#( whatever i fleshed out all the important stuff and it's flexible anyway )

[fairywithgremlintendencies]

hi jas! (i hope its okay if i call you that)

anyways i had was wondering if you had any tips on how to further develop an oc

i have a few ocs and i have fleshed out a general idea about them, but theyre still just really general and i wanted to see if you have any advice on how to make an oc more thorough and unique :)

im sorry its a lottt

evan!! :D you can 100% call me jas, you're actually the first to do so on here *hands you a medal* <33

also don't be sorry! original characters are literally my life and have been for. god. around 2 years or so! BUT ANYWAY I'LL GET INTO THE IMPORTANT STUFF

an important thing to acknowledge is that general character ideas are in themselves so important, in terms of seeing a particular character through. if you're hooked enough on the general vibe of an oc, you're probably going to be more likely to do more work with them in the future, weather that's by drawing them, thinking about them, writing, whatever that may be. There are several ways to make a character appeal to you, the maker. i cannot stress enough how important it is for the creator to be invested in their characters. for example, when i was starting to get into a certain show I noticed that i loved how contrasting the character's personalities were, and how they all interacted together. for me, lots of characters being present was a part of the appeal because i'm interested in how they interact/their connections to each other! therefore that's kind of what my character's story centers around. human connection! (or semi human, in my case.) what i'm trying to say is that if you're running out of ideas, turning to media for inspiration is a go to and can really help!!! even if it's just like "whoa, this character in this show has something special about them, I wonder how i could use this to inspire my own work!" find what you tend to like seeing in characters. how could you use your knowledge of what you find appealing to make this character likable? (if that's what you're going for, a hated character can be fun too sometimes >:) )

also one last thing about base ideas/general ideas. they will change. its important to be flexible with these kinds of things, as creativity can be a complex process and your characters are bound to evolve over time, which is awesome and beautiful.

ONTO FURTHER DEVELOPMENT!!

it's important to make your characters seem "real" in a sense. even if they're based somewhere other than earth, characters are more relatable when they seem more "human" or realistic. By this i mean don't be afraid to give your characters flaws! let them make mistakes! as well as it being good for their development, it's also way more fun to portray.

also, character backgrounds. families!! (if relevant.) people tend to take on traits of their parents, grandparents, etc and sometimes it's best to start with those relatives. i'll give an example. my initial main cast of ocs was just a handful of people. they had their own story forming and it was looking okay. after a while, i came up with future kids for some of these characters and how the parent's features would be shown through these future characters. .....long story short those "future kids" characters are now my main cast. by (accidentally) developing them from this angle, i was able to flesh out important things like their parent's backstories and past connections to my antagonist, how that will affect my main characters, (what trauma could this cause? what conflicts could arise?) and how different and diverse families can look. (found families, single parents, children adopted into families because one of the older characters had similar problems to them growing up,) the list goes on! something that can make characters seem more fleshed out is their relationships with other characters, and their backstories/motives/fears etc! also!! it's always interesting to see how a character's attitude and personality changes throughout their story. for example, how they act at the beginning may be very different to how they act when something is revealed about them later/conflict arises or something similar.

idk how much of an in depth answer you need but it does depend on if you want to have well rounded characters just to have, or if you want to put them in a storyline. in terms of art, if you ever want to design your characters yourself, finding artists that have a style similar to how you imagine your characters can be so helpful, and you can learn so much about your characters by seeing them on paper/on a screen! (like when i imagine my character concepts, there's always some things i don't think about until i draw/colour them, like the colour of their eyes!)

ALSO ALSO ask yourself things like

do they have any physical features connected to their past? does your character embrace them or try to hide them?

does your character have any insecurities?

how does your character feel about (insert activity here)

how does your character tend to process difficult or strong emotions?

if your character has siblings, what is their relationship to them like?

creating character bios can also really really help! general details that I like to include are full name, age, where they're from, nicknames, if any, (my personal favourite part) birthday, any details on any powers they have if any, personality types, (optional but can also help to see how they think a bit better, what their core fears are etc) gender, sexuality, pronouns, any random trivia/facts, and notable friends and family!

also, diversifying characters can help a lot with variety and i really recommend it. having characters with different abilities, disabilities, sexualities, gender identities, gender expressions, ethnicities, etc is all so interesting to develop for a character, and i've learned a lot from doing it! i also like to throw little aspects of myself into my characters! for example, one of my main ocs experiences gender the same as me is many ways! we have similar dysphoria triggers and our gender presentation is almost the same! my protagonist is a lot like me personality wise, and one of my other characters has the same family dynamic problems that i face (not enough motivation to be as helpful as one feels they should be in a family environment etc) i actively encourage projecting onto characters. very therapeutic. also!!! characters are more complex than they seem at first glance. if you think about how you see the world and your experiences, there's probably lots of layers and complexities to that! characters are similar! that's why i personally base my protag off of me a bit, because it means that i already have a solid understanding of her!

ok i've really been rambling but i hope this helps! creating characters is a lengthy process (i have over 100 and have fully visually developed like 4) but it's so worth it in my opinion <3333

[painted-crow]

Submission Time #14

Submission about secondary

Hi, Paint! I was wondering if you ever had time, could you please help and give your thoughts on my secondary?

I guess my quiz results really depend on my mood, on a bad mood I can get a bird or snake, on good mood – a badger secondary. I rarely get a lion secondary, and I’m strangely calm about it, it would really be funny if I’d be a double burned lion but evidence shows that’s probably not the case. Also, I’m sorry for all the mistakes I will be making and the ones I didn’t notice, and this is so long, I’m sorry. I will shamefully copy the other submission style, so if it’s wrong pls just ignore me.

Not a problem! I'm the one who suggested that people use it :)

When you succeed, how influential in that success were the people around you? – I don’t know for sure, and I might be ungrateful here, but I think I’m still the one making the calls and thinking about stuff. Sure, I ask for help and opinion, support, but I’m still the one who has to do the thing. But it’s true I should probably pay more respect and gratitude to the ones who are there for me.

This suggests you aren't a Courtier Badger by nature. Doesn't yet rule out Bookkeeper style Badger, though.

Do people consider you charismatic? / Do people consider you trustworthy? – Eh, maybe. I love that there is a possibility to choose such an answer. Charisma for me is a tool, a mask, while for being trustworthy, some people do, some would like that I’d be more of it, I think people’s opinions on what that is can really differ. I’ve always read that people can’t trust a Gemini, that they have long and loose tongues, one day I decided that will never be me, no matter what others say.

Basically everything I know about astrology is either Homestuck or LavenderTowne's "drawing the signs as cute characters" videos on YouTube 😆 but as a Cancer who does not fit most of the Cancer description, rest assured I will not judge you for this :p

Describing charisma as a "tool" suggests it might be part of a Snake model or a skill you've picked up through Bird.

Do people consider you flexible? – No. Things have to be the way I want them to be. Stupid, problematic, not realistic, I know.

Haha, maybe Bird xD or maybe Bookkeeper Badger. This is a Built secondary answer.

Do you like going into situations with a plan? – Here‘s the thing about my plans – they are small, not really fleshed out. I do like to be prepared, but I do not seek out to be, because usually no matter how much I prepare I feel that it still is heavily not enough so it’s almost the same as just diving in and doing whatever.

Rapid fire Bird with Snake model? Or perhaps the other way around. It sounds from your last answer like this isn't the kind of situation you feel most comfortable in.

Not all Birds like to plan. I for one am a "hoard all the skills and resources" style Bird, and don't tend to plan very much for individual situations, especially ones that change quickly. If I were to prepare for something like that, it would be gathering knowledge about the situation in advance, rather than deciding how to respond based on probably-inaccurate expectations.

Still, this makes it sound a bit like you don't trust Bird, or at least not the planning form of Bird.

When you spot a metaphorical obstacle in your path, what do you do? – This one is the one that always makes me think Am I a snake secondary? If there’s a problem that maybe could arise, why would you not find another way around? Face it? Understand it? Pfffff…. It’s so much stress and trouble, just go around it if you can. If not, well, yeah, I’d just face it head on I guess.

How do you feel about shortcuts? – Well, if it means landscapes shortcuts – love them. In life and situations – no. It feels unstable, unsafe. If there is a way you need to do things, I will do it the right way. I might cut ways in small and not that important ways, but no more.

See, these two questions have me really considering Bookkeeper Badger for you, and I'm starting to understand why you're confusing the quiz so much.

I think the quiz considers these to be kind of opposite answers--just getting around a problem rather than solving it might be considered a shortcut. This is the kind of issue you get with abstract questions, but the problem is that concrete questions are rarely ambiguous enough to serve the right purpose. This is also why I suggest sending me quiz questions--because you're allowed to elaborate, and I interpret your answers differently from the computer. :)

Do you like to gather all possible information before making a decision? – Yeah, I do gather information, research, but at a certain point you just have to dive in, as another person said.

You might have a Bird model? Or you might even be burned Bird, because you don't not use Bird but you don't seem to trust it much or see it as worth relying on.

Is knowing things or knowing people more useful when solving problems? – I really don’t know how to answer this one. Intuitively, without thinking, I’d say things, but there are so much BUTs. Maybe it’s because I always had problems in social situations, that I’m very reserved, cold and shy so I don’t build relationships that could be called like that? Obviously it’s more useful to have someone help you and teach you how to do stuff, like legal documents, mechanics, computer engineering or other stuff that is hard to understand and boring to me or things that I don’t have resources to do. When I go to people asking for help, I ask because I know they can help, I don’t just go to my community, to my people asking IF anyone could help. I don’t know, this question for me is really painful. A simple answer would be people. Like if I’d think about building a house or a van to live in, it would be more useful to know someone who knows how to do these things then knowing how to do it myself. I’d miss so much details by myself. But then why I still want to press Things?

Huh, that's interesting. Especially interesting that you describe this as painful--like, it really matters to you.

You might be a burned Bird with a Badger model that's almost totally Bookkeeper style--which, if that Badger is a model, it would make perfect sense why it relies so heavily on one aspect of that secondary.

You don't seem very Snakey to me so far. The "get around the obstacle" thing is the quiz's Snake answer, and charisma (even as a tool) isn't Snake exclusive either.

When your plan fails, what do you do? – This question always makes me smile, because my answer is 1. I don’t plan, BUT if I did have a plan that failed, if it was that important; 2. I panic; 3. Then, I calm down and improvise like my life depends on it.

Huh. I don't know if this points to anything in particular...

Do you collect things? – No? I collect books that I actually liked, even if I will never read them again, I want to have them around. I have a couple of diplomas, but it’s just because I couldn’t decide or couldn’t see myself in that career. I maybe collect plants. Other than maybe these things, I don’t really feel like I collect anything.

And here again the bird secondary shows up. I really don’t see it with my inability to plan and prepare for things. I feel unprepared for everything and too bored and not intrigued enough to prepare.

Oddly enough, this really makes me wonder if you're a Bird, specifically burned. This isn't just a neutral "yeah I don't really use it," it sounds actually sad and negative: you don't feel able to use it, you feel bored and unprepared. It sounds like you've tried, like you wish you could use it... but it's just not there for you.

Do you study or plan excessively for things that aren’t useful?... – Plan – no. Study – yes. I’m one of those people who has started a new hobby in the pandemic, which involves studying I guess. And it absolutely has nothing to do with being useful, I just love it, so I guess yes. To me it has a purpose, I guess.

You do seem to study a lot. You read books, which not everyone does. You have multiple diplomas. But they're a background element in your life, you were saying.

Do you think of relationships as something you invest in?... – Yes. I think we all invest in relationships, and in the smallest we at least expect that person to be with us, to support us if we had a hard day or a hard time. I do not invest in relationships with people because they can do stuff for me, do that or let me in there or here, or level me up in my career. That would be wrong, it’s not how you supposed to do it. But I’d still say that I think about this, about investing time and effort.

Badgers don't seem to like the idea of networking as a means of getting stuff, on the whole, even though that's how they get described because that's what people might see from the outside. (It's more like a Snake or sometimes a Bird to be okay with that description of their methods.)

I still think you have a lot of Bookkeeper to your secondary. I'm not sure if it's a strong model, or if your Bird is the model and it's just really burned anyway.

Do you act different in different groups? Does it bother you, if you do? – Yes, I think I probably do. It bothers me that I am thrown into a situation like that with people like that more than the fact that I act different. So it does bother me, but not in the way that the quiz authors intended that it should mean.

So, you only do this with certain groups where you don't feel safe. Again, I'm not getting a whole lot of Snake here?

So long as you know who you are, do you care what other people think? – Yes, absolutely. First, I don’t know who I am, sometimes, in certain situations, I can look inside myself and feel empty. It means I’m more ready to react to a situation than to show who I am, I guess. Secondly, what other people think about you can affect you, emotionally, or worst, actually in your physical life.

Okay. I think I might be getting this, finally.

Your secondary seems to be burned. It may be one of those cases where it's just burned, and you haven't recovered it or started up a strong model--this is part of the official SHC descriptions, that you can just burn your secondary and not have strong inclinations about it any more, you just do whatever works but none of it is very satisfying.

You get examples of this with characters pretty frequently, but with people it seems less common--you see a lot of models instead. I actually forgot that this was part of the SHC system until just now, but you can find a kind of not-super-comfortable stability in just... not having a secondary. This might be why you're getting hints of other secondaries, but it's hard to pin down anything strong enough for you to feel like you can claim it as yours.

