#(and having a mixed race kid be abused since childhood then made into a villain worse than his parents by narrative framing...

[void-tiger]

AU where Dyak’s and Lotor’s relationship is actually developed. And although she’s still a Stern Space!McGonagal or Space!MaryPoppins, she doesn’t use that frikkin riding crop while teaching basic history, and actually learns how to be tender.

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What do you guys think about the names Dustin and Darcy for my protagonists in Let's Go?

Cos i really wanted to play the co op mode thing by myself, just so i can pretend this role in the plot is filled by two siblings and have a bit of fun roleplaying that. But i dunno yet how the co-op works and whether you'd be able to customize the avatar of the second player or if its just the default trainer? Or can you only play co-op if you have two separate games? Im planning to buy the other version anyway once i get more money, so it could be fun to play my first version with sibling one and then the second playthru is sibling two's turn to shine!

Oh and the whole reason i wanted to do this is cos i wanna try out the customization features to make some ocs now that there's no competitive online stuff unless you pay a subscription fee (LOL NO THANKS). Like..i always felt like i HAD to make my character me in xy/sumo/usum, otherwise its like lying online? But of course i cant actually make me because theres no nonbinary option or even remotely ambiguous outfits for either gender. And you cant have wild hair colours while i dye my hair 24/7 irl lol. Its silly cos like 95% of the gym leaders and other characters ingame have anime hair colours yet the player has to be normal? So yeah i cpuldnt really enjoy making this innacurate defanged version of myself yet i didnt feel like i was allowed to just make up a new character either. Closest i could do was give myself white hair like my old trainersona when i was 12, lol. I mean i guess thats my 'real hair colour' underneath the dye right now, if you think about it that way?

OH GOD PIKACHU CAN HAVE A LITTLE TUXEDO AND BOWLER HAT HOLY FUCK IM SORRY TO INTERRUPT THIS BUT I WAS WATCHING THE IGN REVIEW AND THEY SHOWED PIKA BOWLER HAT PLEASE GO GOOGLE THAT VIDEO JUST FOR THAT 1 SECOND OF NEW FOOTAGE OF MY BEAUTIFUL CLASSY BOYE

okay where was i

Yeah! I think sibling trainers could be a good and unique way to handle a rival! Like having them be your sibling already establishes that rivalry. But it can be a soft and nice rivalry! I wanna go with that fun version rather than the full on angry exaggerated sibling rivalries you often see in kids media. Like i know that some people legit dont get on with their siblings and some people can even have a very gary esque full on rivalry thats sorta 'love to hate' or like..tsundere pretending you hate them. But personally i never had experience with that, i can never relate to those 'tfw u hate ur sibling and theyre always an asshole but lolll u love them anyway' posts. I only got to live with my little sister for a little while due to the catastrophe of abusive parenthood that was my childhood, and i lost contact with her forever when she was very young so i doubt she'd even remember me. *sigh* But like i don't think i only love her so much because i miss her! People say newborns and toddlers are the most bratty so like you'd think if i was gonna ever find her 'annoying' i would have done it back then. I was always just mega proud of her and whenever she'd be 'bratty' i'd be cheering her on and trying to protect her from mom. And when she'd try and pull pranks on me or practise play-fighting or whatever i was just like 'lol thats legit funny' and taking play-falls so she felt better about herself. Like we didnt have much power in that household so i felt like encouraging her pretending to be a wrestler would help her feel like she had some sort of control in some part of her life i guess? And just i wished i was allowed to roughhouse and run around and be all 'unladylike' and just enjoy BEING A KID when i was a kid, yknow? I always had legit fun being with her and legit enjoyed it and was legit proud and legit never annoyed. I just dont understand 'yeah she's annoying but i love her anyway'. I was only ever her rival as a play-rival to help encourage her to like.. Enjoy the things she enjoyed. Feel like someone else cared. I only ever acted like 'ha ha baby stuff yeah sure i hate hanging out with my sister" cos i thought i was SUPPOSED TO. I always felt so guilty doing it and so dissappointed cos id rather hang out with her than be a boring stereotypical teen tbh. I dunno, maybe this isnt typical for siblings and its just a sign of how badly we were raised? I was just real fuckin lonely and absolutely loved having a family member who loved me for the first time since my grandma died. Same reason i always used to act all 'i am too cool i totally am not soft for my lil sister' around my lil sister's dad. I really wanted him to love me too! I used to say swear words at him cos i thougjt he would thibk i was Cool And Adult?? I have soooo many cringe moments from that phase of my childhood. Man it hurts to think that i never actually did get to become that positive influence that protected my sister from my mum and let her know she was loved. Cos i was sent to live with my dad when she was like 5ish? And never saw her again and now im too scared to try and reach out to her again because 1: she probably doesnt even remember me, 2: theres a chance she believes my mum saying i was some horrible asshole who abandoned the family, 3: even bigger chance that contacting her could mean my mum finding me again and big fuckin risk of further abuse. Plus the awkwardness of introducing my trans self when she'd remember me as her sister and all. Sigh! All i can do is hope that her cool dad eventually got custody of her, and that he didnt turn out to be a secret bastard like when i met my own dad. He seemed good, but then again i was just a lil kid and my dad seemed good at first. Sighhhhhh...

