Writing a Retelling

I used to not like reading or writing retellings, but I actually think that writing a retelling might be on my bingo card for 2023, so I decided to do some research on writing them and share it with y’all! I think the reason I used to dislike retellings was because they can go SO wrong, and they are really hard to write. But, the more I’ve looked into this, I’ve decided writing retellings is actually a really good exercise for writers. The world’s been around for so long that there are no completely new plots, and taking the essentials plots of one story and turning them into something new is a great exercise in the basics of plotting and understanding the nature of characters. 

Back to the OG

Read the original story! That might seem like an obvious thing, but sometimes it doesn’t feel every author remembers to do this. If it’s a story you haven’t read since you were little, don’t rely on your memory, especially if its a story with a lot of different remakes. Are you writing a retelling of the Disney movie Cinderella or the original Greek folk tale? Spoiler alert, they are not the same. You can write a retelling of either, but you do need to decide early on which one you are doing and stay consistent to it. I also think rereading the original story will remind you why you decided to write a retelling. Something about the story you loved so much you wanted to bring to a new audience or maybe something that felt unfinished or unanswered, and you just had to finish it and find the answered. 

Notes, Notes, Notes

I love taking notes, and I think that especially when writing a retelling copious notes are your best friend. Unfortunately, you aren’t going to be able to fit everything into your retelling, but writing notes on the most important things in the original story will help you have a guiding light and keep you organized. I would definitely recommend that you make a list of characters and their roles in the story. Are you keeping the same protagonist? Do you want to write from the antagonists point of view? Or give a side character their time to shine? I would also make a list of all of the settings in the story. Decide whether or not you’re keeping the same setting or revamping it for your story. Finally, make a list of all the major plot points. You’ll probably add more plot points into your story, but making sure that you know and understand the major plot points in the original story will help you as you’re writing. 

Inspired By or Retelling?

This may just be a personal nit-picky, schematic thing, but imo, a book can be inspired by something without being a retelling. Point and case being my favorite book to bash: A Court of Thorns and Roses. People have stopped leaning on this as much as they used too (mostly because ACOTAR has been rebranded as adult), but when it first came out ACOTAR was very much marketed as a Beauty and the Beast retelling. Me personally, I did not realize it was supposed to be a retelling until one of my friends told me after I had read it. Now, that either means that I have a poor level of reading comprehension or that the book is not a very good retelling. Obviously, I don’t like one of those answers, so let us presume that ACOTAR is not a very good retelling. I would say agree that elements of it are inspired by Beauty and the Beast, but I do not think that it is a retelling. SJM fails to keep many of the major themes and motifs of Beauty and the Beast which I think are necessary elements to qualify under the label retelling. 

But What’s the Twist???

Don’t be afraid to take risks and try new things when you write a retelling! Just because you’re writing a retelling doesn’t mean that you aren’t writing a story in your voice and your style of writing. Stay true to yourself, so long as you treat the original story with respect. A lot of retellings either give the story a new protagonist, a new setting, or set the story in a completely different genre. To get yourself going here are are a few questions to ask yourself after you’ve finished rereading the original story help you figure out what the twist of your retelling is going to be. 

Which of these characters do you feel curious about?

Which of these characters is the most hated / misunderstood?

Which of these characters could have the most interesting growth / character transformation through the course of this story?

How would this setting affect the protagonist and the other main characters? 

How would this setting affect the major conflict of the story?

How would this setting affect the themes of the original story? 

Which themes would be preserved and which themes would no longer feel relevant?

Elle’s Retelling Recommendations

And of course, I had to end this with a few retellings recommendations! Reading other retellings and seeing what other authors did well or not well is a great way to sharpen your own skills. 

Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood

I actually really liked this book, but I think its because even though I like Greek mythology, I admittedly am not the most knowledgable on the subject. I know the basics of Greek mythology, but unless something was blatantly wrong, I wouldn’t be able to tell. Apparently, this book had a lot of important Greek mythology plot points missing, but I thought it told the stories of Helen and Klytemnestra very well!

Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 

I first read Circe for school, but I went back and read it a year or two ago. I vastly prefer Circe to Song of Achilles as I didn’t really like SoA all that much, but both are definitely retelling masterclasses. Madeline Miller is definitely the Queen of Greek mythology retellings.

Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor 

This is one of my favorite books ever! I loved the Great Gatsby, and I am a Daisy Buchanan apologist. I love that this book fleshes out all of the female characters from the Great Gatsby, gives them proper back stories and answers one of the biggest questions from the original novel. 

Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

This book is not the best book, and I only recommend it because it is in my opinion how not to do a retelling or even an inspired by book. My friend group was obsessed with this book in middle school, and the best way I can describe it is if Percy Jackson and Twilight had a baby. Take that as you will. 

Re: your Disco S4 review:

but there was just a bit too much Therapy Talk for my liking. and to be clear, i don't mean too much Actual Therapy. i really respect the show for portraying therapy and trauma recovery in depth and just having cool main characters go to therapy because it's good and healthy is Very Cool. but i do think there are definitely scenes (particularly in the beginning of the show) that has dialogue fall into Therapy Talk where all the characters go around in a circle and coherently state their thoughts and emotions and then resolve their conflict.

I also have the same issue, I know the crew were heavily traumatized in season 1 and I love that we’re finally getting a Trek have Starfleet take mental health seriously.

But it’s how the writers execute the scene that’s the problem. I think you’re right on the money about them needing another pass at scenes like that.

I also think, most of the time the show literally stops the action for the characters to just talk. And I adore characters being in a room, just talking. But I think it’s because most of the time it’s because those scenes do two things at the same time. Or they usually have characters talk around it and be difficult.

In season 4, it seems the characters start their scene and they just over indulge too much, maybe a tighter edit would also work.

But also I think most modern shows have that problem where they use Therapy talk as a crutch for character development and relationships.

And again, I preface this that I do love having mental health taken seriously but I think there’s a way to do it where writer’s integrate it organically— one of the new shows I like from AppleTV— Shrinking, is literally all about it but it’s funny and heartbreaking and sweet. I think maybe it’s because the writers are also new to the concepts and think they have to fit everything to be relevant.

Hopefully, they worked out the kinks for season 5!

Yeah exactly. I love Disco but sometimes it feels like the writers just need to read their dialogue aloud to make some last revisions (and also put some nuance/unspoken things into the dialogue).

I also think, most of the time the show literally stops the action for the characters to just talk. And I adore characters being in a room, just talking. But I think it’s because most of the time it’s because those scenes do two things at the same time

This!!!! I know fiction is never meant to accurately reflect reality and that there are always going to be weirdly timed conversations for the sake of narrative but Discovery in particular has SO MANY "stop and talk" scenes during Big Action and it drives me crazy when the plot just establishes a strict time limit to do something and then we spend three minutes for characters to have a heart to heart instead of just. Doing The Thing. I know the 90s era "walk and talks" were annoying to film but those downbeats of characters chatting while going from point A to point B is a great place to add small bits of characterization (and movement!) instead of standing still and monologuing.

Thanks for the rec, I've never heard of Shrinking but will have to check it out!

(putting a big tangential ramble about Disco's portrayal of mental health/therapy under a cut because yeesh it got long)

As someone who has been in therapy, has a psychology degree, and has written fiction that uses therapy sessions as a setting/framing device, I can say with a decent amount of confidence that the way therapy/mental health is utilized in Disco is neither super realistic nor using its full narrative potential. Imo we skipped a very interesting part of everyone's healing journeys between s3 and s4 where characters are actually struggling to articulate their problems or denying their issues. Particularly with Detmer who went from having severe PTSD flashbacks in s3 to talking about her feelings with total clarity in s4 when actual trauma recovery is nowhere near as quick or linear and usually requires making major lifestyle changes to actually heal and maintain that healing.

And also I take issue with the fact that all of the characters are growing and facing similar issues at the same time and pace. It ends up making a lot of awkward and redundant conversations between characters who aren't in conflict and are self-actualized enough that they state everything they mean. And when there is meaningful conflict, the characters seem to very quickly overcome their flaws and make up. It's like the opposite problem that a lot of sitcoms and soap operas run into when characters are so driven to conflict and secret-keeping. It is refreshing to have a show where everyone is committed to being their best selves (which is quite similar to tng in that regard) but it doesn't easily mesh with the sort of drama that Discovery seems interested in telling stories about. All of this is also probably why Book's narrative (and his relationship with Michael) was one of the best parts of s4 because it felt like the writers actually committed to realistic season-long conflict born out of trauma and loss that wasn't written off. And as a result I think David Ajala's acting was some of the best of the show because he was given so much depth. I really just wish that the other characters had something similar but Disco's style of hyper-serialization, shorter season orders, and a large cast of recurring characters just doesn't lend to realistically telling stories about trauma and recovery because we almost only see the action and not the characters living their ordinary lives.

And while 90s Trek certainly wasn't The Best at portraying mental health (the therapy it shows in tng is just. Wrong. And so many characters like B'Elanna and Janeway have their issues with depression forgotten about after an episode or two), portrayals of PTSD with characters like Kira, Seven, Neelix, Picard, and Sisko tend to be more interesting to me because those characters' journeys through healing aren't linear. And as always, more episodes and episodic television in general makes it so emotional moments really hit (like Picard's breakdown in Family after Best of Both Worlds, seeing Kira's trauma around her father's death in Ties of Blood and Water, or whenever Neelix, the usual comedic relief and lighthearted character, has to confront how his family was killed in a brutal genocide) whereas with a show like Discovery – there's constant character drama and confrontations and big emotional moments so the catharsis of someone having a breakthrough in their treatment is a bit undercut. For something like that to be memorable, there have to be unmemorable moments too which just isn't Disco's style. It's not inherently a bad thing, but it's not really to my tastes.

Even the other new Treks tend to be a bit more grounded with character dialogue and addressing mental health. My enjoyment of Lower Decks shot way up in s4 because her admitting that Sito's death drove her away from wanting to be an officer was such a huge moment of catharsis when Mariner usually avoids talking about her feelings with a six foot poll. SNW has both La'an, M'Benga, and Chapel dealing with PTSD and their moments of vulnerability and pain are better because SNW tries to balance the silliness and seriousness of Trek. Picard is probably the most similar in content/tone to Discovery and even there despite the serialization and awkward characterization moments, the characters all have consistent issues with trauma that affect them at different times and affect them despite self-improvement. And I think Picard sometimes dips into heavy-handed emotional conversations but it's not quite as much as Disco because oh boy these characters are good at avoiding their feelings.

To be clear, I do love Discovery and people blow the awkward writing/Therapy Talk problem WAY out of proportion to cover for the bigoted reasons some people vocally hate the show. Like this problem does annoy me but it is just one aspect of the show and I hope one that will be fixed (or at least less noticeable) for season 5.

If you're sorta making this into a vtuber account i might as well ask you, with those pngtuber models, do you have a guide on how to get started with them? Also, do characters need to have humanlike face proportions to be able to like, work correctly? What if you wanted to make a bird, where the mouth is like really long and beak shaped? Would that be a problem for the honk stuff?

God this looks incomprehensible, sorry

not incomprehensible at all! whenever i get a chance i would definitely love to put together tutorials, both quick step-by-step guides and longer videos (bc idk about you but for me, the ideal is when BOTH types of tutorial exist lmao!!!)

in the meantime, there are tons of tutorials that already exist on youtube for pngtubing, and a few for setting up in honk specifically, but i'm not sure how many exist for best ways to actually draw the model and organize parts (layer organization etc) and stuff like that bc i didn't look for those when i was getting started. when i get around to it any guides i make will probably be more about that than the tech stuff, bc other people already have the tech covered!

honk has documentation/guides of its own, and the community page on itch.io can be really good for troubleshooting specific issues. honk is my primary recommendation if you want to get into pngtubing -- the program is paid ($12 USD) and model setup is a bit more laborious, but only in the beginning, and i think the liveliness of the lip sync and the eye tracking is well worth it! a downside is that honk doesn't currently have gif support, which a lot of other pngtubing programs do have, but there are plans to add it in the future.

this is the method i've used for setting up a discord reactive pngtuber (the second method on the page, "stream kit reactive images" - i know it may seem like a lot of steps, but if you take your time and follow the instructions closely it's not so bad! i am NOT tech savvy and still figured it out, so anyone can.) you only need discord and OBS to run this setup, and you can fiddle with it to do collabs (multiple people's pngtubers all on screen at the same time, lighting up and talking while you're in a discord call! fun for multiplayer games), but of course it can also be your main setup with just you alone in a private voice channel as your mic input.

and a good middle ground between honk and the discord reactive setup would be a program like veadotube mini! it does the same thing as the discord reactive setup (display a talk sprite when you're talking and a silent one when you're not), but in a self-contained program on your computer just like honk. i haven't used veadotube myself, but i see other pngtubers mention it as their program of choice.

i do have one video up of myself rigging my model in honk -- i wouldn't call it a guide or a tutorial though, because it's very informal and we also ran into a pretty annoying bug that made the process go less smoothly than i would have hoped :') (also the first few mins of video are muted bc my music got dmca flagged lmfao but the important stuff is all there!) but anyway if you just want a quick look at how a model looks getting put together in the program you might find that interesting.

you could ABSOLUTELY do something like the bird u described in honk, it's really really flexible. the way honk works is u just have to have different images drawn for different lip synch mouth shapes (try googling "animation lip sync mouth shapes" and check out the image results for an idea of what i mean), assign them to different consonant/vowel sounds in the program, and it automatically matches it up for you with voice recognition. so imo the challenge in that case would be an art challenge (figure out how you want to draw lip sync shapes with a beak), not a technical/program-specific challenge. but if you didn't feel like fucking with all that, you could just repeatedly use the same open beak image for all the sounds, and it would just make the beak open and close when you talk!

i haven't tried making a honk model where the mouth breaks the silhouette, which might be the case with a bird character like that depending on how you have the head angled, but theoretically i don't see why it would be an issue. a regular pngtuber would be really straightforward as well!

OK, HI I’m here for more brain dump posting. This post is more possible MF theory bullshit and OTHER me brand insanity that I feel I picked up from the canon that I could be wrong about but I find it interesting anyway so I’m gonna keep talking about it because I do feel like the Duffers were in the same/similar place I am and I know JCB is right here with me so! Yeah, the girls who get it get it the girls who don’t don’t, but lets talk some more about it. Apologies in advance for the seven layers of autism all my shit is marred with that I’m not even trying to hide anymore tbh. Also warning up front I’m going to mention some stuff some people might hold scared and thus find sacrilegious of me, particularly regarding the Bible and Christianity some of the themes there. SO! I’m starting with Mr.Clarke saying “All living things, from complex mammals, to single cell organisms, instinctively respond to danger. Expose a bacterium to a toxic chemical, and it will flee. Or deploy some other form of defense mechanism. We’re very much the same. When we encounter danger, our hearts start pounding. Our palms start to sweat. These are the signs of the physical and emotional state we call fear.”  This is laid over the top of a scene where Will approaches a warm bath, having been possessed by the “mindflayer”, which obviously perceives warmth and heat as dangerous to it. But I also find it it interesting how Mr Clarke is specifically talking about bacterium. Because it likens the MF to a type of bacteria. Which is interesting given what we know about bacteria. 

Bacteria are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. Bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria are vital in many stages of the nutrient cycle by recycling nutrients such as the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere. The nutrient cycle includes the decomposition of dead bodies; bacteria are responsible for the putrefaction stage in this process. 

