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whinlatter · 11 months

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author's note | chapter 5: the flock 🌊

here is the author's note for chapter five of Beasts! this week, the tide's rolling in on the greyback hearings, the press are determined to rock the boat, harry and ginny head for the (metaphorical) lifeboats, and madam pince is officially sick of ginny weasley's shit. all the usual behind the scenes writing notes, headcanons, fic and meta inspo and song choices below, plus a tiny sneak peek of chapter six... 🗞️

✨ spoilers for this chapter below the cut ✨

[ flock, n.: a number of birds of one kind feeding, resting, or travelling together ]

writing notes and headcanons:

the hearings – this chapter sees ginny forced to zoom out from her own (real) problems and start to confront developments beyond the castles: the trials/hearings, a broader politics and set of questions about justice and inclusions/exclusions from wizarding society, and the role of the media in that society’s political and cultural life. i wanted this chapter to feel like a wave building and building and breaking - narratively, i wanted a false break, with harry and ginny’s reunion, and the actual breaking to be with bill’s speech at the end (jury’s out on that one - also just made the chapter extremely long and a bit top heavy, which i might prune in an edit). but i was so excited to start writing this dimension to the fic more explicitly, because i’m really interested in taking up questions about the kinds of evil and darkness that linger after voldemort’s end, and how wizarding institutions do or don’t confront their own role in furthering kinds of societal divisions and discrimination that helped pre-dated voldemort and have survived him. it’s not that ginny’s personal problems aren’t valid or real, but that what i hoped for in this chapter is to take a step back and put what ginny’s going through into a broader context of a whole society coming to a reckoning.

the wireless – i’ve taken some creative liberties on the wireless, as we don’t really know how it works (this pottermore page on technology was far more frustrating than it was helpful lmao - if muggle wirelesses have been ‘modified’, are they still running on the same kinds of (muggle) technology, or on magic? how do they work!!!). i decided static must still exist lol, to add to this sensory experience of irritating omnipresent noise ginny experiences throughout this chapter. the lil opener about the shipping forecast i’m so attached to is a bit of a love letter to this very strange british radio tradition (i really recommend listening to a sample one, they’re so charming), but i liked it also as a window onto a possible touchpoint between muggle and wizarding society that the wireless itself symbolises. young ginny’s question to arthur about sea monsters causing waves, and arthur’s response (“there doesn’t always have to be a monster, you know. Sometimes, there are other things to worry about”) is me trying to play with ideas about wizarding hubris that young witches and wizards internalise but which prevent wizarding society from seeing its own blindspots and points of ignorance. also the shipping forecast is foreshadowing for the rest of the chapter lol (forth is the oceanic region nearest hogwarts; lundy is the region nearest cornwall, where bill’s from. don’t worry i think i’m obnoxious too)

on bill weasley – bill is probably my favourite weasley after ron and ginny. he could be a really nothing character, but instead he’s quietly a really strong and reassuring presence who is clearly widely admired and who has these really loving close relationships with other great characters. he’s empathetic and highly observant, he’s got a sense of humour but also knows when to be serious, and he takes his responsibilities to his parents and to his siblings very seriously. but he’s also got this other streak - ginny think it’s him being drawn to ‘glamour’ and ‘adventure’, but i see it more as him having a bit of a capacity to surprise, an edge, a real audacity, strong sense of self, and a belief in his own convictions. that neither bill nor charlie followed arthur into the ministry is i think very revealing of how the weasley siblings grow up seeing through the political institutions of their world (and what makes percy’s arc all the more heartbreaking).

bill and remus – this is such a personal obsession of mine lol, being a big fan of both bill and remus as characters in their own right, but i think bill and remus’ interactions in canon are small but really meaningful, and speak to two characters bound together in some way, even before bill’s attack. obviously they’re both young(ish) men in the order, reasonably close in age (at least, less than the age gap between remus and dora), and they both often play similar roles within the larger group of resistance fighter, including as peacemakers (to molly in ootp over percy, and to ginny in DH during the evacuation), and sage guides to the younger ones (remus examples too many to name, but on bill i’m thinking of him advising harry in pre-gringotts, sheltering ron after his desertion). they also, canonically, both have an interest in these questions about politics, beings and beasts the place of other species in the wizarding world, actually discussing the goblin Q together with arthur in ootp (remus on goblins: “if they’re offered freedoms we’ve been denying them for centuries they’re going to be tempted [by Voldemort]”) then, of course, after bill’s attack, remus is both a source of information and experience in the immediate aftermath, and has previously shown an interest in comforting victims of werewolf attacks and other wereolves (ootp in st mungo’s). i think they also have a mutual respect and quite a warm friendship, only glimpsed very briefly through harry’s narration. when mad-eye is killed during the seven potters rescue, it’s remus who consoles a crying bill at the burrow (‘Bill’s voice broke. “Of course you couldn’t have done anything,” said Lupin.’) remus knows bill is upset and offers to recover mad-eye’s body with kingsley to spare bill the task, but bill is insistent he wants to go, and the two of them agree to set off alone together. bill also seems to know about remus trying to leave tonks, and knows when they’ve reconciled: ron passes the info on to the trio through bill. then ofc when teddy is born, remus and bill have that lovely moment where bill’s trying to get him drunk to toast to his son’s birth when remus is absolutely elated. i think remus’ experience as a fellow victim of greyback, their age gap and remus’ credentials as a young man who fought in the first war would mean bill would both look up to remus a great deal and would motivate him to do right by remus in death.

bill and ginny – ginny’s admiration, even reverence, for bill, comes through so strongly in canon (harry even seems faintly amused by it, as it borders on hero-worship - “Bill doesn’t like him either,” said Ginny, as though that settled the matter, in OotP). i think if fleur had been with any other of her brothers, ginny might have taken her arrival better. little ginny wants to be charlie, but she also really admires bill and will follow where he leads (👀). bill sticking his neck out will (we’ll see) have big consequences for his family and for ginny. all i’ll say for now is that i think it means a lot that ginny spends this chapter trying to shield bill from the horrors of the greyback hearings, and then he takes her surprise and walks straight into the fire.

on the montgomery family - i wrote much longer versions of all the testimonies drawn from canon here (the montgomery family, parvati on lavender, bill on remus and his own attack). The montgomery family only get a brief mention in HBP, the two sisters whose little brother died after being attacked by greyback, and writing from the perspective from the parents of that child was honestly horrendous. i had to cut a lot of it down because it was just actually horrific and much too sad, too early in the chapter. but yeah sorry writing this chapter really made me realise how fucking awful the greyback stuff is. truly truly not children’s book shit lol

on parvati and lavender - i wanted parvati’s testimony about lavender to address the severity of her injuries after the attack, but it was also important to use this speech as a chance to explore how this friendship feels for those two characters. Harry’s narration is that of a teenage boy - he’s friendly with them both, but not close, probably has a bit more time for parvati than lavender, and he’s largely uninterested in both girls’ inner lives (and tends to dismissive them as silly, girlish and giggly). so it seemed important to explore their friendship as something rich and meaningful, and to put forward a version of lavender that, while shaded by her canon appearances, gives her a more well-rounded and kinder character assessment than the narration in canon ever affords her. hermione looking up to the dormitory steps as she listens to them, ginny and luna holding hands during - girls processing their friendships 2k23 babyyy

on hermione and ginny – as discussed in the last author’s note, this is me playing with how to write conflict between two female characters that’s true to their characterisation and their relationship’s dynamics, but that also has them both coming from a reasonable and understandable place but both exhibiting unhealthy coping mechanisms. ginny is avoidant, using humour, denial and distractions, and fiercely protective of the other gryffindors, trying to shelter them from exposure to too many emotional triggers. without spoiling anything, hermione has a different perspective; she wants all the information possible, she’s very interested in these questions of how this society will or won’t change, and the prospect of reform (she also, of course, has had her own traumatising run-ins with greyback), but, as ginny, harry and ron can all see, she’s not taking care of herself - she’s not allowing her any respite from the traumatising news cycle, and she’s also clearly showing signs of distress, isolation and PTSD, particularly the absence of harry and ron (especially ron, our real hero in this chap). i’ve found it so fun but challenging to write ginny’s pov when personally i’d probably be much more like hermione (want to know everything and obsessively follow the news lol). i really care about trying to write this arc in a way that feels fair to both characters.

on harry and ginny – i finally let them kiss ok!!! and i even gave harry a semi (sorry). those two just write themselves. it was very very important for me in this chapter to have the two of them thinking together about the world around them, as well as providing each other with forms of emotional support that are valuable to each of them (quiet, careful, lots of physical contact, not overstepping or overreaching, balanced out by laughter). ginny is better practiced at this: harry is still learning, though he’s getting there. what i hope i’m starting to show is how these two people go from teenage sweethearts to two people in a marriage and a partnership. (also how do you know ginny’s in the grounds a lot in the mornings harry??? hmmmmmm???) also harry potter loves the sea it’s canon and he also has no chill and definitely would pick out a little seaside house for them both tomorrow if ginny let him. love u hjp miss writing your narration where i could take for granted that you’re very selectively observant and have you slowly realise things. ginny is too observant i have to work much harder to cultivate her ignorance lol

on ron and ginny – i really feel like you can tell in their parting conversation that i’ve been binging succession lately. the surprise at ‘love you’ is pure roy siblings without any of the you know, deeply-fucked-up-ness

on st andrews/anstruther/scottish coastal destinations – how does ginny know these places, indeed? a story for another time… (we’ll get there)

on arnold – ok confession time: i forgot about arnold when i mapped out this fic. wrote a ginny pov fic about magical beasts and forgot her literal pet. in my defence, on my re-reads i was always just thinking like, what is the point of arnold. also what tf happens to arnold. is arnold one of the fallen fifty? we do not know. (...) at a certain point, though, i realised that arnold is just like, a dumb fun pet an adolescent girl gets to play with, and that’s kind of the point. joy is worth something in its own right. so having remembered he exists in canon lol and had that realisation, i’m happy with how he’s ended up in this fic finally lmao. the story of his handover is still to come, but for now just to say i really like the idea of little bea taking ownership of ginny’s pet, this symbol of innocence and fun and happy girlhood.

on chapter titles – this one is for my jonathan livingstone seagull fans (👀 again…)

reading list:

on bill weasley:

up and down and barely made it over by cosmicwritings

Harbor by @greenhousethree

on postwar justice and trials:

castles by @pebblysand

on the sea:

Harry and Ginny at Shell Cottage (meta)

on neville and ginny's friendship:

Ginny and Neville: A Friendship Forged in Fire (meta) by @greenhousethree

on lupin among the werewolves:

It's Just What You Do To Get By by @evesaintyves

songs for this chapter from the playlist:

to anyone who has reached out to tell me they’ve been listening to the playlist - you are all the loves of my life and i could kiss you. i spend an indecent amount of time picking songs out for that damn playlist, and i really used this week’s to get me into the zone for writing different sections, so feel very attached to this chapter's song choices (also it includes one of my all-time favourite songs, nobody else will be there, by the national, which is an immaculate and underrated hinny anthem and maybe my favourite love song in the world)...

and a tiny sneak peek of chapter six... ❓❔⁉️

MEET THE WEASLEYS: THE WIZARDING WORLD’S MOST OUTSPOKEN - AND CONTROVERSIAL - FAMILY William ‘Bill’ Weasley may have made headlines after his recent pro-werewolf testimony before the Wizengamot. But Bill’s not the only Weasley unafraid to ruffle some feathers. Get to know the notorious family who are no stranger to scandal, with the Daily Prophet’s handy pull-out guide, Which Weasley?