SO UMM YEAH WOW I MADE MYSELF SAD

Anyway the point is that whenever i write siblings i'd rather write 100% unapologetic super loving love cos its wish fullfillment for me. This is also why in/cest shipping is a massive beserk button for me, good wholesome family relationships are REAL FUCKIN IMPORTANT and how DARE you corrupt that shit! Some people would fuckin KILL to have that wholesome family!!

Anyway lol thats why i'd like a Wholesome Rivalry for these sibling ocs! Like they challenge each other to contests along the way just for fun, and they react all 'wow my sis is the BEST' when you beat them, so hard feelings at all. And you dont JUST do rival stuff but also sometimes just hang out and have fun cos you missed each other. And if anyone threatens your sibling then THAT is the only time you see the Serious Sibling Power! Rival moments: ha ha lol bet ya cant beat me ooo im a scary villain LOL I CANT KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE HAHA! Giovanni punches your brother: *stony cold death glare from hell as tricksy prank sis turns into an unstoppable vengeance engine* Oh, but also the only other time they'd be serious is in their final battle together! Like most of the 'rivalry' is just competing to make the adventure fun and to help each other get stronger. But if sis/bro ever actually legit said they really want to fight to find out who's the best, and its like..important to help their self confidence, then i think bro/sis would respect that and go all out. Taking a fall and letting them win would be the most disrespectful thing of all! Oh, but i do think there would be one kind of battle like that during the story? Like in one of the more low stakes faux-rival fights the sibling actually does try and let you win, and the challenge is to try and lose against all odds. High stakes super failure battle!!! Imagine the evil team in the background like 'wtf' as these two run the most aggressively slow race of all time! XD

Oh and i kinda thought about different personalities for the two of them based on who you pick? Like i did like that aspect about brendan/may in RSE compared to other 'unpicked option becomes rival' characters in later games that didnt even have one personality let alone two. It just sucks that the personalities they decided to give them were 'female rival is super self concious and thinks youre better than her because youre a boy' and 'male rival is super ego and thinks he's better than you because he's a boy'. Boooo!

So instead of that the personalities i was thinking for these two would be less sexist lol. Male sibling Dustin is basically Wally so far? I need to develop him a bit more to make him a bit distinct, i mean its not like every single shy dude is identical. I'm thinking maybe mix him with all the wasted potential in Brendan? Like in the game they slightly hint at him having the ONE non stereotypical trait of liking cute teddy bears, and that made me think about how much better his whole plot would have been if it actually criticized his sexism and said that he only behaves that way cos he's overcompensating for being bullied for being 'feminine', yknow? And then in the manga they actually DO write him as super feminine, and even as a contest star who loves fashion and dressing up his pokemon! But then GAHHH they present it as some sort of fuckin 'character flaw', like he's shown to be selfish and superficial because of it. And the backstory is that him and the female protagonist used to be 'normal' until a traumatic event. Brendan was a Natural Fighting Prodigy until he saved his female friend from a wild pokemon and was so traumatized that he never wanted to fight again, while she wanted to learn to fight so she'd never need to be protected again. But this is not only presented as Wrong Ways To Be Gender but also like.. Fighting their natural instinct which still comes through?? Like male protag hasnt fought in YEARS yet whenever he's forced to fight he's just magically better at it than female protag who's been practising all these years to become his equal. Ha ha silly girl you can never achieve that! All you get is this patronizing 'well if you just tryyyyy girly things im sure you'll like it' plot and then you get rescued by him in the end because OF COURSE you do. Sigh! I cant believe they made me hate that pairing even more than the games did! So yeah i dont really wanna write Dustin as a jerkass who's secretly got synpathetic motives of internalized homophobia/sexism, cos i feel thats a plot very specific to my perceptuons of Brendan and id basically just have to make Dustin a clone of him and he wouldnt be able to shine on his own merits. Instead i'm just thinking of writing him as a 100% sensitive soul, and he still faces predjudice for not being that bigoted idea of an 'ideal man' but really the fact he doesnt bow down to their demands proves that he's the bravest person here.

