#1) splits off and forms an alternate universe

[bedlamsbard]

there’s a specific time travel trope that I hate, but I always forget that I hate it because I don’t read that much time travel where that trope happens, so then I read it and I get to the end and I remember I hate it. anyway that’s why you’ll never see me use “we have changed the past and it has changed the present/future” in my time travel stories. (the characters themselves obviously don’t know that I hate this and won’t use it, so they’ll always consider it as a factor because it’s the one every knows.)

[shakingparadigm]

Not only Till and Ivan, but it seems like Luka parallels with almost every ALNST character in different ways. I mean, I think this applies to everyone in how they parallel each other in some form, but I find it interesting that Luka’s character in particular seems to have adopted/inherited specific traits from nearly every character. I say nearly because Mizi seems to be the only exception, but maybe if I squint a bit harder I’ll find something they can relate with. For now nothing comes to mind lol.

Luka and…

Sua: Similar in demeanor, appearance, and in their mysterious narrative role. Both have a strange ethereal “vibe”, wear empty doll-like expressions, are dressed up like dolls with white frilly clothing adorned with a bow, their owners objectify and present them to the universe to be leered and gawked at, their birthdays are one day apart, and they both covered each other’s songs despite having no known direct relation to each other.

Till: Similar in background, talent, and onstage presence. Both artistic geniuses, overwhelm their opponents on stage, and are physically abused and exploited for their skills by their segyeins.

Ivan: Similar in personality, execution, and reputation. Both are seen as perfect “princes” in their respective audiences, calm and consistent, smart/calculating, psychologically twisted, and put on a mature charismatic facade around others.

Hyuna: Similar in their motivations. Both share the same rooted desire for freedom and control over their own life and gain a sense of catharsis in finding that autonomy/independence on the stage.

Luka’s character seems to have no real sense of identity. So, in a way, it’s as if his entire identity is built off of every other character despite being the most alienated (ba dum tss) of them all. He’s a blank canvas who’s been painted in the other characters’ colors. Actually, everyone was originally a blank canvas. Sua is the stemming point who’s painted everyone in color, then everyone painted Luka in their respective colors. The author has stated that every ALNST character originated from Sua. In contrast, it seems like Luka was originated from everyone else.

This is a fantastic observation, anon! I agree! I find that Luka is a rather omnipresent character, almost to the likes of Sua but not quite. This might not make as much sense, but I feel Hyuna is on this level as well.

(Long post ahead! Sorry, I ended up rambling and maybe going off-topic...)

Something that has always intrigued me is that Hyuna and Luka are set apart from the rest of the cast. Unlike the main 4, who's story is rapidly unfolding in the present, Hyuna and Luka's inciting incident has already passed. What they're doing now is dealing with the aftermath and attempting to lay their demons to rest (for Hyuna, at least). Bits and pieces of these two can be found within the main 4, and several comparisons can be made (and often they are made canonically, whether it be implied in the content or directly stated by Q and V).

Mentally, I've always split the main 6 in half. Hyuna with Mizi and Till, Luka with Sua and Ivan. The reasons are obvious, of course.

Luka, Sua and Ivan make up what is essentially the perfection trifecta. Dressed in pure white (eventually, for Ivan), charismatic personas, camera-ready marketing stars. An important part of how they cope with expectations and lack of control is by separating themselves into the persona they put on for the audience and the person they actually are. They're passive and obedient, playing along with whatever the segyein want them to do, top students at anakt (Luka was number 1 during his time, while Sua and Ivan often alternate between 1st and 2nd place, essentially a tie in a way), and often perform to perfection. However, Sua and Ivan still retain a part of themselves that is theirs and no one else's. It's obvious in the way they allow themselves to indulge in certain things, the way Ivan makes room for personal time and how Sua refuses to disclose more information than absolutely necessary, protective of her privacy. While Luka gives himself to the audience completely, it's safe to assume that he's doing it out of necessity and not exactly by will (is there an identity behind the success? what is he if not a winner?). There are the sides of them that will happily present themselves in front of a camera, and the sides of them that are cynical and scornful of the life they were forced into. For the most part, they act logically. The obedient pet act ensures their safety and although it is excruciating, they've weighed their options and decided that this is the best way to take advantage of their circumstances. Smart, well-behaved and proper pets.

I like to call the trio of Hyuna, Mizi and Till the rebels because that's essentially what they are (at least eventually). As the other half, they're meant to be the opposite of what is considered "perfect". It's established that Luka, Sua and Ivan are careful and calculated when presenting themselves to an audience, putting forward only their best and hiding their true imperfect selves under this mask. Hyuna, Mizi and Till however are largely characterized by their authenticity, their genuine display of self. When they perform, there is no mask. They offer themselves fully on stage and present their genuine emotions, whether or not it's palatable enough for the audience to take. Their actions are less calculated and moreso driven by the heart, for better or for worse. Mizi and Till are openly dejected and upset in their respective second rounds, while a more careful pet like Ivan would attempt to hide their true feelings and put on a brave face (which he does during the beginning of his part in ROUND 6). Hyuna's rescue of Mizi leans less towards logical reasoning and more towards her own emotions, her personal need for self-consolation. There's also the rebellion factor, Hyuna is a literal rebel, Mizi becomes a rebel and Till is described as a rebel. Unlike their counterparts, they are able to act more freely and don't carry the same heavy sense of responsibility that the others do. They are themselves unabashedly, either because they fought tooth and nail for it (Hyuna & Till) or because they were raised in an environment where they never had to (Mizi).

You've already done a great job at pointing out the parallels between Luka, Sua and Ivan. To further add onto your points, it's commonly believed that Luka so easily and uncannily mimicked Sua in ROUND 5 because of the fact that he was already so similar to her. It's also directly stated in Luka's character design logs that Luka and Ivan's characters were incredibly similar, with the only difference being the personality of the mask that they put on (calm and doll-like for Luka, cool and cheerful for Ivan).

Hyuna can be seen within Mizi and Till as well. The fact that Hyuna sees herself in Mizi is the main reason as to why she saves her in the first place. Once full of joy and blind optimism, innocence shattered at the loss of a loved one. Till bears resemblance to Hyuna as well, both physically (their eyeshapes are strikingly similar, and Hyuna's eyecolor, brighter as a child, is quite close to Till's teal during specific moments), personality-wise (rebellious, fighting for freedom) and in terms of singing style (Hyuna was originally described to be "rock-and-roll", both perform with strong, loud and energetic voices).

Luka's similarity with Till is a special instance. I've said this before (and you've already brought it up), but I believe they're both essentially two very different people who were put into very similar circumstances. Till is overflowing with emotion and a desire to protect his individuality, bearing "quirks equivalent to 10 people" as Ivan says. Luka, on the other hand, seems to have a rather fragile identity. We don't know anything about him besides the fact that he was created to be a winner, trained and conditioned under extremely brutal means. The only times we see him exhibit any semblance of free will and desire is when he's vying for Hyuna's attention or exerting control over others. While Till and Luka are different fundamentally, they're both put through abusive training and experimentation in order to fulfill the goals of their power-hungry guardians. Unrivaled talent at a steep price.

It's interesting how even Hyuna, who was created to be Luka's exact opposite, is able to parallel him in a certain way. Thank you for pointing that out! As their lives are constantly dictated by their owners, the stage is their only escape, a playground of sorts where they finally have the opportunity to control their circumstances. The difference is that while Heperu is overly-invested in and nearly obssessed with Luka's victory, Phan does not care for Hyuna at all. In fact, Phan does not particularly care for ALNST in general, only participating as a sponsor. They care so little that they couldn't even be bothered to watch the show. As Phan lacks any investment in ALNST, Hyuna's life is much less restrictive and ruthless than Luka's. Hyuna loves performing because it allows her to feel free, a form of self-expression that liberates her from the monotony of segyein routine and allows her to feel like her life is hers. While Luka is essentially the same, his means are much more intense. His life is managed right down to the minute, basically a puppet on a string. Since every other aspect of his autonomy has been taken from his control, the stage is genuinely all he has. Unlike Hyuna, who has a strong personality and set of beliefs, Luka does not have much to express. Instead, he finds his identity and sense of control in dominating others, exerting force and pressure onto his opponents. This can be seen in ROUND 5, where his performance is the least emotionally charged and instead calculated to intimidate and provoke his opponent, Mizi. Hyuna's love of the stage stems from the fact that she is brimming with emotion and energy that she wants to express, parts of her that feel restricted by the way her life is led by aliens. Luka performs to dominate, to assert himself as the most powerful force in the arena, which is a privilege he will never get to have outside of it. Both Hyuna and Luka find their strongest sense of self on stage, however the ways in which they go about it are very different in nature.

I'd like to genuinely thank you for this ask, you make a lot of good points and I find the idea of Luka being a canvas "painted" by everyone else very interesting! While I agree with that idea in terms of his character conception, within the story I find him less affected by others and more as if he's the one affecting them. Just as Sua changed the trajectory of Mizi's life, Hyuna would not be where she is today if not for Luka.

[steddieunderdogfics]

A very sweet friends to lovers fic all mixed up in a howl's moving castle au, recommended for the theme weekend 💜

https://archiveofourown.org/works/52643542

The Boy Who Swollowed a Star by hititlikehammers

@hitlikehammers

Rating: Mature

9,951 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: No Warnings

Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Alternate Universe - Wizards, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Eddie as Howl/The Wizard Munson, Steve as Sophie, (kinda), Robin as Calcifer, Dustin as Markl, Platonic Soulmates Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, But What If Eddie Ate A Lost Spark-Of-Life To Save A Stranger, And Lost His Heart In The Process, And What If That Stranger Then Became His Best Friend and They Were In Love, But One Lost Their Spark and The Other Lost Their Heart, And Probably Robin the Very Powerful Fire Demon Was The Key To Fixing All of It, What THEN?!?, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Wizard!Eddie Sometimes Assumes a Bat-form So There's Also That, Hurt/Comfort, So Desperately Fluffy Though, Happy Ending

Summary:

The Wizard Munson is supposed to inspire fear and awe. A trickster, a devil, a power unmatched. Blah blah blah; Steve only sees the gangly boy who almost fell off the roof of the Harrington’s tailoring shop, trying and failing to be stealthy and mysterious when Steve was not yet ten—so where whispers follow down alleyways about the dreaded terrors of the Wizard? Steve really just sees the goofball. His Eddie. “Come with me, Stevie,” Eddie doesn’t even pause for pleading, dives right in and begs him as if Steve needs convincing; "if nothing else, come with me so I know you’re safe, so I can do what needs doing without splitting half of me always just worrying. Save me from scrying out endlessly, to make sure you’re okay.” Steve’s heart thumps painful, pathetic: pure and unvarnished in a way he thinks is only possible when Eddie’s nearby. Only possible for Eddie, at all. Which means the answer’s wholly obvious—the war’s getting worse, this is his Eddie—only one response was ever really on the table: “Alright.” --- A Howl's Moving Castle Fusion/AU

Thanks for the rec!

This rec is a part of Theme Weekend. The theme this weekend is Friends to Lovers.

Know a fic that deserves extra love? Submit through our asks or the submission box!