Bactria are responsible for decay, just as it seems the presence of the MF and UD is literally decaying Hawkins. Bactria serves the nutrient cycle, breaking things down to recycle them back into useable energy, just as it seems this is being done to absorb the life from the environment and strengthen the MF and/or Henry. Which further adds to the whole idea that the MF is literally consuming our dimension, as it also seems it could have done that to other dimensions before. RE: me mentioning how the upside down Henry “explored” when he was originally banished there looks like a completely destroyed world that is utterly devoid of most life outside of the MF, the Vines and the Demo-creatures. In this way it takes on a nearly HELLISH aspect and imo, there HAS to be a reason only those things exist there. In fact, I think I’ve mentioned this before but I love repeating myself so let me mention again. ACCORDING to the VR game, (Which as a side note I have speculated on whether or not we can treat it as canon but I’m going to for now) HENRY was the one who “Shaped” the Upside Down. 

There's a popular kind of headcanon/theory that Will was the one who did this but I’ve never fully brought that because how could Will have shaped it when it was “like that” when Will got there? Will literally describes it as like Hawkins but cold and dark, essentially. This was what it was like when Will got there. In the VR game, we can kind of see Henry using his powers somehow to imprint(?) Hawkins on the Upside Down. Why exactly is uncertain but I think its more true that HENRY “shaped’ the upside down than Will did. 

Also RE: I’ve mentioned, it seems, according to Vecna himself, he was de-powered somehow/someway for the first few seasons of ST and couldn’t really get back into the game until he stole power from Eleven. Which is why we have that shift from the earlier seasons to season 4, where suddenly Vecna’s a thing personally. I don’t know why it doesn’t feel relevant to people that Vecna only starts acting personally in S4. If he could do what he did in S4 all the time, why didn’t he do it in any of the earlier seasons? Anyway, the point is if Henry was somehow lacking his own power as he literally claims, that means he lost it somehow between being sent to the UD and the start of season 1. (We’ve already established the psychics are like batteries and can run out of charge) We also know Henry wasn’t the one who opened the initial gates so it wasn’t that. So what did he do that was so exhausting? It seems if Henry shaped the entire UD that could be the thing. 

BUT WHY would Vecna change the UD to look exactly like Hawkins?

Well, honestly, I couldn’t say why. But as the resident “”apologist"” I feel like some part of it has to do with the fact Vecna is, or was, and still is in some ways, a human being. He was a human with thoughts, feelings and dreams. I think its curious that as soon as this was done apparently “big bad evil psychopath” Vecna retreated to his childhood home and hid himself in the attic of it just like he used to do as little boy. So there is that. But I also feel like this had to do with the just making sense for map purposes. Like, if Vecna and his beasties are gonna plan attacks on Hawkins hes gonna need to know what exactly is where. Its probably a good idea to have the entire place set up looking like Hawkins in order to properly gage where things are exactly. But thats just a theory. 

Anyway back to death/decay/the MF.  

Humans fear death. Its not uncommon for humans and cultures to demonize death. Humans fear things that bring death. Often, people think of this as a form of evil and yet, death is as natural and normal as life. It doesn’t have an alignment. Predators kill and eat not because they are evil, but because they too must do what is natural to them and do what they must to survive. So with that in mind, is it possible that the MF is some type of destroyer/death “god” and this is its natural process? 

In this way I feel like Henry and the MF are “using” each other, if that makes sense. Henry has “weaponized” the MF, so to speak, to serve him as a tool in his conquest against Hawkins and the corruption of human civilization/society (Which could be kind of symbolic to the way the MF/UD’s presence actually literally is rotting/dissolving the environment), but at the same time, if this is the MFs natural process, and it is normally a being that facilitates ‘death’ and ‘destruction’, is it really just HENRY’S plan and HENRY’S connection with it that drives it, or is Henry just assisting it to carry out its own natural design as well?  Thats where I’ve personally been leaning on how what works and why. 

This goes together with the heavy suggestions that the MF somehow reached out to and communed with Henry as a child. I’ve literally been describing the way this took place as ‘subconsciously’, explaining how Henry suddenly seemed to have these powers and know these things that it feels strange for him to be able to know just “randomly” as a little kid in the 50s. (More detailed here, Drop down to the MINDFLAYER section in particular) 

This rings true if Wills experience with the MF is anything to go off.  Will describes the MF as a “feeling”. When asked by Hopper how he knows the things he knows Will says he doesn’t know, he just knows. He somehow just knows things he never did before and he cant explain exactly how. He says its like “old memories in the back of my head, but they’re not my memories.” He also says he doesn’t think they're old memories. He says he thinks “They’re now memories, they’re happening all at once.” He says “Its like they’re growing, and spreading. Killing.” 

This perfectly describes whats going on in Hawkins as the MF’s influence spreads and consumes things, presumably also assimilating them into itself, perhaps taking intelligence and making it part of the ““hive mind”“ and this makes me think of how Henry says when he kills people with his powers that theyre not really gone They’re still with him. If Henry’s powers came from the MF then it feels like maybe we could reason that even before Henry got to the UD, he was sort of connected to the hive mind and thus the “hive mind” is really this, like, divine, cosmic collective of assimilated consciousness. 

In a way this would make the “hive mind” the source of vast, nearly infinite knowledge, and would explain why/how someone like Henry could get these absolutely insane powers. Including the ability to read minds and Vecna’s suggested precognition in season 4. This could also be why Vecna ‘connects’ to the ‘Vines’ in the upside down in order to amplify his powers, giving him a sort of omnipresence. We know Henry was/is a human being, he wasn't always some monster, and therefore this explains the type of “divinity” he now has. 

I also want to point out some things I’ve mentioned before as well from DnD in regard to lichs and how they work: 

No wizard takes up the path to lichdom on a whim, and the process of becoming a lich is a well-guarded secret. Wizards that seek lichdom must make bargains with fiends, evil gods, or other foul entities. Many turn to Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath, whose power has created countless liches. However, those that control the power of lichdom always demand fealty and service for their knowledge.

I also mentioned that as far as DnD lore goes, when a lich traps the soul of a living being the soul is fed to the lich’s phylactery. This is the lich’s power source. Once fed to the phylactery, lich can than draw on those souls for power. 

So this all also takes me back the entity of the Serpent, which we can easily assume the MF heavily represents. Once again, the Serpent is a god of vast knowledge, depicted as cloud and lighting (yeah), and the reason Vecna has been able to call himself the “God of Secrets” and to indeed ascend to “god” status in the DnD lore. 

The Serpent spoke to Vecna while he was still mortal, and revealed to him great secrets powerful magic, including the path to lichdom, the location of Citadel Cavitus, and the true nature of beings including the Lady of Pain and the dark powers of Ravenloft.

Again, this also feels to me to represent of the MF in Stranger Things being a “hive mind" of sorts that is a source of all this inexplicable knowledge and power which it is able to pass to others who are able to commune with it- which unlocks some form of dormant conciseness within the human mind and hence gives them powers. 

RE: The post I made briefly touching on LSD and MK ultra, etc.

In DnD it is the Serpent from which Vecna is able to attain and manipulate knowledge and power, which the Serpent gives to Vecna willingly. For some reason Vecna and the Serpent have a very close bond. No one else has this kind of bond with the Serpent. Vecna is special to the Serpent for some reason and it seems he acts as its will in some way. Vecna is the serpent’s chosen hand. 

I feel this is reflected in Stranger things with Vecna and the MF. This is kind of what I was thinking about when the biblegate (is that what they called it, idk) posts went around, talking about the father the son and holy spirit. I think I deleted the post on my blog bc I upset the OP with my tags, woops, but I loved the post, I just disagreed with them on who represented who. I placed the MF as god, Henry as the son and Vecna as the Holy spirit, essentially. 

And I’ve also mentioned the references to Hinduism, occultism and esotericism being obviously present in Vecna’s character. He’s related to the Goddess Kali with Henrys counterpart character literally being named Kali, and herein there is also the concept of the Left Hand Path. 

The Left hand and Right hand path basically refer to magical/supernatural/religious belief sets that adhere to two sets of district and opposing qualities. I’m not gonna free write all of this myself because I’m lazy so if you never bothered to look into these things here we go this is the basics that I’ll pile together for you. ALSO note this is NOT comprehensive and it is always going to be slightly bias because that is just how it works with these things and I’m left leaning. I recommend actually looking into this kind of stuff yourself, because the is SOOO much to it and it spans across pretty much all human culture and existence.  But anyway here is the bare basics: 

The Right-Hand Path: is commonly thought to refer to magical or religious groups which adhere to a certain set of characteristics: They divide the concepts of mind, body and spirit into three separate, albeit interrelated, entities. They adhere to a specific moral code and a belief in some form of judgement.

The Left-hand Path: those aligned with the left hand path often reject societal convention and the status quo, which some suggest is in a search for spiritual freedom. As a part of this, LHP followers embrace magical techniques that would traditionally be viewed as taboo, for instance using sex magic or embracing Satanic imagery. They often question religious or moral dogma, instead adhering to forms of personal anarchism and they often embrace sexuality.

Basically, “The right-hand path seeks union with and thus dependence on God while the left-hand path seeks a “higher law” based on knowledge and power.” The Left hand path is the way of self-empowerment and true freedom. It began with ancient Hindu and Buddhist sects. (RE: Kali, the goddess of Hindu mythology, and the related Vamachara, etc) 

Voodoo and particularly Hoodoo is also considered an example of the LHP. Both Hoodoo and Voodoo were HORRIFCALLY demonized, particularly by white supremist leaning Christians as these were belief systems practised by African slaves who were already suffering severe dehumanization and abuse by their racist and ignorant captors. Displaying their spiritual beliefs too, as exotic, monstruous, perverted and evil was just a no brainer. But the point is, enslaved Africans held on to their traditions and beliefs in spite of their captors and of course it pissed white folk right the fuck off. So they instantly labeled hoodoo and voodoo as evil and “”satanic”” and used this as justification to hate crime folks associated (Which still happens today, btw) Heres is some stuff Ira Lowenthal, an anthropologist who studies Voodoo in particular said in regard to slaves who practised Voodoo and their relatives today: 

““They were treated as cattle. As animals to be bought and sold; worth nothing more than a cow. Often less. Vodou is the response to that. Vodou says ‘no, I’m not a cow. Cows cannot dance, cows do not sing. Cows cannot become God. Not only am I a human being - I’m considerably more human than you. Watch me create divinity in this world you have given me that is so ugly and so hard. Watch me become God in front of your eyes.

These people will never be conquered again. They will be exploited, they will be downtrodden, they will be impoverished – but you can tell not a single Haitian walks around with his head down … They’re more human than the people who enslaved them. They were better than their masters, able to live in another realm. There’s no other more articulate response to oppression than that. And that’s why Vodou is here – because Vodou is the soul of Haitian people.””  

The point is, contrast to the lie of popular depiction, the Left Hand Path and all its associated religions and practices, is not evil. Its a part of human psychology, typically born from a resistance to political, religious and hierarchical systems that seek spiritual and bodily oppression over us. It is born from a deep-seated desire to be free, independent, and in control of our own destinies, which is actually the only natural state of being for humanity. 

The concept of individualism and ‘difference’ is evil and wrong (left) while collectivism and ‘similitude’ is good and just (right) has been HEAVILY enforced by religions like Christianity as a big example, and political and social systems that use this as justification for the abominable treatment of anyone that falls outside of “the like-minded heard,” whether the individual is consciously differentiating themselves or was just born with the misfortune of not fitting the designated “normal” (Gay people, POC in predominately “white” regions, ND people this particularly applies to).

Anyway, continuing on some other relevant info that I need to add because it is actually more aligned to my personal take on everything is the concept of the “middle path” BUT for me personally I tend to lean this more toward “Left” than the “Middle” because I have no fear of the left and as I said there is some EXTREME bias against the left path due to typical portrayals of it being an inherently evil thing and therefore some people, even those who only study the aesthetics and don't actually engage in the spiritual aspects, tend to avoid the left path even if they are in fact way more aligned to it and this has sometimes resulted in this ‘middle path’ being promoted as the sexy hot alternative when a lot of it is actually just left path repainted. THAT SAID, Buddism as the first one to put forward a middle path and it has also existed somewhere between the two for as long as the two others have existed but yeah anyway: 

“”Many medieval stories provide us with a middle path between those that lead to Heaven and Hell — the path to Fairy Land. Fairy Land is a liminal space where magical things take place in a more complex environment. This path is neither easy (like the path to Hell) nor extremely difficult (like the path to Heaven), but is between these two, through the thick, green forests where the mind and monsters dwell. This middle way provides us with the great stories. It is the source of poetry and poetic truth-telling. 

The Middle Way is a more complex pathway, a liminal space, on the boundary land of order and chaos, where creativity happens. It is the place where you are neither obeying the rules (Right) nor violating the rules (Left). When you merely blindly obey or violate the rules, that means you are taking the rules seriously and, thus, are really playing the same game. But when you are both obeying and violating the rules, that means you are rather challenging and questioning the rules, understanding the degree to which the rules could be other than they are, no longer taking the rules seriously, even as you appreciate what can be done with the rules, especially good rules, and where play takes place for the sake of place, where truly new things are and can be born. 

This is the Middle Way. It is where the poets (poets in both the narrow sense we use it and in the broad sense the Greeks used it, as “makers”) live. Which is why Shelley said, “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Those who work in the liminal space, the Middle Way between the Right Hand Path and the Left Hand Path, are the creators, creating new worlds for us to live in, creating new technology, new institutions, new works of art, new ways of doing things, new ways of living. They are the makers of the law, and can make it only because they don’t take it so seriously.” 

The middle way is cute and becomes kind of relevant, I think, particularly in social environments that have already opened themselves up to political and spiritual freedoms (Such as a good part of the modern world in the west) but in environments and periods in history where the “Right” (again often considered and propagandized as the good and default) reigns supreme you NEED to lean to the left, or even, I dare say, “embrace” the left to get to the middle, if that makes sense. 

This concept of the dark and the light requiring coexistence to achieve TRUE equality and TRUE enlightenment is actually what Baphomet (Essentially similar to Kali in a different culture) who is considered the patron figure of the left hand path represented. Baphomet is the winged, horned, half goat half human, half man half woman, who has since been and is often falsely identified as “the devil” and wrongly considered to be an evil deity.  

This ties into why Henry and Kali both have the same radical left leaning (especially in that time) political and social ideologies and why Vecna thinks he’s ultimately good. Because, he is-- I KNOW WILD TAKE-- but its true. Vecna isn’t actually evil, not in his personal ideologies, its the rage and extremes he’s felt driven to accomplish his otherwise “noble” goals that make him “evil”, but he is not inherently or even necessarily ‘evil’ in why he’s doing what he’s doing. 

