#those characters are up and they're doing things | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mysterycitrus · 19 hours

Note

This is so stupid but I was wondering if you might have any Dick and Roy meta? I've always loved your meta posts about the relationships between the Fab Five and different characters and lately, I've been seeing a lot of those posts where people splice certain comic pannels with poems/sayings/inspirational quotes and things that match and I've been wanting to have more in-depth ideas of the relationship between Dick and Roy because they're just so interesting but I don't have the brains to come up with anything myself

when i think about dick grayson and roy harper i think about the trope king + lionheart — a burdened hero, and their loyal protector — and how they switch roles with each other. like two standout dickroy books are probably old friends, new enemies and outsiders (2003), and while they’re both initiated with roy reaching out to dick for help, his motivations are very different. i think that dynamic, and how they don’t fit solely into one role, is part of why i enjoy reading about them so much.

in old friends, roy is the king — he’s trying to track down chesire and find lian, and isn’t initially honest about his intentions. he’s struggling with his decisions, and his faith in himself. dick acts as the moral support, his backup, and also calls him out on his actions.

but their relationship is still loving. there’s a solid foundation of trust that makes dick want to support roy and protect his daughter, to the point that he and jade nguyen show a (very) begrudging respect to each other.

in outsiders, dick is the king — donna has just died, bludhaven is going to shit, and roy knows that he’s spiralling. roy is the solid support who convinces dick to lead a new team because he knows dick hurts himself through isolation. they’re both grieving donna and the loss of their team, but roy forces dick to reconnect again. he forces dick to care.

despite being the leader of the outsiders, dick is uncompromising in his loyalty in roy. he tells people to leave if they don’t accept roy’s authority in the team. after roy is shot, dick takes the same action as roy in the first issue — he brute forces his way into getting roy out of the spiral. he holds a gun to roy’s head and tells him to take it.

im a huge sucker for friends to lovers, but what i really love is two competent people with absolute faith in each other. i dislike the idea that bat-characters are like….. absurdly op and everyone is just in awe of them all the time, but dick’s reputation means that trusting someone the way he trusts roy is important. he watched his teammates die, he watched his sister die to save his life, and he still trusts roy to be there. roy historically has a bit of an inferiority complex about working with dick, but dick does not reciprocate. dick knows roy will be there when it counts.

there’s a particular kind of love that comes from mourning the same person during one of the worst times of your life.

the fact that the early tragedies in their lives are so similar, that they lost family and an idea of place at similar ages, were mentored by mortal men who wanted to do good, but still ended up so close but so different is really really interesting to me. u get to outsiders, and they really know each other in a really intense way.

truly like…. i would fall on ur sword because i trust u not to land the killing blow. to finish — something something gay people

#blorbos #dickroy #roy harper #dick grayson #nightwing #arsenal #dc comics #the ask and the answer #teen titans #ty vechter for the webweaves hehehehe #then it totally went to shit in 2009 but dw about that lol

133 notes · View notes

writingquestionsanswered · 2 days

Note

i struggle with writing a continuous long scene. instead, i end up writing short scenes that show the core of that scene almost immediately and then time skip to the next scene. is there a way to cure this? it feels like a lot of "jumping around" and somewhat inconsistent because of that.

Scenes Are Too Short (How to Write a Scene)

The way to cure continuously short scenes is to get a better grasp on what a scene is, what they should contain, and how to structure them. :) What is a Scene?

Long fiction is broken up into narrative building blocks called "scenes," which are almost like mini-stories that build upon each other to advance the plot. Remember: stories are about someone who is trying to resolve a problem in their heart and mind, situation, life, or world. The thing they're trying to achieve in order to resolve that problem is their goal. Goals can be broken down into smaller goals (or steps) that must be completed in order to achieve the bigger goal. Scenes are like mini-stories that focus on each of those steps/smaller goals.

What is the Purpose of a Scene?

A good scene should accomplish at least one of the following:

-- advance the plot by completing smaller steps/goals that are needed in order to achieve the story goal -- advance character development to push them toward where they need to be mentally, emotionally, physically, knowledge-wise, relationship-wise, or situation-wise in order to achieve the story goal

-- advance setting and back story development in order to build toward the climax (where the character attempts to achieve the story goal once and for all)

-- deliver important back story or other information necessary to help the reader understand the plot, characters, or setting and to help move the pieces into place for the climax How Are Scenes Structured? Like any story, scenes have a beginning, middle, ending, and conflict/dilemma. The setting, characters, conflict/dilemma, and goal for resolution of the conflict/dilemma are established in the beginning of the scene. Through the middle of the scene, the characters take steps to resole the conflict/dilemma, encountering obstacles and challenges which they must overcome or find a way around, and making decisions and plans to help them tackle the next step/smaller goal. In the end of the scene, the characters attempt to do whatever they need to do in order to achieve that step/smaller goal. The attempt may end in success (the step/goal is achieved), failure (they do not successfully complete the step/achieve the goal), or the outcome may be left unknown (aka a "cliffhanger.) With the exception of cliffhanger endings, the very end of the scene is used to set things up for the next scene/create a smooth transition into the next scene.

A Note About Conflict, Dilemmas, and Goals

It's important to remember that a scene conflict/dilemma and resulting goal doesn't have to be some big, major thing. It can be something really simple, like maybe a character needs cash for a road trip, so they're trying to get a summer job. The problem is that, on paper, they're under qualified for the job they want to apply for. However, they know they have the knowledge to do the job well, so the scene goal is to convince the potential employer that they have what it takes to do the job. Another example: a character has a crush on another character but the problem is they're not sure the other character is interested. Others have said they might be, so the scene goal is to approach the crush and casually ask if they want to hang out sometime. How to Craft an Engaging Scene In order to keep your reader engaged in your scene, be sure to do the following in every scene:

-- reveal new information (character, setting, back story, plot) -- develop internal conflict, motivations, stakes, relationships -- advance the protagonist's progress toward their goal -- establish the setting (time, place, environment, atmosphere) -- establish the scene conflict/dilemma and necessary steps -- illustrate the obstacles in the character's way -- explore character thoughts/feelings/reactions to scene events -- use a relative balance of exposition, action, and dialogue -- use the proper pace for the scene to maintain flow and interest -- explore story themes and messages -- end with some type of resolution for the scene conflict -- transition smoothly into the next scene Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

#wqaadvice

81 notes · View notes

habken · 13 hours

Text

Izuku and Katsuki Hospital Comic - Thoughts and Process

I wanted to talk about the process and my thoughts while making this comic! Cause it was A Lot of planning and I feel like talking about how I went about it could maybe be helpful for other people who wanna make comics too ?

Also I just like talking and I've had So Many thoughts about it over the last few months, I just need to get them all out lol

everything is under the cut (it's Very Long) ↓↓↓

Initial Thoughts

I started planning the comic in January, around the time the chapter with the second user's plan to transfer ofa to shigaraki came out. I remember feeling so anxious and sad seeing how devastated Deku was to lose the 'gift' that All Might had passed to him :'((

It made me start thinking about what it would be like to not only go from having all this insane power at your fingertips back to nothing, but also how it would feel to lose the vestiges, which had been his advisers, yapping in his ear and keeping him company for months. How it would feel to go from constantly having people looking over your shoulder back to silence.

Then I thought about what that would mean for his and Bakugou's relationship, which has developed so much over the series. How Bakugou would feel about Deku no longer having ofa, how the two of them would wrestle with old feelings now that Deku would be quirkless again. Bakugou having to face the kid he bullied and Deku going back to a state where the world saw him as "useless" with dreams too big for somebody without a quirk.

I feel like sometimes it's not really taken into account how Deku's past affects him in the present, and that goes for in the actual series as well. Considering he's the main character, it's funny that we never really get too much of a peak inside his mind lol, especially not recently, which is most likely intentional, but I digress.