[emeraldspiral]

Headcanon:

Since Zib can't be the true "Number 1 Zim" because he isn't a Zim at all but a Dib, that makes Number 2 the actual Number 1 Zim. Following this idea, I theorize that where Zib is the only Dib to have defeated his Zim, Number 2 is the only Zim to have defeated his Dib and conquered earth.

This gives them a unique connection because they're the only versions of each other who can relate to one another's complicated feelings of regret and longing for the past. Zib couldn't handle destroying the only person who understood him and gave him a purpose, only for no one to care, so he merged with Zim's PAK as the only way to be with him again. Number 2 went through the same thing, destroying his Dib for the Empire only to learn the Tallest never cared about his mission. But since there was no way for him to get his Dib back, he coped by joined Zib willingly to get revenge on the Irken Empire, and was the only one to know the truth about "Number 1".

If you're wondering how Number 2 can be unique as the only successful Zim when there's another Zim who won in an earlier comic, well...

At the end of that comic, Zim claimed that defeating himself in the future somehow undid the past, although Dib pointed out that made no sense. But in the Zimvoid, following another train of non-logic, Zim erased every alternate version of himself by feeding them packing peanuts to merge their timelines, which both Dib and Zib point out makes no sense. But since the latter ended up working out due to Rule of Funny, I'm inclined to think the former did as well. Except it actually does hold up to logical scrutiny when you think about it, just not for the reasons Zim thinks.

Earlier in the Future Zim comic, Zim tried to find out from his future self which of his evil plans was successful, but the only thing he finds out is that it wasn't the one where he covered the earth's atmosphere in cheeto dust. Later, at the start of the Virooz arc, we see Zim attempting this very plan despite being told it wouldn't work. So either Zim was so enamored with the idea he blocked out all memory of being told it would fail, as he usually does whenever someone tells him something he doesn't want to hear, or he deliberately attempted a plan he was told wouldn't work just to spite his future self. Either way, meeting his future self altered the course of Zim's destiny because meeting him caused him to make different choices, thereby rewriting the future and erasing Future Zim's timeline. So Future Zim no longer exists by the time of the Zimvoid adventure. Then the timeline branched at some point, creating a new Zim variant who instead of conquering the earth and then putting on a fake beard and high heels somehow grew taller naturally and could throw Vibrating Irken Death Blades with 99.4% accuracy.

I've theorized before that because timelines are always splitting Zib can never truly be erased. After the Zimvoid adventure, ETF came out and created a new timeline that split off from the first comic, creating a universe where the events of the Zimvoid haven't happened yet and therefore Zim hasn't gone back in time to feed everyone packing peanuts to erase them, thereby restoring Zib's existence. I think the nature of the multiverse pretty much guarantees that there will always be a version of Dib who wins and a version of Zim who wins. Zib always comes into existence and creates the Zimvoid while Victorious Zims take many different forms, Future Zim and Number 2 just being two of the infinitely possible examples.

[veryace-ficrecs]

Dinluke fic recs

This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :)

three rules (back straight, head forward) by queen_rowenas - Rated T

Leia is helpless to watch as Senator Almen continues on as though nothing is wrong. “Mand’alor, may I introduce you to Senator Organa’s brother, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker.” She can feel all of her hard work crumbling, whatever trust she had formed with the Mandalorians shattering before her as the Mand’alor slowly stands to his feet. Great, she thinks numbly, Another galactic war on my hands. (Leia Organa has never been one to back down from a challenge. Although advising the new Mand’alor in his introduction to the Senate and also trying to keep her Jedi brother from causing an intergalactic incident could prove to be a bigger challenge than expected.)

It Was Always You by subtlehysteria - Rated G

He’s strong, powerful, his footwork far better than just your average person who occasionally skates for fun. As if that wasn’t enough, Luke watches in shock and awe as the man executes a neat triple toe loop, landing near-flawlessly with only a slight wobble. He doesn’t even register what’s happening, just sprints down the last set of stairs and rams into the barrier, hands raised to cup over his mouth and help project his voice. “HEY, YOU!” The man falters, head snapping to Luke. A single thick brow rises in question. “DO YOU WANNA BE MY PARTNER?” Luke yells. * Or, the one where Luke needs a new ice dancing partner and Din just happens to be in the right place at the right time.

begging for you to take my hand by luminouskywhiner - Rated T

Cara could laugh, but Din knew one thing for certain. Luke Skywalker was utterly and unfairly beautiful, and the most captivating person Din had ever met. If only he could manage to get more than three words out around him without the tips of his ears burning. ~ Alternatively titled; Din Djarin is a socially awkward and sleep deprived single father who falls in love with the prettiest pre-k teacher in the galaxy.

I'd like to hang out with you for my whole life by coffeecatsme - Rated T

The first time Din touches his helmet to Luke’s forehead, it's by complete accident. Or, 5 times Luke doesn't know Din kisses him and 1 time he does.

Crystal Tears by Insomniac_with_dreams - Not Rated

“This is going to be awkward,” Luke sighs down at the baby in his arms. R2 beeps besides him and Luke nods in agreement. “Nothing to do but go back.” His X-Wing is almost completely dismantled, sparking where wires hang limply. There is no way he’s getting off of this cruiser until it’s repaired. There aren't even any escape pods on board all of the docking bays empty. He hadn’t anticipated this, and now he was going to have to walk back to the bridge with the baby and explain himself to a heartbroken Mandalorian.

The Weight of Words by subtlehysteria - Rated E

Dim blue eyes stare up at him. Hair that might once have been rich with colour hangs limp and brittle around a gaunt face. A face with a split lip and a fading bruise on one cheekbone. A face that is blank of all emotion and yet simultaneously screams help. No, he doesn’t see danger. He sees only a man trying to meld with the wall and make his body as small as possible while staring down Din with a glare so cold that it could cause anyone’s blood to turn to ice. The man is dressed in thread-bare prison garb that hangs off his slight frame like oversized drapery and around his wrists is a pair of complex-looking cuffs. They’re the same ones Grogu had been shackled with, cuffs that somehow diminished his powers. If this man bears them too could that mean… Din crouches, bringing himself down to the man’s level. “Are you a Jedi?” * In an alternate universe where the name Luke Skywalker has long since been lost, Din Djarin discovers an unexpected prisoner aboard Gideon's ship, finding not only a potential teacher for Grogu but also the man who will change his life, and his heart, for the better.

First Star I See Tonight by snapdragonpop007 - Rated T

“You’re bleeding,” Luke murmured. “I’m...maybe not fine.” Din conceded. Luke gently held his face between his hands while giving Din a very bright, very angry smile. “You think?” -- Or, Din is heavily concussed after that whole darktrooper thing, and it takes him a second to recognize his husband.

i give to you by treescape - Rated G

“They’re lovely,” Luke said, and if the pleasure in his voice seemed genuine, his brow furrowed slightly in consternation. Din shrugged uncomfortably, because what was he supposed to do—bring a gift for the kids and nothing for their teacher? Or, Din's been accidentally courting Luke.

Where There's a Will There's a Way by xiaq - Rated M

Luke walks straight to Din and Din suddenly feels like he should be doing something with his hands. “Hi,” he says. “Hi,” Luke agrees, grinning. “So. I didn’t get your name, before. Grogu just calls you ‘Daddy’ in his head but I’m assuming I should call you something else.” Din chokes a little. ***** This is basically an Accidental Warlord Din Djarin fic in which Din plays the role of reluctant DILF leader with a heart of gold and Luke plays the role of initially distrusted twink who quickly becomes beloved by all (especially said warlord). The Mandalorians are like, "we've only had Luke Skywalker for a day and a half but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself."

The Way in the Sky by ShyOwl - Rated T

The man, the Jedi, the individual who had been so calm and detached just moments ago now tripped back out of the elevator, cloak tangling around his feet, with a panicked look on his young face, “I forgot to tell you where we’re going!”

Yoda’s Academy for Li’l Padawans by MissDinahDarling - Rated T

Being a new student is hard. Being a new student whilst your socially awkward father avoids the school at all costs and your new teacher pines uselessly over a man he’s never met before is even worse. But by god, Grogu is gonna get through this.

unstoppable force, immovable fathers by godbinder - Rated E

“I just need a refuel,” Luke tells the droids, carefully throwing his legs over the edge of the cockpit to slide to the ground. Grogu coos softly, his hands opening and closing his three fingers. “Not a problem, we’ll have you—ready to go...” She trails off when she gets a look at the child, who begins babbling. The Force moves around her in happiness then surprise, shock, then something akin to anger sparking faster than a thermal detonator. Before he can open his mouth, in a move that would have left Han impressed, she has a blaster in hand and shot him in the face.

[shitpostingkats]

*SHAKES YOU AGGRESSIVELY*

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR “Zarc is an incarnation of The Supreme King” THEORY I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS YOU HAVE GOT ME HOOKED I AM OBSESSED WITH THESE FIRE TAKES YOU ARE SPITTING OP

Jaden and Yuya are now my favorite dynamic of all time, and now that I’m being shown the similarities I’m wondering if it’s really just a coincidence GX and Arc-V are my absolute favorites out of all the Yugioh series this is insane 👀

Hehe. Gladly <3

(Uh. This got long so it's going beneath the cut for the sake of people's dashboards)

Well, first off, there's just a lot of similarities between Zarc (the original Zarc, before he split into the Yu-bois) and Jaden. Both can talk to duel spirits, both start out chipper and are driven to the edge by grief, both split into various personas/people (Jaden with himself and the supreme king, Zarc obviously into the Yu-bois), both fuse with their ace monster(s), and both carry the title of "Supreme King". Most interesting, to me at least, is how both shape a lot of their identities around what they think people want from them.

Zarc was content to be an amazing duelist, but felt pressured to put on a good show, to be more brutal. Jaden, more subtly, constructs most of his personality off being easygoing, chill, and carefree, because he internalized that his emotions are dangerous, and people would rather deal with happy Jaden than the emotional disregulation mess that he actually is.

And both of them, when they get overwhelmed, adopt a mentality of "Well, the world might as well burn with me."

Jaden, rather than feel his grief, locks off his own trauma behind a brick wall and goes on smiling. Yuya, rather than deal with his dads disappearance, does the same.

I'd also like it noted that supreme king Jaden and supreme king Yuya have yellow eyes.

And some teal/orange eye asymmetry

Honestly, even dragon form Yuya and the Supreme Kings armor have similar silhouettes.

Mostly its in the spikes on the shoulders and elbows, and the fact that Zarc Yuya forms a weird chestplate (and that this is the same art team and visual style)

Another thing I get hung up on is that both Jaden and Yuri have super poly. In GX, Jaden had to go through an entire arc of misery to get that card, and Yuri just? Has it?

So my little headcanon, is that in the original timeline, before the dimensions were split, Zarc had the spirit of The Supreme King, able to command duel monsters and wield The Gentle Dark. Unfortunately for everyone, he got a teensy bit traumatized before he could enact his destiny of defeating The Light Of Destruction. Using his powers, he fused with his dragons, nearly destroyed the world, etc, etc. When he split, the Supreme King couldn't just split into four the same way the rest of his soul could, and so while the dimensions split, the past was rewritten to attach the power to a different soul, with a different guardian to boot. Similar to how the timeline got all borked to set everything back to a late nineties world of duel monsters.

