a quick hot guide for people that struggle commenting on fics aka things authors love to hear and youre just over thinking it and its actually really simple to leave comments on stuff!!
key smash/emoji spam/reaction image/etc (it conveys emotions way more than you might think)
drop a line you really liked
say how much you love a ship/character and how happy you are that theres content about them
ALL CAPS ANYTHING
"i liked/loved/enjoyed/whatever it!" its better to say the most basic thing than saying nothing tbh; writers appreciate hearing anything over nothing 💜
"thank you for writing this" its short, sweet, and very powerful
think what kind of feedback you'd personally like to receive on a piece of art you made. try to translate that want into comments you leave for other people too
you dont have to be critical or constructive or anything, even if the author asks for that stuff in their notes. they'll get it from someone else, you just do you
i feel like people make leaving comments too hard on themselves, so really just make it simple. if you really dont come up with anything, just say thank you. youre there reading for some reason, tell the author what it is. fic comments dont need to be book analysis essays (tho those are. incredibly appreciated as well if you want to write one!!), writers publishing their works for free online appreciate any kind of feedback regardless if you consider it good or well written. a comment is a comment
bottom line is, leave comments on fics and other written works. its whats keeping this game alive
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I was thinking about how the run away with me au Robin and Steve "should we get divorced?" conversation comes about:
Theyre about 23 and Robin comes home in tears after another break up. The reason: Robin had asked her girlfriend of 8 months, Lorraine to move in with her and steve. Lorraine assumes this means steve is moving out and when Robin clarifys that no Steve is staying, he's an important part of her life theyre married for chists sake. Well Lorraine doesnt take that well, says she isnt going to spend her life playing second fiddle to Steve.
This isnt the first time a relationship had ended for either of them because a partner hadnt been able to accept that Steve and Robin were a package deal. Things had been especially rough for them romantically in the first couple years of their marriage. It wasnt until a particularly awful screaming match between Robin, Steve and Steves first real boyfriend, that they were able to admit their relationship was incredibly codependent and unhealthy. Steves boyfriend had been upset when Steve had cancelled on him for the 3rd time in a row because of a Robin Emergency™️ and decided to confront Robin about it while Steve was in class. Things escalated quickly when Steve came home early from class to find them arguing and immediately took Robins side. The argument and Steves relationship ended with a slammed door, a lot of tears and a new rift in Robin and Steves relationship.
It took a lot of long conversations with Carina and Marjorie, Steve working through his toxic masculinity enough to go see a therapist - He and Robin made a deal that theyd both go talk to someone about, you know almost dieing "do you think me being fucked up by what happened at starcourt makes me weak steve?" "No of course not!" "Well then why would it make you weak?" - and a summer spent apart (Robin taking an internship in rome to study latin) for them to sit down and have a long conversation about boundaries and ground rules for how they would navigate their relationship as well as dating in the future.
Steve and Robin agreed to both take a break from dating while they worked through their respective traumas, and figured out how to navigate their relationship in a healthy way. Things werent easy, the both of them occasionally backsliding into unhealthy behaviors, more than a few nights where one of them spent the night with Carina and Marjorie in order to have space from eachother. But eventually they get their shit figured out and decide to brave the world of dating again. Steve and Robin both have their share of flings and short lived relationships but nothing so far seemed to stick. That is until Robin met Lorraine.
Lorraine was funny, sweet and a little bitchy. They had immediately clicked after being introduced by some mutual friends from school. Robin really thought things with Lorraine were going to work out. Steve and Lorraine had gotten on like a house on fire, she had slipped into Robin and Steves dynamic easily, trading jokes and light hearted jabs, cooking breakfast together on days Lorraine would stay at their apartment. Robin had fallen hard and fast, she thought she had finally found someone who accepted that her and Steve were a package deal. So 8 months in when Lorraines lease was ending Robin (with agreement from steve) asked Lorraine to move in. Things don't go to plan. Robins dreams of a future with lorraine are shattered. She goes home broken hearted.
After Robin has cried herself out, her and steve cuddled together on the couch Steve is the one to broach the topic. Robin immediately bursts back into tears before he calms her back down again saying he doesnt want a divorce but he also doesnt want to hold Robin back, doesnt want to be the reason she cant find happiness. Robin replys by saying if anyone is holding the other back its obviously her, steve gave up everything to protect her afterall. Steve calls bullshit -years of therapy and he can finally say that word without cringing- says he would do it all again in a heartbeat, that she doesn't owe him anything. They stay up all night talking about it, about what the both of them want from their futures. Neither can see a future without the other. they're platonic life partners, one day they'll find their someones who can accept that and if not well, they'll always have eachother.