What I really wanted to do for this comic was circle back to Deku's question to All Might at the start of the series, "can I become a hero without a quirk" because while yes, deku can be a hero, he had to get a quirk to do so. So what happens now that he no longer has it? After all of Bakugou and Deku's development, would Bakugou's opinion on deku pursuing his dreams while quirkless change?

I really didn't want that answer to be no. I didn't want to believe that Deku would have to give up and "be realistic" again, it just didn't feel right for that to be the answer after 400 chapters.

So I wanted to make something that would encapsulate those thoughts! And I felt like the best way to fully get that out was through a scene in the aftermath of the battle, the two of them in the hospital with nothing to do but talk about their feelings.

It was important to me that the doubts they both felt about the future were stomped out, and for there to be reassurance that things between them wouldn't snap back to how it was before UA. That Deku could still reach his dreams even if they did become harder to obtain.

I also felt like narratively it would be a good parallel if Bakugou were to lose something tied to his power too, and with his arm being so bad off in canon, I thought it made sense that there was a chance he could lose it forever.

So it's like they're both coming out of the final battle worse off with huge losses, but no matter what, they're going to fight to achieve their dreams, and they're going to do it side by side :')

At its core, it’s very self indulgent lmao, I didn’t think that we’d get something that sappy and gross in canon (😳) so I wanted to make something for myself :')

Planning

So then I made a first draft!

When I’m making bigger comics, thumbnails are super helpful! They help me see the full picture of what it could look like, and let me change things without putting in too much commitment. So most of the drawings are loose, but occasionally I’ll put in a little extra detail into things that I want to make sure are included in the final work.

There’s three main things I consider when thumbnailing for comics; expression, composition, and dialogue. Each of these things have a huge influence on each other, so keeping them all in mind when roughing out your drawings is important!

How it usually works is I play out the scene in my head like a movie and roughly come up with dialogue, then I draw characters and expressions based on that dialogue and the visions I had. Simultaneously I plan out approximately where those drawings will go/how much space they'll take up and finally, I add in the dialogue and move things around as needed so everything fits nice together.

Having the dialogue there in the draft lets me know around how big the speech bubbles are gonna be which is a massive help when figuring out paneling. It lets me plan around the bubbles and make sure nothing is too squished!

General tips:

Something I learnt from storyboarding is that establishing a setting for your scene at the start is really important! Most of my comics will start with a long shot or include one early on for this reason. It’s good for making sure readers aren’t confused on where everything is taking place!

Having a variety of shots is good for keeping your story engaging! This comic has a lot of closeups, but I tried to add variety where I could and used a lot of different angles to keep things entertaining even if there isn't that much going on

Final thoughts on this draft:

At this stage, the ending was really different from the final version I ended up with. It was a lot more focused on Bakugou's losses too and the vibe was kinda "well we're both nerfed now but that's chill we can still be heroes." I axed most of that cause I thought it was dumb and wasn’t really the conclusion I wanted lol

After the rough draft, I started sketching everything out and adding in panels based on the composition from the og thumbnails. I also changed the dialogue as I went, focusing on making it sound more natural and easy to read.

This is where the nuances in movement and expression became a bit more refined and speech bubbles where better planned out.

At this stage, establishing clarity and imagining how readers are going to move their eye along the page is really important. Comics are generally read left to right, but you can’t just assume people are going to automatically read it in the order you want, which is why panels and speech bubble locations are so important.

Tips:

A general rule is that along with going from left to right, speech bubbles should be in descending order. This can be broken a bit, but it’s important to remember that the rule is there in the first place for clarity's sake. So if you do plan on breaking it, make sure it's not at the sacrifice of legibility. The human eye is lazy and will jump to whatever seems most logical, so planning things out in a confusing manner is going to make your comic hard to read!

This is another thing I picked up from storyboarding, but keeping in mind the 180° rule is good for clarity as well! In the simplest of terms, if you have two characters in a scene, it’s good to keep character A on one side and character B on the other, and not switch those sides willy-nilly, otherwise it can get confusing. This isn't as important in comics as it is in film/television, but I still like keeping it in mind.

Final thoughts:

I hated the original ending but I couldn't exactly figure out how I wanted it to go, and I was too busy at that point to dedicate the time I needed towards it, so it stayed as these four panels for while :’)

During the period I stopped working on it, Deku lost his arms which had me panicking lmao, so much of the comic was devoted to his emotions and body language, specifically in his hands. I just went "am I gonna have to redo everything? Do I give him prosthetics?" and I was fully ready to rework the entire thing but Eri came in clutch for Deku (and me) <3

After Deku started getting hurt, I didn't really like the idea of him being discharged and sitting with a still injured Katsuki, and wanted it to be clear that they were both still in the hospital, so I had to axe poor Deku's "hospital gown" shirt for actual hospital garb </3

At some point during april-ish, I finally added in a new beginning and end, which took the comic from four pages to seven. I felt like the new parts added a lot more levity and humour which were needed, and I think it helped make Izuku and Katsuki feel closer than before.

For these pages, I skipped the thumbnail stage and jumped straight into full page stuff, which felt easier because they were kind of just add-ons.

Something I specifically liked were the first two panels in the last page. Fun fact, but a few days after I sketched those out, horikoshi released that art of to two of them smiling together and I went !! That's the vibe I wanted !! Me and Horikoshi are on the same wavelength! That was a good day lmao.

At this point, though, while new parts added a lot more to the story and brought it closer to the vibe I wanted, they also messed with the tone and overall pacing and it ended up feeling really off. Deku was now doing this weird 180 from being super sad and upset to then immediately joking around and goofing off with no acknowledgement of anything Katsuki was saying, which had been fine enough when it was just 4 panels, but very off-putting once I made the comic longer

...So I decided to add even more panels :')

I went back to my original ideas, and part of what I wanted to get across originally was the doubts about Izuku's future from here on out, and the worry that things would go back to how they were before he got ofa. I realized those initial things which had fueled the comic were no longer really part of it, and I wanted to change that.

When I thought up the idea of visuals surrounding their middle school selves, I felt so smart LMAO. I think it ended up being the thing that brought the entire comic together.

Izuku reverting back to that anxious, unconfident state, spiralling into himself, and mumbling out all his insecurities, including his fears about losing Katsuki's friendship (and yet still somehow more worried about Katsuki's feelings than his own). And in turn, Katsuki remembering and seeing Izuku as that kid again, and his own fears of becoming a bully once more.

It better explored what I wanted to originally get across and delved more into their feelings, so that the jokes and levity at the end felt like they were earned, rather than being a rapid shift in tone.

(The only other thing that changed was the some of the panels in the first page. I changed up the speech bubbles and got rid of a panel so it would be less cramped and easier to read.)

At this point, I was still having trouble figuring out how to tie everything in and segway pages 6-7 into the ending organically, so it sat like this for around a month.

Then chapter 423 released and the battle was over and I realized how little time I actually had to get the comic out. I knew that the next chapter could possibly make my entire comic obsolete, so I hauled ass :D

These were the final plans before I cleaned everything up! I changed around some of the panels to make the story flow better, I figured out how to tie everything in, and I finalized the dialogue!

At this point all the panelling was redone because I wanted more space in between them. Before, it felt really cramped and I think adding in more breathing room made it feel slightly less overwhelming for readers.

The biggest changes from the previous draft:

First, obviously, I finished the middle school stuff and figured out how to get from one part to the next. This was the hardest part of the planning, but I ended up deciding that Deku would spiral, Bakugou would kind of bring him out of that, they'd hug and then Bakugou would reassure him. I also included motifs relating to their childhood to be reminiscent of The Apology, and Katsuki's thoughts going back to them sharing the special All Might cards, them at the lake, etc. As if this was another healing moment for each part of them; their current selves, their MS selves, and their childhood selves too

I then changed some of the panels in the first page. I switched the direction of the diagonal line in the first few panels because I thought it made it more clear which way to start reading and made the comic flow better.