Which would make Yuya 1/4 of an alternate universe version of Jaden. And I think there's a lot of fun to be had with that idea :)

[the-rogue-that-goes-stab]

SSC Nymph

Oh goodness it's sure has been a long time and I have made so many mechs

Conceptualized but not completed before the Derrima, the SSC Nymph is an otherworldly anathema to SSC principles; rather than expensive, high maintenance, and hand crafted, the Nymph is mass produced and disposable.

Named after the Nymphidae genus of (Split-footed) Lacewings, the SSC Nymph statistically is pretty standard for a SSC mech with a notable 2 Repair Cap (it's loosely based on Atlas because same size but it's states are like barely better on the tech side). The gimmick of the Nymph proper has two aspects. The first is its Disposable trait, which allows it to return to functionality at the end of a scene (regardless if it's wreck is destroyed or not) as long as it has repair points. The second is a trait maxed out its repairs whenever a non-grunt character within sensors loses a structure. This allows for a more liberal use of repair points but also an incentive to not burn through them too quickly (this will come up in the rest of the license). I also kind of tacked on a little nothing burger of an ability that I love too much; when is destroyed, it's wreck becomes an outer hardsuit for its pilot, allowing them to walk with extra protection while waiting for their mech to come back via Disposable.

The justification for Disposable working even when the mech's wreck is ash is the true power of Nymph, it uses alternate worlds. Yeah so I may have mashed Lich and Echo Knight from 5e together. The actual lore of Nymph is that it kind of just teleported in a SSC exotic materials research facility without warning. It's SSC tech for sure but it just feels off (wrong dates, untraditional file names for the OS, and evidence of being worked on by an intern from the Bella Ciao line) and so they kind of just kept it. Thanks to "leaks" by "3rd parties" Nymph and its licenses were made accessible for testing.

This alternate universe mumbo jumbo is the reason for its core passive, a mix between Soul Vessel and Echo Knights ghost friend; so at the start of Nymph's turns it puts an inanimate copy of itself with 1 HP on its space and can teleport to a copy as a quick action. Its core active allows the Nymph to spend its movement to shuffle the temporal clones around and make them not be obliterated by a sneeze.

Oh it also has fragile and no way of stopping itself from being body blocked by every enemy character.

Woah license time:

1) Restoration Mod <mod>, Splitter Drone <system>

2) frame, Panel Cannon <weapon>, Auxiliary Paneling <system>

3) Phantom Weapon <system>, JANUS Fragment <ai>

Restoration Mod

Made in the middle of the Nymph's creation, this mod is pretty simple but also a good bit powerful. It's a SP 2 mod that basically auto repairs your weapon at the start of every fight. Honestly could add unique to it based on how much it keeps you in the fight by not needing to spend repairs on your primary.

Splitter Drone

Original made around the time that Tarrasque was made, it was an exotic until I thought of putting it in Nymph. Lore wise imagine a giant slime you can grab with your mech to act as a bullet sponge. Also if it does it splits into 2 Splittest Drones which have less HP but can be formed back into a Splitter at the end of a fight. Wow, how very disposable

Panel Cannon

This is THE weapon for Nymph imo. It's a lower damaging main cannon at base but it forces you to mulch 1 to 3 repairs (oh would you look at that, those are really easy to spend on a Nymph) to add extra damage and reliable. The weapon also has indestructible because it basically stapling magnets underneath your mechs hull plating. Also I accidentally made the best violence weapon for a Lancaster who doesn't care 1 bit about their 10 Repairs but we will ignore that.

Auxiliary Paneling

This system might need to get nerfed in the future but it basically allows you to, at the cost of 2 repair points, remove the consequences of brace. Likely not a good deal for most mechs but will likely make Nymph annoying as fuck.

Phantom Weapon

Oh hey, another alternate world power.

Okay so this system is 3 SP and it allows you to use a quick action to summon a temporal copy of your mech with its own weapon that 1) fits on your mounts and 2) you are licensed for. Not particularly useful on Nymph but is just good for literally every mech in the game. Free mount is good stuff. But also if you break a weapon, this system automatically eats the break.

JANUS Fragment

Oh boy, time for the fun one.

Okay so JANUS is a pretty bad AI for more reasons. It isn't sentient nor even take the wheel like other AIs but at least it doesn't cascade right?

Well the main benefit of eating your AI slot for a broken consciousness that's barely lucid is the action it gives you. It's basically Mourning Cloak passive but not gambling (only up to your speed but at least it doesn't send you to Brazil if you fail the luck check). However it also have the peculiar effect of causing all characters not within your LoS to, if they want to, move over by 1 space. (Also like enemies might be differently painted or your allies might have slightly different scratch marks but I'm sure it's your imagination).

All in all, I'm really happy about Nymph, I think the concept while over done was decently implemented in a fun way. I will not however that at the time of its creation, I hadn't invested anytime at all thinking about Lich besides the basics haha funny time wizard, so I'm mildly frustrated at the Nymph for allying so closely to the Lich. I guess you could interrupt it as an alt license of it, less controller and more tanky but idk

It probably does need to be toned down but none of my players are using it so it's not that much of an issue.

Nymph was made in late April, god my back log is crazy

[canmom]

yarr harr, fiddle de dee [more on piracy networks]

being a pirate is all right to be...

I didn't really intend this post as an overview of all the major methods of piracy. But... since a couple of alternatives have been mentioned in the comments... let me infodump talk a little about 1. Usenet and 2. direct peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella and Soulseek. How they work, what their advantages are on a system level, how convenient they are for the user, that kind of thing.

(Also a bit at the end about decentralised hash table driven networks like IPFS and Freenet, and the torrent indexer BTDigg).

Usenet

First Usenet! Usenet actually predates the web, it's one of the oldest ways people communicated on the internet. Essentially it's somewhere between a mailing list and a forum (more accurately, a BBS - BBSes were like forums you had to phone, to put it very crudely, and predate the internet as such).

On Usenet, it worked like this. You would subscribe to a newsgroup, which would have a hierarchical name like rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (for talking about your favourite TV show, Babylon 5) or alt.transgendered (for talking about trans shit circa 1992). You could send messages to the newsgroup, which would then be copied between the various Usenet servers, where other people could download them using a 'news reader' program. If one of the Usenet servers went down, the others acted as a backup. Usenet was a set of protocols rather than a service as such; it was up to the server owners which other servers they would sync with.

Usenet is only designed to send text information. In theory. Back in the day, when the internet was slow, this was generally exactly what people sent. Which didn't stop people posting, say, porn... in ASCII form. (for the sake of rigour, that textfile's probably from some random BBS, idk if that one ever got posted to Usenet). The maximum size of a Usenet post ('article', in traditional language) depends on the server, but it's usually less than a megabyte, which does not allow for much.

As the internet took off, use of Usenet in the traditional way declined. Usenet got flooded with new users (an event named 'Eternal September'; September was traditionally when a cohort of students would start at university and thus gain access to Usenet, causing an influx of new users who didn't know the norms) and superseded by the web. But it didn't get shut down or anything - how could it? It's a protocol; as long as at least one person is running a Usenet server, Usenet exists.

But while Usenet may be nigh-unusable as a discussion forum now thanks to the overwhelming amount of spam, people found another use for the infrastructure. Suppose you have a binary file - an encoded movie, for example. You can encode that into ASCII strings using Base64 or similar methods, split it up into small chunks, and post the whole lot onto Usenet, where it will get synchronised across the network. Then, somewhere on the web, you publish a list of all the Usenet posts and their position in the file. This generally uses the NZB format. A suitable newsreader can then take that NZB file and request all the relevant pieces from a Usenet server and assemble them into a file.

NZB sites are similar to torrent trackers in that they don't directly host pirated content, but tell you where to get it. Similar to torrent trackers, some are closed and some are open. However, rather than downloading the file piecemeal from whoever has a copy as in a torrent, you are downloading it piecemeal from a big central server farm. Since these servers are expensive to run, access to Usenet is usually a paid service.

For this to work you need the Usenet servers to hold onto the data for long enough to people to get it. Generally speaking the way it works is that the server has a certain storage buffer; when it runs out of space, it starts overwriting old files. So there's an average length of time until the old file gets deleted, known as the 'retention time'. For archival purposes, that's how long you got; if you want to keep something on Usenet after that, upload it again.

As a system for file distribution... well, it's flawed, because it was never really designed as a file sharing system, but somehow it works. The operator of a Usenet server has to keep tens of petabytes of storage, to hold onto all the data on the Usenet network for a retention period of years, including the hundreds of terabytes uploaded daily, much of which is spam; it also needs to fetch it reliably and quickly for users, when the files are spread across the stream of data in random places. That's quite a system engineering challenge! Not surprisingly, data sometimes ends up corrupted. There is also a certain amount of overhead associated with encoding to ASCII and including parity checks to avoid corruption, but it's not terribly severe. In practice... if you have access to Usenet and know your way to a decent NZB site, I remember it generally working pretty well. Sometimes there's stuff on Usenet that's hard to find on other sources.

Like torrents, Usenet offers a degree of redundancy. Suppose there's a copyrighted file on Usenet server A, and it gets a DMCA notice and complies. But it's still on Usenet servers B, C and D, and so the (ostensible) copyright holder has to go and DMCA them as well. However, it's less redundant, since there are fewer Usenet servers, and operating one is so much more involved. I think if the authorities really wanted to crush Usenet as a functional file distribution system, they'd have an easier time of it than destroying torrents. Probably the major reason they don't is that Usenet is now a fairly niche system, so the cost/benefit ratio would be limited.

In terms of security for users, compared to direct peer to peer services, downloading from Usenet has the advantage of not broadcasting your IP on the network. Assuming the server implements TLS (any modern service should), if you don't use a VPN, your ISP will be able to see that you connected to a Usenet server, but not what you downloaded.

In practice?

for torrenting, if you use public trackers you definitely 100% want a VPN. Media companies operate sniffers which will connect to the torrent swarm and keep track of what IP addresses connect. Then, they will tell your ISP 'hey, someone is seeding our copyrighted movie on xyz IP, tell them to stop'. At this point, your ISP will usually send you a threatening email on a first offence and maybe cutoff your internet on a second. Usually this is a slap on the wrist sort of punishment, ISPs really don't care that much, and they will reconnect you if you say sorry... but you can sidestep that completely with a VPN. at that point the sniffer can only see the VPN's IP address, which is useless to them.

for Usenet, the threat model is more niche. There's no law against connecting to Usenet, and to my knowledge, Usenet servers don't really pay attention to anyone downloading copyrighted material from their servers (after all, there's no way they don't know the main reason people are uploading terabytes of binary data every day lmao). But if you want to be sure the Usenet server doesn't ever see your IP address, and your ISP doesn't know you connected to Usenet, you can use a VPN.

(In general I would recommend a VPN any time you're pirating or doing anything you don't want your IP to be associated with. Better safe than sorry.)