But lets also cut back to the animal kingdom for a second where the same type of “logic” applies to certain animals. Typically animals like SHEEP and RABBITS for example (reference wheelercore’s rabbits and spiders post) are considered to be benevolent animals, as is the case of most herbivores as a lot of them are, unlike carnivores/’predators”, animals who adhere to a type of “”collectivism.””  or something that resembles it that comes across as appealing, just and understandable to Right leaning society and spirituality. It is the predators/carnivores who therefore more represent “individualism” such as spiders and snakes, and are routinely seen as “evil” animals as a result. This is not true of all animals in each category but you’ll probably notice it applies to the majority and where animals fall on the “alignment” chart in human perception, particularly in the west, has a lot to do with this and how much collectivism vs individualism applies and HOW OFTEN collectivism is considered benign while individualism is labeled evil and wrong in contrast.    So this brings me to sheep and goats. In particular, sheep are considered pure and holy while goats are considered evil and perverse and why. What makes this distinction between two otherwise similar animals?: 

Sheep are dependent on their shepherd. They have a reputation for not topping the lists of the most intelligent animals. They trust and depend on their shepherd. Sheep represent a drive to follow a leader unquestionably and even against their own individual interest/saftey. This is what makes sheep and lambs holy. 

Goats on the other hand have a reputation for self-reliance and stubbornness. Goats are most like humans in the sense that they can be solitary if needed, even if they naturally prefer the company of others.

So there we go again. Its also speculated the goat is given this evil rep dating back to the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur or “day of atonement” which employs the “azazel” goat. Essentially, the azazel goat would have all sins symbolically placed on it when the high priest laid hands on it. Once the sins “were placed” they would drive the goat out into the desert, thus driving out Israel’s sins into the desert as well. 

The azazel goat in this scenario represented satan, or something evil. This is speculated to be why Jesus found Satan in the desert coupled with the fact deserts have represented cursed places. This is also basically where the term “scapegoat” comes from.

Cut to Henry who was in fact the ‘scapegoat’ of his family, and on a greater narrative scale, who we ALSO see wandering around the desolate, barren planes of the upside down, (A place that invokes “hell” like imagery) upon being ‘cast out’ by Eleven, who deemed him “evil” after failing to comprehend or perhaps simply rejecting Henry’s truths about Papa and the reality of the situation the two of them had been forced to live in. 

Henry’s justified rebellion against the power (Brenner and his government sanctioned facility) that tortured abused and exploited him, and Henrys perception and knowledge of the inequality and injustice from within the current social/political/cultural system that allowed this, was judged as evil by Eleven, who was too naive to actually understand at this at the time. Eleven saw the “death” of her “flock” (The other subjects) and her “Shepard” (Brenner) and saw this as frighting and evil, in spite of the fact that her flock and her Shepard had every intention to sacrifice her, and that this show of individuality and rebellion from Henry was necessary to her and his protection. (Btw this is not blaming Eleven, at this point she had been RASIED to think this way.) 

Eleven represents the sheep here. Henry is the goat. He is not evil, but he is not a naive follower. He stood up for Eleven and for himself. Henry placing value on Eleven’s life and his own life was thought of as evil by Eleven who couldn’t completely understand the true scope of her situation and the reality that everything Henry said about Brenner, the other test subjects and their society at large was true. 

Henry’s differences, Henry’s understanding of the inequality of the world around him particularly toward individuals like himself who ARE different, who DO fall outside of the status quo, has always been the true qualities within Henry that has resulted in Henry being unfairly labeled as everything from “broken” to “evil”.  Henry does represent the LHP, the “devil” and other “demonic” figures, but not because he is EVIL, rather because he represents individuality, self empowerment and rebellion, which, by the context of his life and the show, is coming from a very meaningful and fairly justified place.  So this is the part of the post where I go “sympathizer” again woops! But anyway more about Henry/Vecna, his morality and his “role” in the story so to speak. 

We could call Henry a serial killer because he killed multiple people but he doesn’t fit the generally recognized criteria for serial killer which is: "The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender in separate events” as much as the anti’s don’t want to admit it, Henry’s killings were not unlawful. In a court of law he could easily prove he A) Was suffering severe psychological and even physical distress and B) Killed people because he had no other choice (or at least thought he had no other choice). I cant imagine an unbiased jury convicting him of actual murder and not recognizing the severe abuse he suffered (physically, emotionally and mentally, and jfc if some of the current theories/hcs are to be believed, literally sexually as well like yeah you're not gonna demonize him to me with that lmao) but the fact is Henry would never go to court because the GOVERMENT would NEVER want ANYONE in the population to know what THEY allowed Brenner to do to Henry (and others), which just makes Henry’s situation all the more dire and justified. He had literally no other way to escape this, he literally didn’t have another choice. And folks can say all they want “Ok he should have left the kids alive,” but  the thing about that is those kids were as much weapons that would be used against him as any guard, orderly, baton, fist, taser, etc, and the most powerful ones were literally hostile and brainwashed as hell. 

As tragic as it is, he was on a mission to strip his near life-long abuser and captor of the tools he used and needed to ever abuse and imprison him (and Eleven) again. 

Next up. Vecna’s killings are not Henry’s killings as such. Vecna’s murders ALSO have a motive and that motive is absolutely not “Joy and pleasure”. There is a heavily supernatural aspect of these killings and the victims are specific for a reason. I’ll repeat myself as much as I have to but Vecna was shown to have some type of precognition, he can see the future of sorts, he targeted Chrissy, Max, Patrick and Fred not because they're “queer” and he’s “homophobic” (idiotic take even as a joke), he targeted them because the entire thing was an allogory for suicide in and out of universe. It seems Vecna knew these particular 4 had a future of committing suicide and therefore he used that trauma and “guilt” to collect their “souls” for his crusade against a world that hurt them to such an extent because he KNOWS their pain. He asks them to “join him” for a reason.

Although we could say that Vecna was indirectly responsible for what set Max on her path, he views his actions merciful and ultimately benevolent. This is Vecna’s problem. For Vecna he is completely blinded by rage and he has somewhat deluded himself into thinking that his ends will justify his means. He is one of the many horror genre answer’s to the tragic villain described as: “ A particular Deconstruction of the villain, a Tragic Villain is completely aware of their evil but takes little to no pleasure from it; in fact, they could very well resent the evil they are committing. Rather, they were driven to villainy due to circumstances beyond their control. In many circumstances they are the Tragic Monster, perhaps an innocent person transformed into a mindless monster, or simply created to be a monster; either way they have no choice in the evil acts they commit and are as sympathetic as their victims.”

He also heavily fits the “Well intentioned extremist” trope:

“A villain who has an overall goal which the heroes can appreciate in principle, but whose methods of pursuing said goal (such as mass murder) are problematic; despite any sympathy they may have with their cause, the heroes have no choice but to stop them. Taken to extremes, they may fully believe that Utopia Justifies the Means. Such an idealistic extremist is likely to be either a Totalitarian Utilitarian or a Principles Zealot, depending on whether they’re aiming For Happiness or For Great Justice. The most well-written examples of this trope are the kind that the reader/viewer stops just short of agreeing with. Other times, the villain may be out for simple revenge against a person, corporation or other entity that has undeniably wronged them. Again, the heroes may sympathize with their plight, but are obliged to stop them because they care not who gets in the way of their planned revenge.”

Woobie, destroyer of worlds also applies:  

This is a character with omnicidal and/or Ax-Crazy tendencies, or a character who wants to destroy everyone in the story, and is suddenly in a position to do so (on a small or large scale); but in contrast to other characters, he/she has some plausible, outright tragic reason to do so. In some cases, the other characters outright sympathize with this one (whether or not the audience does too is out of the equation here), all the while accepting that they must be stopped. Sometimes, the character is even portrayed as likeable, just... not with the right mindset.  

And if we go back to the eerie references to religion, occultism and esotericism, Henry could also be considered a messianic archetype of sorts. 

In media, the Messianic Archetype is a character whose role in the story (but not necessarily personality) echoes that of Christ. They are portrayed as a savior, whether the thing they are saving is a person, a lot of people or the whole of humanity. They endure a sizable sacrifice as the means of bringing that salvation about for others, a fate they do not deserve up to and including death or a Fate Worse than Death.

Particularly, he’s my favorite type of dark inversion of this trope which blends satanic / demonic imagery with the traditional holy and tragic, and draws further from the aspects as aesthetics associated with that of the LHP rather than the right. Which all takes a lot of root in the age old debate about Lucifer himself and the pretty obvious text that can lead to views of him as, in fact, the original scapegoat which I’ve already covered the relevancy of with Henry.  EDIT BC TUMBLR ATE SOME OF MY POST AGAIN: We also have the existence of the Leviathan, depicted as a Giant serpent, a dragon or multiple headed hydra 

Theres A LOT here to that y’all can go look up and dig around in for yourselves but I’m just gonna put down some things I think are relevant here. This is cutting back to my MF theory bullshit with it representing the Serpent of DnD and its relation to other monstrous deities that are pared up with various other iconic horror characters that were used to create Vecna as a character in stranger things.  The Leviathan (note, ONCE AGAIN, this is the also the name of the deity that pinhead serves, and pinhead was one of the biggest sources of inspo for Vecna) is the god of “chaos” and “death” its described as a creature of beastliness, of terror and of undiluted evil. Due to its “demonic” presence in a lot of mythology it has been related to Satan but there is a whole debate about whether or not they're the same being and/or are actually related-- and occasionally if it wasn’t actually “satan” that took the form of a snake and offered the apple to Eve but rather the Leviathan itself that was responsible for this and thus the one who essentially tempted / corrupted humanity with evil. 

We know in the ST universe we have a lot of concepts that surround negative emotions and feelings and how these emotions apparently act as massive amplifiers for the powers of the psychic in the show.  ALSO RE: the post I made about the possible link to the psychics powers and the MF cloud.  And I also mentioned the suggestion of the Original Sin back on the Holy Trinity post and how that feels like it could relate to the whole corruption/infection aesthetic the MF seems to have going on and its symbolic relationship to the evils of human nature, etc, which all once again goes back and adds to my theory about the MF in general potentially being a greater force/influence than people give it credit for. 

The Leviathan is also thought to represent the sin of envy, the most “poisonous” human emotion. Its also been thought of as the creature that separates the human/material world from the world of the divine by residing in the realm between. The Leviathan is also depicted as an eater of “lost souls” and it is also considered responsible for generating all intrinsic evil into the world. Further, in demonology the Leviathan naturally represents water and we know there is a lot of water symbolism going on with the upside down which further ties all this together. 

The 5 Hour Spamton Playlist

It's been many months, and it's finally complete enough to share (though I might add more later). And yup, you read that right, it's just over 5 hours long.

I even decided to order it for some reason. So if you're able to listen to the whole thing in order, that's appreciated! Though it's not required of course.

But either way, I hope this playlist drives you up the wall as much as it did to me.

Anyway I'm gonna put a bunch of commentary under the read more. (This thing has been sitting around in my library for almost a year, since a week or two after the chapter 2 release!!!, I have every right to be annoying about it)

(I was originally going to comment on every other thing on the playlist, but then I got overwhelmed lol. Still keeping some of what I wrote. Might elaborate more on some things later idk. )

(Hope y'all like it!)

I tried to keep the Spamton songs in the same order as the soundtrack. In fact, the whole playlist is roughly organized based on those songs! I guess you could say each section has its own themes.

Imagine. You start the playlist eager to hear what bs was added to it. You listen to HEY EVERY !, and then it ends. Everything's quiet. And then "BWAH BWAH WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT-"

I've seen people add Mamma Mia and Dancing Queen to Spamton playlists, which is neat, but ngl Ring Ring and I'm a Marionette fit way better. And they're both really good.

I like to think I Get Around and Outside represent the very beginning of the bigshot era

But Telephone by Red Vox feels like it'd be from a lot later than that. Like someone looking back at the past with regret. And seeing a loss of independence and control.

Y'know, with the perspective constantly changing between different points in Spamtons story, it sorta reminds me of Death of a Salesman. Except not as good.

Anyway Spamton brings us back to the present. Even if it's just for a moment.

GAS GAS GAS I'M GONNA STEP ON THE GAS (surprised how few playlists used these tbh)

Ok ok I know Business Man has nothing to do with Spamton aside from the title, but it's goofy and gives levels of suspicion that felt relevant >:)

I Really, Really, Really Like This Image comes off as a convo between Spamton and Gaster for some reason, and I really really really like that image in my head. Also Jevil is there at the end (ps the image is an image of an egg 😊)

I'm not sure if I can properly explain It's Still Rock and Roll To Me. Pre-bigshot era? Early bigshot era? Idk. It just feels like Spamton to me. Actually Billy Joel music in general seems to fit imo. Can't explain why. Just does.

Haha All Star hehehe!!! Oh DAng it's a cool place and they say it gets colder??? Snowgrave reference??????

I hope when you hear Doin it Right, you know what I WANTED to put there...

At first Baby Hotline felt like me inserting it for the heck of it, but the more I listen to it in the context of Spamton, it fits more. Being put on hold (literally as well as metaphorically), the implications of suicide/suicidal thoughts. There's also kind of an implication of someone rooting for Spamton to improve. (Which would probably be the player, but who knows)

Ngl Promised You A Miracle is a song I stole from my Mirror Man playlist. And it's not the only one. They both share themes of religion/heaven, changing your appearance to be perfect, becoming god/superior to others, and being seen and respected.

Easy Money is a late addition. I couldn't not add it. It's good.

NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A

Temporary Secretary

(But seriously, can we agree that Temporary Secretary is definitely a Spamton song? It feels scummy, unsafe, DESPERATE, and dare I say unhinged. )

Cars by Gary Numan. That's all I have to say. It's cars. Spam man likes cars!

When adding Hanging On The Telephone, I had to choose between the Blondie version and the one by The Nerves. I chose the Blondie version. It was gayer.

OuiOui's First Crime was added because Peepy's Theme didn't fully capture how much people wanna baby this middle aged puppet. Also It's OuiOuis First Crime specifically to still show that as much as people love this guy, he isn't as innocent/nice as we sometimes want to make him out to be. He's scamming and killing people! Good for him!!!

Don't You Want Me is another song stolen from the Mirror Man playlist. I like to think in perspective of Spamton, this song has multiple layers. It's about Spamton actually being seen as someone important for once, him asking for reassurance that people want him, and threatening them if they don't. It's about Spamton getting more successful because of Gaster/Mike and wanting independence from them, causing his downfall. It's about teaming up with Kris to become BIG at the expense of Kris and potentially everyone in cybercity. It's about Spamton wanting the player to like and pity him. There's probably more connections that could be made than that even!

I'm too overwhelmed to comment too much more atm, but please know that at a certain point of making this and listening to it over and over trying get the order right, I momentarily mentally turned into Chris McLean from Total Drama. I will not elaborate lmao

omg okay so I seen your post about your layout and I only followed you a few days ago but I’ve just started up on this blog and was wondering if you had any tips? honestly literally anything would be helpful your theme is just beautiful

hi! so first of all, thank you so much, it means the world that you enjoy my theme 💜

I've tried to think of some tips - though I wouldn't say my blog is a "reference" in terms of beauty at all, and these tips are not necessarily universal, but they work for me and I hope you find them useful!

