ninthfeather | Entries tagged with meta

Over the last week, I have been keeping an eye on the development of labor disputes in the animation sector. In the course of organization, several animators have come forward with harrowing stories of their working conditions. One person I follow on Twitter retweeted a story about a young animator's mistreatment at Studio Titmouse while working on Motorcity. As a fan of Critical Role, including its just-released animated series by Studio Titmouse, my first thought was "Are they still like that now?"

It's an odd thing to say but one of the things that initially drew me to Critical Role was the knowledge that no one involved in making the show was being harmed in the process. After a decade in fandom, I have heard stories of abuse, mistreatment, and inadequate compensation from every corner of the entertainment industry. I know how idols are exploited, that stunt doubles are permanently injured on set, that crews pull unreasonable shifts and end up sick or in accidents as a result. I've heard about how manga artists overwork themselves into illness, how costars harass each other, how voice actors can seldom survive without another source of income. Critical Role was free of all of that. It was owned by the cast and under their mutual control. I could reasonably assume that no one associated with it was being hurt. In fact, by supporting it I was helping to support voice actors I admired as directly as was feasible.

But as Critical Role got bigger, it's staff expanded, and so did the opportunities for me to find out that the show was not all I had hoped. Then came the Kickstarter. Now my favorite actual play is partnered with one of the world's most odious megacorporations and an animation studio with a checkered past. It's frustrating to feel unsure as to whether people were hurt in the making of something I use to distract myself from my own problems.

Current Mood: cynical

So, ok, I had to admit I was a little nervous going into this fic. I’m still nervous about posting it. This is a big and argumentative fandom and that’s not my typical scene.

Anyhow, since this fic hits some sensitive topics, I wanted to explain some of where my decisions came from. I’m not prepared to disclose which bits came from personal experience and which didn’t, and I don’t think I should have to. But I will say that I’m not Chinese. That said, I think I got over my “exoticizing foreign cultures is cool and not harmful at all” phase a while ago. I’ve been in anime fandom; I’ve danced this dance before. It's a big part of why I avoided Chinese kinship terms that had easy English equivalents. Don’t get me wrong, Chinese is a beautiful language and there are things it conveys that English just doesn’t, but it gets real easy to fall into the trap of overusing another language as a way of exoticizing a setting, and I’d like to avoid doing that if possible.

Okay, as far as names go, I went with two words with initial capital letters, regardless of how many characters are involved.I know that this issue has some politics attached to it, but I’ve mostly concerned myself with being consistent and readable, since while I’ve tried to do research, I haven’t found enough people sounding off on one side of the issue or another to know what’s actually going on.

On the topic of how I wrote Lan Zhan as autistic, I’m sure some people may not prefer my approach, but I hope you’ll give it a chance. The word autism was invented by a Swiss psychologist in the 20th century, and a lot of the (upsettingly bad) early research on it also happened in Europe, so I wanted to envision what diagnostics for neurological disorders might look like in this fantasy setting which is both like and unlike ancient China. I took some liberties because that cultivation probably means that medicine advanced in different ways than Chinese medicine would have in a vaguely analogous historical setting (though, as many people have pointed out, The Untamed isn’t really...set in any specific period, it’s set in Chinese Amorphous Fantasy Medieval Times).

As far as how Lan Zhan is portrayed, I was very aware that there are some….misunderstandings built into people’s headcanons about him being autistic, notably people taking the brevity of his speech to mean that he doesn’t talk much. I’ve seen the complaints about “Lan Zhan talking like a caveman” (which I blame the ExiledRebels translation of the novel for, ok).I want to make it very clear that what I’m trying to convey here is not that Lan Zhan is autistic because he speaks briefly, but because he just...doesn’t talk, especially in tense situations or when he seems upset.

Also, on the topic of chapter two: In this fic (and any others I write, though I don’t know if that’s happening), Wen Ning is written as what the autistic community used to refer to as an “autistic cousin”-- a person who isn’t autistic but has a neurological disorder that gives them traits in common with autistic people. If you’re not familiar with this concept, you can read about it here or here. Yes, I know “having part of your soul snatched by a statue as a small child” isn’t a neurological disorder but this fic is set in high fantasy ancient China, let me bend some rules.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed the fic! I’m not here for discourse but if you want to offer helpful cultural criticism, or have a nice discussion about how Lan Zhan is def autistic, you can say hi here, on tumblr, or in the comments of the fic.