In the fourth page, I added a panel after Deku starts crying, because I felt like it worked better with the dialogue, and brought in more of Katsuki's POV into the story

The sixth page doesn't really look different, but there was a lot of resizing going on panel-wise. The bottom panel doesn't take up as much space and the panels up top are a little bigger

The final big change was the eighth page. I added in an extra panel and changed up a lot of expressions/dialogue so there was more of a natural transition between the heartfelt moments and the two goofing off

I then made some final changes and drawover notes before I started a week of cleanup and colouring!

Cleanup/Colouring Stage

Cleaning up my sketches usually just means duplicating the layer, putting the original layer at 5% opacity and.. cleaning it until it looks nice lol. It's the easiest way for me to work because I hate doing lineart.

This is what my sketch vs final usually looks like. The biggest change was adding in bandages into all the drawings lol.

For speech bubbles, I drew them all by hand, created a flat colour layer underneath in white, duplicated that and filled it in with black and shifted it with the transformation tool to make a drop shadow effect.

It took me two days to colour the whole thing :')

Usually when I colour, I work in a pretty painterly way, but I thought flats/cell shading would be a lot faster for this. I was right but it still took Very Long.

The smartest thing I did was put colour swatches of each colour I was using on a separate layer above everything else so I could easily use the eyedropper and get the right colour without having to reference them from another page. It was a big time saver!

I colour all on a single layer so I don't have progress photos to show, but for each drawing, I roughly added in all the colours in the approximate locations they'd be, and once I did that for every single panel, I went back and cleaned them up one by one.

And that's that! After colouring was done, I added my signature, posted it, and took the nap of the century.

Final, Final Thoughts

I worked... Very Hard to get the comic out before leaks night and even if it was just a few hours, I'm so glad I was able to do it cause when I saw the actual chapter I lost my mindddd

I feel like as the comic progressed, Katsuki's feelings took a backseat and if I was to redo it, I'd probably put a bit more emphasis on that than I did in the final version. I feel like his ~inner turmoil~ didn't fully come through the way I wanted it to. I didn't want it to be an immediate acceptance — I wanted the fact that he was struggling with his past to be evident too — but with the focus being so heavily on Izuku, Katsuki's inner thoughts get a bit lost which is too bad </3 Good thing is Horikoshi had the exact opposite idea as me, so it all worked out :D

I'm really proud of how the comic turned out, and I'm so happy to have gotten such a positive response to it! Thank you for reading if you got this far and thank you for reading my silly self-indulgent hospital comic :)

#bnha #art tips #bnha manga spoilers #long post

87 notes · View notes

bonefall · 14 hours

Note

Thoughts on Wasp? I like the idea of cats joining that turn out that the Clans aren’t great… but also it feels… weird? Like it seems like another “lazy cat bad” on some levels. I don’t mind him not joining the Clans but these “outsider learns they’re not fit for the Clans” things always give me a pause from the Erins. Also interested in how you would handle him!

Moonkitti's video on him is really well worded, if you haven't seen it yet. I do think he's different from the way that other books tend to portray outsiders in that they are saying that he was driven away by the xenophobia of the Clans... but.

They still make him extremely disinterested in Clan life while he's in ThunderClan. I think that was a massive blunder to write, if the thing they're trying to say is "XENOPHOBIA PREVENTS OTHERWISE ENTHUSIASTIC MIGRATION"

It would have hit harder if it was Wafflepaw who tried to run to RiverClan, got assaulted, and then didn't want to be a Clan cat anymore.

Wafflepaw WANTS to be a warrior. Wasp did not. It reads more like Wasp getting hate crime'd was a "last straw" more than THE reason why he won't stay.

That's where you're getting that vibe they're saying "lazy cat bad," imo. It's a bit different from usual, but it still seems like the narrative is saying that Wasp really didn't belong here anyway.

(no, Nightheart's moment where he looks at the camera and says "he could have been fine!" doesn't change that they showed, in their text, with the actions they wrote, that Wasp was not enjoying being part of the Clans anyway. If that was their intended thesis, their writing was sloppy.)

It feels especially weird that Bee didn't go with Frostpaw. Bee was the character with a lot more setup and that strange dream. A lot of people were confusing Bee and Wasp when the book first came out and I don't blame them.

Most importantly, you can't talk about Wasp without also mentioning one of THE worst lines I think has ever been written into a Warrior Cats book. The part where tigerHeartstar says, "Those cats who just committed a hate crime were perfectly good people before the evil dictator took over. If we kill the evil dictator, I'm sure they'll CHANGE BACK"

I'm still REELING. Fuck you MEAAAN "CHANGE BACK????" CHANGE BACK? LIKE BEING A BIGOT IS UNCOMFORTABLE SHOES???

CHANGE BACK... me bringing my evil dollars up to the villain store and exchanging it for racism coins... change back...

So when I get around to it, I'm going to evaluate if Wasp is even actually necessary in the form he's in. BB is already about xenophobia and bigotry and the harm it does. Frostpaw has no shortage of examples to witness what Thistle Law is, and what it does to those excluded from Clan Culture.

When I first made my Family Tree for RiverClan, I actually ended up making Splashstar's MOM, Havenpelt, an ex-rogue. I think seeing him order a hate crime against his own mother would be a LOT more impactful here, actually.

What Frostpaw DOES need is allies and friends. I'm already starting by expanding her little "DND Party," a word I'm using to affectionately refer to some cats who will be following her home from her pilgrimage to the Park. 99% chance that Nightheart is going to become a permanent member of this party, joining RiverClan at the end of ASC. Waffle will be another. She'll probably also pick up a Tribe cat.

Wasp will be on this party, but I won't decide what happens to them until I see what that last book has in store. Who knows, he might come back (though I hope not, run as far away from these ghouls as possible Wasp!!)

#asc spoilers #wasp #Wasp wc #warrior cats analysis #ThunderClan is NOT keeping Wafflepaw they couldn't even use Stormcloud!!!#So help me GOD I will REPURPOSE a name from somewhere and macgyver a son for Stormcloud who can take Waffle's roles in thunderclan #I REFUSE TO LET THIS SERIES FORGET STORMCLOUD #IM GIVING HIM SOOO MANY COOL THINGS IN BB WRAAAAAAAAAAAAHH

66 notes · View notes

tanoraqui · 2 days

Text

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Kill a Dragon, Rez a Falin

I just like when they're friends like this :)

This, too, is taken from another post, but truly this dynamic is sooo funny of

Chilchuck: I am not a fighter!

Chilchuck, any time he has any sort of ranged weapon: [aims with pinpoint accuracy]

This is just literally that moment in every Miraculous Ladybug episode where everything goes gray and the things Marinette is about to use for a Plan "light up" one by one in red with black spots. Please someone draw fanart of this. And maybe an entire Miraculous Ladybug AU. Yes I think Kabru would have to be Chat Noir - in terms of deuteragonist-ness is SHOULD be Marcille, but she and Laios just doesn't have enough of a bizarre push and pull Dynamic. We need real character foils to pull off that relationship square.

Raw fucking dialogue.

THE PERIODIC ADS ON THIS SITE FOR PRINTING OR CLOTHING OR SHOES REALLY ADD TO THE EXPERIENCE.

Agh agh agh, looking at this, thinking about Namari's explanation of how much body mass you can lose before resurrection gets harder...

Carving this tunnel into the dragon and physically walking in emphasizes how big it was much more than anything we saw while it was alive, and it's sooo cool.

This ad was a great millisecond of cliffhanger, unironically.

