#Either going to delete or expand later

[theusernameiwantisntavailable]

Was rereading the Odyssey and in book 6 there's an exchange where Odysseus tries to hug the ghost of his mother and it goes like this:

"Three times, in my eagerness to clasp her to me, I started forward. Three times, like as shadow or a dream, she slipped through my hands and left me pierced by an even sharper pain"

And to me that's Bernard trying to grab onto Tim, who keeps leaving. It hurts every time but like a fool he can't stop reaching out in vain.

[starry-dream-moonlight]

i hate my dad’s side of this fucking family… (except my aunt and nephews…)

[quintinh43]

23. Taking a picture together to print and hang later

I just feel like this is so something Matthew Tkachuk would do. Like maybe he prints them, puts them in a frame, and has it on his dresser or night stand. Or he sends them to his mom to give her updates on how they’re doing and SHE PRINTS THEM 🥺

Thank you for requesting, I loved this sm, I was giggling and kicking my feet while I was writing it, lowkey i might expand on this in the future and make is like a full length fic lol. Also sorry, I definitely went a stray from your request but I hope you still like it 🥹🫶🏼

-

Matthew was a picture guy. At every possible moment, he had his phone out, snapping pictures or recording short videos. "For the memories," he claimed. The problem was, you weren't a picture girl. You hated having your picture taken, and for some reason, you were Matthew's favorite muse.

On this particularly warm Florida day, Matthew, ever the gentleman, had planned a beach picnic for the two of you. Having snacked heartily, you were sprawled on the picnic blanket, an arm tucked under your head and your sun hat pulled over your face to block the sun out.

Matthew had his head pillowed on your stomach, and your fingers were tangled in his curls, scratching soothingly at his scalp while he rambled about anything that came to mind. Unbeknownst to you, Matthew was also taking photos. He was such a sucker for a cute aesthetic candid, especially because when you knew he was taking photos, you always made an effort to hide behind him in some manner.

"So basically, Brady is not gonna name his baby after me," Matthew finishes his story with a huff.

A soft chuckle rumbles through you, and you tug at his curls. "Don't worry, Matty, we can name our babies after you," you lift your sunhat and lean forward to press a kiss to his cheek. He tilts his face so that your lips land on his. He wraps an arm around your neck, his thumb brushing the column of your throat.

"Can't wait to have babies with you," he murmurs agaisnt your lips, with a bright smile. It's then that you notice his phone in hand, angled towards the two of you.

"Oh please don't tell me you just took photos of us making out," you whine embarrassedly, pulling the brim of your hat low over your face to hide behind it.

"Ok, I won't tell you," Matthew shrugs, with a sly smile, flicking your hat off your head.

"Delete them," you glare, poking him in the chest.

"Nope," Matt shakes his head.

You lunge for his phone, and he shrieks, throwing it somewhere on the picnic blanket. He catches you around the waist, pinning you beneath him. He attacks you with kisses all over your face and neck until you're a giggling, squirming mess beneath him. Matt has a hand splayed on your bare stomach, keeping you pinned while you try to catch your breath.

Before you can register what is happening, Matt has his phone in hand. He snaps a picture of you all splayed out beneath him, back arched, your hands resting on curves of your breasts, and your cheeks flushed from exertion.

"Matty," you pout, trying to swipe the phone from his hands to delete the photo. You curse his athlete reflexes as he keeps the phone out of your reach.

"I'll delete it after I print it out and stick it my wallet," he smirks.

You're eyes go wide, "you're not sticking that in your wallet,"

Matthew pouts dramatically, "but it would go so nice with my collection,"

Your face pales almost comically, "What collection?"

Matthew straddles you, keeping you pinned to the blanket, knees on either side of your hips while he shuffles through the picnic basket where your wallets and keys were stored.

In true Matthew fashion, he's had the same wallet for thirteen-ish years. The leather is all cracked, and it's falling apart at the seams. There's duct tape on one of the inside pockets that houses an old punch card to a smoothie place that no longer exists.

He pulls out three polaroids from the back pocket of his wallet and spreads them out on the blanket. You prop yourself up on your elbows to peak at the polaroids as he lays them out in a neat line.

This first one is of you laying in bed on your stomach, naked. The sheets slung low over your hips, with your leg peaking out. Your hair is splayed over your shoulder and pillow, and the sunlight casts patterns along your bare back.

The second is you leaning against a wall with a cup of coffee in your hands as you stare out the window. You'd clearly just gotten out of bed, hair a mess, and t-shirt scrunched over your hip, showing off the band of your underwear. It was from when Matthew had taken you to Paris a couple of months ago during the all star break.

The third one makes your cheeks heat as you recall the memory. In the photo, you're leaned over the arm of the couch, and Matthew's hand is wrapped around your throat. The photo cuts off right before exposing your breasts, and there are hickies blooming across your chest and collarbones. He had been on a long roadie, and you had flown down to New York while he was scheduled to play the Devils, Rangers and Islanders.

It was safe to say Matthew had liked the surprise. The Panthers went on to sweep the roadie, and your hickies had lasted for a good few weeks.

You stare at the pictures, mouth agape, trying to recall how he he'd even been sneaky enough to capture the moments. Matthew looks nervous as you look between him and the photographs.

"Since when have you had these in your wallet?" You mumble shyly. It still genuinely shocks you that Matthew finds you beautiful enough to want to immortalize you in photos. You had never thought of yourself as conventionally beautiful. But ever since you'd met Matthew, he'd been telling you that you were the most beautiful girl to exist.

Matthew shrugs, "For a while now, you're not gonna make me get rid of them are you?" He pleads.

You shake your head, eyes soft, as you wrap a hand around Matthew's neck and pull him in for a kiss. "Love you, Matty," you mumble against his lips.

"I love you too Y/n."

---

Umm, hello? I actually loved this so much? Anyway, I hope yall are doing well. I am working on these requests, I promise! Love yall!!

[omgfangirlland]

Just found your work. I'm so excited to see what's going on next chapter. Do you think that Bruce and the family find her old art pieces to her diety? Maybe murals in Red Hoods territory on the side of buildings that she helped repair and set up programs in? Love stories where they weren't hiding anything, the family just didn't care or notice who was doing the charity work. Plus making them see a contrast of her previous self and her light rebellion vs her potentially bitchy/witchy rebellion when/if they find her again. Also, I would love to know what you think her worship becomes as she gets older? Does it stay art and just add other forms of worship, or does the act of her superhero work start to power and work as a form of worship? Either way, excitement grows for your work! Hope your week goes amazing!

I send your brain kisses cuz this just woke possibilities in mine I didn't even think of, thank you! I'm stealing that mural idea and will expand on it.

They will! The bats are a nosey bunch and her room will become ground zero to find a clue about wtf happened. I already have so much planned for this plot point and it's nowhere close to it starting- but we're getting there :)))

Her worship will definitely change and so will her powers once she finds out but that will be a lot later in the story.

The art will still be a big part of it, but her worship will become more on the nose, I'm toying with the idea of her accidentally becoming a cult leader due to making an altar in the middle of nowhere but that isn't written in stone, I just think it'll be a funny subplot.

Had to delete quite a bit cuz I got excited and kinda spoiled a bunch of stuff- 😅 Thank you! I hope you have an amazing week, too 💚💚

[zeroeightzeroone]

in this lifetime and the next - seo changbin

genre: angst? hurt/comfort? idk two exes are talking about their past relationship

pairing: ex-boyfriend, non-idol!seo changbin x ex-girlfriend!femreader

notes: if this looks familiar, my secondary blog 'zerothreetwentyfive ' was deleted by tumblr (idk why) so i'm republishing everything here on my main blog.

wc ~2.5k | moodboard

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ｡ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:

"how…" he clears his throat, "how have you been?"

his eyes are fixed on the night sky. even with the knowledge that he isn't looking in your direction, you still shrug before replying, "i've been… okay."

if someone told you three years ago you'd be lying under the millions of stars sparkling up within the dark night sky, next to your ex-boyfriend, you would've been convinced that person was out of their mind. especially, if that person told you that throughout the trip you would find yourselves alone together coincidentally, eventually finding yourselves sober and in the comfort of your ex-partner laid next to you. a cool breeze drifting by once in a while and everyone else who came onto the trip were either drunk or passed out inside the cottage. 

you really would've called an intervention. convinced that they were far too delusional for their own good.

then again, you from three years ago would have never believed there'd come a day when your boyfriend would become your ex. where he would become someone of your past. you from three years ago could not even fathom, nor entertain the possibility of being away from the man, of living without the man. the man you loved more than anything or anyone. a statement that holds true to this day.

truthfully, you believed that he would be the one you would love and be loved by for eternity. believing that you waited your whole life, for everything in the universe to align, paving the path to meet the man you were fated for, the man you would call the one:

seo changbin.

"work's been good? school? life?" changbin's voice is quite soft and his tone is a bit awkward. 

he's tiptoeing around his words, trying to figure out how you feel about him. weighing out what you could and couldn't speak about or if you should be speaking at all. the thought of overstepping and potentially making you uncomfortable sits in the back of his mind.

"they've been… more or less the same," you answer.

it's different without you, you think to yourself. 

his absence was something you could never get used to after the breakup. three years later and that sense of emptiness looms over your head.  

"i got promoted last year," you add.

"oh really? that's great to hear!" changbin's tone is excited but at the same time it's uneasy.

of course, he's excited, and he's proud of you but he still doesn't know how you feel about him right now. what if he makes you uncomfortable with too much excitement? or a lack of excitement? changbin's treading lightly.

"… uh… sorry–"

"—how about you? how have you been?" you're quick to cut him off. 

if you didn't, changbin would go on rambling and apologizing; something you picked up on very early into your relationship. the man lying next to you apologizes for everything, regardless of if he is at fault or not. even if there is no fault, he finds himself apologizing anyway.

"last i remember you were working a big project."

changbin blinks, taken aback by the sudden interruption but he composes himself quickly, "o-oh! i've been doing good as well. happy that it's done."

"how'd it go?" you wonder.

"it was... definitely a lot more than we expected to take on. the clients decided they wanted to expand more on their vision. change up a lot of pre-made plans."

"ah, i see... i can't tell if that's good or bad?"

