#audrey in that FUCKING sequel
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god i wish little shop of horrors had a sequel..... it’d probably be terrible, but id probably love it anyway
#jess speaks#ive been thinking of trying to write a sequel to the theatrical cut but i have like 3 different plots for it in my head and i cant choose#obviously with the director's cut it wouldnt work bc everyone is fucking dead#but like. the idea of seymour and audrey trying to cope with their respective traumas after they escape skid row#would the media still be interested in seymour after the shop explodes and audrey ii dies?#the plants would probably come back somehow and seymour and audrey have to stop them#OH and that baby audrey ii in their garden at the end. what the fuck is up with that#seymour and audrey vs capitalism.......Many Thoughts
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Choose - Lose
First posted: April 2, 2019
Focuses on: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, and Bruce Wayne
Favorite bookmark: "cried again. i will cry another time"
Second favorite bookmark: "fuck yeah"
Tier: Pretty middle of the road.
This is my “behind the scenes” series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Thoughts below the cut.
This one. was. wild. At 699 words, I think it's my shortest (just checked, it is) and one of my more uhhh experimental pieces.
At some point in 2018-19, I read Raisin Delight by @lemonadegarden, who is an evil genius. I read it and it broke my entire brain and also my heart. It it one of the few fics I remember my name instead of a Friends-esque description. I don't know when exactly I read it because I don't know how long the emotions it inspired had to rattle around in me before they splorted out this fic in response. I wrote it all in one sitting, if I remember correctly. I don't remember getting stuck or having to backtrack. It being so short helped as well. It was—as you can tell by comparing the works—less about what happened in the fic and responding to that the way one might via a sequel or even going "I like that but what if you..." and more about be feeling many, many things around the concept presented and just needing to barf emotions into a brown paper bag.
They stood side by side, shoulders angled outward, faces on the horizon. The wind rose, lashing stinging grains of sands against their skin before dying down again.
No philosophical intro on this one. It's too short and the tone is all wrong for that kind of introduction. There was no question about sidestepping my usual chattiness and dropping in midscene. Like I said, wrote it all in one sitting, bang, done.
I did try to make each word and image count, though I'm no Ann Leckie and probably could/should have done an even finer job of it, but I do feel like the first two sentences packed in a decent amount of information.
Tim looked to the empty space where the time traveler had stood, a forgettable man with a forgettable face in a forgettable shabby brown suit, and had made his unforgettable offer.
I blame Agatha Christie for this imagery, if I blame anyone.
Bruce, face bare, t-shirt wrinkling in the wind, had sucked in a sharp breath.
This was important, them, as civilians, as people, as a father and his sons, not in costume, not with their gear and tools and weapons. This isn't Batman being forced to choose between his Robins.
In the air, a chopper whined. In the distance, a truck rumbled. A small, caped figure hurried across the dunes.
Fun fact: Even though this fic is so short I have slightly more insight than usual because I was able to pull up my chat history with @audreycritter from right after I wrote it and then surprised her with it, which is the only way I know that I was at work when I started thinking about debt and histories and timelines and realized that Jason's death was the only reason Tim joined Fam, that everyone else would have made their way in eventually but he needed Jason to die to make it and how guilty that might make him feel if he realized it, and then I remembered "Raisin Delight" (still at work) and just about lost it.
Literally at 5:03 PM on 4/1/19 I'm listing different takes I'd love to read and tell Audrey "Or some twisted scenario where a time traveler takes them back and gives them the choice. I couldn't do that one. but I would read it. Maybe. Through my fingers."
... Annnnnd by 7:43 PM on the same day I'm casually texting Audrey "hey off the top of your head by chance do you remember how Jason and Sheila got to the warehouse?" Which is how the above sentence comes into being.
(By 8:31 PM, the fic was already done.)
The traveler disappeared.
This was very much a no-answers fic. Who was that guy? Why was he doing this? How did he find them? Were they all together or did he gather them from separate places? How are they going to get back when they're done?
Answer: Don't wooooorrryyyyyyy 'bout it
Tim’s place with Bruce was bought with blood. Paid for by the death of another boy. Without the sucking, gaping void of Jason’s absence, there was no role for Tim. There would be no grief for Bruce. No reckless rage to tamp down. No despair to fight back. No place for a lonely boy from down the hill. No reason to make the walk to the Manor’s front door.
My thesis statement (paragraph.)
Beside him, Bruce swayed. Forward, as if to step, as if pulled beyond his control. Then backward, rocked by the horror, repelled by the choice.
This is the horror of the fic. Bruce cannot choose. He cannot choose one child over another. Like unbreakable-law-of-the-universe cannot, divisible by zero cannot. But not choosing is choosing, so he can't choose and he can't not choose, and if one of his sons didn't choose for him, he was going to spontaneously combust into antimatter, I think.
Beyond, Jason stood still as granite. Frozen. Hard. Petrified by the glare of Medusa.
Contrast with Jason, who doesn't dare move a muscle.
The numbness hadn’t yet made it to Tim’s heart. It gave a twinge of surprise that they hadn't moved.
Was it up to him again, then? To push Bruce into action? To do what must be done?
Contrast with Tim (the Robin who does what must be done, who exists to help Bruce and keep him on the right path), who assumed Jason must be the one saved, because as he goes on to explain, Jason dies. He gets beaten, tortured, blown apart, killed, buried, and resurrected in his own grave. Tim... well, Tim will lose his heart and happiness and the only true family he's ever known, but he won't know that.
Or, to quote myself:
He would wake, alive and whole, in his own bed. He wouldn’t even notice the hole where his heart had been.
He would live, but he would lose.
Some version of those two words were always the options for the fic, because it's about choosing and losing (not or. and.) But the options listed in the chat were:
Choose. Lose.
Choose / Lose
Choose - Lose
and then lots of grumping about how, grammatically, Choose, Lose and Choose; Lose are both more accurate but I loathed them.
Bruce had gone white. Jason had gone green.
A clever commenter thought this was a reference to the Pit. It wasn't, just nausea (watching yourself walk to a horrible end) and maybe a small nod to Megan Whalen Turner. I like the thought, though.
Tim took a step forward. Then another.
A hand encircled his wrist, held him fast.
The trigger callus scraped against his skin.
Like I said. Bruce could never choose or not choose. He needed his sons to make the choice for themselves. There was never another universe where he stopped Tim or let him go. It had to be Tim's choice to go and lose his future just as it had to be Jason's choice to stop him and accept what he had.
And lastly, a commenter left essentially a dictation of the dialogue she had with her mother (who doesn't read fic or know anything about DC) telling her what happened in this fic, and it made my entire life.
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Honestly, I'm so split on DD2 backstories. On one hand, there's like the plague doctor and grave robber, who I want to still characterize as people who don't really regret their past-- and maybe even are a bit proud of it. on the other hand, I saw the ending cutscene of DD2 and really thought it was kind of a beautiful message about hope and redemption and all that, and it would be nice to keep them aligned with that overall narrative. But on the other other hand, I feel like it's just undeniable that (from DD1 characterizations) some heroes just aren't looking for redemption. Though, maybe they're still looking for hope to move forward?
