#Additionally the whole thing kind of smacks of gender in a way that can either be interesting or just suck bad

[noisytenant]

i played the demo for coffin of andy and leyley. i actually like the worldbuilding and think the story is well-scoped/the nature of the characters being quarantined makes it so that the sometimes annoying RPG trope of "only interactables get flavor text" feels more emblematic of the constriction of their circumstances. i generally like those kinds of light-puzzle-fetch-quest games too, as long as the environment isnt a pain to traverse, which it isnt.

i know im really not the target audience for the central relationship; incest themes do absolutely nothing for me and the character designs are legally classifiable as a type of grain. but i am interested in learning more about how their toxic dynamic formed, and in better grasping their interiority (or willful ignorance of it).

i think in general the core elements were interesting but the writing style is just very alien from the kind of thing i'm into. it seems aware of its own obviousness, but hasn't yet pushed on cartoonishness nor swerved into realism enough to satisfy my sensibilities. i dont know of or relate to people who talk like the characters do, though i know they exist, LOL.

i liked the overworld style. the artist would benefit from learning how to draw anything other than conventionally attractive 20somethings.

i think based on the demo it's really kind of a toss-up if it ends up being anything interesting or if it's just a novelty; i think most likely it's going to be enjoyable with some surprisingly good moments, but mostly just capital C Competent. all the same, i'm curious to play past the demo + see other endings, so that's something.

[mirkstrolls]

What sort of pairings (romantic or platonic) are you *looking* to write? Alternatively: what would be your ideal dynamics for each of your chars in their available quadrants?

Old-ask answering, hot dang!

Okay, I’m always a sucker for anything involving emotional depth, especially since a lot of my current threads are more fun-adventure-times rather than actual major plot pieces, but hmm, let’s try to be more specific here…

For one thing: blackrom. None of my trolls have or have had a kismesis, with the exception of Widsth’s occasional flings and Taz’s weird semi-flirtation with Umetto, and none of them have a conclusively-planned black ship, I don’t think? And boy do they all need one! Plus I need to learn how to write blackrom better, since I’m not sure how to at the mo. This goes for ashenrom too; I’m interested in exploring those dynamics, which is why I’m super excited that Vide/Riccin is imminent and there may be an auspisticism for Taz on the horizon. 

I will always be in favor of more pale fluff, too! And not just piling and feelings-jamming and angsty soul-baring and the pale-honeymoon stuff, either (though I am a wreck for that, as mentioned, I will DIE), but pale couples out and about, doing plot-relevant things, while generally helping each other function better. 

But like… also. I really want Vide to have more friends who are 100% not into her romantically and never will be. Several of her past “friends” have turned out only to be interested in her due to having a crush on her, whether pale or flushed, and she feels pressured and anxious when she can’t reciprocate those feelings. It’d be really nice for her to have a circle of supportive people who don’t want anything from her but platonic friendship! Friends who can joke and gossip with her,  go shopping with her, shut her down when she gets Weirdly Pale, whatever. Just normal platonic stuff, in a variety of dynamics! 

I also want Genuine Friends for Taz, and horrible musician or historian friends for Weeds (and Genuine Quadrants for both), but they’re better set up for friendship than Vide is at the moment.

OH ALSO I would love to backplot ex-quads for Weeds, and maybe a few for Taz – she’s dated around a bit, he’s flirted-and-jilted his way through most of the music scene, the history scene, and the obscure-translations scene, both of them should have exes of varying levels of amicability out there.

Second part of the question was also interesting, answered below.

We’re going to say that “available” means “not actively dating someone right now,” even if that quad has been plotted, so Vide♥♦ and Taz♥ are currently unavailable. Also, keep in mind that these are what I think would be best, off the top of my head, not accounting for what my trolls could offer (as opposed to what they need) -- so they’re obviously allowed lots of wiggle-room

Vide: 

♣: Definitely someone who would take the quadrant pretty seriously and let her meddle at full capacity: someone who’s willing to spend a lot of time with her, since Vide gets horribly domestic with all her quads. But also someone who will meddle back and help her out with her blackrom woes! Vide’s very bad at blackrom and she could use someone to help her loosen up and release her inner bratty side. I guess I’m looking for a sort of teasing-but-affectionate, almost sibling-like relationship here?