"i'd say it's both," you can hear the slight smile in his tone, "a lot of work done being scrapped which, y'know, isn't exactly ideal. but they agreed to pay us more which is good. i'd say we were rewarded adequately for the work we put in."

you hum, "well, then, i'm happy for you."

silence looms in the air between the two of you. neither of you knows what to say to the other, how to continue a conversation. 

the both of you stare up at the stars overhead; most of which you aren't able to see on a daily due to the light pollution in the city. while there is a silence that has fallen between you two, it's not an uncomfortable one. neither of you are itching to escape an awkward atmosphere, to escape being around your ex. instead you find yourselves in a comfortable space in the presence of the one lying next to you.

basking in a presence neither of you has had the opportunity to be comforted by, let alone be around, in the past three years.

you find yourself instinctively fiddling with the ends of your hoodie sleeves, pulling them over your hands and hiding them inside. beside you, changbin adjusts his arm to rest behind his head while the other one rests on his stomach.

"y'know what this reminds me of?" he says suddenly, in a hushed tone, "reminds me of our two-year anniversary."

tearing your eyes off the sky, you turn your head to changbin's direction. 

you let your eyes linger on him for a moment. entranced by how the stars and the moon illuminate his features in such a soft and gentle manner. it's been three years since you've been this physically close to changbin, let alone seen the man, you can't help but analyze his features like it's the first time. looking over the features you fell in love with way back when.

changbin looks just as amazing as ever, maybe even more attractive. he still sports those soft, dark curls in his shaggy hair that falls right under his eyes. he's more buff in comparison to when you last saw him three years ago.

the longer you let your eyes look over him, the more you're taken back, that sense of nostalgia washing over you. he's right, this moment is reminiscent of your two-year anniversary. 

you remember the months leading up to that day as if it were yesterday.

you remember repeatedly asking your boyfriend how you two should celebrate the milestone that was coming just around the corner. in response, he would always say he would be the one to take care of everything and that all you needed to do was sit back and relax. 

the boy was clad in light blue denim jeans, a navy varsity-styled jacket with a white shirt underneath, his hair tousled as it fell in front of his black-rimmed glasses when he knocked at your door. greeting your family before whisking you away for a night you will never forget.

changbin quite literally drove you off into the sunset, one hand gripping the wheel whilst his other held your hand in his. the both of you belting out to the playlist you created together, one that grew as each day passed. 

by the time you arrived at your destination, the sun had set behind the skyline as the dark sky loomed over the city. you remember the way your jaw slacked in awe at the breathtaking sight of all the stars. 

"i've never been this close to the stars! they're so much closer from up here!" 

you stood there gaping at the stars for what felt like eternity, while changbin stood beside you, his eyes full of affection as he stared at you. oh, his eyes. you would think he captured the stars in his eyes with the way they sparkled at the sight of you. that night on the hill, you and changbin were laid next to each other on the hood of his car, cuddled in each other's arms as you talked about anything and everything that came into your minds.

there you were in the arms of your lover, alone together in your own starry heaven. everything seized to exist other than you and your intertwined hearts.

you and changbin, together against the world.

nothing will ever come close to that level of perfection. that ethereal moment you've etched into your brain, you'd much rather be damned than to have that moment wiped from your memory.

"yeah… it does. the sky, the stars… just... everything brings me back."

"it was definitely not as chilly that night," changbin smiles.

half of his statement refers to the weather and the other half refers to how you were huddled up next to him that night. as opposed to now, where the space between your bodies lets in a cool draft.

you chuckle and shake your head, "the weather was great, not too hot and not too cold. just perfect."

lying next to him, reminiscing on your two-year anniversary as a couple has a question popping up in your minds.

if given the chance, would you go back? would you choose each other again?

the question is nothing new. a recurring thought over the past three years. 

over the past three years, you've collected a pool of unanswered questions regarding your relationship with changbin: the how's, what's, when's and why's. how could you not wonder? nothing in the world could surpass your love for seo changbin.

three years later and you have never loved as deeply as you have for the man beside you.

you're both listening to the steady breaths of the one lying next you as both your minds run a mile a minute. allowing a brief silence to settle before changbin is the one to break the silence.

"i'm sorry."

"sorry? ...for what?"

"just… everything."

when you turn to look in changbin's direction, your eyes meet for the first time that night. god, it feels as if your heart stopped at that exact moment. the delay was so long you could have dropped dead right there.

but you lived off the way your eyes locked with changbin's. finding your breath again with each twinkle of the stars reflecting off his black-rimmed glasses. finding your pulse starting up again, this time beating out of your chest as his deep brown eyes bore into your own. breathing the life back into you.

your gazes soften, a wave of nostalgia washing over the both of you; a memory of what you once had together.

a breath of the life you shared three years ago.

you stare at each other wordlessly. soaking in a feeling of comfort neither of you has felt in three years, one you only received from the one lying next to you.

"i'm sorry too. for everything."

"it's not your fault," he shakes his head, "i fell short in the end and i wasn't the boyfriend you deserved."

you're shaking your own head, "i was a terrible girlfriend. i wouldn't have stayed with me either."

"you were–are– amazing," changbin states, "you've always been."

"that's not true. don't say that, i know i hurt you with the things i said."

somewhere along the line of your relationship with changbin, things started to go awry. your lives began to clash; school and work priorities building and creating distance between you two. it felt like your relationship was slowly slipping away, schedules ran tight and pressures ran high. 

you remember petty arguments, the back-and-forth bickering between the both of you when you were able to see each other. 

"and i hurt you. i was never there when you needed me, i promised you that you could trust me, depend on me but i broke that in the end."

"that's not your fault. i couldn't be there when you needed me either."

"and that wasn't your fault either, our schedules didn't line up anymore."

"but… i could've tried har—"

"there was only so much we could do and you tried your absolute hardest," changbin interrupts you, "time just... wasn't on our side."

you hate to admit that even without the petty, groundless arguments, the end was inevitable. 

your relationship no longer fit into the other's increasingly hectic schedule, any and all the attempts came with sacrifices with school or work, and in the end, there was no healthy way to incorporate that time for each other. all the time you did spend together was plagued by stress and high tensions, only pushing you two further apart. 

no matter how hard you tried to salvage your relationship, everything else tried even harder to ruin it.  

the anger and dejection only grew stronger as time passed. the both of you wondering why things weren't going your way no matter how hard you worked for it. you felt dejected that your efforts came without fruition. upset that the time you did have together was limited, fleeting and full of the pressures your individual lives were weighing on you. 

"can i ask something?" your voice is almost inaudible but changbin hums in response, "why did you leave when you did?"

changbin blinks slowly as he processes your words.

"i didn't want things to get worse."

"what do you mean?"

"i didn't want to end things between us on a bad note. for us to part ways hating each other."

"i could never hate you."

"maybe, but we'd grow to resent each other even if we didn't mean to. wondering if our efforts were in vain, that no matter how hard we tried the universe worked harder against us."

"did you… resent me in the end?"

"i would've rather died instead of growing to hate or resent you."

your head snaps in his direction and his to yours. your eyes wide with shock at how he said that without hesitation.

"what we had between us, i didn't want it to be overshadowed by months of arguing."

changbin has never loved anyone the way he loves you. 

early on in your relationship, changbin wholeheartedly believed you were the best thing to ever happen to him. no one cared for him, accepted him and understood him in the way you did. no one made him as happy as you did.

when he realized that your relationship became a source of stress in your increasingly hectic lives, he made the difficult decision to leave.

the people that come in and out of your life come either as a blessing or a lesson; changbin believes you are a blessing in his life.

people slip in and out of your life, fuck around and make you rethink everything. the memories of them are associated with the phrases: "i should have known better" or "you learn from your mistakes".

and he would rather be damned than to be a lesson.

he knew that with the direction both your lives were headed into at the time, the end was inevitable and if things between you two had to end then, in your out-of-control lives, he wanted the last semblance of control here.

"the thought of losing you scared me shitless," changbin continues, "but what scared me even more was that you could one day regret all of this, everything we had. that you would leave regretting ever loving me."

"… i didn't know you were thinking that way," your voice trails off at the end, thoughts still delayed as you process the words of your ex-boyfriend lying next to you.

you take a moment before you continue.

"at one point, i wasn't even mad or upset with you anymore... i was mad at the universe. the circumstances."

when you and changbin broke up, you often wondered what the universe had in store for you after such excruciating heartbreak. but the pain didn't even stop with changbin; it seemed like the universe had it against you as else in your life began to downward spiral. 

you struggled to adjust to the growing hustle and bustle of your life while also struggling to adapt without your person.

oftentimes, you imagined taking a trek up to climb the tallest mountain in the world. exerting all that blood, sweat and tears for the opportunity to let everything out into the void. you imagined standing on the highest point on earth would be as physically close as you could get to the universe. 

maybe from up there, the universe would be able to hear the desperation, the pain that came from wondering what you did to deserve this; to have loved so passionately and to have lost, to experience such excruciating pain.

if the universe didn't align for a life with changbin, you laid awake wondering what it did align for. if it would be worth it. 

what could be more worth it than him? 

with a bittersweet smile on your lips you say, "nothing aligned for us in this lifetime. maybe, in the next lifetime."

you're trying your hardest to control and suppress your emotions as your eyes gloss over, tears threatening to fall. changbin's eyes stay fixed on you as he, much like you did earlier, analyzes your features all over again as if it was the first time.

changbin pays close attention to every detail, etching it into his mind.

"whose to say that?" changbin's eyes meet your own once again, a glint present in his chocolate brown orbs, "this lifetime isn't over yet."

your eyes, still blown wide with surprise, meet changbin's. you would think he captured the stars in his eyes with the way they sparkled at the sight of you.

"in this lifetime and the next, i'll love you."

"does that mean you'll love me for eternity?"

