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paperbackribs · 28 days

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Tags: steddie, getting together, featuring the chaotic friendship of Eddie & Dustin

🤎🌱🤎

Steve's hands are already at his hips, “Eddie, what are you doing down there?”

Eddie glances up from the hole he’d dug in the woods beyond Steve’s backyard. Looking at the dirt nearly up to his shoulders he belatedly realises that he may have become a tad fixed on his big idea.

Dappled sunlight falls through the tapestry of foliage above and the chirping of birds nearby cheerily fill the lush landscape, but none of it seems to distract Steve from his concern as he squints down at Eddie.

“Where’s Dustin?” Eddie counters like he doesn’t currently resemble a cartoon villain digging traps for the native wildlife. He resists twirling an imaginary moustache over his bare upper lip, but Steve must have an idea of his thoughts because he squints suspiciously over his arms as he folds them.

“I don’t know,” Steve says slowly from high above, “should he be here while you create what looks like your own grave?”

Eddie props his arms over the lip, tilting his chin up and aiming for charming. Playful even. “Now, why would I do that, Stevie? Life is a magnificent thing, worthy of delight and whimsy.”

“Whimsy,” Steve repeats sceptically, “like you practically digging up my backyard. You know, someone could fall and sue me, right?” Despite his scolding tone, Steve bends to kneel on the ground, his delicious thighs by Eddie’s folded hands and head hovering over his.

Eddie flutters his eyelashes as Steve waits on him, nearly close enough to kiss if he would just tilt down a fraction. “You could get in here with me, make it so there’s no room for anyone else.”

Steve’s bright hazel eyes flash and Eddie wishes he could get a handle on whether it’s because of Eddie’s suggestive tone or if it’s that Steve is simply annoyed with his antics.

Just when the silences stretches for a second too long, enough that Eddie thinks Steve might lean forward, close the gap and take Eddie’s lips in what would surely be a spectacular first kiss, he instead smirks, slyly pushing a handful of loose dirt into the hole from the high mound above Eddie’s head. It rains over Eddie’s right shoulder, which he shrugs fatalistically — he’s fairly covered at this point anyway.

“Eddie, tell me why you’ve dug a hole near as tall as you by my backyard.”

“Or what, you’ll bury me with all the other bodies out here?”

“Something like that.” Another handful rains down and Eddie sighs, “It’s a compression hole.” Steve’s hand halts, “Like the socks?”

Eddie takes the opportunity to reach out and clasp Steve’s hand, ostensibly to stop it from pushing more dirt over his shoulders but really just taking the opportunity to touch Steve. Hold the warmth of his hand within his own, stroke the silken back of it with his thumb.

Eddie steals many moments like these and Steve always lets him, but he never knows whether it's because of Steve's generous nature or if it's because he wants Eddie touching him, specifically.

“Like the socks,” he agrees, eyes sharp as Steve’s cheeks flush a faint red. Yet he retains a sceptical mien about him so Eddie further explains. “Dustin has this book—”

Steve snorts, “Here we go.”

“Dustin has this book and it says that the Aboriginals from Australia have known for ages how to take care of deadly snake bites.”

“With a hole.”

Eddie is always fascinated to see the evidence of Steve’s smiles in the shine of his eyes, and he delights in being one of the few people who often brings out its brightness. “With a hole,” he agrees with a cheeky grin, happy at Steve’s amusement.

“Bit by a Red-belly then you're in the hole for x amount of days. By a King Brown then for an nth amount of days. Placed in the hole and buried up to your neck, the compression of it all works the venom safely through your system.”

He's sad to see those pretty eyes hidden from him as Steve closes them with a deep, bracing breath. “Eddie,” he begins in a warning tone, drawing his hand away, “is Dustin finding a poisonous snake to bite you with.”

“No, definitely not,” Eddie hedges but at Steve’s stern look he squirms, “because poisonous would mean that I can’t eat them?”

“Venomous then!”

Eddie thinks that maybe he’s losing his capacity to charm Steve if the ire rising in his eyes is anything to go by. He shifts uneasily on the hard dirt below him, feeling particularly trapped as Steve’s frown deepens while looking like he’s considering burying Eddie without the bite and definitely above his head.

The sounds of eager feet crunching over dry leaves and fallen branches sound behind Eddie and he tilts his head in time to see Dustin fly through the trees with a long, wriggling animal in his hands. “Found one!” He calls triumphantly, the curls around his face bobbing in excitement. There's a smudge across his cheek that Eddie suspects was made by crawling through the dirt and bushes to find his captured prey.

About twenty inches long, thin with yellow stripes framing its scales of green and brown, the garter snake wrapped around Dustin’s left arm tastes the air in front of it with its pink forked tongue. Simultaneously looking unhappy at being captured while utterly disinterested in the humans surrounding it.

Dustin’s face crinkles in confusion as Steve starts laughing behind Eddie’s back. “What? What is it?” He asks Steve who, Eddie looks over to see, has fallen back onto his butt, head tilted to the sky as he snorts and chuckles at the harmless animal Dustin has procured for their experiment.

“Never mind,” Steve waves an expansive hand towards the two of them, “carry on. As you were.” Humour dances over his brow and broadens his smile, “Here, I’ll even help. Pass it over, Dustin, I’ll throw the terrible monster at Eddie myself.”

It’s Eddie’s turn for his cheeks to flush now and he might be more embarrassed if it weren’t for Steve catching his eye, sharing a look of amusement with him rather than at him, and Eddie finds himself charmed by Steve Harrington once more.

It's not the first time and he knows that it won't be the last. Steve has had Eddie firmly wrapped around his little finger for far too long to say now, and Eddie's only waiting for the barest hint to step forward.

He sighs and turns back to Dustin, “Let the snake go, it’s a bust.”

Dustin opens his mouth to protest, but Eddie heads him off, explaining that the only creatures in danger of the carnivore in his hands are worms and maybe a mouse or two.

Eddie reckons that if Dustin were a mouse his tail would drop in disappointment right now, looking as sad as one can as he trudges away to release the snake in a safer place deeper in the woods.

He turns back to Steve to find him crouching now, braced with a hand outstretched towards Eddie. His eyes are still bright from his earlier laughter, but an invitation now winds its way through them.

“How about I help clean you up?” Steve asks in a dark murmur and Eddie lights up, finally finding an answer to the question that's been jittering in his heart.

“Why don’t you,” Eddie grins in agreement, clasping Steve back and pushing up to meet him halfway. As he scrambles out of the hole, Eddie pats the lip of its edge in affection as he continues to hold onto Steve’s hand. He silently thanks the soon-to-be-forgotten experiment and winds their fingers together, following Steve home.

💚 More steddie here

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #paperbackribs writing

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xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx · 9 days

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"An ideal Sims game would have Sims 2's gameplay mechanics, Sims 3's open world, and Sims 4's graphics!"

I absolutely despise this take, and I want to explain why. This is a very long rant and it is full of piss and vinegar directed at everything in the Sims 4. I'm gonna try to keep everything kinda professional as much as I can but I can't guarantee an unbiased opinion.

If you'll let me talk your ears off for a moment, I'd like to explain, from my own experience as an artist and a casual player, my issues with the art style and direction of The Sims 4 compared to The Sims 2. (I'm not really going to comment on 3 because I've never played it.)

I want to start off by explaining the difference between better graphics and higher resolution. The Sims 4 absolutely blows Sims 2 out of the water when it comes to textures and polygon counts on sims, no contest. But I'd argue that the graphics themselves... aren't better. They're worse, even, so much fucking worse. The biggest problems come from the stylization and the animations, in my opinion, so I'll explain what I mean.

Have you ever felt like the Sims in 4 just look... weird? Not quirky, not kinda strange, but off. Distressing. Uncanny. Whatever the fuck the kids call it nowadays. When you strip away the packs and the CC and the shaders, the sims in the base game look bad. They're very close to being human; they walk like us, talk like us, have families like us, but they don't look like us, not exactly. There's always something off about them, no matter how close you try to get. Proportions will be a bit off, or your eyelashes will be like three polygons for some fucking reason, and the jig is up. The illusion is gone.

This is one of the instances where a higher resolution and more detailed models and meshes work against you. You aren't making believe. You are beyond the point of pretending that the pixelated shapes are real clothes and bodies and faces, because at this point, they're close enough that you don't need to. There's no gap to bridge. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're lifelike, at least, not enough to be completely human. In some ways, they're still tethered to being cartoony and plasticky and fake. Just enough to frighten you. Enough to put you off. They're not using it to their advantage anymore, and instead, it's holding them back.

When the Sims 2 came out in 2004, the developers knew that they weren't going to make a perfectly accurate life simulator. They physically couldn't render every wrinkle in the face or fold in the clothing. In some animations, things clip strangely or the facial expressions are sort of janky or there's just some form of roughness around the edges. But that's okay; your brain doesn't need a perfectly accurate representation this time. That's not what you're here for, anyway.