What about speed? This rather depends on your choice of Usenet provider, how close it is to you, and what rate limits they impose, but in practice it's really good since it's built on incredibly robust, pre-web infrastructure; this is one of the biggest advantages of Usenet. For torrents, by contrast... it really depends on the swarm. A well seeded torrent can let you use your whole bandwidth, but sometimes you get unlucky and the only seed is on the other side of the planet and you can only get about 10kB/s off them.

So, in short, what's better, Usenet or BitTorrent? The answer is really It Depends, but there's no reason not to use both, because some stuff is easier to find on torrents (most anime fansub groups tend to go for torrent releases) and some stuff is easier to find on Usenet (e.g. if it's so old that the torrents are all dead). In the great hierarchy of piracy exclusivity, Usenet sits somewhere between private and public torrent trackers.

For Usenet, you will need to figure out where to find those NZBs. Many NZB sites require registration/payment to access the NZB listing, and some require you to be invited. However, it's easier to get into an NZB site than getting on a private torrent tracker, and requires less work once you're in to stay in.

Honestly? It surprises me that Usenet hasn't been subject to heavier suppression, since it's relatively centralised. It's got some measure of resilience, since Usenet servers are distributed around the world, and if they started ordering ISPs to block noncomplying Usenet servers, people would start using VPNs, proxies would spring up; it would go back to the familiar whack-a-mole game.

I speculate the only reason it's not more popular is the barrier to entry is just very slightly higher than torrents. Like, free always beats paid, even though in practice torrents cost the price of a VPN sub. Idk.

(You might say it requires technical know-how... but is 'go on the NZB indexer to download an NZB and then download a file from Usenet' really so much more abstruse than 'go on the tracker to download a torrent and then download a file from the swarm'?)

direct peer to peer (gnutella, soulseek, xdcc, etc.)

In a torrent, the file is split into small chunks, and you download pieces of your file from everyone who has a copy. This is fantastic for propagation of the file across a network because as soon as you have just one piece, you can start passing it on to other users. And it's great for downloading, since you can connect to lots of different seeds at once.

However, there is another form of peer to peer which is a lot simpler. You provide some means to find another person who has your file, and they send you the file directly.

This is the basis that LimeWire worked on. LimeWire used two protocols under the hood, one of them BitTorrent, the other a protocol called Gnutella. When the US government ordered LimeWire shut down, the company sent out a patch to LimeWire users that made the program delete itself. But both these protocols are still functioning. (In fact there's even an 'unofficial' fork of the LimeWire code that you can use.)

After LimeWire was shut down, Gnutella declined, but it didn't disappear by any means. The network is designed to be searchable, so you can send out a query like 'does anyone have a file whose name contains the string "Akira"' and this will spread out across the network, and you will get a list of people with copies of Akira, or the Akira soundtrack, and so on. So there's no need for indexers or trackers, the whole system is distributed. That said, you are relying on the user to tell the truth about the contents of the file. Gnutella has some algorithmic tricks to make scanning the network more efficient, though not to the same degree as DHTs in torrents. (DHTs can be fast because they are looking for one computer, the appointed tracker, based on a hash of the file contents. Tell me if you wanna know about DHTs, they're a fascinating subject lol).

Gnutella is not the only direct file sharing protocol. Another way you can introduce 'person who wants a file' and 'person who has a file' is to have a central server which everyone connects to, often providing a chatroom function along with coordinating connections.

This can be as simple as an IRC server. Certain IRC clients (by no means all) support a protocol called XDCC, which let you send files to another user. This has been used by, for example, anime fansub groups - it's not really true anymore, but there was a time where the major anime fansub groups operated XDCC bots and if you wanted their subs, you had to go on their IRC and write a command to the bot to send it to you.

XDCC honestly sucked though. It was slow if you didn't live near the XDCC bot, and often the connection would often crap out mid download and you'd have to manually resume (thankfully it was smart enough not to have to start over from the beginning), and of course, it is fiddly to go on a server and type a bunch of IRC commands. It also put the onus of maintaining distribution entirely on the fansub group - your group ran out of money or went defunct and shut down its xdcc bot? Tough luck. That said, it was good for getting old stuff that didn't have a torrent available.

Then there's Soulseek! Soulseek is a network that can be accessed using a handful of clients. It is relatively centralised - there are two major soulseek servers - and they operate a variety of chat rooms, primarily for discussing music.

To get on Soulseek you simply register a username, and you mark at least one folder for sharing. There doesn't have to be anything in it, but a lot of users have it set so that they won't share anything unless you're sharing a certain amount of data yourself.

You can search the network and get a list of users who have matching files, or browse through a specific user's folder. Each user can set up their own policy about upload speed caps and so on. If you find something you want to download, you can queue it up. The files will be downloaded in order.

One interesting quirk of Soulseek is that the uploader will be notified (not like a push notification, but you see a list of who's downloading/downloaded your files). So occasionally someone will notice you downloading and send you a friendly message.

Soulseek is very oriented towards music. Officially, its purpose is to help promote unsigned artists, not to infringe copyright; in practice it's primarily a place for music nerds to hang out and share their collections. And although it's faced a bit of legal heat, it seems to be getting by just fine.

However, there's no rule that you can only share music. A lot of people share films etc. There's really no telling what will be on Soulseek.

Since Soulseek is 1-to-1 connections only, it's often pretty slow, but it's often a good bet if you can't find something anywhere else, especially if that something is music. In terms of resilience, the reliance on a single central server to connect people to peers is a huge problem - that's what killed Napster back in the day, if the Soulseek server was shut down that would be game over... unless someone else set up a replacement and told all the clients where to connect. And yet, somehow it's gotten away with it so far!

In terms of accessibility, it's very easy: just download a client, pick a name and password, and share a few gigs (for example: some movies you torrented) and you're good.

In terms of safety, your IP is not directly visible in the client, but any user who connects directly to you would be able to find it out with a small amount of effort. I'm not aware of any cases of IP sniffers being used on Soulseek, but I would recommend a VPN all the same to cover your bases - better safe than sorry.

Besides the public networks like Soulseek and Gnutella, there are smaller-scale, secret networks that also work on direct connection basis, e.g. on university LANs, using software such as DC++. I cannot give you any advice on getting access to these, you just have to know the right person.

Is that all the ways you can possibly pirate? Nah, but I think that's the main ones.

Now for some more niche shit that's more about the kind of 'future of piracy' type questions in the OP, like, can the points of failure be removed..?

IPFS

Since I talked a little above about DHTs for torrents, I should maybe spare a few words about this thing. Currently on the internet you specify the address of a certain computer connected to the network using an IP address. (Well, typically the first step is to use the DNS to get an IP address.) IPFS is based on the idea of 'content-based addressing' instead; like torrents, it specifies a file using a hash of the content.

This leads to a 'distributed file system'; the ins and outs are fairly complicated but it has several layers of querying. You can broadcast that you want a particular chunk of data to "nearby" nodes; if that fails to get a hit, you can query a DHT which directs you to someone who has a list of sources.

In part, the idea is to create a censorship-resistant network: if a node is removed, the data may still be available on other nodes. However, it makes no claim to outright permanence, and data that is not requested is gradually flushed from nodes by garbage collection. If you host a node, you can 'pin' data so it won't be deleted, or you can pay someone else to do that on their node. (There's also some cryptocurrency blockchain rubbish that is supposed to offer more genuine permanence.)

IPFS is supposed to act as a replacement for the web, according to its designers. This is questionable. Most of what we do on the web right now is impossible on IPFS. However, I happen to like static sites, and it's semi-good at that. It is, sympathetically, very immature; I remember reading one very frustrated author writing about how hard it was to deploy a site to IPFS, although that was some years ago and matters seem to have improved a bit since then.

I said 'semi-good'. Since the address of your site changes every time you update it, you will end up putting multiple redundant copies of your site onto the network at different hashes (though the old hashes will gradually disappear). You can set a DNS entry that points to the most recent IPFS address of your site, and rely on that propagating across the DNS servers. Or, there's a special mutable distributed name service on the IPFS network based around public/private key crypto; basically you use a hash of your public key as the address and that returns a link to the latest version of your site signed with your private key.

Goddamn that's a lot to try to summarise.

Does it really resist censorship? Sorta. If a file is popular enough to propagate enough the network, it's hard to censor it. If there's only one node with it, it's no stronger than any other website. If you wanted to use it as a long term distributed archive, it's arguably worse than torrents, because data that's not pinned is automatically flushed out of the network.

It's growing, if fairly slowly. You can announce and share stuff on it. It has been used to bypass various kinds of web censorship now and then. Cloudflare set a bunch of IPFS nodes on their network last year. But honestly? Right now it's one of those projects that is mostly used by tech nerds to talk to other tech nerds. And unfortunately, it seems to have caught a mild infection of cryptocurrency bullshit as well. Thankfully none of that is necessary.

What about piracy? Is this useful for our nefarious purposes? Well, sort of. Libgen has released all its books on IPFS; there is apparently an effort to upload the content of ZLib to IPFS as well, under the umbrella of 'Anna's Archive' which is a meta-search engine for LibGen, SciHub and a backup of ZLib. By nature of IPFS, you can't put the actual libgen index site on it (since it constantly changes as new books are uploaded, and dynamic serverside features like search are impossible on IPFS). But books are an ideal fit for IPFS since they're usually pretty small.

For larger files, they are apparently split into 256kiB chunks and hashed individually. The IPFS address links to a file containing a list of chunk hashes, or potentially a list of lists of chunk hashes in a tree structure. (Similar to using a magnet link to acquire a torrent file; the short hash finds you a longer list of hashes. Technically, it's all done with Merkle trees, the same data structure used in torrents).

One interesting consequence of this design is that the chunks don't necessarily 'belong' to a particular file. If you're very lucky, some of your chunks will already be established on the network. This also further muddies the waters of whether a particular user is holding onto copyrighted data or not, since a particular hash/block might belong to both the tree of some copyrighted file and the tree of some non-copyrighted file. Isn't that fun?

The other question I had was about hash collisions. Allegedly, these are almost impossible with the SHA-256 hash used by default on IPFS, which produces a 256-bit address. This is tantamount to saying that of all the possible 256KiB strings of data, only at most about 1 in 8000 will actually ever be distributed with the IPFS. Given the amount of 256-kibibyte strings is around 4.5 * 10^631305, this actually seems like a fairly reasonable assumption. Though, given that number, it seems a bit unlikely that two files will ever actually have shared chunks. But who knows, files aren't just random data so maybe now and then, there will be the same quarter-megabyte in two different places.

That said, for sharing large files, IPFS doesn't fundamentally offer a huge advantage over BitTorrent with DHT. If a lot of people are trying to download a file over IPFS, you will potentially see similar dynamics to a torrent swarm, where chunks spread out across the network. Instead of 'seeding' you have 'pinning'.

It's an interesting technology though, I'll be curious to see where it goes. And I strongly hope 'where it goes' is not 'increasingly taken over by cryptocurrency bullshit'.