I just keep going around in circles like this trying to decide if I like the way DD2 handled the backstories or not :/
Will admit though, the art and animation fucks severely in DD2.
See, I kind of agree. You may be shocked, since I harange so much about its negative effects now, but the overarching plot and theme of DD2 was one of the main draws for me when it first launched. I read the magazine interviews and I adored the idea that after reaching into the corrupt heart of the world we had to find hope, because that's the meaningful message for our times. Fuck yeah it is!
The problem is that it was clumsly handled and it weakened the indivitual characters' narratives while providing a fairly bland by-the-book heroic narrative. And for that end? You didn't need all that bullshit with the backstories changing. This is something I wanted to address during the rewrites (SORRY I'VE BEEN VERY TIRED LATELY AND CAN'T WRITE SO WELL AUDREY WILL COME OUT EVENTUALLY) but here's a spoiler for y'all: there's a simple way to make Face Your Failures fit for everyone regardless of their personal motivations.
Make DD2 a definite sequel.
Make it so every hero participates in the failure that was the attempt to stop the Heart of Darkness. Make the world breaking a direct result of the blood spilled on Hamlet soil. Make them hunted by the Cult because it already knows them.
Force them to go from ironic "heroes", in the sense that they were called that as an incentive to throw themselves into an useless meatgrinder, to real heroes, that seize their fate and try to find a solution on their own. Make them clean up the mess that, even though wasn't their fault, is now their responsiblity.
Even if they were horrible people, even if they are still flawed and unrepenting. It doesn't matter if they are the right people or not, their failure tore the world apart and now they will be the ones to fix it. That's how you respect the characters' individuality while keeping an unifying theme.
And yeah, honestly, if people complain about the art change in DD2 by now I'm straight up making fun of them in public because that shit fucks severely.
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concepts i need to ruminate on:
- joining the war on filler episodes on the side of filler episodes and why utena’s black rose arc needs to stop being discredited as “filler” and why more shows actually need it
- why botw/totk link legendofzelda is short: a study on character design and why, yet again, we can blame ocarina of time
- how and why kiwi and audrey wandersong are perhaps the best parallels ever put to page (or, rather, ever coded to screen)
- Just Let Me Talk About Wandersong, For The Love Of God
- ocarina of time’s spiritual sequels and FUCK twilight princess
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⚠️SPOILERS for Bendy and The Dark Revival!!!⚠️
I wanna go on a rant here: Why the FUCK is nobody talking about our gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss queen Alice Angel?!!?
Because let me tell you: I already loved Alice before, and the sequel just made me a bigger simp!
Let's compare:
In BATIM, Alice Angel kept a big distance from Henry, always behind a glass where he couldn't reach. Talking about him with disgust, calling him "errand boy", etc.
WITH AUDREY??! She is RIGHT there, close and personal, rounding her and trying to touch her!
This woman sets up a dinner by candlelight with food, guests, tells Audrey to her face how pretty she is and that she basically wants to rearrange her guts on the table!
Alice calls Audrey "honey", "baby", THE WHOLE TIME they interact!
The FACE that Alice makes after Audrey tells her "No"!!!⬇️
If that isn't the face of a dom already plotting the demise of their bratty sub, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS!!!!
LOOK AT HER!!!
Where are the fanfics, and the fanart?!?! Believe me, I LOOKED! Do I have to do everything myself?!?
Y'all are sleeping on Alice Angel!
#bendy and the ink machine#bendy and the dark revival#alice angel#batim#character analysis#i love her your honor#gaslight gatekeep girlboss#monster fucker
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A YEAR AGO THE COLLAB OF THE CENTURY DROPPED:
The Beast About To Strike, also referred to as TBATS/BATS by me and my absolutely AMAZING co-writer ( @peterstankoffski ), is a Hatchetfield x Little Shop AU posted before NPMD which stood the test of time. Like rlly fucking well. For example: here is the very first piece of written work involving Max Jagerman on ao3:
By the hand of yours truly. Me and Em both love this fic and you should read it because it’s great. So, happy birthday BATS. You get promo two people are gonna care about.
The crossover follows the casting as such:
Seymour Krelborn: Pete Spankoffski
Audrey Fulquard: Steph Lauter
Mr Mushnik: Prof. Hidgens (he writes a workin boys sequel called Real Grass The Musical and its a running gag throughout, it's great)
Orin Scrivello D.D.S: Max Jagerman
Audrey II: NIBBLENEPHIM
Again. This was all written pre NPMD. We finished writing it in JANUARY and basically my prophetism is off the charts. Read BATS. you know you want to
#you dont understand#some of the things i wrote in this fic ended up in npmd#solomon lauter and the phone#max jagermans varsity jacket#like???#IM sorry#linda monroe WHO???#starkid#consjderthecoconut#hatchetfield#npmd
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Let's Get ((REAL)) fic writer asks
🌈🎉🤍
🌈 is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?
I struggled the entire time trying to get through Ghosts That We Knew, the conclusion to the Picture Perfect series. I honestly hadn't planned to write a whole ass trilogy. Dark Side was the only one I had an idea for, and then halfway through, people wanted more. So I started planning the sequel, Come Back to Me. I'm not a fan of duologies. Trilogies just make more sense. So I started thinking up plots for the third entry. Where could Tony and Loki go after marrying and having two kids (one through a relationship, the other through a surrogate)? What kind of problems would they face? I had no idea, lol. I knew I wanted to insert another kid (Audrey Maria or "Audi"), but I also wanted to show that after 8 years and 3 kids, even the most in-love couples have bad times. I'd gotten about halfway through and just blanked on where to go. It didn't help I was having outside issues -- my RP partner (whom I was in love with) and I were having issues, I was stressing about school, and my dad was having health problems at the time. Oh, and I was struggling to RP too. But I was able to pull something out in the end. And everyone seemed to enjoy it. 😁
🎉how often do you celebrate completing & posting a work? how often do you give yourself the credit/validation that you seek from others when you post? (if you don’t, you should!)
Umm....I'm not sure what "celebrate" means?? I might give myself a mental high five? Say yay? LOL
🤍what’s one fic of yours you think people didn’t “get”?
It's not a fic that's completed, nor is it posted on AO3 anymore, but it's Fools Rush In. It was Frostiron set in the Matthew Perry/Salma Hayek movie. First time I was writing fem!Loki and even tho I only published like 4 or 5 chapters, I got complaints that Loki was "too feminist" and "obsessed with her dad's [Odin's] opinions about what a woman her age should be doing." To be clear, Loki was a 28yo grad student who'd been adopted by the Odinsons as a baby and at 13, chose to search for her birth parents who were teenagers when she was born. She was the youngest in the Odinson clan (Thor and Baldur being older) and the oldest in the Laufeyson family (Helblindi and Býleistr were much younger). And the only girl. So Odin certainly had a lot of opinions about her needing to be settled and married, not living with her bestie (Natasha) in an apartment in a big city.
This isn't the reason the fic is incomplete, tho! I removed it, along with four other fics, from AO3 and ff.net bc I'd reached a block on all of them and I felt bad just letting them sit there unfinished. I do hope to complete them someday. But we'll see. Here's a banner I made for it, when I still thought Olivia Wilde was a good choice for fem!Loki. I do not anymore.