"our love is so strong it transcends lifetimes. we'll always find our way back to each other."

main masterlist

[meringuehearts]

my extremely disorganized welcome home theory!!!

this may sound crazy but please hear me out

there are three main points to this, all of which ill elaborate on under the cut!

one of the companies, either marlo or playfellow workshop, clearly tried to make a lot of changes to the show. this includes heavy merchandising, forcing julie/frank to be read as a couple, and cutting eddie from the show.

i think that once a character no longer appears on the air, they are forced into a sort of subliminal bond with their own home, isolating them and making them essentially unable to leave. we see this with eddie's situation.

if all of this is true, i may have a very good idea for the direction in which the story of welcome home will lead.

quick disclaimer beforehand : obviously, our knowledge on this is constantly growing and expanding! this is not my "entire opinion" on the story nor do i think this is the cold hard truth. these are simply my ideas!

in general, i think the idea of the offness coming from anything internal of the show , like the characters or home, is a far stretch .. more likely, it's coming from the people making the show itself.

my theory is that either playfellow workshop or marlo was taking control of the show , probably towards the end of its run, and making massive changes in the interest of maximizing profit. first of all the commercials clips feel off in and of themselves to me, because we can see that they literally partnered with anything in order to sell it. this is most clearly Weird in the sleeping pills wally clip, but also all over - of course this could just be that it was a popular show and wanted to make bank, but personally i think it was one of the companies pushing for more brand deals and more merchandise and more money.

this, of course, leads directly into the eddie/frank situation. as many different people have stated, this was the 1970s, and if there was any ability in the show for them to be read as a couple this could get a ton of backlash. i'm willing to bet that the company tried first of all to push julie/frank to be more easily read as a couple, then later deciding on either diminishing eddie's role a TON or deleting him completely.

and like, think about it. unfortunately, most of the characters don't really harbor any huge friendship towards him, at least not in the clips we've seen. while having positive relations with poppy, julie, frank and wally, he doesn't have as much as an outright "gimmick" or thing to sell as the others.

julie's excitable, sally's theatrical, frank's stubborn, howdy's charismatic, barnaby's funny, poppy's sweet, wally's reserved but polite, and eddie. "talks a lot". if you're an executive and you're going to cut one character from a show, especially in the interest of Not looking like theres Anything gay in your show, which would you choose?

NOW for the second part:

my believe about home, and furthermore all the homes in the series - but more directly Home - is that i think they act as sort of devices that the company can use to manipulate the characters. my theory about the eddie situation in the recent update is that it takes place in the midst of when the company was attempting to cut him from the show.

and when we see eddie in the midst of his breakdown, he's VERY tied to the post office (his home basically). he's isolated and literally states at a point during it that he assumes everyone's outside and playing in the snow, but never makes any attempt to go out and check - as if it doesn't even cross his mind. he expresses some kind of paranoid need to stay at the post office and not leave, even for a moment, which he also talks about in the videos.

when he finally DOES leave for the party, (which, btw, he only does because sally literally grabbed him and brought him there) , he starts seeing all the awful shit he sees (as we know) . INCLUDING HOME. and towards the end of it, all he says to frank is that he wants to go [ to his ] home.

what does all this mean??? im so glad u asked. basically i think that creators' actions upon the show affect the world of welcome home in subliminal ways that the characters aren't directly aware of happening (until, of course, they are.) in this case, if a character is cut from the show or their screen time is limited, they experience being subliminally forced to stay in their own home. if they try to leave, they start witnessing visceral, terrifying things that they can't explain, persuading them to return back home. back where it's "safe".

wally's home in particular, i think, enforces this the most. home is sentient so the company can probably carry out their desires more directly with him than any of the other houses (which are just structures, pretty much). i DON'T think home harbors any ill will themselves, but moreso is just carrying out what "needs to be done."

more evidence for this:

this theory is also entwined with how wally interacts with us, the people on the site, because he mentions in places like the guestbook, etc that he hasn't seen other members of the neighborhood in so long. but that doesn't mean they're not there.

so if a singular being cut from the show means that they are forced to stay in their own home and not go outside, then the show being taken off the air would, in theory, mean that everyone would be forced to stay in their own homes. for decades. wally reaching out to us could very likely be a cry for help and/or last try after years of isolation. (it would also explain why he's so much more off putting/tired/different than his in-show appearances.)

one last thing!!!! i think if that's what's going, on it could explain this sentence from the summary, unchanged since the beginning. i've never really understood this line or what it could mean, but -

this is a HUGE far cry. but i think it's possible that, if i'm right, at some point down the line the characters (still in the neighborhood) will actually try to leave their homes, or they have already, which would cause the "distortion/nightmarish memory". i mean we definitely could describe eddie's hallucination(?) as that so .

yeah i hope you enjoyed 20 minutes of me rambling ... please ask questions if some (or all) of this didn't make sense cuz im not rly sure if this is coherent lol. this also isnt all the thoughts i have about this theory but this post is too long as is lol. thanks so much for reading this far if you have!!!

[scopostims]

stim gifs in photopea

[PT: Stim gifs in photopea /End PT]

Hello! This is my (lengthy) tutorial for how I make GIFs for stimblr using Photopea. It's not going to be as extensive as how I make for shows, celebrities, etc, because I have different processes for both, however I'm still aiming to cover everything I think necessary!

It'll be split into multiple sections with headers, so feel free to skip whatever you want if you don't find it necessary :•] Reblogs appreciated if you found it useful, but no pressure obviously!

Sections:

Getting your video

Importing into Photopea

Making the GIF

Sharpening the GIF

Coloring

Exporting & Optimization (in EZGIF)

End results, and misc tips and comments

1. Getting your video

[PT: 1. Getting your video /End PT]

Short section! These are the ways I download and source videos for use

Youtube - yt-dlp (installation instructions)

Instagram

Tiktok (Allows without watermark)

Pexels

For yt-dlp, check out this basic list of commands I made solely for downloading material to GIF! If you have further questions, either send me an ask or refer to the github page.

2. Importing into Photopea

[PT: 2. Importing into Photopea /End PT]

There are two ways to import into Photopea, the first is importing footage directly, and the second is screencapping (which I won't cover in detail, but this tutorial is for installing the program I use on mac & how to use it, and this is for installing on windows)

Option 1: Importing footage directly (see end for comments)

On the home page of Photopea, you'll want to click "Open from computer", and select your clip, upon selecting you'll be presented with a popup like below

All that really matters here is where you see "30 FPS", that's the videos native frame rate. I always put whatever that number is as my frame rate because I find it to be the best, but you can use different presets (Like ezgif, which gives you 12, 20, etc). The less frames you have, the chopper it will be. If you plan to slow it down later, I'd also recommend having more frames so it looks smoother after slowing.

Now you just have to wait for it to load all the frames, then you're set!

Option 2: Importing screencaps

This is my personal way of doing things, so this is assuming you've installed a screencapping program and already have your frames ready.

For this, when you click "open from computer", select the first frame and open it by itself. Once that's loaded, look in the top left at the "File" tab, select "Open & Place", then ctrl + shift to select the rest of your frames. Once they've all loaded in, you can either rasterize them now, or wait until after cropping and resizing (goes faster then).

What's important though, is use the shift key to select all your layers, in the top left open the "Layer" tab, hover over "Animation" at the bottom to expand it, and select "Make frames". With your frames still selected, hit the folder button in the bottom left.

Without this, Photopea won't recognize this as an animation, therefore you'll be unable to export it as a GIF.

3. Making the GIF

[PT: 3. Making the GIF /End PT]

3A. Cropping

To begin with cropping, select the crop tool, which is the fifth one down on the left bar (if you hover over, it will say the name), or the "C" key on the keyboard.

Along the top now, you should have some new options. The dropdown menu that says "Free" is going to be how you select an aspect ratio or fixed size, and I always set to 1:1 since most people on stimblr use square GIFs, but you can do whatever works for you! Make sure to leave "Delete uncropped pixels" unchecked, because that lets you move stuff around later without having to recrop.

Crop your animation down as you see fit, then either hit the enter key, or the check button along the top bar. If you're unhappy with the placement, you can undo it OR, select all your layers, then use the move tool (First icon on the left, or the "V" key) and drag it around as you see fit.

3B. Resizing

With all your layers selected still, open the "Image" tab in the top left, towards the bottom select "Image Size", then select what you want to resize to.

Tumblr's exact GIF sizing

1 per row: 540px

2 per row: 268px

3 per row: 177px

HOWEVER. For stim GIFs, I find the quality difference so negligible, you can resize to what you want. It's also better for it to be bigger and scale down, then smaller and scale up. For this reason, I typically do 268px no matter what, or 300px.

As far as resampling goes, leave it turned on, and I personally leave it on bilinear, but the different options vary slightly, so experiment and see what works for you!

If you're happy at this step, go ahead and skip down to exporting! But when doing this way, I do recommend sharpening for better quality at smaller size.

4. Sharpening the GIF

[PT: 4. Sharpening the GIF /End PT]

The fun thing about this section is you get to experiment and find what works for you! I'll give you my personal method, but you can play around, add and remove bits, etc until you get something you're happy with!

4A. High pass

High pass is my personal favorite way to sharpen GIFs, and for stim GIFs I'll often use only this.

(Steps 1-3 in image) To do, start by right clicking the *Folder* all your frames are in, and select "Duplicate Layer". Select all the frames in Only the folder on top, then go to the "Filter" tab along the top left, hover over "Other", and select "High Pass". The grey look is entirely normal! I normally set my high pass at 2-4, but play around with this step and find something you like!

Select the *Folder* all your high pass frames are in, and change the blending mode (fourth step in image) to "Soft Light", it should be on "Pass Through" initially. With that done, you've used high pass on your GIFs! If you're content here, skip the next section about smart sharpening, and see about merging animation folders under it.

4B. Smart Sharpen

Note: I recommend testing your sharpening settings on one layer BEFORE applying them to all layers, as it will be easier on your computer.

I utilize this in addition to high pass usually, but you can do it all by itself as well! To begin, select all the frames in your folder (if you used high pass, select the frames in the *Bottom* folder). Open the "Filter" tab on the top left, hover over "Sharpen", and select "Smart Sharpen". Now find what you like!

For stim GIFs, if I used high pass, I'll go for 75-110% amount, and a .1 radius. I personally don't like the look of an over sharpened GIF, so I only use smart sharpen if I want to enhance some small details high pass didn't touch enough, which is why I use so little. If you don't like high pass, you might use more here!

4C. Combining animation folders

If you used high pass, you'll notice you have two animation folders. To fix this, select both folders using ctrl + shift, open the "Layer" tab, hover over "Animation", and select "Merge". It will give you a popup to confirm, and you can go ahead and accept!

If you don't merge these, Photopea will think they're two GIFs in one document, rather than only one, which is why this step is so important.

As a note, once you merge these folders, you can no longer shift the frames around to change where they are in the crop like you could earlier.

