#I also have a (vague) idea of what the major plot lines are going to be which is fantastic. even thought of a starting line too

[ljubimaya]

Thinking about my wip counts as working on it right????

[oncewhenalongtimeago]

I'm so obsessed 'SbITILYP' it makes my day whenever it updates! I wonder when Hiccup will be able to get his hands on some roses, especially the protagonist's reaction to receiving flowers?

Sorry, but I Think I Lost Your Plot pt 26

Pairing: Onesided!Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Modern!Fem!Reader

Words: 2,983

Berk is a whole new place and you just might have opened up a whole new door for yourself. It’s probably a good one.

Tags: Time Travel, Reader into Movieverse, Reader’s POV, Hiccup’s POV, unedited

<Previous - Next>

You kept your eyes glued to the ground.

The leaves of a plant that were scattered across the floor were somewhat recognizable, though you couldn’t place where you’d seen them before. 

Today, though, there seemed to be an excess of them littering the paths around Berk.

You followed a beige dirt path up from the fields, staring at the ground as you carried up a short woven basket full of wheat. It was your day’s payment, the farmer having felt very generous with his store of things.

You didn’t really have a kitchen area, but you weren’t going to refuse a gift. Maybe you could trade with Mrs. Ingerman for something later. It was worth a try.

It had been a while since you’d been into town, having skirted around it for the majority of the day. It’d been a while since you’d seen anyone important, much less Hiccup, and the more time elapsed, the more you avoided, the more antsy you got.

It was noon, and you could feel the sun through your sleeves, a warm thing that made you want to melt into a puddle, like a cat. A nap would be very nice.

It was much quieter than it had been in a while. Things in town had been busy since the Outcasts had been taken into custody. Mildew had been arrested and subsequently exiled and the Outcasts, Alive the Treacherous especially, had been awaiting trial, locked away in the dripping, jailed caves under the Great Hall.

Things had also been very, very quiet and very, very intense. The air was stiff with tension and just about ten times the number of words left unsaid. It was a world of difference compared to the quick gossipy phrases usually exchanged in town.

There was something going on today, though you didn’t care, ready to enjoy some you-time by the cliffs by the coast doing simple jobs and laying in the grass.

Did that have anything to do with the leaves?

You perked up at the call of your name as dirt became wood plank, glancing back towards the fields but not lingering long enough to make out many details. 

You could tell easily, though, that it was Hiccup.

His voice, nasally though it was, set your heart beating like a whole stampede of bulls was pounding dust and you were just about to get trampled encierro style.

“Can I walk with you?” He asked.

You paid only vague attention to his voice in an effort to keep calm, a line of sweat running down your face and hitting the dirt.

There was a strained quality to it; it sounded like he was trying to keep normal. It wasn’t strained in a way that made you believe he was upset so you didn’t worry, more as if he was holding his breath, though for what you had no idea.

Was this how he felt?

“Maybe… Keep looking?” Hiccup hedged, “I’ll follow the path with you, so you dont trip.”

You nodded.

You walked into town like that, eyes on your feet.

The ground turned to wood turned to dirt a few times, your boots tapping and padding against both.

You picked up a leaf once or twice and kept them flat in your palm.

You adjusted your basket twice, though at Hiccup’s insistence, you kept your eyes focused on the ground.

Until you spotted something.. Out of the ordinary.

Something bright red, saturated as the most visible shade of blood drifted down onto the path. It was round, though slightly light at one of the edges, which came to an almost blunt point.

You squinted down at it, bending further with fingers outstretched.

Your fingertips brushed against dirt as you scooped it up, before taking a step as if you were going to keep walking, and then stopping again.

The flesh of it was soft, with what felt like a film on top that was almost like satin, though the flex and feel of it was much different. It felt as if it might split under your nail if you pressed into it, which you nearly did, holding it between the crook of your pointer finger and your thumb.

It was… A petal.

“So…” Hiccup started, coming to a slow stop beside you, “Notice anything different?”

You turned up and looked at him, the sun was inviting and cozy on your cheeks as you pulled them out of your own shadow.

And then you started.

And you dropped your basket, its bottom landing against the ground with hardly a pat.

What you focused on wasn’t Hiccup himself, but more what was behind him. Something you’d missed as you’d walked with your eyes focused on your feet like you were Sherlock Holmes, which you felt funny about now.

It was flowers. 

Roses. Everywhere. 

…Mostly. 

“What…” You said, for the first time.

There were some other species planted throughout donned in multiple different colors, planted alongside houses in various states of bloom, some with thin pipes made of wood connecting to a larger, thicker one, lifted over the lot.

Some in blues and small, wild whites were hanging from planters above, both shelves nailed into the sides of huts and sturdy metal pots with holes in the bottom hanging by tightly woven and painted rope with small strings dangling from the sides.

You could tell that quite a few plants had been the kind repotted from fields and nooks out in the forest, herbs and farm foods planted closer to huts and lined by stones for the sake of convenience, and suddenly a whole lot of things made sense. 

Nearly magenta pink thistle with its spiky green body, hanging purple bluebells, and pink lavender-esque, black spot dotted heather -even one pink Foxglove plant with its many hanging lantern-like flowers sectioned away from the rest in a small metal cage- peeking out from around corners and around huts.

The rose bushes lay large and mostly flowering in large planters, fenced-off using small pikes, fallen leaves and petals bleeding into the space all around, marking your path from the fields all the way to the places in the clearing they’d been planted. 

Up on the hill, you could just barely make out a small rose bush planted just by the pen up by the Chief’s hut.

You had to turn wildly, tracing them back with your eyes, “What…?”

You said it again.

Pale, dry dirt still made up the majority of the clearing, yet leaves and bushes lined the sides of buildings, spilling over upturned, dark earth which dotted the open space, marking boot and dragon tracks across. 

Small carvings of Vikings like gnomes were dotted around the place, arranged in a way that seemed more respectful and worshipful of their depictions than fanciful.

Off in a corner, a small stone fountain in multiple layers, with a little sign which, after many recent, sleepless nights thinking about boys with brown hair and green eyes and stupid freckles and large teeth, you were certain said ‘prototype.’

Vines grew from some thin wood rods to match the metal rods sticking out from the dirt standing, taller than most of the houses, which seemed to be a lot like lightning rods.