#beasts #author's note #spoilers #fic rec #alexa play press by cardi b

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jakowskis · 4 days

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Day 23 - Discuss Tosh. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?

tosh my babygirl my princess light of my life angel darling… shes so good. shes so good 🥺 i love her dearly. she’s so damn underutilized i hate how the show regulates her to a supporting role + only uses her for romantic plots. WACK shes so much more than that. i want a plotline about her cyberterrorism like hello??? i want a plotline about her warped little mind.. i want a plotline about her finally learning spanish ;-; that show did not do her justice and it did not deserve her. i often say torchwood’s characters are too good for the show; tosh is probs the best example of that. no other character gets screwed over as badly as she does by the narrative (not even ianto!) she’s so tragic and lonely i just wanna give her the biggest hug ever.

fav moment… every time she smiles. (or smirks. hrgh. tosh call me.) also every time she geeks out about smth. im tryna think of a specific moment but idk if i have one?? i just love her overall i smile every time she’s on screen she’s my girlie. when i rewatch i might rmr one though

least favorite moment, the absolute only thing i can think of (hell, my only complaint with her as a character other than i wish she’d get over owen cuz bad taste queen pls u deserve sm better) - it’s always bothered me how she goes over to owen’s flat in aditd and just starts babbling about her own problems. she even says something like “you think everything’s about you”, and in that ep it’s like ??? why are they all acting like he’s unjustified being miserable and angry when he's fucking dead?? like they're all so unsympathetic and mean, even tosh, and out of her it's especially weird?? tbh it just strikes me as ooc (+ kind of misogynistic highkey) writing. i mean, by all means, let tosh bitch, she deserves to blow off some steam + esp deserves to be rude to owen tbh fhsdkjfsd, but the way it’s done in that particular moment feels ooc and, like, how men write women as talking too much and never listening lmao u kno what i mean (owen’s tuned out in the actual episode but you can see her full ramble in the original script, on page 23). tosh has never troubled anyone with her issues before, why would she choose now to, and when she knows owen’s struggling? yeah, on second thought, i don’t hold that against her actually, that’s ooc to me fhdkf. thts just the writer being a wiener.

my only unpopular opinions (slash hot takes) are that 1) towen fucking SUCKS get her away from him, and 2) most people like tosh but she’s highkey underappreciated, esp in fanfic, because of fandom racism + misogyny. she’s not bashed like gwen is but she’s ignored completely which is nearly as bad, and a lot of it’s cuz she happens to be in a show with two white men in a gay relationship who are overwhelmingly prioritized 💀 i will never not be petty about the way that ship dwarfs everything else in comparison. also throwing towen into the background of janto is so gross n cheap. if ppl cared abt her they'd do smth more interesting. and it's never well-done either. ugh.

i have a few hcs that are gonna end up in my owento verse (gwen and tosh are prominent characters in it bc i love them, and their relationships w owen and ianto and each other also have value lawl). tbh a lot of em are just things i think they should introduce into their lives to be happier. i want them happy ;-;

she starts coding video games recreationally!! nothing fancy but she rlly enjoys it + also gets into the swing of making little storylines n getting to express herself that way which is good for her. owen playtests shit for her

her and gwen go on spa dates sometimes. they put it on the torchwood credit card

she gets into fish tanks and fish tank care!!! esp like aquarium plants. shrimp and moss balls, that sort of thing. maybe plecos or loaches. she loves it + it’s grounding, which is good for her bc shes otherwise always got her head in her computers yanno. she’ll sit by her tank while she codes her games and the water sounds are calming.

she also sits by it while she studies her spanish books which she does finally do. she doesn’t get around to the piano, though; doesn’t prioritize buying a keyboard. maybe one day (this is a nobody dies au btw so she will in fact eventually get around to it ;-;)

oh she’s autistic have i said that. the fish tanks absolutely become a spin. she has a few we know of from canon - math and computers, obviously, but also history (gbg) and the uk’s rivers (from gooseberry; i think it was just the uk maybe it was europe’s rivers. or the world’s! i don’t remember). she also loves trivia like she knows a fair amount about quite a lot of things + loves accumulating random info

lowkey also. giving her a kitty. i think tosh should have a lil fuzzy kitty to keep her company

well this is smth from my owandy verse but i think it should happen anyway. so it kind of kicks off bc gwen mixes up a blind date (it was gonna be tosh & andy and then owen & a friend of hers, but shes an adhd icon n bungles the invites <3)... tosh ends up with gwen’s friend, who’s straight, but they hit it off and she invites tosh to have drinks or maybe come to a bookclub meet or something with some friends of hers?? point is, tosh makes some casual friends. maybe meets a pretty girl there or smth 👁️ but mainly i want tosh to have girl friends like i think she grew up very lonely i want her to have some normalcy

also sometimes i like tosh x andy maybe they have a little meet cute at a torchwood crime scene or smth fshdkfd. i think they’d be cute and he’d treat her well. she'd babble abt tech stuff and he wouldnt understand a damn word but he'd listen very intently

i also like tosh x ianto for similar reasons. i think it’d be a kind of friends to lovers sitch... they should just be close in general tbh, platonically or not yanno, and in my owandy verse i like the idea of smth kicking off between them i just think theyd be so sweet

she’s a very sleepy drunk and also a lightweight. if the team goes out to drink she’ll get two glasses of smth moderately fruity and then fall asleep against someone’s shoulder it’s very cute (this is just cuz i like the idea of a sleepy tosh 🥺 my baby my baby shes so precious to meee)

#tdot #txt

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pizzapasta23045 · 1 year

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I think I saw you mention that you don’t see Diluc as autistic, and Shenhe as cluster b. I’m kinda curious now- which characters do you see as autistic/adhd, and what are some other headcanons you have for some of your favorite characters? (Because asking for the whole roster would be a bit ridiculous)

-☁️ (is this one available?)

the emoji's available don't worry, you're litterally the first!

tw mentions of trauma, suicidal thoughts, non in any detail but they're there.

Oh and yeah I have mentioned that, I actually do have some very specific hcs about them so bare with my rant.

Ok, so first of all, the autism:

Alhaitham, obviously. Have talked about this in a lot of posts. He's on the low empathy side of things, special interest is general knowledge gathering and books, plus language history.

Cyno: Also have talked about this, it's pretty obvious to me. He's the nerd kind of autistic, special interest is TCG, has a very strong sense of justice. He's not at all good at reading people but really thinks he is, has a very neurodivergent way of joking in my opinion.

Tighnari: Special interest is plants, very oversensitive to noise, doesn't find socialization particularly hard in the sense that he doesn't care to impress people/get them on his good side unlike Cyno. Special interest are fungi and shit.

ADHD:

Childe: very common hc, I think it's very true tbh. He's got a short attention span, is rather impulsive, has a hot temper and gets easily frustated. I do think he's also got like A LOT of trauma which does affect the way the ADHD shows up and shit. This hc is subject to change if we ever see his childhood in a flashback, which i think is likely.

Kaveh is an interesting case because I've seen him descibed as both autistic, adhd or straight up both. Since we will get a hangout event and voicelines i will wait to decide which i hc but in any case i feel like he's neurodivergent in some way.

Now... Shit gets weird now... /j

Scaramouche has bipolar due to abbandoment issues, which worsens after the death of the kid. He is shown to extreme mood swings, an exaggerated sense of self (his whole god thing and stuff) and poor decisionmaking. Plus, passive suicidal thoughts at some points in the narrative. It's actually an hc I've thought a lot about and I've done a decent amount of research on it because i didn't want to stereotype the disorder... so yeah...

Diluc to me strikes as more PTSD than autism mostly because I think he does understand social norms, just doesn't feel the need to follow them due to lack of care/loss of trust in people's ability to be good.

Kaeya has C-PTSD in my opinion. Which is kinda funny because the ragbros match lmao! (C-PTSD is a different/more specific version of PTSD that causes difficulty controlling your emotions, feeling very angry or distrustful towards the world, avoiding friendships and relationships, or finding them very difficult and that is usually caused by prolonged trauma as opposed to one specific event like ptsd, especially if young when the trauma starts.)

I have more but I feel like I've already said a lot. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

#obvs I'm not an expert and if you have the disorder and feel i've done something inaccurate/offensive don't be afraid to tell me #always striving to learn and understand better #textpost #autism impact #inquiries to a pizza

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emblazons · 1 year

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That's a nice point about Matt Duffers, lol. But I sometimes feel like the show could not manage to deliver the message on the show. Most of the audience thinks Will was truly being childish and in the wrong for playing DnD in S3... and they still think that way after years. And of course, the audience is 'dumb' sometimes and they do not get the messages of the show and its narrative, but... it is also the case that the show could have done... better, so to say.

Honestly I think you make a fair point, though I personally don't agree with the idea that they "could have done it better" just because a lot of people don't understand what they were doing? Sure, I agree that there were maybe simpler or more straightfoward methods to get to where we are now, and I don't necessarily agree with all the Duffer's decisions, but...I certainly don't think they've done anything poorly…on top of the fact that the show isn’t even done.

I have talked about it here several times before, but: Stranger Things was and always has been a show for a specific audience (which The Duffers have repeatedly said, even walking into S5) rather than the behemoth household name moneymaker a lot of people see it as today, and a lot of the muddled interpretations of the show come from that expansion beyond its original bounds more than anything else. I think that, especially with the introduction of S4 when they “started showing their hand,” their direction for the story was clear to the audience it was meant to be—and while it is perhaps its a bit "pretentious" in a way to say so, the fact that ST is lost on people who it wasn’t designed for doesn't mean the Duffers did a weak job—it just means they aren’t the audience the show was written for.

With smaller shows (and even movies) that have more niche audiences and smaller viewerships (aka: people who know what to look for in the show), you don't see the same kind/level of criticism or audience dissonance ST gets—just like the audience for Clueless (1995) can appreciate things about it that people outside of its viewership might think was overwhelmingly foolish, same as the viewership for Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is going to catch and appreciate things about it that are going to fly right over the heads of a fair number of people who watch it...despite both of those films being phenomenal examples of work for their specific audiences/genres.

There are people who don't like Jane Austen who know she's a master at what she did even if they don't understand it, and people who hate Stephen King books still know he's good at what he does (unless they're being critical for its own sake). To me, its much the same with The Duffers & Stranger Things—it makes sense to almost all of the nerdy, deeply steeped in movies and TV humans who watch the show, and most of us have realized they are on their way to making a clear point about how embracing your nerdiness is positive...even if most of the general audience hasn't gathered that yet.

Also, given the show isn't even finished yet, its jumping the gun a bit to say "you haven't delivered" on something that isn't yet complete? You can’t get 4/5 of the way through a book, see the lead up for the story, and then shut it before the dénouement…only to then say the author doesn’t know what they’re doing lmao.