These opening pages of the next chapter are so devastating. After all the movement of the fight, this simple layout and minimal dialogue make the grief and horror and just emptiness, emptiness where Falin should be, where hope for Falin should be, ring like a low and broken bell. Driven in just a little deeper by Laios admitting he doesn't know a monsters fact (warg bones vs human bones) - there is helplessness, too. He's just doing the only thing he can, which is so little, in all this terrible caesura.

And then this! Marcille and Laois don't have the messy meatiness of relationship to carry and Miraculous Ladybug love square, but they are JOINTLY the parallel to the Mad Mage, and that's fascinating. They're on the same page here: Laios's "No" isn't just the denial of grief, it's a flat "That's not what we'll do." This is Laios - of course he's already thinking about how the red dragon is perfectly functional meat. As is Marcille, at last 100% in-step with him re: monsters = meat, here in the final steps to save Falin. With magic and drive and an absolute determination to save Falin, they're going to walk hand in hand into the darkness, and if something in their devours them (or their party, or the surface world...) - well, it'll have to beat them first, because throughout this world it's eat or be eaten, and those who want it most, win.

(And it IS fascinating that they do this while, so far as I've seen, basically remaining at the relationship tier of "good friends/in-laws." This isn't Found Family, it's Found Really Good Co-Workers; and I LOVE that.)

THE PARALLEL COMPOSITION AND DIALOGUE TO THE ABOVE SCREENSHOT WHEN LAIOS WENT TO KILL THE DRAGON THOUGH!! I'M FERAL!!!

Obsessed with the decision to frame this as a monster meal.

Blood! In! Hair! Blood! In! Hair! Man, when I saw that post saying this wished this show was in the show, I vaguely assumed her hair had gotten messed up in the fight but she didn't bother to fix it for the ritual; but in fact her hair was braided literally 1 panel ago - she undid that and DELIBERATELY (or at least uncaringly) ran her bloody hand through it.

YOU WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS AS COOL AS THIS PANEL! Oh fuck yeah, eyes went white. That's when you know the magic is awesome.

HUNGER AND EATING AS A SIGN, SYMPTOM, STIPULATION AND SYNECDOCHE OF BEING ALIVE!!!

Alas, but with good okay slightly postponed and belated timing I must now go to bed.

#dm lb #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon

101 notes · View notes

arieshasbrainrot57 · 2 days

Text

one of my least favourite takes about writing i've ever heard is that trauma = character complexity

don't get me wrong, a character having experienced trauma, or having a traumatic past, or just struggling with anything like that really is a deeper thing for them to do in the story. but it doesn't mean they're complex.

anyone can slap on the label of "my dad was awful to me as a kid" onto a character and that's that. it takes actual writing and work to make that traumatic event/backstory to make it mean that that character is deeper and more complex.

i see that point brought up a lot when people get mad at others for not being a big fan of the way Angel Dust's written in Hazbin Hotel, that he is a more complex character bc of his issues with Valentino, but i really don't think that it means that.

Those two have a very negative relationship, but that's about it. Valentino is aggressive and threatening, forcing Angel into situations he doesn't want to be in, but that's about it. There's nothing deeper than that, no manipulation, guilt tripping, or any other tactics that make those kinds of relationships so difficult to leave. It's a similar situation with Stella and Stolas, but my feelings on how badly written that abuse storyline is a different post on it's own bc i have,,, feelings

#aries yapping #hazbin hotel critical

62 notes · View notes

fury-brand · 2 days

Text

Bizarre to me how unanimous the csm 167 tag is about interpreting this chapter as being SA and primarily about consent. I don't think it's either of those things.

Part 2 of CSM has had a lot to do with desire. The tension between Denji's desire for a normal life and his desire to be chainsaw man, and Asa's struggle to feel any desire at all, up to and including the desire to keep living at one point. A couple chapters back Denji talks about eating toilet paper and how it's impossible to go back. Part of what he's expressing and has been expressing is this idea that desire is ruinous. You can't go back to eating toilet paper once you've overcome desperation and been "ruined" by the desire for food. His desire for chainsaw man's violence has superceded his desire for a normal life and "ruined" it. Leading up to this he's saying his dick (his desire) has ruined everything.

But the answer isn't to cut off desire, the desire to be treated with dignity, the desire for a life where you are fulfilled, or sexual desire. Asa has been illustrating that. I think what's happening in this chapter is happening in the context of frustrated desire, both Asa and Denji's.

Asa has been very touchy about sex so far. She thinks that it's gross, and thinks that Denji is gross for wanting it. It's an obstacle to realizing their relationship more fully. But she's also heartsick and lonely, and in the same way Denji erroneously filters all his desire for intimacy through a desire for sex, Asa seems cut off from her desire completely. What happens in 167 directly confronts Asa with her feelings about sex, both Denji's and her own. It seems like Yoru is actually acting on Asa's repressed desires, and perhaps the two are not as separable as we once thought. They start kissing as a direct result of her remembering that they have kissed already before!

And this is chainsaw man so the whole thing is messy and awkward and certainly a mixed experience, but I will be surprised if the characters' enduring feelings about this will be that they've been violated or traumatized. Asa and Denji are peers. Asa is explicitly contrasting with other women Denji has encountered, being squeamish about sex rather than willing to exploit Denji's desire for it for her own ends. Denji's sexual desire is as real as his desire for connection. And Asa's desires for love are real, too -- Yoru seems to be acting on Asa's repressed desires, which were even more deeply hidden from her by Nayuta (a far less ambiguous violation, by the by). Reading what's occuring between them as unambiguously non-consensual and disgusting makes less sense than reading it as messy confrontation of the barriers in their relationship that will need to be surmounted for them to make the connection they're circling and desperately craving.

Anyway, plenty of people have said chainsaw man is often about sexual assault and so what were people expecting, but they're coming up a little short:

Chainsaw man is also about sex. Not just in the context of trauma, not just as a narrative tool to abuse Denji, just sex and desire and the awkward teen years that demand the negotiation of both.

#csm 167 #chainsaw man #csm

71 notes · View notes

carrymelikeimcute · 2 days

Text

Thoughts on Dot and Bubble - We haven't seen the last of Lindy

The final scene of D&B shows the remaining inhabitants of 'Finetime' sail off into the wilderness instead of accepting help from a black man. And that is a very stark and memorable moment. Not as shocking as the death of Ricky because...well, you can read the racism in the room from the moment main character Lindy thinks the Doctor is just another black guy who looks 'the same' as the one before. Yikes.

HOWEVER, this episode put me in mine of 2 things, the first was obviously Nosedive, the Black Mirror episode which was also pastel and social media inspired.

But also, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or specifically the Golgafrinchans.

(Spoilers for Hitchhikers Guide) but the Golgafrinchans were a race of people on a planet who rid themselves of all the 'nothing jobs' by tricking those who weren't 1. geniuses or 2. skilled labourers onto a ship which they then launched into space. This ship hit the newly designed planet that would become earth, where the Golgafrinchan hairdressers and telephone cleaners wiped out the apes that were thought to be the precursors to mankind, and despite their total lack of intellect or skills, became the dominant lifeform, and the ancestors of all humans.

What does this have to do with Lindy the racist?

Well, the assumption is that Lindy and all the other members of the 'Finetime Youth' will die out in the wilderness. They can't even walk without an AI telling them the direction (which is kind of a nonsensical part of the episode but oh well) and need to be reminded to pee. They're destined to perish.

EXCEPT.

In the episode we see Lindy adapt, and within the space of a day she is walking without her bubble, as are the other survivors. More importantly she shows herself to be ruthless and willing to kill to survive - thinking quickly on the spot to save herself.

Imo the lingering last look from Lindy to the Doctor, potentially sets her up to return in some form - perhaps when they later visit the same planet only to find it greatly changed (as in S1 on NuWho with Satellite 5) or similar to the reveal that humans were turned into Toclafane - showing that the picture perfect pastel finetimers have become monsters on the outside, later on.