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Tell Me by Yorushika (Rachie Cover)

@tomanynames said: Can we hear about the Blush Mermaid Heist please!!

I’m tagging @mirrorfalls because they asked about this too! I have…feelings about this heist, which is to say I disliked it. Detailed spoilers for the trick follow, so I’m putting this under a cut.

( Read more... )

Look, I’m not a real hardcore animal rights type most of the time, but honestly? The real victim of the Blush Mermaid Heist was the turtle.

It’s not safe to glue something to a turtle’s shell, especially for an extended period of time. If the glue is something toxic and goes through the cracks, it can make the turtle sick. If the turtle is still growing, you run the risk of stunting its growth.

Then KID put iron dust in the poor little guy’s food and stuck him to a magnetic plate. Again, we are not seeing a lot of concern for the turtle here. On a meta level, I think Gosho researched synthetic diamonds more than he did aquatic turtles, which are fussy, easy-to-injure animals when kept in captivity. I don’t know if giving a turtle enough iron fillings to supplement the magnetic properties of the fake diamond on its back and make it stick to a metal plate is safe. This isn’t something you can easily research on the internet, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have enough invested in this to ask someone outright. But Gosho did, and he could have easily called a pet store about the matter. The way the scenario is written suggests he did not bother doing this, especially as there is no effort to reassure the audience that KID’s trick didn’t hurt the turtle.

Gosho is usually nicer to animals than this–puppies and kitties get to be cute and remain unhurt, and the doves get looked after too. But apparently turtles aren’t special?

Also, okay, everything about the Masumi disguise situation was stupid. KID crossdresses almost constantly. Assuming gender based on clothing is a complete rookie mistake that Gosho had him make because it was funny. Except the gag regarding Masumi’s chest was off-color when he introduced it and it’s only gotten worse. Masumi kicking KID was funny, but it would have been just as funny if she’d gotten to do it for him trying to steal her clothes. Also, it felt like a cheap way of making sure that Conan, not Masumi, took the lead in the heist investigation. I’d like to see a proper face-off between Masumi and KID.

(Frankly, speaking as a woman, you can tell that a man is writing something when a teenage girl is restrained and unconscious in a men’s bathroom for an extended period of time and this is basically handwaved as “no big deal.”)

Basically, this was the kind of heist I’d expect to see in MK, where Kaito doing poor heist prep and making mistakes has a payoff–it increases suspense and makes the readers worry about the protagonist. For all that I personally am a big KID fan, when I read DC, I generally try to read the chapter from the perspective of the narration, so I was trying to read from Conan’s point of view. From Conan’s point of view, this was just a particularly ill-thought-out scenario and the humor/Kaito’s mistakes felt distracting, rather than like something that added to the tension.

In short, I’m not a big fan of the Blush Mermaid heist, and I hope to goodness the upcoming heist is a bit better.

Current Mood: annoyed

In a previous ask, an anon asked for several DC characters, including Hondou Hidemi/Kir.

Headcanon A: realistic

While Hidemi never became a nurse, she did get first aid and CPR certifications while training with the CIA. It’s a way of holding on to the dream she gave up in order to follow her father’s path. She is not, on the other hand, a fully trained meteorologist, but she was rushed through a few community college courses and she filled the rest in with independent research during the first few months of her assignment.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Hidemi’s method of checking whether people are lying–cupping their cheek to feel their pulse via their carotid artery–is fine for small children, but it sends some mixed messages with people her own age. Especially since she’s a nice-looking single woman whose job involves looking photogenic. She’s accidentally led on two different men while trying to conduct investigations for the Black Org. She caught on to what was happening around the third.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Related to the first item, Hidemi knew enough about medicine and emergency response in particular to analyze the wound that killed Hondou Ethan. Somehow, she managed to bring the part of her mind that was performing triage and determining if the patient was still showing signs of life forward, and to push the part that was screaming about her father’s death in order to protect her to the back. That was the only reason she stayed calm long enough for her actual CIA training to kick in and keep her from breaking down and making her father’s sacrifice pointless.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

More exaggerated than unrealistic, but: the only reason she hasn’t absolutely bitten Akai Shuichi’s head off for not forcing her brother into witness protection is the fact that it’s still risky for her to get into contact with him. Otherwise, it would be 5 pages of pure angry venom.

Current Music: Sekai wa Anata no Iro ni Naru by B'z

tournamentsofroses said: Ninth, may we hear your thoughts on Kingdom Hearts so far?