Like. If The Duffers fuck this up I will be right there demanding justice for Will Byers, same as you. But I’m not gonna call Matt Duffer a liar or incompetent writer before his proverbial essay’s even finished just because someone who wasn’t the intended audience for ST doesn’t understand or see the deeper themes of the show ☠️ if it’s pretentious to say that then…I guess they have to mark me down LMAO.

Anyway. I hope that makes sense? And that you know I am not coming for you, but more the idea that the duffers are fucking up somehow because some people don’t understand them. But still, thanks for the ask!

#my answer giving hardcore ‘it’s not my fault you don’t understand media’ but I don’t mean it like that lmao #I just mean that someone not understanding something not designed for them doesn’t mean the thing is bad or poorly done #especially when it’s not even FINISHED?#like. what Matt said holds up even in canon—the story just isn’t done yet lmao #people not having the foresight to see what’s coming doesn’t mean it should have been done better #just like people expecting ST to be heartstopper or a tragedy have lost the plot either way LMAO #anyway.#let me bring it back in now lol #asks

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arcplaysgames · 1 year

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gurl me too the fuck

okay the next palace is really starting to get on my tits so lets stop and catch up and gloat about how i'm right about everything (i.e. am able to pick up on obvious narrative tells and extrapolate blah blah)

Ran into Kasumi and got lunch. Apparently she totally bombed her gym conference because she's still working to get over the very recent loss of her sister. Like, she says it was this past Spring she died and I'm like wow uh that's. really recent for you to be acting all plucky and optimistic.

So that kind of explains her severe Stepford Smiler vibes, goddamn. I'm certain that the recent loss of her sister definitely won't come up again in a traumatic way that reveals she's been plastering on a happy face to cover her pain, nope.

POINTS AND LAUGHS

stay mad, phuckboy.

Do you think Matt Mercer ever has to ask for a shot of whiskey before straight-facing lines like this or is he such a professional he just powers through?

Everyone tries to go see the summer fireworks but it's hard to see them in a crowd, the tall buildings are in the way, and then it starts raining.

Sucks. Poor Ann, you looked so nice, Ann!

One, sad boy hour is every hour when you are Reverie Vantas the Fifth.

Two, Ryuji can you fucking locate the brake pedal in your vehicle and apply some pressure, goddamn.

I'm prob not gonna show EVERY screencap of it because there are SO MANY but a third of the things Ryuji says are along the lines of wanting to be famous and dramatic, and it's a repeated refrain so much that I can only imagine that's going to be important later. But it chafes so fucking hard in the meantime.

I actually hate the Phansite and the entire concept of the Thieves being famous. I think they should be working silently, not for the fanfare. Not actively seeking out targets (which would lead to overeager mistakes) but waiting to build a case and then striking when the situation is dire enough to warrant their intervention, because the level of power they have over people is tantamount to an ego death and should be treated as such with the needed gravity.

Obviously there are mitigating factors, like how the very presence of a Palace indicates a severe situation, but also: I hate the current MO so much, I hate unilateral action without oversight.

(Hi, yes, I was Team Tony for the five minutes I cared about Marvel. Fuck Captain America.)

Every glimpse the game gives me Sojiro's secret daughter makes me pull my chair in and sit up straight, lmao.

also why do ppl wear their headphones like that, ain't that heavy on the ears

So there's a lot going on so summary: Medjed, which is basically Anonymous in MegaTenland, has threatened the Thieves and calls them fake prophets of justice and says Japan needs to drop the idol worship. wait i thought japan loved idol wor--

fucking crying laughing. IF YUSUKE HAS ONE FAN I AM ONE OF THEM, IF HE HAS NO FANS I AM DEAD.

So while Medjed is making threats against the Thieves, "another" hacker reaches out to Reverie and is like "I will help you with Medjed but you have to steal someone's heart, her name is Futaba Sakura."

So: Sojiro's daughter is named Futaba Sakura, she is setting up her own heart-theft, and I believe she is also Medjed and the entire plot is a set-up to make the Thieves do what she wants.

I don't have proof of the second half of that yet but I am pretty confident in it.

An unmarked envelope for Reverie shows up but thankfully Adachi is still probably in prison somewhere so its a blank calling card like the Thieves tend to use.

"Alibaba" is like "that's what you need, right, a calling card?" And Reverie informs them he needs the targets name. Alibaba reluctantly says its Futaba Sakura. Because Alibaba is Futaba Sakura, obvsly.

Going to Sojiro for deets doesn't go well.

BUT EVEN FUCKING WORSE

Sae wants info on someone named Wakaba, and when Sojiro says no she threatens to pull his custody of Futaba from him until he yields.

And then smiles and says she'll be back for coffee.

Wow, so its just the whole Nijima family, huh? Do what they demand or they will fuck you over aggressively and then pretend like it ain't no thing.

Meanwhile, Akechi is laying the groundwork to blame the mental shutdown cases on the Thieves, which is just fabulous. You need a haircut, Beige Boy.

THEN HE SHOWS UP TO BE VAGUELY INTIMIDATING TO THE TEAM AND BE ALL WINKY AGAIN. If this boy has not already done a murder before, he will have done a murder by the end of the game and we just gotta make sure it doesn't end up being Reverie.

LE BACKSTORY: Sojiro and Futaba's mother Wakaba were friends for a long time. Wakaba was a single mother (the game takes a moment to gasp about this to remind us This Is Frowned Upon) raising Futaba. It's obvious Sojiro was incredibly fond of her. When she died suddenly, Sojiro adopted Futaba and raised her.

She's always been a reclusive genius type but lately Futaba's been losing it, talking about hearing her mother and hearing voices. She blames herself for her mother's death though we don't know why.

Sojiro is doing his best with the situation but mostly is trying to give Futaba a place she feels safe.

Sojiro I'm sorry I made fun of your hat, you're a really good dude. Don't worry, we will use the power of demonic smartphone apps to help your daughter.

THERE IS ALSO A SMALL THREAD BUILDING UP AROUND MORGANA. When Reverie and the team go to investigate Futaba, Morgana gets left behind in the commotion and they don't notice until later.

There is this small wind up happening with either the Thieves not appreciating Morgana enough (which: agreed) or maybe with so many people joining the team and everyone kind of up to speed on how the Metaverse works, Morgana is beginning to feel his importance slipping? Maybe he's afraid without some kind of usefulness, some kind of leverage, no one will be motivated to help him look for his memories.

Which is absurd, I would drop literally any party member for Morgana.

The team goes and asks Futaba for her keywords to get into her Palace. She's fully nonverbal but talks via chat and says she's going to die here, it's her tomb.

Off to the Palace!

#p5 #persona liveblog

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high-voltage-rat · 10 months

Text

Posting my RvB Project Freelancer playlist because I have brainrot about some of these songs and also crave public opinions on them.

This playlist was built with two things in mind- the badass space marine vibes, flashy fight scenes, and fast-paced action that embody the freelancer arc, for one. Some songs I included primarily because they contributed to this overall energy that Freelancer was based around. That feeling of flying through the battlefield, guns blazing, with no regard to the danger. The kind of confidence that lets you jump off a building without worrying too hard about how you'll survive the impact- that lets you face an entire base worth of enemies and still crack jokes as they surround you. The kind granted by a ranking system that tells you "you've been chosen. you're the better than the rest. you're on the leaderboard."

But the other motivation, in perhaps direct opposition to the first, was the set of underlying narrative themes that poisoned the Freelancers from within.

(Further discussion, Spotify link, tracklist, and choice lyrics under the cut:)

The ignorance, intentional and otherwise, to the purpose of their missions- to the Director's true motivations, to the ethical principles being violated with every step, to the thinly veiled lies. The need to prove oneself- to stay on that leaderboard no matter what the cost, to remain worthy of approval, of power, of support that could mean your very survival. The betrayal and infighting to remain on top, to right the wrongs done- the break between the agents who valued loyalty and those who valued morality. The manipulation by The Powers That Be to participate in and perpetrate the horrors of war, to stain one's hands with blood and commit horrible deeds which ultimately have no purpose- believing the lies of 'us versus them', throwing away your innocence and believing that it's all for the greater good, only to discover that the people you've done these horrible things to are no different, no more evil than yourself. Eventually breaking free from those influences, despite the potentially lethal consequences, and being left with the near-impossible task of trying to become 'good' again. All of these were themes I tried to keep in mind and channel in this playlist. Bonus points touched on were the impact of AI on their hosts' physical and mental health, the quest to gain justice, and the attempts to find peace and be better after it's all said and done.

I found that while my primary focus was on the Freelancers themselves, a fair number of the songs applied just as well, if not better, to the simulation troopers and even the soldiers of Chorus. I enjoy that this kind of highlights how the main message kind of echoes through all the RvB arcs. I also think it's a notable point that a lot of the songs that I used to portray the manipulation and abuse of the Freelancers by the men in charge have the real-world messages of highlighting wealth and social inequality and abuse of the working class by the rich. This isn't something necessarily explicit in the RvB canon- but the vast majority of military recruitment comes from their exploitation of the desperation of the working class. This real-world issue has echoes throughout the story- in the Reds and Blues, yes, but also in the Freelancers. They say multiple times, "The Director's given us everything"; they've been lifted up, granted a better life, but it all depends on remaining in line, staying in the good graces of those with power. They eat, sleep, breathe because of Freelancer- they live on the ship, spend their whole days submerged in it. One wrong step, and they're back to having nothing.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the playlist lmao

True Friends- Bring Me The Horizon

I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you // 'Cause I'll forget but I'll never forgive you // Don't you know, don't you know? // True friends stab you in the front

2. Go To War- NOTHING MORE

With every battle we lose a little more // Remember everything that we'd die for // You are everything that I'd die for

3. Only Us- Thrice

Finally when will it be enough // To find there's no them // There is only us // There's only us

4. Wicked Ones- Dorothy

This night ain't for the faint of heart // For the faint of heart, for the faint of heart // This night ain't for the faint of heart // 'Cause the faint of heart gonna fall apart

5. Saints of the Sinners- The Faim

When jokers smile and angels cry // We lose ourselves and lose our minds

6. All Eyes on You- Smash Into Pieces

Now the whole world's watching every move // Still your heart so much to prove // Fight for all the things that you believe in // Now the whole world's watching every move // Take your shot, don't act a fool // All you've got and all you'll ever need // Is one bullet in the chamber

7. Used To The Darkness- Des Rocs

Now would you pray before you twist the knife? // Yeah, would you take my hand and take a life? // I'm too damn young to give up on the light // I'm used to the darkness, I'm used to the darkness

8. Can't Go To Hell- Sin Shake Sin

It's no mystery, what can I say, we're blind by design // And history keeps getting paid to change it's mind // Some wounds will never mend // Divided by deception, but together we must rise // Deafened by the naive while we silence the wise

9. 12 Rounds- Bohnes

'Cause I fight for everything I die for // Everything I bled onto the ground sacrificed for // When the reaper comes knocking at my door // We'll be going 12 rounds

10. Hold Steady- The Glorious Sons

What ya think? // I do it for free? // Either you're lyin' // Or you must not think much of me // I gave you my soul // I gave you my bloody, ragged soul

11. Chosen Ones- Mountains vs. Machines

We are, we are the chosen // We are, we are the few // The end will never come // We are the chosen ones

