#this got rambly

[friedwizardwhispers]

If Peeta was reaped alone, Haymitch would have still sobered up for him.

The reason why he sober up is because he has a "pair of fighters this year". Both of them. And Peeta initiate the first confrontation, so it very likely he would have done it if she wasn't there.

Katniss asks for advice and then Peeta chucks the glass and then Katniss throws the knife.

He might have been a failed Mockingjay like Haymitch if he won alone. That's the difference between Katniss and probably everyone else who tried. She wasn't the solo victor. Another person alive and both of them more or less either dying together or not at all is something that can't be edited out of a footage.

The newcomers' idea to team up and not kill each other at the end of their game and just wait for the Capitol to kill them was the way to go. you can't edit out that either. It's why Catching Fire works too.

[skeletonh0e]

Hii i just wanted to ask this rq do you have any tips for writing? Ive read some of your stories from your masterlist and im kinda trying get back to writing but i feel like i need more practice and probably some advices. You can ignore this if u want ^^

Biggest advice and probably advice any writer would be

Just fucking write

Like no one likes hearing this its very much a to get better you gotta practice

Following that learning writing is very much a matter of trial and error, it'll ultimately be up to you to decide what does and doesn't work lmao. Everyone is different, every writing style is different and we all interpret things differently. A story I think is just okay can be a magnum opus to someone else

Next thing, "good writing" is immensely subjective but as a rule of thumb it definitely needs to be semi coherent, metaphors, magic and nonsense humor can work but you gotta know when and how to use them

Genre will largely define this like if its a horror fiction i am not questioning why that man survives some freak accident that makes him all spooky

However if its a slice of life fic I am 100% going to question why took the mom an hour to get back home with pizza but the pizza is still compl fresh when the kids eat it

See what I mean? Neither of these things need an explanation, one is a guy just maimed then looks scary now, one is just a scene of kids eating some hot food. You don't need to explain either of these things but looking at it from a story perspective?

We can accept someone surviving horrific injuries because it allows for a good story, how he survives after the fact, how this affects him mentally, etc.

We're questioning the magically hot pizza because us being told it's hot pizza now only feels like unnecessary filler but breaks us away from a grounded story

See? A balancing act.

But the best piece of advice i can give since I feel like it's what is currently hindering modern story telling?

Overexplaining

Like, don't overexplain things. It can bog the story down a lot, we don't need to be told how a door knob or how a door works when told a character leaves a room lmao. Let your audience figure things out

It's why that one Wattpad trope always annoyed me

Ya know as an example

Mega POV

(Insert actual story here)

Like I get it's trying to be helpful, but truly, do you really not trust us enough to figure out who's POV it is? We can read, we can see the pronoun and name usage. If you're using "Me" and "I" then someone says "hey crusty" I know the story is first person from Crustys point of view

Adding onto that please dont constantly switch p.o.v, like I use second person for the reader and third person for the skelly boys/stories with no reader insert so I feel less compelled to switch p.o.v consistently but like

Endless back and forth is exhausting to read, we don't get time to process one side before we immediately cut to someone else, we dont get time to know one character before we're told to know a different character, personally I recommend only shifting p.o.v only 2-3 times per chapter

Continuing the "dont overexplain thing" leave some things up to interpretation or at least leave some ambiguity. Like there are things you 100% clarify when telling a story for sure but not everything had to be concrete, sometimes dont tell us if a character who's usually nice is acting mean, let us figure that out and speculate as to why.

Small things like that leave room up for interpretation, speculation, and subtle story telling even if that's not your intention

Cuz like

A nice character having a mean moment can narratively mean many things

Could just show someone is three dimensional, could alert us something is wrong, could symbolize something, etc. Ultimately its up to you whether something like that is a small detail or foreshadowing but it can give a story some depth if the audience doesn't know or isn't told everything

[wolfyraged]

absolutely fascinating to me to make a series about how not being emotionally vulnerable and hiding parts of you can, in a way, kill you. then create a deuteragonist/antagonist that has specific issues and bad history with being emotionally vulnerable.

the juxtapostion was great, the STRESS its created for both jax and literally every charcater except maybe kinger was great, it was built up in an interesting way. the inspiration from "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" (jax having all these issues and being just straight up unable to be emotionally vulnerable and trusting and clear about them) was great.

ik not everybody loves to have a character like that in the works they love, but the series wouldnt have had nearly them same impact without it. jax's assholery and manipulation and two-faceness with her jokes and irony and littlest moments of vulnerability packed together with panic pushed the emotional impact and the series thought-provoking themes to new heights. it made it feel more real --people arent great to each other all the time, and even people who are shitty to others most of the time have their good moments, have their motivations, are the main character of their own story.