I'd hazard that your secondary might have been Bird or Bookkeeper Badger before, and you have hints of both of those now. I lean towards Bird being your actual secondary and just extremely burned, and Bookkeeper being a bit of a model or performance you're kind of using but feel conflicted about.

In a pinch, you'll improvise or whatever, just anything that works, but it's not something you're very comfortable with. That's not the same thing as Snake, but I think it's why you're getting Snake results from the quiz.

Perhaps the reason you can't figure out your secondary, in short, is that it isn't there.

Thank you, and yes, please ignore me if it's annoying. Have a good time and be safe! 

Oof, I'm sorry that this isn't a cheerier result to hand you ^^; hugs! Hope you can find something that works for you soon.

[memecucker]

discoursedrome

replied to your post

“the reason anime characters have disproportionately large eyes is the...”

there's something to this but it seems like it doesn't account for the stylistic variation in eye size within different cartoon styles and often within a single series, which is not just arbitrary but signifies something!

Well, this is an interesting topic, it depends on the work in question as to what is being signified. Differing eyeshapes within the same series can also be used not just for emoting but also accompany the narrative roles various characters express. And not just in obvious ways like “babies have cute eyes” either but they can denote for example what role a given character plays in comedic dynamics.  As an example lets focus our attention to The Flintstones and specifically the facial designs of the four main adult characters.  

So something thats present in basically all designs of The Flintstones that keep to the original style is that Fred’s eyes are always drawn in what can be considered a classic cartoons style having large pupils surrounded by the sclera (white of the eye) while Wilma has the “old newspaper strip” style of Peanuts or Popeye where she simply has plain black ovals or circles. Barney and Betty are similar but in reverse, with Barny having just a black circle (though more round than Wilma since he has a rounder design) and Betty having pupils inlaid within a sclera (though there’s some inconsistency with her as she sometimes has an ‘implied’ flesh-colored sclera). There are moments of inconsistency with Barney sometimes having a flesh-colored pupil and Betty sometimes having flesh-colored sclera but generally speaking thats how their eyes work if animators were staying on-model. 

Now whats interesting about this is if you look at Flintstones episodes the members of the main adult cast will most frequently be interacting with the other members who have different eye shapes. So Fred and Wilma are married of course as are Barney and Betty and also Fred and Barnie are best friends as are Wilma and Betty. This means that there is a feeling of visual variety when the plot splits characters off into pairs whatever they may be. It also helps make it clear that none of them are blood relatives which could be a source of confusion especially in the case of Fred and Barney who really would sorta look like brothers if they had similar eyes since they share many similarities in the rest of their designs especially the perpetual five-oclock-shadow (not something thats really a sign of genetic relation but aesthetic logic doesnt have to mirror the real world).

In addition to that, Fred has the largest eyes of all the characters. This makes sense because he is the overall main character of the show and him having the largest eyes means he will be the first face the audience will naturally focus on in a scene. Its also relevant for Fred’s comic role because he tends to be the active agent in the comedy either peforming actions which frustrate Wilma or which are commented on by Barney and when you have a comedic reversal where Fred ends a scene feeling very different from when he started

As an example we can look at this particular clip from the original series

 So in what ends up being a very common premise for episodes or sequences in the series, an upset Fred wishes to end his friendship with Barney. Fred has a thick furrowed brows meeting downward facing eyes showing clear aggression. Barney (who as I said earlier is being drawn off model in that his eyes are not colored in during this scene) simply stares at Fred, his eyes being just ovals but with his eyebrows being raised in a way to show that he is meeting Fred’s anger in a light-hearted way. You’ll notice that Barney has much thinner eyebrows located much further away from his eyes than Fred, this is because since he doesnt actually have pupils, the way his eyes express emotion is by showing their relationship to other parts of his face specifically eyebrows. Having thin eyebrows allows for more flexibility for their placement, in thise case they even touch his hairline.

Fred accuses Barney of mooching or stealing his stuff including his favorite drink Cactus Coolah (funfact the actual soda Cactus Cooler was created to ride off the popularity of the Flintstones and its fictional soda brand). His eyes are basically in the same position as they were in the previous still with the shift from plain aggression to a smug aggression (setting up the comedic reversal) being conveyed by the rest of his face. 

Barney tries to warn Fred the bottle he’s holding isnt Cactus Coolah. Unlike Fred Barney is expressing a strong shift in emotion from bemusedly teasing Fred to being actively concerned for him. Barney’s actual eyes havent moved at all other than being proportionately larger than earlier but whats being used to convey Barney’s emotions in this still are his eyebrows. They go high-up and far from his eyes and curved to being much closer to his eyes and straight. 

Fred realizes he just drank car polish. His eyes are not incredibly different, conveying both stress and sickness. Not only does he have lines surrounding his eye conveying stress and anxiety but they even go inside his eyes nearly touching his pupil. His eyelids have descended partially.  His eyebrows also show the change of his emotional state no longer being a furrowed unibrow though their importance is secondary to the visual changes pertaining his actual eyes.

After throwing the heavy stone bottle into the air and bonking his own head combined with the implied effects of drinking car polish, Fred’s eyes become asymmetric showing disharmony and showing he is about to pass out. Interestingly he suddenly now has (white colored) irises, the purpose of this being to show widened dilating pupils that relate to a state of excitedness or stress while at the same time not contradicting that he is on the verge of losing cosciousness which is conveyed by his eyelids being pulled down asymmetrically. 

Throughout that short scene Fred having the largest most expressive (for a Hanna-Barbara TV production anyway) eyes of the cast are used to show how he is both the active agent in the story driving the narrative forward as his emotion carry him but he is also the object of things being done to him and with his eyes showing his emotional state in those cases. Barney, being an observer of Fred’s antics emotes not so much with his eyes but the raising and lowering of his eyebrows. Essentially, Fred’s narrative role in the series requires him to be drawn with a much wider emotional range when compared to Barney. This is on top of the other role the eyes of the characters play in this particular show being another way to physically distinguish between the four main adult members of the cast.

[serendipitous-magic]

what's your writing process like? do you plot things out beforehand? or do you sort of write it as it comes? a mix of both?

Depends on what I'm writing!

In general I'm a planner. I can't write from a blank page, unless I'm just like... really really captivated by whatever I'm writing, which was what happened with the first chapters of both The Art of Living Your (Second) Life and The Partnership Plan.

a) In general, if it's a fanfiction I'm writing, I tend to build the plan as I write - meaning, oftentimes I'll be inspired to write the first chapter, and I'll write that with little idea what the rest of it will be. Or, even if I have an idea what the rest will be, it's more of a vague skeleton than a full plan. And then, as I continue to write, I think more about where the story is going and I continuously add to and refine my plan kind of alongside the actual writing. In this way, the plan grows at the same time that the actual chapters do - but because the chapters take significantly longer to write than planning does, the plan outpaces the "real" writing and I usually know the basic story arc from fairly early on. Then it's just a matter of fleshing it out, adding detail, writing down scenes I thought of, etc. And then when I get to that point in the actual writing, I have a framework in place already.

-_-_-

b) Sometimes for fanfic, I have a more complete plan upfront - although I use "complete" here to mean "from beginning to end," not "completely detailed." So, more like a full skeleton than a full body, if that makes sense. I did that with Roll for Strength. What usually happens is that my plan will look something like...

...

Chapter One

-Will suspects Mike has a girlfriend and is kind of put out about it but thinks he's over Mike so he tells himself he doesn't care

-Will walks in on Mike and his BF (name??) and has a crisis (they don't see Will, so Will knows about Mike but Mike doesn't know that Will knows)

-Will might get off to that later, guiltily? (Or move to chapter two)

Chapter Two

-Do Mike's POV to tell about how he ended up dating a guy, how he got very disillusioned with the world after canon events and got into a "fuck it, the rules don't matter and I hate them anyway" mentality, which eventually snowballed into him kind of realizing and accepting his sexuality earlier than usual fanon

-Also introduce BF (name??) in a scene

-Set time and place - season should set the mood if not already mentioned in Ch 1

-Maybe also do BF's POV briefly to introduce him?? Or leave that for later

...

Etc.

And that's the original skeleton plan. And then it gets expanded upon more and more and more as I continue to think about the story, sometimes even with full pages' worth of unbroken text blocks as I get inspired and start basically thought-vomiting an entire scene. So by the time I get around to actually writing it, it might look like the above, or it might be a few steps shy of an actual draft already, depending on how much I've thought about / worked on that part.

See #5 in this writing advice post to see what I mean about a "thought vomit" draft.

-_-_-

c) Here's the thing - the above was for fanfic, or for short stories, or stories that I'm just kind of having fun with.

For original stuff, I adhere much more tightly to the "rules," because the guidelines for original work (that you might try to publish in the actual publishing market) are much stricter - and for good reason! Fanfiction is a sandbox, and we're all invested in the characters and worlds and settings already. We're all reading and writing fanfic because we already love these characters and this world, and we just want to play in it.

It's a different situation with original novels that you hope to publish. The plot, pacing, tension, and story beats have to be much, much tighter and more polished. Because people reading original work have no prior reason to be invested in it or care what happens - that's work that you have to do. For fanfic, that work was done for you by the original thing. Not to mention, the publishing world is so absolutely choked with competition, and the emphasis lies so heavily on sales, that if your book isn't fucking top-tier compelling, no publisher or agent will take a second look at it. Which is kind of unfortunate, because there's value in slower, more relaxed, more reflective storytelling, too - it's just not what capitalism has decided to value, which is sad.

But anyway.

When writing an original thing, I basically need a full plan - beginning to end, covering all plot points. Not necessarily all the details, just all the plot points - I need a skeleton and I need connective tissue. The rest comes later. But to start, I need to know what happens, why, and how the characters get from event to event. I need to know the physical story events, the emotional beats, and how those things logically flow throughout the story.

Some people can write without this and it still turns into a compelling story, tight narrative, etc. I envy these people. I have all respect for these people. I cannot do this. If I write original work with no plan, and especially without at least like 50-75% of a plan, I end up with something slow, meandering, and kind of limp. No bueno.

So, I usually use a beat sheet.

What's a beat sheet?

It's a 15-beat plotting structure used by screenwriters. And, yeah, technically it's for movies / screenplays. But storytelling is storytelling. And it's highly flexible. (And my favorite professor ever taught it to me in college so you can pry it out of my cold dead hands.)

Google it. It's what I use to make sure my (original work) plots are tight, have momentum, have a satisfying character arc, etc.

Okay, okay, I'll paste the basic structure below just so you can see wtf I'm talking about:

-_-_-

-Act I:

1) The First Frame

-What is the first thing we see? This should be a snapshot of the main character’s problem, before the story begins

-Ex: the Star Destroyer in A New Hope

2) The World Around Us

-What is the main character’s world like at the beginning of the story?

-What is missing in the main character’s life?

3) State the Theme (sneak this into The World Around Us)

-What is the story secretly about? This should happen during The World Around Us

4) Inciting Incident (smol tentpole)

-What happens to put the hero on the road? This is where the hero’s life changes forever.

5) The Hero Questions

-1st introspective moment

-Can the hero really do this? Should the hero chicken out?

-Oftentimes the hero fails at something

-Ex: Luke gets his ass beat by the raiders

-Act II:

6) Crossing the Threshold / The Emotional Hurdle (big tentpole)

-The main character makes a choice

-Beginning of Act II

7) The B Story / The Love Story

-Introduced here

-Often but not always a love story

8) Promise of the Premise

-Fun and games in the world you promised

-Horror movie? Creeps here!

-Sci fi? Space battles!

-Animation? Shenanigans!

9) Midpoint (big tentpole)

-The hero finds out that what they want is not what they need

-Luke rescues the princess - turns out that’s not really what the story was about

10) Bad Guys Close In / Throwing Rocks

-Events conspire to tear the hero’s goal to shreds

-Wesley is mostly dead, Inego is drunk, Fezzick is part of the brute squad

-This is the other side of the fun and games coin where things are no longer fun

11) All is Lost

-Something super bad happens, and that goal is impossible

-If someone important is gonna die, it’s probably now

12) The Pit of Despair (smol tentpole)

-The hero mourns the death (if someone died) and wallows in his/her lowest point

13) Inspiration

-A fresh idea

-Act III:

14) Come and Get Some / Final Confrontation (big tentpole)

-The final confrontation - the final showdown

-A and B stories wrapping up at the same time

-The theme makes sense and the battle is engaged

15) Final Frame

-Opposite of the first frame

-The hero is changed

-_-_-

It's what I use. But hey, you don't have to. What works for me might not work for you.