And this one was made by a fan (@/tomhiddlesdarling), and as much as I loved it, I'm not big on Eva Green.
Thanks for asking!
Let’s Get ((REAL)) fic writer asks
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How do you rank each Illumination movie?
Despicable Me - Literally my comfort movie. Villains that start out to be a reluctant dad ends up turning into a good dad. Love it
10/10
Hop - Ive watched this movie so many times as a kid and I still dont remember it.
3/10
The Lorax - Really fucking good adaptation of a Dr Seuss book, messages of environmentalist activism and corporate greed is made stronger by an additional villain who was inspired by the Onceler's greed. Only wish Audrey was the protagonist
9/10
Despicable Me 2 - A perfectly fine sequel, it is a tough act to follow after the first film. Minion scenes were a bit distracting though
8/10
Minions - Havent watched it. Not interested in seeing this. Still find it hilarious Minions has the same age rating as Watership Down in the UK
The Secret Life of Pets - Havent watched it. Has a cute premise for a story though
Sing - Jukebox musical but it feels like its missing something.
5/10
Despicable Me 3 - Havent watched it cos Illumination thought it was a great idea to cast Trey Parker. Also I hate how Gru jsut has a super rich brother he never met and renders the emotional backstory behind Gru completely moot.
5/10
The Grinch - Havent seen it, cos I thought the Grinch's design was a bit too sanitised for my liking and I hate Benedict Cumberbatch. However I like how from what clips I've seen, they make the Grinch even more of a prankster than the 2000 version.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 - Actually kinda like this one. Its cute, a little dull in some areas but cute
6/10
Sing 2 - Yep, THIS is what was missing. Stronger characters, a lot more emotion and comedy.
8/10
Minions: the Rise of Gru - THIS IS THE MOST CRAZY ASS SHIT AND I LOVE IT
10/10
The Super Mario Movie - The nihilistic star babu, Bowser and Mario and Luigi's sibling bonding are the highlights of the movie
7/10
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Audrey's Best Girls Winter 2023
youtube
Video of recommendations of girls (And media) which halfway through turned into a Bocchi the Rock video essay.
Transcript under the cut.
Previous video essay/transcript: Adachi and Shimamura's Second Season
If you're on desktop, you may find this more comfy to read directly on our Tumblr site.
If you enjoy this essay, please consider following us here or on any other platforms, and/or donating to support future works via our Patreon or Ko-fi.
Patreon • Ko-fi • YouTube • Twitter • Cohost • Tumblr • Mastodon
Hello everyone, it’s Audrey. So, it’s been some time, I was writing a script about problematic things, and then Joyce came along and started a separate script about things we had to recommend. I finished that script, and the end result of this process was a great incoherent mess, so I’m taking it from the top.
First thing we have to talk about today is Moonshine!~
Moonshine is a doujin visual novel produced by the now seemingly dissolved doujin circle Sakura Mint, whose origins I don’t have the resources nor Japanese language knowledge to trace any information about. It was released in 2007, and then translated to English in 2008, and, quite frankly, the fact that a freely available English translation exists for easy online downloading is a goddamn miracle. It’s really short, like, about an hour, or two if you’re slow like we are. Nonetheless, this VN made us cry like a little baby child. The reason for that being, it’s about a trans girl. And the other reason for that being, it’s about a trans girl falling in love with a gender ambiguous main protagonist who is, well, gosh, really.
This is a really raw and emotionally powerful little story with a really strong theme of how to move on with your life. From a life where you didn’t belong or weren’t loved, or from a life that you love but that can’t follow you, and how either can be equally painful, how change is always painful, even if it truly is for the better, and it’s just a whole lot of feelings. A story that made us cry this much needs to be read. The English version is available freely, it’s only a bit of time, and it’s very well worth it. You might need to fuck around with your graphics settings to get it to display in proper 4 by 3 if you want to play it in fullscreen without it stretching to 16 by 9, but still, very very worth it. Probably one of the best pieces of queer fiction that we’ve ever read, and the fact that it got translated the year after its release is incredible.
It also has a sequel, called Tsugi no Terasu, which is probably not called “Sunshine” in English because that’s not what the kanji means. This sequel never got any sort of digital release either officially or otherwise and it looks as if the doujin group that made it has long disbanded given that the web domain name they used to occupy is now populated by casino advertisements, sooo all their work is probably just kind of, gone, unfortunately. As is often the case when independently produced niche media exists and no one is doing any work to preserve it. These things just sort of go and vanish.
Unless it hasn’t vanished, and someone does care! Like, I dunno, the girl reading this. I dunno about y’all, but I’d prefer that this thirteen year old VN that’s a sequel to a sixteen year old VN about a trans girl gets to be read, by someone, and hopefully continue to exist, and not evaporate into the mists of time. Sure, we can’t read it, but, details details. We’ll learn! How to read. I hope.
So I found a copy of Tsugi no Terasu for sale on akibaoo. Presumably this copy’s used, and there’s no guarantee it’ll work with our computer, or that it won’t be scratched to hell, but hey, you have to take some chances sometime in life. So, I bought it, with a portion of our, uh, meager, monthly Patreon earnings, so that we can collect it and take some form of action to preserve it in some form. Because this is what we’re supposed to do. I know we don’t have that much money, I know we’re probably going to have to eat a lot of rice for another month, but, what the hell, are we doing this youtube shit for, if not this shit? And I for one, am tired of watching hazel do all the awesome Japanese media preservation actions. I would like to have some of that glory! Somehow.
And that’s the thing.
So if you’d like to support the thing, that is to say, acquiring and assessing niche subcultural Japanese media so that we can talk about it and maybe help make it accessible to other people, and making video essays about these exploits and our emotional discoveries from them, or whatever else we do, which all apparently comes ahead of eating a proper diet because we’re insane… then please, please, donate money to us via Ko-fi, Patreon, or whatever. You will be rewarded in some way, I assure you, unless you don’t feel rewarded, and then you won’t.
So here, I’m gonna tell y’all about other interesting content that we’ve had a look at.
2,
Witch from mercury!
Okay so I had a whole thing written about this show. And then I had a whole other thing. And then Joyce simplified that other thing to its base components. And I don’t feel like summarizing what she said about what I said. But really I just think you should look at the tweet I wrote. Which says,
“So basically this is the story of what'd happen if us talking to girls in our discord chats but we had mechas and were all caught in the middle of corporate/government space politics-wars-ing
“I’m sorry”
And also,
Suletta didn’t do anything wrong.
I’ve thought about this quite a long time, and others have kind of said it more succinctly, but I think that Suletta made, not the best decision, but a reasonable decision in this circumstance, to protect her fiancee from the guy pointing a gun at her.
I think the appropriate thing to do then would have been to emerge from Aerial apologizing profusely for the traumatic experience that Miorine just had of watching a dude get killed, instead of what she did do. That would have been the human thing to do. But Suletta didn’t act like a human in this situation because her mom told her that this behavior was a show of emotional strength. And that’s what’s happened here. And that’s interesting, because it plays really well into the story, I think, in showing that the shonen protagonist pluckiness that Suletta was trying to approach her circumstances with, doesn’t really work all of the time! Suletta, the main protagonist of this series, acted the most protagonist like that she’d ever acted in this scene, and it was the most out of character she’d ever acted, and like, gosh, I’m looking forward to seeing how they follow up on this. That’s really what I have to say about that.