5. Coloring (Image Heavy)

[PT: 5. Coloring (Image Heavy) /End PT]

This section is going to be less of a tutorial and more a basic rundown of the adjustment layers and what they do. Coloring will change from GIF to GIF, and you can do light or intense coloring, so this is just a guide to begin with, but really just play around and find what you like!

To access the adjustment layer menu, in the bottom right where "New Folder" was, the one directly next to it that looks like a circle made of two half-circles, will bring up your adjustment layers.

As a note, I always group my adjustment layers in a folder above my animation, for ease of hiding to compare with and without.

5A. Levels

Levels is one I almost *Always* use on a GIF because it makes it look cleaner to me. In the first box, sliding the black square on the left *increases* the blacks, sliding the white square on the right *increases* the whites, and the one in the center changes the general brightness up or down.

Sliding the black box on the bottom bar *decreases* the blacks, sliding the white box *decreases* the whites.

If you change the channel from RGB to another option, you can change the balance of reds/cyans, greens/magentas, or blue/yellows, I personally don't touch this for stim GIFs. In the RGB channel, I set the top black box at ~10, and the top white box at ~245 usually.

5B. Curves

This is another way of adjusting brightness, blacks and whites, or color balance. By adjusting the dot in the bottom corner you adjust blacks, the top corner adjusts whites, and if you make a dot in the center, it adjusts general brightness! You can also make multiple dots to separately adjust some values. By changing the channels, you adjust color channels rather than white/black.

5C. Exposure

This is another way of adjusting the lights and darks of the GIF. Sliding the exposure up and down will add/take away light from the lighter parts of your images. Adjusting the gamma correction up and down will add/take away shadow from the darker parts of your image. Offset increases/decreases the brightness of the whole thing but I almost never use it.

5D. Vibrance

Vibrance is what I like to think of as a "softer" way to increase intensity of colors, instead of using a Hue/Saturation layer. It affects warmer colours more intensely than cooler colours, whether you use the vibrance or saturation slider. The saturation slider here is more intense than the vibrance one, but less intense than saturation in a Hue/Saturation layer.

5E. Hue/Saturation

This one is simple! Sliding the hue slider changes the colour, sliding the saturation slider increases/decreases saturation, and sliding the lightness is basically like directly adding black/white to a color. I use lightness only sparingly.

What's cool here, is you can adjust the range to target a specific batch of colours! If you find your reds are too bright compared to everything else, you can target the saturation of them specifically.

5F. Color balance

This is a simple way to adjust the base colors of an image, by changing it to be more cyan or red, magenta or green, or yellow and blue. This can be useful for making a GIF appear warmer or cooler!

I almost only touch the shadows & midtones, and highlights sparingly. "Preserve Luminosity" preserves the highlights and shadows of the image, so by unchecking it, you can achieve some more intense results.

5G. Black & White

The black and white layer is useful because you can change exactly how light or dark a color appears after making it black and white. For that reason, I prefer it over a gradient map if I need to make something black and white.

5H. Photo filter

Photo filter is a simple way to add a color filter over the entire image, and adjust how strong or weak it is. "Preserve luminosity" once again just keeps the darks and whites of the original GIF.

5I. Channel mixer

I couldn’t even begin to cover channel mixer here, but this is for very intense color edits (I typically use it when I'm trying to make a GIF fit a board). However, here's another tutorial solely about channel mixer if you're interested in taking a crack at it!

5J. Selective color

Finally, selective color allows you to adjust the amounts of color or lightness/darkness of a specific batch of color.

By changing the color channel, you can affect different batches of color. The cyan slider controls cyan/red, the magenta slider controls magenta/green, the yellow slider controls yellow/blue, and the black slider controls black/white.

Checking the "absolute" is essentially like "Preserve Luminosity" in the other layers. With absolute, it's like shifting the color one way or the other, and without absolute, it's like adding to the pre-existing color.

6. Exporting and Optimization

[PT: Exporting and Optimization /End PT]

6A. Exporting

With all that done, we're ready to finish it up! To finish your GIF, open the "File" tab in the top left, go to "Export As", and select GIF!

Here you can rename, adjust the size (WILL ruin the sharpening you did), the quality (I leave at 100%), and the speed.

Another important thing to note is the "Dither". If you leave dither off, you can potentially encounter color banding, which is where (typically gradients) with look like strips of color, rather than smooth. This is because GIFs only have 256 colors they can render, so if something has too many, it bands.

By checking dither, it can get rid of color banding, at the cost of dots on the image (around where the worst color banding is usually). Sometimes the dots aren't noticeable and this is the better option, however it will Also increase your file size. It's up to you if you want to use it!

6B. Optimization

This is technically an optional step, as tumblr's GIF size limit is 10mb, so as long as you're under that, you can post, however, smaller GIFs load faster and I personally find are better for use in stimboards where you're loading a lot of GIFs! So to help this, let's head on over to the optimize section of ezgif. My personal goal is UNDER 4.5MB, ideally under 4MB.

The two main things I recommend are Lossy GIF, or removing frames, and I always start with Lossy GIF. I do anywhere from 5-15, and usually this will bring down GIFs a lot if you made them in Photopea! My example GIF was 6.7 MB to begin with, and afterwards it was 4.2MB.

However if you find that to be not enough, you can remove frames. When you remove frames, it speeds the GIF up, so I also recommend slowing it down (this is why I set my frames high in the beginning as well). I typically do "Remove every 4th frame" and slow it down to 75%-85%.

7. End results, and misc tips and comments

[PT: 7. End results, and misc tips and comments /End PT]

(source) The first GIF is without sharpening/colouring, the second is with sharpening but no colouring, and the third is with sharpening and colouring. I didn't color it much besides making it slightly warmer, but I hardly ever do much anyways!

As for misc comments:

In firefox, when you import footage directly, sometimes it glitches and tries to load 4000 blank frames, which is extremely resource intensive on a computer. The solution is import the footage in chrome, save as PSD, then open the PSD in firefox. (Or work in chrome but why do that /half silly). The other solution is screencap which I do since I do this often, but both work fine.

In firefox, sometimes you're unable to slow the GIF down upon export and it will export faster than it actually is. Slowing the video down to 50% restores it to native speed I've found, and you can do this in ezgif before other optimization.

When colouring, my number one tip is slide something all the way up first, then adjust down! By seeing it at max, you have a better idea of what's getting adjusted.

If you have any questions, drop me an ask :•]

And that concludes our tutorial! My apologies for the length, but I wanted to cover every possible thing here. It definitely seems like a lot, much more than working in ezgif, but when you get used to what you're doing, it goes extremely fast (even if you spend extra time screencapping). I personally find it worth it for the ability to sharpen GIFs alone, but as well as more detailed coloring opportunities.

Thank you for reading, I hope this has been useful!

[bigfrozenfan-fanfics]

Behind the scenes of „The Broken Bridge“

Warning: this is going to be a very long text, starting with a little personal analysis of Frozen II, but I want you to understand what ultimately motivated me to write "The Broken Bridge" and what was actually behind it.

If the following is too long for you, you can skip straight to the end, to a special invitation for my most loyal readers. But if you want to read on ... who knows, maybe I can give you some motivation to write your own fanfic, or I can give you some inspiration to keep writing and never give up. Let's start now ...

When I published my very first idea about a sequel to Frozen II on my main blog as a ficlet or prologue on May 24th 2020, I had no intention of writing this fanfic myself at first. Instead, I asked the fandom who of the experienced writers would like to do it and later wrote additional thoughts about it. Below is a list of links to my main blog and the beginnings:

Link 1 , Link 2 , Link 3 , Link 4 , Link 5 , Link 6 , Link 7 Link 8 , Link 9 , Link 10

At that time I didn't have a title for it either and simply called it "Frozen III plot / fanfic" or "frozen au". But none of the fanfic writers jumped at it, despite 67 likes including many comments. A few days later I had a discussion with one of my favourite writers on Tumblr, telling him that I was hesitant to continue writing because I just thought I was a bad writer at the time and also because of doubts about my English skills. I received lots of tips and words of encouragement from him and the writing duo.

Nevertheless, I was on the verge of giving up after publishing only 2 chapters. It wasn't until June 2nd that I put my third chapter online, but still as an F3 plot idea and without a title. However, once I found my beta reader (he had contacted me anonymously on Tumblr), I continued until chapter 11 for the time being, until the end of July 2020, when I stopped publishing on my main blog due to a lack of comments and likes. At that point, I was disappointed with the response and was about to give up.

It's no easy feat to convincingly and believably expand the world of Disney's Frozen II in such a way that you're drawn in from the very beginning — just like in the film — and can literally immerse yourself in an epic storyline that keeps you gripped until the very end. But not to the point where you drown in it (pun intended), of course, but that takes a lot of work and ingenuity.Frozen II had many wonderful highlights, but also its flaws, which ultimately divided the fan community — literally! However, one thing fascinated me from the start and that was the introduction of a completely new world in the Frozen universe, which is the main part of my plot in the novel. It's about the Northuldra (inspired by the real Sámi people) who live in an enchanted forest, along with the four nature spirits who are part of a greater whole: the deity Ahtohallan, guardian of all memories and source of Elsa's ice magic.

But this is precisely where the film's weaknesses lie, because unfortunately these remarkable people were given far too little time on the big screen, when they deserved so much more and an incredibly multi-layered potential would have opened up for Disney. As everyone knows, the team had negotiated with the Sámi Parliament in advance and received authorisation — on the condition that the Sámi were portrayed respectfully.

Apparently, however, much of this was too complicated for Disney to realise, especially when it came to customs, beliefs and myths. Ahtohallan in the film, for example, was something that was originally planned quite differently and — as far as I could tell from the concept art book "The Art of Frozen II" and the D+ documentary — was originally linked to Sámi shamanism, specifically their Noaidi.

The deleted scene of the originally planned prologue, for example, showed us a shapeshifter with reindeer antlers. This was presumably an old Sámi myth and the saga of a figure called Myandash. You can read this story online.

(Note: In my novel, Myandash was the model for Kolgrimr's father and I called the human Northuldra wife of the shapeshifter Gyda and made her the evil Noaidi).

What remained

The fact is that the Northuldra and their great role model, the Sámi, were very well received in the Frozen fandom, as can be seen from the countless fanart images, fanfictions, discussions and even the Elsamaren Ship (Elsa + Honeymaren). And not only there, the Sámi themselves also took a liking to Frozen II.