In terms of security, an IPFS node is not anonymous. It's about as secure as torrents. Just like torrents, the DFT keeps a list of all the nodes that have a file. So if you run an IPFS node, it would be easy to sniff out if you are hosting a copyrighted file on IPFS. That said, you can relatively safely download from IPFS without running a node or sharing anything, since the IPFS.tech site can fetch data for you. Although - if you fetch a site via the IPFS.tech site (or any other site that provides IPFS access over http), IPFS.tech will gain a copy of the file and temporarily provide it. So it's not entirely tantamount to leeching - although given the level of traffic on IPFS.tech I can't imagine stuff lasts very long on there.

Freenet Hyphanet

Freenet (officially renamed to Hyphanet last month, but most widely known as Freenet) is another, somewhat older, content-based addressing distributed file store built around a DHT. The difference between IPFS and Freenet is that Freenet prioritises anonymity over speed. Like in IPFS, the data is split into chunks - but on Freenet, the file is spread out redundantly across multiple different nodes immediately, not when they download it, and is duplicated further whenever it's downloaded.

Unlike torrents and IPFS, looking up a file causes it to spread out across the network, instead of referring you to an IP address. Your request is routed around the network using hashes in the usual DHT way. If it runs into the file, it comes back, writing copies at each step along the way. If a node runs out of space it overwrites the chunks that haven't been touched in a while. So if you get a file back, you don't know where it came from. The only IP addresses you know are your neighbours in the network.

There's a lot of complicated and clever stuff about how the nodes swap roles and identities in the network to gradually converge towards an efficient structure while maintaining that degree of anonymity.

Much like IPFS, data on Freenet is not guaranteed to last forever. If there's a lot of demand, it will stick around - but if no nodes request the file for a while, it will gradually get flushed out.

As well as content-based hashing, the same algorithm can be used for routing to a cryptographic signature, which lets you define a semi-mutable 'subspace' (you can add new files later which will show up when the key is queried). In fact a whole lot of stuff seems to be built on this, including chat services and even a Usenet-like forum with a somewhat complex 'web of trust' anti-spam system.

If you use your computer as a Freenet node, you will necessarily be hosting whatever happens to route through it. Freenet is used for much shadier shit than piracy. As far as safety, the cops are trying to crack it, though probably copyrighted stuff is lower on their priority list than e.g. CSAM.

Is Freenet used for piracy? If it is, I can't find much about it on a cursory search. The major problem it has is latency. It's slow to look stuff up, and slow to download it since it has to be copied to every node between you and the source. The level of privacy it provides is just not necessary for everyday torrenting, where a VPN suffices.

BTDigg

Up above I lamented the lack of discoverability on BitTorrent. There is no way to really search the BitTorrent network if you don't know exactly the file you want. This comes with advantages (it's really fast; DHT queries can be directed to exactly the right node rather than spreading across the network as in Gnutella) but it means BitTorrent is dependent on external indices to know what's available on the network and where to look for it.

While I was checking I had everything right about IPFS, I learned there is a site called BTDigg (wikipedia) which maintains a database of torrents known from the Mainline DHT (the primary DHT used by BitTorrent). Essentially, when you use a magnet link to download a torrent file, you query the DHT to find a node that has the full .torrent file, which tells you what you need to download to get the actual content of the torrent. BTDigg has been running a scraper which notes magnet links coming through its part of the DHT and collects the corresponding .torrent files; it stores metadata and magnet links in a database that is text-searchable.

This database isn't hosted on the BitTorrent network, so it's as vulnerable to takedown as any other tracker, but it does function as a kind of backup record of what torrents exist if the original tracker has gone. So give that a try if the other sites fail.

Say something about TOR?

I've mentioned VPNs a bunch, but what about TOR? tl;dr: don't use TOR for most forms of piracy.

I'm not gonna talk about TOR in detail beyond to say I wouldn't recommend using TOR for piracy for a few reasons:

TOR doesn't protect you if you're using torrents. Due to the way the BitTorrent protocol works, your IP will leak to the tracker/DHT. So there's literally no point to using TOR.

If that's not enough to deter you, TOR is slow. It's not designed for massive file transfers and it's already under heavy use. Torrents would strain it much further.

If you want an anonymisation network designed with torrents in mind, instead consider I2P. Using a supported torrent client (right now p much just Vuze and its fork BiglyBT - I would recommend the latter), you can connect to a torrent swarm that exists purely inside the I2P network. That will protect you from IP sniffers, at the cost of reducing the pool of seeds you can reach. (It also might be slower in general thanks to the onion routing, not sure.)

What's the future of piracy?

So far the history of piracy has been defined by churn. Services and networks grow popular, then get shut down. But the demand continues to exist and sooner or later, they are replaced. Techniques are refined.

It would be nice to imagine that somewhere up here comes the final, unbeatable piracy technology. It should be... fast, accessible, easy to navigate, reliably anonymous, persistent, and too widespread and ~rhizomatic~ to effectively stamp out. At that point, when 'copies of art' can no longer function as a scarce commodity, what happens? Can it finally be decoupled from the ghoulish hand of capital? Well, if we ever find out, it will be in a very different world to this one.

Right now, BitTorrent seems the closest candidate. The persistent weaknesses: the need for indexers and trackers, the lack of IP anonymity, and the potential for torrents to die out. Also a lot of people see it as intimidating - there's a bunch of jargon (seeds, swarms, magnet links, trackers, peers, leeches, DHT) which is pretty simple in practice (click link, get thing) but presents a barrier to entry compared to googling 'watch x online free'.

Anyway, really the thing to do is, continue to pirate by any and all means available. Don't put it all in one basket, you know? Fortunately, humanity is waaaay ahead of me on that one.

do what you want 'cos a pirate is free you are a pirate

[drysauce]

Begging on my knees, may I ask for mr welt lore 🙏 thank you for feeding my silly little fictional crushes lol

there's so much to say where should i even start jshxhhd

(btw, it's obvious but. there will be honkai impact 3rd spoilers below)

so you know that welt is a playable character in star rail right, but i don't know if you know that many of star rail characters are alternate versions of characters from other hoyo game which is hi3 - like himeko, bronya and luocha for example. welt however, isn't like them, he's not just another welt existing in the star rail universe but he's THE EXACT SAME welt that exists in honkai impact AND that's why he's such an interesting guy

so let's start with the basics - his name isn't actually Welt Yang but Joachim Nokianvirtanen. he took that name later in his life, yang was his mother's surname and welt was a name inherited from a guy named Welt Joyce.

as for why he took the name from that guy: welt joyce was a herrscher, herrscher of reason to be precise (herrschers are very powerful entities with powers given by the force known as honkai) - he used to be a normal german boy human but after the honkai eruption in Berlin that took a huge ton of lives, a core made from the souls of people who died was formed inside him giving him the powers of a herrscher of reason

while generally herrschers are enemies of humanity, he was not - after losing past memories but NOT being against humans, he was taken in by an anti-honkai organization known as Schicksal (with Otto Apocalypse as its leader and overseer) and moved from labs to labs where he eventually met Frederica Nikola Tesla and Lieserl Albert Einstein (pic below. they might look young but those are only the looks, they're actually great minds with years of experience), two scientists that later became his acquaintances. around that time he also met joachim and his father

later on, the schicksal overseer otto and joyce had kind of an argument when joyce didn't want to agree to follow the overseer path with him because he grew to love humanity and otto was a guy who didn't mind doing the most messed up things you'd think of just to reach his goal. the conflict of interests leads to a fight, that results in otto's death (or rather one of the clones, long story)

(fun fact! ^ this line is also part of welt yang's ultimate line in hsr, just differently worded)

the thing joyce is holding here is one of divine keys (very strong weapon, long story) known as the star of eden which is the signature weapon of the herrscher of reason. otto was using a divine key as well (called void archives) and before his defeat, he used the key to attack the city where they currently were with the intention to completely destroy it. joyce managed to stop that but 1. star of eden was destroyed and 2. it costed him his life. while he was dying he gave the herrscher core to young joachim who was nearby alongside with the name welt - and so joachim became the second herrscher of reason

later on with tesla and einstein he split from schicksal and formed another organization known as anti-entropy (which was also dedicated to fighting honkai but without human experiments and all that jazz) and recreated star of eden

in year 2000 took place the second honkai eruption, there's a manga telling the whole story how it went, but to keep it short, schicksal and anti-entropy allied and were fighting sirin, the herrscher of the void. the two herrschers faced each other in a fight, welt using his herrscher of reason powers created a whole army or mechs and artillery showing sirin that the humanity can and will fight against her and honkai

there was no victor, sirin was knocked down and when welt was about to finish her off with the star of eden, otto apocalypse intervened, destroyed the divine key and stopped welt (he really couldn't allow things to go the way everyone wanted even once)

later the fight was moved to the moon where sirin made her base and from where kept on challenging humanity. schicksal and anti-entropy had the talk™️ which resulted in the decision that welt will go fight on the moon but he'll take one of otto's agents to collect rock samples that could be used to create new kind of weapons

to go and fight there, anti-entropy started creating a giant mech - arahato (two quick fun facts! 1. in hsr welt has arahato on his phone case 2. to earn money anti-entropy launched an anime series about it at some point lol)

on the moon welt creates yet another star of eden and occupies sirin's attention, while siegfried (the man from schicksal that was sent on the mission and who also was hi3 mc's father) who was piloting arahato could take moon rock samples for the scientists. however for siegfried to leave safely, welt had to directly face sirin and was eventually defeated (star of eden destroyed again), near the end he was planning to detonate his core to destroy both himself and sirin, but she manage to steal it before that happened, leaving welt's body to disintegrate

obviously he didn't actually die, he put his personality inside the core at the very last moment with the souls that already were there. he survives there this way until the end of the whole eruption, and after it ended, the retrieved core fragments returned to anti-entropy and after next 10 years core repairs itself and welt gets back the physical body. that costs him a lot of energy and power though, he isn't able to be the leader anymore. anti-entropy was taken over by force in that time by cocolia, who was running and orphanage and. who also made a few clones of welt joyce

-> next events are described in the manga called alien space, it's about both the events of when welt came back to life and is a direct prequel to hsr telling what happened years later, i won't describe it in detail because maybe you'd like to read it yourself - but if not i'll gladly talk about that too in another ask or message<3 it's mainly about welt and (hi3) himeko (and void archives too, who after otto apocalypse's death took a body of one of his clones)

next should be the events in the sea of quanta (empty space among bubbles with different universes, long story) - during the expedition, he gets separated from einstein and gets stuck there until a girl named Bronya Zaychik enters it to find her beloved Seele who was also stuck there for a few years (long story, another manga). a lot of things happened, bronya encountered welt who took kind of a position of the guardian of the sea and began testing the girl in various scenarios. after she passed all the tests he decided to make her the successor of his herrscher core, thanks to which bronya was later able to rescue seele and all three of them escaped from the sea of quanta. soon after that he became her mentor in mastering the herrscher of reason powers (there's more to bronya as the herrscher which also has relations to welt but. i haven't got there yet in the main story so i have to stop here lol)

next there's a timeskip to a post honkai odyssey - it's a spin off/time skip story from hi3, featuring, aside from the main cast, welt, his son - joffrey (one of joyce's clones that he and most likely tesla (there's a line that might suggest she became his partner later on) together adopted), and void archives. i saw leaks that parts of it that are relevant to hsr might appear in an upcoming hangout mission for luocha (the guy who's a hsr version of otto) so if you're planning to play hsr you'll see it yourself and i won't be spoiling you the fun here<3

^ it's also related to the timeskip events from the alien space manga

afterwards welt ends up in the hsr universe and is trailblazing together with the astral express crew and finally becomes a playable character

^ another fun fact! in his splash are you can see void archives in the back, welt joyce on the right and tesla with einstein on the left

ok and that should be all i think? if you have any thoughs or questions feel free to ask here in the comments or in a separate ask or on discord however you prefer and i'll gladly elaborate even more

also special mention to unfortunately not canon part of the welt lore from the hoyofest videos in which he and two other powerful leaders became idols because they were broke and needed money:

[casliveblog]

So here's my best shot at tying the FLCL series' together:

FLCL Progressive takes place in a world where Earth has burgeoning inter-solar system space travel and has had limited contact with alien life unknown to the public, drawing in Medical Mechanica and its plans to flatten the world, causing the rich to flee to Mars to escape the impending destruction, though Kana's NO power summons and utilizes Atomsk's powerto stop Medical Mechanica and inadvertently split reality in two separate dimensions, with half of humanity and all of the people that escaped to Mars being drawn into the other reality while the display of Atomsk's power drives anti-MM terrorist Haruko to become obsessed with obtaining the power for herself.