The Sims 4 is basically Icarus-ing itself into disaster. The entire game sacrifices style for complete realism, a goal that was unachievable ten years ago, and is unachievable now.

The Sims 2 never thought of itself as a completely realistic life sim, though. It has cartoony, low poly meshes and exaggerated proportions and wild, raunchy storylines that would never occur in real life. BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL LIFE. And it isn't like real life, not because it's failing to be, but because it doesn't want to be!

The Sims 4 is not ever going to completely replicate human looks or interactions or dynamics. And if it's trying to, it's doing a shit job of it. That shouldn't be the goal in the first place. If I wanted to watch a lonely college student talk to himself in the mirror to try and get better at interacting with people, I'd close the computer and go look at myself. It somehow highlights the most mundane parts of life without any of the whimsy and goofiness that the earlier installments had. It takes itself too fucking seriously for its own good, and it's killing both the gameplay and the art style.

The other point I'd like to bring up is the animation. The Sims 4 allows for much more customization of both sim and environments, but at the cost of dynamic animations. How many times is that grab animation reused? How many times is the same set of animations used for sims with wildly different personalities? Your sims barely feel alive with how little they express themselves.

Now, look, I'm a digital artist. I've dabbled in animation, but only briefly, and only in 2D. I've got no clue how 3D animation works, much less how it worked 20 years ago, but I can see the passion in every single animation in the Sims 2. The more niche interactions allowed for more expressive animations than in 4. They could afford to have a distinct animation for mean sims throwing the football extra hard to be assholes, rather than every sim using the same generic football-throwing animation to save time and money. I get where they're coming from. I get the idea. But in one move, you've both made the art style stiffer and less expressive, and you've made the personalities of the sims seem meaningless. Everyone acts the same, regardless of what their moodlets or their traits say. It's hollow. It's stifled. It's a waste of potential.

But for what Sims 2 lacks in polygons, it makes up for in smaller animated details. Quality over quantity. The sims have hair physics, they open the door before they get in the car, they take utensils out of the counters when they cook, they jump on the couch and the cushions smush under their weight. When they dance, the weight is realistic, and when they smile, it tugs at every one of the few dozen shapes that make up their faces. The sims are lively. They dance and sing and love and hate just like humans, and rather than being some strange attempt at mimicry, it's almost a tribute. They were made with love. You can tell that they were drawn up and rigged and animated by a bunch of people working together, studying each other and making faces in the mirror for reference and watching their kids and neighbors and dogs and hands for reference. The sims are not human, and not trying to be, but they're taking the most human parts of us and making them their own.

You could never have a game with the Sims 4's graphics and the Sims 2's gameplay. The gameplay and graphics are inexorably connected, and the Sims 2 just has so much glorious detail baked into it, that you could never really make it work underneath the limitations of the later games. The developers of 2 knew what their limits were, and they worked tirelessly to make the game as full and complex as they could within those limits. The developers for the Sims 4 just did not have those guidelines, and thus, the drive to bend the rules was no longer there. They didn't go wild in rebellion because they were never told they couldn't in the first place. They spent the entire time chasing a goal they couldn't meet, and lost sight of what made the series fun to begin with.

It wasn't the realism you came for; you had realism already surrounding you. It was the caricature of it that made it interesting.

#sims 2 #sims 4 #rambling #please hear me out here #if I hear this one more time i'll explode #please #the problem is so deeply ingrained that it corrupts all it touches like an oil spill #you cant separate the graphics from the gameplay #please guys #THIS is why the sims 4 feels hollow #IT IS #IN EVERY WAY IT COULD BE #every advancement it claims to make only digs its grave further #GUYS PLEASE #CAN ANYONE HEAR ME #does this count as an essay #it felt like an essay #it's 5am

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bigfatbimbo · 18 days

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this sounds kinda fucked but like how would vox be toxic in a relationship?? who do you think would be like the worst character to be with in hazbin?

this sounds like a bummer of a request but i ask because you talk about how much you like character analysis posts, and you have a clear love for terrible people (same!)

AHHHHHH I GET TO TALK ABOUT EVIL PEOPLE!!

So let me just say that I feel like, of late, I haven’t given that much attention to how terrible of a person Vox is… But the thing is, no one wants to hear about how they would be mistreated in a relationship. I mean, I fear a lot of my posts seem delusion-ally out of character for this, but also it’s tumblr and as long as I continue have a firm grasp on what that character is actually like, mischaracterization can be excused for the sake of joy and whimsy. (However I can justify ANYTHING that I was written and tell you why they would **to an extent** do that. Actually that sounds really fun someone test me on that—)

Vox definitely gets the worst of ‘mischaracterization for the sake of joy and whimsy’ so here’s a small reality check! Don’t enjoy <3 **NOT PROOFREAD**

Constant surveillance of your every move. This meaning every question you google, all the television you watch, every stranger you smile at, he would keep track of it all.

Anything you do wrong, under his creepy surveillance, would be used against you during arguments.

No, even if you two are official, he does not stop fucking Val, and no, if asked, he will not stop.

He will lie to you if he feels he needs to, and will absolutely never feel bad about it no matter how big of a lie it is.

The worst of this definitely comes when you two are fighting and you call him out for something he 100% did.

He’s great at painting himself out in a good light, and when you’re fighting he does this by lying, and if that doesn’t work, hypnosis.

Yeah, he does that a lot too. If you’re not in the mood to fuck, now you are. If you’re hanging out with your friends tonight instead of him, no you’re not. I hope you all have blue light glasses!

Also, if all of his manipulation tactics fail to work on you, he just gets mad and really personal in all of his insults. It’s easy for him to do so when he’s studied you on his screen for so long.

Hope you’re not overly insecure too, he’ll take advantage of that to get what he wants from you.

Speaking of taking advantage of, if you’re famous or special or interesting in any particular way, he will 100% use you for press.

Also, he’s from the 1950s, no matter how modern he tries to be, a part of this mindset will always stay with him.

Meaning that he will obnoxiously try to be the manly one in the relationship, no matter your gender.

You will be feminized in his mind, at least for a good start of the relationship.

This also stems from his fragile ego, and seeing as he is the personification of toxic masculinity!

This is a dom reader blog, obviously, but even after fucking this kind of mindset out of him, these tendencies would stop, BUT be replaced by equally as terrible ones.

For example, especially if he’s the sub, he would just expect you to do things for him, to stick your neck out, to take care and dote on him.

If you’re not giving him enough attention as well, your internet will go out, your lights will flicker, and no electronics in your house will work.

This will stay the case until you are forced to ask him for help.

But you wanted to be in charge anyways, so why should this behavior be reciprocated?

I’ve talked about this in past posts, I can’t find it at this very moment but I go into detail more, but what does love look like for Vox?

He would probably either be shockingly indifferent towards you, until he falls in ‘love.’

Then, he will be terribly obsessed with you. Because the closest thing he can feel to actually love is devoted obsession.

Yes, it can last as long as love, but it isn’t.

Because, and let me say this loudly, a healthy relationship with Vox, or any of the Vees, is not possible. You can be close, but it is not and never will be possible!

Okay, so your second question, “who do you think would be like the worst character to be with in hazbin?”

Top three and in this order:

Any of the Vees

2. Alastor

3. Adam or Lute

I’m probably forgetting someone, but it’s alright. Top three remains the same.

And you know, you will never catch me defending any of those people. Because I feel like in this fandom there is some crazy internalized theme of being ‘morally correct’ when liking a character.

You can find a character entertaining or interesting, no matter how awful they are. It’s television, characters are supposed to be interesting. Liking their screen time, or finding them attractive, has virtually NOTHING to do with your moral compass.

SORRY FOR THE RANT AT THE END— This is going to flop so hard. ☝️😁

Lucifer content and Adam content coming out soon, BY THE WAY!! Just trying to answer the more question-y asks before putting out actual content. Also i’m bored with no real motivation so

#hazbin hotel x reader #vox x reader #dom reader #bimbo rambling #hazbin hotel vox

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inkymoonbunny · 2 months

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Astarion x Tav Fic Recs

These are just some of my favorites! <3 Mix of during game and AUs

Epistles of Saints & Sinners @elegantduelliste - Soulmate Marks AU during game. Astarion recognizes Tav’s soulmate mark, it matches his own, but he's not going to tell her that; he can't have a soulmate, it's just one more thing Cazador has stolen from him. Tav is just as drawn to Astarion, but her own history has left her guarded and wary of being vulnerable. Elle’s writing of the push and pull of their relationship is breathtaking and heart-wrenching. Matching a bard Tav, Elle's prose takes on a lyrical quality and her use of imagery is unparalleled.

The House of Astarion by Throckmorton420 - Labyrinth AU post-Elderbrain. Ascended Astarion lost interest in conquering Faerun once he came across the Labyrinth, it's much more his style anyway. Stealing Tav’s violin, he offers her a deal: solve his Labyrinth and he'll return her violin and grant her a wish. Realizing this is her opportunity to reconnect to the Weave, Tav agrees. Did I mention goostarion? Because there's goostarion! This fic is filled with mischief, whimsy, and so much heart.

