#i went back to edit my original post to say more and completely lost this train of thought | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

andreal831 · 13 days

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I got a lot of edits on my fyp prior to watching any TVDU show so I knew a solid amount of the plot lines prior to watching either show, which also means I knew what characters were normalized to be hated/loved. I started these shows and expected to absolutely despise Matt, Elena, Tyler, and Cami. None of them are my favorite, but I never understood the hate for any of them whatsoever.

The Matt hate just makes no sense, I’m convinced people just want to “fit in” and hate the person that everyone else hates. You pretty much explained everything I would say for him so I’ll hold back a bit here. And yeah, I’m tired of people pretending he’s not attractive cause there is not a single actor on this show that doesn’t look good.

Everyone calls Elena a crybaby, but if they had lost the amount of people that she had before they’re even 20 years old, I guarantee you they’d be crying even more than she did. And calling her selfish? She very rarely ever put herself over anyone. There’s also the argument that she ‘played Stefan’ which in my opinion is just straight out wrong, it’s not like she was pretending to be in love with him while she was with him, but if you hate her for that, you’d have to hate like half the show. I swear everyone dated everyone within that friend group, why do people only hate on her for it? Also this has nothing to do with my point, but why does everyone hate on her NH era? I liked it, it gave her character something different.

Everyone hates on Tyler for one of two reasons. One being that he tried to SA Vicki in season 1, which you would think is a valid excuse, but then they go onto say Klaus, Damon, and/or Katherine is their favorite character (and I’m saying this as my Damon and Klaus are both in my top 5 TVDU characters). The second reason would be something along the lines of Tyler wanting to get revenge on Klaus. I do think he went too far with trying to kill Hayley/hope, but aside from that, he had every right to get revenge on Klaus. He killed his mom and practically ruined his life, including messing with his relationship with Caroline. I actually love Forewood, but I don’t think they could’ve been endgame after that. So I don’t get why people hate on him for leaving Caroline, because I feel like continuing to lead her on when his head is nowhere near the right space would’ve been worse.

Then there’s cami, which is honestly the most confusing one out of all to me. I completely understand her not being your favorite, especially if you’re into more of the anti heroes or villains (like me), but I do not understand why people just absolutely despise her. She plays a major part in the originals, especially early on, as she is the only person Klaus seems to care about listening to whatsoever. He isn’t paying Hayley any sort of attention, and he lied to/betrayed Elijah left and right in season 1. She’s also never betrayed anyone that she considers to be friends or family. The biggest reason she’s hated on is because she ‘stole Klaus from Caroline.” 1. I genuinely just do not get what people see in klaroline. I don’t absolutely despise them, but I do not like them either. Klaus hurt her multiple times (which, by the way, why do people act like Klaus is a hero for saving Caroline from a bite he caused…?) and Caroline was manipulating him every chance she got. I totally understand the whole ‘enemies to lovers’ trope, considering I like delena, but I just do not get it here. 2. How did anyone see that Klaus (and the originals) was getting his own show, and still expect klaroline to work out? 95% of interactions they had post TO being made was complete fan service. It would’ve been WAY too difficult to do a long distance thing with two different shows, especially when neither of them were (im so gonna get hated for this) never in love with each other, they weren’t even in a relationship. Oh and back to the forewood thing real quick, Tyler had every right to be pissed at Caroline for sleeping with Klaus.

Well that turned into a klaroline bashing towards the end. For the record my top 5 characters are Damon, Elijah, kol, hayley, and Klaus in that order and there really aren’t any ships (canonical ships anyway) that I absolutely hate so.

Side note, thank you for being able to hold characters accountable. I like characters as villains/anti heroes because they are a villain/anti hero, I will never understand why people try to defend their favorite character and make them seem like a hero. Like the character for their character, don’t make them into something completely different. If you wanna debate anything further (or something entirely different) let me know, I enjoy debating about shows, I just typically can’t find anyone in this fandom (or any fandom for that matter) that is able to have an actual debate without someone starting to scream over an opinion lmao.

There really isn’t a question here I just kinda felt like ranting after reading your post about Matt Donovan so here it is. Reply to this as you please!

I was fortunate enough to watch the shows before I got into the fandom so I didn't get spoilers (at least for TVD), but more importantly, I didn't have anyone to influence me on which characters to like or not. Which was why I was so surprised when I joined the fandom and saw so much hatred. But I do think some people just "bandwagon" hate characters. Especially Matt. Because anytime I ask people why, they can't even truly express why they *hate* him.

Elena was never my favorite character but I loved early seasons of Elena. I even enjoyed her NH era. I didn't like her sire bond era much. But she definitely gets too much hate. Even at times when I think she can be selfish, she's still miles better than the men the fandom loves.

I've actually posted about Tyler before, you can find that here. Sure, he's done questionable/problematic things, but who hasn't? The hate he gets is ridiculous, especially because it always comes from Damon or Klaus stans. I actually like Caroline and adored Forewood, but I hated how she handled the breakdown of their relationship. I blame the writers. They continuously tanked Caroline's character in order to get views with klaroline.

I love Cami and she is the one character that I truly believe has done no wrong. Cami was truly a turning point for Klaus. Cami was not only an important person for Klaus but for the entire Mikaelson family and the entirety of New Orleans. I also wrote about that recently. But yes, 100% of the hate she gets is because of Klaroline stans. I used to be indifferent to Klaroline. Like I don't like them because they are toxic and I would never ship them, and there are plenty of ships I feel this way about, but the fandom has made me actively dislike them. Klaroline had no possible way of working out and was just lust, but people build them up in their head and then attacked and harassed a real life person because of their delusions.

I'm glad you found my post and enjoyed it! I love finding people that want to engage and have actual discussions about the fandom. Too many people get so set in their views and can't discuss the characters without getting angry. I completely agree. We can all love the characters but 99% of the characters in this show are problematic to say the least. We can love them and still acknowledge this. I love to analyze the morality of the show because it is interesting as we can't use are real life standards to do so. I obviously love over analyzing everything about the show as I spend so much time doing so.

Feel free to ask anything or reach out!

#tvdu #the originals #the vampire diaries #tvd #anon ask #fandom asks #tvd anon ask #tvd ask #fandom answers #tvdu metas #metas #anti klaroline #just to be safe #i kind of went on a rant there too

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away-ward · 10 months

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Note: I think this is "The Will Post" people reference sometimes, but I'm not sure. Here and Here are the links to the original Anon messages.

This was the first time I'd received a message like this and I didn't know how to response. Eventually, it became the norm for people leave me ranty messages about this series and it's characters. I usually got a kick out of them because you guys are hilarious, and then I'd tried to answer seriously because I like discussion and discourse. So, I developed the method of answering that is seen on other posts. I just wanted to make clear why this one looks different. I wasn't trying to single them out or make an entire post about Will. Anyway.

On to the response!

Original response below, edited for grammar, spelling, and word choice. Some rephrasing, but essentially the same thoughts.

I think, first and foremost, it’s essential to get out of the way that to enjoy this series, you can’t look at any of the characters too closely. Because once you do, you’ll realize almost everybody here sucks in some way or another.

That being said, let’s look at the characters way too closely.

Anon, I organized your thoughts by character/relationships to make it easier to manage my thoughts and form a response. So, I'll take it individually instead of responding to each part directly as you wrote it. I don’t think I or anyone else can say anything that will change your mind, but as regards to how I approach the characters when writing them, these are my thoughts.

But thank you so much for reading my fics! The fact that people spend their time doing so is always such a big compliment, even if some of the things I wrote...didn't quite sit right with you.

Disclaimer: these are my thoughts and opinions and are in no way meant to be asserted as fact or canon. Thank you.

FYI, this is a long one, folks. Grab a drink before you start.

First up:

Will and Alex

You’re absolutely right that Will and Alex only knew each other for about five years when we got to Nightfall. I messed up when I wrote Reality and said seven years. I realized it about two to three weeks after posting it and never went back to fix it. Good catch.

I see that you have a problem with Alex. That’s valid. I’m not entirely sure if it’s how I portray Alex and her relationship with Will or Alex from the source material that you have a bigger issue with. Still, I’ll try to explain my feelings about her beyond what I’ve said in other posts.

Feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong because, honestly, I have disregarded most of what Alex has said and done. After all, it hardly ever matters to the plot. Like you, I have the viewpoint that Alex’s involvement in the story doesn’t affect anything and, more often than not, makes a scene worse. I can’t think of a single time when Alex did something one of the other characters couldn’t do.

I think the timeline is that Will was arrested at 19 and released at 21/22. He would have met Alex soon after his release. It would be just a few months before the beginning of Corrupt. We first meet Alex through Michael. She comes off as confident and self-assured, in complete control of herself. She doesn’t hesitate to let Rika know she’s an escort when the opportunity arises. Her boldness gives off the feeling that she’s world-wise, with years of experience.

The reality is that she’s the same age as Rika. Given this, she would have only been in this line of work for a few months to a year, if we consider her account of events to be accurate. It tracks that Alex would be reeling from losing her friends and scholarship. She didn’t just lose Aydin when her roommate betrayed her. Alex lost her entire support system, and her plans for the future. Maybe she did figure out how to land on her feet through sex work, but I don’t think she was completely content with it – at least not as much as she tries to appear to be. She always said it was temporary, not a forever job, and she planned on doing more once she graduated.

Towards the beginning of their relationship, Will and Alex had a more casual approach to each other. While they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, they weren’t close. But a year passes between Corrupt and Hideaway, and that is plenty of time to get to know someone and develop an intimate relationship. Their friendship deepens over time, but because of how the story is told with the reader only viewing this very narrow window of the character's lives during October every year, we don’t see much of that progress. We don’t know what significant moments these two have shared, what they’ve revealed to each other when it was four in the morning and no one else was around. I believe Will and Alex found solace in each other; peace they couldn’t find with anyone else available to them.

We can see their progression over the years in small moments

In Corrupt, when Damon is being aggressive with Alex, Will laughs and leaves it alone. I think his feelings are that this is her job and she can handle herself. Damon is his friend. Will sides with Damon.

In Hideaway a year later, Will supports Alex in the shopping scene. His comment to Banks is pretty neutral but more positive than before.

Yet, in the third year of their friendship or relationship (whatever you want to call it), we see Will defending Alex against Damon.

Damon's petty words are nothing compared to the way Damon physically treated her just two years prior. Some might argue that Will is acting out of his anger towards Damon, and using Alex as a prop to do it. That's fair. Will isn't the most emotionally intelligent person at this point of the story.

I think it's a mixture of both. Will wants to hurt Damon by replacing him (with a girl nonetheless. The horror), but it's also that his relationship with Alex has changed. He cares for her more now than he did even a year ago. He won't tolerate Damon saying spiteful things to Alex.

In Kill Switch, when Damon is threatening war, Will is the one who brings up Alex. He sees value in her being at his side.

Anon, you asked how their friendship could be that deep if she didn’t know that Will was missing. I don’t have Conclave on me, so I could be wrong, but weren’t Will’s parents lying for him? First, he was actually globetrotting – posting pictures on social media from various locations. Then the lie was he was with some program to help in third-world countries? Either way, it’s entirely believable that it would take a while to figure out something wasn’t quite right with the story. Should they have figured it out earlier? Sure. It shouldn’t have taken his younger cousin to make his three closest friends aware that Will was missing.

But in the Horsemen’s defense, they’re married with children and running businesses. And it’s not like they weren’t trying to reach him.

At the end of Kill Switch, Damon talks about how they got him clean from drugs, but alcohol was a bigger issue. He also mentions that he's been leaving messages often, waiting for a response. Damon was mad that Will missed the birth of his son, and it's not like Damon wasn't trying to make Will aware that it was happening.

Damon tried. Will made the decision to leave without telling anyone and go to a location they wouldn't be able to find him, and then he arranged for his family to lie about his whereabouts. I think the boys have an excuse for not knowing something was up right away, and then for acting when they did.

The way Conclave focuses on other issues is not the character's fault; it's what the author wanted to focus on. But there's nothing to say that the characters didn't eventually get down to business and figure out what needed to be done to get to Will. I agree that that portion of events would have been a more interesting story and would have set us up beautifully for Nightfall, but I've digressed enough.

Getting back to Alex. I find that she tends to lean towards putting her pleasure above all else, unless the situation is dire, or she's been given a direct instruction by one of the other characters. She has moments where she takes things seriously, but for the most part she seems to flounce around with a childish air. And Will does most of the time as well, and maybe that’s why they gravitated towards each other. While Kai, Michael and the others are growing, Will is stuck and Alex is on a similar level. They leaned into each other, and this worked for a while. But then Will was ready to grow, and he knew he couldn't let them carry his weight any longer, Alex included.

The bottom line, I don’t like Alex. I’ve never liked Alex. I was indifferent to her for a while, but Nightfall did her no favors in my eyes. In reviewing the series, I’ve come to dislike her even more. To use what you’ve said, Alex gives me the "ick." The way she naturally falls into coercing and manipulating people doesn't rub me the right away and never has. I'm not saying she's ever forced someone to do something they didn't want to do, but possibly things they'd rather not?