Classic FLCL takes place on Mars in the parallel universe and involves Haruko's initial attempts to trap Atomsk after he was captured by Medical Mechanica, using Naota's NO ability to pull Medical Mechanica guards and eventually Atomsk himself out, once again foiling MM's attempt to activate their dormant plant, though Haruko's own plan is foiled by Naota's character growth drawing Atomsk into him instead of her and letting him get off scott free.

FLCL Progressive takes place after classic, still in the parallel universe on Mars but after an attempt to obtain Atomsk actually succeeded for Haruko and she was split into her main body and Jinyu due to the fallout of containing the massive wellspring of NO power. From here Hidomi's arc and Haruko's general back and forth with Jinyu lead to an even more massive Medical Mechanica plot being foiled and Jinyu and Haruko remaining as separate individuals and trying to form some sort of character development from reconciling the loss of Atomsk's power versus the freedom he represents.

FLCL Grunge takes place in the parallel universe but on Earth or a similar planet which in this timeline has been destroyed either by the events of the split in Alternative or by general Medical Mechanica shenanigans and humanity's growing connection with alien life has expanded to form a tenuous bond with the Rockian species and a somewhat more active interplanetary travel network, involving Haruko's insurrection against a much more visible Medical Mechanica presence on the world which leads to another failed attempt to scoop up Atomsk though she does defeat Medical Mechanica and help Orinoko and her friends make peace with their lives. (Note this one's kind of the hardest to place, for all I know this could be an alien planet and take place before Alternative but this is my personal theory)

FLCL Shoegaze takes place ten years after Alternative in the original timeline and involves the proposal to merge both universes back together in Kanda's attempt to bring Haruko back to the original universe and resolve the rift between worlds that causes mild disruptions. The original Atomsk seems to be in the parallel world but a new version or echo of him still exists in the original and is able to connect with Masaki through his extreme NO power and stop the widespread destruction the merging of the worlds would cause while only taking less than 1% of the original world to merge with the parallel one. Though the cast is still able to make peace with the world being their own and the remnants of Atomsk left in the original world befriend Masaki and allow him to change worlds as well so the Pirate King and the boy that found the NO power beyond teenage lust find their place on the new Mars colony of the parallel world.

[singular-yike]

"Lily Pad Ice" Dimensions

As you've probably already realised reading the title, this is going to be... a rather complex one today. Still, I'll try my best, so please bear with me.

Len'en has a lot of big concepts, most notably dimensions and timelines, which are often associated with Suzumi Kuzu, perhaps the most complex character in the series.

Today I'll try to go over a semi-theory of how dimensions and timelines are understood in Len'en, along with trying to understand related terms in relation to the theory.

The "Lily Pad Ice" Model

To start off, the reason I call this a semi-theory, is that it relies on a comment not directly related to Len'en, but definitely not unrelated either.

When the album A World That Isn't Fantasy came out, JynX gave the new music tracks comments in several pixiv FANBOX posts. Notable to for us today is that of Alice Leaping Atop Lily Pad Ice, which reads:

"Lily pad ice" forms when the ice on top of frozen seas and lakes melt and the ice chunks bump into each other, their edges get curled up and they get their lily pad-like shapes. In my mind, there are several images for other dimensions, other worlds, other wordlines and parallel worlds, one of them is quite similar to lily pad ice. What once was whole breaks apart, it's pieces bump and they roll up, creating walls in between, and thus the pieces no longer interact with one another. These lily pads of ice are hard but brittle and eventually disappear, and something's skipping around the thin sheets elegantly…

Below: Lily pad ice, or pancake ice, atop the water.

Basically, my internal image, understanding and theory about dimensions and timelines in Len'en are all based on this passage.

I hesitate to take it as 100% canon to the universe of Len'en, since it's about JynX's personal word view rather than that of Len'en, though it's certainly the most we've gotten.

So! Based on that passage, the framework has three central concepts:

All dimensions comes from one source, one origin point.

A new dimension is formed when a split action is taken.

"Timelines" and "dimensions" are, in truth, the same thing.

Point 1: One source, one origin

No. 1 doesn't really need much more explanation, everything comes from one source, a single piece of ice.

Though I would like to note that while, in theory, there is an origin point for all dimensions/timelines, when applying the framework we can also freely set our own "origin point", pick out a single piece of ice from the myriad to track its progress.

Point 2: Split paths, split dimensions

This can be nicely demonstrated in my example for point 2. Here I'll use the beginning of the Shrine Team's route as my "origin point", the ice piece that I'll be tracking the progress of.

In one timeline, the Shrine Team met Souko, in another Kurohebi, in yet another Jun and so on and so forth.

This is basically, as JynX describes, "what once was whole breaks apart", they start out as one event, "the Shrine Team is kicked out of the Shrine", but with the game, a myriad of alternate timelines are created.

Point 3: Timelines, Dimensions, Realities

Now, for point 3, we can quite easily demonstrate it by doing a little thought experiment: Say I envision a random scenario, "Yago decided to take up gardening rather than blacksmithing".

Think about it, is there any difference in me saying

There is an alternate timeline where Yago is a botanist.

There is an alternate dimension where Yago is a botanist.

Functionally, not really. The terms "dimension" and "timeline", in this case, really collapse into one thing: "reality". There is an alternate reality out there, in which Yago is a botanist.

And this I think is key to understanding many of the terms, concepts and scenarios in Len'en, some of which I'll go over in the next section.

Notable Terms, Scenes and Situations

Timelines and Dimensions

Despite my claim that these two terms are functionally the same thing, we can still try to define them somewhat.

Under this framework, you could say that the closer-related each piece of the ice is, the more likely they are to be considered timelines, rather than dimensions.

For example, most people would agree that the events of BPoHC all happened in alternate timelines. Despite the variety of events that can happen in the game, they are all ultimately rather close, all coming from the same "source", the BPoHC prologue.

Conversely, lets go back to the botanist Yago thought experiment, in that reality, the Tasouken would've never been made, the powerful clan leader perhaps never murdered, and thus orochi youkai would never have been created.

Even if everything else goes the same, the world is separated into "outside" and Mugenri, Taira no Masakado's rebellion still fails, Tsubakura's mother still passes away, Tsurubami still spirits them away to Mugenri, etc.

It is undeniable that this would create an alternate reality where EMS simply, cannot happen. When things are this distant, I feel most would be comfortable calling it an alternate dimension.

Continuing with this as my example, the entirety of BPoHC, as we know it, may take place on a single piece of ice on the right tree, and it is that piece of ice cracking into its many pieces that gives us the timelines of BPoHC.

Thus we see that there's no true division between timelines and dimensions, those closer to one another in the universal pond are called alternate timelines to one another, and those distant are called alternate dimensions.

Homeologues

Homeologues, a concept introduced to us through Suzumi, is perhaps one of the most confusing and intriguing in the series so far.

A term coined by Tsubakura, it refers to "similar people across different dimensions, although they do not necessarily exist in every dimension."

There's a lot of confusion as to what this really means, but looking at the original Japanese terms shows us that it's really just the character version of the lily pad ice model.

The term is "common originator lifeforms" (同祖体), and therefore it refers to beings that share a common origin, somehow.

Under the framework that dimensions and timelines are really the same thing, the easiest type of homeologue is therefor simply the same person across different timelines.

For example, the Tsubakura who drank ink for breakfast on the morning of BPoHC and Tsubakura who drank Yabusame's coffee instead are homeologues to one another.

Of course, I kind of doubt that Tsubakura invented the term to be used for these cases, but rather for realities that are further separated from one another.

Though with the lily pad ice model, it's easy to see what this means, even if separated by a great many pieces of ice, there will still inevitably be people who "correspond" to one another.

Back to the botanist Yago scenario again, for one botanist Yago and blacksmith would definitely be homeologues of one another.

The Tsubakura Enraku equivalent born in the "ice pieces" originating from the botanist Yago line would be the homeologue to the Tsuba we know and love.

However, since the whole Tasouken line of events could not happen, it would be unlikely for there to be a Yaorochi homeologue other there, thus, "[homeologues] do not necessarily exist in every dimension"

Suzumi Kuzu

Suzumi's ability to let them turn back time can also be understood by the lily pad ice model, they are the "Alice Leaping Atop Lily Pad Ice", the figure "skipping around the thin sheets elegantly".

Their ability basically allows them to travel to a different sheet of ice from their own, and of course, since their destination would undoubtedly have a Suzumi of its own as well, it causes the clone situation.

It is here that I do want to point out problem with the lily pad ice model, it pretty much requires us to freeze things and look at them in terms of snapshots.

Suzumi is unable to travel to the equivalent point of time in another timeline, they must go back in time, and go through a different string of events to reach a different conclusion.

So perhaps you could say that Suzumi breifly reforms the ice, right before it cracks apart and jumps across the crack, entering a different timeline.

Mugenri and the Outside World

Mugenri and the Outside World are rather curious cases, it's sort of implied that Mugenri is but a pocket dimension of the Outside World, but it doesn't exactly make it clear what it's relationship with the Outside World is.

Is Mugenri itself a parallel Outside World, despite being made out of it? Is Mugenri and the Outside World, on a cosmic scale, just two places on the same piece of ice?

This is one question that the lily pad ice model simply cannot answer, unfortunately.

The "Mugenri of the world where we were born in"

In BPoHC, ??? Team VS. Yaorochi, we get the following Suzumi monologue (Quote for Hamee and brackets for Ardey):

"Really though, there sure are a lotta familiar faces 'round here~." (Those would be "homeologues," yeah. Can't say I like usin' the name Tsubakura gave 'em, but whatever.) [...] Yaorochi: "Who goes there?!" (See, now here's a good example.) [...] "Ooh, now here's another familiar face. I'm not even surprised anymore." (Seems like their name's still "Yaorochi", even in this world.) [...] "But there's still, like, a LOT of homeologues here. Isn't that weird?" (It's 'cause this is the Mugenri of the world where we were born in. There's more than a few red threads running off us.)