“It was a volunteer project,” Hiccup interjected quickly at your silence. 

In your periphery, you could see him step forwards slightly. Jerkily. 

His hands were close together, closer to his torso than away.

“This is…” You started. But you didn’t have the words to express just how you felt. Not yet, when you hadn’t even finished processing the life in front of you.

You inhaled deeply, so quickly your lungs hadn’t time to work it or for you to really feel satisfied by it as you turned yourself bodily, ogling the sight. 

His Dad, the Chief, and the Riders, the Twins egging each other on with dirt gloves, Astrid standing still and attentive as if to involve herself somehow in the conversation the Chief was having with Spitelout, both Chiefly hands pushing back red hair and resting against a mighty back.

Some serious talk about the Outcasts, it looked like, from the way Spitelout was shouting. It seemed that even during the good times, the Chief stayed alert and Spitelout stayed on edge, but there was a softer quality to it here, one that said ‘of course’ and made it seem more funny and fitting than worrying.

“Hey!” You heard the small Larson kid shout as he chased after a girl with bright blue ribbons in her straw-colored hair which held two thick braids together. 

Your attention was briefly drawn towards the indignant shout.

It was then that the Chief briefly turned his attention towards his son, causing your focus to snap back and forth between him and Hiccup with a loud, “Hiccup!”

Hiccup shook him off with his head, despite the fact that you were sure he’d approach, but the look on his face seemed to beg you to keep taking in everything. 

There were dragons lounging on the treetops, all of the Riders’ dragons plus Thornado, off in the far distance, napping on a roof, yellow, which had been covered in soft, grassy plants and clovers, a viking below shouting up at him with a shaking fist.

Stormfly was bobbing her head like a chicken, sitting at the head of a mounted head, which tipped and cracked dangerously under her weight. 

Barf and Belch were off causing chaos, wiggling their heads over a crown of kids while Meatlug was being pampered with fish from a shaded barred and scratched by her rider.

Everyone seemed surprisingly not displeased by the change. 

You could tell who’d helped with the planting by the dirt caked onto their hands and under their nails and by how close they were to the various shovels and buckets piled along the clearing.

Some Vikings had ripped sleeves, others were sweating, arms over their heads to block out the sun, trousers rolled up and helmets displaced off to the side in the shade by huts and under benches. 

Even Mrs. Thorston had come down at one point, harping at other various Vikings and sending googly eyes and comments the Chief either didn’t hear or pretended not to towards his back

You weren’t sure how you missed the sound of chatter, deep and thick all around you.

The two blonde ladies who’d roped you into beadmaking before stood side-by-side, your laundry partner standing tall with crossed arms, gloves dirtied from digging, staining the crooks of her elbows.

She was sewing, needle held over a worn, dirty smock, a dark brown dress and boots packed underneath.

She nudged your laundry partner in the shoulder, pointing towards you with the hand holding her needlepoint.

You even caught a glimpse of the brown-haired fisherman keeping to the more empty alleys and shaded sides of the village clearing, looking as if he’d kind of enjoyed the festivities but also very overwhelmed.

You knew Vikings easily took in the down time given before the storm hit. It was human nature, and with the time to work off restless energy, it seemed a taut line had been released, the air filled with laughter and the bustling, joyful and indignant arguments of children.

The flowers mixed with the paints on the huts and the traditional wood-carved builds on Berk’s homes, which had in fact only grown more complicated since the fall of the Red Death, Berk looked absolutely beautiful. Like everyone here had been born into some sort of eternal festival, and you had just been transported into it; a human in a world made by people who existed beyond reality.

“How did you-... You convinced them to do all of this?” The ‘for me,’ went unsaid. You were too scared to say it, afraid that if you did, the illusion might break and this would all turn out to be a pretty lie, and a pretty lie it was.

You slowly looked back to him, your waist carrying the bulk of your turn.

Someone had just finished clapping him on the back, having must have had at least some exchange of words while you were turned, sharing congratulations as they passed to a hardy woman with a large pitcher of something probably cool and a few mugs. Was it Gobber? 

You couldn’t tell.

You didn’t know Hiccup was such a landscaper.

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” Hiccup said, arms behind his back and stance wide as he shifted his weight on his feet, “They loosened up to the idea after I brought up what they’d do to cover the pipes.”

You noticed the dirt on his elbows, the lack of twine on his sleeves and the splashes of yellow and red paint on his cheek that told you that the color on the houses had looked brighter and more plentiful for a reason.

“I, ah,” You said, stepping closer; leaning closer until you stopped just right in front of him. You could have said something about root damage, maybe, or, or… Anything that would have come out coherent in any sort of way. 

But instead, you felt static, and there was nothing to lead you but the fresh feeling in your chest and the prickling in your toes, intense in a dizzying way that nearly threw you off balance.

“You… Planted all this, for me?” You asked, astonished. Against your will, your face began to heat up in a way that must have looked obvious; you felt blotchy and out of place and absolutely light, airy on the inside in a way that brought you both closer to the moment and into the third perspective. 

You were here and with Hiccup. 

Were you going to do it? You weren’t sure where the question had come from, dazed.

He was looking at you with wide eyes as you grabbed his shoulders and leaned closer, closing your own so hard they must have looked like they had been pinched, though you were incredibly aware.

For a moment, it felt like the whole world was watching, paranoia and embarrassment filling your back, each hair on your neck raising in tune with the number of eyes focused on your spine.

You didn’t have to see to know it, though you spotted people stilling and staring in your periphery.

You weren’t sure whether you did or didn't purse your lips though you knew Hiccup was watching, his shoulders stiffening under your hands.

What if you read this all wrong and you were about to embarrass yourself in front of everybody?

…What were you going to do? Were you really going to try and kiss Hiccup for the first time in front of all his friends and family?

Your back and neck felt hot as if you were sweating, heat fluttering and writhing and squirming in your stomach, rising in a quick crescendo though you knew it wouldn’t be until a few moments yet that you’d feel the first bits of moisture against the small of your waist.

It was too much.

You were brought back into yourself with a jump like the cracking of a stick, able to feel every raw edge like a breeze on an exposed nerve or an out-of-place note in sharp.