#dot and bubble #nuwho #doctor who #doctor who theories #ncuti gatwa #lindy pepper bean #finetime #fifteenth doctor

33 notes · View notes

japortalisman · 2 days

Text

first off, no hate to this person or any of the people agreeing - at the end of the day, people have different thoughts/interpretations of star wars and its characters, so it's no big deal. but i just wanted to talk about this post/sentiment because i've seen it a lot in the fandom and i'm still new to SW. disclaimer that i'm actively watching TCW at the moment, so take my opinion with a grain of salt

i know most everyone is going to disagree with me on this, but to be kind of blunt, i feel like people like to be purposefully obtuse when it comes to anakin's characterization and it often seems to come from this place of trying to come off like an intellectual ('well *EYE* knew anakin was toxic/evil/a piece of shit the whole time ☝️🤓 ' type energy). i have various thoughts on this and i'm gonna start with the more nitpicky ones and then finish with what i think is the real reason we all disagree

for starters (again, this is just nitpicking) jedi do kill people and it's reasonable to think anakin has killed people prior to the tusken raiders just by nature of his position as a jedi (aggressive negotiations, etc etc). what makes it 'okay' is jedi, by nature of their beliefs, don't commit war crimes by killing the defenseless or innocents. but my point is that killing is already something he's likely done, whereas being a macho toxic fuckboy to his wife is not.

i guess your opinion on this next part of it varies depending on your thoughts when it comes to human nature/morals/whatever, but to ME at least, slaughtering a village because they enslaved and tortured his mother to death is definitely fucked up (because he also took out the innocents), but it's not the exact same thing as being abusive to his wife? like i'm not even trying to debate which one is worse either atp, i'm just saying both things are different and have different pathways of thinking to get to that point. with the tusken raiders, you can clearly see how anakin got there, even if it was wrong, fucked up and arguably evil when it came to the defenseless people he didn't know.

but putting those points aside, i think the main thing we're disagreeing on with the whole TCW characterization vs prequels characterization of anakin is the when of it all. like for ME (you're free to disagree), anakin's behavior of actively hurting padmé when he force choked her in ROTS was SUPPOSED to be 'out of character', and because of that it signaled that he was an evil sith lord that's now too far gone. that was the marker, right behind him killing the younglings. which people also do talk about when they're arguing about this topic:

the difference in thought i'm having from this person is from MY personal perspective, from a story-telling technique/standpoint alone, i just don't like the idea of putting toxicity towards padmé before that marker (what he did in ROTS). it fucks with the whole classic myth type tragedy of it? anidala is supposed to be somewhat idealized even if something like that shouldn't be irl. that's why luke 'redeems' darth vader and brings him back through a mirror of padmé's love for him. we're supposed to recognize vader is a villain, yes, but we're also supposed to take from the story that padmé's love for him was worth it in the end. and that the circumstances of that situation in ROTS (and leading up to ROTS) created the perfect storm to cause anakin to 'fall' and become a sith lord. the tragedy of it is that he WOULD have kept being a good person, without that perfect storm of circumstances (grooming from palpatine, feelings of isolation from parental figures, being heralded as this chosen one, his own arrogance/passion, trauma from how his mother died, force visions plaguing him that he KNEW would come true like with the one of shmi's death, etc).

for ME, as a story, i like that anakin's push into evil is signified by the force choke. the youngling slaughter is definitely like "well, he's gone now", yeah, but when we see him choking the person he was fighting to save? a character we've been personally watching love him the entire movie? that's when we know anakin is lost. so to try and be like 'well, he was just like this all along' undermines that tragedy of this scene that i just talked about. that's why a lot of people don't like some of TCW anakin's characterization. because it undermines that over-arching story. is the prequels-trilogy darth vader story unrealistic to real life? yes, completely. but that star wars story is not supposed to mirror real life. in real life you would not tell luke skywalker to try and save a man who genocided people, destroyed a planet and upheld a dictatorship for one of the most evil men to ever exist. but you have to suspend some of your disbelief in order to enjoy the story. it's just art. and sure, it's 'valid' if you want to accept anakin's TCW version along with some of those scenes people critique. you're free to think he was just toxic and bad all along, but i just think that's a shame and i disagree personally because i don't like what it does with the flow of the story or the work of art that's both trilogies overall. something i think encapsulates it well is this quote written by matthew stover in the ROTS novelization:

"The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.”

in this situation, the candle was anakin and padmé's love for each other, persisting in their son. and the message wasn't that anakin was toxic and evil all along? it was that their love persisted and it came back in the end because it couldn't be blotted out by evil or death.

you could even delve into the force choke scene deeper? it's really the perfect example of 'a storm of bad circumstances' that make it a tragedy. because no, there's NO excuse for what anakin did and at this point he has slaughtered actual children. him hurting padmé is 'evil'. however, (and i know nuance goes to die on the internet, which is part of why i'm writing this lmfao) from anakin's perspective, padmé had just brought obi-wan to kill him. it's not a justification but it does establish the length padmé had to go to (we as the viewer know she didn’t go to that point, but anakin does not know this) in order for anakin to be 'evil' and toxic with her. he had to think that padmé was actively trying to kill him in order to force choke her. and even AFTER he was burned alive and lost his limbs to obi-wan (someone he saw as a father figure), the first thing he thought when he came to was if padmé was alright. he still loved her. and at this point he still thought she wanted him dead and hated him. it took him thinking padmé wanted him dead and hated him for him to snap enough to force choke her?

so with that in mind, yeah, people are going to view anakin's characterization in regards to her in a specific way. some people prefer that that was his breaking point into evil towards her, because of the story it's attempting to tell with the original movies. and him being this macho man towards her over things smaller than that just doesn't feel organic to what we saw in the prequels and it doesn't seem consistent with the flow of that over-romanticized story being told.

people are free to disagree or not like that over-romanticized story (in fact many people don't? and that's one of the reasons why some people don't mesh with star wars or anidala) but i'm not sure why they're surprised some people don't like that clash of characterization between prequels anakin and TCW anakin. this gets even more complicated when you factor in how people didn't like how anakin was overly romantic and 'simp'-like and even hayden had backlash for his acting and just his existence in the role. so of course when making a cartoon for kids, that younger boys would probably be watching, they would distance themselves a bit from that romance vibe and make it more 'obvious' he's just darth vader

#if you disagree with me then make your own post because you're not gonna change my mind on this #but i'm writing this just because i wanted to get my own thoughts out #and share a perspective that i recognize is not a popular one on here #i honestly don't even think there are many anidalas in general #anyway #anakin #anidala #metas #anakin skywalker #pro anakin skywalker #tagging it as this because i know people will be pissed? but like i recognize he's a villain so #star wars #anakin x padme #anakin x padmé #japortalisman #tcw critical

37 notes · View notes

blitzwhore · 2 days

Note

That ask you got made me realize that Blitzø and Stolas both show 4 of those 5 responses at various points, which I think is very interesting. I really never thought about it before but that's actually pretty impressive bc it never seems "out of character" for them. I think Blitzø leans more towards fight tho we see a lot of fawning from him too, and I think Stolas leans more towards fawn but I guess Blitzø really did make him feel braver bc he shows a lot of fight too.

Fight: Blitzø in FM ballroom + after Striker steals the phone from Stolas + both fighting with and saving Fizz in Oops // Stolas confronting Stella on his balcony + most of his interactions with Striker in WE + most of his scenes in Truth Seekers

Flight: Blitzø avoiding Stolas once things got complicated + not giving Fizz the love letter // Stolas in FM hallway + trying to escape Striker in the café

Fawn: Blitzø to the client in Murder Family + in FM bedroom + trying to talk to Loona in Seeing Stars about her people skills // Stolas when Blitzø comments on his Ozzie's outfit + to Stella in LLL + in a lot of his texts to Blitzø post-Ozzie's

Freeze: both freeze up in Ozzie's + potentially Stolas in the FM ballroom bc we don't see him move except to flinch until the very end but that might just be him forcing himself to stop running

Listing it out like that also made me realize that those two spend a good chunk of the series some degree of scared, nervous, or feeling unsafe. These poor guys 😭😭

Yeah, once you start to think about how present their trauma is in their lives, you can't help but notice that they're both extremely traumatised and broken people. It's really sad, and really well done, in my opinion.