Okay, so first of all this is all

hawk-in-a-tree‘s fault for getting me to watch gameplay videos and getting me attached to all the characters.

I’ve only been through KH1, Chain of Memories, KH2, 358/2 Days, and part of Birth By Sleep (specifically, Terra’s and Ven’s routes, but not Aqua’s), so please no one reblog this with spoilers for other games! I will get there eventually and then you all can yell at me about the full canon!

So, in no particular order:

Sora is too goshdarn young for this, people need to stop encouraging him to repress his emotions, and also he needs actual training/instruction in Keyblade-related history
Riku is precious and I feel so bad for him because he was just a kid who made a few mistakes that snowballed, but gosh did those mistakes have some impressive collateral damage (I still love him though)
Kairi needs more love from canon
All of the Nobodies, Replicas, and assorted other “not-real” people are valid and human and Square Enix needs to stop killing them.
In particular Repliku deserved better than having someone else’s memories forced on him
I read a fic before watching the games and as a result I have a special amount of sympathy for Vanitas. Also, I mean, he spent years with Xehanort.
The whole thirty-Ansem-pileup thing messed me up pretty good. I had to ask hawk-in-a-tree to check my understanding of which one was which after KH2.
I can’t believe the sheer number of times they made ice cream a plot point
Axel is absolutely 100% what you’d call my trash fave. Gosh I love him but he makes terrible decisions.
I can’t believe anyone ever gave Even custody of a child. Why? Someone remove Ienzo from his care please.
Ven deserved nothing that happened to him. Neither did Terra. I’m actually still trying to figure out which one horrifies me more.
Confusing me further is the fact that Leonard Nimoy played Xehanort, and thus even as I loathed the character I absolutely loved his voice.
I want to touch Marluxia’s hair; it looks extremely fluffy. I was very distracted by that thought through the entire boss fight.
Namine’s powers are straight-up terrifying
Actually pretty much all of Chain of Memories was just a head-trip that I really wasn’t expecting to be intense to the degree that it was
I’ve entered the FF7 fandom via fic and Advent Children so every FF7 cameo killed me, but Zack’s, in particular, killed me dead. (It’s baby Crisis Core Zack look at him he’s so innocent and he just wants to idolize someone…)
I’m really baffled that I have this many feelings about a franchise in which Donald Duck and Goofy are main characters, and yet here we are

Anonymous said: If you still doing the headcanon thing: Eisuke, his sister Hidemi (kir), and Sera Masumi. Thank You!

Sorry these took so long! I’m gonna be playing catch-up, but also, I don’t want to answer these all in a single post, so I’ll be making separate posts for each one.

So, this post will be about Hondou Eisuke.

Headcanon A: realistic

Parts of this have come up in my fic, but Eisuke doesn’t have extended family that he’s in contact with. His father wasn’t in contact with his extended family during his work in Japan. Eisuke and Hidemi will later realize that all of their father’s stories were stripped bare of any details that could be used to find his relatives or hometown. His mother, meanwhile, fought with her family over her choice to marry a foreign-born man with a disinclination toward answering questions plainly. While a few of them attended the funeral, it was made clear to Eisuke that while his mother was missed, his father was still a disreputable sort in their eyes, moreso since he wasn’t at said funeral. He’s thus not in contact with them, either.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Eisuke’s clumsiness isn’t so much an obfuscating stupidity trait as a natural flaw he’s managed to twist into a method of deflecting suspicion from himself when necessary. When he finally attempts to enter the CIA training program, this works both for and against him. For, because he’s gotten really good at working around his flaws. Against, because his clumsiness is real and is an actual problem during the Clandestine Service Trainee program.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Eisuke absolutely has a few nightmares in which he follows through and stabs Hidemi while she’s lying in that hospital bed. He knows it’s her as he’s doing it, but his hand moves anyway, and her hand doesn’t. Nothing gets him back to bed after those dreams.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

All of my non-canon things for DC are probably going to be more realistic because canon is the unrealistic one.

Ran, Sonoko, and Eisuke keep in touch via phone and internet after he goes to the US. Eisuke considers going around Shinichi and asking Ran what she wants, but once he realizes that maintaining any kind of reasonable standard of living in the US will require him to get at least one part time job and also study English a lot in his spare time, he puts aside the idea of a long-distance relationship for his own reasons.