Fools' Work @semper-draca - Pre-Tadpole AU. Cazador has sent his spawn after a mysterious box and luckily for Astarion, his latest target happens to have a lead. It should be easy to seduce her and steal the prize! Too bad she’s not as naive as Astarion believes. This mercenary Tav is perceptive and delightfully unhinged that makes her a great matchup for a scheming Astarion.

When the Dawn Breaks… @harcourtholmesii - set during game. Before Astarion was turned, he ignored his family’s disapproval of a Drow lover. Two hundred years later, Lavender has found the lover she grieved and believed dead. Astarion brushes away her questions but still sweeps her off her feet. He can’t believe his luck in finding a target that presumably knows him, one easy to lure back when he so desperately needs to keep in good graces with his master.

Until You @bloodinwine - Post-Elderbrain with modern world AU flavor. Effy thought Astarion needed a friend more than a lover, so now here they are as roommates and definitely not hopelessly in love pining after one another. Effy struggles to fight her way free of self-destructive tendencies and be the person Astarion needs her to be. This Tav is a loveable hot mess! I have never wanted to take a character by the shoulders and shake them so badly, thank you June for spinning Effy into the world.

Lacunae @karinamay - Series set during game. Tav was once Astarion’s target, but she slipped away. Upon meeting after the Nautiloid crash, she remembers but Astarion does not. This is the one that inspired me to start writing again. It’s sweet and heartbreaking and deliciously spicy!

Pour One Out @aevallare - Modern AU/1000 years post-Elderbrain. A spinoff from the much loved and fandom favorite Kindred featuring an anxious Auri that doesn't remember her past life and a tailor Astarion that's in awe of finding his love again. This is an Astarion that's had centuries to heal from his ordeal with Cazador, one that's been able to flourish in freedom. Astarion gets his chance to be a hero for Auri this time around. Aevallare's characterization of Astarion is absolutely unmatched.

All these fics are ongoing so you must be patient, but DO give them a read and the authors some love/kudos/comments!

#fic recs #bg3 astarion #astarion x tav #astarion x oc #fanfic #bg3 #astarion #baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic #fanfic rec #epistles of saints and sinners #The House of Astarion #Fools' Work #When the Dawn Breaks...#Until You #Lacunae #pour one out

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isa-ghost · 2 months

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Could I mayhaps have some hc!philza headcanons? Could be him in his hardcore, or how his time in hardcorr affects him now maybe? :D

OUGH YES.

So these will be operating off the theory that qPhil is hcPhil with his memory fucked up by the Federation. I'm gonna aim for "pre island, this is how qPhil was" but we'll see what happens as I actually write these LOL

What if I call these Pre-Dilf Edition in the masterlist SKFJSKFJSKFHF

10/10 would read the hardcore deity set I did recently to go with these :D

qPhil headcanons masterlist

He either had a flawless sleep schedule (early to bed early to rise ass mf) or no sleep schedule at all (spending 3+ nights hyperfocused on smth). It made for a very loopy Phil sometimes, which his murder of crows very much enjoyed

This man can fit so much joy and whimsy in him. Everything is awesome, everything is a breathtaking work of art and everything is decades of rich history to uncover. He loves life, he loves the passage of time, he loves teaching the murder about what he finds & restores

That's his main hobby besides being a survivalist, restoration and an informal form of archiving. He sketches the builds, takes notes on the deities, adds his own little touches to each place to make it a little prettier

He could fly for hours. Sometimes he'd fly aimlessly into late into the night, too immersed in sight-seeing and chatting with the murder

He had little altars in Flowerfall, Nether Void & Greater Spawn Islands for OO, BE, and Rose respectively. He'd leave little shiny things, trinkets that made him think of them, offerings like cooked fish or blaze rods or flowers in little offering bowls. Just as a nice, more direct way of giving them thanks for creating something so beautiful and allowing him to restore it to its former glory

He fucking loves swimming and fishing and hanging out at Endlantis, he'd just very aggressively avoid the cave that is EK's tomb. It was extremely haunted, he never got good vibes down there

He sometimes considers making his own remarkable build as a sort of "I was here, I too am a mark upon this history" but looks at his house and is like "mmmmbetter not" (he's an idiot, he could 100% build something cool, just probably not on the scale of the builds the gods have created. He'd probably create it for Goddess of Death, not even himself 💀)

Obligatory gapple addiction mention. It didn't start because of the murder, but he definitely used them as an excuse to further indulge once he started devoting eating one to the crows who'd been in the murder for a year. He never really had a reason to quit, or worry about the addiction, so he never experienced negative effects from it. Gapples aren't exactly harmful, just.. tinged with just enough magic to infect the brain. (He never experienced withdrawal misery on QI bc the Feds wiped his memory so his body had no idea it should be having a bitch fit =) )

Semi-related, he loved the days where he and the murder lacked the motivation and focus to do restoration things so they'd just fuck off in a random direction for ages and go on loot sprees. Nothing more exciting than hunting for more god apples :D

He started out liking fishing. The murder got too obsessed and it became the bane of his existence. But he loves the murder, so he does it anyway. Besides, he wouldn't trade chill talks with them for the world. :')

Btw he doesn't know this but it was equal parts the Ender King & the Feds ripping rifts between the universes that got him caught and taken to QI. EK didn't plan for that to happen, he just wanted to escape to a new reality to find a vessel to come back to power. Which is why once Phil was on the island, EK went "Fuck it, I'll use that asshole since he's not only compatible, but from the same plane of existence"

Mobs never scared him much (except Enderman) despite the fact that they were very dangerous and he's a survivalist. He was practically a mob whisperer, it's how he trapped trophy ones, made certain farms and why he was 99% fearless when farming charged creepers. QI has so many mobs he's never seen in his life that his chill instincts are suddenly like AAAWTFWTF

He never felt truly alone despite being the only humanoid. He felt like Rose was always with him, very rarely OO, and the murder ofc. He could understand them and he'd talk to them all day every day. Not only that, he had pets like Pog and Champ and there were quite a few times he'd humanize inanimate objects, which scientifically helps keep you sane in isolation such as survival. He always felt like he had Something to socialize with

That said, he IS still a bit weird socially on the island. Socializing with humans is way different than crows, other animals, gods, and objects.

Btw Ian is God of Chaos (a lesser god like Goddess of Death) and other mods like Birder, D3 & Wolfy are notably larger or perhaps a different species of corvid that hang out among the murder :D

#qsmp #qsmp philza #philza #q!philza #qphil headcanons #hardcore season 4

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be-not-defeated-by-the-rain · 8 days

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mod whats ur opinion on kenji?

Ooc:

the little guy ever! I really love his philosophy and agree with it a lot at its core, though he doesn’t really know how to acknowledge nuance so it tends to come off as really naive and idealistic.

And we do see however that his idealistic no-nuance til violence happens then very rapid flip mindset works for him because he has the strength to back it up. He’s so nice and just naturally cares for everyone he meets.

It’s kind of like- forgive me and hear me out- like early Akutagawa when we first first meet him. Like where he’s killing atsushi and is like “its nothing against you this is just for the job” and he’s all grinning as the tiger starts crawling on the wall or something

Kenji is like that but with like 20 tons more whimsy and i think that’s iconic cuz he’s fighting you and then he’s like. “Oh great job!” “That was so impressive!” “How cool is that!” “Get ready!” “Here i come!” Like if this kid had been exposed to anime i feel like he’d be yelling out attack names before doing them but instead he hyperfixated on nature and kindness

But he’s also like fiercely protective, pushing tanizaki(?) out of the way of tetchou’s sword and ofc finding out atsushi was being tortured and also commonly uses himself to tank attacks which like yeah he’s fine we see him tanking bullets in front of the mafia building during cannibalism but also he’s a kid and he’s still like “ow ow ow that really hurts” and its like stoppit that’s my son over there!

And like his friends being hurt makes him angry right but not enough where he can’t suppress it in favor of kindness because he’s still of the impression that people always have the best intentions. Like he never blamed tetchou, even though he hurt him multiple times and also his friends, he’s trying to do the right thing and Kenji even tries to help him!

But then its like “oh they’re torturing- that’s deliberate. Thats pain for the sake of pain. And its not going to stop unless someone does something to stop it- that crosses his line into anger

Like for the job or for one of his own goals he’ll beat you up. But you’re still friends though right :D? And i just think that’s so fun and funny

Anyways this is long enough lmao. Here you go Anon!

#bsd rp #kenji rp #ask #ooc #ooc post #long post #kenji #kenji miyazawa #bsd #bungou stray dogs #kenji bsd #bsd kenji

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hollowed-theory-hall · 1 month

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Any HC's on what's going on with Luna?