Of course they do find their someones in the form of a charming if infuriating metal head and a brilliant, sweet, and badass reporter. Through trial and error the four of them figure out how to navigate life together. They all live happy ever after.
Robin and Steve celebrate 30 years of marriage with divorce papers. They'll always love eachother but now they dont need a marriage to keep eachother safe. They dont need a marriage to stay as platonic life partners. They have eachother and they have Eddie and Nancy. They have everything they need.
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Lmk what you think! I'd love to have someone to scream with about this AU and bounce ideas off of :D
Tagging by request <3 @ramyayaya
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you also have to consider that i don't think Zelda had a lot of high thoughts about herself because of everything her father told to her, it's pretty clear she thinks of herself a failure not fit to save anyone or even be a royal in botw especially the closer to the calamity we got in the memories. if they just had her and link go around hyrule helping people (which is what I assume they did) in the timeskip they should attribute people liking her so much to her being helpful and literally fending the calamity off for 100 years instead of being royalty, which they could have done easily because it's pretty obvious she did go around hyrule to help (the school is a pretty good example)! it would make zeldadorf going around being malicious way cooler as link has to clear her name around Hyrule
Yeah, Zelda's helpful and all the level of obsession the NPC's in the world have with Zelda doesn't at all match up with all the (fairly basic) nice things she's done, and ESPECIALLY doesn't work with how everyone is totally cool with Fake Zelda raising hell. Ensuring that one village has an elementary school should not generate enough goodwill to let people forgive brainwashing and attempted murder. Not to mention the long list of Good Deeds she apparently has time for is just... bizarre, and a sign that she's actually a pretty crappy leader considering she has zero time management skills. Like lady, you're rebuilding a fucking kingdom after a century long apocalypse, I really don't think you should be spending your time teaching people how to cook random recipes and helping to plant flower gardens. And the random carved little monuments for everyone who died in the Calamity also strike me as just... no. You can commission the fancy monuments later, everyone fucking knows it happened right now. Hell, why don't any of the villages have memorials for the Calamity victims, they're the ones that actually had to deal with the immediate aftermath. Having Zelda place generic memorials everywhere just makes me wonder why the hell there aren't any old memorials made by survivors in the immediate aftermath, in the places where people actually live and can visit them.
Also while I know all of the memorials having a respawning silent princess flower on them is just the game continuing to be wildly unsubtle about "look this flower represents zelda DO YOU GET IT GUYS", from an in-universe perspective it's absolutely hilarious. Those flowers are extremely endangered, and not even the best pre-calamity conservation efforts were enough to help. They're STILL very fucking endangered, and were believed to be extinct! They canonically cannot cultivate this plant, it's very rare and only grows in the wild... which is why they're picking these extremely rare flowers to use as decoration on a memorial. And now you can't find them growing in any of the spots they used to florish in, except the Lost Woods. They're not even tied to the fairy fountains, because there's none of them growing around the new fountain locations. I like to think that Zelda decided to make all the stupid memorials and have a silent princess flower left on each one, and so her loyal followers have been replacing all the cut flowers every time they wither, and as result the silent princess flower is on the verge of extinction again. I know it's not what the game was trying to say, but it's the logical conclusion to make - people have been picking this very endangered plant all over the country, and now you can't find it anymore. And also it's a really funny mental image that Zelda was so concerned about their conservation back in BOTW that she spent a whole memory talking about it, but now she's having them picked en-masse to make sure her vanity project has the correct aesthetic. I hate Zelda in TOTK for many reasons, but her new habit of intentionally killing an endangered plant is easily the funniest problem the writing accidentally gave her.
Anyways as for her mental state before the Calamity, I do see that as being very complicated. She's got a lot of Issues, mainly stemming from her family, religion, stress and powers. No need to go over all that though, as I think everyone has long since analyzed that to hell and back. BUT at the same time, while her personal life is fucking miserable, we can't ignore that she's still literally the crown princess of an extremely powerful nation, and has spent her entire life being told that she is fundamentally a better person than everyone else. She was being emotionally abused by her father, but that does not change the fact that she's incredibly privileged, and doesn't seem particularly aware of that fact. I mean fuck, the BOTW memories show Zelda had a habit of actively trying to lose her bodyguard and run off alone into the wilderness on a whim. And when said bodyguard caught up with her (with zero judgement or displeasure), her only reaction was to emotionally abuse him. She genuinely did not seem to understand or care that it's a universally bad idea to let an unarmed teenager run off alone into the monster infested wilderness, with nobody knowing where she's going or when she'll be back. And that's without taking into account people actively trying to kill her.