Oh and also the show was good.
So yeah, that helped.
3,
How Do We Relationship?
Which I’m going to refer to as Tsukiage, a shortened form of its Japanese title, from here on out.
Tsukiage is a story about lesbians.
And yes, yes, I know, there’s many stories “about lesbians” that I’ve told you about before. No. This isn’t like those. Tsukiage is About Lesbians. Tsukiage is about the experience of being a lesbian in This World, with all its gross bigotry problems. Tsukiage is about the experience of being in a group of heterosexual women and being asked what guys you like, and being unable to answer. Tsukiage is about the experience of being someone you know your parents would hate. Tsukiage is about the experience of being a teenager with no adults to trust in your life, but also about being an adult uncertain if you can trust the other adults in your life, and about the ennui of living isolated in a place you’ll probably never find your way out of, and about,
Tsukiage is about two twenty something lesbians who date each other because they’re the only lesbians they know and they have no idea what else to do, and who are really good at having a lot of sex with each other but are also really bad at dating and even worse at dating on the days when they're really bad at having sex with each other. And they're also both young and both had traumatic high school romance failures because, being a high school student is plenty traumatic in its own ways, and those wounds are still fresh to both of them even if they want to pretend they aren't, and it's bound to follow them still in this town they've lived their whole life in, and it's just a lot of spicy drama about that! I’ve been only three volumes in so far, and Miwa and Saeko are the first main pairing of a yuri manga we've seen to whom I’ve kind of ended up saying “nope”. I don’t get the sense that these two are made for each other in the same sense we got reading Adashima or Yagakimi or Sasakoi. They argue, they bicker, they feel jealous about each other, and about, maybe, 2 thirds of the way through the second volume, I realized I was reading a breakup narrative.
I mean, look at the back covers of the first four volumes. They telegraph it visually!
But also that makes this manga even more compelling for what it’s going for, because, um, conflict is good! And two people not made for each other is damn well better! Just yes, please do try to eventually get these two back together and sell me on this horrible relationship sorting itself. Or don’t, that’s also fine! I’ve not actually got to the chapter where they broke up, because, gosh, and tough, but yeah. And also this is probably the first manga I’ve read that actually shows how school can be traumatic, when it presents a supporting character who was deemed “gifted” in high school but ultimately wasn’t as good as their sibling and then was extremely othered by her family, and just is, generally, awfully maladjusted to, reality, because of the sheltered and overstructured way in which they lived being forced to rank as high as possible on exams, and like, shit! Like, I know Japanese high school is brutal, and it’s a plot point in a lot of anime and all, but this is the one time I can recall offhand when it was actually something that impacted the story and characters outside of a relatively contained studying arc, and it’s probably some of the realest fucking shit I’ve ever read.
Oh, also, um, Tsukiage is really damn funny. Like, the early volumes had me laughing involuntarily so much that I was seriously concerned about attracting noise complaints from others in our living space, or, around, generally? It’s a really good story, the art and faces are really good, the humor is really good and that's pretty damn essential, I think, for a story that deals in such heavy topics. The whole thing is good, so, yeah, read it!
4,
Bad End Theater!
So yeah, I already used this game as b-roll in the Adashima video, so if you watched that, you probably already know that we liked this. And we do. It’s quite good. This game starts with, as Joyce said, *ruffles papers* “an unawakened lesbian is eaten by a demon… and in the next part of the game, the lesbian meets a demon lesbian who wants to eat her in the other way… and in the later part of the game, a reply guy apologizes for replying with violence… or actually replies with violence.”
So anyway this game took us a couple hours to 100% all its Steam achievements. Very short game, very good game, nice little queer vignette about the tragedy of people from different social backgrounds not understanding each other, and then understanding each other, one hopes. It’s not free, but it’s quite good, and easily recommendable! So yeah.
5, Spark the Electric Jester 3!
It’s a Sonic game. It’s basically a Sonic game. It’s much like the earlier game, Spark the Electric Jester 2, which is much like the earlier games Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog, the video about which we were going to make is apparently not coming out until it does, because we keep getting distracted by pointless bullshit. The developer of this series is a former developer of Sonic fangames and started with the 2D Spark the Electric Jester 1, which we could not finish because we suck at 2D platformers.
One really interesting thing about this game is how it treats the lives system. Yes, it has one, but only for the final level. I find this super super interesting, because while we were playing the Sonic Adventure titles with a friend of ours, we kinda generally came into the agreement that the lives system of all these games was a mistake. And Sonic Team seems to have agreed, because they, uh, removed it, from Sonic Forces onwards. But Spark 3 puts it back deliberately, only for the final level, and the final level is basically designed to make you lose lives. Not through difficulty, exactly, because while it is difficult, it’s not insurmountable, once you know the lay of the land- but rather, through compounding difficulty by length. Utopia Shelter doesn’t feel exactly like a level, it feels like a whole city. It feels like, I suppose, if at the end of Sonic 06, the whole of Soleanna became a level from which Sonic had to escape- oh, well, I guess that sort of did happen, huh. Sorry, just um…
Sonic 06 is cool? I’m very sorry to say so. It’s a horrible mess, but it also is cool.
Anyway, Spark 3’s acknowledgement of lives as a part of the Sonic Adventure experience feels like, kind of great? Like it doesn’t just go, “oh this part annoyed people, let’s throw it away” it says, no, dying in Final Chase repeatedly and falling out to the main menu is part of this kind of game, let’s just, give the player a chance to experience that, at least once. Let's make this a part of the game, but make it better, by making the level earn it, both by being an awesome level whose difficulty feels contextually justified, and also by being in a game with phenomenal 3D controls and platforming and movement physics where the appeal of such a difficulty modifier isn't spoiled by deaths that don't feel like your fault And it’s done in a way that feels accessible, with the option of going back and just, playing more of the game more, if you feel like you need more lives to endure the stage, but odds are if you’ve done all the optional stages you don’t need that many. I got to the end of Utopia Shelter on my second try, with lives to spare.
And yeah, so, anyway. Spark 3. It’s a really good game. It’s got pretty great level design and a great sense of visual style, really good music, good movement except for those damn cars that glitch and start going sideways all the time… I started just doing the car stages on foot because I couldn’t be bothered. But other than those, great game!
And finally;
Bocchi the Rock!
Okay, so I’m not sure what about Bocchi I can say that isn’t already said by other people but y’know what, fuck it, Molly’s convinced me, I’m gonna tell the weird age gap crush story.
So, when we were like, 16, 17, thereabouts, we were presumed a cis boy, and about six entire feet tall, and because of this, non-attentive viewers would often mistake us for a college-age dude. This factor, alongside the color of our skin and the general, uh, emotional neglect, of our parents, lent itself to our delinquencies, i.e., doing basically whatever the fuck we wanted at the expense of getting verbally and/or physically harassed by our parents who weren’t happy with us doing whatever the fuck we wanted but were slowly giving up after whatever point at which they stopped paying for the therapy that didn’t fix this brain immediately. So it was one night, while we were out of the house, as we usually were, talking to people at a charity event for the community org we volunteered for back then, that we saw her.