— a few words of advice to new bloggers who wish to improve their (mobile) theme;

➣ first of all: let your theme be you. this is the most important point I think, and that's why I'm mentioning it first. compared to other social media platforms, tumblr offers you a wide array of customization options from the way your blog looks to what you reblog, and in my humble opinion you will never be entirely satisfied with your theme if it's not representative of what you like, or how you feel at the moment. my theme has a majority of purple & lilac because they're my favorite colors — it also references the sky because I'm really passionate about it. before even reading a word of my blog, you already know two things about me: 1) I love purple and 2) I love the sky. if you get the reference, you might even know that 3) I like playchoices and more specifically blades of light and shadow, based on my profile picture. let your imagination be wild, express yourself! like pastel colors? go all for it! love flowers? flower up that whole blog. your layout is the first thing people will see about you, and first impressions matter ッ

➣ have your icon and header match. the way I build my themes is very often as follows: I find (or make!) a beautiful icon of someone I like, then I scout tumblr in search of a matching header, and lastly I have the background and text colors match the set. you can also decide you want, say, a yellow or gold theme this time and look for icons & headers in that range. finding matching colors based on the header is easy for me since I love "cropped" headers or those that have a ripped paper effect, and allow the background color to kind of bleed onto the rest of the page. however if you have a regular-sized, rectangular header, you can easily find matching colors/palettes with websites like this one.

➣ keep your bio short. now this is entirely personal preference, but a very long bio tends to turn me off. mine is maybe a little too short, but I think it contains the most vital information about me: how to address me, my age, and what I do on here. if you want to dig deeper, you can click the links — never underestimate the power of links in your bio! imo, your bio should be somewhere between 1-3 lines of text, enough to add whatever quote you resonate with or important information or links you want people to know at first glance (pronouns, age...) but this is entirely subjective! if you want to go for a very long bio, by all means, do it!

➣ have a little trademark. this is totally optional, but a lot of blogs that I follow and whose aesthetics I love have their own little quirks when it comes to formatting their posts, or the way they speak in general. maybe they don't use capital letters ever, maybe they use the small text feature and italicize all their ponctuation like @meiitanoia, maybe they are known for their use of the ™ symbol like @lxncelot. maybe they have an emoji of choice! mine is the purple heart 💜 ; it's my Brand. I also use a lot of little symbols, stuff these little bad boys — anywhere I can, start all my important posts with ˚ ༘✶, and write all my titles with messletters. it's all about finding what you like best to express yourself, like figuring out your fashion style. once again, this is probably the most optional out of all these tips, but it's sure to crown your theme. (and, indirectly, your tumblr persona, because we are visual animals and will inevitably form an image of you more or less based on the look of your blog. no presssure, though!)

➣ for writers: have an organized navigation post/tagging system. this could arguably be extended to gifmakers and other editors, but I'm not really one of them so I couldn't really tell you. if your blog is organized, easy to maneuver — if it's basically impossible to get lost on your blog, then it will give an impression of well-kept and beautiful, like a maze with trimmed hedges where roses nest. i recommend having a fandom list, a masterlist of your works, maybe a post for your rules and what you're willing to write or not. you can also make little banners at the top of each post, like I do — but the one thing I find the most life-changing are dividers. you can use them anywhere, they're elegant, super easy to make in a variety of colors that go well with your theme; it's basically accessorizing your blog. a pleasure. It requires the tiniest bit of knowledge with photoshop or other softwares of the sort, but there are plenty of tutorials if you want to learn!

➣ lastly, keep it fun. don't fret about having the most beautiful theme or get anxious over whether or not the colors work well together or people are going to like the layout or not. a blog can only be as pretty as the person behind it! as long as you are having fun, showing what you want to show, posting what you want to post, and saying what you want to say, people will love your blog for its sincerity and good vibes, I can assure you!

bella I would love a directors cut on literally any of the rilex you’ve written, but specifically it’s always her, and you, and me, or for these days you’ve been stuck in my brain 💙

OHHHHHH those are some CHOICESSSSSS lucy. fuck yeah. let’s get into it. ill link them both here but we’ll take em one at a time

it’s always her, and me, you

these days you’ve been stuck in my brain

here’s a cut for convenience cos i KNOW i’m gonna go long here.

okay! let’s start with the rilisex fic.

it’s always her, and me, and you

so like it says in the ao3 notes, this fic came from realizing just how frequently rian and alex kiss each other like, all the time? just? casually? for funsies? this was another one of those situations like i mentioned where the hook aka first line (“Rian's no expert, but he doesn't think normal friends kiss this much.”) just appeared in my head and i was like heyyy that’s a GOOD first line. i have to build from that line. that’s the hook, that’s the summary, that’s the core. 

something i discovered upon searching through the editing history of the doc: i had originally sort of intended to go a direction with this where in some other circumstance, rian would see alex giving jack a super casual friendly kiss and he’d get all sad/jealous and be like sure why SHOULDNT alex kiss jack after all its just a thing he does with his FRIENDS. but the fic ended up going a different way and honestly? im glad. i like this way better.

the role of singin in the rain in this fic actually has a HILARIOUS backstory because the night i originally wrote that conversation in the tour bus kitchen, i went into the club and said the following

and then. the next day. rian streamed with ricky, and i asked if he’d ever seen singin in the rain, and he ANSWERED ME and said he hadn’t. so first of all i had already written the scene and i then had to rewrite it to make it so rian wouldn’t have seen it but also!!! i literally asked rian fucking dawson if he’d seen a movie for the sole reason of using that information for fanfiction!!!! and he provided me with the information i needed!!!! whole thing is just fucking hysterical to me. ANYWAY.

ANYWAY, the other reason why sitr has such a big role in the fic is because megs and i watched the movie together while i was in the middle of working on the fic, so it was extremely fresh in my mind. in fact i can probably show you this: i had this comment left for myself when i was kind of trying to figure out if i could make a real metaphor of sorts with the sitr ot3 and the Big Three of this fic. some of this ended up in rian’s wild musings in the hotel scene but i did conclude that it wouldn’t really have worked and that was definitely true but anyway. fuck it, director’s cut, here’s the kind of shit i leave for myself to refer to

so that’s part of the reason why it became such a puzzle piece of this fic, but real talk, it’s also just because i love singin in the rain it’s one of my favorite movies lmao

briefly gonna also touch on lisa and why she’s in this fic because i realize that rian/alex/lisa is an interesting approach to rilex! first of all, i love lisa. i love alex and lisa. and it occurred to me that there was really no reason to split lisex up just to make rilex happen. plus there’s this tweet that really just pushed me over the edge of being like yeah, rilisex is extremely plausible. so that’s that on that.

as for the scene in the hotel room while they’re watching sitr, there is a small piece of that scene - from when alex starts kissing rian’s shoulders etc to “it would defy the laws of nature not to” - that i actually wrote before anything else in that scene. that small piece got stretched out and edited quite a bit from how it started but it did function as a sort of foundation around which i built the rest of the scene, because that small section sort of ~came to me~ absolutely out of nowhere, and i really liked the Vibe it had and i wanted to include it. i THINK that was the only piece of this fic that i wrote Out Of Order - for the most part this was written chronologically.

ALSO!!! omg this is exciting, this fic actually has a deleted scene!!!!!! i hate cutting scenes but i also hate having scenes that are less than 1k and this one didn’t really contribute much to the fic. i can probably share it here right? sure why not ! hopefully you can read this. it originally took place after the scene where alex and rian call lisa for the first time. the question of “what gets left into interview videos and what gets cut” is also just interesting to me as a (fic) concept in general so...eyes emoji, but here’s my mini-exploration that i cut from the original fic. enjoy lol it’s silly <3

oh! also one more thing!! the very final scene was included for two reasons. the first reason being that when i write getting-together fics, i really prefer to add on a scene After they Get Together because i love to write domestic established relationship stuff and i think that’s a satisfying reward for a reader who’s just slogged through all the mutual pining and bullshit to get the characters together. but the OTHER reason is that i got an anon (here it is!) and i read that ask and was immediately like well shit. now i have to fucking include this. for the anon and for myself. so you can thank that anon for that last scene. (also i wanted to include merrikat especially since i had to cut their little moment in the interview scene above.)

so....................whew. i think i’ve bled that fic dry. holy shit that’s a lot of Stuff. OKAY! let’s move on.

~

these days you’ve been stuck in my brain

so!!! THIS fic was the breakthrough after (what felt like) a long bout of writer’s block. long for me was maybe two weeks, but i am the kind of person who is always writing, and two weeks was a long time to go with little to no inspiration/motivation to write anything. i had also been in a weird narrative headspace because i’d been binge-watching disney shows (jessie > austin and ally > girl meets world) and i don’t know how well i can explain this but the way those shows are written is a lot snappier and cares way less for realistic and consistent character development or plots or relationships, and so i was stuck between caring a lot about including those things in my fics but also being unable to conceptualize them in writing because my brain was in Disney Writing Mode. does that make sense? this is rhetorical so let’s go with yes. so anyway. i was in a slump

actually what i ended up doing was basically googling something like “au prompts tumblr” or something and just scrolling through posts. i saw something about soulmate telepathy and i actually tried to write something totally different before i wrote this one, but the first attempt was a different concept and then the direction i took it was like......it wasn’t quite right and i realized that i was kind of writing dark disney style? there is really no way for me to explain what i mean by that because it seems really obvious to me but that’s just because i’m inside my own head so just take my word. 

anyway. attempt #1 of soulmate telepathy rilex went poorly, and this fic was attempt #2. i kinda took the soulmate telepathy thing and changed it as i saw fit and i also went back to skim helen’s telepathy fic because obviously she’s the pro and then i tried not to steal her ideas. and as i was writing it i kinda realized i was doing the whole quirky funny best friend character with jack and also doing the whole “somehow this not-very-dramatic situation with teenagers is treated as The Most Dramatic Thing Ever and that’s totally normal and nobody finds it strange” disney trope with rian and alex being soulmates and i was like (deep sigh) i have to accept that no matter how much i try to fight this, this fic is going to be tainted with disney. and that’s life

on top of that i will add that the real-life rilex were extremely inspiring during the two-day period during which i wrote this fic, because that was when the once in a lifetime video came out and in the brief pre-video livestream rilex were Beyond Married and that definitely helped in the writing of fic rilex!

hmmmm what can i tell you about this fic itself.................honestly, i don’t think there’s much to tell! rian is a band kid because in real life rian was a band kid and he’s staff manager at rita’s just like he was in real life. there is truthfully not a lot to unpack here that i can think of!

oh here’s something i guess: rian and alex go on a date in this fic! that is because watching So Much Disney made me realize that i often forget the fact that people just. go on dates. sometimes. look i clearly do not have an active romantic life but i also really liked the idea of alex and rian going on a date despite not knowing if they’d be soulmates or not and liking each other organically just by getting to know each other, rather than being victim to the whole soulmate thing. like i wanted them to build a connection so that they would want to be soulmates. and then the audience would want that for them too. stakes!! very important.

i can tell you i had a mild crisis over the title of the fic because i am not a fan of the word brain and i didnt wanna use that sticky lyric for the title when it had a word i hated but it was objectively a much better title option than the other one i had, which was “sticky just like the song in my head” but i obviously decided on the former and it has not upset me nearly as much as i expected it to so that was the right decision imo

so! i think that’s all on that! sorry (?) that it got so long although then again i don’t know what’s to be expected in a director’s cut for two long fics but thank you for asking me about these, i love them both so very much rilex is so supremely underrated but so very important

TMA: The 16th Entity is You?

*Heads up! I’m discussing The Entities, so there are possible spoilers in here! I’m terrible at catching specifics though so a blanket warning is all I can give, as well as say that I’ve listened to up to MAG183 at the time of writing this.*

Additional content warnings include: mention/discussion of the climate crisis, abuse (mostly physical and mental or generally), and mental illness (particularly intrusive thoughts and compulsions, and feeling like you’re a terrible person).

Also here’s a TL;DR because this became Very Long:

I saw on the fandom wiki a forum post about the fear of oneself and which Entity that would fit under

Several possibilities were entertained: The Web, The Stranger, The Spiral, The Lonely, The Corruption, The Hunt, The Desolation, and The Slaughter

I argue that it’s actually kinda in a league on its own as one of the few fears I can think of that doesn’t quite fit under the Big 14 (much like why The Extinction is sorta considered its own thing, despite sharing elements with several other fears)

So behold, fear Entity number 16, The Self, or “You”, “Human”, “I Am The Monster”.

Also one more disclaimer: I’m not saying this is canon at all, just an interesting possibility. Personally I’m actually fond of the “fear soup” theory and don’t think that the Entities actually exist in any meaningful capacity beyond characters’ perceptions and as a way to organize certain manifestations of whatever Thing feeds on all this fear. So basically that thing about ants looking at humans, but one step higher than individual manifestations < Entities (ie. Entities < Some Great Fear-Eater)

So I was browsing the TMA wiki and I came across a question asking what Entity the fear of oneself would fall under. (Like for instance, if you were scared of being an abusive or manipulative person, or being one again, or just generally afraid of your own capacity for malice and harm.)

Super interesting fear to bring up, especially with a lot of guilt-ridden “avatars” running around, including our protagonists! So which Power could that type of fear fall under?

Arguments I saw:

The Web, but like, backwards: Basically, because manipulation and control fall under the Web’s vibes, some people thought a fear of being the manipulator could fit under here. If I were to argue this, I’d also add that being afraid of yourself because you’re scared you’ll lose control of yourself and hurt someone is a pretty Webby fear.

The Stranger: Typically depicted as the fear of the unknown, uncanny, or unfamiliar, the Stranger could also include the fear of one’s self becoming an unknown: of seeing a stranger when you look in the mirror. If one views harmful or abusive behaviour as something outside of their character, a fear of somehow doing that anyway could be tied to this loss of identity.

The Spiral: I could really just sum this up in one word: gaslighting. The Spiral is associated with your perceptions of reality being untrustworthy, with distortions in reality and your senses being tricked. Again, you could say that if you’re scared of being someone else’s Spiral, that kinda fits under here, but I’d also point out if you’re scared of being unable to recognize when you’re hurting someone, of distorting your perception of your own actions to justify them, that could fit nicely under the Spiral as well.

The Lonely: This one isn’t super strong imo, but people did point out that being scared of yourself and your capacity to hurt others would almost certainly result in you choosing to isolate yourself for their sake. But I think that misses the point of the Lonely. The Lukases, by serving the Lonely, have chosen to become sort of manifestations of it. They aren’t its victims. The Lonely is the fear of being alone, not isolation itself (which is why its other name is Forsaken: a fear of being abandoned).

The Corruption: The Corruption is tied to toxic relationships, and holding onto things even as they rot and become toxic or just gross. So if your fear of yourself being Terrible is tied to being clingy, codependent, suffocating (hmm... almost like the Buried *wink* but not really), or otherwise harmful by refusing to let go, even as rot seeps into the relationship, I see how that could work.

The Hunt: If you’re scared of becoming a predator, or believe you have predatory instincts and are trying to run from them, well... Yeah, that’s the Hunt’s whole thing. A little niche for it, but hey. Why not?

The Desolation: Again, if your fear is heavily tied to what you could destroy in others, yes, it fits. Or even, perhaps, the idea of destroying your own potential, of “wasting” whatever work you’ve done to be better. Oops that’s really relevant to TMA

The Slaughter: Sudden violence, your own unpredictable nature. If volatility and bloodshed are tied to your self-fear, then yeah, Slaughter is definitely on the table.

(mine) The Extinction: What? Why? you might ask. But hear me out: the Extinction isn’t just about the world ending. It’s about the world ending because of humans. Because of our own awful decisions. Because we fucked it up, because we suck. The fear that we are terrible enough to deserve such a horrible fate.

So those are a lot of candidates for where this fear could fit under, but because of that, my thoughts turn to another Entity... a very hotly debated one...

