Engineer!Mark re: what Actor!Mark was up to in Damien. Maybe the Actor!Mark who talks to Damien is only the embodiment of the worst of him while the rest is Engineer!Mark; or maybe Engineer!Mark started as just a role but developed as his own character to the point that he existed on his own and Actor!Mark could no longer play him; or maybe that Actor!Mark is an illusion by the house; or, maybe, something else.

*And I think there's another character here who, while not another part of / version of Celine, would, in this context, be meant to parallel her: The "Lady". Not just because they're associated with red lighting, but because they are the primary "antagonist" for most of Heist, hunting us and Mark down with her (space) gun. And what Celine lead Damien to think she's doing while she's out of the cabin? Hunting. Mark, presumably.

Some miscellaneous things about this version of the theory being true that would drive me insane:

1) Mark has poked fun at how people cry Darkiplier at any and all instances of red and/or cyan coloring in Space. And that's totally fair of him... Unless this is all actually happening mid-Damien, while we're still, on some level, inside Dark. Then it's fucked.

2) Who else remembers the bit in Damien where Damien looks to Celine and says "Aye aye captain"? Cause I did, in the days after space Part 1 came out, and I waited to see if that would mean anything. If Damien is saying that to Celine while she’s telling currently doing Space? That's, Something, all right. Especially when Cloak is currently selling a mug with the text "The Captain needs their rest" written in red.

3) The metaphor for Damien waking up in Damien (Mark why did you name the video just Damien) is winter ending and spring coming. What's the American tradition for finding out when that happens? When the groundhog comes out and isn't scared by its shadow. The ship the Captain arrives on is named the Shuttle Marmota. "Marmota" is part of the scientific name for groundhogs. On its own? Funny Groundhog Day reference (cause loop). In light of Damien? aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Now, personally, I would prefer it I think if Space is a story Celine is telling post-Damien, because I think it works better for her character development and her getting closure that way. That being said, the likeliness of this second version of the theory both concerns ad intrigues me. A story taking place within Damien, which is taking place within WKM, in a multiverse where time is totally fucked anyway. Why not?

I'm going to cut myself off now before I start thinking about something even crazier to tie into Space being a story told by Celine, like, uh, Bandit / Wilford parallels.

...oh no. Oh No.

#we have fun here #markiplier #in space with markiplier #iswm #iswm spoilers #still not gonna bother tagging all the characters #apologies again to all the people here for the content this blog was made for

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low-budget-korra · 2 years

Text

Let's talk about Euphoria season 2

The season is over but I'm not so I will try to put my emotions behind and try to analyze some hot topics of the season without the rush there's it exist when the season is still going.

Elliot - He had no main purpose other then mess with Rue and Jules relationship just for the sake of having a men in a wlw relationship and I still hate this about his character. Don't help that he had the depth of characters like Samantha, Faye, the vape girl, Aaron Jacobs... but the screen time of a main character. And what make those characters good was that they didn't try to be more than they were, they didn't have to forcibly steal a main character spotlight like Elliott did to Jules.

Sure, sometimes a character is so good and charismatic that they steal the show without much effort, that's what happened with Lexi and Fez. Def not the case with Eliott and I still believe that he can even be a co protagonist or straight down take Rue's place in the next seasons, Sam seen to really favs his character so i would be surprised if this happens

Maddy, Nate and Cassie - Yes we can say that this love triangle has its ups and downs, especially due to Nate's messy writing this season but for the most part, it makes sense. Nate saw in Cassie someone who resemblance Jules and Cassie with her daddy issues, it makes sense and we can actually see this early in the season.

Jules - We don't know for sure what happened in the backstage was the character who most suffer with the season messy and bad writing. Yes I'm aware that Kat only had like two lines but still, at least she had a great scene and at the end of the day we just laugh at wtf happened to her character. With Jules, sadly, things got a little more violent, some people are just waiting for any excuse to be transphobic assholes.

And yes Jules is allowed to make mistakes and all, but even if the idea was to make her think again about the "I'm no longer interested in men", there is better ways to portray this confusion and self learning than the one the show choosed. The show really villanize her and don't come with "oh but Rue is the narrator" bullshit because if we put that on the table we wouldn't have seen Cal backstory, Maddy interactions with Samantha and a bunch of other scenes because there's just no way of Rue to know all that.

Ash's Death - We wasn't a homicide maniac, that kid was smart and didn't had to die like that. Want to kill him ? Fine, but at least give the kid a good death. Make him take a bullet for Fezco, since he go to war like a brother and that's what a brother does, protect each other.

Lock himself in a bathroom in a suicidal action is so off character to the s1 smart kid that probably knew that he would be the one who would get a less sentence since he is a kid and probably the one that would bail Fez outta prison or be the one running the business while Fez serve his time in jail. And don't come with me with the "oh but he was in a adrenaline rush and couldn't control himself, he was just a kid" then Cal Jacobs should have been blasted back on the beginning of the season when he went to the store to confront Fez.

The thing is, with a lot of other characters this season the show forgot their consistency. Characters started to do stuff just because it feels convenient for the plot at that point of the story.

#euphoria #euphoria season 2 #hbo euphoria #rue bennett #rue x jules #jules vaughn #maddy perez #cassie howard #lexi howard #fezco #ash #nate jacobs #cal jacobs

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