Hi, so I really like Luna as a character, and I've seen various theories about her being a seer, which at least used to be popular in fic, but I never got that impression from her. Personally, I don't think there's anything magical going on with Luna. I think she's just a girl with imagination, a sense of whimsy, and some trauma of her own who chose to handle it through her internal little world rather than anger and other more externalized ways to cope.

So, this kinda ended up being a bit of a character study on Luna...

Pandora Lovegood & Luna's Trauma

One of the major moments in Luna's life that really changed her worldview and approach to people and the world was her mother's death:

“Have you . . .” he began. “I mean, who . . . has anyone you’ve known ever died?” “Yes,” said Luna simply, “my mother. She was a quite extraordinary witch, you know, but she did like to experiment and one of her spells went rather badly wrong one day. I was nine.” “I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled. “Yes, it was rather horrible,” said Luna conversationally. “I still feel very sad about it sometimes. But I’ve still got Dad. And anyway, it’s not as though I’ll never see Mum again, is it?” “Er — isn’t it?” said Harry uncertainly. She shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?” “You mean . . .” “In that room with the archway. They were just lurking out of sight, that’s all. You heard them.”

(OotP, 863)

I want to talk about her mother, her death, and Luna's general outlook on death and tragedy which explains a lot of her characters.

So Pandora Lovegood experimented with spells and one went badly enough to kill her in front of her 9-year-old daughter. This is why Luna can see Thestrals and hear voices from beyond the veil like Harry and Neville. But Luna, at her soul is an optimist and a very brave one at that. This is something that she doesn't share with her father, which I'd get to, so I think her outlook on life and death is actually something she learned from her mother.

Luna prefers to look at the half-full part of the glass. She is choosing not to get too sad over things or bothered over her bullying (which I'll get to). The main point is that Luna's way of dealing with the hardship and trauma of watching her mother die is to feel the sadness of it, but not let herself wallow in it. She keeps pushing herself forward.

I headcanon Luna took her mother's death to embrace her mother's outlook on life. That things will always be fine, that they'd always work out. I don't think Luna knows for certain everything will be fine, but she chooses to believe it will be and you see it with her later in the books as well.

“I was saying, what are those horse things?” Harry said, as he, Ron, and Luna made for the carriage in which Hermione and Ginny were already sitting. [...] “It’s all right,” said a dreamy voice from beside Harry as Ron vanished into the coach’s dark interior. “You’re not going mad or anything. I can see them too.” “Can you?” said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes. “Oh yes,” said Luna, “I’ve been able to see them ever since my first day here. They’ve always pulled the carriages. Don’t worry. You’re just as sane as I am.” Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron. Not altogether reassured, Harry followed her.

(OotP, 198-199)

Again, this shows her way of dealing with death and loss that ended up helping Harry. She sees the Thestrals and instead of being discomforted by them and the loss they remind her of (like Neville and Theodore Nott), she tries to smile, to take comfort in the reminder of her mother. "It's sad that she's dead, but it's okay, things will be okay", it's not a direct quote, but I feel it summarises Luna's outlook on loss and negative life experiences in general.

Xenophilius and the Quibbler

As I mentioned above, Xenophilius is much less brave and optimistic than Luna, hence why I think she learned her positive outlook from Pandora and not him:

Xenophilius gulped. He seemed to be steeling himself. Finally, he said in a shaky voice difficult to hear over the noise of the printing press, “Luna is down at the stream, fishing for Freshwater Plimpies. She . . . she will like to see you. I’ll go and call her and then—very well. I shall try to help you.” He disappeared down the spiral staircase and they heard the front door open and close. They looked at each other. “Cowardly old wart,” said Ron. “Luna’s got ten times his guts.”

(DH, 347)

I understand him, I really do. He lost his wife, and his daughter is all he has, of course, he's scared of helping Harry. He doesn't want to lose Luna too. But, I headcanon Pandora was like Luna in that regard. She wouldn't have let fear stop her. I mean, she had to be brave to experiment with the kind of dangerous spells that'll kill her.

The other thing I want to note about Xenophilius and Luna is how close they seem to be whenever we see them:

Bidding the wizards farewell, he turned to his daughter, who held up her finger and said, “Daddy, look—one of the gnomes actually bit me!” “How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel any burgeoning talent today—perhaps an unexpected urge to sing opera or to declaim in Mermish—do not repress it! You may have been gifted by the Gernumblies!”

(DH, 124)

They seem very affectionate and close, both with words and I'm sure also physical affection. Luna even mentions she still has her dad when she explains how she handles her mother's loss. I think both of them grew closer and more dependent on each other after Pandora's death. And I think that's what really pulled them both through it. Each other.

I write about it more later in this post, but Luna tends to comfort a lot of characters. Hermione, Ollivanders, Harry, and I think the first person she practiced this with was her father. She is a very empathetic person and she watched loss affect her father first-hand. I think, that after they lost Pandora, Luna did more of the heavy lifting in terms of emotional comfort rather than Xenophilius, who was probably a bit of a wreck.

Now, the third major thing I think Luna learned from her father is his various odd beliefs. To name a few Quibbler article titles from the beginning of OotP:

How Far Will Fudge Go to Gain Gringotts?

CORRUPTION IN THE QUIDDITCH LEAGUE: How the Tornados Are Taking Control

SIRIUS - Black As He’s Painted? Notorious Mass Murderer OR Innocent Singing Sensation?

We all know they have some odd ideas, and are both very convinced of them. Luna never strays in her belief in the things her father writes about:

Yes, he’s got an army of heliopaths,” said Luna solemnly. “No, he hasn’t,” snapped Hermione. “Yes, he has,” said Luna. “What are heliopaths?” asked Neville, looking blank. “They’re spirits of fire,” said Luna, her protuberant eyes widening so that she looked madder than ever. “Great tall flaming creatures that gallop across the ground burning everything in front of —” “They don’t exist, Neville,” said Hermione tartly. “Oh yes they do!” said Luna angrily. “I’m sorry, but where’s the proof of that?” snapped Hermione. “There are plenty of eyewitness accounts, just because you’re so narrow-minded you need to have everything shoved under your nose before you —”

(OotP, 345)

She actually shows a dislike and anger toward Hermione at first because of how Hermione treats the things she believes in. Luna doesn't get angry often, but when her beliefs are ridiculed in the way Hermione does so, is one of these few times. She doesn't mind being called "Loony", but she cares about her, and her father's beliefs are aggressively questioned. She wouldn't have minded it if Hermione just didn't believe her (like Ron and Ginny) what bothers her is that Hermione doesn't even entertain the possibility of these creatures being real. What angers her is Hermione's closed-mindedness, not that she doesn't agree with her. Luna doesn't mind being alone in her beliefs, she minds closed-minded people who think they know everything, that's what gets her annoyed with Hermione, I think.

Now, I kind of want to discuss why Luna and Xenehpilius believe what they believe. Well, more Xenephilius than Luna, because he taught her most of it and gave her all the evidence she is basing her understanding of all these creatures and conspiracies come from.

Because that's what a lot of these are — conspiracies — and mostly about the Ministry of Magic. These article titles are somewhat like farfetched conspiracy theories like: "NASA hiding a second sun at the center of the Earth" or "Did you know the Earth is actually flat but the government doesn't want you to know" or anything to do with Area 51 and aliens. The articles from the Quibbler sound awfully a lot like that. And it seemed the main reason Xenophilius and Luna believed Harry was because the ministry didn't.

Xenophilius and Luna also believe in miracle cures like gnome venom (as quoted earlier), Gurdyroots and Plumpies:

“May I offer you all an infusion of Gurdyroots?” said Xenophilius. “We make it ourselves.” As he started to pour out the drink, which was a deep purple as beetroot juice, he added, “Luna is down beyond Bottom Bridge, she is most excited that you are here. She ought not be too long, she has caught nearly enough Plumpies to make soup for all of us. Do sit down and help yourselves to sugar.

(DS, 348)

They are essentially wizard conspiracy theorist hippies.

Basically, Xenophilius and Luna distrust the ministry (rightfully so, as the ministry sucks) but they took their distrust to the extreme. Essentially believing any information from the ministry, or ministry-sanctioned textbooks and newspapers to be false (some of it definitely is false, but not all). If it comes from the ministry it's false in their eyes and therefore everything the ministry doesn't live in is true, even if it doesn't make sense. So what I think is going on with the Lovegoods, and what they are supposed to be, is just conspiracy theorists, who rightfully distrust their government, but took this distrust too far beyond common sense. It doesn't mean all they belive is false, they are actually correct often enough, but not always.

Now, I think, as I said, they have a good reason to distrust the ministry, they just took it a bit far. I actually have a bit of a headcanon about how Xenophilius came to the conclusion that they can't trust ministry.