“I can’t do this!” You squeaked and slapped your hands over your eyes as you quickly turned and ran away, face burning with embarrassment.

“Wait-!” Hiccup stood, dazed for just a moment, watching your cramble away, running sightlessly back onto the path away from the village through the minor crowd that had gathered there. 

He felt slightly robbed, hand extended. It was very, very hot out and his insides burned in a way that, put together, made him feel on fire in a way that was nearly unbearable.

He stepped over a rose, the rose, a nice enough red one he was sure you hadn’t noticed. The petals had been slightly crumpled and ripped as he’d pulled it from his coat, hastily shoved in when he’d seen you walking up to the village from the fields. 

 It had fallen from his hands after his hands had fallen to his sides as you’d stepped closer with-

Hiccup stared intently at where you had run off to, brows furrowed, feeling very determined.

He needed to catch up to you now.

“Woah,” Tuffnut said, voice dragging distantly, standing in awe a few measures behind him, as people began to laugh and gossip, “That was lame.”

It seemed Hiccup was the only one who’d taken it seriously, the other Vikings happy to play and gossip while what seemed like the most pivotal moment of his life happened right in front of them -No, he was not exaggerating.

His prosthetic creaked as he whipped around, calling for his dragon, “Toothless-!”

He ignored the excited murders beginning in the background, heart racing. 

You’d been… very close.

His dragon was there, giving him as much of a look as there was possible for him to give, as if he himself was somewhat embarrassed by the whole event.

Hiccup gave him a look of his own, wordlessly asking his dragon, ‘So what?’

Hiccup didn’t know what he expected from him as Toothless turned and started trotting away, snorting and grawping as he disappeared into a heavily planted alley, just before he jumped up onto one of the many ramps covering Berk lining the rear ends of some of the houses.

“Aw, come on-” Hiccup started before very quickly running after his dragon, like he did way back across rooftops when dragons were nothing to him but bloodthirsty monsters, arms outstretched, nearly tripping as his foot caught on a tuft of grass, “Toothless!”

[ad-hawkeye]

LBC Theory: Modern!Alkaid and MC's Past

Alright, so this is going to primarily act as a place for me to gather my thoughts. There will be CN spoilers below, but I will put proper spoiler warnings before any of them.

So, what is this theory? Simple. Alkaid and MC knew each other as children, but don't remember.

On its own, it sounds utterly ridiculous. Why would they not remember? What evidence is there for this? And a few months ago, I would have agreed. But with each new SSR being released, I'm slowly becoming more and more convinced.

Let's start off with global canonical evidence. For the sake of simplicity, I will be referring to MC's mother as Prefect Crimson, and Alkaid's mother as Tammy.

(Note: I would like to give my thanks to the other members of the LBC Discord for first broaching the concept. I just wanted to compile everything!)

It is canon that Prefect Crimson can manipulate people's memories. She once saved Clarence and wiped his memory of the encounter. She also wiped MC's memories of her father, amongst other occurrences, following his death.

Tammy is a woman with a lot of secrets. It is canon that Tammy is entirely aware of who Prefect Crimson is, and of the unnatural influence she has on people. Tammy has thoroughly investigated her. She knows MC is her daughter. She knows Prefect Crimson was originally the source of the mental illness spikes via her radio show. She also knows Prefect Crimson apparently changed her ways and used her powers to soothe mental illnesses instead.

Tammy knows who MC is before the plot even begins and has documents on her. She also knows that MC is "special". Despite this, and despite her job, Tammy is friendly to her and is deeply invested in her safety. Unusually kind for a spy who knows this girl has otherworldly abilities and is now dating her son... her son she desperately wants to have a normal life.

Alkaid immediately feels drawn to MC despite having only known her briefly. Almost as if there's this feeling that he's always known her, but can't put a finger on why...

There are several AUs (even just in global!) regarding the plot line of Alkaid and MC having known each other in the past, but both of them/one of them (usually MC) not recognizing each other upon reuniting. This is most notably seen in Alkaid's Destiny's Call SSR (childhood friends... MC doesn't recognize Alkaid, while Alkaid merely suspects MC of being the girl he once knew), and in his Spirit World route (Alkaid erases all evidence of MC in the third era, his memories included. He regains these memories in era four. MC doesn't recognize him, as she is not the MC he knew. Yet).

There is a whisper (Alkaid's Top Up SSR) that addresses the idea of forgetting and getting to know someone again. Alkaid says if doesn't matter if MC forgets him; he'd cherish getting to know her again.

The "final boy route" tends to be the most important in terms of running themes and ideas. Alkaid's "final boy route" is in Eden. Alkaid's cries as a child reach MC in the modern world, and she vows to help him. MC then meets Alkaid as an adult. MC doesn't know this is the boy she vowed to help, while Alkaid didn't realize this girl answered his cry for help until after the signal went out days prior to the plot starting.

Every Alkaid has a fascination with recording memories. He wants to record everything worth remembering, and vows to record MC's life as she records his.

Now, let's get into CN evidence.

Spoiler warning! Major plot spoilers can be found below for Modern Alkaid, and some vague spoilers can be found for other events. Proceed with caution!

Tammy knows a lot more than she lets on. In the past, Alkaid got involved in a severe accident involving extraterrestrial technology. His memory of the incident was wiped, as well as any extraterrestrial knowledge he might have known. So, like MC, he has also canonically had his memory wiped.

There are several other AUs that involve the same exact plot line I mentioned in the global section... specifically, the plot line of Alkaid and MC having known each other in the past, but both of them/one of them (usually MC) not recognizing each other upon reuniting. This is seen in the second Qixi AU, the Bejeweled Heart AU, and even in the latest 'Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio' AU.

Alkaid and MC have a running bit where they pretend to be strangers meeting for the first time.

And now, let's discuss theories.

I believe Tammy and Prefect Crimson knew each other. That they came to an odd understanding based on their mutual desire to protect their children. I believe that Alkaid and MC met. I believe that MC forgot him once her memories were wiped due to his association with his mother, a spy investigating extraterrestrial activity. I believe Alkaid forgot MC once his memories were wiped due to her association with her mother, an extraterrestrial being.