For instance, in Hideaway, we have this thought from Banks about how Alex coerced her into drinking during the sleepover scene. Banks, while wanting to enjoy a "normal" life, also felt it was important to keep her wits about her when around Kai. So Alex "coercing" her to drink feels like she ignores what people want so that she can have a good time.

Again, in Hideaway, Alex as pulled Lev, I believe, away from his post so that she can try to sleep with him. Same as before, Lev wasn't opposed to the idea of sleeping with Alex, but he had a job to do, and that moment was not the time. Alex ignored that because wanted what she wanted. And like a child, she wanted it there and then.

(I mean, I guess the argument could be made that Alex was the only one who could have helped Banks tap into her femininity because Banks hated everyone else, especially Rika but still. I don’t like the way she behaves in general.)

But when I’m writing about these characters – especially when the setting for a fic is in the canon universe – I don't want to ignore PD intended for their relationship. They wanted Will and Alex to have a deep connection different from what he shared with the others. I’m not convinced it was ever meant to be romantic, but it was meant to be deep.

I think you’re also correct in saying that Will used his friendship with Alex to soothe and distract from the pain of what happened between him and Damon.

Which brings us to our next part.

Will and Damon

I think it’s a bit harsh to say Damon was always a tool to distract Will from reality. I believe Will quite liked his reality in high school. He was privileged, wealthy, attractive, athletic, popular, and had a good home life. The only thing missing was the girl of his dreams, and he was delusional enough to think it was only a matter of time before she came to him. There was nothing to distract from. Will enjoyed every second of it. He loved the drinking, the partying, the sex, and the camaraderie between his friends and teammates. He lived for it.

He never wanted to leave it.

And I think Damon loved Will. He wanted to keep Will “safe” inside this little bubble where nothing could hurt him or take away his joy. Damon wanted Will to be happy, as long as Will's happiness didn't take him away.

The second Will started talking about Emory like she was different from the other girls was the second Damon began to hate her. Because Emory had the ability no one else had: she could either take Will away from him or destroy Will. And Will would let it happen because he’s full of love, and he's soft.

And that’s precisely what happened when Emory and Will did finally connect, as Damon knew it would.

Damon did know Will. He knew what he liked, what he wanted, how he thought. He probably understood Will better than Will understood himself. Which is how he knew exactly what to say and what do to hurt Will.

That's why Damon was sick at the thought of losing him, completely out of his mind with grief at what he’d done. That's why when Damon thought of leaving, all he wanted was to take was Winter, Banks, and Will.

I’d dare to say it’s Michael and Kai that Damon doesn’t care about all that much. Not that he hates them. He’d kill for them. Walk through fire for them. Go to prison rather than rat them out for a lighter sentence. But there’s something in Will that Damon wanted to protect and keep.

The problem was Damon's a little control freak in the worst way. This means he goes way too far in doing anything. His whole redemption arc is learning how not to do that with literally everything and still be okay. The little weirdo.

I’m not a Damon apologist, if there is such a thing. Damon’s trauma and redemption arc doesn’t do anything for me. I also don’t think it's any excuse for his actions before then. I won’t deny that he does add to the series for me. Most of the time, if Damon was there, I was paying attention, whether I liked him or not.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but I would have loved for his redemption arc to be the last part of the series because it makes more sense as a conclusion. To read Nightfall, not knowing if he was going to be a real villain by the end of the series, would have made his scenes with Emory and the other characters all the more chilling,

But the story is what it is, and again, I don't want to ignore what PD was trying to do with Damon and Will, so when I write about the two of them, where one is, the other follows.

On a side note, PD did an excellent job of introducing the potential bond that Damon and Emory would eventually share. They can relate to each other on multiple levels:

The abuse.

The love for Will.

Their artistic visions.

The way they covered for each other when they didn’t need to.

Their bond would be much stronger than Em’s with Alex, and I wish the fandom focused on it more.

Besides

Moving on.

Will

You’re right when you say that Will was doing all those things before he went to prison, before he almost died, and before Damon left him.

The main difference is that he was doing it for fun before all of that. He didn’t need to do it; his life didn’t revolve around it. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence but more of an occasional thing. Once Emory broke his heart and his friends left for college, we see him start to spiral just a little

And that was after only losing Emory.

He needed his life at TBP to stabilize, and once his support system was gone, he couldn’t cope. And I like to focus on that aspect of Will. He was weak and soft before because he’d never faced a real challenge. His privilege, and later Damon, prevented him from experiencing any difficulties, doing him a disservice. When change was on the horizon, Will didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know who he was outside of being a rich teenager. And had things gone along without interruption, he probably would have continued down that path, either never growing up completely or eventually OD’ing.

Going to prison might have saved his life, and if Damon hadn’t betrayed him, he might have been okay.

Except Damon did betray him. So, he started spiraling again, this time worse than before, because now he didn’t even have his friends to fall back on. He couldn't go a day without getting drunk or high. As Banks said, he was only sober long enough to get to his fridge. Nothing was good. His two remaining friends didn’t like how he was acting, and they were moving on without him. The girl of his dreams didn’t care that he went to prison for her – she didn’t even call! (Note: I'm not made about this; it's just Will's feelings on the subject). Rika wasn’t the revenge he was hoping for, and now he didn’t even have that to look forward to. All he really had going for him was the approval he received from Alex.

I haven’t considered how much Alex had a hand in things. I want to think that since they were new friends, she took an “it’s not my place to tell him what to do; his friends will step in if it goes too far” position. At the same time, I can see her encouraging him because it’s what she wanted to do to cover her own pain and fear. Again, because we don’t get moments outside these high-intensity situations, we don’t really know how their friendship works.

But even so, a person’s early twenties are turbulent, to begin with, and Will had to learn how to cope with losing Emory, going to prison, nearly dying, and losing his best friend all within a matter of a few years.

The fandom talks a lot about Damon’s trauma, but we ignore entirely that between the four boys, Will comes in a close second for the most traumatized. All his trauma is fresh, and in a short period of time.

He was an active participant in his own downward spiral. He hid his pain behind a mask of smiles and good times, which carried him through until it didn't work anymore. Furthermore, he knew when Damon came back, he had no more excuses. The thing about relationships is that they require good communication and mutual respect, neither of which Will had. Mainly because he didn’t respect himself. With his friends' help, Will kicked his drug habit. It’s possible that with the clarity that came with it, he saw himself dragging his friends down. His friends were starting families and business, but he was still stuck. Kai said it best when he said Will never did anything on his own, and that was true until Will decided to go to Blackchurch.

So, they would have no reason to suspect that Will was doing anything other than what he said – traveling the world and figuring things out. But Michael, Kai, and Damon hadn't abandoned him. They were trying. Will was the one who left them hanging.

To expect his friends to respect and trust him, and to develop some respect and trust in himself, he had to grow up. But his friends cut him a lot of slack. They let his stupid mistakes go unchecked and unpunished because it’s Will. I think in their eyes, he never meant any harm, or he was young and dumb, or he was hurting. They gave him a million excuses because they loved him. They weren’t strong enough to be the firm hand and give him the tough love he needed. Before anyone else, Will realized what he needed, and knew he couldn’t get it from his friends. Beyond that, he was too embarrassed to ask for it, to be seen as weak to them. Because everyone looked at their group and saw Will as the weak link, Will began to see himself that way too. And he was right.

The Will before Emory and the Will after prison are two different people. I guess it’s up to the reader to decide who is more authentic. I choose to see Will before Emory as the real him, Will after prison, a mask he wears to keep from being hurt again, and Will during Blackchurch as someone stripped down to their barest form. He’s lost before Emory shows up, not knowing whether he can return to the real world and start again. It takes some prompting from Emory to get him moving and feeling like himself. And after Blackchurch, we see the Will from high school begin to resurface.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this thought. But I think all the things you’ve complained about regarding Will are why he went to Blackchurch. He wanted to quit the drugs and drinking permanently, so he could grow up and be the person his friends needed. Then they wouldn’t have to pull his weight. I hated Will through most of the series because of his actions, the way he treated Banks and Winter specifically. Once I realized he was hiding all that heartbreak and pain, his motives and actions became more obvious. Again, pain is not an excuse to hurt anyone, but we are reading about imperfect characters who make mistakes and rarely, if ever, take the high road.

I’d say that part of the story is that when others hit low, they go lower. They’ll go to hell if it means getting one over on anyone who's pissed them off.

They’re petty.

All of them.

The Horsemen

I love friendships. Especially strong ones. Ones that don’t make sense on the surface. The kind of friendships where you know if it weren’t for unconditional love and loyalty, these people would probably stab each other multiple times, but instead they'll stab anyone who hurts them.

The problem with the Horsemen is that because they are supposed to focus on the four romances, we don’t get much of their friendship. PD gives us small glimpses here and there, and then says, “Just trust me, they’re brothers.” However, that leaves a lot to be desired when the entire plot hinges on them practically dying for each other every other year.

But I’ve read other books about solid relationships. I’ve watched shows with the same dynamic. The idea of a unique foursome with an unparalleled bond isn’t unheard of by any means. It's an old trope. So, I can fill in the gaps. It’s sometimes irritating to have to do that when I shouldn't have to. For instance, I have no idea what would happen if I put Emory and Michael alone in a room together. None. They stand in separate corners and don’t talk to each other, and this is because their relationship receives zero development. If you’re going to tell me that this group is a close, chosen family, willing to die for each other; that they loves and need each other, and that each member of the family (everyone from Michael their leader, to Emory the most recent addition) provides something critical to make the family work, then I need to see it. I need to feel it. But if I can't determine how two people in this family would interact, then something is missing.

But I have the ability to add what isn’t there, and to pull inspiration from other sources to fill-in what PD clearly intended. (If there's one thing about Devil's Night, is the potential for Head Canons galore!)

As you said, Anon, there were many times when their problems could have been solved by communication. However, I don’t think communication was a skill any of these men developed. Especially when admitting they were wrong, or talking about their feelings, or showing any sign of weakness in front of each other. Pride is a cruel master; it will trip you up if you give it a chance. But I don’t think their faults were a lack of love for each other.

Michael was overly cautious where Will was reckless, which often caused disagreements. Michael acknowledged this in Corrupt. I still think there is plenty of evidence that they cared about each other and knew each other on a deeper level. I get why you’d say they didn’t care about Will, but if we only look at the one time Will jagged left when he usually goes right, it’s understandable that they’d be a little slow to react.

I mean, think about them being on a team in high school. If Will always preferred to shoot from a certain position, then Michael and the others would work to put him in that position. They’d get the ball to him. But what if he suddenly decided to be on the other side of the court? Then they’d be throwing the ball to an empty spot, because that’s where Will always was before. Just because Will did something he’s never done before doesn’t mean they don’t know him.

They didn’t expect Will to pull the Blackchurch maneuver for the same reasons I mentioned above:

Will never did anything on his own.

He went traveling first, either because he needed to or with the purpose of disappearing. After that, he quickly switched gears without telling anyone.

He had his family lie about it. It was probably his grandfather dispensing information, and who's going to call Senator A.P. Grayson out?

As I said before, if you look at these characters too closely, you’ll find that nothing is redeeming about any of them. But they sure are fun.

I think?

I don’t know anymore. Are we having fun? ARE YOU???

Emory... versus the world?

Emory learned to think on her feet through trial and error with Martin. Unlike Will, she had to learn to survive, which made her think things through before making a decision. Of course, it made her too wary and overly defensive at times. One wrong step and she could have lost her life to Martin losing control.

Emory had a plan to survive, to eventually escape. It didn't include falling for a pretty boy with pretty words. She knew, as good as it sounded and as much as she wanted it, any plan that Will came up with to save her and her grandma could have gone sideways real fast. She made the decision that had the best chance of succeeding, because it relied on her alone. She made the decision out of fear, but I don’t think that fear was misplaced. Hating her because she was forced to make that decision is dumb.

I will say she gave Will mixed signals. But...she was young and emotional and he was the one good thing in her life outside her grandma. I can't blame her for being human and needing him, but it's not wrong to hold her accountable for that.

Just like it's not wrong to hold Will accountable to the fact that he didn't listen for the three years she tried to warn him to stay away. Just like it's not wrong to hold him accountable for pushing her when she had previously said no.

I believe I’ve said this elsewhere, but I don’t know where. I don’t understand Alex and Emory’s relationship. I don’t get why Alex was so friendly with Emory when they first met and then judged her for not being around when Will was hurt. Either she understood Emory’s struggle, or she didn’t. Either way, one of these scenarios doesn’t make sense.

As for Aydin - I don’t care about Aydin. I hated him. I still hate him. I hate that he’s barely three years older than Emory, kidnapped her, messed with her mind, forcibly kissed her to make Will and Alex jealous (which is still considered a form of sexual assault, by the way), and she still wanted to consider him a mentor. I don’t care that he was more valuable as an ally. I thought their bond was too strong after a week to be taken that seriously.