12. I'm So Sorry- Imagine Dragons

So you gotta fire up, you gotta let go // You'll never be loved till you've made your own // You gotta face up, you gotta get yours // You never know the top till you get too low

13. Machines- All Good Things

Hands to the sky I swore I'd try // Searching for a better life // They would take us far from home // Far from all the things we know

14. The Kids Aren't Alright- Fall Out Boy

And with the black banners raised // As the crooked smiles fade // Former heroes who quit too late // Who just wanna fill up the trophy case again

15. Man or a Monster (feat. Zayde Wølf)- Sam Tinnesz

It's so hard to tell which side you're on // One day is hell, the next day is the dawn // The lines are blurred, you keep rubbing your eyes // The tables turn, now it's time to survive

16. Spaceman- The Killers

And you know I'm fine // But I hear those voices at night sometimes // They justify my claim

17. Down (feat. Trella)- Simon

All the secrets that I keep // Like a bomb inside of me // I've been waiting to be free // All the shades of who I am // Try to catch me if you can // I just slip right through your hands

18. Mars- Sleeping at Last

As life replayed, we heard a voice proclaim // "Lay your weapons down // They're calling off the war // On account of losing track // Of what we're fighting for"

19. What Are We Fighting For- The Federal Empire

The price of our freedom // Is blood in the water // We’re looking for hope what will it take // We keep on repeating // The fate of our fathers // Somehow there’s got to be a change

20. Follow My Feet- The Unlikely Candidates

There's a fork in the road in front of me // At the crossroads of identity // The Devil is standing to the left // He says "either way, they both lead to death" // And the high road's steady and steep // And the low road's easy and deep // Guess I'll follow, follow, follow my feet

21. Hysteria- Muse

Yeah, it's holding me, morphing me // And forcing me to strive // To be endlessly cold within // And dreaming I'm alive

22. Go Get Your Gun- The Dear Hunter

And to those who'll die, please try to understand // That for those who die, we tried the best we can // With our one foot in the grave // While the other one's kickin' its way right down to Hell

23. The Fear- The Score

I've battled hard with the face in the mirror // Every scar makes me dig down deeper // Push it 'til there's nothin' more // 'Cause I'm stronger than I was before

24. Lunatics and Slaves- Sin Shake Sin

Hate what they tell you to hate // Love when they say it's okay // Still, you have nothing to say anyway // And you don't even know you're a slave

25. Try Honesty- Billy Talent

Sew up my eyes, need no more // In our game, there is no score // Forgive me father, why should ya bother? // Try honesty, try honesty

26. Blood On Our Hands- KNGDAVD

So walk with me and you will see // That your enemy may be your remedy // 'Cause we all got blood on our hands // But we still got hope in our souls

27. Free- Mother Mother

A bloody war // Behind my eyes // I come out right on the other side

28. Back Against the Wall- Cage the Elephant

Blanket of silence makes me want to sink my teeth in deep // Burn all the evidence of fabricated disbelief // Pull back the curtains, took a look into your eyes // My tongue has now become a platform for your lies

29. Spirits- The Strumbellas

I spend a lot of nights on the run // And I think, oh, like I'm lost and can't be found // I'm just waiting for my day to come // And I think, oh, I don't wanna let you down

30. Blindness- Metric

I was a blind fool // Never complained // All the survivors // Singing in the rain // I was the one with // The world at my feet // Got us a battle // Leave it up to me

31. Champion- Barns Courtney

I've been on a long road // With the devil right beside me // Rising with the morning sun // It's a hunger that drives me

32. All These Things That I've Done- The Killers

Another head aches, another heart breaks // I'm so much older than I can take // And my affection, well, it comes and goes // I need direction to perfection, no, no, no, no

33. Imaginary Friends- Des Rocs

Do you wanna leave me here? // With you 'til the end, imaginary friends // Give in to the fire and the fear, the liar in your ear // And you'll never be lonely again

34. Dear Dictator- Saint Motel

And at the trial, there'll be no jury // And all the dead are going to play witness // Not too late to say you're sorry // It's too late to truly mean it

35. False Confidence- Noah Kahan

Why won't you take me seriously // Look at me all fucked up over someone I'll never meet // And I wonder why I tear myself down // To be built back up again

36. Villains, Pt. 1- Emma Blackery

I don't feel anything // Because I became possessed and obsessed // With the idea of revenge

37. Woke Up A Rebel- Reuben And The Dark

I am wild, I am lost // I am sick, I am damned // But I am holding redemption in the palm of my hand // So I tighten my fist // And sharpen my teeth // It's a promise I made // It's secret I keep

38. Revolution- John Butler Trio

So tell me family now what do you think // Watch it all go down the great big sink. // Watch how the scum it rises to the top. // Don't you wonder when it's all gonna stop? // Sometimes I wonder how we do sleep, // Serving the dodgy companies we keep. // All kicking and scrounging for the very first place // Dictionary definition of a rat race

39. Survivor Guilt- Rise Against

Carry on // Don't mind me // All I gave was everything // And yet you ask me for more // Fought your fight // Bought your lie // And in return I lost my life // What purpose does this serve?

40. Pressure- Muse

Get out of my face, out of my mind // I see your corruption // I'm not blind // I'll carry the burden and take the strain // And when I am done I will make you pay

Note for anyone who actually read this far or looked at the selections here: yes I know these selections and bands imply something very specific about me, and the idea of some of these more popular and overplayed songs being paired with my melodramatic write-up might be laughable. I feel the need to qualify by promising my taste is not just the basic "action movie trailer" vibes or early 2010s radio hits this playlist sort of lets on... but these are the songs that make me Feel The Vibes and part of the vibes is the inextricable fact that I watched the Freelancer Saga in 2011-2012 when I was an edgy teen listening to Linkin Park and Fall Out Boy on repeat daily. Just be glad I branched out more than I did 11 years ago for this one.

#not video games #rvb #red vs blue #it's not 'done' cause I'm still tweaking it but I crave external validation lmao #late nights with ali #playlist #project freelancer #spotify #ali watches rvb #in deciding on the title for this I discovered that the motto they chose for the pfl shirt logo translates to 'strength through science'#which. yeah I'm sure that's exactly what the director advertised his work as but in hindsight his 'experiments' kind of did the opposite lo #anyway sorry this is hella long blame @yer-yellow-stripes for encouraging me

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canmom · 6 months

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I'm sorry, looks like my tone didn't come across the way I wanted. I just felt slightly uncomfortable when, in a review where you deservedly pointed out how some jokes in Adventure Time repeat tropes that hurt trans women, fat people, disabled people etc. you yourself made jokes that repeat tropes that hurt adopted siblings.

Hi anon. I did get a bit defensive, definitely. Let me give you a more genuine answer.

So yeah, textually Finn and Jake are adoptive siblings. This is so far mostly played for humour - Jake's dad is a very silly caricature of a father, the rest of his family have not yet been introduced at this point (I don't think we've met Jerome) - but I think it's absolutely fair to say the dynamic they're going for with Jake's relationship to Finn is 'cool older brother'. It is kind of a failing of media literacy that I didn't pick up on that, thinking of them more as 'bros' in the figurative sense (very close friends). And I can see how that could make joking about Finn and Jake's relationship feel tasteless.

We could talk about the thin line between fictional portrayals of close sibling relationships and romantic ones (c.f. Azula bedroom scene). Bearing in mind that we're talking here about a cartoon boy and a cartoon dog - Finn and Jake are symbols. They invoke various associations based on the needs of the narrative. Trying to read it based on real human relationships is at some point going to founder against the fact that nothing about this show makes sense in 21st century human terms.

So I was reacting to a story about two boys who live together in a treehouse, do everything together such that they're basically treated as a unit, and constantly display a great deal of emotional sensitivity towards each other, which often draws parallels between their relationship and established romantic ones (for example, the gladiator episode, or the 'do the thing I like' in S4E16). Notably they don't really tend to show Jake in a 'sibling who takes on parental role' light either. I certainly don't think the show intends a romantic reading as the primary one by any means lmao, the way the show indicates romantic relationships is not subtle, but I found it amusing that it gives grounds for that reading at all.

But like sure. I don't mean to treat adoptive relationships dismissively. They are precisely as meaningful as 'blood' relationships and I'll keep in mind that it's an incest joke if I ever feel like making that kind of joke again. (which I probably will, because that just makes it funnier.)

That said, I do think the narrow focus on 'social justice' criticism as my only approach, particularly in the 2018-era liveblogs was... a limiting frame, to put it mildly. It's not that I think I was wrong, exactly, to find things like the early Ice King plots tedious. Princess Bubblegum for example becomes a much more interesting character once they start playing up the sinister, tyrannical angle and drop the 'love interest' frame.

But there's more going in this work of animation on that it would have been interesting to talk about. And having seen the alternative in the painfully didactic cartoons that have become the norm... well, I regret worrying so much about frigging Adventure Time of all things lol

#for my own peace of mind if nothing else - a longer answer than you might have wanted. don't really want to discuss anymore

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alovelyburn · 2 years

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Griffith as a character is great but I still hope that it’s Casca who ultimately kills him. Guts and Griffith both got to kill their rapists and I’d like the same justice for her.

I do understand that drive. That said, I personally don't think it is that likely, because... well, two reasons.

First, Berserk is ultimately about Griffith and Guts, as Miura had said himself. That is the central relationship of the series. Having Casca come kill him, even if it makes sense from a character perspective and is viscerally satisfying for many readers, wouldn't fit the story as it's been laid out and would shift the centerpoint of the narrative away from where it has been the whole time.

And honestly, I am an unapologetic Miura fangirl in most ways, but he never had that much interest in Casca as a character beyond her utility in catalyzing Griffith and Guts' relationship. He only kept her alive, per Miura, in order to keep Guts upset at Griffith. Her mental regression is largely present to motivate Guts to do something other than relentlessly chase Griffith. Even now her being abducted is all about making Guts get off the fence about whether he wants to hang around her or chase Griffith. So I'm personally not convinced that.. Miura was interested in focusing on her to that extent. Which is somewhat appropriate since she's a supporting character, but I do think the strings are a bit too obvious with her, at least for me.

Anyway, that's where I am on it.

Could be wrong, though, only Mori knows.

I do think Griffith is pretty likely to die, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had a hand in it assuming she doesn't get killed or turn into an apostle to motivate Guts some more. But I do think the end will necessarily need to focus in on Guts and Griffith.

...oh, there's one exception that I could see happening, which would be one of those scenes where everyone thinks Griffith's dead and then Casca runs into him still barely clinging to life and finishes him off. I could kind of see that.

And PLEASE anyone reading this, don't mistake this for me saying I rooting for any of these things to happen. When I talk about things/make predictions/analyze I'm not looking at it from the perspective of what I, personally, would want - I'm trying to analyze the story structure, the narrative promises, and what Miura had tended to do with the characters or situations, plus his interviews.

What I, as a reader, would want is a wholly separate issue from what I think the story is implying or leading to.

Also I don't mind being wrong unless it's about something embarrassing but then I just won't say it, lmao.