The Extinction. A fear that contains death (the End), destruction of potential (the Desolation), violence and war (if you think it’ll end that way) (the Slaughter), disease (ditto) (the Corruption), widescale replacement of something not-us but similar to us (the Stranger), something happening on a scale too large to comprehend (The Vast), being crushed/swallowed up by the Earth (if that’s how you think it’ll go) (The Buried), the concept of Sole Survivors (the Lonely), being trapped and/or powerless (the Web), and many other awful things.

Huh, that’s a Lot of fears to be tied to... almost like...the above list for the fear of the self... HMMMM

(For those curious, that’s 9 fear-ties for the Extinction, and 8 for the Self, [9 if you count the Extinction] so like even numerically there’s Something there...)

So in-universe, people have argued that the Extinction is too new to fully manifest, that it doesn’t exist at all and is actually just parts/combos of the Big 14, or that it has always been around with the other 14 Entities and is just only becoming more powerful now bc of the climate crisis and all that. I’m partial to the latter argument bc ask anyone whose people have suffered a genocide and see what they think about the fear of being wiped out. Yeah. That fear ain’t new.

And here we have a fear that could hypothetically exist as parts of the other 14-15, that could be too ambient to fully manifest yet, or that is in existence but weak bc of its lack of extreme prominence.

And so, I present to the judges: fear Entity number 16, The Self, aka “You”, “Human”, or “I Am The Monster”.

The fear of the Self is pretty self explanatory at first glance. It’s the fear of your own capabilities: to be cruel, to be apathetic, to hurt and destroy and self-sabotage. That the world rests on your incapable shoulders and you aren’t enough.

Manifestations include: high-stakes situations with no “good” solution, situations where only one person is given responsibility for a task but has no support and/or way to complete it, reflections that hiss criticisms at you whenever you look at them, hallucinations of committing terrible acts, objects that compel the holder to fixate on their worst thoughts/impulses until they act on them, and people who hold you responsible for everything going wrong, a social media account that broadcasts every judgmental or Problematic thought you’ve ever had (or maybe... a book? :3c ).

Possible ritual: A mirror maze full of traps and team obstacles, but the only people sent into it are groups who’d be awful teammates for each other, and who are killed or separated any time they start making progress. It builds up power and starts becoming larger and more elaborate, until it covers the world... (Or can’t keep people who work well together apart lol) I don’t have a name for it, and don’t actually like this idea all that much.

Or alternatively, being such an internal fear, You have no ritual. Everything You need is already inside you. :)

Actually read through this whole mess? Sweet, please tell me what you think/leave your own ideas/additions! Is there another possible Entity you can think of? Do you think my theory is trash and so am I? Is there a fear that you could link the fear of the self to that I didn’t mention? Reblog/reply and share your thoughts!!

Some thoughts of Heart of Deimos.

I made a reddit post but I thought I might repost it here and see if the response is any different. Mild spoilers for Heart of Deimos, the most recent Warframe update, under the cut.

First off, this is a bit of an effortpost, and it will be quite meandering and confused, sorry about that. We are now two days into Heart of Deimos and I had some thoughts I wanted to put on paper as it were. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

The Bad:

In all honesty, taking into account the usual DE release-then-fix cycle and the quick patching they've already done to things like the Son token costs, there's very little about this update that I think is objectively bad. Deimos might be the single best open world release of the set, lack of a catchy musical number aside. It's not any buggier than any other release, which may say more about DE's QA than anything, but I have fallen through the map a few times, and host migrations have broken multiple vault runs.

The combined token system is a pretty big departure from the other open worlds, and I found it very confusing initially. Without the prior context of using Ticker for bonds in Fortuna, I think it would be really opaque, particularly for new players who aren't already up to speed on how the open world resource loops are expected to work. Alongside the complex token system, it's also understandable that people are frustrated with the expectation that they -must- participate in mining, fishing and conservation to get the tokens, since these don't really leverage the well developed aspects of gameplay.

The initial quest was lackluster from a storytelling perspective, with some really nonsensical events, a lack of development for each individual beat, and a frustrating lack of building on the already existing lore in favour of introducing new lore. It was pretty blatantly a tour of the zone mechanics, though maybe we'll see a more engaging plot when the equivalent of the Profit Taker and Exploiter bounties are introduced over the next year. The new warframe being dropped in by Mother as an afterthought, without a scrap of context, almost felt worse than the way previous quests have just given us the blueprint with no explanation at all. Protea's quest felt a lot clearer so it's disheartening to see them taking a step back there.

Finally, prior to finding the Albrecht lore I thought the playable content of the update was quite short and uninteresting.

The Good:

The Family voice acting is really, really good. Some of the writing is a bit iffy in the classic overwrought DE sense (which IMO is charmingly earnest anyway) but the delivery is fantastic, and while initially I was put off by the characters being shallow, I came around on it - I will go into more detail under 'The Ugly'.

With regards to the grind: even though the resources from the open world minigames are mandatory, participation isn't - so far I've run conservation exactly once, for about an hour, and I am clear for the third rank up with the Entrati. The world drops and bounty loot are more than enough to cover the vast majority of other costs, which is honestly fantastic. For all the complaining, DE has definitely learned from PoE and Fortuna with regards to letting people dictate their own playstyle without handicapping their progress. You can focus down specific requirements with specific minigames, no trouble, or you can just play bounties and run and gun your way to incidental loot. The combined token system was really confusing initially but combined with the incidental drops it makes progression quite organic without forcing you to spend your time on any particular task (looking at you, pre-Thumper PoE). There also seems to be a pretty solid spawn chance for tokens in the caves of the open world, and since the rank ups are now 1 of each kind of token instead of 10, this is possibly now a feasible way to skip the conservation grind entirely.

With regards to the lore: despite my earlier complaint about narrative quality and disconnection, DE does seem to be tying Parvos, the Entrati and the Glassmaker together, which is interesting. Prior to finding the Necraloid area and hearing the excellent Albrecht Vitruvian lore (seriously, mad props to the writers and the VA, the fourth log gives me powerful Darkest Dungeon narration vibes) I was ready to drop the game until a few patches and more content was added, but now I'm fully willing to grind for a couple weeks to hear the rest. I'm curious to see where they will go with the Heart and the Man in the Wall, particularly in regards to stuff like the reliquary drive and how it relates to the Necraloids and pre-warframe Orokin technology in general.

The Ugly:

The Family are the ugly, get it? This bit is mostly just because I want to talk about the new characters and the themes of Warframe as a narrative.

There's a kind of tension around the family that I initially found offputting - here we have a family of immortal alien gods who made their name ripping secrets from the flesh of reality, literally sprouting from the meat flowers of an infested moon... and they act like the cast of Arrested Development, switching between lofty poetic proclamations and petty squabbling that wouldn't be out of place on a sitcom. At first it seemed like it was just bad writing. Over time though, with exposure to the wider plot and the various deeper interactions, I started to warm to it. It's really interesting how DE has juxtaposed the deformed appearance of the Entrati, their perfect-marble-statue-like Orokin aesthetic, the pulsating infestation, and this very human, very relatable behavior. It really pulls back the skin on the Orokin as a people and uses a bit of clever metanarrative to show us that even the Tenno remember the Orokin as being more than human, when they were just as flawed as anyone else.

The individual characters felt very shallow at first, like cardboard cutouts of the typical family transplanted into a blob of writhing meat, but the pleasant surprise of the relationships mending between Entrati rank-ups and the subtle undercurrents you start to notice when interacting with them over a longer timeline really turned that on its head. There's some really excellent combinations of writing and delivery that add subtleties to each character, like the Daughter's undercurrent of thirst for either the Tenno or for butchering mutant fish, or the animalistic yearning of the Son and his bleeding heart hidden under the callous and cruel facade.

Family, parenthood and belonging are arguably the core themes of Warframe's narrative - the Tenno are orphan children clinging to a single parental figure who herself is a stolen child, while their allies like the Ostrons and the Solaris are people who cling to their human connections and their shared culture despite outside forces, and draw their strength from each other. The grand enemies of the setting are collectivist empires who have shredded their humanity in pursuit of strength and profit respectively. Then you have the Orokin, whose grand flaw is hubris in isolation, and a deliberate abandonment of shared humanity in pursuit of impossible perfection. The entire Parvos questline related to blood, with Nef wanting to abuse it for gain and Parvos denouncing him. Even the Sentients, arguably the only alien culture in the setting, love their families and oppose the Orokin and by extension the Tenno largely in defense of their people.

DE has leaned hard on quite creepy, quite -relatable- strangeness to give the Family depth, which helps reinforce that they're demigods of a dead empire, even if they are also quite friendly and personable. It lends some real weight to the way the Orokin have been depicted as cruel, hollow people, since we now have direct evidence of how their culture and the expectations of their various roles tear at those interpersonal connections. There's a lot of heart and clear work put into developing these themes, and I think that it's a bit sad that the quality of the writing is frequently overlooked in the broader Warframe community in favour of focusing on the flashy mechanics and cool new novel features. DE's writers are some of the best in mainstream video gaming currently, and even with my complaints about the main quest earlier, this consistent ongoing thematic cohesion and the variety of individually good beats more than make up for incoherent feature-driven storytelling.

TL;DR:

Despite some teething issues and bugs Heart of Deimos might be the best open world update so far, the way DE presents the Family and develops on the overarching themes of the story are pretty excellent, and I am excited to see where they go with it. Thanks for reading my incoherent and largely irrelevant thought-spew. Have a good one.

Read the tag and out of curiosity, how would you pacing the broccoli arc for season 3?

lmao I'm sorry you probably weren’t asking me to go so hard on this but uhhh this is my favorite arc and I've got some opinions

Here’s how I’d love the arc to be paced

Episode 1: Youkai Hunting

-Chapter 93

-probably include and end with the Has It Begun? My Era? panels from Chapter 92

Episode 2: Future Prospects + Carried Away

-opening from chp 94 (the youkai getting pulled into the broccoli)

-Chapter 92

   --skip right over has it begun bc it was in ep1 and go straight into next scene

-Chapter 94

-end with dimple leaving after the “eat shit, dimple” smackdown I guess

Episode 3: The Psycho Helmet Cult Part 1(things start to get weird)

-Chapter 95

-if they wanted to, this would be the episode to add in a new scene with Tsubomi or remind the audience that takenaka was a character at one point

   --basically as just a bit of prep for the other two arcs

-either ends where vol13 ends (teru setting out for the broccoli) or ends where the teru fight cuts off (just after dimple reveal)    

   --I think ending with the dimple reveal is the way to go, plus this way there’s a fight scene in this episode and not two in the next one       

Episode 4: The Psycho Helmet Cult Part 2 (things go wrong fast)

-Chapter 96 and 5-6 parts of Chapter 97

-The quest to destroy the broccoli

-The teru v mob fight

-probably end just before or after dimple actually shows up

Episode 5: Dimple and Mob

-The rest of it   

   --@bones pls do go ham with the dimple v psycho helmet fight

Here’s how the episodes fit into your mp100 season patterns, which are Very Correct btw      

I big agree with you about having the youkai hunting as the first episode. It’s a super solid way to start the season. It’s also especially funny bc this chapter starts with a parody of the show’s usual introduction to psychics, replacing “psychics” with “youkai hunters”. It’s a good piece of mob growth+slice of life, at some point Amakusa wonders if the broccoli is attracting spirits that want to use its life energy or whatever (foreshadowing), plus inukawa (who plays a bigger role later in the season) is in it.   

For the second episodes, I would def say it’s just fun stuff for most of the ep, but I think another thing the second episodes do is that they end with something that sets up the third episode and is usually the start of a big chain of events. S1: join BIC, S2: reigen puts up the website, S3: dimple leaves      

Future Prospects is important to include here bc it’s an easy way to reintroduce mezato and the psycho helmet cult plot. It’s also some of Serizawa’s only screen time this arc and we can’t let it go to waste.  

Ep3 is still mostly a mob character study, bc a lot of the chapter is mob dealing with being (or suddenly not being) recognized as the psycho helmet cult leader + reacting to the spread of the cult’s influence in general.

Ep4 is the beginning of mob’s concrete The Broccoli Must Be Removed quest, which continues into Ep5      

Ep5 -Dimple was a friend r.i.p.

Side Note: I desperately want the omake adventures of Hoshino and Asahi to be referenced in some way. Maybe when the shiratori brothers show up they can have a “what are the other awakening kids up to rn?” 10 second bit.  

And now here’s the reason WHY I organized things the way I did, but it’s under a read more bc this post is already too long

So full disclosure: the reason I paced the broccoli arc the way I did is entirely bc it’s my favorite arc and I want them to take their time with it. It’s also an arc that requires a LOT of setup before getting to the payoff, so I’d like the arc to be more like 4-ish episodes instead of the 3-ish episodes you predicted. This isn’t an arc you can just kind of start. Part of why the separation arc worked as well as it did was because they were subtly setting it up all season with little comments here and there between reigen and mob. It wasn’t something that just happened one day. They had to lay the groundwork and build off of it, and this arc isn’t much different. 

Another thing is that the vibe of this arc is one that will take some effort to establish. The slow, creeping influence of the psycho helmet cult is unsettling, and then suddenly getting caught up in the effects of the widespread brainwashing is even worse, but in order for those feelings to really come across we have to spend time with them. Slowly realizing that something is very wrong and then being horrified by it is something that, unsurprisingly, has to develop slowly. And by ‘slowly’ I mean spreading it across two episodes (3-4) instead of shoving it all into one. 

This arc, more so than most of the others, is driven by a complicated combination of emotions that can very easily be misunderstood if they aren’t displayed fully. I know this because when I was reading this arc for the first time I read through it too quickly, and had to start over because I didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on and confused myself. One of the only weaknesses, imo, that the anime has is that they have to cut stuff out. This is usually fine, but sometimes it can have a significant impact on the audience’s understanding of a character. It’s something that happened with ritsu’s arc. It wasn’t really That much different in the anime, but a few lines were cut here and a few shots were skipped there and the result is that ritsu’s fall is a bit harder to actually understand. At least for me, somehow the manga only has a few more lines and yet it makes ritsu’s character and his whole character Arc much clearer. 

I feel like something similar happened in the anime with dimple. There isn’t much aside from a few cut omakes and punching Suzuki in the face that’s significantly different, but a decent amount of time his lines get cut or altered a tiny bit over the course of the series and ultimately the result is that manga dimple is a slightly different, and slightly fuller, character than anime dimple. Idk fam I just watch people’s reactions and I worry that the fact that dimple actually has feelings that can potentially be hurt isn’t something the anime-onlies are prepped for. 

If the anime doesn’t take its time in this arc, and decides to cut some things here and there the way it has in the past, it runs the risk of 1. Being all around harder to follow, 2. Feeling out of character, and 3. Not hitting nearly as hard. Feeling out of character is the riskiest part of all this because mob and dimple ARE acting out of character. That’s the point! They both get carried away and they fight and they do and say things they shouldn’t and usually wouldn’t do, but if it isn’t clear that that’s what’s happening then their behavior can feel confusing or even disappointing. 

One more thing. I love mob psycho fight scenes. I really do think they’re some of the best I’ve seen, and there are a lot of fights in this arc I can’t wait to see animated. It can kinda become a problem though if emotional content screen time is sacrificed for action content screen time. Not to beat a dead horse (or cat in this case), but, uh, *cough* mogami. I’d rather they go ham with the animation in the confession arc and spend more time in this one on the other stuff. 