Anonymous said: Kogoro Mouri for the ask meme please? 😉

Headcanon A: realistic

I’ve been pretty well influenced by Ellen Brand’s Unprofessional Opinion, but I am pretty convinced that Mouri has issues with depression. I’d differ from her story in that I think he always had some problems with it, but that it only got to the point where it interfered with his job after his wife left. Japan’s bad with mental health, and Mouri’s not only terrible at asking for help but also a master of socially unacceptable coping mechanisms (smoking, drinking to excess, inappropriate flirting, taking his anger out on random bystanders) so he’s not exactly in a good position to get any sympathy or help.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Back when he was a cop, Megure used to take advantage of Kogoro’s utter obnoxiousness. He just set the guy on a suspect, apologized continually for his rude colleague, and had said suspect thoroughly off-balance by the time he actually wanted to ask questions that were relevant to the case rather than uncomfortably personal. After a while, he got Kogoro in on it. They had a system, and it worked pretty well until Kogoro left the force.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Kogoro doesn’t understand what Sleeping Kogoro is or how it’s happening, and the blackouts are more than a little scary, but it’s the best thing that’s happened to him in years and he’s more terrified that it’ll stop.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

More not canon than not realistic, but here’s my version of “Eri left Mouri because he complained about her cooking.”

It was the last straw. You can take the movie events of the Thirteenth Target as canon or not, but either way, something had happened at work and he was on a downswing. He wasn’t doing his part around the house, and instead was sitting around, drinking beer and watching TV, and it finally sank in for Eri that neither nagging him nor manipulating him was going to effectively stop this behavior. (Of course, talking with him might have actually worked, but neither of them were ever very good at things like communicating their feelings directly) He complained about her cooking, she realized that she couldn’t make Kogoro into the man she wanted him to be by force, and she left.

Anonymous said: Kido for the headcanon meme please?

Headcanon A: realistic

She is the type who plays a single song on loop for days. Kano knows and thinks it’s hilarious.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

She is pretty uncomfortable with her powers for the most part, but she’s not above using them to sneak up on people as a prank…or at least trying. Kano always hears her coming. Seto is startled every time, to the point where it’s not even funny anymore.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

She is trying her best to be the big sister, now, in Ayano’s absence, but she’s not really good at expressing her feelings verbally, and her history with her family and at the orphanage has made physical affection difficult for her as well. She’s best at showing love through her actions–cooking, doing chores, listening to her siblings rant when they need to–but it never feels like enough to her.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

She keeps her powers post-canon. Momo drags her on tour so that she can get time off from constant public scrutiny, and also because Kido deserves a few months of someone else catering all her food.

ranichi17 also asked for Miyano Shiho!

Headcanon A: realistic

Shiho had the intelligence to go to Tokyo University or another top-ranked school, but not the background. In Japan, a fair amount of weight is placed on how good the high school you attended was when entering college, and Shiho was likely homeschooled while working on projects for the Org, since the way she acts as Ai indicates that normal socialization isn’t exactly a familiar experience for her. So her degree is through a second-rate institution with some slightly shady faculty members, but their library is adequate and that’s good enough for her.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

The Black Organization didn’t exactly provide babysitting, so Shiho spent a lot of her early childhood hanging around her parent’s lab. it wasn’t unusual to come into the lab and see her and Akemi on the floor with a set of blocks or a set of toy test tubes. Safely away from the hazardous substances, of course. The two of them ended up with a lower-level member of the organization assigned to them as a de-facto babysitter. It was essentially punishment duty. Obviously the organization had worst punishments than having to look after two genius preschoolers, but not a lot of worse punishments.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

When Shiho was younger, she wanted to work at a big pharmaceutical company and do work like her parents’, except she wanted to be able to decide what projects she would work on for herself. Akemi held off on explaining the facts of the situation for a while, but she did eventually get to that point.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Ai’s neck-deep in the supernatural shenanigans and fully aware of it. She went to the mermaid island for research. She likes hard science better, sure, but that doesn’t mean she’s in denial (unlike certain Holmes nerds). She knows that being able to sense members of a certain organization isn’t normal, and neither is however Kudou scents murderers and attracts murders. And then there’s Toyama-san, who’s on a whole different plane of weird. Bottom line: she knows.

ranichi17 said: Has anyone asked for Kisaragi Shintarou in the ask meme yet? Or Miyano Shiho?

This post is gonna be Kisaragi Shintarou since there’s not a lot of people who are in both the Kagepro and DCMK fandoms. I’ll do Shiho in a seperate post.