#ask #ariel talks about berserk

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chuplayswithfire · 2 years

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hello! i found your blog recently and have really enjoyed reading your meta - specifically re: your recent post about izzy and the comment that - "its to izzy’s credit that i dont think he gathered that this was what was occurring" as someone who has complicated feelings about izzy but ultimately enjoys him as a character (even though i'd hate him if i met him IRL), i spend a lot of time thinking about what i want out of izzy's storyline/character progression in future seasons. i think there's so much we don't know about him and so much that could be done, and i would love to see him have the opportunity to grow and change - and i think the way he got everything he thought he wanted and now everything is a fucking mess because of it has the opportunity to be a catalyst for that. this may be grasping at straws but at least based on that post, it doesn't seem like you think he's beyond the point of change i guess? (using "change" specifically since idk that "redemption" is the right word and i can't think of a better one.) i think in a show about found family and community care, i would love to see izzy have the opportunity to try to become better and maybe try to right the wrongs he's caused as much as is possible. i think the idea that someone who has caused harm has the opportunity to realize that harm and want to become better is an interesting storyline that the writers of ofmd could really do justice to. but i will grant that i'm maybe somewhat biased since i personally think he has potential and i just want him to become a better person, haha. basically, i'm sending this ask bc i appreciate your perspective and the meta you've already written, and i'm curious if you think this is possible for his character? if you do, what do you think that might look like? if not, what would you want to see the writers do with him instead? (anyway, i hope this ask is not a bother and you definitely don't have to take the time to answer it - i'd just be interested in your opinion if you wanted to!)

Firstly, thank you for reaching out! Your ask isn't a bother, though I won't lie I at first was a bit surprised to be receiving the question, but...

My thoughts on Izzy are complex, partly because if Izzy Hands were a real person i would want to run as far away from him as possible, given he's practically the human manifestation of sublimating your worst impulses onto other people, being overly possessive and entitled to another person, and also like, *super* invested in toxic masculinity and homophobia. He reminds me of the no fats no femmes type of guys I met when I worked at the Pride Center for my university.

But Izzy Hands is NOT a real person, he's a character, so I can engage with him in a way that feels more compassionate and kind than I would Izzy Hands if he were a real person. He's make believe, he's a part to play, he's a role within a wider narrative. And in that role and narrative, I do think that it's probable that Izzy will change for the better. I think this because OFMD has a pretty hopeful bent to it, a pretty reparative/restorative justice tinge rather than a punitive tinge to it, but mostly I think so because Ed and Stede are the main characters of this story, and I think it would do a lot for Ed's healing and journey for Izzy to grow enough to apologize and then get out of Ed's life.

I personally do not see a world where Izzy and Ed stay on the same ship and Ed is able to be emotionally safe, secure, happy and in love with Stede, just because all of those are kinda against Izzy's own interests, and as much as I do have some compassion for Izzy, OFMD asked me to love a LOT of white men lmao and Stede is the problematic white man who takes up all my bandwidth. I have nothing left for Izzy but an exasperation at how determined this man is to wreck Ed because he's too scared of change to give it a try.

tldr: I do think the show will write Izzy in a direction of positive change, because this would be beneficial to the narrative and especially to Ed's healing.

#asked and answered #izzy hands #ofmd

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vibesaresimplyatrocious · 2 years

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Dude your tags on that writing post are making me go wild because oh my gosh your fic does read like someone committing to the bit!! Like in the nicest possible way it does read like improv every plot point feels like a “yes and” moment and it’s AMAZING (also it’s great to know that the character assassination of Johnny Storm was not premeditated lmao)

oh yeah pretty much everything in it is just a "yes and" moment where I did something earlier and I decide to play off of it more. Like, especially in chewing coffee.

i decided to commit to chewing coffee because I had like. one specific scene with the avengers i wanted to write, and i needed a way to fucking get there. So i decided I'd just start with dealing with the narrative consequences of the last fic and I would get to the avengers when I figured out how to get peter's character emotionally to the place he needed to be for that bit. it's been three hundred pages, by the way. and we still have some decent ground to cover.

I like talking about writing and stories, so there's a huge fuckign data dump below the cut about how the improv developed and the johnny storm thing. don't feel obligated to read it, it's a lot.

One of my big pet peeves in stuff that has romance, especially when there's a "woman" character (since the omegaverse basically just always has a guy taking the "female" role in the relationship) is when that character's like. entire life becomes their love interest. Like nah. They have to have other shit going on. you gotta let them do their own things. having feelings for this person doesn't mean you don't have other shit in your life.

My other big pet peeve is when people do things for drama and then don't follow through with the logical consequences of that.

Which is one of the reasons why Matt's the love interest and has hardly been in the fic. peter's got his own shit going on. The biggest consequence of hand-spun silk wasn't them getting feelings for each other--that's manageable, even if they're going to be huge fucking dumbasses about it. It was the bridge. at the time, I decided i needed a big climax action scene thing to sort of make a transition moment in the narrative that would push matt and peter to commit fully to what they were doing. but the logical consequence of that is "wow the public got a HUGE FUCKING CLUE as to who this mystery omega is."

of course, i was never going to write chewing coffee, so i thought i was never going to deal with it. then, i wrote chewing coffee. so i had to deal with it.

so Peter's got bigger shit going on, and he's got a very full life outside of matt. Matt stilll adds to his life! even if they both have a huge amount of trouble realizing it, they both really love being with each other. They're both some of the most important people in each other's lives. But they still get to lead their own lives, which i find much healthier and does way better justice to Peter's character. Like, he is his own main character, and so is matt. Both of them are superheroes in their own right, and while they are huge allies, neither of them is less capable or some kind of damsel. neither of them is teh traditional hollywood love interest screaming for the hero to save them. So peter does not need his narrative chained to getting a boyfriend. he can get a boyfriend and stop a bomber.

and like. i want to be clear, i'm not shitting on romance as a genre. finding love can be the number one driving factor! that's okay! great even! especially if you don't want to have to devote a bunch of narrative space to a bunch of subplots. the pet peeve specifically arises when people set up a bunch of other stuff to make it more exciting, like some kind of villain or enemy, and either make it secondary to the love plot when the fucking murder attempt is objectively way more pressing, or when they make it into an excuse to damsel the "female" character for the love interest. Like, i'm sorry, peter can lift multiple fucking tons and you think the physically normal man is the one who does the rescuing? Peter is not a damsel. he has never been a damsel. like he looks like a twink but he is one of the most powerful heroes in comics and way too many people decide to damsel him just so whoever's playing his love interest can be a hero. In general, i don't like the entire trope of "love interest as damsel." Like. take MJ for example. She's been dangled off so many fucking bridges. but she's been in peter's life for forever. she's tough as nails and deserves having her own narrative and character independence outside of being someone you can dangle off a bridge.

I dunno, it's a balance that has to be struck for me, i'm not saying it's bad if love interests help each other. Like, Matt does help peter! Peter needed help that Matt specialized in (law), and Matt was able to help him! there's nothing wrong with needing help and matt and peter can and do pull each other's asses out of fires. but peter still gets to be strong and independent and capable and matt doesn't need to hold his hand through every fucking plot point, jesus christ. I think some of the best romances are ones where people are just looking at their partner being extremely badass and applauding. it just icks me out when one person is made less capable just so the other person can be a big fucking hero. so that's the number one thing i had in mind while improv'ing matt and peter's relationship.

I do plan on making matt more present in the plot, for the record! once i started getting a sense for what i was doing, i started realizing some things i wanted to have in there needed build up or they'd be coming out of left field, so we have a lot of narrative threads just set up that i'll be tying together soon.

The other reason why Matt hasn't been as present and will start being more present is because my biggest rule of writing is that I can never sacrifice character for plot. i've trashed and redone entire projects before because i decided that i hadn't brought the characters to the right point to make the decisions they were making for the sake of plot, so the plot had to go in order to make the characters right. it's more of a general vibe? the biggest guiding factor during all of this is whether I've gotten them to a point where I can understand why they're able to make the decisions they're making.

And there was no fucking way that Peter would ever get with Matt after hand-spun silk.

Part of this is because I very firmly believe that just sex cannot be a basis for a relationship, especially in the context of ABO. Like, if it's just that they spent a rut together? Nah. Losing control of your body and having hormone-fueled sex is not grounds for a relationship. if anything, it's the grounds for intensive therapy, not a relationship. Like, what do you like about their personality? how do you feel about their communication style? what if you hate the way they chew? Peter's never going to look at someone he just had a bunch of sex with and think "wow, we should be in love." Sex is great, fantastic, having good physical chemistry can be really valuable, but it's not the sole basis of love. He spent his entire life being objectified, and he's also someone who's in a very healthy long-term relationship where they had to work fucking hard to stay with each other.

MJ and Peter's love story was something that sort of strung itself together in the background and it became something I really, truly loved. Like, originally, I was trying to figure out how to just make Peter mentally good with offering to do this for a bro, and I decided he couldn't be in a relationship. He'd have to necessarily talk it through with someone else to clear it, and matt would have called the entire thing off the second it started causing more inconvenience than was already obvious, so that would derail it entirely. But I didn't want to do that thing where the preexisting female love interest is a huge bitch or inexplicably missing or whatever just to make way for a ship, so i decided that she was still a huge part of his life and decided to add in a gag where they called it on and off again like they were playing a game of hot potato. Inadvertently, that gave them an epic fucking love story of people who had to wake up every single day and make the conscious choice to love each other.

it's hard to show, because it's all stuff that happened in the past, but it's inherent in their everything. it's one of the reasons why they have such good communication--it was figure it out or destroy each other, and they figured it out. Inherently, Peter and MJ are extremely traumatized people subjected to structural violence and generational abuse. they spend every single day of their lives under extreme stress, from poverty and violence and inequality and fighting crime. their early relationship would have been a mess. they had to create ways to keep themselves from destroying each other. they had to spend a fucking decade meticulously laying boundaries and figuring out how the other worked best, and working fucking hard to respect and fulfill each other.

Like, most of it ended up written in their mannerisms. Like the scene where MJ's going off to get peter's camera--i fucking adored that scene, because Peter's arguing with her about how dangerous it is for her to go and how he doesn't want her to go while tying her shoes for her so she can go. That was extremely important for me because I felt it was the key to why their relationship ultimately worked. Because MJ would bitch slap anyone who tried to throw their weight around with her. She would never be with Peter if he was the kind of person who would think he could make that decision for her. Peter still gets a voice, he still gets to raise concerns, but he recognizes that it's her decision and he will enable her to make it. It's a huge act of respect and one of the fundamental building blocks of the way I made MJ's relationship with Peter was that they mutually respected each other.

The other thing I wanted was to make them deeply messy fucking people. That's why MJ's so crude in this--it's a choice, and a big source of trauma. She grew up in hyper traditionalism. I grew up in hypertraditionalism, and you aren't supposed to know what a dick joke is. You aren't supposed to swear. you're supposed to be perfect and ladylike and daren't say a word if the men say something unseemly and you shan't repeat such dastardly things.

Anyway, I have a mouth like a sailor and wrote a porn fic to see if i could. purity culture doesn't work.