I really like how complex they both are and how many different symptoms of trauma they show—both survival reactions like the ones listed here, and just their thoughts and fears and how they handle their relationships.

What's really interesting and compelling to me is how similar they are despite how different their lives have been. And how the more episodes come out, the more obvious this becomes.

Like, up until now, we knew that Stolas often fawned to keep the peace for fear of being a burden or making others uncomfortable, like he did in his text messages to Blitz, and in Ozzie's when he immediately agreed to leave when Blitz said so. And we knew that Blitz hated himself, that his biggest fear was dying alone, that he couldn't even bear to look at his own face in pictures.

And then, in The Full Moon, we get Blitz going into an extremely childish and heartbreaking fawn spiral with his "I can always do better", making himself smaller, smiling, wagging his tail. And we get Stolas covering every single picture (and item) in his house, and then taking the time to uncover Via so she's visible, but not himself. And we get Stolas terrified of dying alone.

And to me, this conveys really well how no one's trauma is worse than others', how no traumatised person is more or less broken or hurt than the rest, how there's no "lesser" trauma. How traumatised people can't be neatly divided into "people who become sensitive and weak" and "people who develop thick skin". How your trauma may present differently and uniquely depending on the circumstances, but deep down the truth is always that you were deeply hurt, and you can't bear to be hurt again, and your life has become a constant cycle of trying (and failing, due to self-fulfilled prophecies) to avoid going through that pain again.

Truly, masterfully done ❤️

#helluva boss #helluva boss the full moon #blitz helluva boss #helluva boss blitz #stolitz #stolas helluva boss #helluva boss stolas #Trauma tw

44 notes · View notes

queseraone · 3 days

Note

I got asked this question and loved it so much, I wanted to open it up to the group.

If you could choose 5 Chenford scenes to rewrite, which would you choose, and how would you rewrite them?

Oooh, thanks for the ask Becca! I had a similar one from an anon, so consider this the answer to that one too 😘

Okay, so I'm going to preface this by saying... as much as I love this ship and this show, I could probably give you an endless list of things I wish they had done differently/better. Particularly in the more recent seasons, a lot of the storylines have felt... rushed?

And in a lot of ways, it feels like once they pulled the trigger for Chenford, they hit the gas so hard that they blew past a lot of story. (Okay, that's two unrelated metaphors in there, but I hope you get my point.) I know Chenford isn't the main focus of the show, but it is a huge lure, and it feels like a waste to not lean a little harder into some of those moments. A lot of the time it feels like they're giving quantity over quality for Chenford scenes, like they're trying to meet some unspoken quota for moments, but aren't putting much care into what those moments actually are.

Oh god, that all sounds sooooo negative. I swear I love Chenford and the show, no matter how much I may criticize it 😅

ANYWAY...

I desperately wish things had gone differently in 5x05. Tim should absolutely have broken up with Ashley, not the other way around. They still could have played it similarly, but instead have it be Tim getting that reality check. Nothing quite like your entire future being in jeopardy to make you take a good hard look at your life and who you're spending it with.

A lot of 4x08, but particularly their last scene of the episode and the way Lucy is written as more 'Team Genny' than 'Team Tim'. It's wildly out of character for her to not be able to recognize that Tim isn't just being stubborn, but rather he's having a very valid response to trauma.

It seems like perhaps there was a scene missing somewhere along the way leading up to that conversation at the end of 5x08. It has always felt like a bit of a leap between their conversations in the shop and that closing scene. They're clearly on the same page at the end, but they didn't quite succeed at showing how they landed there.

Look, as much as I adore the group scenes at Nolan's in 5x13, it will forever bother me that we didn't get a relationship reveal. What's the point of touting a 'secret relationship' and not bother bringing it out into the open? For a show that absolutely leans lighter than any other cop show I've seen (save for Brooklyn 99), the sheer comedy potential is a loss I will be mourning forever. I think it especially bothers me because we were kind of left in limbo between 5x12 and 5x16. We know they were still hiding it in 5x12, but then by 5x16 they were comfortable with people gossiping about their Valentine's Day plans? Make it make sense.

This can be related to several different scenes (5x12, 5x21, etc...), but for the love of god, stop telling us that Tim and Lucy are horny for each other and show us for once! They can tout this as "a family show" all they want, but as far as I'm concerned, this is a show for adults. And if a person is old enough to watch the host of other mature things they do show (physical assault, a man on fire, someone being blown up, shootings, etc.), they can fucking handle a non-HBO level sex scene.

I'm adding this as a bonus answer, because I can't necessarily pinpoint a specific scene to change here. As a general season 6 rewrite, I really wish they'd focused more on the UC conflict with Chenford. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the exploration of Tim's military past and the demons he has from that time, but it just felt... forced? Certainly a byproduct of the shortened season, but I wish they'd woven that in more organically, and not all but forgotten the UC issue after it was so prevalent in 6x01 and 6x02. There's just so much more to unpack than what we saw in their conversations in those episodes.

#chenford #the rookie #chenford chats #asked and answered #thisnightissparkling089 #tim bradford #lucy chen

29 notes · View notes

vladdyissues · 3 days

Note

Hi, I'm asking this question because I'm genuinely afraid. I want to post art I did/I commissioned a different artist of Pompous Pep on my blog, but I'm terrified of others attacking me. I've always liked this ship since I was kid and didn't it was considered taboo until I was older. How do you deal with hate? Would it be better to post on a side blog? My main DP AU does have Pompous Pep when Danny is in his early to mid 20s.

I answered a similar ask here, but this one also deserves its own answer. Here are some things you can do to protect yourself from hate:

✦ Turn off anonymous asks. That curbs 99.9999% of abuse, because haters are too chickenshit to send stuff that they can get reported for and possibly have their account terminated. If you do decide to open anonymous asks at some point and receive hate, you can still report it. More on blocking here.

✦ Make sure you tag your post with "pompous pep" so those who love the ship can find it and those who have the tag blocked can avoid it.

✦ As you can see, there are quite a few of us Pompep fans here on Tumblr, and it's good to be part of a community. Being able to laugh off anon hate with one another is a superb morale-booster. (If you spend any amount of time on Discord, DM me. We have a server, and you'd be very welcome there.)

Bottom line: Haters will always find a reason to hate something they don't like. You can never "perform" purely enough to please them, so don't even try. If you age up Danny and Vlad, they'll still bitch about the age gap. If you make them the same age, they'll bitch about the "toxic dynamic" of Enemies to Lovers. If you make an AU where they've always been friends and are the exact same age, they'll still accuse you of Shipping Crimes™ because it's still the same characters—even if all the obstacles that made the ship problematic have been removed. All you'll do is wear yourself out trying to conform to their standards, so just say "fuck em" and do what you want.

Me, personally, I've been in fandom too long to be bothered by anon hate. I report them, block them, and delete the message, and I don't waste any more energy than necessary. I also follow the golden rule of Don't Feed the Trolls. Haters thrive on attention, and if they get no response from you, they'll eventually give up their attack and move on.

I'm sorry that the actions of an idiotic, vocal minority have made you afraid to participate in fandom activities. No one should ever feel that way. Just remember that you're not alone. Almost all of us Pompep fans have dealt with negativity at some point in our lives, but that hasn't stopped us at all. We're still here, and we'll always be here.