I mean, Anon, you’re criticizing the bond between the Horsemen even though they’ve known each other for over a decade, but Emory's known Aydin for all of five days, and that’s all it takes for her to need him and understand him? Because she realized he’d be better as their ally against the families? Because she's smart? I call BS on this entire thing. This was one of the weakest storylines in my opinion and I mentioned on another post how I think it could have been helped just a little bit if Aydin had been older. It wouldn't have fixed it! But I could have tolerated it more. I stand by that.

I still don’t know what Aydin brought to the table that Micah or Rory didn’t. He's there because of only because of Alex, so to favor him while despising her also doesn't make sense to me. They're literally the same.

Anon, are you talking about how other fans treat Emory like she’s the worst character because she hurt Will? When literally all of these characters have hurt each other—all of them. The only characters we don't see taking actions that hurt another are Emory toward any other character that isn't Will, and that's because there isn't time. The series ended before we could see Emory interact with any of them, and all their major problems were over. There was no opportunity, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have if the series had been ordered differently. So, if people are hating on Emory for hurting Will alone, then they're probably biased toward one of the other girls (probably Alex). Not saying that readers can't dislike Emory for other reasons. She won't be for everyone and I'm sure there are valid reasons to dislike her. For me, she was the one I could relate to the most out of the main four, and I really felt for her struggles. She had the most realistic character arc, and her finding her way back to Will made the most sense over Rika, Banks, Winter, and even Alex with Aydin.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on everything you said. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of what I was actually attempting to say. Regarding my way of writing specifically, since I'm filling in voids and holes that I felt were too unanswered, I tried to remain as close to canon as I could. Not necessarily what was there, but what was intended. I don't always keep them in character as PD wrote them, but I try to get the same vibe.

This means, even though I don’t like Alex, I know Will likes her. So when I write about Will, she’s sometimes there too, and it's sometimes positive.

***

Anyone is welcomed to share their thoughts...if you're brain's not numb by now. If it is, I understand. Thanks for making it this far and listening to my rambling.

-KO

#devil's night series stuff #asked and answered #asked and answered 11 #the horsemen of devil's night #the women of devil's night #devil's night series #debated putting DN tag in because this is a lot #let me know if I should remove it #I don't write essays #I just wanna write pretty words and characters smooching

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fyrets · 7 months

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Valentine Gene Development E-Mails LEAKED {NOT CLICKBAIT!!!}

So last night on discord I was able to share the Valentine gene WIPs I've been receiving through e-mail over the past months and I think it's worth sharing on here too! Be warned this is gonna be image heavy and long so under the cut it goes.

(note: the title is a joke 🥺everyone be niceys to me)

To start, I've already posted some of my very early design concepts on here, and it includes some stuff I sent to the team after the Kickstarter ended (November 2022). However, it looks like I never posted this little "ref sheet" that I also sent to the team! Of course it becomes something vastly different by the end, especially since in the next year the gene style was going to be revamped so I was operating under very different rules, but some certain details I wanted managed to be preserved regardless!

Fast forward to July 2023, I receive the first round of rough mockups! Because of the revamped art style, the artists did some experimentation and exploration of how they could interpret the concept and let me pick a direction to go in. I went with #3 because I thought it nailed down the idea of what I wanted while adding the detail of the new style really well. The only change I requested was to port the tail of #2 onto #3 because I really liked it! I am a tail tip enjoyer.

Time passes, and I get more emails in September 2023. The artists wanted to give the head area of the 3 design another shot because the original was a bit wonky. I received four examples (that for the purpose of this post I have cropped and compiled into a single image since the head area was all that was altered so its easier to compare them all this way.)

Being completely honest none of these were really speaking to me, at least not completely as they were being presented. Not being able to find the right words to say what I wanted exactly, I decided to make an edit of one of the D variants! The main changes I made were removing the contouring of the face, changing the scalp design to invoke a sort of spade (which is something I've wanted since day one!) and bringing back the freckles.

Finally, on October 8th 2023, I received the final render of Valentine! We unfortunately lost the freckles because they felt noisy (and this has caused issues with other gene concepts behind the scenes as well, so this wasn't just a me problem 😔 RIP freckle enjoyers), but other than that, WOW!!! Valentine came out like a dream. They really kicked it out of the water and I'm so happy to know other people think so too!

#meow.txt #paw borough #sorry for so much valentine posting i just keep thinking about it #kicking my feet giggling and twirling my hair #its what the gene would've wanted

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azerothtravel · 1 year

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Secret Origin

I'm just an old time Warcraft nerd who's too dumb to quit. My first WC game was Warcraft II, when I was in high school. I gravitated toward the Horde because they were funnier. I liked the game, but wasn't too good at it. Jump ahead to the release of Warcraft III, it's a whole other thing. I read all the lore in the huge manual. I was completely taken with the concept of orcs as once noble, tragic victims trying to make their way in the world and atone for their crimes. A friend of mine had me read some of the novels. I was suddenly way, way into the setting. Plus, I knew a lot of people who played WC3. I enjoyed the Orgrimmar campaign in Frozen Throne with no idea it was more or less a test run for WoW.

But I didn't like MMOs. I wasn't sure about WoW. Then I got into the beta. I hauled my whole-ass desktop over to the house of the same friend who loaned me those books, and we were up til 4am downloading the client and then getting started. Gormorash the orc warrior was born that night (And so was Skarsnik the troll hunter, but he lost interest after BC). I was immediately sold. Running around Azeroth at ground level, full of detail from the RTS games, was a ton of fun. Gormorash went on many strange adventures in beta, like a hilariously inept "raid" on Westfall where half our group died before we got there and none of us were even level 60.

Then Gormorash was rebooted on Argent Dawn US when the game launched, a member of <Flaming Skull Clan> with several other friends of mine.

By middle 2005, almost literally everyone I knew played WoW. My oldest friends, friends from college, friends from the internet, relatives. Basically 2 friends and my parents were the only people not playing. Friends of mine who didn't know each other met and bonded through WoW. It was a glorious time.

By the end of 2006, I'd been through 2 guild collapses and one server move, as they opened up free transfers to Eitrigg and my friends all took it. I wasn't sure I'd keep playing. The novelty had worn off for most of my friends. I wasn't that into raiding, and doing Arathi Basin over and over was only so interesting (Gormorash just lived in Hammerfall for like a year). I was maybe gonna quit. And then, in early 2007, my brother found 2 Collector's Editions of BC just sitting on a shelf in a store, and asked if I wanted one. I had the vanilla CE, but I'd missed BC when they were released, and didn't buy BC at all. He bought them and shipped me one, and we leveled 60-70 together. It was a lot of fun.

Along the way, I started a new guild with some online friends, and Gormorash is still in it. He's never missed an expansion. Most people have fallen off the wagon. Our guild typically only has 3 active members at any given time these days, but that's fine with me. Sometimes a couple people come back for major content. It was lore that got me into all this, and that remains my primary motivator for playing. My endgame is more PvP and leveling alts than raiding, but the game has literally never supported those 2 things better than right now (2023), so that's pretty good. I still have a good time. And that's why I have hundreds of screenshots to choose from stretching from the 2004 open beta to just a few days ago to post on this blog. With the sad exception of most of 2006, lost in a hard drive failure, I have a comprehensive collection of every screenshot I ever took, and that's what this blog is all about.

I've made a few other Gormorashes on other servers, but rarely leveled them very far. Someone out there made a Gormorash that isn't me, a fact that shocked me when I found out. Who stole my name? Was it you? I have characters of every race on both factions, but still tend to prefer Horde. If you see me, say hello!

Gormorash is an orc warrior who came of age in the camps. With his brother, Rugurrash, he's led a guild of adventures for many years, with trusty allies Snarfner, Vallkillmore and Canon rounding out the core group. His hair's started to gray after saving the world 8 or 9 times, traveling through space and time and the realms of death, but he's still out there, still exploring, still getting into trouble and mostly getting back out of it. He's an alchemist and herbalist in his spare time, and has a completely unmanageable collection of pets. He is really, really tired of being forced to fight his own Warchief, and really hopes the gods don't lean on that already very tired trope again in the future.

#wow #world of warcraft

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goodboypolly · 7 months

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A long thought about surprise queer representation:

The term ‘“getting ‘EVERY’ed” isn’t something that can just happen in any context.

The thing about the original EVERY is that it was from a completely unrelated multi show promo from Amazon’s Twitter, and no one paid that split second of Good Omens any mind for a good couple of days. Why would there be a Good Omens kiss in a queer kiss compilation for pride month, after all? Then someone actually watched the promo and went ‘wait a fucking second…’

It was out of fucking nowhere. We didn’t see a kiss coming in a million years.

When I first read the book years ago as a teenager, I fell in love with the idea of Aziraphale and Crowley. But it was a book that was finished and we would never get any new content. So I read every fanfiction written.

Then a show was announced. A mini series. A one off. Six episodes to tell the story of the book updated to the modern era. Like most of us who were fans of the book before the show, I was cautious. It could have been a dumpster fire.

And then it just wasn’t. I remember seeing a post way back in 2019 that summed it up perfectly: I knew I was going to like Crowley. I was always going to like Crowley. But I wasn’t expecting to LOVE Aziraphale. (Or something like that).

They were perfect and the extra scenes and watching these amazing actors actually play these characters gave us so much more fuel. The fandom exploded and we were so lucky to have an influx of ridiculously talented writers and artists and cosplayers joining our ranks.

I saw Neil Gaiman give a talk a mere week before the season 2 announcement was made. He is a professional like no other. I was fully fooled by him sadly saying that Good Omens was only going to be one series. He signed my book and was lovely and fully knew the whole time that he was going to change the trajectory of my fucking life the next week.

The announcement came and I lost my shit. This was something that was never going to get any more content. I was happy watching the same episodes over and over again and listening to different versions of the book or flipping through and rereading my favourite bits.

We were getting more content.

I never expected a kiss.

I don’t think any of us did. I thought we were always going to be living in the ‘it’s a love story, we’re just not going to show it or talk about it’ world. I’m used to being told that my existence as a queer person is meant to be kept as subtext.

It was days out from the show that EVERY dropped. Someone I followed on Twitter reposted it so I saw it. And I froze. I genuinely thought it was an edit. I had to tell myself it was an edit or I’d go insane. For the most part we all stayed silent on the subject. We didn’t want to spoil it for people who hadn’t seen it.

But I was going fucking insane. We weren’t getting a kiss there was no way we were getting a kiss.

When the show dropped I was there the first minute to binge the whole series in one go.

EVERY sitting in the back of my mind for the 5 or so hours of episodes.

Episode 6 was happening. I was 10 minutes out from the end. EVERY hadn’t happened. It must have been an edit.

Schrödinger’s EVERY, if you will.

Then it very much wasn’t.

It was real and it still is and I still lose my mind when I remember that it actually happened.

I don’t think anything else will ever feel like this.

—

For those who never saw it, I present:

#good omens #EVERY #aziracrow #A/C #I saw people joking about being EVERYed by HBO and I just thought about how much nothing will ever compare to the original feeling #this isn’t meant to be wanky #I just want to talk about how insane it is that this actually happened

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okami-zero · 1 year

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"You can't come here"

*watches latest G-Witch*

There it is! The seething vengeance behind that mirthless smile, hidden by a helm that obscure the eyes. Possible spoilers below (but if you are keeping up with the show, not really).

I was waiting for it. Waiting to see behind her facade, to see what embers smoldered that burned away Elnora Samaya and left Prospera Mercury. The remnants of her motherly love for her child twisted to create a weapon from her child/children. With a remaining desparate (mad, perhaps?) hope to resurrect her daughter through the use of Quiet Zero to rewrite reality. (This always goes SO WELL whenever it's attempted. /s)

Lots of people are debating/speculating that the GUND-Bits are failed Eri clones, using Ple and her clones from Gundam ZZ as a parallel. However, based on what we saw when she nearly fried Elan-But-Not-Really's brain, if she is just Permet data now... perhaps they are merely copies. Or shards. Connected and with a limited independence, but still linked to Eri's core consciousness. The fact that Aerial can act on it's own without Suletta's input (seen in the fight with Sophie) is also concerning. This basically reduces Suletta to a battery and "starter" for the Gundam. Once the Permet level hits...Six, was it? Then Suletta doesn't seem to be 100% needed.

However, this conjecture is based on Aerial's cease of attack against Sophie being not because Suletta begged her, but because she had already overloaded the poor girl's brain. I don't think there's a clear cut answer for this just yet. Also as an aside, Norea's blaming of Sophie's death on Nika feels a bit hypocritical, until one considers one simple thing.

They may not have ever lost before.

It's easy to pontificate how mobile suits, and Gundams specifically, are made for killing people when you are the one doing the killing and not the dying. But being the one doing that (well, that was mostly Sophie, poor kid), then getting angry when your comrade is killed by one such weapon of war... it is understandable, perhaps even relatable. And horrible. But the asshole response of "Well, guess you were right" hovers in the back of my mind.