And then I'm thinking maybe the female sibling Darcy is the older one and is a bit "gary ish"? Like eitjer way you still have a friendly and loving siblingness, but she's a bit more of a sass who is tsundere about admitting she loves her bro. But i dont think she's the cold or grumpy sort of tsundere, more like a trickstery tomboy? Bombastic loki jock sis! She can only be a bit abrasive with her bro cos she wants to teach him to be tough even when she's not there to protect him. But sometimes she can mess it up and make him feel like he has to change his personality in order to be tough, rather than letting him know she supports him in being "unmasculine" and just wants to help him find the confidence to stand up to people who bully him for it. Like she feels like she is 'weaker' than him in the sense that she worries too much about what people will think if she expresses her real emotions, yknow? Like theyre both suffering from toxic masculinity! He's suffering from the standard form where men who are too 'soft' are beaten down into that mould. Ans she's suffering from the problem where 'masculine' girls feel like they have to be '100% masculine' in order to be allowed to be themselves at all. Like back when i was a kid and before i came out as trans i always used to try and pretend to like sports ans like..cliche macho shit where you Cant Admit You Care About Your Friends and also i wasnt allowed to like ANY feminine things at all. I had to either follow the stereotype of femininity entirely or follow the opposite stereotype, i wasnt allowed to just reject stereotypes and like what i actually like. So yeah me realizing i wasnt really a girl has led to me embracing more 'girly' things than back when i thought i was one! So i think Darcy would have a similar arc but like..the cis equivelant? Just finds people who arent such judgmental pricks and stops having to conform to either of those stereotypes in order to keep fake friends who dont really give a shit about her. She can have a plot about both forced feminine and masculine stereotypes being equally limiting, rather than that shitty 'being masculine is a prison uwu every woman will be happier embracing her love of makeup' shit. That dominant narrative just made me feel like i was somehow wrong about myself whenever i didnt like 100% Of Sports All The Time, i must be somehow girly if i liked even ONE girly thing yet i needed hundreds of proofs if i wanted to be masculine. And like i wasnt just allowed to be neither! I wasnt allowed to like parts of both! I wasnt allowed to BE GODDAMN TRANS!!! So yeah i dunno if i'd go whole hog and make this character a trans man or a nonbinary person tho? I think she's just actually a cis girl who happens to be sporty and brash and likes a lot of 'masculine' fashion and hobbies. And she's just been made to feel self concious about it, as if she cant possibly REALLY be that unless she likes Every Single Boy Thing and wins at Every Single Challenge. Does anyone else remember that shit too? The girls have to win Every sports game against the boys in order to be 'one of the boys' but if you lose even one of them it somehow proves that you're inferior. Even though the boys lost 50 billion games to you and that doesnt prove theyre inferior! Like man she has sooooo many 'gary rivals' in her school life, thats why she loves going on this adventure with a kind brother rival who actually respects her! So her resolution would just be her staying the same but being more confident about it and saying fuk u to those fake friends. Same as her brother's plot, just they both face different specifics to the way this sexism affects them, yknow?

