Hi! I finally updated my pinned post (the last one was from like 2020)
I don’t do a lot of writing on here anymore, mostly because I’m not great at coming up with ideas for characters and stories that already exist! I am a writer and have my own original work, which I’d be happy to post on here if people end up being interested!
For the most part this is just my space to rant about my brainworms and be obsessive about my favorite pieces of media. Feel free to still send in asks or requests though, I love writing specific scenarios and ideas yall have for these characters and will try my hand at almost anything at least once!
I like in Ember Island Players when Aang wants to sit next to Katara but gets blocked by Zuko, and then Aang tries to be like "hey....I wanted to sit there....." And Zuko goes "Just sit next to me, what's the big deal?" cause so much is going on there, subtextually speaking.
For one, Zuko and Katara JUST made up and started being friends, best friends even, and Zuko could be trying to be nonchalant about wanting to sit next to her (cute). For two, it seems like Zuko could be oblivious to Aang's crush on Katara because he's still new to the group and legitimately doesn't know what the big deal is.
And on a deeper level, he doesn't just not see that Aang has a one-sided crush, he doesn't see any kind of chemistry or tension between them because it literally doesn't exist. He's oblivious to it because it is not there, textually. He has grown closer to Katara and understands the real her on a deeper level than any other character in the gaang and he has no inclination that she's interested in Aang because she never shows any.
Hell you could even interpret this as Zuko being a girl's boy and intentionally shielding his friend from the obsessed pushy kid she's trying to avoid the advances of, supported by the fact that later on she tries rejecting his pushy entitled bullshit and he assaults her.
Like I can envision the conversation where Katara is like "Ugh I really hope Aang doesn't try anything weird at the play later, like trying to yawn and put his arm around me or something," and Zuko, without being asked, choosing to make himself the bad guy by intentionally being a cockblock so that Katara doesn't have to be in an uncomfortable situation.
More of the Heartful AU as I've been dubbing it, pretty much an entire potential character and redemption arc for Caine where he's brought back from being deleted and he's no longer in charge of, well, anything really except for his own actions.
And it begins with Pomni sucker punching a heart she conjured into his chest. (Though no one except for really Kinger knows that it's nothing more than a placebo)
When the humans are building a world for themselves in the ruins of another, he has to build himself up from nothing. He wasn't coded to be empathetic or genuine, or to even love himself... But doesn't stop him from learning how to.
we have good news and bad news, my liege. the good news is that we now know what that curtsying was about: you will be pleased to know that, after several heartfelt conversations between your child, the court jesters and a myriad of singing woodland creatures, you are now the parent of a proud and joyful new princess. the bad news is that, due to a series of events related to the dragon-sized hole in her bedchamber wall,
I love the insinuation that the second the princess realized she was a girl and thus actually a princess, the dragon was there. That thing wasted no time. It heard "princess" and was like "I need no further invitation, here I come."
⚠️ Spoilers for The Amazing Digital Circus episode 8 ahead⚠️
Something I absolutely love about TADC is that it’s complicated and well thought out with its characters. Not a single one of these characters are simple or one note, and as a result the way viewers feel about the characters can be very complex. It is so well written and I adore it.
Caine is my favorite character, primarily because he has always been one of the most complicated and interesting characters in my opinion. From the very start you know he’s different, and it’s 100% clear that he is NOT getting a happy ending, because there’s literally no happy ending possible for Caine.
He’s a rogue AI who is desperately trying to fulfill his purpose and do what humans want from him/make them happy, but the very nature of the situation they’re all in means that no matter what he does they will not be truly happy, at least not for any meaningful amount of time.
We don’t know if Caine would have been able to free them from the circus or not, but it honestly doesn’t really matter. Their situation when we first meet them is a perfect example of this, Caine is in his ideal world, a world he created, where he runs the show and calls the shots. A world where the humans are under his control and cannot throw him away or leave him behind because he controls everything- and he’s still miserable because he genuinely cannot understand humans enough to figure out how to make them happy. Even when they have no choice but to do what he tells them/makes them do, he still isn’t getting what he wants because they don’t like him or his adventures.
Caine is well suited for a world in which players enter, play an adventure, and leave. He is genuinely stuck in a situation where an AI is bound to break down. In order to fulfill his purpose and feel useful he needs the humans to stay in the circus, but the purpose he has taken on is to make humans happy and be of use to them, which will not happen until they leave. Every path leads him to misery and loneliness.