All of this and the actual, ultimately somewhat disappointing realisation in the film was hardly surprising to me, as this is, after all, a Disney film with a target audience that ranges from young children to the age of puberty, but at most to teenagers under the age of 18. What can you expect in terms of an in-depth plot?

This applies not only to the style, with sidekicks such as Olaf, Sven, Bruni and Gale, but above all to the plot and duration of the feature film. Many in fandom later said that Frozen II was told far too hastily and left far too many questions unanswered, especially about the main aspect, Elsa's powers. However, the entire Frozen franchise is all about Elsa's magic — right from the start. At its core, this is what has always fascinated fans about it and, of course, the characters of the royal sisters themselves.

It's a great pity that Disney didn't appreciate the older cinema audience — especially the Frozen fans among them — when producing the second part, but instead behaved as if it were a completely new audience of children. In the meantime, ten years have passed since the first instalment, six of them after the first, so there were already many loyal fans in their twenties who expected more and hoped for answers — something that Disney has unfortunately failed to give us to this day. Admittedly, a completely different approach was originally planned — as you can see from the deleted scenes and from the documentary on Disney Plus — far darker, more serious and actually aimed at older fans, just as Jennifer Lee had once promised to us. But in the end, everything was decided at Disney from the highest level, over the heads of the filmmakers, and thrown overboard. The logic, seriousness and complexity of the plot fell by the wayside in favour of a very young audience, who — as you could hear in the documentary on D+ — were not old enough to understand the movie. No wonder, when you show the test screening to five to twelve-year-old children and expect them to leave the theatre enthusiastic and completely satisfied without any further questions. The original plan was probably just too demanding.

How often has it happened that even adults didn't immediately understand a film and instead pondered it for weeks afterwards? That's what makes a good film. But to reset everything to zero immediately after the first screening test, to completely discard the originally planned plot and to put the entire film team in a difficult position to just make the deadline for an extensive and elaborate production within just a few months? For a film that normally takes three years to produce? No! This makes no sense at all and is only due to the greed to earn as much as possible at the cinema box office. Never mind the plot, the main thing is to make it family-friendly! What a pity!

In addition, the vision of the film makers was ignored. Ultimately, it hurt everyone involved, especially Jennifer Lee, who shortly afterwards was no longer a director and is now only available in an advisory capacity for the planned sequels. Honestly, I would have thrown in the towel myself after such treatment, which, at least judging by her presence on Twitter, she actually did. Presumably mainly because of the hate speech from toxic circles of the fan community that she was constantly confronted with there because of the end of Frozen II. None of us fans know the real reasons though — one day her account there was simply deleted.

But enough with my opinion on the film.

My vision

We have now arrived at the reason why I wrote "The Broken Bridge" primarily for older Frozen fans, the novel is even partly aimed at an adult readership from 18 years upwards. There are scenes with explicit language, violence and sex scenes, simply because the plot required a realistic, logical approach. But each chapter is specially labelled, at least in the chapter overview, and the most violent LBGT scene is even linked to a separate 18+ blog. So no one gets to read that unless the reader specifically follows the link.

Of course you can't please everyone, as one reader in particular showed me with his behaviour, who had commented on every chapter so far, but suddenly stopped from the part with "18+ content" onwards, presumably for reasons of age. I'm really sorry about that! On the other hand, I received statements on various platforms from readers who made it clear to me that I had not only hit the mark, but that their tastes had been fully satisfied and that they were simply delighted (for data protection reasons, I won't mention any names below).

Reader statements

On Discord: "Oh...that Frozen 3, the broken bridge novel right? I've read it all and it was EPIC. Well done." On Twitter/X: "I've been following your Frozen 3 Fanfiction since the beginning, and I love that the story is really believable and totally follows the universe of the two films, and that it could very well work as a 3rd film...I can't wait to read the next part !!" (Note: this was at the end of the third part of the story, after my hiatus in the fandom) On reddit, as a recommendation to other fans: "Greetings, I started reading an amazing story about Queen Anna and her sister Elsa some months ago. It's a long but terrific story. Tbh, This level of work and details in the narration is worth to be considered a sequel to Frozen2." On Tumblr to chapter 81: "This is a beautiful, genuinely remarkable closing for such a novel. ..... I truly enjoyed reading about Anna's wedding. It was like watching a short that Disney Animation should have given it to the fans years ago!" On Tumblr to chapter 66: "Goodness...what a chapter! In my mind I was thrown back and forth between Star Wars vs Robin Hood style fights! Yeahhh Elsa off to the monoliths? Get her power back! Go girl!Brave Anna! And what a loss for the Arendelle side. War is always such an unnecessary way.... but then... they fought for justice! Well done!" On Tumblr to chapter 43: "I love how you connect your stories with few official books, love to see 'A Perfect Night' from Elsa's pov, it looks like an official frozen book"

...and many more great comments from you readers, which have really motivated me immensely and encouraged me to keep writing. Some days I just couldn't stop!

Admittedly, I love the concept of cliffhangers, something that many other fanfic writers avoid in order not to keep their readers in suspense. So: sorry, my dear readers, you couldn't wait for the story to continue next week. But it turned out that I was able to maintain and even increase the suspense from chapter to chapter in this way.

Speaking of plot ... in my novel there are up to ten different storylines that intertwine, making the story very complex and exciting, and there is something for every reader that he/she particularly likes or has looked for in vain elsewhere in the Frozen universe. But ultimately, there's no accounting for taste.

Some people seem to have only picked out specific chapters. Unfortunately, this means that the coherent overall picture of the story falls by the wayside and my vision of a sequel to Frozen II escapes them completely in this way. But it's hard to tell who of the many followers on my fanfic blog has even read all the chapters if I don't get any likes or comments on them. I can only guess.

However, I have to admit that the novel wasn't completely planned out. They say there are two different types of writers, those who meticulously plan every detail from start to finish (plotters) and those who just start writing and only have a rough idea of the plot (pantsers). I count myself among the latter and write from the gut. However, I imagine every scene as if I were watching it in the cinema — with all kinds of details and make lots of notes on new ideas. So there was some rough planning. Sometimes it was the case that my characters themselves dictated the plot, I just had to follow them.You may remember that I write in my native language, German, and only translate everything later. I use DeepL online for this and my English-speaking beta reader HeinrichVSA corrects it afterwards where necessary. But what you probably don't know is that I wrote every single chapter on my smartphone during long train journeys. Until I was completely satisfied, I read through what I'd written again and again in the days that followed, adding scenes, rephrasing phrases and correcting anything I didn't like.

A large part of the story also required a lot of research on the internet, about everything I don't know much or anything about. I wanted to describe everything as realistically as possible and get the facts right.

This was especially true when it came to the Sámi people in the 19th century: their customs and traditions, their shamanism and beliefs, burial rituals and folk beliefs, clothing, crafts and dwellings, everything about reindeer herding, bear hunting and also about skalastet, or stick fighting. Incidentally, the idea of fighting with the Rope-Dart for Honeymaren comes from Asia, so it was added by me, and works exactly as described. I know everything about traditional archery from my own experience and also a little about bow making and crossbows.

I also had to do a lot of research on sailing ships of the 18th and 19th centuries. It's a tricky subject to portray properly and convey a credible feeling for it. For me, the topics were not only ship types and rigging from this era, but also the hierarchy and crew types. Basically everything about sailing itself on board such large ships, changing of watch, typical speeds and distances that could be travelled per day and which terms and commands were usually given on deck and by whom.

Warfare eventually became a topic for me as well, something not mentioned anywhere in the Frozen universe so far. HeinrichVSA was able to help me enormously with his profound historical knowledge and I had to find out what of my ideas worked and what did not. In these chapters I used methods from different eras and settings, including Asia and Ancient Europe. Even topics such as illnesses and healing methods from this period were important for a coherent description and so much more, right up to Norwegian wedding customs and also about signs of pregnancy in the middle of the 19th century, when there were no tests.

So what started out as a small idea has developed over the years into an enormously complex project with huge challenges, and more and more characters have been added.

My OC’s (my own characters)

Various roles had to be filled in the course of the story and since — apart from in comics — hardly any characters are mentioned who fulfil important tasks in the castle or accompany "the gang" on their adventures, I had to invent them. The more relevant a character became, the more important it was to research a suitable name for them ... and there were more and more. Depending on whether it was for someone in the city or among the Northuldra, I drew inspiration from Norse or Sámi names. Often I even researched the deeper meaning of the name, which matched the character's nature as closely as possible.

Of course, I also used almost all the well-known characters from the Frozen books and comics that were more or less relevant for the interaction with the main characters or who enriched the ambience.

The places in the story

Arendelle or the Northuldra camp were not enough, as I quickly realised the deeper I delved into the story. For some areas there was no description in the Frozen universe and the available official maps didn't give much information either. I therefore analysed the movies again and again and also consulted the many comics to get an idea of where the action takes place and what it looks like, feels like or how difficult the terrain was. I made up the rest with the help of logic and real places. Unfortunately, Disney has never told us which real country Weselton, Corona, Vakretta, Snoob and the many others correspond to. But as soon as I was relatively sure of an approximate position on the world map, I was able to research the real conditions of this country.

Small statistics on “The Broken Bridge”

My image edits: 40 plus 5 poster, 2 letters, 2 newspaper articles, 1 self-made map Fanart: 4 (1 unpublished) Storyline: Prologue, 81 chapters in 5 parts, epilogue and acknowledgements totalling almost 437,000 words (excluding acknowledgements) (about 1000 pages)

Very first novel title: "The Only Star", inspired by a sentence Anna sang during "The Next Right Thing": "The only star that guided me was you." Of course, I had her close connection to Elsa in mind. I later discussed final title ideas for my novel with HeinrichVSA, and in the end we had 43 different titles to choose from, with the subtitle "A post Frozen II Novel". As far as I remember, @annaofthenorthernlights confirmed our previous favourite title 'The Broken Bridge', in reference to the 5th Spirit and the bridge that connected Anna in Arendelle and Elsa in the Enchanted Forest. That was the final start for the publication on my fanfic blog.