That woman who played guitar. Who was, back then, about the age we are right now. Maybe a little bit older.
Don’t think I need to describe her elsewise, really!
We had played guitar, too, once, for several years even. But I think we’d given up on music, like, the year before, after our mom harassing us to practice the “right” way made it not fun for us anymore. Seeing that beautiful, talented, very nice, woman almost made us want to try again. Although, we didn’t, because our mom didn’t want us to ever touch an instrument again unless we were truly serious about trying to make money with it, because those lessons are expensive, and I guess that’s one of the many ways we disappointed her, by ostensibly wasting her money.
But anyway, this woman. She was nice. That’s most of what we remember about her. She was a nice, cool, and to our eyes then, pretty, older woman who felt easy to talk to, and seemed to empathize with our anxieties, as, little of them as we felt comfortable telling, and, we were awkward around here and didn’t say much other than to compliment here and to talk about Edgar Wright’s movies, but like, y’know, she was good. She was good. Remembering how she smiled and how she looked at us like… well, probably the same as she smiled and looked at everyone, but still, it seemed like she liked us, or liked having us around. Although, now, being a performing person, we understand it’s kind of in your best interest to smile at everyone who comes to see a show. But. Yeah.
And we knew we never had a chance with this nice older woman, and that our crush on her was inappropriate, but, still… we still thought about this nice, talented, tall, pretty, interesting woman, and how much we wished we could be closer with her, but alas, and curses, age gaps, strike something again. Our heart, most likely, but maybe something else too.
And you know where this is going, don’t you.
Yeah.
[Kikuri Hiroi, a clip]
Kikuri is far, far more unhinged than that woman. The woman we knew was, uh, hinged, enough, to not drink around the absurdly tall and cute 17 year old that kept coming to her gigs for unknown reasons. Kikuri meanwhile is hardly ever seen without a can of sake nearby. And she’s also a bit more, y’know, open, with Hitori-chan, whose face around Kikuri is constantly a mixture of mild terror and grand astonishment. And, yes, Seika and Kikuri, is definitely, the more appropriate ship, and the one more likely to happen in the actual story, if any explicit lesbianism did happen, which I don't expect it to, but Hitori and Kikuri, in my opinion, is much more compelling, precisely because of how inappropriate it is. There’s just something particularly compelling to us, anyway, in the thought of our dead-in-the-water teenage crush, or something adjacent to it, actually going, someplace. It’s true that had we acted on it in real life, assuming we weren’t just rejected and told to abscond permanently, it’d almost certainly have gone extremely badly, for all the reasons it’d have done that, but, y’know, fiction is meant for exploring those culturally taboo fantasies of these sorts without necessarily needing to consider those unsafe and undesirable consequences. Although… you can, cause that’s conducive to drama.
So anyway, as far as, the actual show, goes, I dunno, I think it’s all pretty clear in this moment. This entire surreal bit with the psychedelic rock concert, where Hitori sees Kuroi reach out to her in this imagined intimate moment and whisk her away through this weird and new aspect of music and life experience that she’s not felt before, and it’s just like… Yeah! Yeah, that’s how it felt to us back then, watching that nice older girl on that stage. It was really kind of nostalgic actually. So, there’s one layer of the appeal of Kikuri’s inclusion in the show, Hitori’s feelings for Kikuri as someone who is a mentor figure and has things to teach her. You could say the thing Kikuri has to teach is music, or, something else, and though Hitori isn't eloquent or brave enough to articulate whatever her crazy teenage feelings are, it's clear she… has some! Which are ambiguous enough that they could be interpreted as just her wanting to be like Kikuri, which was also an aspect of our teenage emotions about our cool guitar woman, or that Kikuri playing in front of her triggered a spicy homosexual awakening! Not wrong either way. Though I think it's both.
And the other layer of the appeal is just… well, Kikuri herself. And our adoration of and relation to Kikuri as not just a stand-in for our teenage age gap crush, but also as a character in our age range who is relatable to us as a young adult who feels similarly to her about life!
I don’t think I need to explain that one, but I will anyway.
Kikuri is an alcoholic.
At some point after we turned 21, when it wasn’t us, but Joyce, Joyce discovered alcohol, during one of the low points in our life when we were unstably housed, and gradually started to rely on it a fair bit more than she should have. For a good year or two there, Joyce was drinking off our ass about once a month, sometimes twice, and y’know, just sort of thinking, who cares. If I die, if I lose, if I go out. Who cares. cause I’m not going to! We only really stopped drinking as much as we did because it started costing money and we started finding ostensibly better ways to hurt ourselves, like buying the disc of an ancient Japanese-only doujin game and telling ourselves it’s media preservation. I don’t think we were ever as much of an addict as Kikuri but, just, watching Kikuri, and watching her ruin her life in, basically the same sort of a way, is extremely relatable and gross and eugh
And the whole gosh contrast of THIS WOMAN being Hitori’s mentor figure who she takes her cues from and then embarrasses herself trying to do it
Is just incredible and perfect and gosh
Both these lovely women are both ruining themselves trying to be cool and likable and awesome, and… SUCCEEDING, because, the… the people LIKE the women, ruining themselves! and it’s beautiful.
I’m sorry, it’s beautiful.
Anyway Bocchi good. Bocchi good.
We've been reading the manga of Bocchi since writing that bit, and I think the Bocchi manga is just, for one thing, somewhat inherently let down by not being an anime and not having songs play in it, but, it's got more humor, at least one more crazy adult, and it's got more happening in it, as there is in every manga, and I really like it.
[I had to transcribe this part because I ad-libbed it. - Audrey]
I also like how it goes about, y’know, putting forth the, general, thesis or idea that, you know um, quote, “Rock Touches People’s hearts, because it’s coming from a loser, but you can’t call it rock if it’s from a successful person” Because that’s a- that’s a statement to make. That’s a statement that I’m kind of into. because we’re very not successful and uh. Seeing characters like Kikuri, and Bocchi, and y’know, and her, underground band, and uh, characters like Aiko, and her… Shady Underground Journalism, and the fact that the manga presents all of them, all of these very unsuccessful women, as cool, because they are cool, and that’s, real, rock!
*giggling lightly* uhhhh ahaha and you know but also *mutters sheepishly* please donate to our patreon- *laughs*
And one thing that I’m, one thing that I, one other thing that I really like about the manga is that it, it focuses so much, it’s like- it’s not so school-centric as a lot of other manga about y’know, music teenagers, tend to be, like- They’re not the light music club! They’re- they’re, a real underground band and you know that’s…
That’s freaking cool! *chuckles* That they are, they are, y’know, actually doing concerts for money, and that’s, y’know, it’s about doing the concerts, for money, and about working with adults who also have been doing concerts for money! and drugs *laughing quietly*
And also the fact that so little of it is set inside the school, like, y’know, th-the one moment where like, th-the online journalist writer who’s just like spotlighting, who’s y’know, writing about bands, and looking for Hitori. And then she goes to the school and she’s just like… Kicked out of the school! Because she’s not- she’s… she’s a creep! Who doesn’t belong! In the school! A-And *laughs* And then y’know, in like, another manga where it’s the light music club that that’d just kind of be where the plot… stops! Where that plot line… stops! But she- But then she finds out that y’know, they don’t perform at school, because they’re not a school band, and then, she… goes to the live house… and advances the plot. And is also a kind of… fucked up, self-interested woman, who tries to… sequester Hitori into… agskjhgdkfhkdhjfdddd because she’s afkhjdhkhf she’s interested in money, and promising more than she’s probably able… able to give, she is……
[trails off laughing]
This- this chapter…! This is- This is a scene where, *hiccup* This is a scene where this woman tries to buy Bocchi, buy Hitori, with the promise of exposure! *laughing* That- That is literally: That is the literal description!