There are two curious things here:

Ardey's implication that they've seen a different Yaorochi before

The "Mugenri of the world where we were born in".

To be completely honest, I'm unsure how to interpret #1. Personally, I've always been under the impression that Suzumi is comparing our Yaorochi with one that they've met in a distant dimensions.

However, apparently a lot of people think that this refers to a parallel Yaorochi in the Outside World instead.

Given what I've mentioned about the ambiguous relationship between the outside and Mugenri, I must honestly say I have no answer for this, and can only leave the mystery be.

As for #2 though, I believe that with the lily pad ice model, it's extremely easy to see what Suzumi means here. They are taking their own birth as their "origin point", every version of Mugenri that exists this event, would be a "Mugenri of the world they were born".

Conversely, any Mugenri extending from universes where this particular Suzumi was never born, are the "other Mugenri's", like the one from botanist Yago's line.

Ending things off

So yeah, this was a bit of a ramble this time, I must admit. It's a very ambiguous topic that we don't know much about, so I was perhaps over-ambitious in trying to tackle it so casually.

Perhaps I would've done a better job getting my point across if I could illustrate it better, but that's just not my forte, so I hope what is there helps.

In any case though, if nothing else I'd love for more people to read about the "lily pad ice" vision of dimensions that JynX has, and come to their own conclusions as to how it all works in Len'en.

As usual, I hope you enjoyed~! :)

[theuntitledblog]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) - REVIEW

SYNOPSIS

When Rocket is seriously injured following an attack by Adam Warlock, the Guardians of the Galaxy recruit Gamora to hunt down Rocket's creator; the twist High Evolutionary to save their friend's life.

The rather disappointing Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has led to some difficult questions being asked of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It would be foolish to say that this represents a genuine crisis, it is rather fair to say that this phase of the MCU has struggled with the overarching story and has left some questioning where is it all going. The Guardians of the Galaxy have always felt standalone in the way that James Gunn has approached their story and he does the same again here. While this doesn't answer any questions regarding the overarching narrative, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 gives the MCU a much needed boost with a crowd pleasing sequel that ticks off everything you'd expect to see on a Guardians checklist. A stylish soundtrack? Check. Colourful, crazy, imaginative and physics defying space locations? Check. Memorable characters and side splitting humour? Also check. Pushing the boundaries of just how dark the MCU has ever gone before? I didn't see this one coming and was definitely not on any checklist I would've had going into this. But it is this tonal shift and bold storytelling that helps set Vol. 3 apart from other entries.

While the trailers suggested a more darker aesthetic than what we had in Vol. 1 and 2, I seriously doubted whether any MCU film, particularly the Guardians of the Galaxy, would ever go to the sort of places that James Gunn takes us here. Let's be clear about it ... Rocket's backstory depicts the darkest, saddest and most horrifying concept yet seen in the MCU. So unsettling is some of the scenes that you would have to question whether it would be suitably for young children to come a long and see it. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bleak film but the horrifying concepts being explored here is only heightened visually with a degree of gruesomeness I wasn't expecting either. Factoring into this also is perhaps the nastiest and cruellest villain yet seen in Chukwudi Iwuji's High Evolutionary who gives off some Kang vibes with his unstable and menacing performance. Rocket's origin steals the movie for me and helps elevate Vol. 3 to upper tier MCU levels but it's also to Gunn's credit that the rest of the film delivers.

The Guardians enjoyed great outings in Infinity War, Endgame and the recent Christmas Special and Gunn's writing builds upon these with Karen Gillan's Nebula and Pom Klemetieff's Mantis in particular getting much more to do this time around. But that doesn't mean that this is an imbalanced affair, in fact one of the things I admire most about Vol. 3 is that each Guardian is given something to do and moment(s) to shine. Yes this is a dark film at times but it is balanced with moments of levity and a strong emotional centre. Chris Pratt and Dave Bautista are as good as they've ever been in both their comedic moments and dramatic moments. Gunn is balancing a lot character threads; perhaps too much as he's balancing all the relationships between the Guardians, Rocket's backstory and Quill's unresolved issues with Zoe Saldana's alternate Gamora. Will Poulter's Adam Warlock doesn't get a lot of screen time and you do wish slightly more was done with him, Gunn gives him just enough to justify his presence in the film. Whilst it would've been tempting to provide a fan pleasing finale, Gunn is true to his word in the sense that this feels like a genuine finale for this set up of characters. Vol. 3 is a return to form for the MCU and it came at just the right time.

VERDICT

Vol. 3 is a fun, character driven thrill ride that also serves up dark and emotional themes that you might not have expected from a film called Guardians of the Galaxy. A complete triumph and perhaps the best film since Avengers: Endgame.

4/5

[vera-dauriac]

Ok @verdiesque. You asked how to plot a longer work, and I hope you don’t regret that. 😉 Anyhow, here’s the most basic 3 Act structure I use when writing. It’s primarily based on the work of Syd Field, and like a lot of plotting systems used by me and other novelist/prose writers of varying lengths, its roots are in screenwriting. I’ve tried to use examples I think you will know or that are easily explainable/generic/universal so that they will make sense. If you need clarification or a better example, just ask.

OK. Let’s go.

Act 1 (Roughly first 25% or less)

Opening Image: We see the character where they are starting from in normal life and the tone it set. This will often be a deliberate mirroring of the Closing Image. (If you’ve seen the 1988 Dangerous Liaisons, this is done really well. We open with the Marquise de Merteuil at her dressing table, putting on her persona, and the last shot is her wiping her makeup off, all of which says so much about her and her world.)

Inciting Incident: Something happens to start the protagonist down his/her path. If this is a romance, this is the couple meeting. If it’s a procedural, the detective gets the case. In adventure, the hero receives a poke to start his adventure.

Plot Point 1: This is the moment that changes everything. The protagonist only has one direction available. In Star Wars, it’s the Empire destroying Luke’s home and killing his aunt and uncle, so he literally can’t go home anymore. In Black Hawk Down, it’s the literal title event—the Black Hawk goes down.

Act 2 (Roughly 50% or more, split in half around the aptly named Midpoint)

Pinch 1: This is a thematic reminder of what the story is about. The point of the Pinches is to apply pressure to the protagonist and keep the story from bogging down. (See Pinch 2 for more.)

Midpoint: If the trajectory of the story has been positive up to this point, things should start going wrong, and if the trajectory has been down, this is when things start trending up. I once heard the Midpoint described as the moment when characters stop asking questions and start coming up with answers. Frequently, this will be a big crowd scene or party. In Fellowship of the Ring, this is the Council of Elrond: All the free peoples of Middle-earth have gathered to discuss the problem of the Ring; they debate the feasibility of walking it into Mordor; a better plan is formed and implemented. The second half of the movie starts. (Aside--in the larger story of LOTR, this is Plot Point 1. Really well structured continuing series will do this, and it's awesome.)

Pinch 2: Another thematic reminder of why any of this matters and an application of pressure to keep the story moving. To use Star Wars again, Luke and Gang once more clash with Stormtroopers, which is thematic of fighting the Empire, and unifying because both times it’s Stormtroopers. (In an adventure romance I’m outlining right now, I do pretty much the same thing. Both Pinches involve battles scenes that don’t go great for the lovers because of the antagonist.)

Plot Point 2: There’s a dramatic reversal, and it’s usually very bad. Sometimes referred to as the Dark Night of the Soul, things are never worse for the protagonist. Very specific romance structures will sometimes differentiate between Plot Point 2/Dark Night of the Soul and the Break Up, but it’s essentially that moment. It’s Elizabeth Bennet, dealing with the fact her dumbass sister has run off and she knows that Mr. Darcy is in the world thinking ill of her.

There is an alternative to a Dark Night of the Soul, turning this into a moment of “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” For an example, um, see Network.

Act 3 (Roughly 25% or less)

Showdown: Shit is now going to happen and get figured out for good or ill. The protagonist and the antagonist come face-to-face. Final battle, hero running through a crowded city to kiss his beloved on New Years Eve, etc.

Resolution: The hero’s problem is solved, either positively (we’re getting married!) or negatively (oops, I’m dead or dying), depending on the type of story you’re telling.

Closing Image: The final summation of your characters and themes and what you’ve been trying to say in a single shot/line/paragraph/chapter/epilogue. Bonus points if it mirrors the opening shot. (Examples: TE Lawrence on the road, Eleanor leaving to mirror her arrival in Lion in Winter.)

In a shorter work, each of these headings (beats) could just be a paragraph. Multiple beats can happen in the same chapter. In longer works, each of these might get their own chapters with all sorts of fun stuff in between. (Next post if you’re still interested—resources to help you figure out the in between stuff.) Point is, it’s flexible.

[brandwhorestarscream]

In the Shadows AU, how do the adults of the family go about procuring more "drones"?

Uhhhhhh- 😀

Ok I'm gonna put this under the cut because HUGE SPOILERS for anyone that hasn't read/watched Shadows House

Much like in Shadows House, the Shadows Family of Cybertron are parasitic entities. They need to mimic and then merge with another living creature to become complete and "perfect"

Since it's at this point unclear where the morphs came from originally, I reserve the right to say that morphs in this AU are either

1. From an alternate shadow realm (kinda like the shadow zone), where everything is black and faceless, or

2. Are somehow connected to Unicron. Maybe drops of his blood afger his defeat floated freely in the universe, and eventually took on a vaguely-living form as the first Morph.

Regardless. Shadows starting as morphs is canon. BUT, this is where we're gonna v off because I'm obsessed

Regardless of where the original morph(s) came from, they can't get any more. So, in true mimicking fashion, some of the adult shadows are able to create morphs from their own body. Maybe by splitting off pieces of themselves and sculpting them with their hands, drawing out a piece of their spark energy (if they even have sparks) to bring it to life. Then the freshly made morphling is taken away to the Chamber of Mimicry, the birthplace of all Shadows.

Because they need smthn to mimic, I'm gonna say the small towns built on or around Mt. Helex (where the estate is located) are being controlled and manipulated. Their energon has been poisoned with soot and shadow, making it black to drink. Dulling the minds and the senses of any who ingest it. The school system is still the same--children of every frame type are given a well rounded education free of charge, sponsored by the Shadows. Then, once a vorn, The Selection rolls around. The Shadows waltz into town, wearing their stolen faces, and choose the prettiest, most talented younglings to take back with them. They will become the Drones for the new sons and daughters of the proud Shadows Family 🤭

As the younglings are taken away, they're given an extra special drink. The darkest energon of all, black like an endless void, capable of wiping their mind of all memories, and making sure the new rules set in quick.

"Now, repeat after me: Let us ever remember, the Shadows are an exceptional noble family. And to serve them is the pride and joy of every Living Drone's existence!"

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

...Another Weird AU

I call this the “deranged cousin” of the ideas in this post, and for a good reason...it’s basically that as a crack fic.