This is where things start getting stickier, I reckon. Hope this ends up at least the standard 25 episodes (not counting the Prologue).

So now, we have an election for President coming in. In the running being Shaddiq, Miorine...maybe Guel, too? Someone from Peil, certainly. Or maybe. Keeping track of factions is going to start needing a scoreboard...

Peil Technologies (creepy Bene Gesserit-looking ladies creep me the absolute FUCK out)

Dawn of Fold

Benerit Group

Earth House/GUND-ARM, Inc.

Shaddiq

Lady Prospera

And now The Moderators

Hoo boy.

Oh! Oh! Wait, I almost didn't talk about poor fucking Suletta! Who is all but a freaking puppet, with absolute faith in what Mama says to do! And while Miorine is upset by Suletta basically saying "I'll do what Mom tells me, because she's always right!" mindset is actually MORE upset with Prospera having turned her daughter into a completely obedient and subservient puppet than she is directly AT Suletta. And also horrifed that Prospera would do that, to her own daughter, no less. I mean, I am with Miorine, that's absolutely horrible, but righteous fury and all-consuming thirst for vengeance are things that push all other concerns and emotions aside.

And this is merely the BEGINNING.

I say again:

Hoo boy.

Edit: When I was writing this, and went to find the quote for my post's title, Crunchyroll was having fits. Finally got it to come up, though. Guess we're just overloading their servers. xD Also HOLY SHIT THIS IS EPISODE SIXTEEN. This is going to be more than a standard 25 ep show. Or at least, I hope so. I have seen what happens when you try to cram everything into limited episodes. >.<

I don't think it'll hit Gundam Wing length (oh, but if it did, ooooh, a treat! A treat for Miette!) but we shall see!

Edit the second: Forgot in my original post to have our Earth House/GUND-ARM, Inc. underdogs on the list of factions. This nigh-egregious error has been rectified.

#okami rambles #okami watches g witch #mobile suit gundam: Witch from Mercury #mobile suit gundam #witch from mercury #g-witch #g-witch spoilers-ish

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amazinglyegg · 8 months

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Give us the headcanons plsssss

Ask and you shall receive! I wasn't actually expecting anyone to be interested in this so I'm hyped!!

Transfem! Danse Headcanons

I personally think that queerness in general is very normalized in the wasteland

Like, it's 2277. The Brotherhood doesn't give a shit what your gender is. Scribe Haylen would probably do your top surgery on the ground in the police station if you asked politely

What I'm trying to say is if Danse's egg cracks while he's in the Brotherhood "Not wanting to transition to prevent transphobia/sexism/general issues in the workplace" wouldn't be a reason to stay in the closet

It's more of the fact that Danse has created this little niche for himself, that he has so little identity outside of the Brotherhood that he feels the need to hold onto every scrap he has, even if that scrap is, well, "male".

My original idea for the drawing I made was Danse losing a bet/game/etc during his more ~wild~ Knight days and Cutler (plus some other knights) made him wear a skirt/dress/etc as "punishment"

And Danse is embarrassed and whatever, he's being laughed at, and then he goes back to his quarters to change and for the first time actually gets a glance at himself in the mirror and woah

It's more than a bit awkward - the clothes are ratted and don't fit properly, he's probably wearing his flight suit underneath, but there's a flutter in his chest that's more than just the lingering embarrassment of the lost bet

Egg successfully cracked. Now to just push down and hide those feelings about as much as he hid that dress in the back of his closet

I also wouldn't be surprised if he went through an "aw fuck I have a crossdressing kink" phase before he truly realizes he's trans

Partially because A. He's a bit repressed, both sexually and in general, and probably connects dresses and bras and general prettiness to "sexuality" rather than "womanhood", and B. It's common for your sex drive to increase once you start feeling gender euphoria

And he's completely oblivious about it all, too. He talks to trans people and watches his teammates transition and he goes "hmm good for them. I can't ever imagine what that'd be like!" And then prompty locks himself in his room, puts on a dress he "borrowed" from the lost and found, jacks off, and cries for 45 minutes.

It probably doesn't click for him until someone looks him in the eyes and says "hey man, you know you can just... be a girl, right? Like, 24/7 for the rest of your life?" And Danse is like oh my fucking god. Holy shit.

And let's be honest, with how Danse doesn't open up very much, that person would probably be Sole, and it'd probably be post-bb

Dealing with a gender identity crisis ON TOP of a synth identity crisis might be a bit much for him though so... let him take it slow

I would love to see Danse mess with his pronouns a bit - maybe she/they or she/he?

I can imagine him still having a strong attachment to his manhood, due to it being one of the only aspects of himself that really exists and isn't either ripped away from him (like the Brotherhood and Cutler) or a fake memory

So he'll go for demigender or bigender or SOMETHING not binary trans that includes both his current womanhood and his past manhood that he still connects to

The TRANS part of "transfem" is super important to him

Totally not me projecting with my own experiences as transmasc

ALSO I like to imagine he gets gender envy from the WEIRDEST things

Like Sole sneaks this shirt into his laundry:

And he is. Entranced.

Stares at himself in the mirror for the next like ten minutes straight

Haylen knocks on the door like "Hey Danse? buddy? You good in there...?"

And Danse is softly weeping like "I want them to be real... 🥺"

OKAY I'M DONE FOR NOW. I hope you enjoyed transfem Danse rambles. If you read this far congrats here's some pride edits for your commitment:

#the brainrot is real #and so is transfem danse #fallout 4 #lgbtq headcanons #headcanons #not maintagging danse for this. idk maybe if people like it i will. jurys still out on whether im hashtag cringe or not #trans mtf

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mysterycharacterbracket · 3 months

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Update post

We will begin the Final Four on Wednesday. And by that I mean the Final Four characters, the Final Four polls, the Final Four rounds, and the Final Four weeks. It's been a heck of a ride. Shout out to all the fandoms who rallied around their characters (yes, even the one who submitted the same character four times).

But before we move on, let's take another look back on this entire tournament thus far:

Preliminary

We started with 297 characters submitted. I did some math and realized that 297 = 99 x 3. So I decided to divide the characters up into 99 polls of 3 characters each. I then divided them further into 9 batches of 11 polls each. I decided that the 99 winners would go to a winners bracket, along with the top 29 losers, so we could form an even 128 character bracket. Then I realized that I didn't want the other characters to be eliminated right away before many people got a chance to discover this blog, so I decided to create a losers bracket with the remaining 169 characters. The math dictated that I would have to divide into 41 matches in the first round featuring 82 characters, and 87 characters receiving first round byes. This would be a modified double elimination bracket, i.e. losers from the winners bracket go to the losers bracket, and losers from the losers bracket get eliminated.

Then I decided to randomize the character order first so as to make it as fair as I could. I also decided not to look at the characters myself beforehand, so that I could be just as surprised as the rest of you at the reveals, and to eliminate any personal biases I might have had. I chose to make the polls a week long, so that as many people as possible could vote.

Once the format was complete, I set up the tournament!

Round 1

I started the first batch of 11 polls of round 1. To differentiate between characters, I used red, green and blue text. I realized too late (Tumblr didn't let you edit poll posts at all back then) that my posts were missing titles. I corrected this starting in the next batch.

Speaking of the next batch, I decided I really didn't feel like waiting for 9 whole weeks for the first round to be done, so I decided to stagger the polls so that each of the 9 batches started well before the previous one ended (but I made sure to not post the polls less than a day apart, because I didn't want the round being too short either.) Took exactly one month to get through the first round.

In the process, I decided that a tie for first or second place would trigger a tiebreaker, that tiebreakers would last one day (basically overtime for a poll), and that tiebreakers would not be counted towards a character's vote total for seeding purposes.

Once all the polls were posted for batch 9, I received a couple of messages saying that three characters had been submitted but were not in the tournament anywhere. So I created poll #100 between these three characters. This forced me to slightly change the math so that 100 characters would win their polls, the top 28 losers would be wild cards in the winners bracket, the next 84 would go to the second round of the losers bracket, and the bottom 88 would compete in the 44 polls in the first round of the losers bracket.

Round 1.5

Once all 100 polls came to a close, there were still some polls that needed to happen before the bracket phase could begin. I decided that all of these polls would last one day.

One poll asked you to choose from all the colors I could post in on Tumblr. The top two colors chosen were pink and purple, which I used for the winners bracket, and the next two colors chosen were green and blue, which I used for the losers bracket.

Another poll asked how I should handle seeding in the brackets. "Keep the original seeds" won out.

And then there were two ties to break. The categories ended up being:

The 100 winners went to the winners bracket.

26 characters lost their polls but finished with 57 votes or more, making them wild cards.

3 characters lost their polls with exactly 56 votes. 2 had to go to the winners bracket and 1 had to go to the losers bracket (but receive a first round bye). So they entered a tiebreaker.

79 characters lost their polls and finished with between 35 and 55 votes, so they received the first round byes in the losers bracket.

9 characters lost their polls with exactly 34 votes. I had to give 4 of them byes, and send the other 5 to the first round. So I created another tiebreaker.

And the other 83 characters lost their polls with 33 votes or less. These characters went directly to the first round of the losers bracket.

I nearly made the first tiebreaker a poll where you voted for the loser (since there would be one loser and two winners). And the second tiebreaker, I nearly split into three polls of three, giving a bye to the winner of each poll and the top wild card among the three. But I wanted to make the polls as fair and consistent as I could make them, so I didn't do that.

Group 1

Group 1 was a little different than the following groups because it's where every character started and more than half were eliminated. I started to denote each round with a letter L or W (to indicate the losers or winners bracket), and a round number. This group consisted of rounds L1, L2, W1, and L3.

Because the website I used to create the brackets only went up to 64 characters, and I had to block out certain areas of the losers brackets, I ended up creating 16 pieces of the losers bracket and 2 halves of the winners bracket.

The first round lasted 44 polls, divided into 4 batches of 11 polls. After that we switched to 8 polls per batch. Rounds L2, W1 and L3 had 64 polls, so this created 8 batches of 8. (The losers from round W1 moved on to round L3 to battle the winners from round L2. This pattern continued throughout the tournament.)

I also created a bonus poll to decide whether or not I should stagger rounds as well as polls. The result was affirmative.

Groups 2-3

The next six rounds continued in the same pattern as group 1, but with half as many batches each time. Group 2 consisted of rounds L4, W2 and L5, which each had 32 polls in 4 batches of 8, and then group 3 consisted of rounds L6, W3 and L7, which each had 16 polls in 2 batches of 8.

I re-randomized the order of characters for the bracket phase, but I did not re-randomize them for subsequent rounds; the winners from polls #1 and 2 in rounds W1 and L3 moved on to poll #1 in rounds W2 and L4 respectively, the winners of polls #3 and 4 moved on to poll #2, etc. The same principle applied in a three-round pattern throughout the entire tournament: i.e. the winners of polls #1 and 2 in round W2 moved to poll #1 in round W3, the winners of polls #1 and 2 in round L5 moved on to poll #1 in round L6, etc.

Because the brackets I used were only able to have 6 rounds, I had to have 16 pieces of the losers brackets at the beginning. I then had to make the L5 polls each the bracket semifinals, and the L6 polls each the bracket finals. Then I had to create two new losers brackets to hold the 16 winners from L6 (and the losers from W3, W4 and W5).

At round L7, Poll #6, I discovered why it's a bad idea to not know which character is which beforehand, not write down which character is which, accept an alternate description of a character from a DM, and then get shadowbanned and lose access to your messages entirely.

Groups 4-6

At this point, each round (L8, W4 and L9) consisted of only 8 polls. Rather than continue to stagger them, I decided that this was when I would start releasing a round all at once. This forced me to slow down the tournament considerably, because I could no longer post some rounds until the previous round was finished.

Rounds L10, W5 and L11 came next with only 4 polls each, with the latter two rounds being bracket semifinals.

Then came rounds L12 and W6 with only two polls each. Because of the aforementioned brackets, each of these four polls was to be a bracket final. Then I created the final bracket and started round L13.

Group 7

And now, we have arrived at group 7. The Hebrew number of completion. The Final Four. The grand finale.

There will be no overlapping polls in this group. From now on, there will only be one poll active at a time.

We will start with the losers semifinal. The loser of that will take 4th place.

Then we will move to the winners final. The winner of that will move on to the championship, and the loser will move to the losers final.

Next, we will have the losers final. The winner will move on to the championship, and the loser will take 3rd place overall.

Finally, the championship will happen. Obviously the loser will take 2nd place, and the winner will be crowned the ULTIMATE CHAMPION!!!! 🏆🥳🎉

The ultimate prize is at hand, and one of these four characters will receive it:

Character 5: She's a terrible driver even though she's been driving since before the age of 12. She only has 1 name. She's autistic. She's the best in the world at what she does. She's been searching for a family her entire life and when she finally found one that actually loves her she reciprocated that love by pushing them off of buildings. She's a terrible liar until her family teaches her how to lie (for fun and profit!!). She's a badass on paper but in reality she's the weirdest fucking person you've ever met.