My headcanon is that it has to do with Pandora's death. We don't really have any indication that Xenophilius believed in everything he did before her death. Neither do we know how exactly the spell killed Pandora. I think the ministry either hid information about Pandora's condition, used some spells she created in their books without giving her credit, or the ministry never sanctioned her spells (we know the ministry does approve spells, Hermione mentions as much in HBP). I'm not sure what exactly went with the ministry, but I headcanon Xenophilius has a personal reason related to Pandora to distrust them.

Loony Luna

We know Luna gets bullied. Her belongings get stolen, other students call her "Loony". And it isn't surprising she gets bullied. children are mean to anyone who is weird and different and Hogwarts has no anti-bullying measures. Literally none, the faculty doesn't care.

What is more interesting is Luna's outlook on her own bullying. It's the same optimistic acceptance of how she treats death.

“How come you’re not at the feast?” Harry asked. “Well, I’ve lost most of my possessions,” said Luna serenely. “People take them and hide them, you know. But as it’s the last night, I really do need them back, so I’ve been putting up signs.” She gestured toward the notice board, upon which, sure enough, she had pinned a list of all her missing books and clothes, with a plea for their return. An odd feeling rose in Harry — an emotion quite different from the anger and grief that had filled him since Sirius’s death. It was a few moments before he realized that he was feeling sorry for Luna. “How come people hide your stuff?” he asked her, frowning. “Oh . . . well . . .” She shrugged. “I think they think I’m a bit odd, you know. Some people call me ‘Loony’ Lovegood, actually.” Harry looked at her and the new feeling of pity intensified rather painfully. “That’s no reason for them to take your things,” he said flatly. “D’you want help finding them?” “Oh no,” she said, smiling at him. “They’ll come back, they always do in the end. It was just that I wanted to pack tonight. Anyway . . . why aren’t you at the feast?”

(OotP, 862-863)

Other Ravenclaws steal her things and hide them, they call her "Loony" and at no point is Luna angry or scared. She is calm and serene and she declines Harry's help because she believes it will all work out. It's the same outlook on death and sadness: "Everything will be fine, just keep your chin up and believe things will be good" That just really seems to be Luna's life philosophy. She faces every problem with optimism and serenity.

Instead of being concerned over her own situation, she actually goes a step further and ask how Harry is doing. Luna goes out of her way to brighten up other people's lives and help them see the good in situations like she can. She is really sweet.

“I enjoyed the meetings too,” said Luna serenely. “It was like having friends.” This was one of those uncomfortable things Luna often said and which made Harry feel a squirming mixture of pity and embarrassment.

(HBP, 138)

“Oh, it’s been all right,” said Luna. “A bit lonely without the D.A. Ginny’s been nice, though. She stopped two boys in our Transfiguration class calling me ‘Loony’ the other day —”

(HBP, 311)

These are two more examples of Luna's being bullied. She is lonely and didn't really have friends before the D.A. But just like with her missing things, while it makes her sad, she doesn't wallow in it. She looks at the good parts. The happy memories, the fact that Ginny defends her now. Honestly, it's a healthier coping mechanism than what we see with other characters, I'll give her that.

The other interesting note is how honest she is with all of it. She always says things exactly how she believes they are. She doesn't lie or hide information from people, even for their own comfort. I think this has to do with the distrust in the ministry her father and her share.

Essentially, she was raised being told how awful the ministry is for lying to everyone and how it's horrible they hide information from the wizarding world. I think this is part of why she is so honest and straightforward. She really sees hiding information and lying as awful things to do. And, I mean, she's a Ravenclaw for a reason, she likely believes information should be accessible to know and learn, not hidden in the bawls of the ministry. It's all part of her honesty.

Luna's Empathy

Luna is one of the more empathetic characters in the books. I mentioned before how she goes out of her way to encourage and comfort others, and here are some examples I picked up:

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you look for your stuff?” he said. “Oh no,” said Luna. “No, I think I’ll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up. . . . It always does in the end. . . . Well, have a nice holiday, Harry.” “Yeah . . . yeah, you too.” She walked away from him, and as he watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly.

(OotP, 864)

Luna is the first person to make Harry feel better after Sirius' death, to tell him life goes on and actually convince him of it. She can empathize with people really weel and tell them what they need to hear.

He finally tracked her [Hermione] down as she emerged from a girls’ bathroom on the floor below. She was accompanied by Luna Lovegood, who was patting her vaguely on the back. “Oh, hello, Harry,” said Luna. “Did you know one of your eyebrows is bright yellow?” “Hi, Luna. Hermione, you left your stuff. . . .” He held out her books. “Oh yes,” said Hermione in a choked voice, taking her things and turning away quickly to hide the fact that she was wiping her eyes on her pencil case. “Thank you, Harry. Well, I’d better get going. . . .” And she hurried off, without giving Harry any time to offer words of comfort, though admittedly he could not think of any. “She’s a bit upset,” said Luna. “I thought at first it was Moaning Myrtle in there, but it turned out to be Hermione. She said something about that Ron Weasley. . . .”

(HBP, 310)

Even with Hermione, whom Luna tends to argue with most due to Hermione appearing closed-minded to Luna, when Luna hears crying her first instinct is to go help. And she actually seemed to have made Hermione feel better, she found the right things to say.

Her mention of Moaning Myrtle makes it sound like Luna knows the ghost well. My headcanon is that in Luna's first years, when she was lonely and had no friends, she sat and chatted with Myrtle, and they had a cute little lonely friendship.

“That’s right,” said Luna encouragingly, as if they were back in the Room of Requirement and this was simply spell practice for the D.A., “That’s right, Harry. . . come on think of something happy. . . .” “Something happy?” he said, his voice cracked. “We’re all still here,” she whispered, “we’re still fighting. Come on, now. . . .”

(DS, 548)

Encouraging Harry to cast a Patronus when they need one.

“I’m going to miss you, Mr. Ollivander,” said Luna, approaching the old man. “And I you, my dear,” said Ollivander, patting her on the shoulder. “You were an inexpressible comfort to me in that terrible place.”

(DH, 437)

And even comforting Ollivanders.

Luna just brings comfort to everyone she meets. Knowing what to say to make them feel better.

About her supposed seer-like abilities

As I said, I don't think Luna is a seer or anything like that. I think she's intelligent, open-minded, incredibly empathetic, has some extreme distrust in the ministry, and has an overall life philosophy of looking at the full half of the cup.

When I searched for scenes that had "extra-magical" potential I found only two:

The girl beside the window looked up. She had straggly, waist-length, dirty-blond hair, very pale eyebrows, and protuberant eyes that gave her a permanently surprised look. Harry knew at once why Neville had chosen to pass this compartment by. The girl gave off an aura of distinct dottiness. Perhaps it was the fact that she had stuck her wand behind her left ear for safekeeping, or that she had chosen to wear a necklace of butterbeer caps, or that she was reading a magazine upside down. Her eyes ranged over Neville and came to rest on Harry. She nodded. [...] The girl called Luna watched them over her upside-down magazine, which was called The Quibbler. She did not seem to need to blink as much as normal humans. She stared and stared at Harry, who had taken the seat opposite her and now wished he had not.

(OotP, 185)

I think this is more Luna being awkward because she never had friends more than anything. I think she is just honestly shocked and confused that Harry and Co. want to sit with her; of like, their free will, and not just to say mean things.

As much as Luna holds her head high, she is hurt by her bullies and loneliness, she just chooses to not internalize any of it and never stop to be herself. Honestly I really appreciate this aspect of Luna, I adore her ability to stay afloat.

The second scene:

He led a party of warlocks into the marquee as Luna rushed up. “Hello, Harry!” she said. “Er—my name’s Barny,” said Harry, flummoxed. “Oh, have you changed that too?” she asked brightly. “How did you know—?” “Oh, just your expression,” she said.

(DH, 123)

I don't think this is being a "seer" or anything like that. I believe this is an extension of Luna's intense empathy. She says she recognises Harry's expression. Also, she's smart and he acts around Ron the way he always does, Luna would be able to recognize it...

So, yeah, these are my thoughts about Luna.

#harry potter #hp #hp meta #asks #anon asks #anonymous #luna lovegood #harry potter meta #hp headcanon #hollowedheadcanon #hollowedtheory

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lillifaba · 4 months

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My thoughts on the Wicked movie teaser trailer... so far.

Before you pop off in my replies and reblogs yes I know, this is just a teaser trailer and not the official tralier. Regardless that doesn't give this movie a magical critique pass. Most of my critques on this teaser come from my own thoughts and some of points raised in this post. This is also just me rambling into the void. Don't like don't read lmao.

If you've been following me for a while, then you already know my opinion on the Wicked movie and casting. Surprise surprise, you guessed it... I am extremely underwhelmed and disappointed. For so many reasons.

I'll start off with some things I like.

Johnathan Bailey is hot asf as Fiyero. (even if he looks way older than Fiyero is canonically meant to be)

The set and props. I think some of them actually look pretty neat. I'm glad they didn't use a green screen for Shiz and put in the effort to build a university campus. The train from Shiz to Oz looks kinda dope. I was always wondering what it would look like and I'll probably use that as inspiration for my fics and art comms.

Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard. I won't lie, I haven't seen a lot of movies with Jeff in them so I was cautious about his casting. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much his look and his performance so far actually fits Oscar. Time will tell if he can hold up to those standards.

I'm happy a WOC is playing Elphaba. Everyone complains about Fiyero not being racially book accurate but nobody talks enough about Elphaba being discriminated against as an amalgamation for rac!sm. More women of color should play her on stage.

THE NAILSSSS. Come on people this is the Wicked Witch of the West we're talking about she should be SERVING WITH THOSE CLAWS! Although personally I would've preferred them sharp but I'm over here with almond arylics what do I know lol.

I'm happy they casted a disabled actress to play Nessa. I always wondered why they never did that.

With that out of the way, let's get into a million reasons why I hated this trailer and why I'll most likely hate the movie anyways.

Arianna as Glinda. Look, I don't hate Ari. I like some of her songs and even bought some of her perfumes because I like smelling good. At worst I just don't care about her. However whenever I see Arianna as Glinda, I'm sorry I just don't see Glinda, I see ARIANNA GRANDE dressed in last minute cosplay for a Halloween party. I heard one line... ONE LINE from her and the delivery is NOTHING like Glinda's character or cadence, it's just Ari in drama class.

The wigs and costumes. What the hell was the makeup and hair crew thinking when they selected that wig for Arianna???? It's an ashy dull blonde that brings no color or life to the character. The #1 thing about Glinda is her vibrant blonde hair, it's even mentioned IN THE SONGS. MULTIPLE TIMES. This wig looks like a botched bleach job. Then, there's the costumes. Good lord what are those glasses on Elphaba's face??? I get they're trying to be all "whimsy" and "peculiar" in tone with WOZ, but they just look silly. Why not stick to the glasses in the musical? Why overdo it? I fear how the Emerald City sunglasses will look (if they even add those in) Also why are Glinda's clothes so dull? Where's the vibrance? Where's the pink frilly coquette contrast to Elphaba's dark coquette?

The camera work and Elphaba's entrance. This is Wicked the musical. I'm expecting a huge and grandiose presentation, especially when it comes to THE MAIN CHARACTER. Showing Elphaba from the back of her head in slow motion while she's walking to the entrance is just... boring and an overused cliche. Not to mention the underwhelming reactions from the extras. The cinematography is just meh. I'm expecting better for a fantasy film. It's been done before.

Cynthia as Elphaba. Listen, Cynthia is a great singer and talented actress. I have absolutely nothing against her. With that being said I'm going to be brutally honest: much like Arianna, she is not Elphaba... at least not entirely. Like Johnathan, Cynthia is way older than Elphaba is meant to be canonically and the editing team clearly used the de-aging filter on her to the point where it looks unnatural. If this movie had been made at least five years ago or earlier Cynthia would've fit perfectly.

Continuing my point with Cynthia: the singing. I'm sorry but what the hell was that riff with Defying Gravity??? I'm not entirely blaming Cynthia for this because this has become a massive problem with a lot of musical film adaptations which I like to call the popification of songs. It happens in nearly all the live-action Disney movies and I'm sick of it. What confuses me is STEPHEN FUCKING SCHWARTZ is involved in the musical production. He wrote the god damn songs, how the hell does he not direct Cynthia to sing the right note instead of letting her do whatever she wants??? I don't think he did that with Idina, which is why this riff is so iconic. Come on, if a tiktok meme trend can do that riff better and more accurately than an actual singer can, that's just embarrassing. I'm not good at explaining myself in terms of singing, so I'm hoping a youtuber I occassionally watch does a reaction video to the trailer and does a better job at explaining than I can.

The acting. Like I said with Arianna, the delivery is so bland and dry. I'm trying not to judge all of the acting on a teaser trailer but if this is how the leads are going to act throughout the whole movie then I'm disappointed.

Too much CGI in some parts. I get it. This is a fantasy movie there's bound to be certain effects you can't do practically. But that's no excuse when this is a $145 million dollar movie. The flying monkeys are so painfully obvious CGI. This was a wasted chance to get Doug Motherfucking Jones to play Chistery in prosthetics. So much of this movie ends up looking like those garbage Oz spinoffs. (If you know you know) The CGI is just bad. The bubble and Emerald City buildings look so cheap.

WHY IS THIS MOVIE SO DARK? This is suppossed to be OZ! Why do I have to turn up my brightness to look into the shadow realm???

Now onto some things I'm confused about.

Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible. I'm praying to god she'll blow us away because she's such a good actress and is serving c*nt in her costumes. I haven't heard her sing (I'm dumb but unless the opera song she sang in EEAAO was her then WOW!)

The silver slippers. I KNOW! I KNOW! The ruby slippers are copyrighted and can't be thrown in all nilly willy wherever you please. But keep in mind this is a 145 MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE ALL FOR PART ONE. Do not tell me they couldn't shill a few extra bucks on signing a few contracts. AND YES I KNOW. The musical uses the silver slippers in the first act in ode to the L. Frank Baum books which I love, but don't forget, they turn red when Elphaba enchants them to give Nessa the ability to walk. Dorothy shows up after Nessa is killed and has her shoes stolen. Why aren't they red now? Not to mention most of the audience might not know the original slippers in the books were silver. This would've been a great chance to combine two different canons.

WHO IS PLAYING DR. DILLAMOND???? ifitisjamescordenandyouusecrappycgiiwillgotoyourhousejohnchuand-

Finally, why did John Chu absolutely insist on this being a two parter movie with a year long intermission? Is this shit show really that fantastical that it can be akin to Kill Bill part 1 and 2?

That's pretty much it for now but expect an update to this post with a reblog with updated thoughts when an official trailer drops. My mind probably won't change though. I'm totalllllyyy not considering pulling an Eddy Burback sneaking into Morbius for a week when this movie comes out lol.

Universal Studios and AMC theaters that was a joke please for the love of god do not send Nicole Kidman after me.

#anyways can't wait for the reactionary misogynist reactionary videos pumped out like garbage by neckbeards talking about “woke culture”#I'm already seeing it in the comment section #I'm going to go stick to better fics that get Wicked right #wicked movie

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mooonzyyyy · 17 days

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moonzy is back with a yap

you all i’m gonna be very sentimental, this is a very much letter from me to dan and phil

Dearest Dan and Phil,

this is so sappy but idc i can’t meet you coz you bitches don’t come to the middle east but i forgive you because i understand why you wouldn’t, anyways as i was saying i have been watching you ever since i was 11 years old, i am now 20 you guys particularly raised me and idk truly what i would do without you

you both have come so far, i know how insane this phandom made you feel and i am so thankful you never gave up on it, it takes a huge amount of power and courage to deal with it you are so much stronger than me, i’m so proud of you <3

phil, the way you are unapologetically yourself helped me become more like myself by just trying new things (need that merch back) and just having fun, your creativity inspires me everyday (please make a little comic book story i would buy it) and i wish i was half as talented as you are <3

honestly never change phil you will always be my go to person for anything whimsy and i adore you, i can not wait to see you grow even more and i hope you jump back into your phil’s whimsy little world i will be watching <3

dan, i already made a whole separate post about you but weirdly while you were growing up i too was growing up with you, when you do anything life changing for some reason i will be doing something life changing myself, i aspire to gain the content and happiness that you have been radiating, i look up to you so much more than most people and i just can’t wait to see you blossom even more, from WAD to YWGTTN and i know there is so much more coming in the dan journey to living your truth <3 (DINOK PLEASE DINOK)

i’m proud of both of you so much and 11 year old moons heals anytime you all do anything you are fixing parts of me that you don’t have to and i just am so thankful for you and the time i discovered you, anytime life doesn’t work i can always rely on you guys, i love you both so much 🫶🏻

thank you for helping me survive and i promise both of you that i will try new thing and have the courage to exist 🥺🤍

#amazingphil #phil lester #dan howell #daniel howell #danisnotonfire #dan and phil games #MOONS YAPPING

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sukimas · 8 months

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As someone who is- at best- a Touhou secondary, can you offer any insight as to why there appears to be/is so much drama surrounding whether or not Merry is Yukari? “Seemingly Unrelated Character B grows up into/otherwise becomes Character A” is not an especially world-shattering story beat, and after reading your document it seems unbelievably obvious by 2005.

There's nothing that I can say is the overall reason as sadly I'm not a mind-reader, but I have some theories (some of which may be true in parallel, some of which may not be true at all):

A.) Touhou is a series that many fans believe is highly up to interpretation (due to the fact that they are otaku unused to literary elements such as the unreliable narrator; you can see this in, for example, responses to Umineko) so there's a degree of resistance to anything being "obviously intended".

B.) Many Touhou fans enjoy having opinions on things without reading the works that apply to these things; the music CDs in particular are a case where "fans of fans" are very common. This isn't necessarily a problem when discussing what people like, but it runs into issues when discussing, say, authorial intent.