I think it's highly unlikely Alkaid secretly remembers her. In all AUs where he is the one who remembers, he does subtle tests to see if MC remembers him. Examples being the flower in Destiny's Call, the fox joke and tea in Spirit World, or the pom pom in the 'Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio' AU ...Or the not-so-subtle act of trying to show her his ID in the modern world. There is no notable example or foreshadowing of Alkaid trying to get MC to remember anything prior to the mountain meeting, and the logistics of him remembering would make for a very convoluted theory. It's possible! And my theory would still work! But IMO, it's unlikely.

I do, however, think it's likely that he would be the first to remember in a future storyline. Not MC.

Also, what if this is subconsciously why Alkaid is so fixated on recording everything? So he never forgets something... or someone important again?

I believe the reason why Tammy is so friendly to MC right off the bat is because she remembers her from years ago. She knows Prefect Crimson changed her ways, and that MC is an innocent bystander in all of this.

As for letting Alkaid meet her again, Tammy is riddled with a lot of guilt. She tries to overcompensate by giving Alkaid the freedom to do what he wants, like going to a school that is a point of extraterrestrial interest, and that clearly wants him there for some reason. Also, who's to say she doesn't think meeting MC again would be good for Alkaid? He's had a stunted upbringing and it's rare for him to voice his own wants - except when it comes to MC. She makes him more human. More normal.

And isn't that what Tammy wants?

For her son to finally feel like himself again? After all the pain she caused for him?

[thecoffeelorian]

Unsung Heroes; Unspoken Lines: Issue #2

Good morning, all, and welcome to another discussion session for all of the unsung heroes of "The Bad Batch", as well as the many plot directions that never quite made it to the small screen. As we did in our first thread, please make good use out of the comments and reblogs, as we kinda won't be able to come up with any good responses without them.

For everyone else, feel free to filter out the tag #tbb: deep dives , especially if giving a sideways glance at megacorporation-produced content isn't quite your thing. Thank you, and good morning.

And now, let's get straight into it and put on our thinking caps...

So, everybody, it’s kind of like this…

…I was tossing a few ideas for the next discussion around in my head late last week, and of course, specifically from the first season. Two examples of these had been, at least at the time, how did the Mantell Mix vendor reflect the average citizen’s response to the shiny new Imperial regime; or else did toothpick usage indicate evil behavior from major and minor characters alike. Totally random, somewhat vague thoughts to be expounded upon...and also kind of bad.

However.

It wasn’t until I read some leftover comments from around the last discussion thread, specifically from @megmca, that I was reminded of a missing key aspect of a lost canon character, as well as one whose “death” a certain amount of fans may still be hurting over, myself included. Something that just so happens to perfectly fit this latest 'Tech Tuesday', even if it's short and sweet.

Something like...Tech himself just happening to enjoy audio and video recordings as a hobby.

In other words, even if the show carrying their squad nickname never brought it up, or stranger still, left it back in the final season of The Clone Wars…Tech DID, in fact, record everything, a fact stated to be a hobby of his during the arc involving Echo, another key character in future episodes.

And boy oh boy, this is a once-cancelled possibility that now leads us straight into our next discussion--What If?

What if he recorded other things besides various examples of animal sounds, and if so, how effective would they have been in the future?

What if he could also record human/humanoid voices, and use them to generate deepfakes that could get the squad through even the toughest of Imperial checkpoints?

And third...what if a collection of past footage could crack open all the unsolved mysteries from the complete series, be it the last procedures on Kamino or else the secret files from Tantiss? Could at least one terrifying event been avoided, if not several...?

I hope that this can, at least, begin to get everyone else's thoughts out on the matter...and if so, please answer our latest Question Of The Week in either the comments or reblogs:

QOTW: How would Tech’s recording hobby have either added to/changed canon, and why?

No Pressure Tags: @theosb0rnway @brownielocks69 @alwaysflexfoampads @lucky-ducky006 @travellingnorthwards

@moe-oh @depeachy @petrivbatig @sadiecoocoo @maddyknight28

@traveller-of-word-and-screen @greyangelpain @tbnrpotato @lilithastar @sillishit

@techs-goggles9902 @amandamadeathing @number1morphfan @darthbecky726 and any other interested fans who might want to sound off.

[end notes: I basically finished typing this at around 9 pm last night, so I hope I didn't go too all over the place here. ^^; Thank you.]

[barcodeboyz]

My top 10 favorite South Park episodes, no one asked but here we go

10. With Apologies to Jesse Jackson

This is a controversial episode to put here because of how offensive it is, and truthfully, I didn't care too much for the A plot. But the B-plot makes up for it. Watching Cartman and a Midget fight to Get Down with the Sickness is so hilariously absurd.

9. You're Getting Old/Ass Burgers

This is the second/third episode I remember watching before I got into the show. I included them both in one spot because Ass Burgers is a continuation of You're Getting Old, but each have their own separate charm. I definitely shed a tear when Stan moved out to Fleetwood Mac's Landslide and split my sides laughing as Kyle yelled at Cartman for sticking the burgers up his ass. I also heavily relate to Stan's meltdown in class in Ass Burgers, because that's real emotion. An amazing storyline overall.

8. Make Love, Not Warcraft

I mentioned that the previous two episodes were some of my first episodes, but not THE first episode. That title goes to this episode. When I was born, my brother was 15, and as I grew up, I often watched him play World of Warcraft. So this episode is very nostalgic to me, not just because him and I watched it but because as someone who plays WOW nowadays (very inconsistently), it's so nostalgic to see how much has changed.

7. The Losing Edge

This is just a classic episode. The boys don't want to participate in baseball and try to get out of it by losing, but the other teams have the same idea. I think we all know who the real star of the episode is: Randy. I thought this was America!

6. Trapped in the Closet

Subtlety is completely ignored in this episode. As Stan is praised as the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, his comments about Tom Cruise send him literally into the closet. I think my favorite bit in the episode is R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet verses, specifically when he pulls out a gun in Stan's room and everyone in the hallway runs away.

5. Major Boobage

This episode is... beautiful. The animation is impressive, and the story is hilarious as well. Kenny and Gerald cheesing and then getting into a fight, Cartman reliving the Holocaust with the cats, and the funny ass press conference given just solidify this episode as legendary.