I'll finish this off by pasting in a section of actual real-ass planning I have open in a document for one of my novels at this moment (it's giving me the evil eye, I swear) so you can see what I kind of mean by "thought vomiting." Also note that in my actual document, the bullet points are indented incrementally to be kind of "nestled" underneath the relevant points, if that makes sense, and that it's a whole eye-watering mess of different colors. But for Tumblr, it's this:

-_-_-

-You have to be rescued by the rest of the team, because you fell down that hole - and you are, eventually, after screaming yourself hoarse some more (plus it’s been like an hour or more now, so they have since noticed that you were missing)

-I could gloss over this, like end the chapter when you run away, and open the next one with “It takes another half hour of screaming your throat nearly bloody before the team finds you,” or something

-They berate you for chasing after ghosts - you say you didn’t find anyone down there, because you know for damn sure nobody’s gonna believe what you think you saw, and you don’t even think you believe it

-This leads to a trip to the local doctor (a clinic, probs, akin to UrgentCare), which you’re not happy with because that’s more people taking notice of you

-However, you’re also going through the change in mindset here - see below

-Note: I as the writer don’t have to worry about the paperwork or whatever that you’d normally have to fill out, getting hurt on the job, because you weren’t officially hired - however, it would be a good “humanity is okay” moment if the guy who hired you came in and helped you with the medical expenses because he felt bad - he’d also probably be a little nervous about you suing or something, but you assure him that you have zero interest in that

-I could include a funny line where the guy says he’ll pay for your doctor bill and you try to say no (being indebted to someone is bad news for you) but he insists, because he says he feels responsible, and you just kind of stare at him and then blurt, “Do you need me to kill anyone for you?” (Something you probably regret as soon as you say it, not because you expect him to accept but because you abruptly remember what happened two days ago.) (Would it be too much to also add like “You want me to murder anyone for you? You want a blowjob? I will do anything,” and he gets flustered and bats it off like “Nah, nah, nah, chill out. You’re crazy, man.” And insists that you don’t need to pay him back)

-Here’s a decision I have to make - does the guy pay for your doctor bills as well as paying for your work today (leaving you enough money to potentially split town, but you decide not to), or do you have to pay the $2,500+ in doctor bills with no insurance for the injury, which raises the stakes by depleting all your money?

-I think I like Option A best, because it gives Sam more agency as a character if they decide to stay despite having the option to leave, versus them just being stuck completely - plus I don’t know how else I’d be able to explain away you having money for the hotel

-The guy who hired you pays you for the work day here - and maybe, just maybe, that gives you barely enough to buy that used car (although, why would it? It couldn’t have been more than like $200 for 8 hours of work, maybe $300 if he was really really desperate - if it was a really cheap used car, that might give you barely enough to buy the car but literally nothing left over)

-Point being, maybe you have enough money to bolt now, if you chose to - and you have to make the choice not to

-The car you found might be a $1,500 Honda Civic (or Jeep or whatever) with a dead battery, and the guy selling it says it should run fine with a new battery, which you Google (apparently it would be somewhere in the range of $100-$200) - maybe you think of how nice the mechanic was for you and wonder if you could cut a bit of a deal with him, if you get this car - and if the guy pays for your trip to the doctor and pays you for the temp work, this could just tip you into the margin of being able to afford the car, if you haggle with the seller

-_-_-

Or another example, with more actual sentences:

-_-_-

-As you approach the trailer you start to register a smell that turns your stomach - something like a porta potty and something like the sharp tang of rusting metal. It makes you pause - maybe there really is someone in there, using the place to live whether there’s a sewage hookup or not - it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing you’ve heard of. But after standing for a bit, silent and listening, and then hiding behind a large tree to chuck a rock at the vehicle to no response, you continue forward. You’ll just have to be cautious. Your spirits lift when you see the door. It’s completely grown over. (Leafy vines lace over it, tangling in the handle, yellowing and unbroken. If someone is living in there, they’ve been using the window to come and go, and that doesn’t seem all too likely. Bolstered by a new swell of confidence, and picturing the unlikely riches you might find stashed away in a cabinet or a glove compartment, you cross the last few feet towards the shape.

-You find the body and recognize it as one of the two obnoxious vlogging dudes from the motel

-I’m kind of imagining the moment of discovery like the wardrobe moment in Narnia where, during your nice forest trek, there’s been some pleasant acoustic music playing (like All the Pretty Girls by Kaleo maybe) and then it just stops abruptly in the middle of a phrase, maybe echoing slightly, when you see the body, and all at once everything is sickly silent.

-Oh dude, maybe you continue thinking it’s a duffel bag (possibly feeling pretty upbeat, though cautious until you’re literally about to step over it, and then you happen to glance down and get a sickening, chest-slamming shock when an empty human face is staring up at you

-Note: there should be mushrooms growing in, on and around the RV, because mushrooms are Creepy

-You go to investigate the RV

-Maybe you recognized the body as one of the vloggers and you’re trying to see if his friend is around - or maybe, in a kind of sick daze, you short circuit and find yourself doing the only thing you can think to do: continuing along your trajectory, stumbling towards the RV and tearing the rusted-out door free from the lattice of brittle vines that held it in place (this is what alerts The Dude that someone has been here), like if you just get to your original goal that’ll fix everything - somehow, if you just keep moving forward on the track you set out on, that thing won’t be real anymore - at the very least you have to get inside, to put a door between you and the body, like you’re pulling the blankets over your head to shield yourself from the boogeyman. Just as long as you’re not out there with, with...

-_-_-

Anywho, I'll stop.

I apologize again for... (scrolls up for a million miles) all of that, but you asked me about my passion and now you pay the price, lmao.

[kumeko]

A/N: For the FashionXV zine! I wanted to have a little fun with Iris and fashion tips for this one. Even at the end of the world, you still need to be stylish. It’s a once in a lifetime event, after all.

Summary: It’s time for Iris’s special, step-by-step guide on how to slay demons and look fabulous while doing so. As a warning, this guide is not Glaive or brother approved, but when have we ever needed permission?

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…

…

…

It’s time for Iris’s special, step-by-step guide on how to slay demons and look fabulous while doing so. As a warning, this guide is notGlaive or brother approved, but when have we ever needed permission? No, we’re more than capable of fighting demons on our own. We have to be, honestly.

Now, as a warning, you will need a few things before we get started. The most important thing is access to weapons and combat clothing. I, fortunately, have my brother and his terrible secured cache. It is ridiculous how many swords he fits in there, I honestly think the royal armoury has less gear than he does. Sadly, some of you might not be so lucky as to have an weapons junkie for a brother. If that’s the case, don’t worry about it! You can make do with items in your house, the store, or just contact me and I’ll secretly drop off a few choice items for you.

I want to clear up one thing before we start: I’m not writing this article because Gladdy hates my training with Cors. The world might be ending, but that doesn’t stop him from being himself. I’m not that petty. No, my goal is bigger than that. This is about me giving back to everyone. Maybe it’ll even save a few lives, who knows. Anyways, ready?

Step 1: A flimsy shield is worse than no shield at all

This is perhaps the most important step, even more so than the weapons. What’s going to stand in the way of an eight-inch claw and your flesh? What’s going to look good in blood or in rain? Your outfit. You can’t get much done if you’re bleeding out in a ditch.

It’s important to use strong combat clothing. It doesn’t even have to fit you properly, you can always adjust it in the next step. You want something that is tough enough to protect you from damage, but flexible enough that you can move effortlessly. If the material’s too tough, you’ll dodge slowly, making you an easy target. If it’s too thin, then you’re not really protected from anything.

It might be hard to find this material in regular stores. It’s not really something that people use on a daily basis. In that case, just stop at your nearest Glaive depot and pick (or steal) one there. Or, if you’re like me, take it from your relative. Just make sure to be stealthy!

As a bonus tip, take extras! You never know when your clothes might get utterly destroyed by some Flan’s acid or if you’re terrible at sewing (like I am) and need several tries to get it right. Spares are always useful.

Step 2: Find the you in your clothes

Now, you can skip this step if your clothes already a) fit you and b) look great. But if either of those things are missing, this part is essential. Now, sewing is hard enough as is with normal clothes, and with this type of fabric, it’s almost impossible for a newbie. But don’t fear! Just find a friend who’s good with machines, or maybe call up one of your aunts. If you still have any. There’s always an old lady somewhere with a sewing machine.

Don’t be afraid to cut up your clothes to match your vision. There’s always more where that came from (there’s a reason my brother seems to only have one outfit: that’s all I’ve left him). Keep enough fabric to protect yourself but adjust to rest. After all, who says you can’t look great while slaying a daemon?

Personally, I like leather jackets and featherless gloves. It makes me feel really fearless and strong.

Step 3: Every rose has its thorns

Now, while I said clothes was the most important aspect, that doesn’t mean you should neglect choosing your weapon. After all, while your clothes keep you alive, your weapon is what’ll slay the daemon in the first place. And that’s what we’re all here for, to become daemon slayers.

I would say pick a weapon that matched your abilities and your clothes, but every weapon is black and almost everything my brother owns is black, so they balance out neatly. Make sure your outfit has plenty of pouches for small knives, smoke bombs, and other small weapons. They can mean the difference between life and death.

Step 4: Grand Theft Auto

Well, I call it Grand Theft Auto because for this step, you have to steal a fast car. The run-of-the-mill vehicle you take to the grocery store won’t cut it here. Daemons are fast, and you need to outrun them if you can’t beat them. You need a car that can outrun the wind itself.

I, of course, steal my brother’s car when he’s not looking. As the Crownsguard, he has access to some really nice things. Which mean I have access to them too. It doesn’t hurt to know a mechanic who’s willing to give me his spare keys.

Step 5: Write a will

I know, I know. It sounds dramatic. It kinda is. But you could get hurt fighting daemons and a will is very useful. People know how to divide whatever’s left of your stuff, you can leave goodbye notes, all of those fun but sad reasons.

Step 6: Stare longingly at a loved one’s photo

In my case, it’s a photo of Prince Noctis. King Noctis? He didn’t really have a coronation ceremony, so who knows what his title is. Now, you all know me and my big crush on him, but I promise you that is not the reason I stare longingly at his photo before I go. If I could, I would stare at a photo of my dad. Not my brother, because he gives me an earful every time I come back and I don’t want to hunt while grumpy.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have any pics of my dad anymore. I’d have to dig through rubble in a daemon-infested city to find them, and while I love my dad, that is probably not the best way to show my feelings. Prince Noctis isn’t around either now, but I do have photos from his road trip, and they make a good secondary option.

Anyways, pick your favourite photo, and stare at it longingly. This might be the last time you can see their face and you want to make your peace with it.

Step 7: Slay Daemons

This part is pretty self-explanatory. Don’t try to make your attacks look nice, just kill the monster and be done with it. If you can, set up a camera before hand to take some photos. Or get your brother’s best friend to tag along, under an oath that he will not tell your brother a thing about it.

Step 8: Gloat

Now that you made it home in one piece and with some photographic evidence, it’s time to show-off. You killed a daemon and the world (your brother especially) deserves to know about it. The best way, obviously, is to write an eight-step how-to article and rub it in his face. Now he’ll know better than to ever question you again.

[lumilasi]

Redesigned his timeskip look a bit as I didn’t like the original hair, and added an image of his new back tattoo. (The old one was kind of a mess and ugly bleh)

The incidents talked about here are both stuff brought up in the fic he first appeared in. (Reanimate) 

Rest of the bio below:

Age: 23

Sexuality: Biromantic demisexual

RYUU’S QUIRK EXPLAINED

Quirk name: Crystallization

BASICS

Ryuu’s Crystallization power allows him to turn the things he touches into ice-like crystalline substance, that evaporates overtime like dry ice. It never melts into liquid. In truth, his quirk isn’t a typical “freezing” quirk, given he doesn’t actually ‘freeze’ anything even if it looks like it. He turns things themselves into this supposed “ice.” Meaning he changes the very molecular structure of the object he’s touching from whatever it is into his “ice” crystals. His ice by default is much denser and stronger than normal ice, although he can keep some of the original properties of whatever he crystallizes if he wishes so, so it can even be made stretchy and flexible.

 A side effect caused by his parental heritage creating his current quirk has caused his body to be denser in a sense, making him much faster and stronger than average fit person or an average pro hero.

QUIRK WEAKNESSES

The power tends to have backlash towards him, that usually manifests in his own skin starting to turn icy and potentially leave him with frostbites; it also can cause his mind to slow down and hibernate in a way, making him sluggish and sleepy, both usually happen due to overuse of his power. 

He’s almost constantly risking going into overdrive because of how much energy his body is capable of storing. In fact, that build up of energy can then burst out without his control and crystallize anything around him without his consent, even his companions if they don’t manage to block it. (In a sense, he has the opposite problem of Kain; Kain has too little energy to use, Ryuu has too much)

Ryuu’s quirk has a few different types of “crystalization” he uses: Object I Vapor/particle I Lethal

OBJECT CRYSTALLIZATION

Basically turns anything he touches into this ice-like substance, speed depends on the size of the object. He can choose if he just wants to turn the thing into pure, rigid and cold crystal, or if he’ll let it keep some of the original properties like the flexibility of canvas or strength of steel, or even the original temperature of the object. Bigger targets take longer to crystallize naturally.

If he doesn’t manage to crystallize the object all the way through, it’ll return back to its original state eventually, completely unharmed. 

VAPOR/PARTICLE CRYSTALLIZATION

Allows him to crystallize any vapors/dust/particles in the air basically and turn them into his preferred ice-spear weapons. He can even create large domes or walls fairly quickly in ideal conditions, such as high humidity, snowfalls, pollution in cities, even just dust blowing in deserts to name a few.

LETHAL CRYSTALLIZATION

Infection: Basically he can kill you fairly quickly and painfully by turning your body into crystals. This happens by “infecting” his target with crystallization by poking them with his icicles or any sharp object he has crystallized, making the effect spread across their body fairly quickly. He’s naturally immune to this aspect of his own quirk, so he can’t turn himself into a crystal like this.

If the spread is stopped on time, the crystal particles eventually evaporate and leave the target unharmed. This is usually done by blocking the blood flow to the injected area, or in severe cases cutting off the limb. Ryuu can also decide consciously when infecting people if he wants it to be lethal or not.

PERSONALITY SUMMARY

Ryuu is blunt, straightforward young man with a temper, who doesn’t always think before he acts/says something. He’s not the smartest pea in the pod, more used to relying on his instincts and gut feeling than brains. 