Character 21: Old lady has had enough of everyone's shit, gives space for a young girl to safely talk about the abuse she is experiencing, and murders her granddaughters abusive fiance.

Character 67: Is part horse. Can cause others excruciating pain with their own anger. Joins an illegal rebellion at age 13. 3 elves are all in love with her. One of them is her cousin. A grumpy short man tried to get her exiled from society because she has brown eyes.

Character 246: Ate glass, got hit by a car, fell from a 40 foot cliff, got hit with a 600,000 volt stun gun, and endured much more and they're perfectly fine

Which one will win it all? YOU decide!

#update post #final update post #mystery character bracket

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natigail · 8 months

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August 2023 - natigail

It was time for my Posting Every Day In August (PEDIA) challenge, so I posted 31 chapters/one shots/excerpts this month!

I posted all six chapters of my skz ace/sex worker AU - oh, you kissed me just to kiss me

I posted all five chapters of the side piece to my skz wolfpack AU - What if I Told You I'm a Mastermind?

I posted the December chapter of my phan Stardew AU - Broke, Gay and New in Town

I posted four new chapters of my skz wolfpack AU - Rest in the Belly of the Wolf

I posted a one shot prologue of Seungcheol to my svt mafia AU - 돈’t Blink (at least not here)

I posted a chapter to another svt mafia AU prologue, this time about verkwan - 돈’t Resist (at least not me)

I posted both chapters of my Legend of Zelda fic focusing on optaining the Master Sword - to become an immortal dragon is to lose oneself (why did you do it?)

I posted the first chapter to my bts insomniac/baker AU - the donuts are warm for you

I posted my Good Omens one shot focusing on the season 2 finale - contains information in a tuneful way (stop, you’re losing me)

I posted three excerpts from an original novel wip of mine (x, x, x)

I posted a bts one shot focusing on Yoongi getting his 7 tattoo - Future's gonna be okay

I posted my The Untamed one shot about Lan Wangji’s grief - you can’t talk me through the fall if we don’t know if i can land

I posted my phan one shot inspired by Taylor Swift’s Timeless - In another life you still would’ve turned my head

I posted my Nimona one shot focusing on a scene from the film - Say that I'm a monster

I posted my phan one shot about not attending pride - so tell me i’m a rainbow (it makes me feel alright)

I posted my Good Omens one shot about Aziraphale doing an apology dance - it ends with a garden (and a cottage in the south downs)

Bloody hell, that’s one hell of a list. And it’s not likely the last one I’ll do, I think I’m going to do one with their summaries and stuff too but I wanted to have my usual monthly recap, even if PEDIA always messes with everything in the best way. Same can be seen on this pie chart.

I didn’t even attempt to untangle all the small entries that’s about 1-0% in the grand scheme of things. It’s the fics that were done before this month but needed to be edited before posting. I had given myself the goal of 2k a day because I knew I needed write a lot to complete PEDIA but I also needed to spend a lot of time editing, but I still went past the goal and almost hit 75k.

That definitely held true, but man, I’m still so proud of myself for managing to keep up even while feeling burned out and getting sick. Like, look! I did it. Yay. You’ll get my monthly overview of PEDIA as well, because why not?

Over 253k words posted! Not my record for a PEDIA but it’s the third most I’ve ever done during one of these challenges, which I’ve been doing since 2017 (except my thesis year). Like this month is kind of stressful and getting into a bit of grind with it all, but the sense of accomplishment when sitting back is indescribable. And I still try so very hard to keep the quality top notch, because despite how I like to get lost in my stats - it’ll always be the words that matter more than the numbers.

I’m going to take a very chill time in September. I’ll still keep up with my daily writing habit but we’re aiming for 1k a day instead, and for this coming week, I am going to maybe only keep up with the journalling to take a break.

#monthly recap #pedia

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miscelunaaa · 2 years

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some small updates

Hi y’all, I've been logged into hellsite for like thirty seconds and haven’t managed to work myself up into arbitrary rage so that’s good ig.

It’s beeennnnn ... oh wow.

It’s been exactly a month since I went on a real hiatus. That's fucking wild. tbh not much is happening on my end. I’m trying to get started as a freelance editor but it’s like a super slow burn. I’ve written a little, but not a lot, and it’s been kind of a struggle trying to find things that count as self care while actually being self care. It’s planner season and I’ve already spent toooo much money on hobonichi and the stationary shit, etc. This year’s dalmajung concept is killing me slowly and Sexy Nukim was just mind meltingly cool. So like, all in all, a pretty average time for me. I can’t say I've missed this space a ton, but I have missed y’all, so that definitely counts for something.

A few things:

Sacrificial is still getting posted weekly-ish on AO3. It’s not behind their accounts wall, and we’re not even half way the story yet, so you’ve got plenty of time to start reading and maybe get an account there to subscribe if you so desire. The feedback and love people have been giving the story has really blown me away. It’s given me the courage to try to make sure that as I work through edits, it comes out closer to what I originally intended. Will it ever really meet my impossibly high standards?? Probably not, but it’ll be closer and that matters more to me at this point. Please consider reading it if you’re interested! Here's a link, have fun.

In a couple of hours, I will be posting the first in what I hope is a series of weird hybrid fics. The series is called Animals in Predicaments and I’m fucking vibrating with excitement for it. When I realized I was burnt out as hell in like, July, @thatlongspringnight said I needed to work on something fun and absurd, rather than something that was going to rip my feelings out and eat them. Y’all probably don’t know this but I have a SERIOUS LOVE for hybrid fics, so being able to work on something crack-y and strange and delightful was just ... so nice. I got held up on the smut though so this took me like two months to complete alkdjsfhlaskdjh but I finished it last night and ah, wow. I’m just really glad I managed to finish something at all. It’ll go up on ao3 and mmmmmaybe here, I haven’t decided. Regardless, I’ll be back with a link so y’all know it's up.

Sooooo yeah, there you have it. I’m not ready to return to this space for real, yet. Honestly, most socials just make my brain hurt anymore and ugh, I have little patience with the bullshit that happens on them. I looked up a few weeks ago and realized I'd lost touch with why I was here in the first place: Celebrating these seven weirdoes by writing stories about them. So many people have lost the point of this community, and it makes me incredibly sad and angry.

With that said, I’m still incredibly grateful for the people who’ve continued to read my shit and love it. It means the world to me.

I’ll be back in a couple of hours with a link. Lots of love, y’all 💜 stay safe and well.

#updates from the void #texts from em

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passiveagressiveukulele · 1 day

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Side-quest

When we were making the crowdfunder video I remember Natalia saying her family wasn't really a video household and that going back to Poland, she expected to find some old photos of her dad, but no moving images. Ula and Janusz dug up some really old photos of baby Sebastian and we replicated the sequence we had in the test shoot - Natalia looking through old photos and Sebastian disappearing from them.

I might be wrong, but I'm not sure this footage will give us the same effect the test footage did, as it wasn't as staged and Janus kept moving the pile of photos around, but also because suddenly I had three characters to think about. I needed to capture their interactions and not just the placing of the photos on the table. Might be the case of creating the photo appearances digitally, through a stop motion animation and then I can silmutaneously do the cut-outs. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, or in other words - we'll fix it in post.

Onto the heart of the matter - yes we found photos, both physical and digital (on CDs), but we also found videos on tape. A VHS camcorder appeared first. Intrigued, we turned the house upside down to find the tapes - or, a tape, because surely something was captured with this camera. We couldn't turn on the camcorder to see if the original tape was still in, as we didn't have a battery or a battery charger for it. Just as we got our hopes up, they got shattered.

We kept looking for the tapes though, unsuccessfully. Natalia then called her mum who told her to look on top of the wardrobe, she remembered a case of tapes was left there. Bingo! Filled to the brim, the case had tapes labelled Natalia. The intrigue rises. The only issue is - we can't play them... Or can we? Natalia then found a VHS player, but alas it was a European player and what we found were American tapes. Dead end, again. It felt like her dad kept escaping us. We came here to find him, but everywhere we looked he appeared for a second and then disappeared again. Frustrated as we were, it worked for the narrative arc of the film. Natalia's dad is this elusive figure that was never around much - even during his life, he kept running away, first to America, then to Scotland. Could we have found him in these tapes - maybe, but we won't know until we take them back to Scotland. Natalia ordered an American VHS tape player off of eBay and we did the only thing we could now - focus on seeing what was on those CDs.

Except there was one issue standing in our way - we didn't have a CD player. Thank you modern technology! We found an old HP laptop that had built in CD player, but we couldn't find a charger for it. The recurring theme is disappointment. We had planned a trip to Krakow later on in the week so we thought we could maybe buy a CD player then, but the curiosity was restless. Natalia suggested we go to the closest city, a 20 minute train ride from Debica and buy a CD player there. And so with this side quest, the plot thickens!

Scooting around Rzhzhzhzwkow (sorry Poles, but you lost me there, no city should have that many consonants) we did what we came to do and more (we might have accidentally ended up at a charity shop, my heightened sense of smell for second hand clothes led us there). When we got back, Natalia went through all the CDs, which not only had photos on them, but a home video shot by Janusz sometime in the early 2000s.

The video was over an hour long and glitchy - very glitchy. It had recordings of their family on a camping trip, at the pool, in Bulgaria and importantly - at the house. Janusz recorded a 20 minute home tour that featured Ula, Iowa (Natalia's aunt) and their adorable white cat - but Sebastian was nowhere to be seen. Granted, they were in America at that point, but that home video just proved what we already concluded - Sebastian was a mysterious, missing figure from their life. When I saw Janusz's camerawork I knew it was going to make the edit. It was the complete opposite of what I initially planned for capturing the house - instead of the controlled, slow pans and tracking shots on a tripod, Janusz was serving ultimate home video zooms and shaky movements. And yet, both of these approaches had the same effect - it was a quiet, meditative exploration of the house. Ula and Iwona paid no attention to him and went about their days as he moved through rooms and hallways capturing both the atmosphere. It was clearly lived in, but somehow also empty - something was amiss.

I watched the video multiple times and decided to replicate it. Natalia and I agreed I will go through the entire house, ending the video in the room where she is trying to play the tapes she found. Cheeky and staged perhaps, not entirely documentarian of us, but it was simply a recreation of what already happened. I only wanted to capture the action of her putting in the tapes into the player and them not working, but after she had done that and sat on the bed I couldn't help but ask her a few questions. She opened up about her frustrations and the disappointment and I was glad she did, as I know how much she doesn't like writing voiceovers, so this was good stream of consciousness stuff she could use later to build on. What started off as a recreation turned into pure documentary gold.

And so I can only conclude that life imitates art - we are all main characters in our own 3 act story, and I think we just unlocked Natalia's second act.

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sometimesfoodie · 2 years

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Boo! I’m Still Blogging!

Happy Meal Halloween Eve-Eve! After my midnight Mountain Dew and cup of Death Wish coffee, I treated myself to some extra sleep, which is why today's post is later than normal.

Yesterday, after work, I called 12 different McDonalds locations and completed my trio of 2022's Boo-Buckets. Before that, I hadn't eaten anything from McDonalds in years, so it was quite the adventure.

McDonald's and I have a bit of a history. As a kid, we ate it occasionally. Mainly when we were with my birth father. Hot cakes in styrofoam trays, circular sausage patties, happy meals, and as I got bigger (and hungrier) my go-to was the 2-cheeseburger meal with fries and a coke. With mom, it was more-so the occasional order of nuggets with honey. Then, when I was in high school, Morgan Spurlock's, "Super Size Me," was released and I was obsessed. Not so much with the overall experiment of eating junk food every day and it being bad for you (pretty obvious outcome) but more-so probing into the global phenomenon that was McDonalds, and how something familiar and recognizable around the world could be a bad thing. All with quick editing, funny songs, and amazing artwork. I even brought it with me to school when we had the option to watch movies in class, but most people opted for Mean Girls instead.

"Super Size Me," killed it's namesake, put a negative spin on the company, and triggered mockumentary style copycats like, "Super High Me." To this day, out of all the fast food chains, McDonalds is still short-hand for overconsumption and unhealthy eating in America, in spite of it being a global chain.

Spurlock has also fallen from grace. After a sexual harassment allegation, his infidelities, and the successor to the original, "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!," being poorly received, he stepped away from the limelight. But, I was never into -him-. I was into, "Super Size Me." SUPER into it. I had this small, portable, DVD player in my teen bedroom, and the amount of times I re-watched this DVD is staggering. And, likely as a result, I just, stopped eating at McDonalds.

I went from absolutely no McDonalds for years, to eating 5 Happy meals in the past 7 days. My own, personal, "Super Size Me." Or, a much less catchy title, "The Pursuit of Happy-Meal-ness." All for plastic buckets.

Cashing in on Millennial nostalgia, Boo Buckets are back, and everyone 30-and-up lost their minds. Including me. Rumors at first, buzzing through the online foodie and spooky communities, and then it was finally confirmed. We have three buckets, each an amalgamation of buckets past.