cartoonish villians have their place, but jax had the real, everyday kind of shitty that hits different, and impacts the audience differently.

i dont know. i appreciate they let her be shitty and in some ways allow her space to heal without breaking their own boundaries. and, on a personal note, i like that not all of the canonically queer characters are good people in this story, that their queerness is a small part of their stories while still being important to the make up of the characters. being queer doesnt make you a paragon of kindness and understanding and good mental health. having bad mental health and coping mechanisms doesnt make you not responsible for your bad behavior. being shitty to others doesnt make not deserving of healthcare.

i like the story. i look forward to rewatching it as a whole and tracking the character arcs again. thank you to gooseworx and the creatives for working so hard on it

[stagefoureddiediaz]

I think some people are conflating the concept of buck having his oh moment with the full recognition of his feelings and what it means and accepting that.

When the reality is his oh moment is not full recognition and acceptance - it is not his complex and tangled up feelings magically untangling and becoming simple, it is actually the moment when he sees his entire world being shattered and come crashing down around his feet - those barriers, road blocks, walls, fences and whatever else he erected in his mind are the rubble around him - his unexplored and buried feelings are molten liquid and it is starting to trickle out through the cracks in the rubble.

So he’s not fully cognisant yet but now the trickle has started - he won’t be able to stop it - he cannot go back or turn off the tap.

He is still misunderstanding the assignment - but not for much longer - because the trickle will become a flood and he will become increasingly aware of exactly what those feelings are and what they mean!

So yeah he had his oh moment but that does not mean he knows what that oh meant actually means - it’s just the start - it’s bucks spiral kicking into gear and it will only stop with recognition and acceptance - then he can move forward!

[chongoblog]

Congrats on being a woman! I regained access to this blog after like 8 years and found I was following you but I can’t remember who you were when I was last active here 😆

Well, a lot has changed in 8 years. And I'm talking about more than just gender. Like, the Sonic fandubs came out in the last 8 years. My first big mashup album (unless you count Star Shop) was almost 7 years ago, and making mashups has become my sort of primary mode of creative output.

Honestly, I can hardly remember who I was when you were last active here. 8 years ago I had just finished college, so I was moving back in with my parents and on the hunt for my first job. I know back in the day, I did a lot of musical experimentation where I downloaded MIDIs of songs and I changed their keys from major to minor and vice versa (I know the ones for Megalovania and Bad Romance are still rolling around a bit, and I even use Megalovania in Major Key in some mashups), and I also ran another blog that was actually more popular than this one for a while (shoutouts to dhmis-audio). I was also probably way less of a radical about things.

But that was 8 years ago. This is today. If you can't remember who I was, then good news, I'm someone different now. There are still shades of me from all that time ago (after all, it's still me), but I'm always changing and becoming the best person I can be, whether through evolving my art or gaining a further understanding of myself. Sometimes these two things are intertwined. I think being a woman is one of those changes.

[greetingsprogramms]

I know Mack got the arrow to the back treatment from Johnny boy bc he found his creepy photo album but like

I believe this turn of event is in no small part also about john's jealousy of mack and aaron's relationship. He felt threatened by mack and that's exactly what he said to him

We saw the length he went to to gaslight and alienate robert, who he identified (admitedly correctly lol) as a threat

And we're only just now unravelling the thread of all his scheming to keep control of aaron. It's going to get much worse for aaron before it all implodes. Getting him away from the village was the first step.

[the-amber-raven]

I would never delete my fics

I got linked to a reddit thread today where people were being advised to download my mortifying ordeals/Buddie fics, since apparently "now that I'm a BuckTommy shipper", I might be "petty" and delete all my Buddie fics.

So. I'll move past the complicated feelings it gives me to have people hoarding my fics while actively shitting on me as a person (and seemingly not even telling me that they enjoyed my work, although in fairness that could just be a difference in usernames.) That's the nature of fanfic, fandom, and putting things out there on the internet and I accept that.

But I do want to reassure people that I would never delete my fics. I still have the cringy-as-fuck Harry Potter fics I wrote in high school up; believe me those would be first on the chopping block if I was inclined to delete my work. And all of my 9-1-1 fics hold a special place in my heart, but none more than the mortifying ordeals series, which consumed basically a full year of my life and reminded me why I love writing. Hell, I got engaged while writing the final chapters of I once was lost. That fic is indelibly tied to my life now.

And look... I don't think it really matters, nor should I have to explain and justify what I do and don't enjoy about a show or fandom, but this whole experience has upset me more than it probably should have and I can't help but want to get it off my chest anyway.