As a villain, he naturally has a violent streak to his personality, and enjoys torturing people he has personal beef with in very brutal manner. He’s not as unreasonable of a maniac as the media and law-enforcement likes to portray him as however; Ryuu generally doesn’t attack people for no reason. (The reasons can be petty, but usually the level of violence inflicted does correlate to how badly you pissed him off; stealing shit from him isn’t gonna warrant a death sentence, hurting his peers will)

He’s a very loyal companion to anybody who’s earned his respect and trust, but not the type to blindly follow you. He’ll only give his trust to those who allow him to call them out if they do something he’s not comfortable with. He is able to sympathize with people to an extent, especially if they’ve had similar experiences in childhood, such as terrible parenting and bullying/being blamed for things you didn’t do/fear over your power you can’t help having. How far this sympathy extends does depend on if he likes you personally, or not. It’s generally not a “get away with any bullshit” card with him.

He’s not gonna care about your sob story if you go and harm an innocent animal, for example. 

BACKGROUND STORY

Ryuu’s original parents (Toushou) left him in foster care for Katagiri family, as they felt dealing with a child while also attending to the cause of Meta Liberation Army would become too difficult for them. Ryuu grew up pretty much knowing nothing of his parents, as his foster family did not bother telling him anything about them; Katagiris were convinced the parents would not come back anyway since they’d pretty much given the child away because he was “an obstacle” for their cause.

After Ryuu’s quirk manifested, it began to cause a lot of trouble as he couldn’t really control it so well, and the poorer rural area he lived in did not exactly have the equipment to deal with a situation where a child’s power is so volatile it can severely harm someone (turn people into ice statues, not freeze them with a coat of ice, but their flesh, bones, blood, all that itself turned to ice-like substance)

As a result, Ryuu was pretty much shunned by the community, and he was lonely for the most part as people were too afraid to play with him or even talk to him; he ended up getting bullied a lot because he was too scared to lash back at anyone in fear of hurting them.

Then a strange, ginger child suddenly showed up one day after he’d ran into the woods to prevent another burst of ice from escaping his body. (Ryuu had fits often where his power would just lash out and freeze everything around him instantly)

Ryuu made friends with the strange kid, a boy named Kain, who eventually helped him to master his power better. He also learns from his new friend that he’s being held in a secret facility, where his dad uses his quirk to “help” people as he puts it, though it’s pretty clear it’s something shadier.

Kain almost never shows his face to the villagers themselves, usually showing up only when Ryuu is alone somewhere, stating that if he shows himself, his dad will find out and make it impossible for Kain to get out and come see his friend.

As Ryuu grows, he starts slowly to get back at the people who bully him, thanks to Kain’s encouragement to not be afraid of his own power, as that’s what causes him to not be able to control it.

As a teen, Ryuu gets into fights and trouble a lot, often being yelled at or otherwise punished by the Katagiris. He doesn’t really care at this point, having long since stopped finding anything they say important. In turn, the family has started to slightly fear him for a whole new reasons.

Then, Kain suddenly stops appearing for weeks. It gets to the point Ryuu goes to seek out the place his friend said the base was, but finds nothing.

Meanwhile, some of the villagers had started to think that enough was enough, that Ryuu was becoming too dangerous for them to have around, and thus the village’s council had arranged a meeting to discuss what to do with the “disturbed foster-child.” Some of these villagers sneak after the boy secretly at night, deciding to take matters into their own hands before the town-council could actually make a decision.

They attempt to attack and kill him in the forest, but Ryuu lashes back, killing all of them instead. Now, sunken into bitter anger and dozen of chaotic emotions, he heads back to the village and destroys his foster-home, injuring the Katagiris severely, and he also attacks and kills most members of the village council, before running away.

During his run however, Kain reaches out to him, telling him to stay strong and keep going as he’d eventually come back, once he would find a way to get rid of his father. Ryuu decides to cling to this hope that maybe one day, his friend would return and prove he was real.

During his wait, Ryuu runs into a girl called Ezuko, who was somewhat falsely accused of murder (It was accidental) and she was never given a chance to explain her side of the story. Sympathizing with her due to his childhood of people making assumptions instead of hearing him out, he helps her out by bringing her to Giran, a man who generally helped out people like her who were down on their luck, including people who got thrown into the underworld without really meaning to do so. He hangs around her for a while, but eventually leaves figuring his constant presence could be bad for her, given how high his villain rank was becoming.

After reuniting with his childhood friend, and spending years travelling into alternate worlds with Kain in-between stopping by the small home of Kain’s childhood babysitter who’d allowed them to use her small village home as their sanctuary, he eventually ends up reuniting with Ezuko after asking Giran for a small favor, not knowing she still worked for him. This reunion was awkward at first as it takes him a moment to remember who the hell she was. Ultimately, he was glad to see she was okay, and they accept her into their weird secret family, with Ryuu eventually realizing that he perhaps was developing more feelings for her than just friendship.

(Wasabi and his mum Kei of course tease him about it, stating that he had a type, given Ezuko is another smart black-and-red wearing redhead in his life that he was fond of)

Few more extra details;

- Ryuu’s name translates roughly to “honorable/dutiful dragon of the lagoon,” and he has a dragon tattoo on his back. 

- He and Kain share the same blood type

- His original surname Toushou ,translates to Frostbite. He is using his original surname’s English translation as his villain name on purpose as a “fuck you” to his parents. Katagiri was the surname of the orphanage keepers, and him using their surname as a known villain is another “fuck you” towards them.

- Ryuu is pretty immune to seduction tactics because he tend to require a strong emotional connection first before being attracted to anyone. He will legit just stare dully at you if you try to flirt with him, and depending on the situation, might just skewer you with one of his spears, or “freeze” (crystallize technically) you to death because you’re being annoying.

- He’s not attracted to Kain/have a crush on him despite what some may think; their relationship is purely platonic and familial almost. This becomes even clearer once Ezuko drops back into his life, as he develops pretty clear feelings towards her. 

- Ryuu actually still has slight bit of morality left, and Kain tends to let him choose what to do in certain situations, especially if he notices Ryuu is not comfortable with what they’re doing

- he tends to come off as childish a lot due to his tendency to not focus on the here and now so much and basically doing his own thing constantly

- Kain has taught Ryuu bit of English and French, but while Ryuu is pretty fluent in former, he only remembers insults and curse-words from the latter.

- Ryuu has been characterized as an avid animal-lover by the law enforcement due to his tendency to be behind cases that involve punishing animal abusers. While he tends to be nicer to animals by default than humans, he is not as strict about it as this label combined with him being a criminal makes people think; he still eats meat for example. 

- In truth his tendency to aid animals comes from his habit of wanting to aid those who can’t help/protect themselves, thanks to how he didn’t really get much support and help as a child apart from Kain. This means he is likely to help out a kid in need, such as how he’s bonded with a boy named Wasabi Saname, becoming a bit of a big brother figure to him. 

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Bio sheet base (C) yourultraarchive

Oc (C) Me

[tossertozier]

you mentioned possibly doing a ben or mike writing guide.. would you.. be willing to post a mike one. i'm plotting a fic and im struggling to get my mans down?? also i think abt ur fics weekly bare minimum.

hi there!!! i did my best. i tried to not sound preachy or like a know it all bc y’all know i can barely write. i hope this is helpful in some way!! disclaimer of of course this is all just my opinion & there’s no wrong way to write, you’re the only person who can tell your story!!

[[MORE]]

i think the first really important decision you have to make as Person Writing Mike is his

family & background

-are both of his parents alive?

-if yes, what’s their relationship like?

-if no, who’s his primary caretaker? what’s their relationship like?

-if no, when did they die? did he cope well with it? what’s his relationship with their memory like?

these are really really where you gotta start to write mike imo. or any character! i think one thing stephen king is to be admired for is he doesn’t neglect the parent-child relationship as so many people who write youth do. your parents are the most important people in your life for a long time. i don’t think there’s a wrong or ooc way to answer the above questions tbh. canon has really left a wide open field for you to run amuck in.

(example: i’ve mentioned in the past that my & tfat mike being a small adult is no mistake and intentional. it’s a bit of a throwaway scene, but i mention in on pointe that mike’s parents are coming. it’s intentionally done there too. mike is goofier, more outgoing, more immature in general in that fic in the small bits he’s in & that’s all a response to his familial life. )

culture + friendships

after you answer those questions, important follow up questions are:

-are the losers his first set of friends?

-how much social exposure has he had?

-has he dated? who is he attracted to?

-who influences him? (celebrities, family, culturally)

-what are his cultural interests? what does he do in his free time? how would that impact how he interacts with the rest of the world?

again, no wrong way to answer these. i’ve seen a super broad spectrum of indirect answers to these questions. even thinking about where he might pick up patterns of speech can make him feel much more like a realized character. i’ve noticed some people dip fully into aave to an extent that doesn’t even seem logical in their character’s current situation & it can really seem like a caricature, but i think to write mike without any sense of aave at all is a little ?? too. just be cognizant of it is my only real advice here. it doesn’t so much matter as long as you don’t forget who mike is which next point

humor & personality

-what do you think he would find (shows, comedians, youtube videos) really funny?

-does he have something he quotes often? something he started saying ironically but never stopped?

man i know i’m all there’s no wrong way to write mike !! in this post but i will say real quick that i think mike is funny and i don’t really respect depictions of him where he’s not. i think this is where the movies really just fucked up. book mike drops some of the funniest lines of the book. and honest to god tip is to write out a scene as you feel the urge too, look away for five minutes, look back and give half of richie’s lines away. (or... dialogue.) this sounds like a joke but it was what i did when i first started writing & tfat

i’d always be like “n the funny part goes... to richie.” and thats a fandom inclination too. nooooo. avoid this trap. it doesn’t even make sense. have u ever been in a friend group where only one person... makes jokes? that’d be genuinely so weird. especially bc if you give the joke away to someone else, you can also build on it. amazing things start happening when u start thinking of the characters in flexible patterns. like for example, i almost always give absurdist humor to stan now. wholesome to ben.

mike’s humor is largely situational to me. solid comedic timing & he’s an observant person. sometimes i read back my own writing & have to change the pov bc richies making jokes about things he would never ever notice to make fun of. mike would. mike genuinely sees all. i think he’s just got one of the most analytical brain of the losers. & i think intelligence is subjective and people are smart in different ways but i think it’s foolish to write him as anything other than incredibly intelligent both academically and emotionally. he’s just a natural observer and pattern notice-er. which brings me to my next mike thing:

love & selflessness

i think the biggest part of mike being harder to flesh into a fully realized person is the fandom tendency to make him kind and nothing else. here’s mike. he’s nice. next. bc the book kind of points out his selflessness in his decisions and it makes itself one of his strongest character traits.

especially bc nice seems to trump him having any other emotions. ...no?

i believe in general, but ESPECIALLY in the case of mike, that kindness is a choice. it’s one i genuinely believe he’d make, over & over again. but a choice he makes. he gets annoyed with his friends being annoying like anyone else would. he gets hurt when he feels left out. he feels tired & anxious & hungry and all those other human things. sometimes he might not let it show outwardly, but there’s a difference between that and not giving him feelings at all.

people are selfish. it’s a defense mechanism. it’s to protect us. it’s not a bad thing. we think of how the world impacts ourselves first. we don’t always act upon those thoughts or voice them, but don’t forget to let mike have them. he doesn’t need to be happy for his friends all the time, or rooting for them or supportive. he should have his own things going on.

also. mike’s not a doormat. yes, he stays in derry. but those were life-death consequences for generations of children. it’s really not comparable to almost any decision mike would make in a pennywise free universe. yes, he made a sacrifice in the book but i don’t think he’d just lay himself down in any given universe to whatever fate wants to hand him. but this is where i end this topic bc i’m actually only barely beginning to get to this topic in my own fic!

it’s hard writing the losers young sometimes bc i do feel relationships are naturally a little unbalanced based on basic maturity levels as young people. sometimes friendships just are unbalanced bc of who people are at that time. everyone involved can still be good people in these relationships. it’s about growing together and learning how to be good friends to each other.

for example, in &tfat: certain losers are always checking in with others. others are really wrapped up in their own shit and don’t really notice what bothers the others. it would probably take a chart the size of a textbook to explain how i think this dynamic wholly pans out in full. and yeah, i think it grates on mike a little bit that he is always the checker and never the checkee.

but even when mike snaps, even when he gets upset, i always write it coming out of him with a lot of love. i genuinely think mike, regardless of experience in that fic, has the deepest understanding of love as its own concept and an understand of how exactly it rules his life and and his relationships. mike knows to feel strongly about something he has to care about it. there are lots of things he just doesn’t care about. in the book it’s stated he’s difficult to connect with as an adult. he’s distant. he’s focused on what he wants to focus on. i think mike is actually the most interesting when he becomes a little bit of a disaster man with very little time for what doesn’t interest him.

which last thing, dislikes & disinterests

-what annoys him?

-what makes him genuinely angry?