I personally don't have memories of getting my meals in the Halloween Buckets, but we had them at my mom's house, and used them as Halloween decorations. We had to have gotten them at some point. My excitement didn't stem from personalized nostalgia of having one and eating it, more so the overarching collective nostalgia of them being a familiar face on the holidays. (My love for pop culture and all things spooky and Halloween-y didn't hurt either.)

So, I decided to try and get one.

First stop, a local McDonald's that had them listed for sale on their app. They had them, but didn't say which bucket. The double-wide drive-thru had lines wrapped around the building, so I went inside to order. It's so different! Ordering screens to bypass cashiers, fancy soda machines with touch screens, and the poor staff running around like crazy to take care of impatient customers in cars and delivery apps. (Anyone mean to fast food employees is a dick.)

I approached the large 2001: A Space Odyssey-looking monolith-screen, placed my order, and shortly after I was handed two white ghost buckets, one for me, and one for my sister. Ghost is the bottom tier bucket. Too simple. Too blobby. I had been hoping for goblin/witch, or pumpkin. I was like, "this is fine." And it was, until it wasn't.

After a rough night the next day, my friend called other locations, found the pumpkin ones, went out and got them for us as a little pick-me-up. (Really appreciated it!) McPumpkin achieved!

But now I had 2/3. Dare I complete the set? I originally didn't think so. Went to work, everything was fine, then a bunch of stuff went south right before closing Friday night. Tired and stressed (drinking all that caffeine this week didn't help), I got into my car, and called 12 different locations. I found the last bucket, the McGoblin, which is very obviously a misnamed witch. Drove out, got one for my sister, my friend, and I, and grabbed a McRib for good measure. (Apparently it's going away forever now? We've been down this road before, but I figured, Mcfuck it, why not?)

We each have the full trio! Happy and complete, but my stomach can't say the same thing.

In my pursuit, I have eaten several cheeseburgers, fries, kids-size sodas, and half a McRib. All within a week's time. My collectible-monkey-brain is satisfied, but my insides are full of McDisappointment.

The first cheeseburger I ate, made me feel weird childhood things. It tasted familiar, but also, as an adult who loves to cook now, it also didn't really taste like food? Like, the burger patty has a texture that I have no idea how to achieve in home cooking. It's difference in quality is like, a boardwalk prize-stuffed animal vs. a stuffed toy you buy in the store. It's a bit mean, but this is the wet-newspaper of burgers, topped with salt, pepper, a slice of cheese, ketchup, yellow mustard, and the teeny tiniest diced onions. (I always loved their tiny onions, but White Castle does it better.) Eating it left me craving real food, but, seeing that paper yellow wrapper, made me feel like I was a kid again.

Next bucket, pumpkin, I opted for the same cheese burger meal. This one was prepared a bit better and tasted more like I remembered it being in my childhood. More sauce-forward, with lots of ketchup and mustard. Originally I dreaded eating it again so soon, but then I finished my meal no problem. And the nostalgia of seeing the yellow paper wrapper still hadn't worn off. It tasted kind of sad, but not sad enough to dull my warm fuzzy feelings.

Yesterday, I did it again! I got the green bucket with yet another cheeseburger. This time swapping one of our sodas for the orange Hi-C drink we got as kids, and went full nostalgia. And you know what? I liked the cheeseburger even more this time? Maybe the addictive nature of fast food really is no joke. Am I playing with McFire? It was already getting more familiar, and having it tied to happy Halloween and childhood feelings is probably a dangerous combination.

The McRib thankfully extinguished that flame the moment it started. I was pretty sure I had reviewed one on the blog years ago, but I can't find a post anywhere, so better scoop it up on it's farewell tour.

It's bad. Really bad. Like, near dog-food bad. I hate tearing products apart, because someone out there loves this thing, but...look at it. A pork-based patty, covered in smoky BBQ sauce, topped with chunky onions, two pickles, and a soft bun. The sauce is smoky, and sweet, not great, but not bad. Onions are just onions, and McDonalds pickles are the one product I do find myself pining for after all these years. But that patty...is not food. It's so soft, texture less, and the flavor is kind of like a hot-dog with liquid smoke? Whatever goodwill the children's cheeseburgers had built, was immediately dismantled. My sister agreed. McRib was McRough.

The spell was broken. Now that my buckets are collected, and my nostalgia sated, I can part ways with McDonalds again. This time more-so as friends.

Also, I am still salty that these don't have real lids, but this handle-lid-abomination is McCanon. (Okay, I'll McStop.) In the 2000's this was how the buckets were released, with shaped handles. It was past my time, so I was unfamiliar with them. The buckets continued with tie-ins like, Scooby Doo and Monster High. They're legit, but I still think they're stupid. There are 3-faces per bucket, and a stationary handle made to look like the previous lids, but there is no perfect way to display them. Choosing a face results in the handle being off-center and destroying the lid-illusion. Facing it in a way that make the lid illusion work, results in being between faces. It's lose-lose!

Even with it's faults, I have these buckets in my possession, and I am happier for it.

This Sunday, October 30th from 2-5pm EST/US

I'll be guesting on my friend, QueenzDragon's, Twitch stream!

Today's post was filled with rambles, so I'll just remind you that tomorrow I'll be streaming with Halloween snacks and candy on my friend's Stream for a local cat charity. Tune in if you happen to be around!

Fans of this would also like: Burger King's HA1loween Burger, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990), or the Ghost Bustin' Burger

Keep Up with all my posts on my official blog! Sometimes Foodie

#halloween #boo buckets #halloweenburger #junkfood #mcdonalds #nostalgia #food bloggers #blogging #mcgoblin #halloween buckets #sometimes foodie

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evanjinx · 3 years

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alternative universe buddie fics recs :)

note: the links weren't working the first time i wrote the post but i edited and they're okay now!! if it still isn't working for you is probably because you're trying to open from a reblog from before i edit it, so try open directly from the original post on my profile.

Blind Date by @sassypopstar [complete | teen and up audiences | 3.8k words]

Buck feels a little ridiculous dressed in a jacket and a shirt. But Maddie had insisted on him dressing up for the occasion and even Chimney had quipped that it’s the right thing to do. So Buck, who never went on a blind date before in his life, listened to his big sister and her boyfriend because apparently that’s who he is now. Or the one where Buck goes on a blind date with someone called Eddie.

Buckley's Bouquets by awashleyno [complete | teen and up audiences | 23.4k words]

A world where Buck owns a flower shop and manages to develop a huge, massive, ridiculous crush on a handsome firefighter that comes in for a visit one day. Or, 5 times Eddie gives flowers to other people and the 1 time he gives them to Buck.

Call It What You Will - Fate? Destiny? (A Tsunami) by @abow123456 [complete | mature | 20k words]

Evan Buckley's day of relaxation is cut short when a tsunami hits the beach he was relaxing at. He has to fight to keep himself and a lost little boy safe from the water, as well as anyone else he finds. After, he meets the boys father and family, and it causes a snowball effect of good things for him, for once.

Capuccino with extra, extra sugar by buckbng [complete | teen and up audiences | 2.7k words]

Buck is the cute barista and Eddie is the grinch that hates coffee. Until, he doesn't. Because if Buck says he looks like the kind of person that would love a cappuccino, who's Eddie to disagree with him? OR Eddie really doesn't like coffee but pretends he does just so he has an excuse to see the cute barista at the coffee shop.

Confirmation Bias by strifechaos [complete | mature | 31k words]

After the fallout with his ex-wife, Eddie believed he could only trust his family with his son. He hadn’t imagined falling for his son’s sweet-hearted nanny, Buck. With his own family so distant, Buck never considered that he’d be lucky enough to find a home for himself, let alone people he could count on. Not until he meets the Diaz boys. AU: Buck was never a firefighter, and becomes Christopher's sitter when Shannon's job takes her away from Eddie and Chris for the summer. Eddie tries to not fall for his son's nanny, he's not very successful.

dream of some epiphany by extasiswings [complete | mature | 7.3k words]

Evan Buckley is lost. It’s happenstance that he wanders into the navy recruiting center—he’s been in San Diego for a few weeks, bartending late nights and weekends, living in a house with three other guys not because he needs the roommates but because he doesn’t want to be alone, and the military is…respectable. Stable. So Buck thinks maybe and opens the door. Buck leaves ten minutes later with a set of printed instructions for sending his first letter, assured that he can drop it off whenever he’s ready, and a name. Staff Sergeant Edmundo “Eddie” Diaz.

Frequent Flyer by red_to_black [complete | mature | 13.4k words]

In his entire time being a firefighter, Eddie has never met anyone as accident-prone as Evan Buckley. And Buck - well, he's quickly becoming the 118's best customer. (Or - the one where Eddie is a firefighter, Buck isn't, and Eddie finds himself rescuing Buck from increasingly sticky situations. Sometimes literally.)

Gave me no messages, gave me no signs... by @reallysmartladymariecurie [complete | teen and up audiences | 7.4k words]

"Buck is beyond nervous, and he’s really trying to convince himself that the familiarity of the situation is not some sort of bad omen. Just because there are parallels of the start of his relationship with Eddie to that of his relationship with Abby doesn’t mean that this new adventure is destined to end in the same miserable fashion. He hopes it won’t, has to believe it won’t. Because even with Abby, he hadn’t fallen this hard for her before their first official date. With Eddie, everything is already intensified by a thousand." Or, Buck covers a shift for a firefighter at the 136 and it leads to a budding relationship through text messages.

Gotta Find My Corner (Of the Sky) by doctornineandthreequarters [complete | general audiences | 31.3k words]

It was the last day of 2016 and two lost souls found themselves in a quiet dive bar, as the loud noises of the city celebrating New Year’s Eve buzzed around them. Most people chose loud, flashy bars with DJs and entrance fees and promises of champagne for New Year’s Eve. But both occupants of the dive bar preferred the quiet. They both didn’t need the added chaos when everything around them already felt chaotic. --- Or, Buck and Eddie meet on New Year's Eve, 2016, a meeting that sets of a series of events that changes the trajectory of both of their lives.

I Didn't Know I Was Lonely 'Till I Saw Your Face by @hmslusitania [complete | general audiences | 10.4k words]

After the ladder truck and the blood clot and the tsunami, Bobby makes Buck go to therapy before he does something stupid (like sue the city). Buck's not totally comfortable being alone with a therapist, but fortunately he makes a friend and ally who's willing to help him out - Eddie Diaz from the 136 who's just been caught in an illegal fight club. OR Total strangers Buck and Eddie go to couple's therapy together to get out of the therapy requirements their captains have placed on them.

i want your midnights by allyasavedtheday [complete | teen and up audiences | 36.3k words]

In which Eddie decides to rent out his spare room to help with mortgage repayments right around the time Buck decides to move out of Abby's place after some not so gentle prodding from Maddie. It's a coincidence. Or serendipity. Or maybe just really good timing.

i wanna be know (by you) by @starlightbuck [complete | general audiences | 12.5k words]

“I didn’t mean to do it.” Hen glances down at Eddie’s phone then back up at him in disbelief.

“How do you ‘not mean’ to download a bunch of dating apps but still have them on your phone?”

Or In which Eddie delves into the intimidating world of online dating.

if i got locked away (would you still love me the same?) by @firefighterhan [complete | general audiences | 3.7k words]

Buck gets accidentally thrown in jail after meddling in a fight outside of a grocery store. There, he meets an unexpected guest, famous music artist Eddie Diaz, who is being suspiciously quiet about how he ended up here in the first place.

if only in my dreams by @buttercupbuck [complete | general audiences | 5.4k words]

Years before Eddie joins the 118, Buck meets him at an airport bar on Christmas day.

in a week by @buttercupbuck [complete | explicit | 78.9k]

in which Eddie joins the U.S. Forest Service and in the meadows of California, finds the things he thought he lost and the things he thought he'd never have.

It Started With A Bang And A Hostage Situation by JayJay__884 [complete | general audiences | 6.6k words]

Buck goes to the store one late night to buy food because of Maddie's pregnancy cravings. Whilst at the store, Buck accidentally gets caught in the middle of a robbery and gets knocked out. After waking up in the backroom, Buck finds himself as a hostage with a handsome and caring stranger.

Leading with the Left by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels [complete | explicit | 84.7k]

When Buck said he was a "bartender" in "South America" what he actually meant was "stripper" in "Mexico." And when Eddie said, "What's your problem?" what he actually meant was, "Is this about the time you gave me a lap dance?" In other words, there's a few things the 118 doesn't know about Buck. Or Eddie. Or Buck and Eddie's relationship.

Lift me up by @captain--sif [complete | teen and up audiences | 5.5k words]

Buck gets stuck in his apartment building's broken elevator with his good-looking neighbor from the sixth floor.

Love and Bullets Both Shatter Hearts (But Only One Can Put You Back Together) by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels [complete | explicit | 11.2k words]

Agent [Redacted] Diaz is the best at what he does. Usually. But lately there's this real pain in the ass* who's been ruining his missions: Code Name "Buck."