Headcanon A: realistic

In terms of real-life instruments, Shintarou can play the piano/keyboard and the guitar, as well as the drums. He had piano lessons in middle school, probably, and he learned guitar in the high school music room without permission before Ayano decided to befriend him. He’s never tried, but his crap endurance means that he’d be terrible at all woodwind and brass instruments and in general would be laughed out of marching band.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Yes Shintarou made an Utauloid once, with his own voice. Specifically, back in middle school when his voice was in the middle of changing. No, no one can ever know about it. Not even Ene will find those files. He’s deleted all the copies.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Good endings in which Shintarou uses his powers in the process of ending the time loop come at a cost. He spends the next few months (and the rest of his life, but the next few months are the worst of it) waking up from screaming nightmares of deaths and betrayals and other horrors that both did and didn’t happen as his brain tries to process the massive amount of information he’s suddenly remembered. Everyone is helping each other through these sorts of issues, of course, since the entire Dan is varying degrees of traumatized, but everyone ends up avoiding Shintarou a little at first because it is unnerving as heck to hear a detailed second-person account of your violent murder from your babbling, half-asleep friend.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

I’m very attached to the idea of Shintarou’s condition as a hikkomori being actually treated seriously. A lot of Japanese media don’t take it that seriously, probably because they understand that some people who watch the shows are hikkikomori themselves and don’t necessarily want to confront that kind of thing in their entertainment, but once someone becomes hikkikomori, it generally takes a lot of effort for them to start engaging with the outside world again. It’s classified as a culture-specific mental illness, and it’s not something that will just go away after two days, not even two days on infinite repeat. Especially when those two days on infinite repeat are traumatizing in and of themselves.

Current Music: Lost Time Memory by Jin feat. IA

@mirrorfalls said: Oh, you're still doing these? Then I submit... the Black Organization. As a body or as individuals.

I find this kinda hard to do for a whole group, but I’m not doing the whole Org, individual by individual.

Headcanon A: realistic

It’s not something that canon gets into, but realistically, a criminal organization that big has to be into good, old-fashioned illegal drug trafficking and smuggling as well as the murder, extortion, and theft we see onscreen. Probably they deal in knock-off goods too.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

You can get in trouble for letting your black clothing get too faded. Grey isn’t black, okay! There’s a dress code.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Ai and her sister were not the only kids born into positions with the Black Org, not by a long shot. Akemi isn’t unique in her fate, either.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Look, you can pry the “APTX and Pandora are related in some way” headcanon from my cold dead hands.

Anonymous said: Seto from Kagepro?

Headcanon A: realistic

Even once he’s an adult, Seto’s fondness for eye-searing green never quite abates. A lot of the other Dan members move away from their signature colors over time, or only hold on to them for sentimental reasons, but Seto just loves green a lot.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Whichever of his siblings starts dating first gets spied on via Seto’s animal friends.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

After Ayano died, he spent a week straight avoiding his siblings, because he couldn’t shut out their thoughts, he didn’t think it was right for him to hear any of this, and honestly, he couldn’t handle what he was hearing.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Seto’s employers around town are looking out for him a bit–they know he and his siblings are on their own and that he’s acting as the breadwinner. He gets leftovers pushed at him on occasion, and no one says anything too harsh when he runs late.

FabHawk said: *imma gonna keep throwing characters at you* Axel from Kingdom Hearts

*Disclaimer: I’m about halfway through watching a gameplay vid of KH2, and the only other games I’ve seen are KH1 and KH:COM. So if any of this turns out to be more canon than I know, don’t spoil me! I’d like to find out myself.*

Headcanon A: realistic

Axel gives the impression that he does the most collateral damage of the Organization. He gives this impression very carefully, and with admirable control. He’s in fact very aware that his powers are very good for collateral damage, and if he leaves a bunch of half-burned out buildings behind him, those are deliberate. He fights people inside the Castle, after all. He knows how to control his fire when he has to.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

During KH2 Axel, in the pursuit of trying to sound friendly enough to interact with Kairi, actually attempts to practice a friendly voice in front of a mirror.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Related to the previous headcanon, part of the reason his friendly voice still sounds vaguely menacing is that he doesn’t have a lot of actual experience with friendly voices. (Roxas sounded friendly sometimes, but it just sounds weird when Axel tries to impersonate him. Who else is he going to impersonate? Larxene?)

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

All of my hopes edge too close to spoiler territory. Maybe someday he learns how to be slightly less of a trash fave and a bit of a better person?

Anonymous said: Haruka Kokonose?