[long pause while Audrey gets herself under control]
Okay, I’m done ad-libbing.
One thing I wanted out of the anime, watching the anime, was to see the group grow and expand to the point where they actually do become a famous and successful band. That's basically what I figured it'd head for since, Hitori is already a successful YouTuber, as YouTubers go, and since Nijika said that's where she wanted it to go, that she wants to grow the band and become popular and help everyone reach their dreams. We kind of do have the whole "high schoolers become music celebrities" thing in Love Live, but I'd love to see that sort of thing be done in a way that feels more grounded and believable in a world where people actually seem to worry about money, outside of the fantasy confines of a nationally famous school club, and have it done in a way that the story doesn't stop happening once they graduate! Given how much the story already focuses on adults who are implied to be varying levels of fucked up just as well and seriously as its lead teenage characters who are implied to be varying levels of fucked up, it feels like the sort of story that's kind of made to transition to follow these girls out of their school lives. And I hope it goes there, and I also hope that the anime eventually gets further seasons because the material of the later manga chapters has itself a fantastic foundation if the rest of it is adapted in the same way, so, yeah.
And that's just the feelings I have on that. If you're interested in more bocchi content then um, sakugablog has a couple writeups and translated interviews which talk about the production which is itself its own really interesting story! It also got us to read the manga, because the way that the anime's character designer expresses such passion for Hamaji's work is utterly palpable and gosh things. Also I think it's really funny that Kerorira decided to animate the Bocchi ice bath scene with her wearing a school swimsuit because that adds another deeper layer of hilarious cringe that isn't quite present in the manga version of the scene when you see that she's so mentally conflicted about the merits and demerits of this scheme that she can't bring herself to fully expose her own body to the ice water which would, uh, probably make the intended effect of catching a cold more likely and thus make the plan work better, and also the scene probably couldn't have become as much of a twitter meme if they'd decide to illustrate her without the school swimsuit like the manga does, since then instead everyone would be mentally and sometimes textually debating the merits and demerits of bath scenes in anime, again, except it'd be funnier than that because it'd be about *this* scene and that would be goshdarned hilarious.
I think that’s really kind of it for this one. We’re out of time. So we’ll see everyone next time. And thanks to our patrons.
Brea,
Dorian Newlin
hikari no yume
L Tantivy
pigeon
Sally
Scimitar
And Thijs
And everybody else.
oh wow that was, that was a, that was almost 48 minutes, okay um—
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Gather 'round kids, it's Complaining About DD2 Time, and since this is my private hole I'm not gonna be too polite about it.
Spoilers to be expected, obviously. Please, if you like dd2 and its backstories, do not go ahead and read. I'm not going to convince you it's bad and you're not going to convince me it's good. This is for my own sake and to any that want to read someone expressing their own annoyance at length.
Now, I was never a DD2 nay-sayer. And gameplay-wise? This is not a bad game. It's not DD1 and I'm glad for it. It had the balls to try something new and it succeeded there. The main issues were patched out in early access, the visuals are STUNNING and the music is as good as always.
But story-wise? As a sequel to DD1? As an opportunity to expand the lore of beloved characters? It failed so, so hard. Like, "what the fuck are you doing, how are you doing this to the characters you wrote"-hard.
Characters have their mistakes whitewashed from their dd1 portrayals, random trauma is dumped on them without any sense of character progression or central motivation. Dismas is by far the worst offender on the whitewashing front, but he's not the only one. It's not enough for them to be normal, kind of shitty people in bad circumstances, they gotta go through the meatgrinder! Audrey HAD to kill her husband, he was an abusive monster and probably going to kill her first! Dismas was just a hungwy boy! Boudica was a dumb teen and also didn't run away without a fight! It's not enough for Alhazred to live with Space Satan inside his head because of his ill-advised search for power, he's got to have dead friends to be sad about! Sexual repression, humiliation and banishment aren't enough for Junia, she's got to be tortured for days and see all her friends and acquaintances die in one of the most horrific ways!
Sometimes even their personalities seem to have been overwritten. Para's morbid obsessions and general lack of ethics are lot more subdued. Sarmenti isn't a overtly violent and secretly depressed clown, he's more about his music than anything. Dismas' isn't hiding a heart under 10 layers of whiskey, sarcasm and false confidence, he's just sort of sour. And boring.
And somehow the exception to all this blorbofication is Damian who goes from "miserable guy who gets a few too many screws lose and joins a cult" to... a fucking torturer. Which is never addressed in a meaningful way because *key jingling noise* LOOK A FIGHT WITH DEATH that's more interesting, right? Dude has three completely different beats to his backstory and none of them lead to any satisfying conclusion or unifying theme.
Did they forget this is the guy who was eager and willing to give himself to the Heart of Darkness as the ultimate sacrifice? Why is he denying death now? Where did the religious motivation of his pain obsession go? Did he just knock at St Martha's dressed as a beggar and ask if they were hiring torturers? What did he do that got him kicked out by people who think branding children is ok? Why does a convent have a dedicated torturer on the payroll anyway? Are we just going to forget that Junia beat him with a stick? Now everyone's buddies? What? What's happening here? Why is Death less trouble than an Examplar?
I'm not opposed to Damian being shown as a dick, I'm sure he is one given his belief system but please, for the love of god, tell ONE story and make it coherent.
Which brings us back to Junia. How the hell does the end of her shrines connects to her now? If she was condemned and never absolved by authority, just knocked out her jailer and made a run for it, why does she have Vestal armor and act as a member of the Church? Who even let her leave? Why isn't there a bounty on her head? What authoritarian religious authority would have let a heretic that says the Light told her it was ok to fuck run amok? It was more important to end her story on a shock twist than to have it make sense, so we jut don't know.
On the topic of adding shit for the sake of it: why wasn't it enough to have Sarmenti be a normal guy pushed too far by a bunch of asshole nobles? What exactly does the evil magic song add to it? If he has to have something to regret about the whole thing, why not just add innocent victims to his rampage? Or have him do questionable things in his despair to never be trapped again? Again, write ONE story well instead of adding incrongruent shit that looks cool!
And I'm gonna go out and say it... I'm not the biggest Reynauld fan in this fandom, not by a FAR shot. I think he's an interesting dude. And of course he'll have a special place in player's minds as one of the dd1 starters. But that shit at the end? Unnecessary spit in the eye for anyone who gave a damn. If you were hoping for him to show up in the game, I don't know how you'd read this besides "lol fuck you he's DEAD and also not fucking important".