*stupidly handsome and annoyingly talented rival spy

Mr. Buckley's After Hours Detention by aresaphrodites [complete | mature | 11.4k words]

It’s not like Eddie Diaz planned on this. Really, there was no scenario in his mind where he would ever be bringing his son’s teacher a freaking goody basket to class; a homemade goody basket, no less. Then again, Christopher has never had a teacher quite like Evan Buckley.

MukbangsWithBuck by @reallysmartladymariecurie [complete | teen and up audiences | 19.3k words]

After growing tired of eating alone in his loft, Buck decides to start a YouTube channel where he records himself eating dinner and telling stories about crazy things his team has encountered on calls. He eventually gains a substantial fanbase, and he is led to the channel of another LA firefighter who uploads informational videos and also casual vlogs with his ten-year-old son. It isn't long before the two start a friendship through messages, both of them secretly hoping it will turn into something more. Or, Eddie and Buck are both firefighters/YouTubers and they end up falling in love.

Objects in the Mirror by SevenSoulmates [complete | explicit | 139.1k words]

The voice had always been around, Eddie remembers it, like a stream of consciousness that babbled incoherently to the point where Eddie just tuned it out. But then the voice started speaking directly to him. Conversing like he was a whole person standing right in front of him. Like he could see what was happening around Eddie. Eddie shook his head. No one was talking to him, and Eddie most certainly was not talking back. He wouldn’t talk to the boy in his head ever again. There was no boy in his head.

Passive Aggressive Flirting by @starlingbite [complete | general audiences | 4.5k words]

Buck and Eddie have never met. They both work at the 118 but just on different shifts. That's all about to change when Buck finds a sticky note message, signed E.

String of hearts... by @reallysmartladymariecurie [complete | teen and up audiences | 11.1k words]

“Now. Eddie is this incredible presence. He’s funny and smoking hot, and he has a son who sounds wonderful. And he’s serious and vulnerable at times. But so enjoyable to be around, every single second that he’s there. And how can I put myself out there when the expectation is so high? When the thing I might lose is so beautiful?”

In which Buck owns a plant shop in LA, and Eddie becomes his new favorite customer. Pining ensues.

check out my post of buddie fics with dad!buck

#i will probably do a part two of this because i have more but this post its already way too big #buddie #buddie fic #buddie fic rec #fic rec #911 #911 fox #911 on fox #buck x eddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #otp: you act like you're expendable but you're wrong #tv: 9-1-1 #*

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sortasirius · 3 years

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What the Fuck Happened to the SPN Finale?

Okay so here it is, my Charlie Kelly style manifesto.

Before I get into it, I recognize that I will look like this to many of you, and that’s okay, I understand:

Secondly, your personal Takes about the writers don’t interest me, I don’t need to hear them. This, as I’ll explain, is going to remain a writer positive blog, and that’s the end of it.

Third, and most importantly: some of what I’m going to talk about is fact, and some is highly educated speculation. I will notate what is speculation, just so there’s no confusion or hot takes in my inbox that I’m a conspiracy theorist or stirring shit up for no reason.

A list of what I’ll be discussing

The episode in regards to the rest of the season

The episode issues: length, editing

Scene placement and speculation of scenes cut

The scrubbing of Jack, Cas, Eileen

Network involvement and general timeline of when things were cut

Misha: theories on where he was, official company line, why we can’t expect to hear anything directly

The silence of the cast post episode (in Misha’s case, mid episode) and what this might mean

Jensen speaking with Kripke about the ending: why it doesn’t mean what you might think (also why kripke remained positive on the ending)

Walker, and why this episode had a major shift

Why the network would do this or get involved

Why the writers of the show simply aren’t the bad guys here, and what I “want” out of this post, since I know it’ll get asked

This is very long and under a cut, but I hope you’ll give it a read.

The Episode In Regards to the Rest of the Season

So, I’ve discussed this already here, but it’s the most obvious thing to me, and that’s the way this episode simply doesn’t fit with the rest of the season.

These people in this room have, truly, been nothing but consistent when it comes to their arcs, especially this season, and the marked dropoff in quality for the finale episode is just too sus to discount to me. Dabb’s whole focus has been character-based. In his seasons, we’ve moved far away from MOTW and bro-codependency, the found family taking it’s place. Does it really sit right to anyone that that was all thrown away in literally the last episode of the entire show?

This is speculation on my part, but as a writer myself, there is no way I would be happy or willing to stamp my name on something that I didn’t think would, at the very least, wrap up the season+ character arcs that I and my team had been crafting.

And before anyone comes in here saying, “well GOT did that!” Bruh. The writing was on the wall for GOT long before the final episode. You could tell that the showrunners just wanted to be done (not only from the plot, but from the fact that they lobbied for a shorter season). Miss me with that, it doesn’t apply here. Andrew has, besides Singer and J2, been with the show longer than anyone. He cares, he is meticulous and detailed, and this ending feels worse than anything Bucklemming has ever written, let alone Dabb.

Additionally, I’ve seen a lot of people say that Dabb was never behind Destiel, that it was all Bobo and Meredith and no one else. That is reductive to the point of insult of the work Dabb has done to get this greenlit. This man did not write the s13 Dean grief arc to be slandered like this. That being said, YES, Bobo and Meredith were the leads on the DeanCas arc this season, but ANDREW IS THE SHOWRUNNER, TO GET EVEN THE CONFESSION APPROVED BY THE NETWORK HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE THEIR BACKS. AND HE DID.

Finale Issues

So, now that we’ve gotten the fact that this episode doesn’t hit on any of the major themes the show was barrelling towards all season, let’s discuss the fact that the episode is just...weird.

Not only is it shorter than any other episode (I think with the intro and the credits/crew thing at the end, it was around 38 mins), but it was also...idk, 90% filler?

One of the lovely humans in the POLOL server did the legwork here, and broke it down:

This is weird, y’all. Most series finales are LONGER than normal (Lost, SOA, Longmire are the ones I can think of off the top of my head), and for the final episode to be this? I saw more than one person point out that we only really needed 19 episodes, what was the point of 20? AND THAT’S EXACTLY IT? WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS FINAL EPISODE IF THIS WAS ALL WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET?

It simply doesn’t make any sense, the first half of the episode was rushed, a final monster hunt gone wrong, but in the second half? Nothing really happened? Sam lived his entire life and Dean just drove around. It doesn’t make sense to have all the emotional arcs left unaddressed in an episode that definitely needed some kind of spark.

Here’s the speculation I have: the episode seemingly went through a lot of changes between the initial inception of the final season and when we actually got it, but I think it would have been passable (as in, we wouldn’t be sitting here asking each other why each arc feels incomplete) until the editing room got ahold of it. The only think that makes this episode make sense is network fuckery. Truly, that is the only thing. It explains the weird, cuts, the rushed pacing of the first half followed by nothing in the second half, the double montages of “Wayward Son” back to back, and Dean just...driving around for the last half of the episode.

Scene Placement and Speculation of Scenes Cut

Before I get into this section, the info of the shots in the episode I have come from a source that @occamshipper got a week or so before the finale. She’s talked about this here.

So here’s what Min was given:

1-5: 1 INT MEN OF LETTERS – DEAN’S ROOM Dean is greeted by Miracle

6-10: 6 INT MEN OF LETTERS – HALLWAY/SAM’S ROOM Sam has his routine

D1 1 11-15: 15 EXT FARM HOUSE Establishing

N1 1/8 16-20: 19 Dad’s journal, marker, drawing of masked man in journal.

21-25: 23 INT IMPALA – PMP Driver picks the music

N2 1 3/8 1,2 26-30: 28pt2 INT BARN: A face from the past

28pt3 Sam and Dean say goodbye

28pt4 Shot early for technical reasons, presumably the overhead shot

N2 31-45: 41 INT MEN OF LETTERS – SAM’S ROOM Sam’s alarm goes off D4 1/8 1 46-60: 56 INT N7glasses for Sam, laptop.

So...it all fits right? It all tracks with the actual episode, where it lands, etc. The issue is between shots 29-40 which were apparently “too big to spoil.” Uh. Where are they? And where’s 28 pt4?

After Dean dies, the next scene is Sam burning him, then shot 31, the shot of his alarm going off.

So. Where are those 11ish shots?

PLUS we have the boards, which are scenes we KNOW were actually shot:

As well as scenes for 20 that were shot in 19.

It’s just...weird, it’s weird and again hits on the fact that the episode is so short and like 80% montage.

The Scrubbing of Jack, Cas, and Eileen

So now we have to reckon with the fact that Eileen was last mentioned by Sam after she got snapped by Chuck, Jack’s last mention is that he’s off being God somewhere, and Cas’ last mention is a ~knowing look~ between Dean and Bobby.

I’m sorry, make it make sense:

???????? That’s the end if it? They don’t need to be discussed after this??? It’s just simply not something a writer would do, they would not introduce these characters, these arcs, without thinking there’s going to be some kind of follow through here.

So not only were three major characters (including two leads and both of the original characters’ love interests) completely wiped from the finale episode, it was as though Sam and Dean never even needed them, which just...ain’t it.

So why Eileen and Jack too? Why not just take Cas out of it if they were afraid of the gay? Because, ultimately, the episode went back to Kripke’s original story: just the bros, they only need each other and no one else. They don’t want anyone else, they don’t need anyone else. Easier to go back to something they knew was successful than trust the writers and their audience and take a big leap.

Alex even said he shot for 20 with “some of the guys” here. What happened to that footage?

The complete 180 of it all still shocks me, I still cannot believe that we were essentially at the finish line, and the network just stopped short, and decided to go run another race, at the expense of the arc of this fifteen year legacy show.

Network Involvement and When Things Were Cut

Okay, now into the juicy stuff.

So I’ve pretty well established that network fuckery is clear, but how much did they get involved, what was the original intent?

Well again, we may never actually know what Andrew’s original script was, but I think, at the least, it would involve Dean speaking his truth to Cas and Sam living a life with Eileen.

Now, it seems today, that Misha said that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale in one iteration of the script, and while initially my brain was like “that truly makes no sense and he’s either straight up lying or telling a half truth,” I think what may be happening is Misha talking about as much as he can right now.

So Jimmy right. Weird as fuck. Why would he been in the Roadhouse and not Cas? My current thought (this is about as reachy as I’ll get) is that Jimmy had no lines, could he have been in the Roadhouse as a red herring, like it said “Jimmy” in the script but it was just Cas in human clothes, a way to get around the network saying Cas couldn’t be in the final scene. Also, you’ll notice that Misha didn’t say that Cas wasn’t supposed to be in the ep at all, just Jimmy in the last scene.

All this to say, there have clearly been multiple versions of the script, getting lighter and lighter with Cas and Eileen as the network pulled further and further back. Remember, Dabb has to get things approved before they get shot, and if the network kept asking and asking and asking to cut Cas and Eileen, he had to find a way to work around it. Granted, I still think that if we had been able to get a Dabb script that wasn’t torn to shreds in editing, it wouldn’t be so bad. It may not be what a lot of us wanted (Dean speaking his truth to Cas and a reciprocation), but doing everything he could to give it to us in subtext or visual clues.

Plus, in all honesty, my man can’t keep his story straight anyway. He said twice in his panel that the Empty and offscreen Heaven ending weren’t his original ending either.

In addition, remember that Jensen did ADR post episode 18, AND said in a meet and greet last weekend that Dean’s reaction to Cas’ confession was “cut down.” (Source here). Many of us clowns got excited when we first heard about ADR, because we thought it would be upping the ante on Dean’s reaction, but I remember being a little sus when it was just crying. My speculation on that is that they cut out Dean actually SAYING something, @winchestersingerautorepair spoke about that here.

The biggest sins were, in my opinion, committed during editing, where the network got too gun shy and sliced the episode until it was nothing but a heartless bro-fest of a finale, not mentioning anything about the other major characters that we all love, and letting the boys just suffer in separation until Sam died and finally joined Dean in Heaven. The editing came by cutting all the major emotional beats between anyone other than Dean and Sam, leaving the skeleton of the story intact, just shorter and less...poignant than it was ever supposed to be.

Misha

We know Misha was in Vancouver, we know he quarantined, but we also know he wasn’t in the final scene, when he spoke about being in the last moment of the show months ago. We were not crazy, he was there, he quarantined, and, in all likelihood (speculation but fitting with the timeline), he actually may have shot something (not much, but something).

I have sources here, here, here, and here showing where Misha was at that time.

Remember, the man was completely open about coming back until they finished shooting (look at this thread). The switch happened, just like everything else, halfway through them shooting.

Please also remember Jake Abel posting his “Where’s Misha” video here. Jake isn’t malicious, he isn’t being nasty here. Misha was there, and everyone that’s trying to convince people he’s wasn’t just...isn’t telling the truth about it.