4. Le Petit Tourette

This episode introduced my favorite one-off character, Thomas. But even more than that, it gave us a great story and a chance for us to see Cartman's plan blow up in his face. While it ultimately never came to fruition due to Kyle's actions, it's satisfying to know that he definitely revealed a deep secret or two in exchange for almost slandering minority groups on national TV.

3. Follow That Egg

I have vague memories of watching this episode as a kid, but I don't consider it as one of my firsts because I could only really recall them running through the crowd trying to save their grade. But it's a fantastic episode. Ms. Garrison's attempts to stop gay marriage from being legalized, to Stan's comical bitterness towards Kyle and Wendy, it all comes together and compliments each other well.

2. D-Yikes!

I didn't expect to get so personal on a South Park top 10 list, but it's the honest truth. South Park became a major comfort for me after my assault. And this was the first episode I watched that made me burst out laughing since the attack; Ms. Garrison screaming "scissor me timbers!" has got to be one of the funniest lines in the show's history. And overall, it's just a fun episode to watch.

1. Guitar Queero

This is an underrated masterpiece of an episode that more people should watch. The plot of the episode feels so fluid, and everything about it makes sense to me. The rise to stardom, falling to drugs (well, video games about drugs), losing it all and returning to give it one final shot just encompasses what South Park can really do when given the right tools. Maybe I'm biased because Season 11 is my favorite season, but something about this episode just really scratches my brain.

Anyways, that's my list! Thanks all for reading.

[99corentine]

How To Write Good by Corentine

THE DRAFTING PROCESS, PART 2/2

Writing guide continued! Here's PART ONE.

STEP THREE: THE START, THE END, THE BEATS

I’m of the opinion that every story should start with a bang. You could start mid-way through a notable event, as seen in GHD:

- O L H A - D - V - The words, incomprehensible, rattle around his head like the last rumbles of a great thunderstorm. Then, much like after a storm has passed, the air suddenly feels clearer, sharper. A sludgy fog he didn’t even realise he was in clears from his mind and he blinks, confused. The first thing he sees is his own hands.

If you want it to be especially punchy, you can start with a line of dialogue or a short sentence, like I did for T4T:

CHAPTER ONE: It is the end.

It’s reeeally easy to lose readers at the start, so you always want to write a strong opener. Something that grabs the reader by the collar and drags them in to read the rest of the chapter.

You don’t need to have all the details, but you should have at least a vague idea of how the story ends. If you’re writing fanfic that follows along the same plot as a game or existing story, most of the legwork is done for you – so writing GHD, I planned for it to end when Alduin was killed. As I got further into the story, I came up with a more narratively satisfying ending, because it’s okay if the ending changes. As long as you have an ending in mind, you have something to work towards.

So GHD’s original, very basic plot was:

START – the Last Dragonborn wakes up with total amnesia

???

He saves Miraak

???

They kill Alduin together – END 

Now you have to map out those ??? parts by deciding the major beats of the story, i.e. notable scenes. This gives you something to work towards other than the ending. I ended up with notes like these:

START – the Last Dragonborn wakes up with total amnesia

Who is he? Don’t spend too much time on this, not important, can be answered later

Goes to Solstheim, meets Miraak

Finds a way to communicate with Miraak – sneaks into Apocrypha? Shares dreams? College of Winterhold has psijiics, use telepathy?

Finds a way to save Miraak

Go to Apocrypha, confront Hermaeus Mora, save Miraak

They look for ways to kill Alduin together

Hermaeus Mora comes for them

Prolonged recovery, tells reader that even ‘redeemed’ Miraak is still scary

They kill Alduin together

What happens after Alduin?

(Redacted for spoiler purposes) – END 

The story beats should ebb and flow like the tide; high-octane scenes should be followed by periods of calm. You don’t want to do this too quickly or the story will feel like whiplash; rather this is a process that happens over many chapters. Let’s look at some examples in GHD:

⇈⇈ Miraak dominates telepathy and is really scary!! ⇊⇊ Chry wanders around Skyrim doing errands and Thinking About Life… ⇈⇈ Chry breaks Miraak out of Apocrypha!!  ⇊⇊ They recover from the ordeal and have a honeymoon period… ⇈⇈ They go to Blackreach and it’s visually awesome, and also Chry gets jealous!! ⇊⇊ They do misc stuff for a while… ⇈⇈ They talk to Septimus Signus, Mora shows up, nearly kills Chry!! ⇊⇊ Miraak whisks Chry away somewhere to recover in peace…

You see what I mean?

Right, you know roughly what’s going to happen. Time to turn that into words, baby!

STEP FOUR: GOTTA START WRITING

My actual writing style is its own separate topic so I’m not going to tell you how I structure a sentence or anything, just my literal writing process. 

In my chapter document, I start by making a bullet-point list of everything I want to happen in the chapter. What happens can, and probably will, change as you actually get the chapter down. That’s fine, you just need a starting point.

I very rarely write individual chapters in order, as in start to finish. Rather, I tend to write the scenes I can picture clearly in my head – then by the time I’ve written those I’m in a writing groove and the gaps in the rest of the chapter will come easier. When I’m done, I’ll stitch the individual scenes together, which sometimes requires altering the scene start or end to make the whole thing more cohesive.

There are times when the writer’s block takes me, and I have like two finished scenes and just cannot summon the words for the rest of the chapter. When this happens, to be honest, the only answer I’ve found is brute force: I sit myself in front of the computer, get rid of phone/alt tabs/other distractions, and force myself to type something. Or I hold myself hostage (i.e. ‘I am not allowed to play more Baldur’s Gate 3 until I have written GHD chapter 47’) that works too, for me anyway. 

Whatever it takes to get something on paper. What’s mostly important is to get something written, even if it’s not very good. You can always edit, rephrase or even rewrite sections later. Usually I’ve found once you start writing, you get into a groove and then it’s no longer a chore.

I also aim for a certain word count / chapter length while writing. I know a chapter is exactly as long as it needs to be and blah blah, but I set myself a minimum wordcount to reach. Or if I go way over the word count it’s probably because I’ve waffled too much, so I either aim to split the chapter into two, or to ruthlessly edit it back down again. 