Oh but yeah when i did finally learn about LGBT stuff and realize i was trans it was Big Amazing cos even in the rare stories about Its Okay To Be Yourself it still left me feeling weirdly empty when the girl decides that yes she does wanna be a girl in the end. So i get that these plots might come off as queerbaiting if i write them badly? I need to make sure to make it clear that these characters 100% want to be seen as this gender and its just other people being fuckfaces and trying to define what their gender has to mean. I think maybe i'll try and mitigate this potential misunderstanding by adding different sorts of lgbt content. And, well, also cos i just want lgbt content in all of my stories because i am lgbt, of course! I'm 100% sure that Darcy is gay, and i think also maybe possibly Dustin is trans? Like, his plot is about being mocked for being a 'feminine' boy, but its also even more personal for him because he's a trans boy and he feels like he needs to change his personality in order to pass/he isnt really real because his personality doesnt fit the stereotypical image of a man. Like if you'd looked at the two of them back when they were identical twins, you probably would have expected Darcy to end up being trans if you were the sort of person who believes those basic ass stereotypes about 'boys who play with barbies and girls who play with trucks'. Or i mean maybe its the other way around and Darcy is a trans girl who still has a 'masculine' personality according to stereotypes? Or even both of them are trans and both face being told that they arent real because they dont fit the perfect stereotype of a trans person according to cis perceptions? Or maybe i'm overcomplicating things with all of this and it'd just muddy the message i guess. I might just keep it to them both being cis but also both of them like girls. And i can always apply my trans and other LGBT headcanons to other characters along their adventure.

Anyway LOL im rambling too much!

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NOW FOR THOUGHTS AND THINGS

* I don’t think the entire zodiac would work out well, so is there any other sort of thematic personality quiz or superstition that has closer to four or five options? Or I mean would people not mind if I said 'here is zodiac kingdom, but we’re only gonna romance four or five of them’? I mean just rationally it would take way too long to make a game with twelve love interests that each have a plotline in the real world and the magical world. Oh! Maybe it could be like.. aren’t there those ways to categorize zodiacs?? Like... uhh.. ‘muteable and immuteable signs’? or Something? or maybe just group it by seasons? Maybe its something like the seasons are all continents in the mirror world, so this game could just take place on one of them. And it leaves it very open for fanworks, yknow!

* Also, hmm, western or eastern zodiac? I mean it’d be easier to assign traditional fantasy races to animal signs, probably, but I don’t know many games that’ve used the western signs as a theme. But then again I really wanna do a kingdom of bunny people! Ehh maybe I could make that Libra cos that;s my sign. Or hmm excuses excuses well bunnies have good balance XD

* Possibly that star mermaid design I made up could work here? Tho I also like the idea of using it in one of my other plots.

* Maybe the ability to remember both worlds is an inherited trait of the royal family, and the whole reason they’re given the role of royal family in the first place. Like, they act as oracles and tell people about their real world selves, and try and predict conflicts in the fantasy kingdom based on stuff that’s happening in real life. So your country could be suffering from a lack of power after their last queen lost her ability to travel between worlds, and they’ve only been able to keep the economy steady because of her cool clockwork robot inventions. So there’s extra pressure on you being a great princess now that you’ve awakened to your power!

* Not sure whether I should keep that idea from my dream of the protagonist having multiple appearance options that give her different elemental boosts. Cos I mean you’d assume that each standard fantasy kingdom place embodies a different element, right? So would that mean you’d be princess of a different kingdom each time? Cos that’d be even harder to write all the dialogue for than writing 24 love interests... or is it gonna be like there’s four neighbouring kingdoms for the standard four elements and then all your selectable options are a bunch of more unusual elements that’d become the fifth one? like you decide if this world has element of steel or element of thunder or element of cake... OR maybe just the kingdoms aren’t limited to one element, and everyone just has their own individual element tied to personality instead of nation. That;d be cool cos there could be more variety in the npcs! Like fire and ice and water bunny folks!

* Though it could actually be really interesting if the protagonist country could change. Like maybe depending on what you pick, one of the love interests would be your sibling instead? O_O Could be cool to have a secret platonic sibs route for everyone!

* One simple idea for the prince/princess dynamic: everyone says get married to this dude, you end up smooching his sister instead, everyone shrugs and the two kingdoms get united anyway. Woo!