-what bores him to tears?

i always make jokes that i bring up the nastier parts of the losers bc i love nasty boys but thinking of things people don’t like is as much a part of them as the things they do.

for example, in &tfat, i write richie as making fun of “nerdy” things like anything you could find at comic con. i write bev as not giving a fuck about sports. bill doesn’t care about richie’s music tastes. eddie hates getting condescended to.

bc of the ... kind thing, mike’s one of the harder losers to do this with. i genuinely think mike would listen to any of his friends tell him about anything. & he knows, in return, they can’t say shit when he wants to ramble about history. but dislikes can also be super situational.

again, for example in & tfat: mike doesn’t like when his friends talk about college right now. no one is really being sensitive to him at all. he hates getting blamed for stuff that isn’t his fault, mostly bc it keeps happening.

anyway. i based a lot of my mike (mostly sense of humor and personality) off of a mix of real life friends of mine. it’s a luxury. i know. i’ve been blessed to have friends from literally all walks of life & for me borrowing little habits & quirks & sayings & jokes to slip into my fics and characters is my way of writing one massive love letter to those ive known. i hope i’ve helped you in some way anon. n if not.... don’t be sad i’m hardly one to take writing advice from anyway jandjxjx

overall, as i used to do often, i’d genuinely stop myself and say: is this a person, or a convenience for the plot? and if it was the latter, sigh, and get my backspace key ready.

[pricklyest]

okay under a cut because it’s probably long but I’m out of the bath and here’s those tma themed asks

The Eye: If you were an avatar of any entity, which one would it be?

there are so many possible answers to this like wow but I’m caught between the eye because I am Thirsty for knowledge 1000% of the time if someone is talking about something with another person and I am near the conversation but not involved you can bet I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and if I know either of the people I will almost definitely ask what’s going on and be intrusive as hell because I have no self restraint; and the lonely because like I am a very alone person but in the words of my fav jamilah woods I’m not lonely, I’m alone and I feel like that is a very peter lukas vibe, yknow? he enjoys being alone? also I too am a sailor and I would like to mysteriously hang out on my ship in the ocean surrounded by fog with no other human being for miles.

The Spiral: Are you good at math?

listen, I spend all of my free time listening to calculus the musical and if you asked me to I would probably rewrite every song I have ever listened to to be about mathematics. in another universe I am probably a math major and in this universe I am deeply, deeply in love with every single second of martin gardner’s work. 

but also no I am not good at math because nobody is good at math, ask any math major and they will tell you we are all terrible at math. engineers (of which I am one) think they’re good at math but they are wrong. that’s how you know I’m meant to be a math major. I know that I’m bad at math. no one can ever be good at math. 

anyway in case anyone ever was wondering my favorite number is euler’s number and I almost named my animal crossing new horizons island eigen as in eigenvectors/values because I am a huge fucking nerd. 

The End: What would you do with your time if you never died?

literally study every single thing I ever could. like. why would the cullens repeat high school over and over again where you’re just relearning the same shit and not just like. major in every single thing a person could possibly major in. that’s just like. the thing to do. 

The Stranger: Are you normally a fan of horror?

not really, but it’s growing on me? I’m like really into psychological horror type stuff and obviously the line between scifi and fantasy and horror is not really a line and especially like things like black mirror that’s scifi gone Wrong is very specifically my jam? but like classic horror stuff has not historically been my thing but like I said. it’s growing on me. 

The Lonely: Name a few of your friends and your favorite things about them.

listen. I don’t have any friends. I mean I do, I am literally snapchatting w merle rn but like. I don’t know how to publicly say words about my friends. I don’t know my friends? I know the feelings that I have in relation to them? 

god, that sounds. enormously self centered and like. really rude. that is not in any way true. okay let’s try this again. 

[redacted]

okay I got waylaid for like 40min doing this writing about my friends and what’s actually going to happen is tomorrow I am going to go back to what I was writing and finish it because I actually do want to sit down and appreciate my friends? because that is a thing everyone should do and also I specifically v much need to because I am not good at feeling close to people so I intentionally downplay how important relationships are to me and that’s objectively Bad and we need to stop doing that. 

what I mean to say in the mean time is that I love my friends and here I will put some of their names so they know they are loved and they are in order of how long I’ve known them so no one feels bad about whatever other order they might be in: alex amy musa carter emma lexi quinn kara merle jasper 

wow I stopped to look at something on my phone and came across the phone number of someone I used to go sailing with who’s dead now and I cried a little bit so that’s something. 

The Desolation: Have you ever been in love?

yes. we’re not going to to talk about that. 

The Slaughter: What kind of music do you like?

what a vague and unanswerable question. idk get some idea of some of my music tastes but definitely not all of them via the post I made a little bit ago with songs that start with the letters in my url. 

The Vast: Can you swim?

yes, but not particularly well. I mean. I’m a sailor. I swim well enough. but like my mom’s side of the family is a lot of competitive swimmers and I’m definitely not one of them. 

The Buried: How do you do in large crowds?

I like the idea of crowds and anonymity and being alone while surrounded but I also get anxious and claustrophobic feeling and I am glad I have a service animal trained in blocking. 

The Dark: Dark colors or pastels?

dark colors bc I am goth

The Corruption: Do you kill bugs?

sometimes yes sometimes I put them outside. depends on the bug. spiders I leave alone unless they’re right by my bed. centipedes get killed on sight. 

The Web: Are you any good at lying?

I don’t think so but I also don’t lie v often and when I do it’s usually to my mother about school.

The Flesh: Are you flexible?

I am somewhat hypermobile but not particularly flexible. whatever that means. 

The Hunt: Would you be a monster hunter?

I have a high pain tolerance, which is a plus, but I am also v chronic pain and so like I would be able to hunt monsters one night but then spend the next three days in bed, so like. probably not. 

The Extinction: Would you survive the apocalypse?

oh god, no. I’m disabled. 

[aeipathic-a]

hogwarts au rundown.

name: Pearl Madlabayan (birth name, Tagalog for “common people”; adopted family surname is Diamant) house: slytherin wand: aspen and unicorn hair, 10 1/4 inches, brittle patronus: lark

wand analysis.

aspen.

Wand-quality aspen wood is white and fine-grained, and highly prized by all wand-makers for its stylish resemblance to ivory and its usually outstanding charmwork. The proper owner of the aspen wand is often an accomplished duellist, or destined to be so, for the aspen wand is one of those particularly suited to martial magic. An infamous and secretive eighteenth-century duelling club, which called itself The Silver Spears, was reputed to admit only those who owned aspen wands. In my experience, aspen wand owners are generally strong-minded and determined, more likely than most to be attracted by quests and new orders; this is a wand for revolutionaries.

unicorn hair.

Unicorn hair generally produces the most consistent magic, and is least subject to fluctuations and blockages. Wands with unicorn cores are generally the most difficult to turn to the Dark Arts. They are the most faithful of all wands, and usually remain strongly attached to their first owner, irrespective of whether he or she was an accomplished witch or wizard.

Minor disadvantages of unicorn hair are that they do not make the most powerful wands (although the wand wood may compensate) and that they are prone to melancholy if seriously mishandled, meaning that the hair may 'die' and need replacing.

i chose this wand for pearl partly because of the Aesthetic™ of having a white wand, which is reminiscent of her spear (esp if i hc that there’s a subtle spiral pattern in the woodgrain), but also because the aspen hints at her eventual mastery of dueling, and for the part about being drawn to quests and new orders. a wand for revolutionaries indeed.

unicorn hair is not the most powerful wand, which fits because pearl is not the most powerful witch in terms of magical ability, but it is steady and faithful, also fitting because pearl, too, is prone to fits of melancholy if mishandled.

house analysis.

here’s where it gets interesting. pearl is difficult to sort - she has attributes from all houses, really. like gryffindor, she values bravery and chivalry and believes you should fight for what’s right. like hufflepuff, she’s loyal and nurturing. like ravenclaw, she values intelligence and thoughtfulness and has a thirst for learning. like slytherin, she’s ambitious, determined, and cunning.

slytherin may not seem like the obvious choice for her, as someone who upholds both the ideal of a chivalrous knight and a learned scholar. but here’s the thing: if pearl had been raised in a healthy, encouraging environment - if her love of learning had been allowed to blossom, if she had been given validation and room for emotional growth - she would have been in ravenclaw, no doubt. 

but both in canon and in this au, she was neglected, mistreated, and dismissed for most of her life. she is genuinely inquisitive and thirsty for knowledge, and she does love learning for its own sake, but she’s also learned that she can use knowledge to get ahead, to be recognized, and so that’s a large part of her motivation to learn: a thirst to prove yourself, as the sorting hat once said. slytherin trait.

she is logical and loyal and tries to be fair, but she also has a deceitful streak. though she never means to cause harm, often the only way she can think of to get what she wants is to manipulate others into it (i.e. the sardonyx incident in canon), because she’s too scared of conflict to talk about things openly and too convinced that she won’t be given validation otherwise. so her first instinct (which she does learn to battle) is deceit. slytherin trait.

she’s cunning and pragmatic; she doesn’t like conflict, but she’s also willing to hurt or kill someone if it ensures the safety of her own group. slytherin trait. 

also, loyalty is a hufflepuff trait, true, but slytherins are also loyal, they just aren’t as impartial about it. pearl will choose a small group to be intensely loyal towards, and dismiss those who aren’t a part of that group. slytherin trait

additionally, pearl has crippling self-esteem issues, which leads her to harbor a desperate need to feel superior to others. we see this in canon in the way she treats greg and other humans; after feeling inferior for so long, she clings to any sense of superiority she can find and lords it over those who are “below” her, which can give her a condescending air. slytherin trait.

it’s important to note, of course, that none of this makes her an inherently bad person!! slytherins aren’t inherently bad people. pearl isn’t always kind of patient or right, but she is ultimately good, and her slytherin traits can contribute to that just as they can detract from it. 

of course, if she were given the choice between ravenclaw and slytherin (if hogwarts sorting worked like ilvermorny, for instance, and you got to choose your preference if picked by two houses), then she’d pick ravenclaw. she does not, at least initially, see herself as a slytherin. she didn’t expect to be sorted there, and she isn’t happy to be there for multiple reasons, which i’ll get into more when we get to backstory. it takes pearl a long time to grow to be proud of being a slytherin, and she’ll always have reservations about it because of its stigma, but while she does eventually take a certain measure of (defiant) pride in her house, she’ll always wonder who she might have been, if she might have been better, if she’d gone to ravenclaw.

history.

pearl was born to a squib and a muggle. her mother came from a prominent pureblood family, the diamants, and was disowned from them when it became clear she possessed no magical ability. when pearl’s parents died - only five years after her birth - it was therefore in the diamants’ reluctant care that pearl was placed.

she was not treated well there. technically she was mrs. diamant’s granddaughter, and a half-blood, but to them she was little more than a mudblood, and she was treated more like a house-elf than a child. she was mistreated and neglected, ignored in favor of the diamant children. though clever and inquisitive, she was given few lessons, and most of her knowledge came from sneaking into the family library at night to read by candlelight. 

she showed signs of magic late for a magical child - not until eight years old, when most experts put the cut-off age at seven - and her magic was weak and sporadic. but magic it was, and she received her hogwarts letter when she turned eleven, just as the diamant children had. this was a terrible relief to her; she dreamed of the day when she could attend hogwarts, away from the diamants, where she could learn magic and be just like any other child.

but when pearl, scrawny and timid beside the other first-years who laughed and talked together, sat under the sorting hat, it put her in slytherin. there must be some mistake, pearl thought. slytherin was where the diamants were, slytherin was for the kind of children who kicked her around and called her mudblood. she had wanted ravenclaw. she had expected ravenclaw. that was where she would have been free.

but the sorting hat said slytherin, so she was given a tie of green and silver and sat at the slytherin table amongst children she knew, children she had met at the diamants’ banquets, children who already knew her as the little mudblood, or even worse, as the house-elf. during her first dinner, one of the older students who knew her foster sister suggested that she go down to the kitchens and bunk with the other elves.

pearl’s first months at hogwarts were not happy ones. she was not popular in slytherin, but nor did anyone else want to be friends with her, because she was a slytherin and slytherin was the evil house, wasn’t that how it went? and to make matters worse, pearl struggled in her classes. she understood the theory fine, could memorize any term or definition she needed, could write twice the required length for essays - but in class, her spellwork suffered. everyone else could make their feathers float. why couldn’t she? everyone else could turn their matches into needles. the only class she excelled at was potions - there was no wandwork there, you only had to follow directions, and she could do that.

so she spent those first months alone and despondent, keeping away from other students when she could, throwing herself into her studies in the vain hope that it would make her less weak. because that was the only possible explanation, as the other slytherins were quick to point out to her - her parents didn’t have magic, she was a mudblood, she wasn’t as powerful as they were and she never would be.

she couldn’t accept that. she wouldn’t. if she had to work twice as hard as everyone else to pass, then she would. she spent her time studying, practicing by herself, determined, stubborn, but lonely.

and then she met rose. rose was a hufflepuff, a year or two above pearl. rose came upon a group of slytherins ganging up on them, and made them leave, and then conjured a bunch of flowers from her wand to cheer pearl up. rose was kind and encouraging and didn’t seem to care that pearl was a slytherin and a mudblood and a bad witch. she offered to help pearl practice.

and from then on pearl wasn’t alone. rose showed her how to perform some of the spells that pearl couldn’t seem to grasp. rose invited her to eat breakfast with her in the mornings, even when other hufflepuffs shot pearl nervous looks when they saw the green trim on her robes. rose was the first friend pearl had ever had.