For GHD I average 7,000 - 9,000 words, but I actually think that’s a bit too long and risks losing people’s attention span, so for T4T I aim lower, about 6,000-ish. Less is perfectly fine, but if I’m reading another fic I find a chapter length of 2,000 words or lower to be disappointingly short. That’s all personal preference of course, and certain fics will lend themselves better to shorter chapters.

Although I jump around scenes within each chapter, I make a point of writing my entire chapters in chronological order. If I’m on chapter 5, and I know something awesome happens in chapter 12, it’s imperative that I do not write chapter 12 ahead of time. If I do, I’ll reeeally struggle to write chapters 6-11, because I have already rewarded my brain by writing the cool thing. If I hold off, my enthusiasm to write chapter 12 may in fact motivate me to crank out chapters 6-11 in record time.

I do have one other thing – in my Scrivener projects I always have a document called ‘Unused’. Sometimes, usually at like 2AM when sleep has failed me, I’ll get a really good idea for some dialogue or description. I scribble it down somewhere (or it will be forgotten for sure) and later I type it into my Unused document, so it’s just filled with random bits of text like this (note, everything you see here is unused, so it's not going to feature in the last chapter of GHD):

At some point in time I’ll peruse it and think ‘yes, this line!!’ and drop it into a future chapter – again though I just write bits, not entire scenes or I’ll have written all the exciting parts already. Anything I edit out of a chapter (i.e. a paragraph I liked but didn’t quite fit) gets dropped here too, in case I can reuse it later.

STEP FIVE: FINAL EDITING

I will be honest, I’m pretty impatient. Once I’ve finished a chapter, especially if it’s one I’ve been struggling with for a long time, I want to publish it now. So I’m guilty of not editing as thoroughly as I should – but this is what I usually do and it catches at least most of my mistakes:

As a first step, I copy-paste the chapter from Scrivener into google docs. Remember I said Scriv’s word processor wasn’t the best? Yeah, it’s no good at picking up on dodgy grammar, but google docs is, so I run it through there and skim-check for wiggly blue lines, then make the changes in Scriv. You may not have this issue if you’re using Word or another more comprehensive software

In my great excitement, I publish the new chapter to AO3. As I re-read the chapter over there, I see a minimum of 5 glaring errors I somehow didn’t spot in the previous steps, and hastily correct them before anyone notices.

Once I know the grammar is mostly fixed, I run it through a text to speech software to read it back to me (surprisingly Microsoft Edge has quite a good one built in called 'Read Aloud'). You'd be surprised how many mistakes you pick up this way. I’m looking for whatever google didn’t catch, wonky phrasing, repetition (i.e. I used the word ‘quickly’ twice in the space of two paragraphs, that sort of thing)

Sometimes I do a re-read with a fresh pair of eyes, anywhere from hours to days later. If I have the patience, of course...

I like to get at least the first 2-3 chapters of a brand new story written before I post anything to AO3. This is to make sure my enthusiasm doesn’t immediately wane and I actually stand a chance of finishing it. After that I’m rarely more than a chapter ahead of what’s been posted, because go figure I’ll post the newly-written chapter once the editing is done, then start on the next one.

Some people won’t even post a story at all until they have the first draft fully written. This is admirable, but not always realistic – GHD is like 375,000 words, you think I would’ve sat down and written all that before posting chapter one and even knowing if anyone would read it? Hell no. 

But while you don’t need a story to be fully written, you do need it to be decently mapped-out. I used to start fics with absolutely no idea where they were going to go; I’d finish 1 or 2 chapters, get really excited at writing that much and hungry for feedback, then post something that I would inevitably lose all enthusiasm for and leave unfinished.

So, know how it starts, know how it ends, and know the story beats in between so you always have a goal to write towards. There will inevitably be fics that you never finish and that’s fine – it’s all writing practice – but readers don’t like to be left hanging, so try your best to finish! Even if it takes ahem four years or so.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

And there you go, that’s my writing process! I’m not sure how useful that really is, but if it was I could write more guides in future? I have…

A guide to my writing style (this one might be hard to put into a guide but people like my turn of phrase so, maybe useful?)

How I write a sex scene

How I write a fight scene.

[shihalyfie]

Shihanne's 02TB FAQ

Here's a 02TB version of the Kizuna FAQ I made earlier, where I answer questions to things you may be curious about regarding the movie while trying to stay as spoiler-free as possible! This is, again, not a post made to convince anyone towards or against watching the movie, but rather just something to provide assistance for people who might be on the fence about watching the movie or want to know certain things before going in.

Like with the last post, I will be organizing this post in such a way that the story references to what happens in it will get more and more extensive as the post goes on. The more you read, the less "blind" you'll be going in, or the more there may be risk of you being able to figure out what happens in it. So if you want to stay fresh to a certain extent, you should just stick to reading the first few questions! (However, also as with before, I won't be including any major story beats in here, just generic allusions.)

What do I need to have seen beforehand in order to watch this movie? Are tri. and/or Kizuna necessary to understand it?

Perhaps surprisingly, I personally think you can still enjoy this movie even if you've never seen a Digimon thing in your life before (something I would not say about either tri. or Kizuna!). However, I do think you should at least know:

the basic concept of what a Digimon partner is

the context that the 02 group has known each other since they were in elementary school and overcome a lot of things together

the context of the proliferating Chosen Children all around the world and the epilogue it's going to be leading up to

...but other than that, you'd probably be fine even if you have no idea about anything else. Still, the movie will definitely be greatly improved if you've seen 02, because you'll have better surrounding context of what these characters are like, what they'd done together in the past, and what little things here and there are referencing.

Even then, the 02 main TV series (and possibly the second movie, Diablomon Strikes Back) is really the part that could be said to be most relevant. Adventure is largely relevant only for (very mild) context behind Takeru and Hikari's characterizations, and there are virtually no substantial references to Kizuna. tri. is actually downright contradicted by this movie's contents, to the point where the official timeline leading up to it straight-up omits it. So even if you've never seen anything past 02, you're still perfectly good to go.

(If you do see someone reporting that they referenced tri. by using the name "Homeostasis" at one point, note that the name was used in an Adventure novel from 2001; it doesn't actually originate from tri., and the way the name is used is compliant with Adventure lore.)

How 02-referential/fanservice-loaded is this movie?