All of that behaviour right there is just a combination of teenage dumbassery and Zelda being extremely privileged. She lives in a world without any serious consequences, why would she need to learn self preservation? And her abusing Link was a hell of a lot more serious than the fandom likes to see it as. Being a knight is literally his lifes work, he's been training since he was a small child, he has no idea how to support himself in any other way. And he answers directly to the reigning monarch, which is currently King Rhoam... but in the very near future would be Zelda. If he doesn't follow Rhoam's orders to be Zelda's bodyguard, he's fired and his life is ruined. If he does follow his orders, he's angering Zelda, and then in the future she'll probably retaliate by firing him, and his life will be ruined. I absolutely hate that most of the fandom has decided Link was reacting to the verbal abuse with just "wow she's so smart and pretty, what a girlboss", because that's completely insane (and in the context of shipping, wildly unhealthy for Link). I see Link silently tolerating Zelda's harassment as just him desperately trying to minimize how much she hates him, because she can absolutely destroy his life on a whim, and her actions all suggested she will absolutely do so. Princess Zelda does not want Link to ever exist in her presence; why the fuck would she want to keep him employed after she becomes Queen?
...To be clear, I think all of this is a good thing. I mean, Zelda being a privileged little shit and coping with stress by abusing her personal servant are very negative traits for her as a person, but as a character I really like it! These are very serious flaws, but they're understandable - she's not a total bitch because she's pure evil, she acts like a bitch because she's a stressed teenager lashing out at the easiest target, and she genuinely does not realize how harmful her actions are. I liked that the game wasn't afraid to show us an uglier side of Zelda, and trusted the audience to understand that she was more than just her worst impulses. I think the closest we've ever gotten to that was Skyward Sword Zelda admitting that she pretended to be in grave danger to manipulate Link into doing her dirty work, and he should not be okay with that... but that wasn't quite as nuanced, because that was more Zelda literally being a god in mortal form, and doing something morally sketchy for the Greater Good. BOTW Zelda is just a person that hurt someone because it was an easy way to make herself feel better. It gives her a depth that very few Zelda's have been allowed to have.
And it really bothers me that apparently all of that is just gone in TOTK. Zelda, who is inexplicably still a princess for some reason, is the unquestioned almighty ruler of Hyrule. The Zora King and Gerudo Chief both swear eternal subversience to her in the ending, and Zelda happily accepts their submission as just what she is rightfully owed. When she's in the past she feels completely entitled to declare that Link will finish the battle for them, even though the last time she saw him he'd lost his entire fucking arm and was falling to his death, and also the entire situation is very political, and she has no idea which side Link would interpret as being correct. For fucks sake, she stole his goddamn house, made extensive renovations, added a large second room for herself, and still did not allow him to have any space in there. They're not sharing that bed, shippers. Link just does not live there anymore. That's why one of the TOTK sidequests is... Link getting a house again, on the other side of the country from where Zelda is living. The game repeatedly tells me that Zelda is actually the single bestest person who ever lived, but she never shows any real consideration for the wellbeing of someone who isn't Rauru, Sonia or Mineru... apart from the opening where she expresses concern that Link was seriously wounded by slapping three keese with his sword and killing them instantly. Which is more condescending than anything else.
And as I think I've mentioned before, all the apparently great and noble deeds Zelda performs are done with the overall goal of ensuring the Kingdom of Hyrule continues to exist under the control of the royal family. She's the current reigning monarch, so literally all of this is for her own benefit. There's nothing wrong with doing good things that also benefit you, of course, but once again the game constantly insisting that Zelda is a perfect selfless martyr... doesn't really track with the fact that she's the only one with a real motive to want Hyrule to remain under her rule. Everyone else has been getting by just fine without her for the last century, and Zelda going missing at the start of a crisis doesn't really cause any issues with leadership; things keep running smoothly, the only issues that ever show up is from Zelda not being there to do specific tasks she said she would do, like help plant a flower garden. Idk, it just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth; there's absolutely no reason for Hyrule to be a monarchy post-calamity, and the fact that everyone is so fanatically loyal to Zelda makes me feel like she's actively working to keep herself on the throne because she wants the power. If her first priority was being a good leader, people wouldn't be scared to question her.
But I'm with you on the Puppet Zelda plotline being wasted, it's like the whole thing was just there bcause the devs realized the main story quest (regional phenomenon) had nothing to do with the supposed main quest (find zelda), and just threw in a fake zelda to chase so the players would feel like they were making progress on that, but couldn't be bothered to make the fake zelda subplot have any consequences. That or they were just cowards with no faith in the audience, and figured if the fake Zelda's actions made NPC's express fear and hatred for the real one, the player would also be convinced that the real Zelda was bad. Which is ironic, considering the NPC's refusing to express any negative thoughts about the fake Zelda is a massive red flag about what the real one is like, and has convinced a lot of the audience not to like her.
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