Headcanon A: realistic

When Haruka isn’t in his uniform, he prefers loose, comfortable clothes. A lot of his aesthetic choices are actually comfort-based because he doesn’t have the energy to expend on trying to look fancy.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Haruka is the sole and specific reason that several all-you-can eat buffets in town now have an upward limit on what “all you can eat” means.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Haruka has a lot of insecurities about himself as a friend, since he’s pretty low on energy and sometimes just ends up at the hospital for weeks at a stretch, so he sometimes has doubts about his friendships with the rest of the Yuukei Quartet.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Post-Daze, Haruka does permanently need a wheelchair, and while this part is realistic and possibly canon, the non-canon part is him moving into the red-brick house with the rest of the quartet, who promptly make the place as wheelchair accessible as possible. (I’ve mentioned this once a while ago) And they all live happily from then on.

hawk-in-a-tree said: Faiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii <3

Headcanon A: realistic

Fai struggled in Yama. Another world with chopsticks, Eastern-style armor, and other things he doesn’t know how to do, and this time he couldn’t even ask for help! Kurogane probably had to demonstrate how to put on the armor. Repeatedly.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Sure, Fai was hiding his magic by saying “hyuuuuu” instead of whistling, but he also just kinda got to like saying it. He’s not even trying to annoy Kurogane anymore, that’s just a bonus. He likes the way it sounds.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

On one hand, losing an eye pretty much does away with those moments of early-morning confusion when he looks into the mirror and thinks he’s seeing his twin staring back. On the other, it tosses several of his plans for bringing the real Fai back out the window, because he absolutely refuses to subject his brother to living in a body he’s damaged.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

They do make it to a world where there’s both a Fai and a Yui someday. Fai expected to be bitter, jealous, hit hard by grief–but instead, he’s just so grateful that he got to see this, and that there are versions of him and his brother somewhere who weren’t touched by tragedy.

@mirrorfalls said: Ran Mouri.

Headcanon A: realistic

After the second or third time she had to actively use karate on a case, Ran started shifting her training focus to incorporate not only things that would be effective and legal in regulation matches but also things that would work on a real assailant.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Especially if you take the movies as canon, Ran is probably an Internet Cryptid™ in the sense that there’s stories about a brown-haired teenage girl doing impossible things that show up on various message boards once in a while. Maybe someone even got a really blurry photo of her kicking out that car window. Ran’s definitely the type who doesn’t spend a lot of time on the internet, so she has no idea. Sonoko knows and thinks it’s the best thing ever.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Ran puts up with Shinichi’s increasingly unacceptable behavior as a romantic interest/boyfriend in part because of her own family situation. She knows she doesn’t want to end up like her own parents, who refuse to tolerate one another’s bad points whatsoever, so she’s swung too far the other direction and started putting up with things from Shinichi that she knows aren’t fair to her.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

At this point, it’s not that Ran doesn’t suspect, or for that matter, that she isn’t pretty darn sure. She’s just tired of Conan diverting her.

(She’s not an idiot)

Some Akako headcanon-discussion/meta because it occurred to me that the part she plays in Riddle in Reverse involves a fair amount of my thoughts about her.

In canon, Akako’s powers are explained a little bit, but her society and what exactly happened to her parents is never made clear. I’ve seen cool headcanons around but none really match mine, so here we go.

First, I take Akako’s age as read—she’s 17. I think her parents probably died doing something related to magic—maybe there was infighting with other magicians, maybe they tried summoning something big, I don’t know and it’s not too relevant, because, given the fact that Akako can’t let herself cry without losing her magic, she literally wasn’t allowed to be upset about it. By the time canon rolls around, she’s buried any trauma pretty deep, and we never get any glimpses.

Whatever happened, though, happened when she was in middle school or so. She learned social skills and basic human interaction from them, but most of her magic is self-taught. This means two things—1) she has no measure for comparison and 2) nobody really taught her to be responsible with her powers. These factors combined explain the attraction spell she apparently puts out 24/7. Something like that, which manipulates multiple people’s mental states has to be high energy—but I bet Akako’s never thought about the fact that spells the books say are “difficult” don’t seem to be for her. And as for ethics and responsibility, I can’t honestly believe that an entire society of magic-users are chaotically evil enough to have constant competing attraction spells “on” all the time—so Akako’s probably disregarding either a social or actual taboo because no one taught her not to.