Commissioned fanart images by HARU (@xlayers): 19 (12 unpublished), all with the maximum image width of 800 pixels. Title ideas for the chapters: mostly HeinrichVSA came up with them while correcting the texts, but of course a few were also my own ideas. It was always difficult to find a good title because the storylines in the chapters often overlapped.

Characters: 16 original characters 15 characters from Frozen books and comics 38 OC's (own characters) 23 locations

Plot period: for the main part (without flashbacks): over a month, followed at the end by 2x three months in chapter 81 and a few more weeks in the epilogue Embedded YouTube music titles: 287 Reboot of the novel with final title (June 25, 2021) as an epic dark AU novel on the fanfic blog: June 19, 2021. originally planned for 1 year with 52+ chapters.

In the last two months since the Acknowledgements were published, I have been working on the preparations for AO3. I had to rewrite the first chapter (prologue) a bit to make it fit the following plot, corrected and formatted everything in detail again, made changes here and there in the chapters and wrote down the links for the pictures — plus prepared comments. I very much hope that in the end everything will be as I imagine and hope it will be!

~~~

Invitation

I would like to invite my most loyal readers, who regularly left me their wonderful comments on every chapter, to discuss with us — my beta reader HeinrichVSA and me — on my newly founded Discord server, ask questions, share ideas and much more. As you know, I wrote a question mark after the words "The End" at the end of the novel. Maybe you would like to participate in a possible sequel? Who knows ...

Just send me a short message as a DM on my fanfic blog and I'll reply with a Discord invite link for you.

Thank you so much again for sticking with me until the end!

Your Bigfrozenfan

[kyuohki]

For the fic game, specifically for your "An Honor" fic series. ✄, ★, ✎

As I had two fic game posts, with some duplicate symbols, we're going to get a bonus question! :D

.

✄ DVD BONUS: pick a fic and I’ll describe or write a deleted scene!

I actually had Valere's family be the asshole family that controlled the village and abused their kids (so Valere's mom and aunt) as described in the first part of that chapter. I didn't like how it was turning out, and it was becoming a slog to write; there was a confrontation between Aelia and her parents bc she was grieving the loss of her baby, while they were both celebrating the honor publicly and berating her for not planning it properly so they could have another mage in the family... They were downright horrid, and I hated them. I eventually scrapped it bc it was starting to feel too forced and a different idea bit for later down the line, for when Valere meets her family.

.

✄ what’s your editing process? (Bonus Question!)

I edit as I go. Sometimes when I get stuck, I'll switch to edit mode and try to polish things above/below where the block is. It sometimes works and knocks the words loose, or gives me an idea for later down the line.

Which means that when I get the chapter/fic into a good place, I tend to skim the parts I've gotten really familiar with and miss stuff; or there are extremely polished sections, and the more recently written spots are in a "I do words good" level of coherency. I try to make myself wait a day or so before posting, then one last read through on the website, but I get so antsy and end up posting almost immediately.

.

★ what was the scene you most wanted to write in [fic]? what was the hardest scene to write?

I answered this for An Honor in a different post, so I'm gonna expand this to do any from the rest of the Bloodlines series.

I think the scene I wanted to write the most was actually in Friends, of Zale being "kidnapped" by Rocky, based on his concept art of him being "eaten" and my playthrough with him being the one targeted exclusively (or at least the most). Zale being used as a squeaky toy still makes me giggle.

Hardest of the ones posted? Probably Reunion, bc I got stuck a couple of times with how quickly Yu'mi's mood dropped over someone possibly knowing Zale, then getting hostile bc she *really* doesn't like the system or Solstice Warriors bc of it.

.

✎ how do you think readers would guess a fic was yours if you posted anonymously?

I...don't last long posting on anon, honestly. All my smut fic were on anon, but I caved pretty quickly and took them off bc I was literally vibrating with the need to talk about my fic on here. And at the time most of what I was posting was just smut...

But if I managed to stick it out and keep some fic on anon...I know I've got some writing quirks, some odd turns of phrase bc I write late at night and my brain can't do words good. (I don't catch them on edits either...) So, I'm sure people would catch on fairly quickly.

[coldau]

Sorry to ask! I've been trying to find good resources to learn how to mod (both to create my own but also do mashups) and cannot seem to find any on my own that I can comprehend. So many rely on having basic knowledge of modding, and I'm at an assumed 0% of even where to begin. Do you have any resources you could share? ;w;

I long lost most of my guides but I'll make a walk-through for this here, with pictures.

HAIR MASHUPS:

Say you want to mash up a hair that's viera only with a hair that every other race has, like my longer styled for hire mod.

Find the hairs in Textools, and then EXPORT them as .fbx:

Next, open blender and import the hairs in from the dropdown file menu. It'll look like this. (NOTE THE FILES ON THE RIGHT SIDE! THESE ARE ALL VERY IMPORTANT!)

Now expand the files on the right side so they look like this. You'll be immediately joining the pieces together.

Select from the N_root of the hair you're stealing parts from, and drag up to the N_root you're making the base hair. HOLD SHIFT! Otherwise it'll be a bad boy.

and be sure to have ALL the things under that root node selected like I have it.

It'll drop the hair down to the ground like this. Click the orange box on the right hand menus and then, one piece at a time (don't select them all and try to do it, just won't work) rotate them to 90 degrees.

Next, join the bones together. They're those triangles.

SAVE! BEFORE! YOU DO THIS! Blender likes to crash randomly, but especially with "join" functions.

Select them either on the sandbox, or by holding CTRL and selecting the N_roots in the files.

Now you have one bone for all the hair pieces to work off of. You will have to reassign bones- i will show you later in the guide.

But now, we get to some very very important parts! Discussing node pieces.

First of all, before you do anything- look at their names. Au Ra Male is "1301", Viera male is "1701." I'll be renaming the Viera's pieces to match the Au ra's pieces in a minute, but don't start with that.

Instead, look to the numbers on the right. Those are the NODES. The numbers after the "." are just different parts, but the numbers BEFORE that are the actual different pieces!

0.X nodes will have different TEXTURES AND ATTRIBUTES than 1.X, 2.0 nodes. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR TEXTOOLS! Pay attention to what pieces of hair are in "0.X" and so on.

But for the X.1, X.2, X.3? As long as they're all on the same node, you are free to join them.

IN A LOT OF OLD HAIRS THEY WILL HAVE A LOT OF PARTS! Feel free to join them if they're under the same main node!

Now, the Viera hair honestly can be one piece. It's got main hair and some fragments. So, I joined them together like how I would bones.

THEN!

I renamed them to match the naming structure (including this green thing in the dropdown) but put them on a whole new main node! (NOTE: see, it's 2.0 now instead of 0.0)

That's MOST of the technical bits out of the way.

Now we focus on modeling the hair. There's two tabs to model under. "Modeling" and "Sculpting."

Modeling is for deleting/moving individual pieces of polygons/deleting entire polygons.

This is the tool I mainly use: Poly Build. It allows me to click and drag polygons by their verticies and make new ones.

If you make new polygons, you have to triangulate your build when you're exporting your save to a new .fbx!

When you have "poly build" on, you can hold "Shift" and delete polygons or verticies.

(If you need to join verticies together, use the select tool and hold CTRL and click on the verticies you want to join one at a time, right click, and go to "merge at center" or "merge at first/last" depending on what you need)

Sculpting is for the entire shape of the hair you have highlighted.

Here are the tools I use in Sculpting:

The top one is "Grab", it grabs onto a vertex and pulls on it SHARPLY, so use it for very accurate things.

However, the other one that I have selected in that picture is "elastic deform." It grabs a VERY LARGE AREA and pulls on it gently, I use it for shifting things around by a large margin.

NOW! Let's say you did everything you want. You deleted, you moved things, you joined things.

Now, assign a bone. The part of the hair we moved from Viera doesn't have a bone anymore! So sad. So go back to "layout" and click the part of the hair the viera hair is on, and go to "Modifier properties"

Ignore the part at the top, just click on "object"'s box and select "n_root" and it'll have bones now.

You did it! Wow, look at that hair!

(results my vary)

Now you save it as a .blend once more, just to make sure it's there in case you fucked up somewhere.

Once you've done that, you're going to save it as an .FBX again.

Name it what you want, untick "add leaf bones" and "apply modifiers", while also selecting "Triangulate faces" if you NEED to- if not, don't bother.

You now have the hair modeled out. This... was only half the journey. Now you need to harvest the Normal and Multi layers of the hair you joined in with your base model and make a new texture.

To navigate to the different texture maps, it's on the upper right.

Remember, Normal files are _n, and Multis are _s

NOTE: TEXTOOLS ONLY ALLOWS FOUR TEXTURES /APPLIED/ ON HAIR. You don't have to delete unused textures, but you can only use four of them max.

Since my hair uses Viera hair 14, I go to Viera hair 14 on textools (note, for midlander based hairs you'll probably have to go to the midlander hair menus for the textures. You will see why in a moment.)

Export these as .dds, extract them from the folder they go to (lower right again) and now go alllll the way up to hair 157 on MIDLANDER.

Even though this hair is being made for au ra, it's ALL based on midlanders! IT'S A CONSPIRACY--

Next you click "more options" on the lower left, and this will pull up. Click the dropdown for "backfaces" and click "show backfaces"

then click the button "use unique textures". After you do that, it should look like this in the menu, and click "save"

You now have a blank texture.

Press "import" and put the _n texture of the hair on the normal, then use the dropdown on the upper right and go to multi and import the _s there.

REMEMBER THE TEXTURE NAME, it'll probably be something like Acc_C or Hir_C!

Once you've done that, it's a matter of uploading the .fbx.

Go back to au ra hair 157, press "import" on the "models" tab, and click your .fbx. Then, don't have any of the boxes checked (unless you are a miqote, then it's UV1 to [1,-1]) and press "open editor."

This is the part where I told you to remember which Root Nodes applied to which pieces of hair.

The base hair is on 0.X and 1.0, so all we care about is editing rootnode 2.0 in this guide.

Go to Rootnode 2, click the dropdown, click custom, then type in the Hir_B or acc_c address you need, then hit import!

BEHOLD, ART

Now you load into game, check if it works. If it does, go to "mods>create mods>basic modpacks" and select the pieces you changed.

Ask or DM me if you need anything else :)

Extra tips: if you want to scale things, but are having difficulty because the scale point is way too low- go to layout, click on "object" and "set origin" to "geometry," then press "S" and scale easier.

[fights4users]

Implications on form and circuitry

I’ve talked about this briefly before but again, it’s so so funny that there’s actually a lot of lore and world building within a deleted intimate scene. Modern Disney could never, lmao. Anyways this is going to be a somewhat deeper discussion on some of the implications brought about by the scene in York’s quarters.