Very little. Despite what the advertising might suggest, there really aren't a lot of references to things that were in the 02 TV series, other than the fact it has its characters and is obviously set in a point in timeline after it. (Of course, there's still the evolution sequences and all, but that goes without saying.) In fact, most of the "references" to 02 are vague and not explicitly stated, so it's a very "if you know, you Know" affair -- for instance, the Kaiser is not mentioned even once in the entire movie, but Ken and Wormmon's lines are very obviously written with that background in mind, and if you know what happened, their words carry much more weight.

The main character of this movie is Rui, and the story of the movie is about him (official media has been open about this), so you can think of it as a mostly original story that happens to be rather 02-flavored. Or to put it a different way, it's more like 02 episode 51 than it is a 02 tribute; it builds on 02's themes and characters, but more in terms of building on top of them rather than referencing past stuff.

How much of a role do the 02 characters play in the plot?

Since Rui is really the main character of the movie in practice, the 02 characters are "support characters", similar to the way they supported Wallace in Hurricane Touchdown. This is a good thing, and in fact most hardcore 02 fans I personally know agree that this is for the better; the 02 cast has a specialty in supporting others, and the best way to show off their character development is to show off how good they've gotten at reaching out to others like Rui.

Moreover, the movie also goes out of its way to portray the 02 group as a solid group that bounces off of each other, so it's less about each individual character getting any super-impressive moments and more about the way they interact and how deeply they know each other. The movie itself is also about relationships and connection, so it's thematically appropriate, both for the movie and for 02 itself.

Is the 02 epilogue retconned?

Hell no. The movie is very obviously building up to it (even more so than Kizuna was).

How are Takeru and Hikari portrayed in relation to the rest of the group?

They're regular members of the group, and there's no real separation between them and the rest of the group at all.

Does the movie resolve Kizuna's lingering question regarding partnership dissolution?

For better or for worse, no. It's a completely self-contained story, and its only connections to Kizuna are the fact it takes a lot of elements from the worldbuilding/setting it added. (For the record, I'm of the opinion that there's no need for anything new to answer Kizuna's question, but that's a digression.) The movie does give you more lore about Digimon partnerships that you could potentially apply to figuring out the situation in Kizuna, but it leaves the question untouched.

The movie prioritizes its own integrity as a standalone story first and foremost, so (again, for better or for worse) it doesn't have too many connections to other things.

How much of a role do the Adventure characters play in the plot?

Taichi and Koushirou have an extremely short background cameo in the beginning of the movie, and they're also briefly namedropped. There's a quick scene depicting a flashback/past representation of young Taichi and Hikari, but it has no plot relevance (the PVs were probably overselling this a bit...). Koushirou is namedropped later in the movie. Other than that, there's nothing relevant to the Adventure characters (sans Takeru and Hikari, naturally) at all.

Is there time travel in the movie?

No, or at least nothing that would be outside the range of what's effectively a vision/flashback. The PVs probably suggested that more aggressively than what had actually happened, and it seems to be a common misconception about the events of the movie, but there are more than enough context clues in the story that indicate that the "past" shown in the movie is more of a representational space than literal time travel.

Is it true that some really messed up stuff happens in this movie?

There are two major content warnings I would give the movie: one for a clear depiction of child abuse, and one for mild body horror (not super-graphically depicted, but definitely something that's very uncomfortable to think about). Neither depiction is particularly unusual for Digimon standards, and if you've played some of the video games like Cyber Sleuth or Survive, it's not even remotely near that level. (And besides, 02 itself certainly had its fair share of psychological horror, even if it was comparatively more subtle in order to accommodate for kids' show network restrictions.) Still, it may be something you want to know about before going in.

There is also a mild amount of blood in one scene, but it's not any worse than the equivalent scene in Kizuna, and in fact, the animation framing is clearly trying to prevent it from getting too graphic; the blood is mainly there in a "with that kind of injury, it'd be weird if there weren't blood" sense, so it's definitely not trying to come off as a violence fest or anything.

For all it's worth, despite the above factors, and despite the fact the middle of the movie definitely starts getting into some serious psychological horror territory, I would say that overall, this is actually a very sentimental, feel-good movie. There's nothing that feels like it's there for shock value, and in fact, there aren't even any real surprising or shocking plot twists or anything; the main core of the story is about talking about relationships and what's important for a good one, and it takes that theme and commits itself fully to it.

Why is there a new version of Target when the opening is the original version?

So, you know how Target also happened to be the evolution insert song for Imperialdramon...

How much of a lore retcon is in this movie?

There are definitely things that seem contradictory to anyone who has a passing casual knowledge of Adventure lore, but in fact, if you know it deeply, there isn't really a hard contradiction at all.

It's actually a plot point that the 02 group isn't sure what to believe is the right lore, and that they're making their best guess as they go along. The new things they learn in the movie ostensibly seem to be contrary to what they'd learned earlier about how partnerships work, but this contradiction is directly pointed out in the movie itself, and there's a very clear sense of uncertainty as to how everything works and what the true mechanics are behind everything.

For what it's worth, even in the original series, entities like Homeostasis and the Holy Beasts were not portrayed as all-powerful, and were depicted as also trying to figure out this whole thing as they went along. So while the new introductions to lore are probably outside what Kakudou would have liked (yeah, this has been getting kind of awkward...), just speaking from a detached perspective, there's nothing strictly contradictory.

On the other hand, the entire existence of Rui as the first Chosen Child from 1996 makes tri.'s plot pretty much entirely impossible, so that's probably why the aforementioned official timeline actually omitted it. That said, Wallace has a cameo, so even if the part about him meeting Chocomon and Gumimon in 1995 doesn't work anymore, he's definitely still canon. (Note that Mochizuki Meiko appeared in Kizuna, and one of the novels explicitly describes her as having met the Adventure kids in high school, so just because tri. isn't in the timeline as-is doesn't mean it's as simple as "the series isn't canon anymore".)

Are there romance depictions in the movie?

Nothing overt, but there's definitely something that's practically the absolute embodiment of "if you know, you Know."

[fixated-on-something]

I have a theory, very unoriginal but I just want to yap

I feel like part of the reason Kady is such a nothing sandwich of a character is because she didn’t exist in the books.