✦ As for sideblogs, they're great if you want to keep certain stuff separate from your main blog, but it's totally up to you. Just keep in mind, if you want to block anyone from seeing your sideblog, it must be done from the Blog Settings of that particular sideblog. More on sideblogs here.

I hope this post answered your questions and eased some of your fears. If you have any further comments or questions, you know how to reach me :)

#asks #pompous pep #[tumblr]#dealing with anon hate #antis #blocking #sideblogs #info

33 notes · View notes

2minutesnotice · 3 days

Note

do you think the others ever treat blitz like a sugar baby? cause, while he has a successful business, he is the poorest of the four. two of them are literal hell royalty and fizz is one of the most famous people in hell.

i just like imagining them showering blitz in gifts and being silent partners in his business so he doesnt have to worry about going under if he doesnt get enough clients one week

Just so you know, I'll go just with my headcanon Polycule and kiiiinda ignore canon here, if that's okay?

I'm still trying to stay in character as possible but there's some stuff I'm still trying to figure out, without ignoring their own character traits.

For your question:

Private Blitzø appreciates gifts, as long as they're mindfully chosen. He's not into expensive stuff, he has no need for expensive clothes or jewelry, he's fine with his last generations phone, he loves to chose his weapons himself.

But he definitely loves the little gifts, horse merch, a new blanket from Stolas, a date night in which he doesn't need to pay (and sometimes he does and they let him).

I think he would be really pissed when it was obvious that they would gift him things just because he's not in wealth. Like, when Stolas's tried to buy him clothes for an fancy event they attended to (and it was nerve wracking anyway since it was one of the events in which they showed up together, like officially announced and Stolas was all over him the whole time, nervous energy spreading) he got really angry at some point, since it felt like a weird degrading dress up game for him.

Or Fizz gifting him expensive tech, like, he doesn't need a damn watch that talks to him, thank you very much.

BUT Ozzie is smarter lol

Ozzie involves Blitzø into things. He shows him fancy cooking and Blitzø is so damn well good with a knife, cutting those onions without shedding a single tear, and that pan which they use has a special knack to it and nothing sticks on it and oh, these plates are nice, thanks, they're from a manufacturer handmade from Sloth.

So he gifts him these thing, like, a fancy cutting knife for cooking, to prepare dinner faster. Nice looking tableware, in Blitzøs favorite color because he liked them so much and now he can prepare fancy dinners for them on fancy plates.

He involves Blitzø into HIS business and the man is all over the pleasure bringing things, why not gift him those, he had his fingers in them anyway.

If they think Blitzø is absolutely wrecked tired from doing mission after mission and keeping a relationship with 3 people, Ozzie will tell him how good he is and that his business is thriving and gifts ALL of IMP a day spa gift card. That he owns that Spa is a secret lol

So, Blitzø is good with gifts but they know he has boundaries and even if it is hard to accept these sometimes, they really try to not make him uncomfortable. Also, he loves gifts that involve all of them, LuLu Land tickets, coffee dates, sex toys, vacations (he pays his share of the expenses but who would say no to free drinks). He just does not like to feel like he's using all of them for their money.

(And that's something that hits hard, since Stella constantly is on their back screeching that into the crowd. Also tabloids and newspapers rip their relationship apart, since Blitzø moved into the palace, calling him a Homewrecker and that his status is definitely not good enough for a prince, that he's a moneychaser. That does something to people..)

Business Blitzø will talk business.

IMP is good, they're making money and some of that really gets into their pockets. They can buy better guns, better ammo.

It's not as chaotic as it was at the beginning, since they now can use the damn Crystal (yeah it exists, yeah there was a sad hiccup in Stolitz relationship. They worked it out..kinda) and Ozzie is way better at keeping that a secret then Stolas was, with letting Blitzø handling the book.

(I'm still waiting for that court episode since I think the use of the book will be addressed there and they will be in deep shit lol)

Since I headcanon that Blitzø is half Succubus (or Incubi, since he's a male), Ozzie has that card ready when someone asks.

They also have human disguises now (and yes, Stolas fucked him human, he really wanted to try lol), which makes dealing with the human world way easier.

And when it comes to his business, Blitzø allows his partners a little bit of help, but mostly to keep things smoothly. Obviously Ozzie did his biggest part by giving him a Crystal, but sometimes Stolas does some long overdue Paperwork ("You have to do your taxes, darling! You're throwing away money" "Of course Hell would have taxes, it's literally Hell!") , Fizz looking over their schedule ("You should keep up with the timezones, Idiot. Look, if you do your killing in France and then go to Japan, there will be daylight in Japan and it's way easier of you do that at night, I'll keep an eye on that!") and trying to keep his boyfriend alive lol

But no, no partnership with anyone. IMP is Blitzøs work, his pride. He's good at what he's doing there, he loves his employees, he's glad he has something to get up to every morning. There's his name and his name alone on that door.

He needs that and they accept that. It's that one step to a better picture of himself and his self worth. They even got him to hang a picture of them all into his office and his face isn't blacked out. Just a post it glued over it.

So, thank you for your question! As you can see I love to rant about these idiots lol

#helluva boss #fizzarolli #blitzø #stolas #asmodeus #fizzarozzie #stolitz #2minutes answer

30 notes · View notes

rachelgearhardt · 2 days

Text

i'm hoping the livestream for life is strange: double exposure will clear some things up for me, but as of right now i have some trepidation. i used to have an active LiS blog a couple years back and i just made this new one specifically to talk about my feelings seeing this trailer

so, just diving in, obviously the elephant in the room here is that there's no chloe (or more importantly, any mention of LiS1 and its story beats or characters at all). someone said that max is supposed to be either 28 or 29 years old in DE, but i couldn't find an official source for this so take that with a grain of salt

regardless of which ending you chose, bay or bae, max's character arc through LiS1 is extremely significant. if you choose bay, max probably has some level of survivor's guilt for 'letting' chloe die (even if that was 'what the universe wanted' and changing time is 'wrong'). ten years is not enough time to significantly divorce this from her character, so i would expect to see it mentioned or affecting her still. max went through so much trauma through the course of that game that it would be bordering on exhausting to make a list of each trauma. my first thought when telling another story about max (whose story was very much finished at the conclusion of LiS1) would be to explore those things or at the very least tack onto what was there

you would think that would be a gold mine of story-telling opportunities, just as a writer and a dev, but even if you only wanted to look at it from a cash grab lens, it would also make more sense nostalgia wise to include LiS1's story in whatever arc they give max next

but let's say you choose the bae ending. if you do that, max has fundamentally decided that she will save the one she loves with the power she's been given and she owns up to this, even if she has guilt after the fact. we would see her struggling with that guilt just the same as if you gave her the bay ending. but to tack onto this, i think she and chloe would be pretty closely linked, whether they're in a romantic or platonic relationship atp. i just don't think you can 'sacrifice' your childhood town (or at least, that's how max perceives it. whether it's true is another topic) with your superpowers just to save your best friend and then not have her in your life going forward. i would say at the very least they're trauma-bonded, and at most they're in a romantic relationship, depending on how the player plays the game. either way, chloe should still be an integral part of max's life, especially since it's only been ten-ish years since LiS1. i would still expect to see chloe with max, like in LiS2

so then comes the issue - how are they going to tackle this? they have a few options here. the first one is they can completely avoid canonizing either ending by just never mentioning LiS1, chloe, or any of the other characters again. they can pretend that max has moved on and it's been enough time to divorce that story from her character.

however, i kinda don't think they're going to do this because square enix gave this response to someone on twitter:

i think they know they're playing with fire here, so i doubt square would say something like this unless they were aware that LiS1's events or characters are mentioned in some way. so from here i would assume they're going to take a LiS2 approach and have the player choose which ending they picked at the end of the first game.