and through rose, pearl made other friends. garnet was a solemn gryffindor, quiet but kind. (and exceptionally good at divination; pearl was awed by her predictions.) amethyst didn’t come until a year later, and she was not a solemn gryffindor, she was a rowdy gryffindor and a metamorphmagus to boot, and sometimes she made her nose long and pointy like pearl’s and laughed, but she was earnest and friendly and rough. the four of them became close-knit - even when pearl felt like the odd one out, the skinny slytherin among two gryffindors and a hufflepuff, even when she wondered if they were only friends with her out of pity, even when she felt herself growing desperate to please them, to keep up with them, so they wouldn’t leave her behind - it didn’t matter, in the end, because she had friends and she wasn’t alone.

gradually she grasped her schoolwork. she would never be very good at transfiguration, and she still had to spend hours practicing before she could master any of her spells, but her grades rose, in charms and defense against the dark arts especially. and in potions, of course, she continued to excel. she clawed her way, not quite to the top of the class, but very nearly so. she was still scorned and teased by many of her schoolmates, but she forced herself to turn the other shoulder - it only motivated her to work harder.

after graduation, they were swept into a war.

the dark lord was ever rising in power, and a group grew up to resist him: the order of the phoenix. rose wanted to join the rebellion, and pearl, of course, stood by her side. they ended up right in the thick of it, and pearl, the witch who had once struggled with the most basic spells, found herself dueling for her life on a regular basis - and, to everyone’s surprise, winning.

not without cost to her. the fighting exhausted her - she was never the most powerful witch, and no amount of training and mastery of spellwork would increase the mana she had to work with. she would fight to the point of exhausting her magic, and what’s more, she often threw herself in front of her allies, taking hits she needn’t have taken to save them (particularly rose), which often sent her to st. mungo’s for healing. as skilled a duelist as she became, she was lucky to make it through the war.

and while the war was going on, there was another disaster to contend with.

rose had fallen in love with a muggle.

rose, who pearl had loved for years, had become totally charmed by this greg - who, of course, knew nothing of the war, nothing of the battles rose had fought. pearl told her it was a bad idea to get involved - told her that she’d only be bringing some poor muggle into a world rife with chaos - but it was no good. they were married, and pearl had to hide her own heartbreak.

they had a child. his name was steven, and even pearl couldn’t help being taken with him. but that point of light did nothing to block out the awful truth: they were losing the war, and it seemed increasingly unlikely that steven would grow up with any sort of happiness.

and then the worst happened. rose was targeted by the death eaters. they came to their home. she was able to hold them off long enough for greg to call for help and get steven away, but by the time pearl, garnet, and amethyst arrived, it was too late. rose had been killed in her attempts to keep the death eaters away from her family.

the war ended soon after that. the dark lord was vanquished, and the wizarding world breathed again. but rose was still dead, and pearl had never, in all of her difficult life, endured grief so acute.

in the end greg raised steven in a house by the beach, with pearl, garnet, and amethyst often coming by to spend time with him. pearl took up teaching study of ancient runes at hogwarts, and headed the dueling club as well (which totally existed before lockhart started it shhh). her focus was on managing her job and keeping an eye on steven - but when the dark lord returned, she, along with garnet and amethyst, rejoined the order of the phoenix to fight the new enemy.

[gascon-en-exil]

Ranking FE’s Lords

@paragonred asked for this, possibly as a follow-up to this ranking of the games themselves. I’ll use the same tier format so I don’t have to get so specific as to order everyone into a numbered list.

S Tier - interesting, narratively engaging, and (usually) fun to use

Micaiah - see this post.

Eliwood - ends up mediocre more than half the time, but he’s got a strong character arc with plenty of development and good moments even on Hector’s route. I very much like Eliwood/Hector as a traditional romantic friendship that could feasibly grow into something more between games depending on who they marry and what happens to their wives. Incidentally, I don’t have any very strong opinions on any of those ships, other than that Hector/Florina is rather nonsensical.

Celica - see this post

A Tier - fun unit and may have interesting character potential, but I’m less invested in exploring them

Ephraim - mostly up here because I like lances. His arc is similar to Hector’s with more urgency and the homoromanticism coming from different sources, but his contribution to that questionable legacy has largely been swallowed up by twincest. Or something like that anyway.

Hector - speaking of which, he’s a good unit apart from his promotion (both the class itself and the timing of it in his route) and as mentioned I ship him with Eliwood in a sense, but I don’t like the archetype he spawned. He also feels a bit superfluous to FE7′s main story, though not as much as Lyn does.

Lucina - will be incredibly broken unless you don’t pair Chrom or stick him with Sully. Severely under-served by her narrative despite being a uniquely tragic figure in an otherwise aggressively optimistic game, but she got a DLC campaign and a bunch of shilling outside the series proper so that sort of makes up for it?

Sigurd - the most OP lord ever. I like that he’s an idiot and that he faces real consequences for his mistakes, and I like how he looms large over Gen 2 in spite of his flaws. Even more so than with Hector, I don’t like how his fanbase sees his game performance and nothing else about him.

Alm - already a good unit in the original from what I understand, and he benefits considerably from the distinctive presentation elements of FE15. He certainly offers a more nuanced discussion of class than certain other lords. *ahem* It does suck a bit that it feels like some of his character beats have to compromise Celica’s to make them work, but that’s partially Gaiden’s fault too.

Leif - might move up if he’s relatably more of an impoverished aristocrat in the remakes, but then his particular circumstances don’t really speak to me the way that, say, Almedha’s do. I mostly hated using him in FE5 though he had his moments. Probably benefits from being surrounded by interesting people more than anyone else in this tier, but he really benefits there.

B Tier - either overwhelmingly average, or with both strong positive and strong negative aspects that balance each other out

Ike - yeah, you guys probably saw this one coming. On the one hand, he’s very likely gay; on the other, half the fandom still won’t shut up about the possibility that he might not be and/or that IS was wrong to do what they did with him. On the one hand, convention-defying peasant lord shaping his own destiny is interesting; on the other, he has terrible manners and a shameless insensitivity to foreign (beorc) cultures and yet we’re meant to be rooting for him. On the one hand, a strong unit who plays quite differently in his two games and so therefore doesn’t feel stale; on the other, he and his mercenaries edge out the light magic-wielding Micaiah and her army for screentime and EXP and it’s pretty obvious which unit type I prefer there. I can’t even get all that strongly into Ike/Soren for entirely personal reasons, but at least Ike/Ranulf is still there to pick up the slack.

Lyn - even though she’s the first lord with a same-sex paired ending that fact is largely forgotten. Much of her enduring popularity seems to be based on her sex appeal, and she’s irrelevant to Elibe as a whole. Still, her route is a nice little self-contained story that doesn’t feel too similar to anything else in FE, and she’s got a strong camaraderie with her fellow lords.

Corrin - it’s difficult to talk about Corrin as one entry since they develop differently depending on the route, but as with Fates as a whole I feel like the three iterations of the character average out somewhere just slightly below average. Birthright Corrin is a standard FE protagonist, except maybe a little angrier (Leif, Shadow Dragon Marth maybe?) and with entirely too many death scenes thrown at them. Conquest Corrin has the most missed potential, as with most things involving Conquest apart from gameplay, and one practically has to roll with the headcanon that they and the Nohr royals have been conditioned by years of abuse to make their characters sort of work. Revelation Corrin reminds me unpleasantly of Robin (see below) with the power of cross-cultural friendship stuff and the super special ending. I’m not too fond of the character as a unit either, since they take more work to get as flexibly broken as the other Avatars and their manakete form fails to impress except for tanking.

Seliph - saved from C Tier by the general messiness of Jugdral. His father’s legacy is a complicated one, and about 1/3rd of his campaign amounts to a blood feud with the aim of giving his first cousin a throne for somewhat dubious reasons. He takes some time to get as broken as SIgurd, but he’s all sorts of fun when he gets there. Couldn’t tell you if he’s got any interesting romantic prospects, endorsed by the pairing system or otherwise, because he’s still pretty dull in that department.

C Tier - bland, and usually bad as units

Marth - truly the Mario of FE, in that he’s everywhere with a different personality almost every time. His two remakes did surprisingly little to flesh him out in any consistent way, and by that point over half a dozen other protagonists had diverged from his archetypical lord model in almost as many different ways.

Roy - red-haired Marth with a harem and an obscenely late promotion instead of no promotion at all *yawns* I guess he gets points for having a living parent? Not sure why anyone is a particular fan of him unless they mained him in Melee. Maybe a remake will help him out?

Chrom - Marth with biceps and a time-traveling daughter who coincidentally cosplays as Marth. That’s marginally less yawn-worthy if only because of how strange it all is, and he also borrows from the Hector-type lord as well so he ends up as an unexpected fusion of the buff and the bishonen. Overshadowed in story and in gameplay by his daughter and some random amnesiac he found in a field who he may or may not decide to sleep with.

Eirika - only slightly a Marth clone, but as with Celica the story is unevenly stacked against her and in favor of her male counterpart, even on her own route. The fandom doesn’t like her because she’s naïve, but that could also be said of several other lords. Not really into her as a unit or any of her ships, so...yeah.

Kris - ...do they even count as a lord? Eh, whatever.

D Tier - OP unit, terrible character

Robin - would have been so much more tolerable if endgame didn’t abruptly swerve to becoming entirely about them, at the expense of Chrom and Lucina and everyone else. Somehow the special secret origin type of Avatar grates more than one whose importance to everyone and everything in the story is laid out right at the beginning. I can more or less buy everyone in Fates obsessing over Corrin because of who they are and what they represent for the various players, but not so much Robin whom everyone rallies around apparently for the sole reason that they’re a really friendly tactical genius. Compound that with the fact that they’re meant to be a self-insert in a game with enormous levels of explicit homoerotic denial and it should be easy to see why they’re at the bottom of this list.

[birdbizarre]

the human sex talk

okay trolls listen up heres the sex talk your lusus wont give you

im going to try to keep this as basic as possible because its going to be confusing anyway so if youre human and youre reading this thinking wow davesprite why didnt you bring up x im sorry bear with me

okay

humans have two basic sexes male and female

for trolls this split isnt really significant in terms of reproduction obviously universes vary and i dont know about every troll but the sexual dimorphism between trolls is very low compared to say some of your lusii or native animals i know some universes where trolls dont have sexes at all just genders

for humans however outside of medical and scientific intervention only a male sex and female sex pair can produce a child

males of the species are born with what is called a penis this is roughly analogous to the bone bulge of a troll below the penis where a nook is on a troll are the testicles sometimes referred to as the balls

you then have the what do trolls call it waste chute or whatever thats further behind the balls

and thats all that is down there

the penis is a flesh covered muscle that normally hangs limp in front of the pelvis there is no sheath and it does not retract into the body it is usually smaller than a troll bulge so the average range is between four and six inches its generally the same width all the way usually between like an inch or two inches in diameter

the head of the penis can be slightly wider than the shaft but doesnt have to be you can usually tell where the shaft ends and the head begins because the shape is slightly different usually the skin that covers the penis will also cover the head and then there will be a sort of fold where the urethra is at the very tip

the urethra is a small hole and thats where piss and ejaculate come out but well get to that in a bit

some humans however have the fold before the head leaving the more sensitive skin around the urethra exposed this isnt the way humans are born but its pretty common so its worth mentioning you dont really want to know why so dont ask

when a male sex human gets aroused the human body directs blood into the penis muscle which then causes it to stiffen otherwise it would just be sort of floppy and useless during sex this is called getting hard or getting a boner or whatever else theres tons of nicknames for all this stuff those are just the big two

then there are the testicles or balls that i mentioned before these are about the size of a golf ball i guess im not really sure what the best troll analogue is there i guess if you imagine the size of an eyeball that is removed from someones socket its just a little bigger than that but again sometimes its different depending on the human

these are also covered in skin like the rest of the human and theyre not really important for the act of sex but they play a part in reproduction because inside is the males genetic material theyre pretty much just weird flesh sacks so its sort of boring but some humans like them being touched i dont know

lets skip over to the female sex organs so we can see how they fit together

females have the equivalent of a troll nook collectively referred to as the vagina which is composed of several parts they do not have a penis

essentially you have a hole much like a nook and around that hole are a few flaps of skin for protection i guess you cant just leave a hole uncovered its all sort of shaped like a clamshell if you turned it on its side or a sort of vertically oriented oval so the quote unquote tips of the oval are oriented toward the belly button and the waste chute respectively

at the top of the clamshell though still within the skin folds above the vaginal opening and just barely above the female urethra which is just another smaller hole with no sexual purpose is the clitoris this is the big one boys this is the doozy this is essentially the female penis or bulge except its only about as big as a pea and something like fifty thousand times more sensitive than a penis so tread carefully

unfortunately for most ladies the clitoris or clit for short isnt reproductively relevant its just sort of vestigial so while its great for pleasure it often goes neglected which sort of sounds like a shame if you ask me and probably more than half the human population

anyway

you might be wondering well if the human males have balls to hold the genetic material where is it on the female its on the inside

essentially the vagina is like a tube and at the end of the tube it narrows and theres a very small opening called the cervix which is where the vagina technically ends and past the cervix is the uterus which is like a balloon with two small deflated balloons attached on either side called the fallopian tubes and finally at the end of those deflated balloons are the ovaries and thats where the female genetic material is squirreled away like some sort of dragons hoard except the hoard is squishy little things called eggs and each egg holds all of the females genetic material

now again this is all on the inside

now lets get to the big shabang itself sex

if your planet doesnt use the word sex this is what youd call pailing and some parts of this might get sort of scandalous depending on how into pailing culture you are and if youre from alternia or beforus so im sorry if it makes you blush or makes you angry but youve been warned