This is one of the things that makes me really mad, because they’re literally attempting to gaslight people into thinking, “oh we were totally wrong he was never supposed to be there” WHEN HE WAS THERE, WE KNOW HE WAS THERE.

So we’ve already heard from several people (Meghan Fitzmartin, Jay, a PA on the set of 19 (WHO WAS NOT WORKING FOR 20), Misha himself) that this was all down to Covid restrictions. Ultimately, as this post says, we’ve heard FIVE versions of where Misha was. None of it makes sense, but the Covid protocol seems to be the company line that others are repeating.

You may ask: why? Why lie to all of us when we have questions? Why, in Jay’s case, say that we’re all spreading false lies to stir up trouble, when we just have questions and things that do not make sense. Simply? Warner Brothers is absolutely massive. These people have their careers to protect and are likely all under NDAs. They want to work for WB again and don’t want to burn bridges, including Misha. It sucks, but that’s why it’s unlikely that we’ll hear someone come out and say, “yeah we’re lying to you.”

Silence of the Cast Post Episode

So this is...probably the worst part of all this, at least in my opinion.

The guys had all been pretty excited about the end of the show (especially Jared, but Jensen’s panel last week was Jensen as happy and jokey and positive as I’ve ever seen him. He was so excited about episode 18, about what it meant for Dean and for Cas, and I just cannot buy that he would have been that excited unless he thought there was something more in the episode.

Misha live-tweeted the episode, and was watching it with his kids. It’s well known that Misha and the kids don’t watch the show because it’s too scary, and let’s ask ourselves, why would he have them watch an episode that he’s barely even mentioned in?

He also stopped live-tweeting at a very specific point in the episode (Dean’s death) and has not mentioned Supernatural since then.

None of them, not Jared, Jensen, Misha, or even Alex, said anything about the episode for nearly 36 hours, when Jensen posted a salty photo on instagram. It’s just...not what you’d expect for the end of a 15 year show, when the cast and crew are so close to the fans, so close to each other.

My theory? They didn’t know. They thought Misha was, at least, going to be in the episode in some way, and when he wasn’t, they decided not to say anything.

You really think that Jensen “Heller” Ackles would have been so excited about the end of the show last week if he thought Cas wasn’t going to be in it at all? Nah son, doesn’t make any sense.

Even today, in Jared and Misha’s panels, they seemed sad and...more than a little careful, both saying that there were things they couldn’t say, both talking around things that we all have questions on.

Jensen Speaking with Kripke

So this is where a lot of people are getting fodder to take shots at the writers, saying that Jensen hated it from the beginning, but I don’t think so. I actually think I know what Jensen went to him about, and it wasn’t the lack of Cas or the weird pacing or the montages (which I don’t think were there when Jensen got the script); I think it was the manner of Dean’s death.

I know a lot of people were upset about that, upset with how...normal it was, coming off an episode where they literally beat God. I actually didn’t mind it, I thought it was an interesting thematic take to be like: you can be a hero all your life, but sometimes shit happens, and you just die.

But imagine how hard that was for Jensen to read. He would run to Kripke for that, because for him, Dean dying by being impaled by a piece of rebar had to be tough to swallow.

So, why didn’t Kripke say that? Why didn’t he say, “oh well he had a problem with Dean’s death, none of that other stuff was in the script.”

Guys. Why would he get involved? He’s not going to burn bridges any more than anyone else is. He said the ending was good because it’s the easy thing to do, it’s simple, will cause him no problems in his career, and he can just ignore the people trying to engage with him on it.

Walker

Something else to talk about is the major shift this episode had from the rest of the season: the shift from Dean to Sam. I am NOT saying that Sam isn’t important, he definitely, absolutely is, but it was DEAN who really needed to wrap up his arc, Sam just needed to move on, get married to Eileen, become the leader he was always meant to. So what changed? What was with the shirtless scene, the Austin number and random case there, most of the episode being heavily Sam focused, going through his entire life in a montage?

Anyone else notice the 375 Walker promos, or Jared’s little spiel about Walker and how he hoped SPN fans would “come along for the ride.”

It’s...kinda obvious? CW wanted to appeal to who they think the key demographic of SPN and Walker is: rural areas in the South. It would explain a lot, why so much editing, why so Sam focused, the Austin number, the number of Walker promos, all of it.

I’m not saying this is fact, I don’t know that it is, but it is a little suspicious that even in Jared’s panel today, he talked A LOT about Walker and how he hopes SPN fans will watch it.

Why Would the Network Get Involved?

Simply put: $$$

If they think Walker can be the new SPN, and that those crazy SPN fans liked it originally, it’s a lot safer to go with the “original intent” of the show than do something risky (like making one of your two original leads queer).

And? They don’t care. They don’t care that the episode didn’t make sense, they don’t care that all the emotional arcs were left hanging, they don’t care by (potentially) smashing together two of Dean’s monologues (one to Sam, one to Cas) that it came of as...gross. ( @curioussubjects wrote a beautiful post showing how part of that death speech was likely meant for Dean here). They don’t care, they never have, they just want to make their money and move on from the too-loud fandom that fought for representation too hard for too long.

It can’t help but feel insidious, which, honestly, it might be, but it really all comes down to the next cash cow, which, they think, is Walker, even at the cost of the fifteen year legacy show.

The Writers and What I Want

So here it is, all this weird, sus shit laid out on the line. And you know what? To me, there is no way to blame the writers, because they didn’t want this.

I don’t think Dabb and Bobo would have gone ahead with the confession in 18 without thinking that there would be some closure to that arc, they wouldn’t have done that not only to the fans, but for the sake of their own story as well: no writer wants to start something that they can’t finish. (And this applies to both Cas and Eileen).

Here’s a basic rundown of what I think happened: they had a clear arc from 18-20, ending in reciprocation at some level from Dean, Sam marrying Eileen, Hunter Sam as the new Bobby, Dean in heaven with Cas and big roadhouse reunion at the end. Covid prevented a good amount of that. Network had to stare at big gay 18 for six months, got cold feet. Thought about Walker, target audience and alienation of the rural areas if it went full gay. Misha quarantined and likely shot something (not much), he was then cut by execs and went home. They likely added in lines referencing Eileen and Cas to make it clear but more subtextual. They wrap, editing gets it and hacks it to pieces, so we get a shorter episode that’s mostly montages and jarringly bro-centric with nothing else. Arcs are left hanging. Dabb gets episode but it’s too late, there’s nothing he can do. Actors aren’t told so they can continue to do positive PR for the ending, they all found out at the same time we did: hence almost complete silence about the finale.

And you know what? They warned us. I talked about it here, but they’ve been telling us all season that Chuck wasn’t the writer, he’s the network. I don’t think, still, that they thought it would be cut up like this, into something so unsalvageable that it’s been panned by almost everyone, even people who didn’t care much about Dean and Cas.

Finally, a masterpiece can be ruined by editing, and while I’m not sure even the script they ended up shooting on was a masterpiece (due to the network meddling already), but to me it’s blatantly obvious that it’s no one but the network that caused this, that took away closure for Dean, Cas, and even Sam.

So what do I want? Nothing really, there’s nothing we can do, but I wrote this mostly to show people that the writers are not your enemy. In fact, to the people trashing them? You’re doing exactly what the CW wants you to: blame the obvious targets, blame Misha, blame Jensen and Jared, blame Dabb. Scream and yell at them on Twitter and about how the show is ruined because of them. The network keeps their engagement levels high, they don’t get as targeted for their behavior, and just keep moving along.

Just, please, think about who did this, Mourn the show, be angry, but not at the people who fought tooth and nail for this for literal years, not the people who wanted it more than we did, not the people who cannot say anything because of their careers and the NDAs they’re bound by.

Someone is going to spill eventually, but until then, we just have to wait, and continue to be loud.

#my writing #my meta #supernatural #spn #spn finale trash fire #MY MANIFESTO IS DONE

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bananonbinary · 3 years

Text

Time for a Salty Meta Post about Martin!

people who’ve followed this blog for a bit know that spending six hours combing through text for some goddamn sources is my specialty, so i compiled every time jon ever talked about martin’s work in season 1. which for the record, he stopped complaining about all the way back in episode 26, where he was angry that martin of all people got hurt.

things jon gets mad at martin for:

not being able to find records that don’t exist

not being able to find someone based only on a first name

the Dog

not wearing trousers in his off-hours

being the one that got caught up in the jane prentiss thing

mag 004 and mag 012 both have jon taking potshots at martin over research that was proven accurate by outside sources

things jon has never once complained about:

martin not understanding the filing system and just putting stuff away at random

martin being clumsy, constantly ruining things, spilling tea everywhere everyday, etc

martin turning in incompetent, poorly-edited, or badly formatted reports

martin not understanding the terminology used, skills expected, etc., and generally being extremely new to the field

please for the love of god stop making martin the silly bumbling idiot who can’t do anything right just because he doesn’t have a formal education. there’s zero evidence for it in the text, and it’s really weird to act like a 4 year degree would outweigh the *10 years* of job experience he has, not just in academia, but in the institute itself by season one. my boy has worked there longer than ANY of the rest of the main cast. screw you guys.

tl;dr: martin is never once shown to be bad at his job, jon pretty much only ever gets mad at him for the really stupid first impression and also not finding stuff that no one else was able to find either. after martin got hurt, jon talks about his research basically the same way he talks about tim’s or sasha’s work.

fucking proof under the cut:

(i didnt include the s1 finale or martin’s statement bc that’s just...two entire episodes of them talking to each other, but there isn’t really any notable Martin Complaints in either of them imo)

I swear, if he’s brought another dog in here, I’m going to peel him.

[pre-launch trailer]

Well, technically three, but I don’t count Martin as he’s unlikely to contribute anything but delays.

[...] Alongside this Tim, Sasha and, yes, I suppose, Martin will be doing some supplementary investigation to see what details may be missing from what we have.

[MAG001 Anglerfish]

Martin couldn’t find any records of Ex Altiora as a title in existent catalogues of esoteric or similar literature, so I assigned Sasha to double-check. Still nothing.

[MAG004 Pageturner]

I had Martin conduct a follow-up interview with Mr. Woodward last week, but it was unenlightening. Apparently there have been no further bags at number 93 and in the intervening years he has largely discounted many of the stranger aspects of his experience. I wasn’t expecting much, as time generally makes people inclined to forget what they would rather not believe, but at least it got Martin out of the Institute for an afternoon, which is always a welcome relief.

[MAG005 Thrown Away]

Martin was unable to find the exact date the original house was built but the earliest records he could find list it as being bought by Walter Fielding in 1891.

[...]

We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree.

[MAG008 Burned Out]

According to Martin, who was here when they took this statement, it was at this point in writing that Mr. Herbert announced he needed some sleep before continuing. He was shown to the break room where he went to sleep on the couch. He did not awaken; unfortunately succumbing to the lung cancer right there. Martin says the staff had been aware of how serious Mr. Herbert’s condition was, and had advised him to seek medical aid prior to giving his statement, but were told rather bluntly by the old man that he would not wait another second to state his case. I can’t decide whether this lends more or less credibility to his tale.

[MAG010 Vampire Killer]

“Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin,” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

[MAG012 First Aid]

I sent Martin to look into this ‘Angela’ character - not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to. Apparently, he spent three days looking into every woman named Angela in Bexley over the age of 50. He could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.

[MAG014 Piecemeal]

Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s “a bit claustrophobic”

[MAG015 Lost John’s Cave]

There simply aren’t enough details given in this statement to actually investigate, short of Martin confirming that Mr. Vittery did indeed live at the addresses he provided.

[MAG016 Arachnophobia]

Oh, he’s off sick this week. Stomach problems, I think.

Blessed relief if you ask me.

[...]

I asked Martin to try and hunt down Mr. Adekoya himself for a follow-up, but have been informed that he passed away in 2006.

[MAG017 The Boneturner’s Tale]

MARTIN

Well, I need to tell someone what happened, and you can vouch for the soundness of my mind, can’t you?

ARCHIVIST

…

That is beside the point.

[MAG022 Colony]

Martin! Good lord man, if you’re going to be staying in the Archives, at least have the decency to put some trousers on!

[MAG023 Schwartzwald]

Martin found one other thing while combing through police reports for the Hither Green area. About a month after this statement was given, on May 15th, 2015, police were called out to once again investigate the chapel.

[MAG025 Growing Dark]

I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Why didn’t you report this?

[MAG026 A Distortion]

Martin made contact with the son, Marcus McKenzie, but he declined to talk to us, saying that he’d “already made his statement.”

[MAG027 A Sturdy Lock]

Tim and Martin had a bit more luck investigating Tom Haan, though only really enough to confirm that he seems to have completely vanished following his departure from Aver Meats on the 12th of July.

[MAG030 Killing Floor]

Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books

[...]

TIM

Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?

ARCHIVIST

No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.

[MAG036 Taken Ill]

#the magnus archives #LISTEN #i am once again asking people to remember that martin has MORE job experience at the institute than literally any other character #(except elias or i guess maybe rosie)#he's the goddamn veteran not the newbie #fan wank /

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