So MJ grew up where she was just boxed in to only appear as perfect and ladylike as possible, so she went the opposite direction and became as crude as possible. she likes pushing people's buttons. she will make comments about your ass. And that's deeply inappropriate behavior at times. With peter and ned? They're used to it. They've consented to it. It's part of why they love her, actually. But slapping matt's ass? he didn't give her the green light to touch him like that, and she definitely wouldn't have done it if she hadn't been drunk. In the end, he didn't care, so no ultimately harm done, but there could have been harm done and she doesn't exactly get credit for lucking out. it doesn't mean that she's a bad person, it's just that she's not a perfect person and she does dumb fucking shit at times--which, everyone does. She's extremely messy, oversteps boundaries, and it's a direct product of trauma. Peter ain't exactly perfect either. he's borderline suicidially reckless and has trouble ever letting people into his decision-making process. He'll risk himself eleven days out of ten before giving an inch, which was one of the reasons he's nearly fucking killed himself with his heats.

So it ended with these extremely messy, imperfect people who had to try again and again to keep loving each other. So many romances, especially in the superhero genre, stem from some kind of inexplicable chemistry instead of conscious choice. MJ and Peter could have burnt out and stopped loving each other. They worked hard not to. That's important.

So Peter became this character that had an extremely hard won love that would have been invalidated every single day by people who thought biological chemistry was superior to a decade of fighting to be together. like, the omegaverse? It's fucking weird about biological predeterminism in general. one of the premises that i set for myself when i decided to do this was that i had to keep everything from the omegaverse but if it was something that was fucking stupid, i would make it a part of the stupid things that people believe or just a part of the absolute most extreme moments like heats and ruts.

like, for example, guys in my family would always say "men drink because they like it, women drink because they don't like something else." that's the stupidest fucking thing i've ever heard. do they think gender affects your fucking taste buds? also, have they ever thought for even half a second about the sheer number of men who are alcoholics and drink specifically as a coping mechanism? Women have better tasting drinks than men because someone randomly decided that beer was for men and fruity cocktails were for women, despite the fact that cocktails taste better and have stronger booze. it's the stupidest goddamn thing i've ever heard. but the world is full of dumb shit about biological predeterminism just like your fucking drink preference. So everything i hated in the ABO world just became that kind of thing.

So that thing in the ABO world? The thing where people just smell good and that means you're fated because you both smell really good to each other and, you know, you can base an entire relationship off smell? or the thing where you find someone of the opposite secondary gender and immediately they're the perfect alpha/omega for you and you're ready to do everything with them immediately upon meeting? That's present in this world. It's a dumb thing people tell Peter when trying to convince him and MJ that they'll never be happy with each other, and that some dumb fucking frat bro alpha can do more for them with goddamn body odor than a decade of dedicated love.

So Peter was never going to be able to get with Matt after hand-spun silk. Absolutely not. He's way too traumatized for that. If anyone suddenly developed feelings for him after years of platonic friendship when the most notable thing that changed was that they fucked due to a biological demand? He would never, in a million years, believe that they could have fallen for him because of his personality. He'd think it was just them deciding he made a good omega for them in bed and he'd leave deeply fucking hurt. Even if he realized he developed feelings for matt in the aftermath, he'd never trust any feelings matt developed to be real. Peter was in his right mind. matt wasn't. It would eternally fall into the same trap of "I was just play acting at being his obedient omega and that's what he was into."

Like, Matt too, for the record, just for different reasons. matt would have never gotten with Peter after hand-spun silk becuase he has a guilt complex the size of jupiter and he'd never in a million years make a move on peter after the guy just nuked his own life to save matt from dumbassery his twenty-something self willingly committed. No. He's going to crush everything down deep inside and then one day he'll die. And, honestly, I do think that would have been the right decision had Peter not liked him back.

One of the core distinctions i made between Peter and Matt's character is that Peter is really good at dealing with his emotions in a healthy way but is absolute shit at recognizing them. Matt's dumb as a fucking post about dealing with his emotions but tormented by his own awareness of them. So Peter's big problem is that he will be fully into someone and shuffle that away as something that's obviously not his own emotions, pshhhh. Matt, meanwhile, woke up after his rut, realized he had developed feelings fucking immediately, and then had a panic attack in the bathroom.

I'd like to go on record that neither of them developed feelings for each other because they fucked. it's because they, necessarily, had to be more intimate with each other than they would have ever been with like, their regular bro, and it made them realize that this person who'd they'd already die for is someone they'd really like to live for too. They had to go to bat for each other. Peter destroyed his own life to help matt. More than once, Matt fought through his hormones to try and give Peter an out because he'd rather he be hurt than Peter be hurt.

And, it's also the little shit. They talked a lot about things that they never would have talked about otherwise and realized how deeply they related to each other. they did a lot of little acts of intimacy, like when peter would scratch the base of Matt's neck because he liked it or when Matt would deny his impulses to help peter through anything. Neither of them really had to do that for the rut. They did it purely just as acts of caring, and those were the bits of each other that they got feelings for.

And those nice feelings would almost absolutely be crushed down forever in the aftermath of a rut. you'd have to drag them kicking and screaming to emotional realization. there's a lot of fucking work to put in before they can get past their own issues and realize that it's okay to give each other a shot.

I have a LOT of thoughts about the Johnny Storm debacle. It's going below, so if you're interested, read on. Some of it is what's outside of Peter's perspective and therefore not featured in hand-spun silk or chewing coffee. I doubt it will be able to make it into the fic, just because there's a lot that gets missed when you limit it to one character's perspective. There's still a chance it may come up, so there's a risk of spoilers.

The Johnny Storm thing is something that i think is a lot more nuanced than i was able to show. Part of it is that i made it up totally on the fly so it was very sloppy execution. Like, if you go back and read the Johnny parts of hand-spun silk? i shift the goal posts a LOT because i was still developing Peter's own character and figuring out how he would respond to all this. The other part of it is because this is totally from Peter's perspective, and so we have kind of a coke-bottle lens view of it.

See, the thing about the Johnny Storm thing is that i think it could have been a relatively minor speed bump in their relationship, and then circumstances, a few very poor choices, and plain bad luck blew it up into something major. I also think that Johnny Storm and Peter Parker would be great together, but that they could never work in an omegaverse specifically.

in the comics, i think they're fucking great together and make a fantastic ship. In the ABO world specifically, i think that Johnny would be ass over tea kettle in love with Peter, and Johnny would at best be a ship in the night for Peter.

Because the thing is, from Johnny's perspective, he was legitimately in love with Peter and did not ever want to hurt him.

I want to be clear, I'm not excusing the dumb shit he did. I have explanations for it, they're discussed below, but they're not excuses. He has to bear the blame all the same, but I think that it adds a little more nuance and makes it a little more tragic.

He was legitimately in love with Peter and it wasn't because of the rut in the same way Matt didn't get feelings for Peter because of the rut. Like, nothing about why Johnny fell for him had to do with the bits where Peter had to put on a show of being the perfect omega for him. Johnny actually really, truly loved him way better when he wasn't play-acting at being the perfect omega for him--which is why, at one point, Peter mentions that Johnny always made dumb fucking jokes during the rut and it would always snap him out of pretend and he'd instantly threaten to kick johnny's ass. Johnny really liked Peter's like, actual personality. He figured out early in their friendship that dumb fucking jokes always got a rise out of Peter, so he memorized them ahead of time and brought them up whenever he had enough sense to so he could get back to how Peter is normally, because that's the Peter he loved.

(which was another distinction I tried to draw between Matt and Johnny, incidentally. I decided to give Matt an identical moment in the rut where he was aware enough to realize that Peter was playing things up to cater to his hormones and try to get back to Peter's actual personality, which is the one that he actually had feelings for. However, Matt said directly to him that he was aware that he was putting on a show and let Peter consciously drop out of the headspace he had put himself into in favor of his genuine personality, whereas Johnny sort of tried to draw him out. Neither had any ill intentions behind it, but Matt's more consciously communicated with Peter.)

The thing about Peter is that he is the first partner Johnny ever had that treated him with the love and respect you'd give an actual partner, and they weren't even actually dating.

This entire thing has been a big mash up of the comics and the movies and the only rule is that I steal whatever i find funny. Like, Peter? I know most people think he's tom holland peter because of MJ and Ned, but his basis is actually comics Peter for me. Ned and MJ (and the Toomes plane crash) were the funniest fucking things from Homecoming for me, so I kept it. He has the key to the city like Tobey!Peter (because how the fuck do you explain having that, that's the most useless piece of decor over a guest can never see it) and a lot of the lines and personality i get from Andrew!Peter and most of the backstory and attitude is comics peter. Like, imagine whatever fucking Peter you want, I don't give a shit, I want everyone to have their own experiences with this fic, but all of the characters are really just a frankenstein, and Johnny is no exception.

Like the comics, he became a superhero when he was still a teenager, is the thing. He's been in the spotlight forever. Celebrity culture is fucking toxic as hell and he sort of was drowned in it young. Like, the thing in the movies, where he's dating an eternally changing supermodel who goes on live TV and announces that the most important thing about dating the human torch is fireproof lingerie? weird straight people celebrity bullshit. why would you ever fucking say that outloud to millions of people jesus christ. and it's all this johnny has ever really known, relationship-wise.

Like, it's give and take. He's not exactly a passive participant or victim or whatever. He likes having sex and has a lot of it (and there's nothing wrong with that). He fully wanted Peter Parker to be a notch on his belt and nothing more when they first met, and his expectation was that Peter Parker would be another person who wanted to happily fuck a celebrity--and then would probably post on Twitter a full review of how he was in bed, without ever asking Johnny and with Johnny never consenting to it.

So Johnny made the stupid fucking decision to roll up to Peter in a sports car to ask him if he could take Peter for a ride, and Peter immediately fucking laughed in his face, asked him if he thought dick size correlated with how stupid your car was, then proceeded to call MJ in front of him and heckle about it for seven minutes straight before walking off to catch the subway. this peter believes in eating the rich and was deeply unimpressed.

Like. johnny benefits from his public image, dont get me wrong. He gets a lot of hook ups because of his image and certainly isn't upset by this fact. But the standard that was set when he was very young and dating for the first time and getting his heart broken for the first time was that his body was public narrative and he was being used for his name and the publicity attached to it. he got fucked up by it. It was a long string of toxic relationships that usually ended up on the front page of a lot of tabloids--and that's how it always was and that's all he ever expected. his nudes get leaked without his consent and everyone acts like it's a completely okay thing on the person's part, and he should have known better and is at fault. his exes sell interviews. he gets photographed on his walk of shame and the person he hooked up with goes on ellen to reveal that he does perform oral. and i'm not going to say he was comfortable with any of that, he wasn't, he hated it, but he wasn't looking to change the status quo--partially because he didn't fully believe that the status quo would change, partially because he was having fun with hookups and wasn't looking to settle down (which, again--as long as both people go in knowing that's all it is, is not a bad thing). He'd always be johnny storm. There'd always be a price tag attached to intimate parts of his life, and a lot of fucking people would be more than happy to cash in.

Peter would rather rip out his own appendix than be publicly known as the person who risked getting set on fire to climb on Johnny Storm's dick, however.

So, for the first time, Johnny found himself in a relationship where the person was genuinely only in it for him. Peter didn't want the novelty of fucking a celebrity. He didn't want to go on a talkshow or go viral because he leaked a picture of johnny's dick. He rather violently and aggressively cared about Johnny and Johnny alone, actually. It was sort of Johnny's first experience ever, after years of dating in the public eye, where he was in a relationship where no one was looking to exploit him. The other thing was that they did this for a long time. This was a month they spent together, most of which didn't involve Peter having to play pretend because that wasn't necessary until right before the rut.