There’s just a fuck ton of shit that happens in this arc and fitting it all in before episode 6 without rushing anything is gonna be a process. It’s possible, but it’s really gonna take some planning.                

EPIX/Rise of Skywalker Reaction Post

So, I got back from seeing EPIX this morning, and I figured I should get all my thoughts down!

Everything spoilery is behind a cut, and this post is also tagged with the spoiler tags I’ve listed here. If you want me to add any additional tags, let me know and I will to this and any future EPIX posts.

Okay, so, before I really get into this, I should mention two relevant contextual things that probably strongly impacted my feelings on this movie.

I’m not super-invested in the sequel trilogy. I love (most of) the characters, I’m not really into the story that’s being told with them.

Given where TLJ left us, I went into the theatre expecting something between A Trainwreck with Some Delightful Moments and A Delightful Trainwreck. Basically, it was going to be a Hot Mess and I knew it, but I was pretty sure there was going to be something to love, even if the film as a whole didn’t delight me (which, honestly, is even where I stand with TLJ, which remains my least favorite film of the series). And, you know what? I got exactly that. A Sometimes-Delightful Trainwreck. I’d say it’s even towards the upper end of that Delightfulness scale.

All right, moving on to actual thoughts. I’m trying to focus on the positive here, mostly because I did overall enjoy this movie, but I also had some Problems with it.

I’m gonna talk about Kylo Ren first, mostly because I want to get this out of the way. I will say that--when I first saw TFA, I thought I could be interested in this character. I thought they were gonna maybe go the burnt-out gifted kid route with him, which would be hella interesting to explore for the child of Heroes like Han and Leia, and the Legacy he had to live up to. Obviously, they didn’t, and while the direction they went is certainly topical, it’s not super engaging, at least to me. I know it is to some people, and far be it from me to harsh anyone’s squee, but he basically doesn’t do anything for me. I personally don’t find him particularly interesting or intimidating.

Basically, I don’t particularly care about Kylo Ren. (I don’t know if I’m quite at the point where, as my roommate puts it, I aggressively Do Not Care, but the Not Caring is definitely a thing.)

Anyway, that disclaimer aside--his arc was okay, I guess? I mean...I think my general feelings on the subject are not that it felt phoned-in, exactly, but that it was mostly there because the writers thought it should be there, rather than it flowing organically from the character(s) involved. It also felt rushed, but that goes back to a problem with the movie as a whole that I will get into later in this post. But, given that, the actual beats that were involved in said arc I thought were effectively done. The bit with Han in the wreckage, in particular, was nice.

As for that Kiss though.

...I mean. I’m actually kind of pleased that the end of the film left the romantic threads dangling? It gave me plenty of OT3 feels (though I felt like, especially in the first third or so, the film was leaning more towards Rey/Poe and Finn/Rose, but there was some later stuff that seemed to hint at the full OT3 with a question mark on where Rose stands.)

But I do have a problem with the fact that the only on-screen kiss between Major Characters was between Rey and Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. That being said, I can backfill/justify it in that...you know how some people headcanon that Luke’s initial crush on Leia was some sort of “There is a Connection Here that I Cannot Name and it’s probably supposed to be Romantic given our ages and genders and presumed lack of other relationship so let’s go with that?” Between something like that and the fact that he just gave up his life for her in a very literal way (side note: the Force has always been New Powers as the Plot Demands; but the healing thing was a) if not actually in a canon novel at least strongly implied and b) ALL OVER fanon so even if I had a problem with Random Force Powers suddenly occurring I wouldn’t have an issue with this one; the Force Diad thing was ~handwave plot device~ sure fine whatever). ...anyway, given all of that, I can backfill it to a way where I don’t hate it (i.e., if he’d lived, I don’t think it would’ve been followed up on very much/they would’ve settled into a non-romantic relationship of some kind, whatever that might’ve been). Except that it’s the only one, which kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Then again, he did immediately die, so...yeah, I can live with this. I don’t like it, and I don’t think I ever will like it, but I don’t hate it either and it’s not a dealbreaker for me.

Most of the other problems I have with this film come down to structure and pacing. In that, thanks to where TLJ left us, this move had to do so much to bring the story to any kind of cohesive end, and not enough time to do it in. Trying to squeeze too much plot into too small a space.

(I actually had the same problem with ROTS initially--although that was more due to the PT having pacing issues as its Primary Narrative Flaw; TPM was way too slow; AOTC actually had good internal pacing but couldn’t quite make up for it; and then ROTS was as a consequence of that really rushed. Meanwhile, with the ST, I feel like the writers are relying on “it’s all there in the manual” a little too much, so not really...trying as hard, if that makes sense? To make it all connect within the film, I mean, as opposed to depending on people going into other/outside/supplemental material to connect the dots (still not as bad as the Prisoner of Azkaban movie on that front, but it’s still Bad; and, like, all film versions of novels leave some stuff out, just look at the LOTR films; but POA left out a key plot point and that--is a rant for another post. Back to EPIX). It’ll be interesting to see what kind of deleted scenes come out, or if it’ll grow on me in future watchings. Not that it’ll ever become a favorite, I don’t think, but it might improve in my eyes.)

Anyway, basically, a lot of this felt rushed or like...introduced but not really addressed/wrapped up in any kind of satisfactory fashion? Kylo Ren’s arc in particular, as I’ve mentioned before, plus the Threepio stuff felt rushed and non-consequential, and also with Rey’s arc to an extent (it...again, all the beats worked for me/I thought it was fairly effective, but it really needed two movies to pay off as well as it could have). ...I mean, there are more plot threads I could probably mention here, but those are the three that stuck out the most.

Also, this movie needed More Rose :( I LOVE HER and she was barely here!!!!!

Another thing I would’ve liked to see is...okay, I really liked the Overlapping Voices bit, but it would’ve been nice to have more Presence from the ghosts? Like...there’s a bit at the end of season 1 of Sailor Moon where she’s in the Final Battle, the other four have died (or just been left behind, if you’re watching the English dub), and their ghosts show up and place their hands on hers and lend her their strength? A visual cue like that would’ve been great and helped the arc feel more complete. Especially since Palpatine had all of his predecessors/Sith ghosts backing him in a more visible fashion. But, then again, that’s a Personal Taste thing and while it would’ve, IMO, made that moment better, not having it doesn’t make it worse, if that makes sense?

(Also, the credits moved too fast for me to track, but I definitely saw Qui-Gon Jinn listed, though I don’t recall hearing him, and I definitely recognized Anakin/Hayden Christensen and Mace/Samuel L. Jackson and Obi-Wan/Ewan McGreggor (and Alec Guinness I’m pretty sure?) and obvs. Yoda/Frank Oz when actually listening, but I couldn’t identify the other voices--anyone have the full list? Was Ahsoka and/or Kanan and/or Ezra involved, or was it restricted to movie-only Jedi?)

But...yeah. Apart from the Kiss being very ....:/ for me, most of my identifiable problems with the film is stuff like this.

I think the other thing I want to talk about in detail is the Rey Palpatine reveal.

So, up until this movie, I was actually in my corner flying my tiny but determined Rey Kenobi flag, and the more I think about it, the more I like Rey Palpatine for some of the same reasons? Like...I don’t remember everything I’d thought through about Rey Kenobi, but it had to do with the cyclical nature of Star Wars, and bringing it back where it started--and we get that with Rey Palpatine, in a nice arc, healing some of the damage her grandfather did, both to this family and to the galaxy as a whole.

That being said--those of you who know me and my fic projects know I’ve been writing a child (daughter) for Palpatine for quite some time now, and I have no intention of stopping, lol. Am I going to take this/Lavinia’s (presumably) half-brother into account in future projects? ...probably not. But I am looking forward to/hoping we get a novel or something about him and Rey’s mother. Because that is actually a story I’m interested in--why canon!Palpatine chose to have a kid, and how said kid managed to break away and got to this point. [...y’know, I actually think Rey Kenobi’s background/thread of descent would be less interesting to me? Since I subscribe to the idea that a) Korkie Kryze is Obi-Wan’s biological son; and b) Obi-Wan had many Friends With Benefits throughout the galaxy and figuring out exactly which one Rey descends from carries less weight for me.]

...okay, I think that’s all the Detaily Bits I want to get into, so here are some bullet points of things that really stuck out to me, in no particular order:

Bawled like a baby re: everything involving Carrie Fisher. Just...yeah. Miss you Space Mommy.

LANDO! I loved his entrance, I loved him adopting Jannah at the end, I loved all of it.

Chewie’s fake-out death was also actually pretty good/well-handled. I mean. First Boom happens and I’m like DDDDDDD: but then I remember how people reacted to his death in Legends and I’m like would they really do it and then DELIGHT.

HUX. Okay. I never really cared about this dude before, and honestly I still don’t really care about this dude but at the same time, those of you who know me know I have a Thing for double-agents and defectors and I LOVE THIS WHOLE ENTIRE PLOT THREAD. I LOVE THIS SHITHEAD TURNING TRAITOR FOR THE MOST VENAL REASONS AND STILL BEING A BAD GUY/EVIL/AN UNREPENTANT JACKASS. THIS WAS PERFECT.

(Also Finn shooting him in the leg instead of the arm as requested was DELIGHTFUL)

SPEAKING OF DELIGHTFUL gotta love Zombie Skeev Palpatine Unliving His Best Afterlife. Was he as Delightful as he is in ROTS or ROTJ? No. Did I still enjoy every minute of his scenery-chewing nonsense? You bet your ass. So happy, Ian McDiarmid looked like he was having tons of fun and honestly what more could I have asked for?

The whole scene on Ahch-To was just *chef’s kiss.* Use of Yoda’s theme with the rising X-Wing, Luke being snarky and kind and beautiful, him emerging from the fire with the saber...just loved it.

LEIA HAD JEDI TRAINING AND HER OWN LIGHTSABER. BB!MARK HAMILL AND BB!CARRIE FISHER’S FACES.

LEIA TRAINING REY. REY CALLING HER ‘MASTER.’

USING THE BOND TO ARM KYLO REN okay like I said I have Mixed Feelings about the arc as a whole but that moment was SO COOL.

Poe’s ex-girlfriend was pretty great, ngl.

JANNAH AND EX-STORMTROOPERS YESSSSSSSS

HINTS OF/SHREDS OF EVIDENCE FOR FORCE-SENSITIVE FINN GIVE THEM TO ME NOW.

D-0 was pretty cute!

All of the Badass Finn.

Also that MOMENT where Finn runs up to Poe like “I NEED TO TELL YOU A THING” and Poe is all “I NEED YOU TO FIGHT WITH ME” and Finn just interrupts himself to thank Poe and they have that “General” “General” moment and it’s SO CUTE I’m love it.

The entire thing at the Lars farm at the end. Just. Burying the lightsabers, seeing the twins’ ghosts, claiming the Skywalker name, Rey having her own saber now. This movie was a Hot Mess but it definitely ended on a high note.

...that’s pretty much what I have for right now. I will probably have more thoughts after discussing it with other people/seeing it again (because I will be seeing it again). But overall...do I like it? Well, it’s Star Wars, which I love and which frankly always has some Super Dumb and/or Frustrating Stuff, and the things I disliked weren’t bad enough to Ruin It for me, so yes, I liked it. Is it my favorite Star Wars/good for a Star Wars movie? ...not really, no. It did have some gorgeous moments, but it doesn’t really hang together. Like the rest of the ST, it relies way too much on It’s All There In The Manual and, between that and the fact that TLJ didn’t do the work necessary to set it up, the movie felt rushed and a little bit...I don’t want to say hollow, maybe shallow is a better word? I mean, I know this is Star Wars and It’s Not That Deep (but the ground is soft and I’m ready to dig or however the quote goes), but this felt particularly shallow even for Star Wars. Like...cotton candy, fairly good/tasty but a little bit prone to melting away and with very little substance holding it together. On that level, I’d actually probably rank it around Solo (which, let me say, I really like)--so, better than TLJ, but still A Hot Mess of a movie. But I enjoyed myself, and I think overall my feelings are middling-to-positive on it. Even if...honestly, even like less than four hours after the movie ending, I’m already forgetting like half the plot points...? Like I said. Cotton Candy.

What did/do you guys think?

@summon-daze replied to your post “lukewarm take but idk... nobody (at least not this century) says shit...”

Great post but whats the game mentioned? I'm curious

Thank you! I was super nervous to make it so that’s reassuring. <3

The game I mentioned is Rimworld! 

The premise of the game is that you’ve crash-landed on a foreign planet and must build a colony, survive raiders, and prosper long enough to build a ship to get back off-planet. All this time, there are events that have a mathematical risk of happening (such as volcanic winters, cold snaps, flashstorms, and so much more) to make it a sort of storytelling game for your colony!

But honestly the beauty of this game is in the details and the lore! It’s like a dark scifi-esque galaxy of planets outside of the planet you crashed on. Imagine Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle but less literary and more bent towards the portrayal of tropes in fanfiction/pop culture, like prostitution, space pirates, and human traffickers. The darkness of the lore is exactly what appeals to me and what makes this game more intriguing than any other sandbox/colony-building game I’ve ever seen or played.

For example: with the base game, you can capture the raiders who periodically come to attack you, and you can either recruit them, release them, execute them, or harvest their organs for profit lmao. Sometimes factions will come by to trade and you can sell your prisoners to them, too. When things get tough and you don’t have food, you can also butcher human corpses and cook them into meals. Another example: mental breaks! If your colonists become unhappy enough, they can do anything from hiding in their room to digging up a corpse and displaying it on the dinner table (depending on how severe their mental break is). So yeah it’s clearly very dark and morbid gaming that isn’t often done and doesn’t appeal to everyone. (Hint: It definitely appeals to me. XD)

Another thing I really like about Rimworld is it’s blend between strategy games and more Sims-like games. You can control every single colonist individually, which makes it like Sims, but you can also set up the colony’s work priorities in a way that makes them act optimally without you having to guide them!

If you are the person that liked to drown your Sims in the swimming pool or light houses on fire, I highly, highly recommend this game to you!

Of course, Rimworld is not a perfect game and I will never claim it is such! It’s very heteronormative (honestly pushing lgbt-phobic). The game (which was an early access steam game) was made by what feels like the exact stereotype of a reddit dudebro-nerd coding from his momma’s basement because it’s the feeling of progressiveness (or the lack of) that his game gives me lmao. (No offense to such people, I have a severely mentally ill family member who is one of them. My family member knows bisexual ppl exist though lmao.)

The other problem with Rimworld is how boring it gets after playing it enough. There’s only so many events, so much mystery, before it kinda starts to lose its thrill.

However, this is where mods come in. And I’m telling you, this is literally where the game shines the hardest - the modding community. If you play Rimworld without Mods, then you’re not really enjoying the full experience lmao. The Psychology Mod for example adds in a lot of shit, including more sexualities, social interactions, and mental illness that the base game doesn’t have. There’s the Prison Labour mod where you can make your prisoners do work for your colony (haha, perfect for my Grandmaster-led colony). There are mods that add children/pregnancy, gladiator arenas, and the need for showers&water. That honestly doesn’t even begin to explain how many mods I use and how much they enhance the enjoyability of the game! I use like 50 mods and I’ve logged almost 500 hours in gameplay now soooo yeah, haha. Playing without mods is like playing Sims without expansions.