C.) Youkai are kind of nasty, and Yukari is a particularly nasty variation. Many people don't like the idea of humans in Touhou becoming youkai in general.

D.) Due to B, as well as the obscurity of the two works that are written directly from Yukari's perspective, many people have an incorrect idea of Merry's personality, Yukari's personality, or both; this leads them to have an incorrect idea of the differences between the two. This is the "well, even if Yukari was Merry once, is there anything really left of her since she's so different?" objection.

E.) Many people see the idea of Merry ending up as a youkai as something tragic- they enjoy the idea of her and Renko going on adventures in their modern day forever. This is despite the fact that their sense of ennui in and disgust with the modern world is more apparent with each CD published.

F.) Also coming from E and B, people often have an interpretation of the club members as "innocent" and "childlike"; there's a general degree of belief in sweet, innocent, childish whimsy being what drives their actions in the CDs. Yukari being self-admittedly too tired to have stupid fun like the members of the Scarlet Devil Mansion going to the moon on their idiot rocket can seem like a contradiction in terms, and makes it seem "tragic".

G.) Also coming from E, many people seem to have the mistaken opinion that in order for Merry to have become a youkai, something terrible must have happened to Renko, and she's really torn up about it. Either that, or that she'll never see her again- this latter is common even in more level-headed interpretations, but makes little sense with, for example, the idea of Yuyuko Saigyouji existing. Anyway, people don't like to imagine the club being torn apart so rudely.

H.) An extension from G- people don't believe that Merry could ever be or become a youkai without harming Renko as they simply don't seem to have a strong metaphysical understanding of youkai from other Touhou works (and this idea is often played up for drama in popular fan media).

Generally speaking, it's mostly "she's so unlike this, so either this can't be true or if it was true it would be a terrible tragedy. and i can't stand terrible tragedies, so it can't be true" as large segments of the Hifuu fandom are a little bit immature about the idea of anything ever changing. In a sense, it's kind of treated like Class S yuri. Add to this a good helping of people not reading and not believing that anything not stated in so many words can be true, and you get a perfect storm of idiocy.

#yukaribel

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whimsyprinx · 1 year

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i would without hesitation give up the ability to feel emotions if given the chance

#whimsy whispers #it wouldn’t matter #like I wouldn’t miss them when they’re gone because I wouldn’t have the ability to #and would I even feel like anything is lacking? I don’t believe so #I’m rarely truly happy #I mostly feel sad and I’m tired of feeling things #never feeling happy again is worth never feeling sad again #love and happiness and joy mean nothing to someone who rarely feels either of those #I’m tired of constantly feeling negative emotions with little to do about them #I’m not even going to hope for more happiness because i can’t just be happy i can’t tell myself to be happy and have it work #doing that has always bitten me in the ass because I spent too much energy convincing myself I was happy and okay and then idk cracked #anyways this is a random dumb post bye abdjjfjt #I ran out of things to do to occupy my mind and the sadness got me if y’all can’t tell #I still haven’t cried though so :3 #and I feel more empty and annoyed than I do sad and in despair

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eph-em-era · 8 months

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OFMD intimacy breakdown eps 6-7

Oh hey, it's me! Back again with an intimacy breakdown for episodes 6-7. prefacing this, once again, that I'm not a certified intimacy coordinator, I'm an IC in training, choreographer and director. I'm also not affiliated with the show, just have interest in the subject.

Check out episodes 1-5 here.

Massive spoilers so it's under the cut.

(I do note that there's not an IC credited in these episodes - I know there's one attached to the project so perhaps they weren't utilised in these ones, or were uncredited. Who can say!)

Let's start with - I don't know why these two episodes were so deliriously fucking fast. Potentially scheduling issues with Taika? Alternatively I heard that they lost some budget, which would have cut things a bit.

HBO Max I am in your walls.

regardless, not a fan! I think the acceleration of the relationship worked, just because of what we know about their characters, but the wider plot was too fast for my liking. Hoping in the event of a season three they take that to heart.

Anyways, onto the intimacy!

Calypso's Birthday

On a whole, I found this episode deeply charming. I love a bit of whimsy, and the ep felt like a tribute to their queer audience. Felt very seen!

It's quite challenging interpreting intimacy in these scenes as an interloper, cause I don't know how much is purposeful, vs how much is staging. Regardless, we will forge on.

One -

I would have loved a little more closeness during Izzy's first singing scene! There's what feels like a metre of space between them; something as simple as arms brushing or leaning against each other helps build that intimacy. I am guessing the gap is for shooting space - you need to see what's going on behind them - but it really loses something. It's not bad intimacy, I just would have liked more.

An alternative character interpretation is that Ed & Stede are still trying to fumble their way through things and public displays of intimacy are too much for them - which could also be the intended effect.

But as we all know - a hand touch can ignite a thousand feelings, and I would have liked a little more.

Two -

Lucius and Black Pete emerging after their day-long fuckfest. I've said it in the past and will happily say it now - I think Matthew Maher and Nathan Foad have the best chemistry out of this entire cast. It's so sweet, and so honest in a way that's very grounded compared to the rest of the cast - which is surprising considering who their characters are!

Lovely positioning! Very simple staging but effective, it makes the moment feel so, so private and intimate. It's really lovely.

Three -

Ed and Stede finally get it together and have sex. Okay, so this is obviously intercut with Izzy singing, so I'll lay it out in stages.

First, the jacket grab.

What does this say about Stede? He's been buoyed by his weird night and he wants to do something about it. What does this say about Ed? He's willing to go along with it, but it is not necessarily his first reaction. He's clearly feeling qualms about something - whether that's his relationship, or being a pirate - and he's not the one to initiate. This comes back later.

Regarding the staging, more technically - this is pretty common. A grab using the lapels or jacket is a very easy way to show intensity and passion. Does Ed respond with the same passion? Not quite.

Oh hey, an up against the wall kiss! Very fanservicey, consider me impressed. I think this is a fun bit of staging, I suspect they were given very strict hand placement, cause nothing moves that much, it doesn't look particularly improvised.

Rhys Darby does something very specific with his hands when kissing that I've noticed now and I will never not notice, which is deeply annoying.

It's a very nice moment, but honestly, I would have loved a pause? There's something very sexy and very charming in a scene like this where one character makes the other character wait for it. A little holding back, breathing together, finding the moment. More of a seduction than this brute force omg we need to do this now thing.

I saw someone on Twitter say "Ed and Stede fucked but haven't made love" and that's the vibe I'm getting off the scene. Both of these characters have had a weird day, they're probably tipsy, there's been a lot of emotions and this is a desperate spilling over I need to feel your skin against mine now thing, from two people who don't really know where they both are yet. There isn't seduction cause it's not the place for seduction, cause no-one here properly knows how to communicate yet! They're saying everything but saying nothing.

I hope, in the event of further scenes like this, they have the moment to breathe.

And finally, the third piece - the closing of the curtains.

What does this say about the characters? Hey this is a private moment, you're not allowed to witness this. It's the same as Ed/Stede other moments of intimacy. Everything is private, it's hidden, it's on a remote beach on an island or unobserved under the moonlight.

These dudes might talk about each other constantly and are unashamed to say they like each other, but they sure as shit can't show it publicly. There's also clear reticence within Ed - which echoes him saying he wants to take things slow, as well as his hesitance in the next episode.

This reticence is also shown in their costuming. This isn't a we spent care and time taking each other's clothes off energy, this reads more like Stede Bonnet is emboldened for one of the first times in his life and got naked way too fast. Hey, he's the one taking charge. He's the one closing the curtains.

Man On Fire

Not a whole lot of intimacy in this one. I'm not going to spend long on it, because it's not particularly meaty, but I think the Olu/Zheng hand grab over the table is adorable and a perfect way to show two people on the same page after going through it. It's balanced and sweet.

Now, the other thing:

This staging is suuuuuuch a missed opportunity, but I also think it works considering the later context of the scene.

Y'know how you'd usually show a morning after? Snuggling up together, shoulder to shoulder, legs intertwined. Hazy and precious and lovely.

It's a bit harder with this particular set piece - you can't shoot them from the reverse, cause of the window, so everything needs to be pointed out towards the camera, making snuggling side by side harder to shoot. In theatre you'd just angle the prop differently, but you can't do that on film in a room that has established locations.

Initially when I watched this, I was like "okay rookie move, they've missed the obvious".

But.

It makes sense with the characterisation of this episode. Stede's killed a guy. He's had probably the first bit of pleasurable intimacy in his entire life. Man's ego's the size of the room. He's got his chest out cause he feels good.

Ed, however. He's fully clothed. He's doing the good thing, doing the right thing, getting breakfast in bed but it's still not quite right in the way "it should be" (the twine), and he's buttoned up to the neck. No swagger, no body showing. What does that scream? Avoidance. Weirdness. Maybe even a bit of discomfort.