And from Peter's perspective, they did the same shit they always did, just with sex, so there wasn't any change. From Johnny's perspective, he got to spend a month in constant contact with someone who genuinely cared about him, was hilarious and ridiculous and one of the best fucking people he had ever met. Like, he loved that Peter brewed coffee with red bull. He thought it was ludicrous. He was in love with how ridiculous Peter was. So he found himself wanting to keep with it afterwards. he wanted his relationship to be with someone who genuinely cared about him and treated him with respect the way no one else had.

The problem was they were never in a fucking relationship in the first place, which was a slight wrench in the works.

There are three reasons why it blew up as bad as it did/why they would never work, and that's 1) outside forces, 2) privilege, and 3) just plain dumb immature love.

Outside forces:

This is the absolute biggest thing that I think sank them, and it's kind of sad in the sense that it was legitimately outside of Johnny's control. The media is the biggest one. If they got together, eventually, the news would get out. It would be chaos. Like. Johnny's an A-Lister, and a fucking superhero A-Lister. In the public eye, Peter's a total nobody. It would be rabid. It'd be like if every wattpad fanfic about one direction falling in love with some random girl from fucking iowa or whatever the trope is came true.

I could write an essay on how biological predeterminism and natural law resulted in like 97% percent of modern issues and inequality, but this is already too long for anyone to read. but the omegaverse would undoubtedly be 1000x worse about it, holy fucking hell. which means the way we treat women in our world? even worse in the omegaverse.

The public narrative fully thinks that he's a slut who will fuck any cape that looks at him twice. He's been considered a slut since before he even agreed to fuck Johnny. It was a given, and Peter knew that going into it. Like, no one had any illusions that the human torch was going to find a nice omega for his rut and settle down in holy matrimony before they so much as graze each other's hands god bless amen praise the lord jesus christ. The expectation is that whoever would be sharing the rut would just be doing it casually. that's PEAK slut behavior. Peter's a public whore from the start, and while it always bothered him, he didn't care about that nearly as much when there wasn't any chance people could find him or his loved ones.

If he actually ended up with Johnny? Nightmare situation. Jesus Christ, he'd never know peace. People would hate him and be jealous of him and psychoanalyze everything he ever did. he's queer. He's in love with MJ, a fellow omega. he drinks red bull with coffee and is a fucking mess. he wants zero children. Johnny's an alpha, and a superhero to boot. People would eternally expect him to be the perfect omega and it would not fucking work out.

And that's something that can be overcome, don't get me wrong. The important people in the relationship are teh ones actually in it. But it's a huge stressor factor, and It's one I don't think they could have overcome for other reasons.

The other big outside stressor is the Fantastic Four.

Full cop, I don't like Reed Richards. I think he's a dick. He is the only one i directly was trying to character assassinate. for the record? they were fully in the wrong for everything they did. But I think most of the shit they pulled arose from assumptions that would have been extremely likely had it been anyone other than Peter.

because from their perspective, they're trying to protect Johnny from what's already been the biggest violation of his life.

his private health information got leaked by people they hired, and it became a talk show matter. johnny was visibly tormented by it. they felt like shit and knew it was only going to get worse. he was going to live with whoever did this talking about his dick for a solid year after. it was going to be brutal if he ended up hurting whoever he fucked. they were in damage control mode. legally, NDAs around sex cannot be enforced (a lot of celebrities try to have them--it's just a scare tactic. not a court in the US would ever enforce one. it's legitmately impossible to make them binding, but i won't get into why). so whatever happens, it's almost definitely going to make the news.

Then, in strolls baby brother, having announced that he found an omega all on his own.

and it's a fucking reporter from the superhero slander newspaper. They were fully convinced that not only was peter doing this for fame, but this was basically a work assignment for him.

All of Peter's butting heads with them was him setting very healthy and necessary boundaries. From their perspective, it looked like he was trying to increase his bottom line.

He was forgoing all health precautions--because he refused to fuck their brother in a monitored room on videotape with eight medical professionals watching at all times and the EMTs and the fucking fire department in the next room listening to him get it on. he's got superhealing and a precognition for danger that let's him know when johnny's getting too riled up and he needs to calm him down or dodge a dick fire. From his perspective, danger is minimal and he isn't making a fucking sex tape or putting on a week-long peepshow for a bunch of total strangers.

The F4 saw a totally normal unenhanced human willing to get third degree burns inside of him if it meant that he'd get a bigger payout when he appeared on oprah.

Same thing with pregnancy. Peter demand a certain level of dignity from the proceedings. He was going out of his way and fucking a friend, their baby brother, exclusively for said friend's benefit. He gets the fucking dignity of not being treated like a cheap whore who needs to be monitored to make sure he's not going to baby trap someone he'd never be able to get otherwise. He was not going to let the Four watch him take the contraceptives or the pregnancy tests of his own free will, because that's fucking humiliating.

For the F4? Great, not only is Peter going to leak this all afterwards and break Johnny's heart, he's definitely going to be an eternal source of emotional devastation because he's looking to get a fucking child out of this that Johnny will forever be tied to.

And the problem was that it was all based on the assumption that Peter was doing this out of self-interest. And they don't get a pass for treating someone fucking terrible just because they thought he was going to hurt their baby brother down the line. But without the context that Peter was spider-man and a good person, it was the plainest thing in the world that he'd be leaking all of this. So the F4 became a huge source of stress and bad feelings that constantly hung over anything Johnny and Peter could have had.

Privilege

This is another thing where Johnny wasn't consciously trying to do something bad, but it is something that sort of made everything worse. Johnny's rich. A celebrity. Male. An alpha. White. He's about as privileged as you can possibly get.

And I think that it's important to note that that's not a source of fault, but it is a thing that you have to be aware of. And I didn't think Johnny would be aware of his privilege throughout this and it would make everything worse, simply because his privilege never really came into play with Peter.

Peter could not care less about whether or not Johnny was rich, or white, or an alpha. In fact, that's more likely to be an active deterrent than anything else. So Johnny walked in with the mindset of "this is someone who just cares about me for me. he doesn't care that i'm famous or rich or whatever. we just care about each other's actual selves." And that's true!

Doesn't take into account every fucking other person on the planet, though.

A lot of Johnny's fuck ups were directly sourced in the fact that he didn't consider his privilege. He sort of took this on with the mindset of the media being a storm they'd have to eventually weather together, if they did end up together. And he's used to that. He's been eternally in the public eye for years. It's hell, but it's something you can get through together. but he didn't consider that that storm would be extremely different for someone who had money, resources, clout, who wasn't an alpha, and also who wasn't at times in a publicly queer and interracial relationship.

The media storm for Johnny is horrible and invasive. For Peter, it's "hey, haha, is Someone Going To Kill My Entire Family." Johnny didn't even think about showing up on Peter's doorstep with roses, because he's never even goddamn had to pay rent before. it didn't even occur to him that this may make people come to try and kill Peter and his family (Peter's fucking Spider-Man--he's the last person in the world to worry about handling some random fangirl) and it didn't occur to him that it may put Peter in the very difficult position of not being able to afford to move. Johnny's already been to Peter's apartment before. So he didn't even think about how showing up with roses would end with months of serious agonizing stress for Peter.

And it's not an excuse, but it is an explanation and it is something that he has to learn from. Like, there's a lot of fuck ups i've unthinkingly done because i didn't even know it would be a fuck up. i've been privileged in ways I wasn't aware of and ended up with egg on my face. In Johnny's case, that wasn't a minor fuck up you learn from and move on from, it spiraled into something bigger than it otherwise might have been.

Immature dumb love

The last factor in why this went the way it did was simply because this was very much this Johnny's first real time being in love and he was sort of fucking stupid about it.

Like, Peter's lightyears ahead of Johnny when it comes to "being in love" maturity because he has intensive experience. He and MJ had to fight for their fucking lives figuring out how to navigate a relationship. Johnny's never once been in a real one that didn't come with the expectation of "hey so we're gonna fuck around for a while and in the end you're inevitably going to leak my dick pics and tell everyone that i'm good with my tongue and get a spot on a night show from it, and I'm going to feel embarrassed every time i leave my home for a while." Johnny's like. Early twenties. People in their early twenties have a vast fucking range of things they're really mature in and things they're total fucking dumbasses in. i'm 23 and i've got things i'm lightyears ahead of my peers in and things i'm like a toddler in. He's young and fucking stupid about some things, and in this case? He fell in love for the first time and blue screened completely.

he got butterflies and set himself on fucking fire on live TV at the mention of his crush, inadvertently starting a media frenzy. You could see his crush from fucking space. he had no idea how to handle doing this like an adult, because every other relationship started with making a pass and immediately hooking up. He tried that with Peter and Peter asked him if he thought dick size correlated with how stupid his car was he has no backup plan. So he just started choking on his own dumb feelings.

For the record? His intent was never to make Peter feel like he was less capable. He knows Peter is capable. But he got within twenty fucking feet of peter and ended up choking on his own panic and emotions like a school kid with a crush. So he just ended up hanging around his crush and fumbling around him and checking in with him way too often and being extremely conscious of how sweaty his palms are or how many times he asked Peter how he was doing in the span of one conversation, fuck that was too many this got weird.

But we don't see Johnny's internal reasoning. We see his actions through Peter. Who has spent his entire life being pushed down and treated like he's some helpless damsel when he's the most competent person in any room he's in. So everything gets filtered through a narrator who's not entirely reliable, and intentions get read in that aren't exactly there.

Johnny's plan when confessing his feelings was to try and handle it like an adult. He dressed up and got roses, because that's what Sue told him you do when you're trying to make a big romantic gesture. He was going to confess his feelings as best he could and respect Peter's decision no matter what.

.... And then he walked right into the knowledge that Peter was in that very moment fucking another alpha and got brutally kneecapped by his own disappointment. His entire plan got put on the off-step.

When Peter let him down, what was going through his head was that he was extremely disappointed and didn't want to put that on peter, so he wanted to give them space so Johnny could get over him and not impose his feelings on Peter unfairly. What came out was "let's not be friends for a while," which isn't actually what he meant but people don't say exactly what they mean in the moment a lot. He realized that after the fact, got panicked that he might have fucked up the best friendship he ever had, and then fucked up even worse by trying to fix it in the moment instead of respecting the words Peter was actively telling him. And that's still his fuck up, and he still needed to respect boundaries. But the reasoning wasn't "I don't see you as someone worthy of respect," it was "i'm in a panic spiral and making poor decisions."

The worst, most egregious thing Johnny did, and in my opinion the one that's the absolute hardest to forgive, was when he started a public fight with matt on the bridge where he directly talked about peter's fucking sex life in front of people.

Like holy fucking hell, that one there's no real valid explanation for. Like, i included it because comic book characters, especially Johnny Storm, are very impulsive and hotheaded and a lot of people do fucking stupid things in the heat of a bad moment. It was an act of total immaturity, jealousy, and the culmination of a lot of disappointment and bad feelings that resulted in him saying a lot of really fucking dumb things that he regretted immediately after he said them and has been absolutely torturing himself over ever since. And, once again, his regret doesn't excuse his actions, and it's up to peter as to whether he'll ever get forgiveness.