When I first heard about something involving him at the end of the game I was accepting. Sure, he'll turn out to have been devoured by the Heart of Darkness and show up as a surprise part of the end boss, right? Tragic and painful, but not a bad end for him story-wise! It would have been the sort of cruel twist I'd have expected from Darkest Dungeon. It takes the character and does something interesting with him! What better to represent our ultimate failure than reminding the characters and the player of everyone we sacrificed in the first game? If he's going to be dead, it might as well mean something.
But nope. He's. Not there. Not even as a grave. His fucking helmet is lying around and used as a candlestick. Apparently by Dismas, who of course has no reason to give a fuck. The hell, man.
And the overall arc? I was so there for it. Redemption, failure, struggle against impossible odds, one must imagine Sisyphus being happy, that's my jam. But as it turns out, it was a straightforward hero story. Sure, there's the sting that the darkness in people's hearts will show up again and bla bla bla, but that's standard fare too. The hopeless struggle wasn't at all hopeless, you just had to kill the big monster. Which fixes things because... I don't know, cosmic therapy? A wizard did it? Where did the cultists go? The fanatics? What about the Heart of Darkness, why is it just chilling with all the blood that's been spilled? I get that they wanted to write something more hopeful, but to sweep aside all the worldbuilding that suggests that it shouldn't be this easy feels cheap and unrewarding. I expected some sort of twist, a terrible cost that is worth it regardless.
What I got was a candlestick helmet.
#darkest dungeon 2 spoilers#this is just venting#you haven't seen the last of me#there's plenty of salt left
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So I’m currently obsessed with a sequel/au of batdr I made called “Bendy and the Artificial Industry”
And one of my favorite things about it is Audrey and bendy constantly finding out about just how many things Joey lied about and being horrified while inkys like
“I TOLD YOU SO!”
That and inky refusing to swear while bendy cusses like a sailor
That's a neat idea.
Let my lil gremlins discover the world and such.
Bendy: Fuck!
Inky: No!
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2 + 3 + 17 for the book asks! 📚
2. Did you reread anything? What?
Yes! I reread all three of what I deem my favourite books, which I try and reread once every year or two: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Nation by Terry Pratchett and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (just finished my reread of Book Thief yesterday, it's been a while since I last reread it so yes it did make me cry). I also reread This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (which I first read in 2020) and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (which I first read last year and is definitely a new fave). Also listened to Re:Dracula which I counted as a Dracula reread.
3. What were your top five books of the year?
Not counting my faves/rereads, up to this point it'd probably be:
1. Babel by R F Kuang (soooooooo freaking good, magic system based on translation which made my little translator brain go brrrrr, translators of colour at Oxford in the Victorian era, pulls no punches on dealing with colonialism and racism and resistance, I adored the four main characters and their relationship and the ending broke my heart and made me cry. Just so fucking good, highly recommend)
2. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (Jade Daniels my beloved. These top two are so close but I put Babel slightly higher because I think it's objectively slightly better. But this is the book that truly has my heart. She's obsessed with slashers and her essays about them made me want to watch all the slashers, and she's a mess and thinks her town is gonna be victim to a slasher and whaddya know? Anyway so good I love her, the sequel is also very good and I'm very much looking forward to rereading them next year when the final book in the trilogy comes out)
3. Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt (trans woman and TERF dual POV, the haunted house is an allegory for fascism in Britain, and it's so fucking good. It's also A Lot though so proceed with caution)
4. Nettleblack by Nat Reeve (the MC in this is sooooo cute and so fucking anxious god bless. Vaguely Victorian era small town, youngest sister in the Nettleblack household runs away because she/they doesn't want to get married, ends up joining an all-female detective agency. Told through letters/diary entries etc and just a lot of fun, I'm pretty sure there's a sequel coming out at some point which I'm very excited for)
5. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (cosy sci-fi about a non-binary monk who is somehow unfulfilled by life so goes looking for more, meets a robot in the wild and goes on a road trip with it. Very cosy soft sweet and just what I needed this month)
Big shout-outs also to Bunny by Mona Awad, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth and Vicious by V E Schwab.
17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?
The Night Circus kinda, only because I'm not usually very big on detailed, luscious description in books, like I can take it or leave it, but the description was what I absolutely loved about this book. It's so gorgeous and evocative and honestly I can take or leave the plot, but it was worth reading (and earned a 5 star) from the description alone.
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top 5 characters this year so far can be from books movies shows etc
I’m doing this in terms of character who were totally new to me so far this year so if it’s a reread/rewatch, additional content for chars I already love like a sequel I read or an adaptation I watched it doesn’t count (there’s one on here who is from a long franchise but she still counts for a reason I’ll explain)
I love all the yellowjackets girls but especially Taissa/Shauna followed closely by Natalie would be my favorites. Tai and Shauna are just so the type of characters that would obviously be favorites for me it sort of doesn’t bare explanation, and I really feel for Natalie a lot all three girls are such interesting characters and perfectly acted I’m obsessed with them.
Kate Wallis from Cruel Summer, we talked about this but she’s such a great character I love how she subverts the trope of like as much as I love her an Alison Dilaurentis type of mean it girl who is involved with older men and painted as an evil temptress for that (in a way her character to me is like a combination of aspects of Ali Spencer and Aria if the Pll writers had a better grasp of what to do with their arcs), I loved how empathetic the portrayal of her character was and her arc through the season, and Olivia Holt is just so charming as her.
Eleanor Vance from The Haunting of Hill House book (I was planning to finally watch the show over break but I got sidetracked with the SaB season release + Djats releases and my brain rot, hopefully I will watch it soon I promise it will be the next New show I start just not sure when I will start watching anything new rn I’m just watching YJ and Abbott weekly and I’m going to start that partial Pll rewatch for a project.) but anyway book Eleanor is an incredible character I’m in love with her voice, and women who’s narratives are about isolation and also homoerotic subtext especially in horror you’ll always be famous.
Meritte Audrey and Harper from Plain Bad Heroines, if I have to pick one probably Meritte since I dug her voice and initial characterization the most although Audrey’s arc was my favorite. I really really loved this book everything about it was written specifically for me in mind including these three characters and the dynamics between them (canon polyamerous sapphics in a horror novel!! I loved all the dynamics between the three of them so much that’s also why all of them count)
Courtney Dilaurentis from Ali’s Pretty Little Lies the prequel to the Pll book series. Even though this is part of a franchise and there were scenes involving Courtney in the main series I’m counting her because getting a story from her pov does separate her char from just the version of her the liars see in flashbacks and you feel for her in a different way. I thought her character in this book was so fascinating, throughout the whole thing she’s referring to herself as Alison to method act her way into her life but also to me her character felt a bit like a version of show Alison where the writers could find a middle ground between viewing her as sympathetic because of her horrible family and the way older men took advantage of her and gave you reasons for why she does the fucked up things she does, without completely de-fanging her character for a redemption arc the way late Pll did. And I just found her dynamics with the other liars in the book so interesting esp with Aria and Emily.
thank you for the ask! (Ask me too 5 of anything)
#s speaks#asks#loverdives#mutuals#yellowjackets#cruel summer#the haunting of hill house book#pll#Pll books#Plain Bad Heroines#I cheated w yj and pbh but to be fair they’re really ensemble
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Hi, I’ve been thinking about negative relationships, and how it might be fun narrative-wise if a pair, or all four of the heroes make it to the mountain despite, or even thanks to, their negative relationships. Do you have any negative relationship headcanons?