My favourite thing about this show is the found family feels. I either love or am at least intrigued by every single character that has appeared. You'll notice that family is the central theme of every story I write, whether the story is Gen, Buddie, or BuckTommy.

Because yes, the idea of BuckTommy and how that plays into the family themes of the show has intrigued me and captured my muse.

I've also said before that I didn't think Season 7 left Buddie in a great place in terms of romantic relationship potential - in my opinion, the ghost of Shannon would be an absolutely massive barrier to them getting together right now. The post season 7 Buddie fics have also heavily featured character bashing, which isn't something I generally enjoy seeing, and infidelity, which I really don't like seeing romanticised especially since I've had a partner cheat on me.

So yes, I've distanced myself from the post-S7 Buddie fandom because I just don't enjoy the pervasive negativity I've seen and the way that cheating and violence is suddenly celebrated by a significant subset of the fandom.

That does not mean I've given up on Buddie altogether. I still have a whole list of pre-S7 buddie fics in my to-be-read list that I've been making my way through and 2 out of my 5 WIPs are Buddie fics (both in the mortifying ordeals 'verse, just to make it even clearer that I'm not at all interested in deleting that series.)

But two of those 5 are BuckTommy, because as I said above, their relationship was intriguing to me and it captured my muse.

I don't think those opinions make me some kind of betrayer, or that they inherently make me a "petty" person but I guess I just didn't realise that not-exclusively-shipping-Buddie was such a High Crime in this fandom.

[boinin]

The dust has settled on Ubers versus Bastard Munchen. Any of us rooting for the Italian side have had to reconsider our theories for the PXG match. It's now being pitched as a battle of the NEL titans, rather than the scrappy underdog match-up some of us were hoping for.

I'm still excited for PXG v BM, as it means we'll get a definitive victor. Not just for the NEL, but for Blue Lock. It'll be either Isagi or Rin, just like in the U20 match.

But beyond that, there's a couple things I'd really like to see addressed. Namely around the master strikers... and the enigma that is Julian Loki.

Loki was introduced much earlier than his colleagues Lavinho, Chris Prince or Snuffy, preceded only by Noel Noa.

Unlike the other masters though, Loki is seventeen. Younger than many of the kids he's coaching... everyone but Rin and Nanase, so far as we know.

Given the other master coaches appear to be at minimum in their mid 20s to late 30s, Loki must have something extremely special going for him to be selected over another player... because whatever way you look at it, his age and inexperience pose a significant red flag.

You should not ask a seventeen year old to monitor a training camp for other teenagers. Come on. I bet Anri was banging her head off a desk when Ego informed her of this decision.

Anyway, building on this train of thought, Loki must have some heft both as a player and a coach to secure this gig. We know he's talented, from the World 5 game (third selection). We also know he's the "top rising star", at least in the French league. But why on earth was he chosen to be a master coach? Is it just to sell BLLK TV subscriptions?

Despite his relative inexperience, there's something about him that puts him in the same league as Noa, Snuffy, Prince and Lavinho, as both a player and a mentor. The question is, how will they establish this?

I have a vague prediction that would sell how good a coach he's been.

Each time so far, the Star Change System has been invoked by the opposing coach. Namely, Lavinho, Prince and Snuffy. Noa's never been particularly happy about it.

Imagine a scenario where PXG are destroying BM, as a result of their disjointed teamwork.

Rin has blown through their defence twice to score, and BM are visibly losing hope. Isagi's spilling puzzle pieces everywhere trying to come up with a countermeasure. But he needs time to think.

Right about then, if Noa decided to substitute on through the Star Change System... it would serve as a powerful commentary.

If resident frigid bastard Noel Noa has to row in to support his team, that says a lot about how well Loki has coached his players.

Does this overly rely on the PXG team's innate talent? Kinda. But you could say say the same for BM and Noa, who's managed to coax fantastic performances from his team in spite of his supposed hands-off approach. We only see things through Isagi's perspective. It's possible Noa's coached the others (such as Jin and Neru) off screen.

In essence: BM have raw talent, about the same as PXG. But the coaches are the ones who've polished it to a killer sharpness. You could argue Barcha were such pushovers because of Lavinho's refusal to refine their footballing early on. Manshine held up better, but like Lavinho Prince let his own narcissism get in the way against BM. Ubers were the hardest to beat, because Snuffy trained all of his players evenly.

So yeah: speculation for now, but I'm curious to see how they're going to justify Julien's placement as a Master Coach. Here's hoping we get some insight during the downtime chapters.