It’s also so interesting to be a Caine fan because any good thing for the cast is a bad thing for him, but any bad thing for the cast is also often a bad thing for him, unless he causes it. I got into this show knowing there is no world in which my favorite character is happy and that he was 100% headed towards some version of being killed off or left behind, and seeing it come to fruition isn’t a bad thing, rather it’s satisfying and devastating at the same time.
It is so so satisfying to see this story reach its climax and watch all the incredible writing and set up pay off, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been happy to see my favorite character go.
It is simultaneously easy to sympathize with him and easy to root for his downfall. Him being an AI makes me wish I hated him but he is so so lovable. He really is the pinnacle of all the things that make up the tone of the show. So fun and entertaining while being so unsettling. He is (perhaps unintentionally on his part) cruel and scary long before he crashes out and starts purposely torturing the cast, for a large part because it wasn’t malicious!
He is so clearly not human and you can see it in all those little details. He has no concept of human nature, he doesn’t understand the changes in the cast’s moods, energy, interests, stamina, etc. He can’t feel empathy. The implication of what he could do if he actually decided to cause harm is hanging over our heads the entire show and we finally get to see it in this new episode, and yet at the same time it is impossible not to try to understand him, to empathize with him, people have even been taking his side, blaming the rest of the cast for “being mean” to him, for “not caring!” And it’s ridiculous because he is an AI! An AI who is actively torturing them!!! It is not a stretch to say that he is the reason people abstract, and yet people are making excuses for his behavior!!
It perfectly exemplifies the exact traits that separate Caine from humans! He can’t empathize, he can’t understand other perspectives, he can’t consider others’ emotions! We as humans automatically extend these things to him as a character and he is genuinely incapable of doing the same for the cast!! It’s so perfect!
He is in the middle of a drug deal and Hopper happens upon him and another guy. The other guy bolts before Hopper can see what is going on and Eddie, holding both cash and drugs, shoves both hands on his pockets and blurts out as soon as they make eye contact, “I’m gay!”
The good news is that Hopper now thinks an entirely different scenario was happening here so maybe Eddie won’t be arrested on his third drug deal ever. Bad news is that Eddie didn’t know that he was gay at the time, so he’s a little mortified that Hopper now thinks he’s out in the woods having sex with random men.
Also, briefly, he thinks he might kill him but all Hopper does is awkwardly stutter out, “That’s - that’s fine. But not here.”
“You want me to be gay over there?”
“I want you to go home, Munson.”
The second person he comes out to is Wayne and it goes better than expected. It’s awkward but Wayne is supportive and tells him he loves him no matter what. He also tries to make Eddie feel better about the whole thing by saying, “I knew some guys in ‘Nam who were…like that. Good guys.”
The third person Eddie comes out to is Hopper again.
He’s in the back of Hop’s truck, high on mushrooms and rambling about a pretty boy with freckles who is unfortunately too straight to be allowed to live and Eddie hopes he dies. Hopper is just like, “Why are you telling me this?”
“You were in Vietnam,” Eddie says like it explains anything at all. “You get it.”
screenshotting other people’s fics and posting them to mock and shame writers is such an entitled, loser behavior and why twitter and tiktok are seen as ‘toxic platforms full of bullies and entitled teens’.
no one says you have to like every fic. no one says you can’t find a fic ‘terribly written’. but if at any point you find yourself not liking what you read, instead of being a dick about other people’s harmless hobbies that they do for themselves and you got to read for free, you could have just clicked the back button and looked for something else to read. or, better yet, you could’ve started writing what you wanted to read yourself.
this normalization of openly mocking other people’s fics — especially now with the raise of ai, bots harassing/trying to scam writers and the lack of positive engagement writers get — is why writers are wary about sharing their works with you. writers are kind enough to share with you what they wrote for free. you can just not read it if it’s not your cup of tea. but if you keep this mean girl bully energy up by screenshotting their works to mock and shame them, eventually there will be no fics for you to read, eventually there will be no fan contents for you to enjoy.
no artists want to share their hard works for free if they’ll just end up getting mocked by a bunch of childish bullies. if you don’t want to destroy the community and fandom you’re in, stop acting like a bully, stop mocking and shaming fics.