While it has been expressed in the novel that, at least on the game grid the color of circuitry is controlled. You are either Red or Blue. Us or them. Easy to divise who’s a prisoner and who isn’t. Later in the novel and in the cut scene itself it’s made all the more clear that on a broad level color of circuits are controlled— NOW, that is not to say that there’s not outliers like the one hot pink woman and the more wilder shaped programs. I think the control is more on the video warriors or the useful. The ones the MCP hasn’t assimilated but drained enough so that they’re mindless drones.

Second thing Yori does upon changing her apartment is change her looks, she’s pinks and oranges as opposed to the “standard” blue. This also brings up the implication of a “true form” or a more natural/customizable look for programs. And it’s immensely interesting as The novelization goes on to imply that the sparkles in her cape are sort of akin to her circuitry? Still attached/apart of her in some way (she still has several on her mind you)

This also goes back into funny territory as Yori is ready for the icecapades and Tron gets…. Streamers taped onto him? I don’t know what that’s about but apparently that’s his thing. Also his new wave hairstyle is actually everything… except the rat tail. Tron, baby, honey, I love you but put the helmet back on No one wants to see that. 😭

But back to the point, this is a restricted thing. Highly unauthorized and dangerous to look like this even for a little while- just like Yori lighting up her  apartment. I love the novelization as it goes onto say :

It’s a “this is not what I look like but what I have to” it’s fascinating as thr MCP sucked the light and energy out of the landscape as well as prevents (or takes away enough energy that it’s hard to appear this way) the more whimsical appearance some programs have. Someone gives you a work uniform and you aren’t allowed to change back to regular clothes at home.

I might be way overthinking all of this but it’s just? It’s a fascinating thing to think about and I love expanding world building and will probably use the information in at least my own works.

[eldritch-elrics]

hmm... here's another opinion about remakes. i think it's jarring when a remake updates some of a game's features for the modern era and doesn't update others.

i'm thinking specifically about nier replicant here, from the perspective of someone who hasn't played the original. so much of replicant feels very modern - the graphics especially! however, there's also a lot about it that makes me go "this is a game that originally had a smaller budget and was released for an older console." the world design is especially a victim of this. it just feels kind of... small? lacking in the same detail as a game like nier automata? there's so much repetition in replicant, and it kind of makes you feel like that was an attempt to make a little go a long way. the world just feels stunted, in a way that a AAA game released in 2021 should not.

and these are things i would have forgiven/looked past if i'd played the original nier on ps3! there's nothing wrong with a small world, and repetition can be fine too (just look at automata lmao). but the big-budget, high-detail parts of replicant (especially the graphics, again, and the fact that every single line is voice acted) skew expectations in certain ways. it's sending a message that they have the budget and technology to expand, but not expanding uniformly.

(to be clear i don't have any suggestions for what nier replicant should look/be designed like; i'm just voicing something i noticed while playing that disappointed me a little.)

(i also wrote a whole thing about how the klonoa phantasy reverie series on switch feels really outdated in a jarring way, but deleted it because 1. i don't remember that game well enough to criticize it and 2. that was a remaster, not a remake. those are different things i think)

i'll have to think more about how this factors into my overall opinions about remakes, but i think... there's nothing wrong with a remake changing janky and dated features of the original. nothing wrong with "janky" or "dated" either, tbh (and there is so much debate to be had over what "dated" design even is!), but that plays better in a context where you are expecting/prepared for those things. a remake is an opportunity to go like, "what if this ps3 game had been made 10 years later for ps4 instead?" and then make that a reality. but part of going "what if it was a ps4 game" is making it feel like a ps4 game - keeping it somewhat consistent with what gamers of that era would expect

[tenebraevesper]

King Shadow (The Alternate Story)

A while ago, I did an analysis on King Shadow from the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie) comics, King Shadow (The Altered Future & The Altered Character), which is my least favorite take on Shadow the Hedgehog in official media so far. By the end of it, I had said that I might write down my take on King Shadow if you guys want me to, and I got a positive response. So, here is my concept.

Please note that this are my thoughts and if you have your own ideas regarding how you’d write King Shadow, I’d love to hear them.

First, I want to start off with the setting. King Shadow appears in the alternate future called Light Mobius in Ian Flynn’s continuation of Ken Penders supposed “magnum opus”, called Mobius: 25 Years Later... which is probably the worst Sonic story I have ever read. Ian’s attempts at fixing the story and turning it into something good fall flat mainly because the base of the story is really weak and while it has some interesting concepts, it really falls apart in the grand scheme of things.

The gist of Penders!25YL is that absolutely nothing happens until King Sonic is sent back at time to prevent a disaster and the story ends there. Ian!25YL picks the story up where it ended, explaining how King Sonic fixed the future, but it has been altered in such way that Shadow went on conquering the world for basically no reason and crowned himself king.

From what I understood, the reason why Shadow was written as an evil king was because at the time, he was still seen as an antagonist.

Now, thinking about the setting... I feel like we don’t even need it. Honestly, when I started writing this concept, I took a look at 25YL/30YL and decided to just Ctrl+Alt+Delete the whole thing and start with a blank slate. As a matter of fact, this doesn’t even have to take place in Sonic (Archie). It only has to take place in the Sonic Universe.

Next, the biggest issue I had was with was Shadow’s motivation for conquering the world - that being that he apparently had none. Admittedly, this seemed to have been somewhat expanded in Mobius: 30 Years Later...

If I understood correctly, the world had been at a war and Shadow conquered it to bring peace, but he turned into a tyrant in the process, using brute force to keep everyone in line. I think that this isn’t a bad motive, but it still needs to be worked on.

So, with the two main issues I had with this story (there are many more, but let’s focus on just these two for now), here’s my idea how the story might go. Once again, this is just a concept idea and if you don’t like how I wrote King Shadow, you’re free to tell me how you would write him. 

Trigger Warning - It is quite brutal.

Shadow’s descent into becoming a tyrannical King would have its origins in a tragedy (yeah, I like to make the characters I love suffer), with the story starting off with Sonic and his friends being involved in another battle against Eggman. This takes place at a point where Shadow has opened up more to his friends, like Rouge, Omega, Sonic, etc. He has moved on from his past, accepting his new life and managed to forge several close bonds.

This confrontation everyone participates in is on a grand scale, think something akin to the battle during the Metal Virus Saga from Sonic IDW, and is incredibly brutal, with the consequences of it that most of the characters have been either killed or died due to their wounds. Sonic has somehow vanished during the battle, leaving Shadow as one of the few survivors. Having witnessed the demise of his closest friends, Shadow would be deeply affected by this traumatic experience, the memories of his past overwhelming him.

He had lost Maria, and just when he had come to terms with moving on and living life with his new friends, he now lost everyone he cared about. This would lead to him shutting down, or at least becoming closed off once again as he tries to handle the grief and survivor's guilt, with the only hope being that there wouldn't be any conflict because Eggman is also gone. The world is at peace now, isn’t it?

Except, that's not the case. New villains would rise and Shadow would see it as his own responsibility to go to the front lines to fight these new villains, over and over again. He is The Ultimate Lifeform, the strongest being in the universe, and he feels that he needs to soldier on and protect the world as he had not only promised to Maria, but to himself. He also refuses to get close to anyone else, because he doesn’t want to deal with another loss.

Eventually, he is called to deal with another conflict, this one being rather petty. It doesn’t matter what it is, but the point is that this is what finally breaks Shadow. He realizes that no matter how hard he works to protect the world, there would always be new conflicts, even for the most ridiculous reasons and people would continue being ungrateful for the peace he’s trying to create.

So, he decides to take matters in his own hands.

After all, Shadow is the Ultimate Lifeform. He is nearly invulnerable, he is ageless, he is incredibly skilled with Chaos Energy and can use the Chaos Emeralds to turn into Super Shadow. No one can harm him and, more importantly, no one can stop him. 

In order to preserve peace, he takes it upon himself to conquer everything, crowning himself as King Shadow, and makes sure that all wars/conflicts cease. If someone attempts to cause trouble, he'll deal with them swiftly and, if they resist, brutally. Peace is finally brought back to the world.

However, one issue remains. Even though Shadow has achieved his goal of peace, he enforces it with an iron fist. People are living in fear of him and have to walk on eggshells as they believe that even the smallest argument or protest might get them thrown into prison or worse. They see him as a tyrant king, and Shadow knows that.

He knows that people fear him, but because of his immense power, no one would dare to challenge him. He doesn't pay mind to them though, as being ageless, he'll outlive them. His reign is absolute and no one can do anything about it. He is angry though, noting how ungrateful everyone is - they finally are at peace, yet they complain about it. He would, however, acknowledge that they're partially right - he knows that he's a tyrant for enforcing peace with an iron fist, but he doesn't care. It was a necessity.

Shadow is also dealing with loneliness, heavy trauma, survivor's guilt and understands that he twisted his promise to protect the world beyond recognition. He notes that he isn't doing this for Maria, but for himself. He knows that his old friends would be horrified by what he had done, by what he had become, but he saw no other way out of this situation. He knows that he is the villain here, and he has embraced that role fully during the time that had passed.

Then, some time during King Shadow's rule and him dealing with a resistance of some sort, Sonic suddenly appears seemingly out of nowhere.

Now, I haven’t really thought about what would happen to Sonic, but the general idea is that he may have experienced some kind of time travel, which flung him from the past into the King Shadow!Future. He may have even had some help from Silver.

Regardless of what happened to Sonic, he has talked to the leader of this resistance movement and learns not only about the deaths of his friends, but also about Shadow's tyrannical rule and decides to confront him. The resistance members, not really knowing what kind of person Sonic truly is, figure that Sonic is going to remove Shadow by force, possibly even kill him, and support him.

Shadow also hears about Sonic's return, and while he's shocked at first that Sonic has somehow miraculously survived the battle, he decides to prepare for their eventual encounter. Interestingly, he actually welcomes Sonic with open arms, despite being aware that Sonic wants to fight him, and when Sonic attempts to talk things out, he punches his rival.

This escalates into a battle between the two, where Shadow reveals what he had gone through and admits that he knows that he has become a tyrant and that people hate him, but he feels that he was too far gone to change. He had been hoping for that eventually someone would come and put him out of his misery - and Sonic is the only one who can do that. 