Difficult question, I think if I follow my own "DD2 as sequel" headcanon there could be reasons for every permutation of Resentful relationship.
Some characters should be more Suspicious, namely, Baldwin (nearly got assassinated), Sarmenti (abused by huge crowds of people), Audrey (used to two-faced high society) and Tardif (loner, has a vendetta, don't tell me he's a professional, his brain is full of worms too). Paracelsus, in an interpretation closer to her DD1 self, is the prime candidate for Envious, imo. Possibly Bonnie as well, since she could feel left out as the "new kid". Boudica, when she dislikes someone, is all anger and bile, so perhaps Hateful? Not in that her dislike is any more intense, but it manifests in a very "grrr hate hate bite" way compared to Audrey entering Mean Girl mode (which she absolutely can do, it's horrific).
The reason why I favor Resentment is that it indicates the characters have baggage that's not explicitly talked about, but manifests in little unrelated displays of hostility. It's a great premise for a story and allows them to keep going without murdering each other. For now.
I have to say, I really like the idea of characters sticking together even though they are one wrong look from a full brawl, because damn it, no one else is gonna save the world but me and you fucks, wont they? It would make the ending cutscene very interesting if instead of rebuilding together they are all flipping the bird as they go their separate ways.
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7 & 17 from the weird writer ask list please!
Oooo ok ok ok
7. What is your deepest joy about writing?
When you form an attachment to the characters you’re writing. Sure that seems like, really generic, but you get to know them and when you’re really really paying attention to them, they start to make their own decisions. You understand them on such a personal, intimate level, that it’s like, legitimately hard to put them through shit. It’s just fun to sit back and realize you’ve written something that compelling to you, and that makes you feel this strongly. It’s nice seeing how other people interpret the character’s actions, and how because you have their thoughts in your head, you can sort of see how the outsider’s perspective looks at it. Idk, it’s just interesting. The same goes for the world you create. This spans away from fanfiction but a lot of my original works have these complex worlds and politics and it becomes an character in and of itself. Okay I’ll shut up now.
17. Minutiae of your WIP. Little details, lore, things that I know about etc.
I’ve got two WIPs but one of them is really simple and essentially post-war canon compliant so we’ll skip over A Short Life.
Regretfully Uncaring:
Fucking hell where do I start.
Remus and Tonks write together a lot. Since they released their book on werewolves, (which Remus is now credited) they’ve been writing up a sequel of sorts, going into how to solve the political troubles and corrupt legislation the ICW keeps in place. Anyway, their relationship has done nothing but grow since Harry and Ginny went missing, and Tonks has a hunch that Ginny was working on becoming an animagus, something she’s kept close to her chest.
Greyback sees potential in Dudley to rise the ranks and become a fourth member of his little top of the pyramid club. Of course, Dudley only assumes this is a lie to get Dudley to think he’s important when reslly he’s just there to lure Harry, but that’s actually not true. Greyback likes Dudley, and wants him on his side for more than just Potter purposes.
Voldemort went to Ginny’s grave out of a legitimate sense of loss. This is, sort of, clarified in the fic later, but because it’s from Ginny’s perspective (unreliable narrator) it feels like Voldemort is insincere.
Daphne notices Ron because of his nose. That is what initially got her paying attention to him.
Harry’s crush on Elizabeth melting into his crush for Ginny has a deeper meaning and I hope people catch onto that eventually.
Audrey Williams, who eventually goes on to marry Percy, favourite subject was astronomy. Her favourite planet is Neptune.
Ted Tonks is currently sitting in a bar in Northern Ireland.
Remus collects vinyls, even though he doesn’t like playing them. It drives him absolutely mad that Sirius plays them, and his biggest annoyance with Potter Manor’s destruction is that his collection was destroyed in the fire.
Dobby did indeed die in the fire of Hogwarts.
Charlie Scamander, (Alyssa and Charlie’s daughter who I’ve neglected to mention in almost 20 chapters) has her grandmother’s voice in her head. Tina, unfortunately, is losing her hold over the position, and Snape’s is coming to replace it.
Death in Regretfully Uncaring is frustrated with Harry and Ginny because for her, she’d only just tracked them down in another reality, that of A Short Life Full of Long Years. So, in some ways, both of my fics are connected in that sense, though it is never mentioned nor eluded to.
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Audrey has so much character potential in a way that would never have been able to be utilized in the play/1986 movie.
She romanticizes this unbeknownst to her fucked up social role/lifestyle (being a 50s housewife) (obligatory disclaimer that it's totally understandable that this would happen and it doesn't make her any less intelligent) and uses her fantasies of it as a coping mechanism to make it through the day, which is a compelling aspect of her character that could be made even more compelling and be used extremely effectively by forcing her to contend with the fact that it is in fact fucked up. At least to me the obvious thing to do with a character that romanticizes something that's awful in reality and uses it to cope with their harsh reality is to explore their reaction to actually getting that thing and seeing behind the curtains, or in this case the veneer that was sold to her by those magazines and society in general.
Obviously an Audrey Disillusionment Arc would be beyond the scope of the play/1986 movie and I'm not suggesting that this should have happened there, but it would be perfect for a sequel to the latter's theatrical cut. Especially with the inherent parallelism with the director's cut ending, where by literally becoming a part of her partner's career and her relationship with him she achieves and embodies those 50s housewife aspirations she's always had far more completely than she ever could have as a living breathing flawed human.
This is a big aspect of my rewrite that I haven't released online, and it's set up through my character concept/interpretation of Seymour being kind of like Othello in that he's so used to bad times (war in Othello's case and Skid Row/social isolation in Seymour's) that good times freak him out and he can't handle them. And thus his mental health goes even further off the rails in Somewhere That's Green. There's a lot of other stuff going on there too it's a whole thing. It's almost more of a remake of Othello than Little Shop actually.
Anyway my ideal Little Shop sequel would involve the plant in the garden being taken care of in the first five minutes and then just tons of Audrey character exploration and development and a nice complex disillusionment arc for her. She deserves nice things like that. Even if giving them to her in this way obviously involves her suffering a lot. Audrey my beloved <3
#I hj about the plant in the garden being taken care of immediately but I used Twoey as the Iago equivalent/basically Seymour's mental health#issues in a whatever the plant version of anthropomorphized is form/a part of him basically/his intrusive thoughts in my rewrite#so the plant in the garden could be used in a similar way potentially I dunno#Seymour having a pretense of studying it in case more of them show up but really he's just letting it fuel his mental health issues#hanging out with the embodiment of his mental health fuckery in the basement#moreso rotting than hanging out really#just like how he used to be isolated in the basement of the shop#while Audrey's having an even worse time somehow but handling it better#they should let me write this thing#lsoh#little shop of horrors#audrey lsoh#seymour lsoh#lsoh twoey#seymour x audrey#othello#personal post
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