Akako is lonely, and she throws her power around because she has so much of it but nothing especially interesting or productive to do with it (Drawing in all those boys is neither–she doesn’t even seem to enjoy the attention, much less reciprocate, and it’s clearly not a challenge). Aiding KID at least gives her something to do with the near reality-warping levels of magic we see her throw around. And, you know, his second-hand advice from his late father and/or his own advice occasionally nudges her toward better choices.

As a final note, and for my own sanity, I don’t headcanon the thing she summons as actually being Lucifer. It’s a spirit, maybe even an imp, that has an affinity for fortunetelling and is weak enough to not set off the truly impressive wards Akako’s parents left behind on her house. It just responds to Lucifer because it gets yelled at less that way.

Originally posted 2/2/2016

rinrinhime said: "(unpopular opinion: shinn asuka had potential as a character before GSD became The Kira Yamato Show pt II)" MAN YES THOUGH i mean he was being very "reckless protag" at the start but imo he was on the brink of actually learning from his actions. SORRY JUST HAD TO SEND A MESSAGE CAUSE i have so many feelings on GSD (most of them negative - ) don't even get me started on rey

Sending an ask is fine!! I still have a lot of feelings about GSD, as it was my Very First Gundam, so even though I’m not actively in the fandom, nor was I ever really other than, like, two really subpar fanfics, I like the opportunity to talk about it. My love for Gundam Seed Destiny is the love of nostalgia–it wasn’t actually that good, but it meant a heck of a lot to me at the time. Besides getting me into Gundam, it presented a fundamentally different narrative about war than anything else I’d been exposed to up to that point, and it was in some ways formative for me in that sense. Narratively and as a piece of writing, though…it was not great.

Shinn’s arc was a trainwreck and it didn’t have to be. He wasn’t some sort of irredeemable villain from the get-go, he was a hurting kid with PTSD and an impulsive streak. Athrun was trying to get him to make better choices, but Athrun was affiliated with Orb, Shinn had trauma, and Durandal was playing everyone. Shinn was manipulated by Durandal, but also took reprehensible actions on his own. So it’s more complicated than him just being a victim of Durandal, but it’s also false to say he wasn’t one. I know from an Anime Insider interview from when the show was released that someone on the production staff (head writer or director, I think? It’s been years and my hard copy’s not here) basically said that Shinn was a portrait of the problems with modern Japanese youth, that he was “entitled” and craved “acceptance” and “approval.” I remember being annoyed by that when I read it and it still annoys me. If they were trying to portray Shinn as entitled, I’m not sure they did a good job. Traumatized war orphans who live on their combat ship just don’t read as entitled to me. His tendency to seek approval constantly and especially from the wrong people is among his tragic flaws, but it’s also among Athrun’s, and yet things turn out very differently for those two characters.

Personally, I find Shinn most interesting as a counterpoint to both Athrun and Kira, in the sense of this is how their arcs could have gone wrong. I am not certain this is what the show was trying to convey, but I’m a former English major and texts are sometimes more fun when you read for what’s actually in them rather than authorial intent. Kira’s arc in GS is plagued by the threat of the Earth Forces wanting to turn him into a glorified tool. Shinn’s arc, in an indirect way, is that made real in the form of Durandal’s manipulations (and Rey’s, though Rey is also simultaneously complicit and a victim). The difference between them is the allies Kira had with him (vs. Shinn’s allies, who aren’t all truly his allies, aren’t close to begin with and are picked off one by one through the show, until only Luna and Meyrin survive the series, and only Luna stays with Shinn). Athrun, meanwhile, makes poor decisions about who to follow, but also is ultimately able to realize when his side has morally gone beyond the pale, and to use the connections he had from childhood (Kira and Lacus) with the other side to reorient himself to a side that matches his moral convictions (vs. Shinn, whose only remaining childhood connection, the cell phone recording of his younger sister, is a tool that Durandal uses to manipulate him toward further morally questionable decisions). Shinn is a testament to the chaotic nature of war, a reminder that our faves, while good people, also got lucky. If they’d ended up in the wrong places at the wrong times, they could have ended up like him, or at least in similar situations.

REEEEEEY. My feelings about him are so complicated and at the same time boil down to screw Ulen Hibiki. A lot of my GS and GSD feelings boil down to that honestly. Rey deserved better. Rey also did some very, very screwed-up things and the fact that he was actively aiding Durandal in turning Shinn into a human UXB shouldn’t be overlooked, but he was also one of the only people who was really kind to Shinn. The fact that he helped Shinn rescue Stellar makes me think that under all the manipulation and pain and screwed up things that never should have happened to either of them, Shinn and Rey’s friendship was real, to some extent. In an environment with no Durandal, it could have been good for them both.