Anyway this finally brings me to the point of the original post, sigh. There is a mod called Rimjob World that I have found recently that adds noncon and sexual slavery (and even prostitution game play) to Rimworld. This mod was created by people who... equally fit the reddit dudebro-nerd coding from their momma’s basement stereotype. T_T I don’t agree with a lot of the language that the mod uses (i.e. adding trans characters but calling them “traps” or “futas” -_-) or a lot of the systems that the mod has set up (i.e. the default settings categorize women in a way that implies only certain women rape and only certain women get raped). 

I’m very frustrated with this! I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find another mod that puts the lack of noncon into this barbaric and violent world of Rimworld in a less problematic way. But when I look for it, there is nothing. And instead I’m always hit with comments (especially on reddit) like the one I mentioned in the post.

It always comes down to people thinking it’s okay to have games/mods with slavery, cannibalism, and organ harvesting, but making those games include rape is a step too far. -_-

It’s disgusting and just as rape culture-ish as the opposite expression imo.

Anyway sorry to ramble about this, I know I’ve complained about a lot of these things a few times, but it never ceases to infuriate me lmao so I figured I’d just consolidate all my thoughts (along with the positive ones) about Rimworld into one post! So thanks for the opportunity and I hope this was helpful! Have fun if you play and also:

Anyone feel free to hit me up for my recommended mod list lmao because this game can get so boring without it.

Also if you’re not sure about the game and wanna see some gameplay, I do play rimworld on stream sometimes lmao, but I’m a lame newbie streamer so feel free to find... other sources to watch let’s play videos too XD

A (Not So) Brief Summary of The First 27 episodes of Critical Role

So @i-do-as-i-want had mentioned wanting a summary of the first bunch of episodes so that they could get to the part without Tiberius and his player. I was originally going to message this to them but then it got long, and I figured others might be interested too. I tried to be brief while still covering everything important (27 episodes is still almost 100 hours of content ya’ll). Feel free to add if you feel I missed important stuff, but be kind as I did this pretty quickly. This isn’t a post to talk about what went down with Tibs’ player. There’s a lot of those posts around rn and they serve their own purpose. But this post is just supposed to be a summary of in-game events. Summary under the read more!

Underdark Arc (episodes 1-16)

We meet Vox Machina—Percy a gunslinger nobleman who’s trying to avoid his past; the half elf twins, Vax the rogue, and Vex the ranger (and her bear Trinket); Keyleth the half elf druid who is completing her journey to become her people’s Voice of the Tempest; Scanlan a gnomish bard; Pike a gnomish cleric of Sarenrae and her best buddy Grog the barbarian; and Tiberius a dragonborn.

They are a group of adventurers who have just successfully saved a city called Emon. After a six(ish) month break where they have split apart to complete pieces of their individual stories they have rejoined to find Lady Kima, a friend to the Sorcerer Allura whom they met in Emon. Kima, a paladin to the Platinum Dragon, had gone to the Kraghammer to deal with an evil vibe she had been getting. VM arrives, talks to a bunch of people and go to a mine where creatures had been coming to the surface from the Underdark. They make a deal with the mine owner to take care of his creature problems for a lot of gold pieces.

VM goes through the mine defeating a vast assortment of creatures such as umber hulks, intellect devourers, and illithids. Along the way Vex and Keyleth meet Clarota, an Illithid who has been cast out, they invite him to come along to help defeat a mysterious figure known as K’varn who the group believes to be the source of the problem. They then reach the castle of the Underdark Dwarves (duergar). The evil king and queen had been holding Kima! The gang rescues Kima, who dislikes Clarota and wants to leave him behind. VM has a battle against the king and queen. The King dies but the Queen gets away with Grog. Eventually the gang gets back Grog, defeats the Queen and heads on to face K’Varn. The group finds out that K’varn is a beholder controlling the mind flayers through their elder brain, battles him (ep. 11) and wins out. Then it turns out that the god Orcus is trying to use K’varn through the Horn of Orcus-this reanimates the beholder corpse. After persevering again VM unintentionally frees all the controlled mind-flayers and Clarota betrays Vox Machina in the hopes his people will take him back.

The gang fight-run away from the mind flayers and through the use of a teleportation circle return with Kima back to Emon. There is a shopping episode where we meet Shaun Gilmore, Vox Machina’s favorite merchant who has a bit of a flirtationship with Vax. (Ep. 14) The band of adventurers is summoned to Sovereign Uriel and the council of Emon. VM tells the council about the Horn of Orcus and decide to bring it back to Vasselheim where Kima’s temple is where they should be able to keep the Horn safe and away from dangerous creatures/people. VM does this, traveling by air ship. They return the Horn to the Platinum Dragon’s temple. They also say good-bye to Pike for the time being as she has decided to stay to fix the temple of Sarenrae (Ashley Johnson was cast in Blindspot).

Adventures in Vasselheim (17-23)

After saying goodbye to Pike, VM looks for things to do. Grog gets in a fight against Kern in what is known as The Pit (ep. 17 part 1 quite good). Grog loses just barely and is very sad. The group looking to cheer him up and get back to what they’re good at, leave Vasselheim and come across a hydra, and defeat it. Unfortunately Vasselheim has an organization known as the Slayer’s Take who are given assignments to hunt monsters and other creatures and the hydra slain was one the Slayer’s Take was supposed to take care of. Vox Machina is told that they must join the Slayer’s Take or will be persecuted as poachers.

Vox Machina is split up to undertake the Trial of the Slayer’s Take. Vex, Scanlan, Grog and two new friends go to slay a white dragon. Vax, Keyleth, Tiberius, and two other new friends have to beat a Rakshasa (I like these episodes and reoccurring guest characters are introduced. Ep. 18 and 19 have no Tiberius, ep. 20 and 21 have…well a lot more Tiberius. For the reoccurring guest character of 20/21 it is Kash a cleric/paladin who is played by Will Friedle. Kash is interested in Keyleth romantically and Vax gets jealous. Kash is good here but there are other instances of him after Tibs so no big to just avoid these ep if need be just know the Rakshasa will be a problem again in the future). Once everyone has passed their trial they become members of the Take. Yay!! Then they go to the village of Pyrah so Keyleth can pass the Fire trial of her Aramente. They go to the Fire Realm, things are hot but they get by and Keyleth passes. On their way back they have to hide from a big scary red dragon (foreshadowing!!)

Before they leave back to Emon, Grog returns to the Pit where he faces off against Kern, and this time…is victorious!!!! (ep. 23, part 1. There is some Tibs but the Grog part is pretty good and is pretty heavy Grog centered which is the last we’ll see of that for a little while.) Fan Favorite NPC Viktor the gun powder merchant is also in this last episode in part 2, (2:08:29)

VM returns to their keep and meet Kynan (recurring NPC) who wants to join Vox Machina. Vax knocks him out and then revives him in an attempt to teach Kynan that their work is dangerous and not for him at that time. He tells the boy to train and that one day maybe he can join. Kynan runs off saying he will do that. Vax later feels guilty and tries to find him but cannot. Seeker Assum, a member of the Council, sends word to Vox Machina that they are invited to a fancy feast next week to welcome Emon’s new fancy guests…the Briarwoods (aka the people who invaded Percy’s home and killed all of his family).

The Briarwood Arc (24-27)

After receiving the invitation Percy finally tells Vox Machina all of what had happened to him before he joined the Adventure Party. Basically bad people came in, killed everyone, Percy was tortured before he was able to escape and now he wants revenge. On 5 of the 6 barrels of his gun there is a name—Lord and Lady Briarwood, Anna Ripley, Sir Stonefell, and Professor Anders. The group says that they will help Percy.  The group splits to do errands, get their money from Kraghammer and play with Trinket.

Then the group goes to the feast, Percy disguised as Vax. They see Silas and Delilah Briarwood and hear their version of how they acquired Whitestone (ie. The de Rolos got sick and died and they were in line to inherit), Vax although asked to go with Seeker Assum sneaks off and does his own thing (after agreeing to say “Jenga” over the magical earrings if he needs help). He ends up getting caught by the Briarwoods in their room. As dinner ends Vax finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble as he isn’t able to speak or move.

When he gets a chance to break the spell Vax throws himself out of a window and yells Jenga. A Very intense fight follows (ep. 25 is really good overall though as it is nearing the end of time Tibs was around things are starting to get strange/tense with him so watch if interested and you can just skip him really) as the group fights to save Vax and stop the Briarwoods. They fail to stop the Briarwoods though they do save Vax. Percy begins to act more rash than is normal for him. Sovereign Uriel and his council are unhappy with VM as it seems they attacked Emon’s guests. He agrees to look into it but VM is on some thinnnnnnnnn ice. The gang does some…questionable stuff when some bloodhunters come after one of their new friends (This is where the Vox Machina hates old people comes from). There’s a filler episode where Scanlan turns everyone into Cows. Its kinda amusing though skippable overall.

Okay, now we’re at ep. 27. The tension throughout the episode is weird at the beginning and terrible by the end imo. Unless you enjoy second hand embarrassment/awkwardness/weirdness I would suggest trying to avoid this episode. Percy begins to have nightmares and dreams of a smoke entity before ghosts attack Grey Skull Keep. They fight off the ghosts and then later in the day start to make plans.

Seeker Assum comes to see them and says that he thinks that Uriel is under a charm like Assum was earlier. Keyleth had used Greater Restoration on him when the council was talking with VM, but Assum pretended it didn’t work b/c he wanted to stay in Uriel’s good graces to help VM later.  After more debate, and an offer to raze Whitestone from Tiberius, and some creepy smoke voices in Percy’s ear, Percy decides that they will go to face the Briarwoods and that they will have a week to prepare. (Now comes the worst part of the episode tension wise). The party makes their preparations to leave the city, Vex leaves a note for Uriel.

Then they leave for Whitestone. The journey goes okay though they lose their horses to harpies. Keyleth is becoming increasingly concerned for Percy, feeling he isn’t telling them everything. The next day they continue on their way and the episode ends as they are faced with a dragon-ish creature.

The next episode they continue onto Whitestone but Tibs is controlled by Matt. The disappearance of Tibs’ player is brought up sometime over the next few episodes but he does not come back to the table and you can now enjoy the rest of the episodes of Critical Role! 

The best Guide to Reddit Marketing around 2019

"Yep, i do all my modelling in C4D as I just know the tools so well there. I do minimal retopology in Zbrush on organic shapes but any hard surfaces I make in C4D. I'd recommend the "Introduction to Subdivision modelling in C4D" by Shane Benson on Vimeo (he goes by Sheppard O'Neill on YouTube if you prefer that) and it was his tuts that got me into box and subdiv modelling.