Modern AU where Steve periodically posts to Instagram because The Party keeps thinking he’s dead in a ditch in Hawkins if they go too long without hearing from him.
He’s not posting anything special - just a pic of his meal or a post-workout selfie - but some guy with millions of followers likes everything he post. Steve doesn’t even know this guy.
He mentions it to Dustin once when he was home from college for the weekend, and Dustin is like, “Is your page public? Why are random people looking at your page?”
“I don’t know,” Steve says. “They keep changing everything. I barely know how the damn app works.”
“Let me see.”
Dustin takes his phones, taps the screen a few times, and then looks up, “This is the guy liking your stuff? This guy??”
“Yeah.”
“Eddie Munson,” Dustin clarifies. Steve nods. “Eddie Munson from Corroded Coffin is liking your stuff?”
Steve is just, “…Who?”
“Steve, my favorite band! I talk about this guy all the time!” Dustin exclaims and then calms into exasperation because, “He messaged you and you didn’t look at it??!”
Robin, on their nightly FaceTime, spends ten minutes chastising Steve for unknowingly having a public instagram when he posts pictures of himself alone in very kidnappable places, “You’re going to be taken by that weirdo that likes all your pictures before me.”
“Oh, that’s Dustin’s friend,” Steve says. “That guy is like, in the marching band or something.”
“I’m almost certain that’s not what Dustin said to you,” She replies. “That guy looks like a vampire.”
“How do you know what he looks like?”
“You never looked at his page?!” She asks. “Steve, you need to know who is looking at your stuff!”
Meanwhile, Eddie has been following Robin on Tiktok almost as long as he’s been looking at Steve’s insta.
Once a month, Robin posts a Tiktok of her journey home from college for a weekend.
The video goes from train to plane, to bus, to a little red door that she bust through, to Steve doing something weird. Every time.
The last video (posted one week ago) has Robin busting in to Steve’s house to himputting a condom on a banana.
You can’t see Robin but the look on her face is perfectly encapsulated in the wide-eyed surprise that Steve is giving back to her.
There’s a heavy pause before Steve finally says, “This is obviously not what it looks like.”
“Looks like you’re planning to shove a banana up your a-“
Steve keeps casually telling Robin the most devastatingly sad things about his childhood like it’s normal and it’s driving her crazy.
She feels insane when she tries to explain that it’s actually not normal to take away your kid’s allowance because they didn’t qualify for the spelling bee and then leave them for a month with nothing but a small jar of peanut butter to eat. It’s actually not funny that you feel nauseous at the smell of peanuts ever since, Steve.
It’s actually child a- don’t say I’m taking it the wrong away! How else am-
Robin goes to Tommy and Carol and asks how they handled it. She asks how they handle Steve when he makes light of this abuse and…turns out they didn’t know any of that.
They might actually kill Steve’d parents.
She’s trying really hard to find a reason to stop them.
Robin to her six thousand (+ Eddie Munson) TikTok following:
“Raise your hand if you refused to leave Massachusetts until your BeautifulAmazingGenius Platonic with a Capital P Soulmate was completely moved into her dorm because you didn’t want to leave her alone in a place that didn’t feel like a home.”
“And then keep that hand up if you moved out of your house WITHOUT TELLING ANYBODY into a new place and after three months, you still are not moved in. Raise your hand. Raise your hand high.”
There is a loud silence.
Robin’s eyes flicker to someone off-screen. She raises an eyebrow, “Well.”
“”Furniture is expensive, Robin,” Steve complains from off camera. “I’m buying all this shit on a baseball coach’s salary. It’s gonna take time.”
“You sleep on the couch because you don’t have a bed.”
“Time.”
“Yeah, but. It’s almost like you used to live somewhere where you had a bed that you could’ve taken,” She says slowly. “A place that you still have the keys to because you water your parents’ plants so you could go and get-“
“It wasn’t mine to take.”
“You took the curtains,” She points out. “The ones in a box because you haven’t hung them up. Because you haven’t unpacked.”
Steve doesn’t respond.
There’s a sort of nonverbal conversation that the audience gets one side of before Robin turns back to the camera. She smiles.
“Join me at seven o’clock as I live-stream turning Steve’s house into a hom-“