It’s been like 10 years since I watched this show why on earth do I still have this many emotions about it???

(Disclaimer to anyone who comes across this in the tag: I am not an active participant in the GS or GSD fandoms, and know nothing about the current discourse trends. I’m not really interested in fighting anyone on this, it is just my opinion. Lemme be wrong on the internet in peace if that is what you feel I am.)

Anonymous said: Is steeplechase getting near its end? If yes, do you plan to write more for this series or...? Just curious.

Steeplechase is in its final arc. This story is about Kaito bringing Hakuba home. Granted, it’s also about a lot of other things, and I do plan to resolve as many of the emotional arcs, side plots, etc. as I can, but that was always the main point of this story. Granted, getting Hakuba home means more than getting him there physically; it involves convincing him that this is home. The story has quite a few chapters left in it still–there’s a lot of conversations left to be had in the wake of Hakuba’s return, and I’m not planning to rush through them. Also I made promises to miladyRanger about the epilogue, and those date back to 2014 or possibly early 2015. So, given my current posting speed, making firm predictions on whether the story will end this year might be pushing it. But it won’t still be going this time next year.

I’m not going to write another chaptered fic for this verse, or at least, I don’t have plans to do so at the moment. When I finish Steeplechase, I’d like to take a bit of a break and catch up on ficcing for some of the other fandoms I’ve been neglecting in favor of this fic, and possibly even poke at some original projects again. But when I come back, I have pretty fleshed-out plans for oneshots set in this ‘verse, and I’d very much like to write them. While putting together background for this fic, miladyRanger and I wrote some backstory that didn’t really have a place in the fic–adding it would’ve been intrusive and unnecessary, so I left it out. Also, it would just be fun to write some lower-pressure scenarios with these versions of the characters, as opposed to what I’ve been doing with Steeplechase. There’s a lot I like about the character relationships I’ve set up in this verse and a lot I’d like to be able to explore with them. So yeah, I’ll probably write in this verse after this, but it might not be on this scale.

…Frankly, if I write on this scale again, next time I might want it to be original fiction. I really enjoyed this, and I’m so glad everyone else has too, but I can’t emphasize how much the length was not planned.

Originally posted 9/18/2017

Anonymous said: Personally I find it annoying that Gosho insists Magic Kaito and Detective Conan are separate because at this point how is that possible when KID has been directly involved in a Black Org arc?? Like...his involvement was pretty key to how it all unfolded in the end. And the connection between HIS family and the Kudos and Vermouth too...Also imo Akako having magic actually explains some things (Hattori's dream for example) so it's not like the connection doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Honestly, for me, it’s Vermouth that I can’t get past. Like, as much as I hate it, the single BO arc he got involved in was set up so it could have just been because of Shinichi. But the whole implication that Toichi taught both Yukiko and Vermouth is plot-important in DC, at least insofar as Yukiko and Vermouth’s relationship. And given that this is Vermouth, who is probably the most competent of the BO members (Gin is close but he’s not so great at successfully murdering people). Like, is Gosho really trying to sell to us that Vermouth let a random criminal organization to which she had no connection kill her teacher, and then let them live afterward? Because that seems odd to me.

I think at some point DC and MK were supposed to be happening in different universes, and then Gosho said something else, and honestly I have regretted every time I tried to pay attention to one of those interviews he does because half of what he says is confusing and sometimes he says things that are deliberately misleading. As a fanwriter, at least, I’m going with the written canon, not with anything Gosho says outside of it. And the written canon is unclear but implies the two organizations at least could be related, and definitely sets both series in the same world.

Besides, as far as magic is concerned, DC isn’t quite as logic-driven as we tend to think of it if you look close. You pointed out Kazuha’s dreams; Heiji also has one that he at least thinks is supernatural during the Naniwa Serial Murders. Also, that omamori works, and on a pretty different level from what people expect from them in the real world, from what I know. Conan seems to be able to sense murderers and also has a KID-radar. Likewise, Ai can sense members of the BO. And like, maybe with those last two Gosho is trying to imply that it’s reading body language, but it’s drawn like lowkey psychic powers. There’s magic, or at least a lot of supernatural crap, in DCMK’verse, there always has been.

Originally posted 5/25/2017 with 69 notes

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