sex occurs between all genders but the again the only kind of sex that has reproductive merit and can produce descendants is between someone with male sex organs and someone with female sex organs as described above

when a male becomes aroused and gets a boner he will then part the folds of the female and insert his penis into her vagina carefully because the vaginal opening is relatively small compared to the penis but fortunately its flexible and if the female is aroused it produces a lubricant sort of like pre material if everything goes well and the foreplay was good enough it shouldnt be painful though if the female hasnt done it before aka is a virgin it might take some time

from my understanding troll bulges are prehensile so pailing involves a lot of wiggling in the indoor area but human penises are not so from here it just becomes a lot of thrusting straight forward and back changing positions can change the sensation but its really pretty boring to talk about but in practice its fun because if it werent our species would die out obviously

anyway then climax happens this should be pretty self explanatory even for a troll this is when the genetic material is released

for the purposes of reproduction the female doesnt have to orgasm but if youre having sex and you think its over just because the guy came youre a monster always take care of your partner

now youre going to be thinking wait davesprite you skipped a step no i didnt

the male does not pull out of the female to release genetic material i repeat the genetic material remains inside the female this is where it belongs it might be gross and drippy but that doesnt go anywhere its not collected its not put anywhere

in human reproduction there is no bucket

the males genetic material which is called sperm or semen technically two different parts of the same liquid but people use them interchangeably goes through the cervix and into the uterus then it will go up the fallopian tubes where if the timing is right because the female reproductive system is not always ready and thats a whole other lesson i cant go into right now there will be an egg waiting

the genetic material of the male will attempt to merge with the genetic material of the female in the males ejaculate there are tons of little packets of genetic material thats the sperm i mentioned before and these little packets have tails on them which let them swim up to the egg and then attempt to break in like little horny thugs the egg will attempt to kill them so only the strongest reach the center

if one of the sperm is successful and of the millions and millions of sperm released in the semen only one usually ever makes all the way from the cervix to the egg the egg will be fertilized and then it will move down the fallopian tube and embed in the wall of the uterus

by then the sex is long over but the egg remains in the uterus for nine months longer if you dont know what a month is its basically a perigree so nine perigrees give or take a little and then a baby aka a grub comes out of the mother through the vagina

and thats human reproduction we do it ourselves because thats just the human way

thanks for listening ive been davesprite and ill take your questions now

oh wait

faq number one

yes trolls and humans can have sex because while the parts are different they can usually more or less fit together however this wont make a grub or a baby unless your universe allows it which sort of varies but usually the answer is no

faq number two

humans can do it up the waste chute which is how a lot of gay men aka male humans who like other male humans choose to do it because they dont have a vagina or nook again it is extremely rare that this makes a baby though the multiverse is a big big place

okay there you go now ill take any remaining questions

[hydrus]

Version 314

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

tar.gz

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a great week. Tag import options are now easy to mass-manage, and I have fleshed out the new downloader system's file page parsers.

default tag import options

Almost done with tag import options, I promise!

This is an important but slightly complicated update. Nothing huge will change, and you'll see what is going on as you use it. tl;dr is: go to network->downloaders->manage default tag import options and set something good for default for file posts if you haven't already.

This week has an important update to how tag import options (TIO) typically work. First, the old TIO options under options->importing are now deprecated--they are no longer referred to by any downloader, and I will be removing the ui entirely in a couple of weeks. All downloaders now inherit from the newer network->downloaders->manage default tag import options, which operates in the new download system. Please make sure your default tag import options are set up how you want, as any new downloader or sub now inherits from this new location! You will get a popup about this on update as a reminder.

Second, the TIOs for new downloaders and subscriptions now start in a 'default' mode, meaning 'I do not have any specific options, just use whatever is set in the defaults at the time of import'. In the TIO edit ui, this is a new checkbox that greys out the rest of the panel. This means that if you change the new defaults under network->downloaders->manage default tag import options, every 'default' TIO across the program will inherit those changes!

This new 'default' mode makes the job of managing TIOs for dozens or hundreds of downloaders and subscriptions much easier, particularly now that TIO have become more powerful and complicated. Rather than, let's say, adding the tag 'vore' to twenty different subscriptions' blacklists, you can now just add it to the defaults and all your 'default'-set subscriptions will work with that updated default when they next run. But if you have a particular subscription or downloader that needs a special blacklist or namespace filtering, you can still set a specific TIO and make it happen.

Your existing downloaders and subscriptions will keep their specific TIOs on update. They will keep parsing tags like they did before.

But when you are comfortable with this new system, you may want to set many if not all of your subscriptions to default TIO, so I have added a button to manage subscriptions that sets TIO to all selected subs! Furthermore, any normal 'tag import options' button now has a right-click menu that lets you copy/paste the TIO to/from clipboard, so if you do have some clever tag filter or blacklist you want to spam to several places, you can now do it with just a few clicks.

Also, the 'url downloader' now has its own TIO. This also starts 'default', which is basically what it was doing before--referring to network->downloaders->manage default tag import options based on import URL right when it imported--but now you can overrule this 'refer to defaults' mode and set a particular set of rules if you are doing some clever one-time job with the URLs you are giving it.

more parsers

In the new page downloader, if a site does not yet have a new parser, it falls back on the old system. This left me the job of filling in the blanks for all the default sites that come with a fresh install of hydrus. I have been adding new ones here and there, but this week I pulled out the stops and finished them all off. There are new parsers for furry.booru.org, hentai foundry, moebooru (konachan, yande.ro, sakugabooru), shimmie (rule34.paheal, rule34hentai, mishimmie), newgrounds, sankaku (thanks to some users for contributing this one), and tumblr. All these sites now support Post URL drag-and-drop import (and sakugabooru doesn't actually have a search by default, so this is likely the only way you can take advantage of it for now) and have improved file parsing support and can sometimes grab a source time and so on.

So, by default, a new hydrus client now deals with file pages entirely on the new download system. This frees me up to delete more and more of the old legacy system in the coming weeks, shifting everything over to the newer and neater code. I expect I'll throw in some other new parsers for imgur and so on as well!

There remains the issue of custom boorus. Any user who added a custom booru in the old system either by downloading a yaml file from somewhere or making it themselves has something that is a bit tricky to convert to the new system automatically. I made this new system in part so I wouldn't be needed to make new downloaders, so I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of writing a hundred new parsers, but I think I'll figure out a simple way to update the old custom booru objects into barebones new parsers in a coming update. I will probably do it all in one go, when the gallery and 'searcher' object work are done, but it may need a bit of extra work on your end to connect things together. If you care about this stuff, please watch this space. I will be working with the users who are interested in making new parsers, and we'll figure out a variety of 'make it work now in a difficult technical way' to 'I can wait a couple months for the single drag-and-drop solution' methods so you can get derpibooru and the other unusual but desired boorus working properly.

Btw, the new tumblr parser does not work with the in-client tumblr downloader yet, but it will in a couple of weeks when the gallery stuff is finishing up. But if you want to try it out, just try drag-and-dropping some tumblr post URLs on the client in v314. As well as doing the difficult 'raw' URL translation correctly (and not doing it for the pre-2013 URLs for which the translation is invalid), it now figures out a creator: tag, including swapping out for the original root creator on reblog posts! It is almost as complicated as the pixiv parser, and I am really pleased that the new download system is flexible enough to have supported what I needed it to do.

misc

There are some other quality-of-life options and improvements this week:

''options->speed and memory'' now has 'cache timeout' options for thumbnails and rendered images.

''options->downloading'' now has 'hide/show the 'D' on short import summaries', the default being hide.

''options->gui'' now has a 'only autosave last session during idle time', which is useful if you run a really heavy client (like 200k+ files/import objects) that you leave on all the time and are getting regular 10s+ lag from the session autosaving. I still ''recommend'' you try if you can to keep your client below 50k at once, but if you can't, try this out and let me know how it goes.

The ''network'' menu is now categorised into something better than 'a giant single mess'.

Edit subscription panels now has 'copy queries', which will copy all the selected subscription queries' search texts to your clipboard. This is basically the opposite of the 'paste queries' button on the same panel, and makes it easy to copy twenty queries to a new subscription or chat window or whatever.

full list

tag import options can now be set to 'default', meaning 'use whatever the default is at the time of import', which will be an easier way of managing TIOs for many subs that you'd prefer all share the same TIO settings anyway

updated tag import options ui to enable this default setting where appropriate

updated the newer import pipeline to work with 'default'-set tag import options

new downloaders, subscriptions, watchers, and multi-watchers now start with 'default' tag import options

deleted the old default tag import options management code and put some text up on options->importing making notice about the impending shift. a popup message will also say this on update

tag import options buttons now have a right-click menu with copy/paste/default options for quick assignment and duplication!

added 'overwrite tag import options' to manage subscriptions--once you are comfortable with the new 'default' TIO mode, and after some small tests, you might want to switch all your subs over to 'default'

the 'urls' downloader now has a tag import options--it initialises as 'default'

added furry.booru.org to gelbooru 0.2.0 parser

wrote a hentai foundry file page parser

wrote a moebooru file page parser (this works for konachan, yande.re, and sakugabooru)

wrote a shimmie parser (this works for rule34.paheal, rule34hentai, and mishimmie)

wrote a newgrounds parser

integrated the user-created sankaku parser

wrote a tumblr parser that handles photo, photoset, and video posts, auto-converts to 'raw' urls for those post-2012 urls that can handle it, figures out a creator tag (reverting to the reblog root if it is a reblog post!), and cooks you breakfast

(hence all these above sites now support drag and drop!)

rolled out some new tumblr url classes to handle all this.

added sakugabooru url classes

fixed an issue where url classes were not normalising api urls in all cases, meaning some url classes would not api-link correctly in 'manage url class links' panel

fixed an issue with deviant art legacy gallery parser pulling some funky 'creator:' tags

some misc new downloader error handling improvements

the watcher now uses the new gallery object to parse and generate file import objects

the downloaders with gallery logs should now report non-success gallery fetches, along with error tracebacks (this will include some no-worry 404s the legacy downloader sometimes uses to terminate searches)

added image and thumbnail cache timeout time delta buttons to options->speed and memory

added a 'show the D on short file import summaries' checkbox to options->downloading--it defaults to off

the 'I' on short file import summaries is now 'Ig' to clear up 1/I confusion

added 'copy queries' to the edit subscription panel, which lets you copy all the selected queries' search texts to clipboard, newline separated

added a checbox to options->gui that commands 'last session' only be autosaved during idle time. this is useful if you usually have a huge (200k+ file) session and your client is always on

fixed file import status button right-click, which I messed up somehow last week with the 'retry ignored' add

shook up and collapsed the network menu into neater categories

tightened-up the rarely used pre-parsing conversion panel on the edit page parser panel to just a button with a bit of explaining text

if database errors include the word 'malformed', the client now throws a little extra error text pointing people to the help.txt in the db dir

cleared out some legacy download code

cleared out legacy hard drive import error handling, moving it all to the new file import object

misc refactoring and cleanup

next week

I moved the new gallery watcher forward as well, this week. The new gallery pipeline is mostly in place, and thread watchers now use it, so now I have to re-jigger the regular 'walk through gallery page' downloader code around a bit and then I can blitz a bunch of new gallery parsers (which are thankfully very simple) like I've just done the file page parsers today. So, I'd ''like'' to have gallery url drag-and-drop (i.e. you drag and drop a danbooru gallery search url onto the client, and it starts a new hydrus page for that search, either getting just that page's thumbnails, or starting a new search from page index 0, or starting a new search from the dropped page) in for next week.

[liaragaming]

Uncommon OC Questions

I finally finished this, and holy crap it’s 12 pages in my Word doc. This turned out to be a great character exercise to flesh out my characters Inan Lavellan, Abigail Hawke, and Liara Tabris. I even added a few questions that occurred to me while writing. I mostly did this for myself, but if you’re interested, you can find all questions under the cut. Original meme can be found here.

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

Inan – She can sit still forever. She finds it very peaceful, especially after she becomes Inquisitor. She just cherishes those rare moments where she can take a breather. Bet her she couldn't sit still for days, and she will take you up on the challenge.

Abigail – She's a mover. She likes to get up and go. The only time she really sits still is when reading a book or getting a drink or just laying in bed with Fenris.

Liara – She really likes the sound of being able to sit still and do nothing. But an idle elf was always sure to draw suspicion from the humans in Denerim, and she's never allowed herself to make that mistake. Even after becoming a Warden, it's hard for her to shake the habit.  

2. How easy is it for your character to laugh?

Inan – Very easy. Humor is like a balm to her.

Abigail – there are days when laughter seems hard, but with her friends around it's very hard not to.

Liara – when she's comfortable and with the people she cares about, laughter comes very easily.

3. How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

Inan – just goes to bed, plops under those covers and that's the end of that.

Abigail – has trouble sleeping without someone with her (either Dog or Fenris).

Liara – she likes to stay up chatting with someone before she goes to sleep. If no one is available, she'll write in her diary. Both are ways for her to wind down.

4. How easy is it to earn their trust?

Inan – She's pretty willing to trust.

Abigail – She needs to get to know someone before she's able to fully trust them.

Liara – She's always hesitant around humans because of her negative experiences with them. But she finds as long as they don't prove to be an ass with their first impression, they're generally okay. Other than that trusting comes easily.

5. How easy is it to earn their mistrust?

Inan – It's hard. She's generally pretty forgiving.

Abigail – One mistake and that's all it takes.

Liara – She understands the world is complicated and not everything's black and white. She can be understanding if not fully forgiving.

6. Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable?

Inan – flexible

Abigail – flexible

Liara – flexible

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

Inan – The smell of lavender and finding halla really bring her back to her clan. For the most part, it's a comfort, but sometimes it's hard. She misses her family.

Abigail – Memories of Lothering are hard. They bring up everything that happened after, losing her father, her brother, and her mother. She doesn't like to think about it and prefers to keep herself focused on the present.

Liara – Talking with Alistair, Wynne, and Leliana reminds her of her friends and family back home. It's a good feeling, makes her feel like she keeps her family with her.

8. What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a child?

Inan – She'd just wonder off sometimes because she felt like it. She likes being in the woods.

Abigail – She picked on Carver a lot when she was little. She liked reminding him she was oldest, especially as he liked to pretend he was.

Liara – She really liked to practice the knife skills her mother taught her and was told to stop many times.

9. Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?

They all swear occasionally, Hawke perhaps a little more than the others. As for first words:

Inan - “Shit? Maybe?”

Abigail - “Fuck.” It wasn't it, but she's going to tell people it was.

Liara - “Does 'damn' count? Because it was most likely that.”

10. What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?

Inan – The first year she was transferred to Clan Lavellan, she told people stories about her parents. It bothers her that she can't remember if those stories were lies or not. Mostly, she doesn’t think about because she has other family, but when her birth parents are brought up, it does bother her a little.

Abigail – There was something she said to Carver after their father died. She was trying to step into her father's shoes, be the head of the family, and Carver was trying to do the same and they butted heads. She doesn't remember her exact wording, but it was something about him being too selfish to be man of the house. It wasn't true. She was just frustrated, and upset, and angry. But she thinks Carver took it to heart, and she never got to apologize for it.

Liara – Lied many, many times about practicing with her mother's knives. She doesn't regret those as it meant she got to continue practicing, but looking back there were some risks it was foolish of her to take and she could have gotten a lot of people in trouble.

11. How do they cope with confusion (seek clarification, pretend they understand, etc)?

Inan – she worries about keeping up appearances as the Inquisitor, so she will smile and nod and then later ask one of her companions, especially with instances where they're in Val Royuex and she doesn't understand what those people want.

Abigail – she will straight up tell people she doesn't understand or that they are not speaking clearly

Liara – she completely shuts down, especially around humans. She doesn't want to appear as the “dumb elf,” so she nods and then gets the heck out of there as quickly as possible. She doesn't even think to ask her friends for clarification, she just wants out of the situation.  

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Inan – She has to deal with it immediately in whatever way she can. If that means using her staff like a scratching post, she'll do it.  

Abigail – grits her teeth and ignores it

Liara – asks someone she's traveling with to scratch it

13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color? (changed to) What colors do they like to dress in?

Inan – likes to dress in earth tones.

Abigail – likes red or bold colors.

Liara – likes blue or soft colors.

14. What animal do they fear most?

Inan – Fade spiders

Abigail – “Do undead count?”

Liara – Blighted animals. At least Darkspawn look like their own species. It’s easy to forget they were once people before. But blighted animals remind her they used to be something else. She doesn't like encountering them.

15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?

Inan – Will definitely rehearse with Josephine if she's meeting someone important for the Inquisition.

Abigail – just says whatever comes to mind. Life's too damn short to do otherwise.

Liara – She'll often rehearse when she's nervous about an important meeting or discussing uncomfortable topics, but she gets so nervous she usually forgets what she rehearsed anyway.

16. What makes their stomach turn?

Inan – Being with her people again and encountering their stories and traditions. There is so much she's learned that the Dalish don't know, and she can't just come out and tell them about Mythal or The Dread Wolf or the vallaslin. She's certain they wouldn't believe her, that they'll think being with the humans has changed her against them, especially since she had her own vallaslin removed. She loves encountering her people, but if myths and traditions come up in regards to stuff she knows and can't say, she will legitimately get sick to her stomach and have to excuse herself.

Abigail – necromancy

Liara – Thinking about the alienage where she grew up. She will always feel like she abandoned her people, that she didn't do enough to help them. Knowing the purge happened because of her actions, that Tevinter came and took people away, that friends and family died from sickness… she will always feel that was her fault. It’s difficult for her to go back there, and she mostly avoids it.

17. Are they easily embarrassed?

Inan – no

Abigail – no

Liara – yes

18. What embarrasses them?

Abigail – hearing about stupid stuff she did while drunk.

Liara – anytime she thinks she may have made a mistake or done something wrong.

19. What is their favorite number?

pass

20. If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?

Inan – romantic love is when you want to give someone every piece of you and receive every piece of them, platonic love is when you trust someone to always be there for you and you for them, familial is when you care for and respect someone enough to associate them with familial roles.

Abigail – romantic love is when you care for someone so much you want to know how well your bodies fit together, platonic love is when you care for someone a lot but don't want to see them naked, and familial love is when you may not like the person but care for them anyway.

Liara – romantic love is when you want to spend everyday of the rest of your life with someone, platonic is when you want to spend a lot of your time with someone, familial is when you love the people you were born to.

21. Why do they get up in the morning? 

Inan – because someone's gotta save the damn world, and shit it's her.

Abigail – isn't sure some days and just rolls over and pulls the covers over her head.

Liara - Leliana

22. How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)? 

Abigail – seeing other women flirting with Fenris often has her either telling them off or stealing him away.

23. How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)? 

Inan – seeing happy couples or Dalish clans makes her wistful and sad.

Abigail – seeing older adults happy with their parents or siblings makes her a sad/angry ball of frustration and she has to leave the area.

Liara – She envies people with expensive things, can't stop admiring them, and then she feels guilty about wanting those things.

24. Is sex something that they’re comfortable speaking about? To whom? 

Inan – she will freely discuss it with whomever if the topic comes up in conversation.

Abigail -  she'll talk about it with whoever, sometimes when no one asks.

Liara – she's comfortable talking about it with Leliana, but that's it.

25. What are their thoughts on marriage? 

Inan - “Would love to get married someday, but the man I love right now is trying to destroy the world, so...”

Abigail – “Would love to, but living on the run kinda puts a damper on things like that.”

Liara – “Would love to, but I don't know how many years I have, and with Leliana's role with the Chantry… I don't want to do anything that might reflect badly on her.”

26. What is their preferred mode of transportation? 

Inan - walking

Abigail – Anything but a boat. Maker, please.

Liara – whatever is going to carry her home fastest.

27. What causes them to feel dread? 

Inan – makes some internal joke about The Dread Wolf. Laughs to herself, then bursts into tears.

Abigail – undead, boats, and uncle Gamlen

Liara – darkspawn and demons

28. Would they prefer a lie over an unpleasant truth? 

Inan – “Always tell me the truth no matter how terrible. Always.”

Abigail – “I prefer the truth but sometimes… never tell me the odds. Just lie to me.”

Liara – “I'd rather my friends and family be honest.”

29. Do they usually live up to their own ideals? 

Inan – “I did let Celene die so I could Briala in charge. That was… well…”

Abigail – “You know… I think I did okay.”

Liara – “I did let Morrigan talk me into a ritual of questionable circumstances…”

30. Who do they most regret meeting? 

Inan – No one.

Abigail – “Well Bartrand and his expedition was a huge mistake. But where would I be if that hadn't happened? And Quentin – well, I had to find him to kill him, so… If I had never met Anders… I don't know… pick your poison, I guess.” 

Liara – “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if Vaughan hadn't shown up at our wedding. But then I never would have met Leliana, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me, so...”

31. Who are they the most glad to have met? 

Inan - Solas

Abigail - Fenris

Liara - Leliana

32. Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke? 

Inan – Throws in a story about some Dalish tradition that still holds meaning for her or someplace she's traveled.

Abigail – She's listened to some of the stories Varric tells about her. She usually uses one of those if she needs an ice breaker.

Liara - “A human walks to a tavern, and there's an elf there. And she says, 'I don't…' Well, I don't know how the rest of it goes. Oghren was too drunk to tell me, but I keep hoping I'll tell it and someone will know the rest.”

33. Could they be considered lazy? 

Inan – *glares*

Abigail – “Say that a little closer so I can punch you in the face.”

Liara – “I killed the archdemon. What more do you want from me?”

34. How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt? 

Inan – she's usually able to shake it off, doesn't stop it from coming around again though.

Abigail – orders herself a dink or two, maybe three

Liara – usually needs Leliana to talk her out of it.

35. What do they feel guilty about and/or biggest regret? 

Inan – not being able to return to her clan as the person she once was.

Abigail – not being able to save her mother

Liara – not being able to do more for her alienage

36. How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive? 

They are all usually very supportive, but they all have that one friend...

Inan – She's apprehensive whenever Sera comes to her excited about something but is usually supportive.

Abigail – She will never trust anything Anders comes to her for ever again. She’s always uncertain whenever Isabela comes to her.

Liara – Ogrhen always concerns her, but she tries to support him.

37. Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap? 

Inan – Mix of both. She makes her feelings known upfront, then allows the other person time and space to respond.

Abigail – She is pretty obvious in her advances and is not afraid to make them multiple times.

Liara – Literally had to wait for Leliana to confess her feelings before she so much as hinted about hers because she didn't think finding romance for herself was possible.

38. Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)? 

Inan – puts it to a Dalish song

Abigail – she asks Fenris. He's better at that sort of stuff.

Liara – writes it down and tries not to lose the paper.

39. What memory do they revisit the most often? 

Inan – She likes to think of the early Inquisition pre dragon attack. Things were simpler back then.

Abigail – A lot of memories are painful for her. She doesn't like to dwell. If she does think of the past, she thinks of time spent with Fenris or Bethany since they're still alive.

Liara – She likes to pull out her memories of the alienage. Not that it was always a happy place, but it was good enough to her and there were people who she cared about. Thinking back on it makes her feel like she's honoring the memory of what it once was and the people who were lost.

40. How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people?

Inan – as easy as it is for her to forgive them.

Abigail – Depends on how much she likes the person.

Liara – usually makes a point specifically of ignoring other people's flaws.

41. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?

Inan – sometimes when she's stressed, she gets snappy. She normally doesn't realize it until she offends someone, at which point she apologizes and goes find something to calm herself down.

Abigail – *flips two fingers*

Liara – Over sensitive. Second guesses herself a lot. Leliana has helped with that, though.

42. How do they feel about children? 

Inan – she loves children, and would love to have some someday or at least have some she's in charge of caring for.

Abigail – Part of her would love to have children. The other is terrified of having something else to lose.

Liara – Even if she could find a cure for the blight, she isn’t sure she wants them.

43. How badly do they want to reach their end goal? 

Inan – “Pretty damn fucking badly! What kind of question is that?!”

Abigail – “I'd just like to not have to deal with everyone's shit anymore and not have to worry about losing the people I care about. But how likely does that sound?” *Smiles through all of it*

Liara – “I want something I might not ever have, so I try not to think about it. Does that change how badly I want it?”

44. If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so? 

Inan - “I like men.”

Abigail - “Hmm. It would be easier if you suggest things, and then I'll tell you yes, no, or maybe.”

Liara - “I like women, and sometimes I like sex?” *shrugs*

45. What are their thoughts on religion? (I added this one) 

Inan – After Trespasser, she doesn't even know anymore. She's given up on the elven gods entirely and has replaced some of her oaths with Andraste-isms, such as “Maker!” instead of “Creators!” but she's not sure she believes in anything right now.

Abigail – She thinks she believes in the Maker or tries to. She doesn't believe in the Chantry's interpretation of the Maker. It's never sat right to her that the Chantry believed her sister had to be locked away. She will go to service sometimes though with Fenris if he asks.

Liara – she believes in Leliana and by extension supports her beliefs.

46. What are their thoughts on alcohol? What kind of drink do they like? Do they drink with friends or alone? What kind of drunk are they? (I added this one too)

Inan – Before the Inquisition, she only drank Dalish wines, which are floral based and consumed during celebrations. While with the Inquisition, she mostly drinks with her companions but would sometimes get a glass by herself just to relax. She still likes floral wines, but will try whatever Dorian recommends for her. She's developed a liking for a few signature Teventer wines.

Abigail – She goes lighter when she's out with friends as she's looking to have a good time and wants to remember it and not make a fool of herself. Alone though, she drinks whatever is strong enough to have an effect, usually because she's upset about something. She prefers hard liquors or ales.

She and Fenris will have casual drinks together, and sometimes they will get drunk with each other for the fun of it. They have discovered they cannot drink together when they are both upset. That ends very, very badly. So, they've made a pact not to do that. If one of them is drinking because they're upset, the other has to stay sober and make sure they don't do something stupid.

Liara – She sips whatever Leliana or another friend orders, then makes a note of the things she likes. Usually sweet things. She only drinks if she has someone to do with it. She doesn't really care for the effect, so she'll drink what she likes the taste of and stop when she starts feeling floaty.

47. Any scars or tattoos? (added)

Inan – Has a scar over her right eyebrow. It's not a very glorious tale. She was exploring the woods one day, tripped, and smacked her head on a rock hard enough to split the skin open.

Abigail – Has taken up getting tattoos for her family members. (I haven't decided what all of them are) She has something for her father, mother, Carver, and Bethany. She got something for Fenris too. She's debated about getting one for Gamlen but isn't sure what she'd choose for him or even if she wants to make that commitment. But she does throw the thought around.

Liara – Has various scars all over her hands and a few on her arms from dropping her knives repeatedly. Leliana likes to trace them with her fingertips.