I'm also releasing a modelling workshop in C4D and models from the kitchen scene that these belong to will be in there to learn. Just not these two as they belong to marketing for the workshop. very well "Brand new Reddit account with two extensive comments defending Boa Vista Orchards huh...? We joked earlier about spotting the Boa Vista account in here but it looks like we actually have lol! > I just talked to the dude who does the marketing for Apple Hill and he sent me this So you just randomly talked to the guy and he emailed over his entire statement...? " "I too wonder why they didn’t just create a new line and call it the mach-e instead of mustang, I believe it has something to do with the marketing department since they knew it’ll stir a lot of discussion" "Precedent suggests it depends on the marketing around the product being sold and the implied purpose. " "Wow, ha. The fact that you think that it’s ok for the government to strip away my personal health insurance so that I HAVE to be on the same shitty plan on everybody else is crazy. If healthcare is “free” and universal, the quality of healthcare is bound to decrease. I can choose to pay for whatever the fuck I want and whatever healthcare I want. I give to charity and I have plans on giving a lot more to charity as I get further in my career and start making more money. Believe it or not, you aren’t the only one that cares about people just because you want “free” healthcare for everybody. And there is also no such thing as free healthcare. It has to be paid somehow and middle class taxes will go up no matter how complicated you try to make the source of payment sound. And regarding free college, that will also raise middle class taxes. You keep bringing up this. 02% of financial transactions bullshit as if that’s going to cover all costs. Have you done studies on this yourself? Do you even know that? You act like all these things can be magically paid for without anybody in the middle class being negatively affected. I have a bachelor’s degree and I didn’t feel like college was very challenging. It was more like a series of annoying classes I didn’t need when all of college could have been boiled down into one year of the core classes of my major of marketing. College is a fuckin scam and it’s only truly necessary for a very limited amount of majors. You’re just another minion that kisses the feet of big-government Democrats that try to make us feel like horrible people for not allowing them to sucks insane amounts of money out of the economy and spend it how they would like to. inch "That's including the localization teams for every language though, as well as PR and marketing. >! Some of them might even be legacy accreditation for the Gen 6 models they're *still* using.! < " "Time is a cost and you should track where that cost is going. That said, if you are working on general administrative/nonbillable stuff within your own department, it's pretty easy to have that time automatically go to the right cost bucket, so generic entries for that sort of thing are fine imo. The stuff that really has to be tracked is anything for clients or for departments that are outside your default (e. g. engineer writes a blog post, that's marketing time etc). micron "I believe there are some lessons on Google Academy for Adss (now called Skillshop) but hands-on experience is tricky. Two ways are possible, 1) is for you to have your own website and use Google Ad Sense, but this is more from the advertiser side rather than publisher or technical side 2) ask a digital or marketing agency that is near you if you can shadow/assist/internship/work experience for a week or so. This may be difficult depending on where you live and agency people are always very busy, so if you do ask tell them how you could help THEM not the other way around. To be honest, start with Analytics and Paid Search as they are arguable more accessible and have more out there for you to learn" "We are in the same boat, but different industry. Here's my approach, starting this week: I'm joining business groups that my target clients are a part of, for example, manufacturer groups. Then I'm going to target that organization with our services. I'm then going to offer to speak about the service I offer and how it helps businesses. Not a marketing spiel, an educational talk. Good luck" "One might consider a lawsuit if a car or alcohol company advocated or implied the action of drinking and driving in their marketing" "This post has been removed for breaking Rule 1. No Spammy Titles. Do not mention anything about selling anything in the title. Absolutely ZERO marketing in the title. Do not even ask for people to contact you for more. Be enticing. Post quality pics with quality titles. Read the rules for info on how to market yourself here. If your posts keep getting removed then you will be banned. READ THE RULES! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Remember to[contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/? to=/r/feetpics) if you have any questions or concerns. *" "I came of grew up and came of age in Chicago during Jordan's time with the Bulls and the shortest answer is that it's almost incomparable because the level of fame basketball players before Michael Jordan was laughably lower than now. Even today MJ has a logo that might be more identifiable than the company that created it. I would argue no athlete in any sport has surpassed MJ's level of fame. MJ pioneered so many avenues of endorsements, its like comparing planes in the era of propeller planes with jet planes. Jordan like most greats, stood on the shoulders of giants, specifically Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Those two spent the better part of the late 70's and early to late 80's dominating the sport of basketball. Also add in Isiah Thomas of the Pistons and arguably "Dr. J" Julius Erving of the 76ers and those four were the superstars of the four teams that won EVERY NBA championship of the decade. Before Michael Jordan won his FIRST NBA Championship in 1991, he was arguably bigger than all of them. Before MJ, being a big name athlete meant getting your name on a breakfast cereal box called Wheaties, and doing the commercial saying the plug line "Gotta eat your Wheaties! " That's not a joke. Check 'em out on youtube, they're cringe worthy. MJ's meteoric rise in my opinion was helped by a few special advertising campaigns. I think first would have been his Nike commercials with Spike Lee, another pioneer. He just made "Do the right thing" at a time when black people making movies with black people in the movies wasn't really a thing. Spike Lee also happens to like playing characters in his own movies and Mars Blackmon was a character in that movie that Spike Lee chose to portray in a series of commericals with Michael Jordan. Again, pardon me for repeating, but I have to say it again for context. You have a supremely talented and charismatic young athlete being marketed by a young shoe company (Converse Chuck Taylors were still THE basketball shoe) hiring a visionary and ground breaking director to do something that had not been done before. And they crushed it. Again, at this time Michael Jordan wasn't winning NBA championships. He was having savant level performances, but get bounced out of the first round by the Celtics, or getting manhandled in the playoffs by the Pistons. By the time he did win it all in 91, MJ was doing things that no one had done in fields well outside basketball. Michael Jordan in Flight is one of the first videogames to have 3D. He had already supplanted Dr J in the one on one basketball video game with Larry Bird. Gatorade put out a marketing campaign with the song "Be Like Mike" and that song was the top song for the summer of 92 in Chicago on most radio stations regardless of genre. You're already familiar with Space Jam, but before Space Jam, the Looney Toons were relegated to afternoon after school syndicated (rerun) television stations. Michael Jordan made Bugs Bunny cool again to a whole new generation that knows of them only through MJ. I hope that helps. inches "Yeah I don't want to turn it around and criticize Musk over this or anything, but Tesla is great at PR and marketing while convincing people they don't actually try to be. inches "No, you dont need more parties, you need to ban all parties and establish government funded elections where everyone with a certain amount of support by the people can run using government money and marketing channels. Equal funding, equal marketing, equal candidacy, by the people, for the people. Sounds too good to be true? Well fuck you, because parties are corrupt barbaric cavemen shit. " " Funny Cartoon Images for website content - Family Funny Images and illustrations, Ultimate single panel funny cartoons used for websites, social media and emails https://www.freecartoonsdaily.com https://www.cartoons.cafe   www.cartoons.cafe www.acmeblanks.com sign up now! Funny Cartoons, Funny family cartoon images, Custom Cartoons, Niche Cartoons, Humorous Illustration Services, Business Cartoons, Medical Cartoons, Custom Comic Strips, Book Illustration Services, Political Cartoons, funny hospital cartoons, cartoons for marketing, corporate cartoons, work cartoons, business cartoons, Computer Cartoons, farmer cartoons, farm cartoons, tractor cartoons, Pig cartoons, pig farmer cartoons, cor farmer cartoons, wheat farmer cartoons, soybean farmer cartoons.... inch "That's including people associated with the marketing and promotion of Sword and Shield, which means people at Nintendo and the Pokemon Company rather than actual programmers at Game Freak working on the game itself. The same article you're looking at gives 200 at Game Freak - which is likely wrong since Game Freak had 143 employees, and Game Freak openly stated most were working on Town. You could include the modelers from Creatures Inc, but given that the models are the same as those developed for X and Y by Creatures Inc years ago, they are likely still being credited for "work" on this game that was actually done quite some time ago. " "Imagine what a lucky break JonTron was for FlexSeal. Their products are actually pretty decent, but their marketing was almost typical infomercial stuff that no-one over fifty would've seen. Next, out of nowhere, some YouTuber makes them famous amongst younger customers. People make "that's a lotta damage, " and "I sawed this boat in half, " memes. Everyone knows who they are. Chances are, when you need some stuff like this you'll at the very least know about their existence and you might buy their stuff because at least you know they're legit. Some people will buy it when they need something like that, literally for the meme. All they have to do is keep the ball rolling with tweets like these (because, of course, people actually follow them on Twitter now). " "That's my point. The pub you linked to is disney land. I'm looking for somewhere that recreates the  a more authentic historical experience. I think these places have got their marketing wrong which is why they are closing. They should be trying to recreate an experience closer to that in the Pathe news reel. If you just sold fresh baked bread, potted Hare, a variety of local ales you could heat with a poker while smoking a hilarious pipe you could capture a huge slice of the real ale / hipster / foodie market. " "No game in the genre had been competition for the Diablo franchise since it's inception. D3 no matter how you look at it was a huge commercial success being in the top 10 video games sold of all time at one point. Diablo now has become what WoW was before, tons of games saying they are a WoW killer and none of them doing it. So now we looming at Diablo killers but they all end up falling off somewhere because they don't get the same $$$ support / marketing. inch "8M opening weekend bad = bad marketing. Bad quality movie would be revealed in the multiplier (word of mouth and no rewatches). In this case I don’t think there was anything compelling from the movie they could focus the marketing around which led to the 8M OW. " "I’m in the same boat. I have to get 14 credits by may2020. In the last 2 weeks I did principle of marketing 3 credits score 66 and principal of management 3 credits score 62. This week I’ll take precalculas which is 5 credits and calculus which is 4 credits. I did not pay the $89 for the test because I did modernstates which pays the testing fee. It also reimburses me for the $20 testing fee" "Marketing. McAf€€ gets money from users, Micro$oft gets money from McAfee. They beget the green, motherfuckers that they are. Sometimes  http://tipofmytongue.topreddit.info  who install 3^^rd party stuff tho, it's not only Microsoft. Anyway, it's a motherfuckery of bloatware if not malware. "McAfee antivirus is one of the worst products on the planet" -John McAfee" "You're arguing entirely from marketing hype instead of actual quality, which is entirely stupid and comes down entirely to Sont having far greater of a userbase and them having less games to pump more money behind. Besides, let's not pretend Sony has an actual library of games here. Both Xbox and Sony have completely shit the bed this console generation in terms of exclusive libraries. Sony has had like, 8 good games this entire generation as exclusives. You have Death Stranding, Uncharted 4, Horizon, Until Dawn, Bloodborne, God of War, MLB The Show... That's about it? I guess you also have Detroit and Last Guardian depending on who you ask, but I defo don't wanna throw Days Gone on that list. But in any case, you could lump all of those games into loke 3-4 genres. Am I missing anything? But yeah, stop saying dumb shit like "Well its not a household name so its irrelevant" because you're entirely missing the point and reducing the entire industry to what can or can't be marketed. As well, its telling that Sony has stated their goal next-gen is to have less games release but have them be bigger, where Microsoft is going the opposite direction. Keep the the big titles, bur also have a little something for everyone. Diversity is important. Your Battletoads reboot might not sell as well, but its important to folks who like it. Games shouldn't be live or die based on how well they fit in established and marketable trends. Its absurdly reductive" "I actually never had injected one, whats the main difference? And is it really a big improvement or rather a marketing bait" "It’s all part of his NYC persona. Marketing. inches

And now, cause im bored, here's every chapter of Keys briefly summed up in just a few words each (possible spoilers ahead??)

Prologue: The Thirteen Keys: MoM fucks with his students, what else is new

Chapter 1: Remaining Recusant: Riku rescues his boyfriend through the power of Gay

Chapter 2: To Guard the Light: Bunch of boring lore but Sokai makes it worth it

Chapter 3: To Seek the Darkness: Organization shenanigans; Vanitas divorces his shitty, abusive not-dad

Chapter 4: Hero to Zero: Uhhhhh fuckin' Hercules or somethin idk

Chapter 5: Go the Distance: Rage Mode angst is Fun

Chapter 6: Wandering in the Dark: Riku gets a haircut in the Realm of Darkness and Sora really needs to stop lying to everyone

Chapter 7: Promising Beginnings: Kairi and Lea are forced to wear a "get along" shirt

Chapter 8: Lazy Afternoon Streets: Sora has an Identity Crisis part 1

Chapter 9: At Dusk: YA STUPID ORG XIII FUCKHEADS BEST LEAVE MY SON ALONE OR ELSE ILL THROW HANDS

Chapter 10: Sinister Whispers: ^^^ BASICALLY THAT AGAIN ONLY I MEAN IT THIS TIME

Chapter 11: You've Got a Friend in Me: Being a living toy has gotta create some sorta existential crisis, right?

Chapter 12: To Infinity and Beyond: JEN IS GONNA THROW HANDS WITH YOUNG XEHANORT I SWEAR TO GOD I AM

Chapter 13: Chase the Shadows: Detectives Mickey and Riku play a round of "Where's Terra?" And fail miserably

Chapter 14: Paradise Found: Fun with Balloons and Grumpy Geriatrics

Chapter 15: Adventure is Out There: Sora may or may not fall to his death from ridiculously high up in the air i dont fuckin know

Chapter 16: Unspoken, Unheard: Kairi writes Sora a bunch of letters cause she loves him so much but wont say it cause she shy ahah

Chapter 17: How Far I'll Go: MOANA AND SORA ARE MY NEW BROTP

Chapter 18: Know Who You Are: Vanitas gets yeeted by the Ocean cause he a naughty boyo

Chapter 19: The Streets of San Fransokyo: Sora doesnt understand how Technology works what else is new?

Chapter 20: Immortals: everything's all fun and games until Sora's dumbass self-sacrifical complex kicks in (again)

Chapter 21: Depths of Despair: LOOKS LIKE I GOTTA THROW HANDS WITH MALEFICENT NOW TOO

Chapter 22: Rise and Fall and Rise Again: Sora and Kairi hang out and DAMMIT JUST KISS ALREADY YOU DORKS

Chapter 23: The Lost Empire: Lingering Will pops in to say hi and also uhhhh whatever the fuck happens in Atlantis goes down idk

Chapter 24: Where the Dream Takes You: Sora may or may not have PTSD, boi should probs go see a therapist

Chapter 25: Drowning in Darkness: Aqua throws hands then proceeds to get Norted

Chapter 26: I See the Light: Basically KH3's take on Corona but things actually make sense this time

Chapter 27: What Once Was Mine: In which that bit from KH3 where Marluxia knocks Sora out actually leads to some legit payoff smh

Chapter 28: Firsthand Experience: Kairi and Lea take a trip to Disney World and yeet Vanitas (again) right the fuck outta there

Chapter 29: The World Es Mi Familia: Being an (unliving) skeleton also is bound to raise an existential crisis, right?

Chapter 30: Recuérdame: I cry while writing this chapter, both for my baby Xion and because Coco is just that damn tearjerking

Chapter 31: Destined Reunion: ALL THE POLY DESTINY TRIO FEELS

Chapter 32: Something There: At this point even Riku be lookin at Sora and Kairi and shouting "KISS ALREADY YOU ADORABLE DORKS"

Chapter 33: Tale as Old as Time: Sora commits an Actual Murder (am i kidding? Who knooooows)

Chapter 34: The Realm of Darkness: DARK AQUA CAN STEP ON MAH FACE IMO

Chapter 35: Rise to the Light: Great, now Aqua has PTSD too, thanks for nothin, Mickey

Chapter 36: Return to Depart: Sora has another Identity Crisis, part 2

Chapter 37: Broken Chains: Vanitas challenges Sora and Ven to a fight in the Denny's parking lot and fucking loses what else is new

Chapter 38: So This is Love: YES THEY FINALLY KISSED THOSE DORKS

Chapter 39: Almost There: Frogs and also like... Voodoo and so many BBS callbacks so damn many

Chapter 40: Dig a Little Deeper: Sora is too damn stubborn to admit he needs help what else is new

Chapter 41: Follow the Light: Wayfinder Family Reunion saves my life

Chapter 42: Solving Mysteries, Rewriting History: Sora and Goofy meet Donalds family (who then proceed to take the piss outta Donald cause this is Ducktales fam why wouldnt they)

Chapter 43: The Other Promise: Sora has yet another Identity Crisis, part 3

Chapter 44: Vector to the Heavens: Sora and Roxas drink their "Respect and Protect Xion" juice

Chapter 45: Another Arabian Night: Sora, Roxas, and Xion fuck around in a B-list Disney Direct to Video Sequel

Chapter 46: Out of Thin Air: GONNA THROW HANDS WITH XEHANORT HIMSELF THIS TIME AROUND GET AWAY FROM MY SON YA OLD FUCKHEAD

Chapter 47: Alone on the Run: Sora has a Bad Time, Riku and Kairi also have a Bad Time, generally everyone has a Bad Time

Chapter 48: Trust No One: Ven and Roxas add onto the never ending Twin Pile that apparently exists in Gravity Falls

Chapter 49: Not What He Seems: I KNOW ITS NOT UF BUT LOOKS LIKE I GOTTA THROW HANDS WITH BILL CIPHER ANYWAY SOMEHOW

Chapter 50: A Heart Torn Between: Vanitas learns that Girls exist while Sora continues to have a Very Bad Time

Chapter 51: Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride: Riku's goin on a twink hunt, and dont think he dont know how to weeeeed em out

Chapter 52: Aloha 'Oe: Sora and Riku get into a bit of a lover's spat dont worry about it its nothin serious dont worry about it

Chapter 53: Treasured Memories: Namine is the Very First Person Ever to tell Vanitas he has emotional issues, its about damn time

Chapter 54: Let It Go: KAIRI'S FUCKIN PISSED SHE GONNA BRING HER DAMN DUMBASS WAYWARD BOYFRIEND HOME ALREADY DAMN also Sora hangs out with Elsa i guess

Chapter 55: Love Will Thaw: KAIRI KICKS EVERYONES ASSES INCLUDING SORA'S CAUSE LIKE I SAID SHES FUCKIN PISSED

Chapter 56: Back Into the Fold: Sora doesnt have an Identity Crisis anymore but he sure as hell has Anxiety now, part 4

Chapter 57: Farewell to the Wood: Absolute tone whiplash, brought to you by Winnie the Pooh and Sora's ongoing Existential Crisis too

Chapter 58: Link to All: Everyone just cries a lot for an entire chapter cause they all know they boutta fuckin dieeeee

Chapter 59: Face My Fears: I systematically rip every single one of our protagonists hearts out and stomp on each of them with no remorse whatsoever

Chapter 60: Fragments of Light: The B-Squad saves the day

Chapter 61: The Thirteenth Vessel: Sora hangs out with his New Fam, otherwise known as Organization XIII, family fun ensues and it totally isnt a massive angstfest i dont know what you mean

Chapter 62: Key to the Heart: Riku and Kairi throw hands with their boyfriend while also trying to save their boyfriend it makes sense if ya dont think about it

Chapter 63: The Final World: Sora is McFuckin dead and chilling in heaven with a cute baby plushie cat (hey its not a spoiler if KH3 did it first)

Chapter 64: At Daybreak: "But Jen, if you hate KHX so much then why do you keep making so many references to it???" BECAUSE THATS WHY NOW SHUT UP

Chapter 65: The Keyblade War: Keyblade Fight Club, either you Die or you DIE

Chapter 66: Clash of Light and Darkness: Bunch of teenagers throw hands with some bald old fuckhead, but in the end nobody wins except me

Chapter 67: Kingdom Hearts: You know you're in for something fucking nuts when the chapter title is named after the entire series

Chapter 68: The King and the Crown: Jen pulls off a plot twist so mind blowingly ridiculous that it would probably make Tetsuya Nomura blush

Chapter 69: Reconnect: Everyone has a happy ending except no not really i lied

Chapter 70: Don't Think Twice: Oops I Lied again :)

Epilogue: Dearly Beloved: Fuck KH3's ending this is my new canon now