based on that choice, the game will either show you evidence of chloe living or her dying. and if chloe lives, who knows if she'll just be away on a trip or if she and max have split completely. but i already see issues with this regardless, personally. it only worked in LiS2 because the game wasn't about chloe or max and the easter eggs were small. this entire game is constructed around max as a main character, so... the events of LiS1 would both affect her thoughts, her surroundings, her actions and even just her core character? that is a huge amount of things to tackle and change based upon your ending in LiS1, so i'm worried this will be watered down in a way that's probably not going to sit right with me

i mean, just looking at the trailer, max's powers have developed to show she's almost opening portals to change timelines. do you really think bae ending max, who decided to save her loved one over all else, wouldn't use that power to contend with her arcadia bay trauma and save her and chloe's other loved ones? save rachel or joyce? it just seems odd and it raises a lot of questions.

what i will give them is there does seem to be some element of max not being able to control her powers in double exposure, evidenced by this:

max can't rewind time at all anymore, so her powers are just not to her control. it seems like she starts hearing safi's voice without being able to control it or know what's going on, so i guess because of that unpredictability she couldn't exactly use it like a marvel superpower and go and save arcadia bay. but is that going to feel a little too convenient or actually genuine, when we see it actually executed in the story? who's to say, atp

another element to this discussion that's kind of important to note is that michel koch has openly stated that the reason why dontnod split with square enix is because they wanted to essentially reboot LiS with Lost Records, mostly due to them being creatively constrained by square:

this sentiment that square is ultimately unsupportive of dontnod's vision of LiS is corroborated by deck nine employees with the expose article written about deck nine's work culture awhile back:

i mean, square enix does not seem to care about LiS past a money making venture, which is already showing in the way double exposure seems to be a cash grab. how can you authentically continue max's story, including all of the character development and trauma from the first game, while also not making it any part of this new story? i could be proven wrong (and i hope i am), but considering the trailer says it's a max caulfield adventure, it seems like it's mostly going to be separate. the fact dontnod had to split off to tell stories with artistic integrity should tell us enough about this situation, and that's without going into other issues in this expose about the work culture at deck nine. there are no doubt some amazing people working there that fought for LiS and i still think BtS is an amazing game that has a lot of aspects where the love for LiS1 shines, even despite square selling the franchise to 'the lowest bidder'.

but anyway... all this to say, i'm really worried about the integrity of max's character here. i hope i'm wrong about a lot of this and chloe (or really just anything hinting to max's pre-established lore) is shown in this game. but right now it's feeling a little odd to me

#max caulfield #life is strange #life is strange double exposure #lis #dontnod #deck nine #chloe price #pricefield #metas #life is strange before the storm #lisbts #rachel amber #lis1 #life is strange 1

29 notes · View notes

emilybahu · 2 days

Text

What I want to see with Eddie/Buddie Going into Season 8

I'm really excited to see what they do with Eddie this coming season after how season 7 ended for him.

I feel like it may take a few episodes of us watching Eddie pull away from everyone as his mental state over this whole situation he got himself in just keeps getting worse until someone finally knocks some sense into him and tells him he needs to get help. Maybe the firefam even stages an intervention of sorts, telling him that they're all worried about him and that he needs to get help. I could see Buck trying his absolute best to help Eddie, to no avail. Then Hen just shows up at his house one day and straight up tells him if he doesn't work on himself, then how could he expect to repair his relationship with Chris.

I want to see a whole episode, maybe two, dedicated to Eddie's healing. I want to see him going to therapy. I need to see him learning to love himself and how to live for himself, not only for Chris. I need to see Eddie uncover the parts of himself that he's unconsciously buried through the years and rediscover things he used to enjoy. I need to see Eddie opening up to everyone and them all being proud of him and happy to see him genuinely smile. I want to see Eddie having an adult conversation with Chris about what happened and how nothing like it would ever happen again. And I want to see Eddie and Chris working on repairing their relationship and Buck hanging out with both of them.

And who knows, maybe Eddie will have a sexuality crisis, maybe he won't, maybe Buddie will happen, maybe it won't. All I know is what both Oliver and Ryan have said, which is that it has to feel right for the characters and their respective stories. Buck and Eddie have such a beautiful friendship as is, so furthering their relationship has to be done carefully. Now, I know that for a lot of us, it feels like we've been waiting long enough for this to happen, but we also have to think about the fact that the characters don't see their relationship like that. Like in a lot of the fanfics, they might both realize that they have romantic feelings for each other and be too afraid of ruining their cherished friendship to share them with one another. Or maybe they haven't realized those feelings yet, and even when they do, they'll need time to process them.

On Eddie's side, it will likely take him a while to come to terms with not being straight, and I'd like to see him putting the pieces together in his brain and talking to his therapist about self-acceptance. Apart from that, I'd like to see his dynamics with another partner (perhaps another man) before Buddie happens, if Buddie happens. I also think that Eddie figuring out he's not straight will be how he realizes the love he feels for Buck is more than one would usually feel for a friend. Maybe he'll try to give his all to whatever relationship he's in at the time, but he'll quickly realize that although he was genuinely happy with the other person, his heart just isn't in it anymore.

On Buck's side of the coin, I really hope that Tommy sticks around long enough for us to get to know his character more. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that, but as long as Buck is happy with Tommy, I'm happy with Tommy. And if they break up, I want them to still be friends. Anyway, back to the Buddie of it all...

I think Eddie will come out to the 118, and of course, everyone will be supportive as he explains that it took him months to finally be comfortable enough to tell them. And whether or not he tells them all at the same time or comes out to Buck first, I KNOW that Buck won't even hesitate to give Eddie the biggest hug! Buck starts realizing his deeper feelings when he sees Eddie with another man for the first time. Also, whether or not they're both single, mutual pining will most definitely ensue.

To me, there are only a couple ways that would feel right for a Buck and Eddie's feelings reveal (of course, in both situations, they're both single, no more cheating!):

The first one is high drama, of course, something I think a lot of people want after hearing that when Eddie got shot back at the end of season 4, there was supposed to be a feelings reveal. Hence, Eddie puts Buck in his will as Christoper's caretaker if he were to die. (Speaking of that, I really hope that we also get a serious conversation about the will in season 8). Anyways, I think it would be more interesting if, rather than only one of them getting into another near-death or serious injury situation, it was both of them together. Like they get trapped together in a burning building, one or both of them get hurt, and all they can do is wait for the team to come find them. They're holding each other, scared that they won't make it out, and they confess their feelings for one another. They hold each other even tighter after that, maybe even share a kiss.

Another scenario that I wouldn't mind seeing is a lot less dramatic. It would be sweet and soft and full of nervous energy. I think that I'd almost want it to mirror when Buck came out to Eddie, but this time, they're at Eddie's house. Chris isn't there. Buck and Eddie are just hanging out together. They just ate, and they're either sitting at the table or leaning against the counter, standing so close that their shoulders are brushing. It's a quiet moment, a lull in whatever conversation they are having, and they just look at each other fondly. Eddie quietly confesses his feelings, telling Buck that it's ok if he doesn't feel the same and that, regardless, he still needs Buck in his life. Buck is shocked, but doesn't let himself freeze, telling Eddie that he feels the same, and the scene ends with Buck and Eddie sharing a sweet kiss.

And now I'm going to make these scenarios into fanfics...

God, as much as I want Buck and Tommy to be happy as long as possible, I just NEED Buddie to happen! I love these guys't wait to see what happens in their relationship next. If nothing romantic happens between them in season 8, they need to at least have something happen that deepens and solidifies their friendship even further. Something that reminds Buck and Eddie of the place they have in each other's lives and how important they are to each other.

Thank you for reading my rant! I really do hope that people read this all the way through. Took a good amount of time to get all my thoughts out, so I hope people enjoy what I had to say! 😁

#911 abc #9-1-1 #evan buckley #eddie diaz #buddie #911 thoughts #911 speculation

24 notes · View notes