* Other possibly more conflict-y ideas tho: Love interest gal isn’t a princess, but just the butler or bodyguard that came to escort the prince. Love interest is a lower class commoner who just works in the prince’s kitchen, you fall in love over mutual love of fancy cakes~ Love interest is a robin hood esque adventurer who rescues the prince from bandits, now you have to compete against princey cos he fell in love with her too!

* Actually, could be interesting to think about the prince’s role in each of these routes, cos it’d get boring quick if he was always like a Gaston guy who wants you to marry him and gets villain-y if you refuse. Maybe for the butler lady, the prince is like her childhood friend who super supports her dating you? And he’s totally ace as hell and pretty much dies of happiness when you say you don’t want to marry him. Damn social obligations, amirite? It could be funny if he looks like your cliche stoic asshole smug guy for like.. a total of five seconds, before he realizes you’re not interested in him. “Oh phew, its exhausting to keep that up! And for some reason people STILL want to date me!” And I dunno, maybe for cake lady, the prince is her friend and he’s like a nerdy studyman who wants to revamp the political structure of his country and close the gap between the upper and lower class. So he actually DOES want to marry you, even though he’s equally uninterested. He’s struggling with kind of anti hero status here, cos he feels like he has to follow his parents’s dumb rules in order to ascend to the throne, before he can actually change things. And its like ‘but do the ends justify the means?’ when the means are pressuring someone into a loveless marriage and the both of you being unhappy forever. Though this kinda makes him a bigger focus of the route than cake lady, I don’t have any plot for her yet and I’m not sure what would thematically interlink with this plot and give her a starring role...

* Oh, and maybe there’s two princes that actually have a crush on each other, and you can help them get together?

* And then i had an idea maybe for the bunny people kingdom, where the batchelorette there has a bratty little brother who’s always getting in the way of the romance. And he’s the prince, but it’s like Blatantly Clear To Everyone that there’s been a mix up, you arrive there for your arranged marriage and the guy is like.. eight. No. Non. Nein. Nicht. Nope. But then he’s like Sibling Tsundere, and he’s only being bratty to you cos he can tell you have a crush on his sister and he wants to test if you’re trustworthy. And he can be a cute lil sweetheart once you win him over, and he helps convince the Council Of Vague Ominous Advisor Dudes to let the two of you hook up as super double bunny queens of joy and wonder~!

* Oh and i actually had an idea of how this one could tie in with the real world! Cos maybe the princess is a shy girl in the same class as you in school, who takes care of the class pet bunny. And Because Why Not, maybe she has the same backstory as me and she ran away from abusive parents and is spending the last year or so of high school living alone and struggling to make ends meet. And that bunny is the closest thing she has left to a family, and she’s really depressed about how she’s been the lil guy’s best friend for all these years and now she’ll never see him again once her last year is over. And like.. already she’s not able to see him as much, since he’s meant to be a pet for the younger kids and she’s only allowed to keep looking after him cos she’s in the biology club. But now cos her life situation is so awkward she’s super exhausted juggling schoolwork and jobs to make ends meet, and she might not be able to stay in the club too. Plus the rabbit’s getting kinda old now, and he’s been really sick, and it’s just REALLY SCARY for her... So then you end up finding out that she doesn’t actually have a brother, and her brother in the other world is actually that pet rabbit, because he loved her just that much! And you can tell her this and she’ll have a good old happy cry, cos she was always worried that maybe the rabbit didn’t need her after all, and wouldn’t miss her when she’s gone, cos he’s always been a tsundere little prankster in both worlds. Though that just makes the whole thing even sadder cos now we know BOTH of them are gonna be hella depressed when this school year ends... And then maybe in her ending the two of you move in together after you start going out, and things are a little easier with two of you working, and with her getting some support from your family and stuff. And maybe the teachers decide to retire the class bunny cos he’s getting so old, and they take him to a pet adoption shelter but make sure to mention the nice girl who took such great care of him and give her a great reccommendation if she wants to adopt him! And like if you got high enough stats and stuff you get the double good ending where the two of you are able to succeed enough at your jobs that you can afford to keep a pet. Or I dunno, maybe through Power Of Love Magic or something he could get the power to turn into a human in the real world too? Either way the whole family can be together ^_^