I think the entire Johnny Storm thing, under different circumstances, could have been minor. Johnny could have confessed his feelings, Peter could have turned him down. Johnny could have swallowed his disappointment and they would have moved on. But a lot of outside stressors, bad timing, and people being their worst selves resulted in Johnny fucking up with way worse effects than otherwise it could have been. His decisions are on him, don't get me wrong, but I think sometimes just plain bad luck can also lead us to being worse versions of ourselves. I will say that a lot of the harm he caused was unintentional, and he is actively in deep regret over it--and not because he lost out on a romantic partner, for the record. He regrets hurting the best friend he ever had, hurting someone who helped him at dear cost to himself, and potentially losing him forever.

#chewing coffee #this is very long due to who i am as a person #i wrote an extreme slow burn after having them fuck for eight chapters straight like i'm just long winded #i answer comments on the fic like this too it's ridiculous #why am i like this

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icyxmischief · 2 years

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....HHHH lol as much as I love it smashing (haha) the entire dudebro incel culture, does anyone feel as conflicted as I do about the She-Hulk season finale?

Well played, Kevin Feige. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, TOO.

Oh God, what's Ambs blabbering about NOW?

Well, I'll tell you, lmao. Keep scrolling if you're annoyed, but I think you will ultimately like that I'm pointing this out.

The fourth-wall breaking narrative tool needs to be done well or not at all. Jen does this a little forcibly often. It works when she's making commentary on the absurdity of a capitalist, cis male centric audience and the over-used tropes that come along with it. I also like that she's reclaiming her own Narrative, capital N, the way Loki did in his own series.

BUT.

We are being had, folks. I learned about this way way back in grad school, so hear me out:

Yeah, we get it right? The Having the Institution™, the Big Cheese, the Exec, participating good-naturedly in their own ridicule, IS THEIR OWN BEST WEAPON AGAINST BEING CHECKED BY COUNTER-CULTURE.

WHEN "WOKENESS" GETS BRANDED, COMMODIFIED, AND SOLD LIKE THIS, IT PLACATES THE AUDIENCE INTO THINKING WE HAVE "DONE ENOUGH" ON BEHALF OF SOCIAL JUSTICE. (not yelling, caps just for emphasis).

It NORMALIZES problematic content.

Because, see, they've already "gone there" with all the Bad Content: --fridging, --male "equivalent" characters commandeering the show; --convoluted and hackneyed plots; --unnecessary glossy mega-production; --the underpayment of their CGI department; --preying on nostalgia and "vintage" content that "only True Fans get" for maximum emotional impact (Emil Blonsky's appearance as a throwback to the very old Hulk movie..whoops, you didn't realize that's why they did that? welp now ya know! it's a BIG thing mega-corporations are doing right now, and not just in entertainment); --the cheap marketing trick of having guest stars (like Bruce) who appear just to tie in plot points that tease the next big series or movie; --EVEN SAYING IT'S "CREEPY" TO WORSHIP THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND MAKING FUN OF THE "NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT" (this is a callback to the whole "Marvel snipers" joke about how the actors can't share any spoilers ever and aren't even told the whole plot of a film); --and so on; As a result: if an earnest media critic on the internet (which "K.E.V.I.N." also takes a smirking stab at) is still having qualms about the problematic content, they can be written off as fringe weirdos who need to "go outside in the sun and touch some grass."

I know, I know, "Ambs, enough. Just let me ENJOY shit already!"

And you totally can!!!! ALL I AM SAYING: Do I think that enjoying shows like She-Hulk makes a person immediately some kind of drooling passive slave to contemporary culture. No, obviously not. It's entirely possible to enjoy problematic things and still not emulate the problematic content in real life.

Frankly, I'll watch any show with Matt Murdock because he's sex on legs.

Just be AWARE of what the MCU creative team is really trying to do.

#meta #she hulk spoilers #she-hulk spoilers #spoilers

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your--isgayrights · 2 years

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just messaging to say that i really enjoy your fics, characterization, analysis/insight, and writing talks - you put out valuable work and i really admire your writing. it’s been really fun waiting for updates, it feels exciting!

since you feel like sharing, is there anything you have about one of your fics (be it a cut scene, the writing process, or so on) you’ve been dying for an opportunity to share? i love behind-the-scenes/the writing process ^^

hiii hellooo thanks for calling my gay losers fanfiction valuable work its on my emotional resume now

Hmm I don't really cut scenes as much as I just sometimes completely rewrite them and/or move them around... Like there was going to be a scene with LJY and a scene with SYS in chapter four but like for uhhh Obvious reasons I was like okay no those go in Chapter 5 now my privileges for adding scenes to chapter 4 have been revoked.

On my other fics hmmmmm.......... Um if you read the one for ORV bigbang that I pitched and wrote, the 10k one about YJH going through every regression and KDJ is always there, that one is one I like talked about in an ask way back ago on this blog... It was an AU I played around with in my head that like I pictured being like suuper long and multichaptered and going through each regression but like... A writing skill I actually learned was that... you can actually make plans about writing... so that you have to do less work...

Shocking!

Which is why when it was still going around in my head I pitched it to ORV BB and Yuu was kind enough to pick it. I initially planned two chapters in the outline submission, one chapter with the sort of YJH timeline viginettes and then a second chapter where he has to game everything to make sure KDJ lives... So in my outline process I have the end of these two chapters written, the first is the one that you see in that fic with the sacrifice and the second is a final confrontation w/ the OD AND i think that the latter will never see the light of day. My main problem with it is that even though I tried to incorporate HSY more in the planning of chapter 2, I felt like the ending I came up with didn't do her justice in the climax, it was too YJH and KDJ focused, so if I ever went back to that chapter 2 concept I'd basically be starting from scratch I think.

ALSO about that one: in the ORVBB terms Yuu only had to make one illustration for me but she really went above and beyond and did a bunch of scene sketches just before I submitted the final which was just so crazy cool. A lot of my WIPs went on hold during bigbang but it was really wroth it just to have that experience i think.

if you want some Writing Process about wall fic tho heres a fun anecdote (cw i talk about why suicide is included in the fic a bit):

so back when I put out the first few chapters of wall fic i was really not expecting the kind of response that it got because firstly i had never written a fic that got the amount of attention wall fic got from the git go before and then secondly... ok when I wrote the outline for wallfic in my head it is like. A. Comedy.

So that seems like crock because chapter one is like explicitly about Kim Dokja's suicide attempt huh. and like I knew that when I wrote it... But I didn't think it was that sad? It's hard to explain that because like. Something I encountered after publishing is that in my experience, like, attempts aren't sad. You know, I'm open about being trans and gay and like the fact of the matter is that like 50% or more of my lifelong friends from growing up have attempted suicide before like we're part of those more than 80% statistics lmao. So in my mind when I see narratives about suicide in media, I'm sort of looking at how well they represent my own or my friends' experiences. Which is why cannon ORV really struck a cord with me, because it presents KDJ's suicidal ideation as this natural part of him that's always there, and he's never portrayed as crazy or wrong for feeling and thinking in those ways. It's presented very naturally in a sort of "this is just how it is" way. Which is something that really hit me, because I think that in my experience with suicidal friends, that's how it is. It's always lurking under the surface and it's something we all have thought about. Then there are just these moments of crisis where it can't be held back anymore and then you're calling 911 at 3 am on a school night...

So when I sort of write about these adults and institutions failing KDJ in chapter one, my feeling on it was going for that "this is just how it is," and then, in setting up the YJH relationship, it represented to me the fact that there are things that can still save you, whether it be friendship or strange parasocial calling, at the core of things there's some hope for us... It seems very optimistic to me! A great set up for some gag comedy too, classic romcom misunderstandings such as... "Oh the guy who saved me from my suicide attempt doesn't actually care about me..." oh hmm.. that still sounds depressing doesn't it?

I think that one of the reasons I had to take a lot of breaks in between writing Chapter four is because around the time i was done with chapter 3, i was home for winter break and found myself calling 911 for another friend and I was like... OH. WAIT. this is like. Not something that Most People Have Done. Because I was sitting there answering the responder thinking like "🙄 ugh i hate that they always ask if the suicidal person is armed when you call 911 for attempts" and then I remembered that like the first time I called 911 on like a for real for real attempt where I 100% knew that my friend Would Die if the ambulance didn't get there on time my reaction was... not like that lmao. Like The Sheer Desperation I felt at that time would almost be impossible to explain because there's this sense of helplessness that comes from being a teenager where your friends are just physically out of your reach and it feels like there's nothing you can do for this person to change the home life that keeps bringing them to the edge so all you can do is watch your discord dms late into the night in case you need to call 911 and then once you have that's all you can do...

And then i was like hold on wait is that what wall fic is about.

So I like reread chapter 1 then and it was like kind of hard because like... Yeah huh I kind of Wrote This huh. These are kind of my Real Life Personal Experiences being projected onto my Korean Webnovel Men.

Then I reread comments that I got on that first chapter and like... people saying that they cried reading it and that it was so sad... I had kind of laughed or thought they were exaggerating the first time I read them because it's like... I didn't write anything sad though?

But then when I was rereading what I wrote with everyone else in the comment section that time I thought... it really was sad... It was sad what happened to me and my friends, wasn't it? That it's just how we grew up, thinking it was normal, getting used to it to keep each other alive... And I started crying too, because I had forgotten that it was sad, that it was terrifying, and I needed all these people on the internet to remind me...

It was a bit hard to write after that, because I realized that my own words had a lot of meaning to me... and since it was very important to me to write wall fic, I started to get a lot of anxiety about doing it right. ORV big bang helped me take a break and remember that writing is just writing... I don't have to worry too much about whether or not something I'm writing is accurately representing something important to me... because since I'm the one writing it, the things I think, my values, ideals, experiences, all these things are naturally going to be in something that I make... I don't have to express things on the axis of all these specific ideals, its enough to just put down what feels fun and good. I managed to bottle the feeling I had before of "i enjoy these guys in my head and i want to show them to people," sort of the joy of creating that got overshadowed later on.

I think that was important for me, because at the end of the day I think that wall fic is still comedy. It would be wrong to call it tragedy, because even though the beginning is sort of in this sad place, the sort of trajectory of the story is upward, you know? I think that it's also something I want to express that those of us who do have those sad lives or those tragic lives... it's still living! Too often I feel that narratives about suicide I've been subject to in media are either blink and you miss it cured (unrealistic, quick resolution that doesn't give anyone the proper building blocks for recovery) or made out to be impossible to escape from and inevitable (you're doomed the second you start feeling this way)... I would like to see more narratives that start out with suicide, take it seriously, and then go on to ask... now what? When we survive, what do we do? Because too often I think the only answer some of my friends found was "Nothing changed, but there's nothing else I can do. I'll just try again."

So with Kim Dokja, of course he still has the suicidal ideation, he still holds tightly onto "there's nothing I can do," he still doesn't value himself even though he isn't actively attempting... but even though he's Going Through it in wall fic I want to show that his life gets just a bit more beautiful every chapter. That he didn't have to change too much for his life to get better, he wasn't in the wrong for feeling the way he did... things just get better... you just have to live to see them and they will... this is something I would want to promise to a reader, so I think carefully about it while writing now.

#then of course the comedy comes from him not internalizing that things are better lmao #personal #ask #twigwing

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