♠: The thing about Vide is that she has some very specific blackrom issues springing from… not really knowing what it is or how it works? So ideally, she’d date someone who could go slow with her and maybe even be a bit domestic -- as I said above, Vide gets very strongly attached to all her quadrants. They’d also have to cool it on the violence aspect of the relationship, putting more emphasis on verbal arguments or passive aggression and pranks. Not that Vide wouldn’t want to physically fight them (because she would) or that she wouldn’t do well with someone who would push her to be stronger (again, she really would!), but a super-intense, hate-makeouts-with-lots-of-teeth-every-five-minutes kind of relationship would be likely to scare her off -- or scare her into flipping pale. She has to be able to win sometimes! And physical fights with people are not something she feels she can win at.

Taz: 

♦: I’d say, someone relatively calm and rational, who can get her to simmer down when she’s anxious or angry and curb her more self-destructive tendencies without alienating her for them. That might need to come later, though; at this point she’s badly in need of someone to talk to without fear of rejection, honestly.

♣: Taz is pretty good at being (bluntly, aggressively) ashen anyway, from long practice with the gang. For someone to actually get in a relationship with her, there’d have to be some reciprocity -- helping her out with her Umetto troubles, mediating tense business meetings with other gangs, maybe even setting her up on dates. I actually haven’t thought about this relationship a whole lot, because Taz just plain doesn’t hateflirt much!

♠: Not Umetto. Ha, but really, she might do better with a rival gang leader or someone on the other side of the law -- or even someone not related to the smuggling business at all: the trouble with being pitch for Umetto is that Taz is not really a domestic kismesis, and she can’t compete with him the way she wants to in a blackrom without shooting herself in the foot. So a Jets vs Sharks or Javert vs Valjean relationship could be fun with this one! However, any relationship based on work has the potential to screw up her profits, and she’s Very Not Okay with that. Honestly, I think it’d be more interesting if her kismate didn’t even know she was a smuggler: they’re competing with her in sailing, or they’re a rival coffeeshop, or something like that. Taz’s life is pretty high-stakes and this might be a fun way to lower those stakes. (Okay, so maybe I just want escalating coffeeshop wars, don’t judge)

Widsth (a.k.a DATE SOMEONE ALREADY): With nearly all of his quadrants, there really needs to be a friendship there first in order to give the romantic relationship staying power. Because his definition of “attractive” is so broad, because he’s like 25% in some kind of love with all of his friends anyway, it could pretty much be anyone! But this is about my ideal dynamics, so, hm.

♥: I kind of want him to date a lowblood! Particularly in this quadrant, since Widsth all but worships his matesprits, and I’d like him to end up with someone whose existence forces him to confront both his casteist beliefs and his weird courtly-love expectations of redrom, with its ideal of an unattainable, remote highblood beauty for a matesprit. Additionally, they’d need to have some common ground interest-wise (in music or history or adventure or storytelling) and be able to keep up with him on his travels, for his interest not to wane as it has in the past.  So: someone unpretentious but with an active interest in being involved in his life, and either someone who will travel with him, or someone who he’d be in love with enough to keep coming back for – but the latter is very unlikely. 

♦: You gotta find the fine balance between loving Widsth for the dramatic, extravagant nerd he is without trying to stifle him and not letting him jump off a cliff because he and Riccin think it’s funny. Weeds is not emotionally in distress very often, but he is very bad at coping with it when he is, and also very bad at not doing distressing things like cliff jumping or making out with a stranger in the bathroom of a bar for an hour on the off chance that they might be serendipitous. He desperately needs to be reigned in -- just not smothered.

♣: If we’re going for Mirk-Brand Meddling Auspisticism™, this might be the person to smack him upside the head when he starts flirting with inappropriate people again, or possibly make apologies to the people he flirts with. Of all his quadrants, this is the one with the most leeway for difference in interests: you don’t have to be into music/history/melodrama to get ashen with Weeds, you just have to be able to put up with him and bat him away from bad decisions once in a while, maybe be that cold splash of reality on his rosy-eyed romanticism 

♠: There has to be real competition here, so a musician would honestly probably be best? Or someone with lots of history knowledge, anyone he could have a meaningful contest of skills with. They’d have to be genuinely skilled and able to keep up with him, so that he could respect them while still wanting to beat them this time for sure!!! I don’t imagine they’d get into physical fights very often! Sometimes, yeah, but at his heart, Widsth is not a fighter, he’s a bard. Might be fun for this one to be a lowblood too, but I don’t actually care about caste or gender!