Inspired by a conversation on a certain Discord server about “what if HypMic magical girls, but not Ramuda?”. Thus, even though they’re guys, they will be referred to as “magical girls” as a gender-neutral term. After picking characters based on their height, it was quite the brain exercise to string them together, but I had a lot of fun doing it. That said, I think I’ve written “magical girl” so many times for this particular set of ideas, it’s started to lose all meaning... *sweatdrops*

So there is the HypMic world we know and a parallel universe to it, in which 1) there are no Hypnosis Mics, but 2) some people develop magic and some don’t (which essentially took the place of Hypnosis Mics). What was TDD + Sasara and Kuko were hyped up to be the greatest magical girls ever by Chuohku...only for half the group to develop powers and for Chuohku to banish the Powerless trio (this world’s Samatoki, Jakurai and Kuko) as a result. Fast-forward to the present day and Riou, who did develop powers, sets out on a trip to make things right again...by recruiting the Powerless’s counterparts from the universe we know...

...or so the story goes, but as you can see, that’s not fully true.

Basically, in this system, each magical girl is assigned a gemstone and their powers are related to both their backstory and possible meaning/s of the gem. They also have a ring with their assigned gemstone, typically worn on the third finger of the left hand, which they use to transform, although Jakurai doesn’t keep his on his person (see below for why). They have to transform to invoke their powers, with the exception of Kuko. (Why Kuko? Because he’s the only one whose powers already seem to exist in canon in some form, most notably in RIP and the related drama track.) They were originally meant to have sentient wands as well a la Prisma Illya, but that made everything too complex. You can see a remnant of what once was in Riou’s profile below.

(…On a personal note, as I was thinking about this idea, I was reminded my story White Parasite originally had the same premise before becoming more standard. However, this was a few years ago when I believed gender and sexuality to be more binary, so I was afraid of not being taken seriously or alternatively, being heckled out of town. You can either take this idea as extremely parodic (like Mahou Shoujo Ore) or as breaking down gender norms (men who wear dresses in spite of not having femininity).)

Magical Girl Riou. The magical girl of alternate worlds (or dare I say, isekai...?). Gemstone: obsidian, a gem with potential meanings of “clarity” and “looking to the future”. Power/s: parallel world travel and observation, born from wanting to do things over in order to save his commander. Ostensibly the leader, because he’s the one who has the powers to kick off the plot, but prefers to not take the spotlight. His transformation outfit is a black vest and a white short-sleeved shirt over a black ballerina skirt (it gives off the image of a “third-rate idol”). The magical girl has to be okay with the outfit to some degree, so his magic gave him combat boots as a compromise. (Also maroon stockings, because I can’t imagine him with bare legs *sweatdrops*.)

Magical Girl Rei. The magical girl of success. Gemstone: citrine, a gem with the potential meaning of “prosperity” - this extends to his transformation outfit, which for most intents and purposes is a businesswoman’s (complete with kitten heels!), aside from a big split in one side (...for mobility reasons, although even with that, it still hinders him so much, it doesn’t do much for fanservice purposes) and with the shirt open (as he usually does). Power/s: brainwashing, born from wanting to “exert more control over others”.

Magical Girl Jakurai. The magical girl of location. Gemstone: amethyst, a gem with the potential meaning of wisdom, protection from drunkenness and instilling a serious and sober mind (ha!), born from the fact he wanted to save Yotsutsuji. Due to the belief such powers are “unscientific”, he is unable to manifest a transformation, although his power (as seen by Riou) is known to be a “viewfinder” - finding lost items with more accuracy than Odd Jobs Yamada or creating magical weapon sights.

Magical Girl Samatoki. The magical girl of relationships. Gemstone: rose quartz, a gem with the potential meaning of “unconditional love”. Power/s: love spells or similar which can manipulate romantic and/or sexual feelings [A/N: over the years I have realised I’m no help when it comes to writing romantic/horny stuff, so don’t expect me to write about the repercussions of it all *sweatdrops*], born from wanting to amend his own failed relationships. His transformation outfit, much to his embarrassment, is a cross between his Halloween Witch outfit and Magical Girl Ramuda’s - a light pink dress with bell sleeves, bright pink gloves, a hooded cape and ballet flats (also bright pink).

Magical Girl Kuko. The magical girl of enlightenment. Gemstone: lapis lazuli, a gem with the potential meaning of “contacting spirit guardians”. Essentially, his power is a stronger version of his existing powers of bridging and contacting the supernatural and mundane worlds, born out of his spiritual beliefs. His transformation outfit (although basically no one ever sees it) is a royal blue halterneck top with silver sparkles, a navy blue pinafore skirt and strap sandals.

Magical Girl Ichiro. The magical girl of emotion and one of the magical girls restricted to the parallel world. Gemstone: opal, a gem with the potential meaning of “intensifying emotion”. Power/s: manipulation of platonic emotions (...basically anything that’s not Samatoki’s domain), born out of the fact he wanted to sympathise with his brothers better (it may not seem very versatile until you realise he can manipulate happiness, sadness, jealousy, platonic love/friendships and so much more). His love for his division bled into his transformation outfit and so it is a maid dress, complete with Mary Janes. Samatoki is still in denial his power is a more limited variation of Ichiro’s.

Magical Girl Ramuda. The magical girl of innocence and one of the magical girls restricted to the parallel world. Gemstone: moonstone, a gem with the potential meaning of “abundance”. Exactly as you know him from HypMic Quest, including the flashy powers, although in this case it is specifically born from him wanting to gain attention.

Magical Girl Sasara. The magical girl of renewal and one of the magical girls restricted to the parallel world. Gemstone: emerald, a gem with the potential meaning of “youth”. Power/s: Temporary age regression, born out of the desire to see the world as a child eternally. His transformation outfit is a corduroy dress that looks similar to overalls, with black shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt underneath. I just can’t get this version of Sasara out of my head, which is why I shelved the idea initially when I couldn’t get table formatting to work on Tumblr and then brought it back once I found time for it... *sweatdrops*.

[star--nymph]

the first 5 random pieces of OC lore you can think of, GO! 🌸

UH UH OH NO I'VE BEEN PIT ON THE SPOT UH

Gonna keep this to Godkiller//Deity for now cause I mean, ya'll know about Eurydice. How about some Lore around the world building of story.

1. Taking place In the year 3362 in an alternate universe to our own, humanity has made their home on a planet known as Eua. Though mostly populated by familiar fauna and flora, part of the planet is still over taken by danger and largely unknown breastary who threaten those who venture beyond human cities alone. The world is united under the Republic of Eua, a democracy that functions under the Six Branches (Military, Science, Law, Business, Communication, Humanities) and the Council of Presidents--representatives of the branches voted into power by the people. The Branches exist to maintain and serve society and every person has a hand in moving humanity forward into a new era. The military, especially, was created for the function not fighting any wars--since humans have been united under the same banner of one thousands--but to protect the Republic both inside and outside. Thus the Military is split into fractions: the Human Fraction and the lesser Beast Fractions.

The Human Fraction deals with internal affairs of society, investigating and containing human issues that are beyond the normal capabilities of the Republic’s Law Enforcements. Soldiers who are part of the Human Fraction are usually the elite, both revered and highly skilled, though some argue it is the ‘easier’ of the two fractions.

The Beast Fractions, however, are sent out beyond the Republic to work as a sort of glorified pest control, tasked with maintaining the border walls and keeping the more dangerous of the beasts out of human dwellings. Being placed in the Beast Fraction is considered a lesser honor, as those inside are usually less controllable, violent, or incapable in some manner or another, Often, being transferred to the Beast Fraction and thus far from society is considered a punishment or ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

2. Eua is littered with “pockets” or bottomless holes through out the planet where extremely strong, monstrous animals spring from. The edges of these wholes are also toxic for humans and therefore need to be cut off from the rest of society. These are the spaces in which the Beast fraction needs to monitor and guard. The planet seems to be made out of the corpses or ruins of the previous world’s inhabitants, the elder gods—who are either sleeping or dead. Humanity sprang from these corpses and built their civilizations on top of them unknowingly, leading to some cities and areas to be built on entire limbs or around giant ruins. There is one gigantic whole in the middle of the an ocean known as the Infinity Sea—this is assume to be the sight of some final battle between the elder gods. Animals and monsters strangely do not spring from there—it is eerily silent, for now.

3. Outside of the military, there are legal mercenary and private security organizations that can be utilized from protection, city-guarding, or monster control. While the military has a monopoly on paramilitary functions, some city-states prefer the use of their own funded organizations or some privately owned ones for a variety of reasons--ranging from distrust of the military, control over their own environments, bounty related jobs, or personal issues. All these organizations have to go through official channels to gain a license to form, otherwise they may be classified as an illegal fugitive unit. A group can obtain a licenses for many different things, though rarely are they given license to kill humans.

4. Eua’s nature is a mix of Earth nature and mutated nature, suspected to have been mixed with Elder God DNA. Most recognizable Earth nature can be found in the domesticated parts of Eua, believed to be rather mild even if their most wild regions. Mutated Nature can be found in almost all it’s entirety within “Pockets” or holes in which creatures and fuana pop out of and contaminated the land. The creatures and planets found there are consider too dangerous to be around normal humans and must be held at bay from the population. The Beast Fraction was created specifically to protect the border and keep humans from cross into it from their own benefit. Very few humans have gotten far within Pockets and most have died. There are a few flora and fauna taken for study and domesticated, though this is mostly because they are considered low level threats compared to other inhabitants. For example: the Ager is a large canine-like animal that has been breed for the most part for military use. A plant called Midas has also been cultivated and used as a quick acting medicine, known to seal up wound rather quickly. It is the primary ingredient in the now famous band aid, Hyper Aid.

5. A short list of other facts:

Planet Name- Eua (Eh v aa) Moons- Azura and Aclima Government- The Republic of Eua Evian- Refers both to an inhabitant of Eua and the universal language of the Republic. Unless stated otherwise, all spoken and written words are in Evian. Most people are bilingual, learning both Evian, and also their cultural languages. In fact, it’s a rarity for a person to only speak Evian. Children are also taught in school ESL or Evian Sign Language. Evian Colors- Cyan, White, Green Evian Symbol- A white and cyan background with a green tree in the center. Six branches protrude from it and grow six flowers. Currency- Fiats (symbol pending). 1 fiat is equivalent to one $1 USD. Age of Majority- 18 Years Old (This is includes as well: a age of maturity, age of sexual consent, marriageable age, school-leaving age, drinking age, voting age, smoking age, gambling age) Age of Driving- 16 Years Old Six Branches (with symbol and capital city) • Military- Nasturtium- Capital City Nova • Science- Sage- Capital City Nebula • Law- Gloriosa Daisy- Capital City Nuetron • Business- Hollyhock- Capital City Protostar • Communication- White Chrysanthemum- Capital City Tauri • Humanities- Bluebell- Capital City Pulsar

Metallicity- The headquarters of the Six Branches where all representatives meet on neutrul ground to make major decisions.

Along with the capital cities, there are also city states that control their own regions, each run by an elected Archon, which only holds office for a year and a limit of holding said office six times.

Presidents of Branches most hold a high position in their respective branch for five years and are not allowed to run for office, but instead must be nominated by those within their branch and then by the people. If it's found that they had any hand in being nominated, they are removed from the list. They hold their position as president and as archon over their capital city for five years--they can not be elected more than once and the age range for the position is 30 to 65.