So, the two fight, going all out on each other, with the battle ending in Sonic’s victory. However, instead of destroying Shadow, who is laying on the ground, defeated, Sonic offers him his hand, much to everyone’s shock. Sonic explains that he’d rather stay with Shadow and help him deal with his trauma, and the only reason he fought the latter was because he knew they both needed to blow off some steam without putting anyone else in danger.

Sonic explains to Shadow that they both dealt with a heavy loss and he is still grieving the death of his friends, but he isn't going to lose another friend, that being Shadow himself. Sonic wants to help Shadow heal, pointing out that he and Shadow had the same goal in achieving peace, except Shadow went overboard in his grief, and he doesn't consider Shadow a lost case. 

While still in shock, Shadow accepts the proposal, grabbing Sonic’s hand and getting up, but is basically arrested by the resistance. They still want him to be punished for what he had done, and Shadow agrees to it, even if Sonic protests, because he feels Shadow has suffered already enough.

As it turns out, Shadow gets banished from his own kingdom, as they have no means of imprisoning him, and when the court debates on whether they can even do that, since they would have to trust that Shadow wouldn’t return on his own to take back his kingdom, Sonic replies that he’ll keep an eye on his the ebony hedgehog.

Once left alone, both Sonic and Shadow are aware it will take a while to heal from what had happened to both of them, but Sonic is just glad to at least have one friend by his side, suggesting they travel together from one place to another and help those in need or go on adventures. Sonic notes how regardless of everything, he will continue to protect people, with Shadow agreeing - ending the whole thing on a bittersweet, but hopeful note.

Whatever happens afterwards, they will face it together.

EDIT:  

#Isekai'd As My Past Self (Sonic the Hedgehog AU Story) - a spiritual successor to this story idea.

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)  

[callipraxia]

Writing updates:

1) The Ford Essay is now longer than The Player of Games, at least with the footnotes and annotated bibliography.

2) I’ve come up with a name for a trilogy of monographs of this sort, with pieces about Stan and Dipper to follow…but I still can’t think up an appropriate non-working title for the entity which currently just goes by “The Ford Essay.” This is starting to feel like something I should really sort out….

3) Another thing I really need to work on is the chapter lengths. At present, they go

Chapter 1: 5 pages

Chapter 2: 7 pages

Chapter 3: 26 pages

Chapter Four: 19 pages

Chapter 5: 7 pages.

Admittedly, chapter 5 is nowhere near done and I have some thoughts on expanding chapter 2, but…dang.

4) Today I did it: I wrote something in this thing that I might delete out of concern about it being too controversial, or at least too…English major-y. Or possibly psychology major-y. Either way, I’m almost proud, somehow.

5) To read more or not to read more, that is the question…I have about eight more books marked down to finish as potential sources, but I keep kinda wanting to go ahead and publish without completing two of them or even starting the other six. I keep telling myself that I will regret it if I indulge in half-measures here, but…the temptation is there.

6) If I do read those books, I’m going to have to push back the projected publication date of “by the end of September” to “by the end of October/hopefully no later than mid-November.” I have to get this thing posted by the end of December, though, just to avoid a whole year of nothing getting finished….

[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck ch.168 thoughts REDO!

The bulk of this week's review wasn't directly related to Undead Unluck, so I'm going to delete that one and rework it into its own standalone post later. This post is going to start the same as before, but now it's going to address a point I meant to talk about and simply forgot because I got sidetracked

So, once again:

[Time for School]

HIGH SCHOOL! AU! HIGH SCHOOL! AU!

Man, this was one of the funniest chapters in a long time, from Fuuko ripping open Shen's eye to force Untruth onto Feng to Feng realizing that he's been reduced to a gym teacher and won't get to fight anyone, I was laughing start to finish

I really needed it, too, I was having a rough day at work (when normally Jump day is my day off...), and this chapter cheered me right up!

Shen and Mui's relationship developing into an actual romance of course was a great way to start us off, and seeing Fuuko continue to wrap Feng around her finger gives me great hope for how his character is going to interact with the story going forward, but of course the real meat of this chapter was the Union infiltrating Chikara's school

I'm sure that Tozuka will think of a way to actually incorporate everyone into the plot to save Chikara's parents, but man...do they really need to be here? I think that any one of them would be sufficient to stop a truck from hitting some pedestrians, and yet here everyone is, wearing costumes and faking credentials to get close to an underage boy

Boy, sounds bad when you put it like that...

Anyway, of course this is the mission that Fuuko is the most excited about. Fuuko's greatest regret is that she couldn't live a normal school life, so while this is clearly wholly unnecessary to helping Chikara, it's absolutely vital to Fuuko to do this. I imagine it's going to help endear the group to Chikara, too, but this isn't really about him. It's the one truly selfish thing that I think Fuuko is going to be doing in the series, and she deserves it! Treat yourself, girl!!!

And again, there is no need for her to bring everyone else along if she just wants to play high schooler. But let's be honest, there was no way she wasn't going to bring them along. Not only would she want all of her loved ones to be present for what is going to be the most important side quest of her life, but consider this: NO ONE ELSE HERE HAD A NORMAL LIFE EITHER!

Shen and Mui grew up on the street, Billy's been a mercenary for lord knows how long, Sean was in the cartel! I could go on! Sure, a lot of them probably went to high school normally and had these experiences already, but their lives have been screwed up for so long by this point that it'd definitely be good for them to have a taste of normality. Not even just by virtue of being Negators, the way that everyone here has lived their lives has simply been abnormal, so letting them have normal jobs and normal friends is a great way for them to get a basic idea of how their lives could look once everything with God is resolved. Many of them likely won't choose a life like that, but still, having that perspective could really change the trajectory of their lives by expanding their horizons

I just think it's a shame that so many other characters don't get to be here. Sure, world-famous boxing champion Void Volks and American military captain Creed wouldn't make much sense to be here, but c'mon...you did this arc BEFORE recruiting Tatiana?!

The other girl who missed her entire adolescence??? The other girl who can never touch another person??? THE GIRL WHO CHIKARA HAS A CRUSH ON??? She would have been perfect! ...Assuming that she won't be stuck in Sphere this time...oh god, that's probably why, she's still going to be in Sphere and wouldn't be able to go to school...

Also sad that Andy can't be here, but it was established LOOONG ago that he can't pass for a kid in this very school, so while it would be nice to see Fuuko and Andy play high school sweethearts, it would definitely be tricky to pull off. But who knows, maybe this is where we'll finally get him back? Probably not, but I'd like it

I don't expect to see much if any combat in this arc, but weirdly, I'm perfectly okay with that. I'm really excited to see a more domestic look at this cast, and as we've established, Tozuka is just super funny, so this is probably going to be, at least for the next couple weeks, a fantastic slice-of-life manga. I know I said it about the Hong Kong arc too, but I think this is the most excited I've been about an Undead Unluck arc

It definitely says something about Tozuka's quality as an author that he's made me say that two arcs in a row

[scepterno]

hi its me again ..

sorry to bother, just wanted to ask if you have any tips on how to start off a fic.. i have an idea ive been sitting on for ages and i have so much planned but i just... can't start it!! how did you start an insulting indifference...

oh man.... im so ass at giving advice.... but thank you for asking anyways! let's see.... this got long so im placing a read more

the way i write is very based on improvisation. i either go into a fic with a very very broad idea of what i want to accomplish, and let the story take me wherever it wants. if i think of something randomly that i want to write, then i go to the bottom of my word document and pound out about two to three sentences IN the moment or scene, just to set the tone. i typically end up hoarding about 3 or so pages of disconnected story moments or character dialogue. by doing this, i can also foreshadow events or make parallels that span across several chapters in the story.

work OUT OF ORDER!!! its fun!!! it keeps it exciting!!! there was one fic i wrote where the last chapter was the first ever thing i wrote for it, and so i had a better picture in my mind about how the entire thing would GENERALLY play out. i like to leave the details in the moment, which is where the improv aspect comes in. if you let yourself ride the tide of the story, you wont have to force it in certain directions as much. sometimes you have to correct its course, but mostly youre there to cruise along with the story thats coming to life!

think of it like... a bunch of big dots. and these dots are all connecting by lines. like a big web. everything in the dots are BIG STORY BEATS, and the lines are the exposition between them. the lines don't have to be straight, either. they can have loops, or wiggles, or tiny tiny dots of their own. it may not be as exciting as the HUGE dots, but its still necessary. then again, maybe it isnt! dont feel like writing a scene? skip it! trust in your readers' abilities to make inferences based on all the other context clues you give them in the text.

as you can see, i suck at giving advice HAHA. my brain is.... not very good at sorting the chaos into something tangible for others to understand.

if you have an idea, just run with it! write for the sake of writing SOMETHING. anything is a good starting point. ANYTHING. you can always go back and edit it later. write what you DONT want to write so you can get to the stuff you DO want to write.

)--)o

i would also recommend never deleting stuff youve written. if you write a scene that you end up hating, cut and paste it into a separate document just for safe keeping. it might come in handy down the line, even if you never actually USE it. you might be able to look back on it and REALIZE what does and doesnt work about it, which will improve your tone and general skills for OTHER stuff you're going to write in the future.

and one of my favorite things to do in a story when im stuck is STEP OUT OF MY BOX. especially if youre writing from a single character POV. we've been following the story of a single person, but every single other character they interact with has been going through a fanfic of their own. what is happening to them? what are they saying? being told? experiencing? what would cause them to change their mind about something suddenly? or act irrationally? the best part about writing for humans is that they're flawed. all of them. so we can write them making mistakes and doing stupid things. it helps push the plot along. it creates conflict, WHICH IS INTERESTING. we love conflict.

find something you want to write about in a fic, then expand the world around it. when i started an insulting indifference, my goal was to write about Alejandro's trauma, Noah's mental health, and have them experiencing healing by mending their relationship with not only each other, but the world and people around them. and then it grew from there!!!!!!!!!

ok im done

i talked WAAAY too much about utter nonsense. i hope at least 5% of this was helpful to you. LOL!! thank you again for the ask!!!!