Keep in mind that in the last 12 hours he's seen Stede, who he fell in love with because of his whimsy and difference from other pirates kill a guy. He's seen him threaten other peoples' lives. He expressed the desire to take things slow and instead, in a feat of piqued emotion, they hooked up, and they probably shouldn't have.

They're not cuddling because it's weird. The whole moment is weird. It's almost a walk of shame but they're on the same damn ship together. They might have hooked up, but the pair of them clearly still aren't on the same page.

I doubt we'll see it next week, but I hope these two can find their peace. This is a genre comedy, not just a romance, so I doubt it'll be anything explicit, but I would love to see a scene that's deeply passionate, building the intimacy without building the pace. Take us in closer, let us feel what the characters feel without immediately cutting away.

Loathed as I am to link some of these clips because of their nonsense dialogue, here's some moments in other mlm media that do well at building that intimacy.

This Bill/Sam clip from True Blood that doesn't even have a kiss but holds the tension really well. Another nonsense dream sequence scene from True Blood that still has nice staging. Agron and Nasir from Spartacus have incredible chemistry with a variety of clips to choose from. There are so many options and I would love love love to see them explored in the final episode of S2 or in S3. Very excited to see them both on the same page - ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT FOR THE WIN.

Thanks for reading! Reblog if you liked. If there's anything juicy in ep 8 I'll cover it as well.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd season 2 #ofmd season 2 spoilers #our flag means death spoilers #stede bonnet #ed teach #intimacy direction #intimacy #intimacy coordinator

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eccentric-nucleus · 2 years

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so back in the day i read HPMOR, right? like many people. and as it went on (& yudkowsky kept talking about his writing process on tumblr) it became more and more clear that this was fiction approached from an angle i had never really considered before. i had been vaguely aware of places like the spacebattles forum or the dark lord potter forum, where apparently people wrote stories that were mostly just a long-form way to debate "would the USS Enterprise win against a star trek star destroyer", or whatever. yudkowsky kept saying wild things like "the point of this scene is to vicariously enjoy somebody solving a problem" or "all characters should always do smart things so the reader doesn't get frustrated with them" or "i wanted to add a short arc where this character doesn't instantly solve all his problems but i was worried it would alienate the reader". (see also.) just like, expressing this conceptualization that the point of fiction was to... write a character stomping through a little fake world going from victory to victory so that the reader could enjoy the vicarious glow of having a hard problem presented to them and then immediately resolved. how smart you are for following the line of thought of the main character, who did this smart thing!!

so that was very weird, but it was mostly a singular kind of weirdness. another weird, out-of-touch artifact from the rationalists, like roko's basilisk but harry potter fanfiction instead.

anyway a while back i stumbled across "Mother of Learning", and i think my initial response to it was 'this is less a story with a plot and more a series of obstacles that are presented to the main character to be sequentially overcome'. there was a furry webcomic years ago that was a calvin & hobbes knockoff -- small child, stuffed animal companion who became alive when they were alone, whimsy, etc -- only where calvin & hobbes left the premise unstated, this comic, roughly 30 strips in, had a whole plot explaining: okay so these are a special kind of magical creature that bonds with children. in this metaphor susie's mr. bun is also a magical creature. eventually they start going on adventures together. my overall thought was like, oh i guess i was assuming this was a narrative framing device structured around the themes of the work, but actually this was all meant to be fully diagetic and fully explained as part of the work's "worldbuilding".

anyway mother of learning is like that but for groundhog day. the time loop isn't an unexplained device used to inspect a character through a lens, it's a dragon ball-style training chamber. there are "plot developments" as more information is revealed, but all of that takes a back seat to extensively and exhaustively describing every ability and technique that the main character learns and how they use them to be more powerful. mother of learning is 800,000 words long. the time loop is because they're actually duplicates of the 'real people', in a pocket universe constructed inside of an eldrich monstrosity that was designed to be used every x years by some kind of fated hero to keep it sealed. the main character has to escape partly to make sure some evil cultists don't unseal some stuff, but mostly so he doesn't lose all his experience gains.

anyway so reading that brought me to royal road. (i've always found the name very funny since my main familiarity with the term is the phrase "there is no royal road to geometry - euclid", aka there is no shortcut to learning something; you always have to put in the hard struggle of comprehension. it's actually named after... something from a light novel or something? it used to be a fan forum for a specific work before branching out into a publishing platform.) anyway it's a place to post stuff, like fanfiction.net or fictionpress or whatever. there is a strong genre constraint: they mostly want to hear about their protagonists getting endlessly more and more powerful, and sometimes collecting a harem of sexy women. it's for that kind of fiction. reading a few stories there was very illuminating, in that finally i could place HPMOR in a genre: that of the 'progression fantasy', a profoundly self-indulgent and formulaic genre that's mostly just an action story with a lot of the bits stripped away so they can describe how much more powerful the protagonist is getting. a subgenre of this is the 'litrpg', which are stories with a diagetic video-game-mechanics layer. people are checking their stats and getting experience from killing monsters and leveling up and all that. a lot of them read like text LPs of videogames that don't exist. where the author is, of course, executing a min-maxed run.

(there's a lot of overlap here between progression fantasies and like, xianxia stories? cultivation stories are generally all progression fantasies, and so there's a lot of overlap thematically.)

anyway so that was kind of a grim awareness of a dark corner of the literary world. this stuff is popular. royal road is pretty aggressively farmed by publishers wanting to license stuff so they can make ebooks or w/e; there are author patreons there that make like, thousands of dollars a month for writing chapter 1394 of "my character with a cool spear levels up more". i've read a bunch of progression fantasies but i wouldn't say i really enjoyed any of them, partly because a lot of them are really bad at like... constructing a narrative with any kind of stakes. it's all gonna be jettisoned away in favor of talking more about level ups. it is actually almost exactly the experience of grinding for levels in an RPG: it's not really fun, but it can be engaging in the moment, and also you get to see a number go up, so that's like a reward.

(i started writing one of my own as a writing exercise b/c i wanted to try some short-paced serial work that wasn't porn, and it shot up to uh #40 top-rated on the entire site. it was in the top 10 for a few days. i have some complicated feelings about that.)

recently, i've been reading a lot of, uh, gay incest teenage mutant ninja turtles fanfiction. a lot of it is incredibly overwrought. 200k words of characters pining guiltily over each other! soap opera antics with miscommunications and secrets! genre cliches piled up in a big heap and remixed! and like, fanfic as a genre can be real formulaic too, right? a lot of people who read&write fanfic don't read much else, and there's absolutely a 'house style' for most fanfic. but when i read fanfic i get the sense that the authors are, you know, aware of some literary conventions, of the various aspects that make up a story, and they're struggling to convey concepts and themes. apparently i'm responsible for inspiring somebody to write what i think is the only sincere donkey/shrek porn fanfic in existence, and personally i think that porn fanfic has a million times the literary and artistic merit as chapter 1400 of randitly fucking ghosthound, because porn, overwrought incest soap opera dramas, is at least saying something about the nature of human desire, whereas most progression fantasy stuff is an utterly self-absorbed thesis on "writing somebody cool and powerful is escapism so i can feel cool & powerful", stretched out to a million words.

like i guess 'i want to feel powerful' is an expression of human desire but it's a particularly flat one. i think a lot about that bit in dead zones of the imagination:

Violence’s capacity to allow arbitrary decisions, and thus to avoid the kind of debate, clarification, and renegotiation typical of more egalitarian social relations, is obviously what allows its victims to see procedures created on the basis of violence as stupid or unreasonable. One might say, those relying on the fear of force are not obliged to engage in a lot of interpretative labor, and thus, generally speaking, do not.

[...]

To be more precise: violence may well be the only form of human action by which it is possible to have relatively predictable effects on the actions of a person about whom you understand nothing. Pretty much any other way one might try to influence another’s actions, one at least has to have some idea who they think they are, who they think you are, what they might want out of the situation, and what their aversions and proclivities are. Hit them over the head hard enough and all of this becomes irrelevant.

a fantasy of having power is, i think, fundamentally a fantasy of never having to know anything you don't want to, of never having to deal with the consequences of your actions. i feel it's a particularly grim thing to enshrine into a millon-word epic.

anyway, hi, i'm back on tumblr, i guess. who can say if this will last. i'm still not happy about the porn ban! for reasons hopefully partially explained by the whole bit about porn above. also the increasing sidelining of custom layouts in favor of a uniform interface. sadly even with that it seems like tumblr is basically the only well-travelled social media site that's not a total algorithmic nightmare, although the first thing i did when i remade this account was to go into the settings and turn off like a dozen algorithmic switches that were all defaulted to 'yes'.

i ended up moving cross-country during the peak of covid b/c my former housemate started having screaming panic attacks literally any time somebody stepped outside the house (literally literally, not emphatically literally). i would not recommend it. now i live somewhere where 'fire' is a season, which is introducing new complications to my life. we'll see how things go from here.

oh yeah, also my icon has more points now. i leveled up V:

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