(Loooong rant that’s kinda aimless but idc I want to talk)

(Hot take I know!!! I’m sure no one’s every thought of this one)

And I know that a lot of the characters are very different from their book counterparts in a lot of ways, but the groundwork was there! The idea of the character, the foundation, had already been written.

Whereas with Kady, I feel like they just threw her in and then… and then what? Sure she’s like, a “bad girl” character… with a… semi-angsty backstory? And sheee’s… dating Penny… and she hasssss mommy issuuues…??? But where do you even go from there? They literally throw her away for like a whole season just because, well, what is there to do with her?

She wasn’t even there for most major season 1 and early season 2 plot points! Then she’s kind of relevant in mid to late season 2, and then in season 3 she disappears again and when she returns her whole plot is centred around penny.

And THEN in season 4 I guess she’s doing… hedge stuff? Where they try to give her agency and make her #empowered but it’s just… weird

Because everyone else is dealing with a body hopping unkillable monster in Eliot’s body, and Kady just… fucks off??? I guess??? I mean she’s doing stuff with the library for a bit but like… why??? I get why she wants to fuck them over but also where did that come from

Like why is she not helping defeat the god monster. That seems like a pretty major issue that she should be more involved with.

I understand that her stuff with the library does ultimately help, but it really did feel like it was just a way to wedge her into the plot somehow. Also, we’re not even talking about season 5. Let’s not open that can of worms.

Idk I guess it just never really feels like… she’s part of the group? She kind of hangs out around the edges, and she’s close with Penny and Julia but other than that kind of just hangs around

Because… she WASNT IN THE BOOK!!! She didn’t exist!!! She wasn’t Julia’s hedge buddy, or Penny’s girlfriend, or anything! “Amanda Orloff” in the books, (who I’m guessing was her vague template??) is the first character to get killed. First beats encounter. She’s meant to be like, an example of “magic is dangerous”. That is her role.

Originally the group dynamic wasn’t WRITTEN to have her in it! So they were winging it.

Most of the other major character plot lines were based in something, but hers just kind of had to be pulled out of thin air- and it feels very strange

I found myself at several points in her story going “Why is she in this show?”

And it feels very, VERY jarring when she is then the person to… choose the song that is QUENTIN’S MEMORIAL?

They spoke like maybe twice. I feel like, I don’t know, ANYONE else in that group should’ve chosen

I love the Take On Me number though it’s literally my Roman Empire

All this to say, I have empathy for how hard it would be to wedge a new major character into an already very established group dynamic, but then… why did they do it…

[total-drama-brainrot]

So I see you've asked for Rice Krispies song inspos, and I seek to deliver with TWO songs!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFARCTqtVWo

This one's Already Dead by KittenSneeze. It's a FNAF:SB song about Vanny constantly trying to fight free of Glitchtrap's control. Which seems fitting given Noah's circumstances. Especially the line 'I'm already dead since you got in my head'.

Particularly brutal given how Noah was the one to give Alejandro permission to hypnotize him in the first place.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfZEf4qM4UE

Here's Discord's Puppet, a MLP grimdark song about an immortal god of chaos keeping the one he loves as a puppet rather than letting her pass!

It's very much a song for the 'worst case scenario' ending. An Alejandro who's so victorious that all that remains on the outside is Alejandro's version of Noah, while the real Noah can do nothing but watch, if he's even still there anymore. For this one I think the last line is the most fitting, being 'It's your eternal shame.'

Noah has to get one last, futile quip in there. Even though Alejandro isn't listening because Noah is just singing so beautifully.

Ooooh, I'm absolutely here for it.

The first song is definitely fitting for Noah's internal struggle against Alejandro's control, especially Vanny's repeated bouts of self-doubt in herself. Since Noah knows that hypnosis, no matter how 'absolute' it is, isn't the same as full-on mind control (no matter how much he likens the two as the same thing, Noah knows he still has some semblance of autonomy, it's just greatly diminished), he's always going to have that nagging thought in the back of his head; "do I want to follow his orders?"

The answer there is a resounding no, of course. But the added punishment of his psychosomatic shock collar* as well as his susceptibility to obedience whilst under the trance doesn't really give him much of a choice regardless.

Also, those bridge verses where Vanny and Glitchtrap have their little back and fourth? That's so accurate to Alejandro and Noah's confessional confrontation in chapter two- especially the line "I hold the key to free you," which is exactly what Alejandro is holding over Noah; the freedom of his mind from post-hypnotic triggers.

Though Alejandro hasn't actually had the chance to make Noah do anything under his control. Yet.

As for the second song! I actually held a poll (though I've since deleted it) asking if people wanted the RK fic to have a 'good' or 'bad' ending, and the first option won by a pretty overwhelming majority. I won't spoil my intentions for the 'good end' here, but what I had envisioned for the hypothetical 'bad ending' was something slightly similar to Fluttershy's situation.

Though, in that 'bad end', Noah isn't exactly fighting back anymore like Fluttershy is. It's very dark, and very tragic, and I won't get into it here because I'd end up writing a whole essay on the vague plot I had floating around in my noggin.

I do like the imagery of Noah being a 'living puppet' though. It fits with Alejandro's whole ventriloquism/puppet master motif he had going on in "This Is How We Will End It", and the toy/doll imagery I used for Noah in the fic itself.

* I have so many notes explaining why Noah experiences The Static and The Shocks but I'm not sure if I'll have someone in-universe explain the phenomenon, since I've mostly been making up the plot as I go along (with certain ideas/concepts/scenes working as the backbone of this whole AU), so I'm hesitant to divulge that now if it's potentially going to feature in the fic itself.

[jon-withnoh]

Hello! Hope this isn't a bother, but do you have any tips for thinking up plots? I mean for the whole story. Reading Nie Wirst made me want to try to write something longer, but I'm a bit lost since all I've ever written are short one-shots or drabbles. Again, hope this isn't bothering you, feel free to ignore it! Also, this goes without saying but I'm looking forward to the sequel if you do write it

Hi! I love this question, thank you for asking it 😊 I'm pretty sure you'd get a variation of answers depending on who you ask, so my way might not necessarily work for you. (I'm thinking of this as a fun Pick&Mix of things that work for me and might work for others.)

My strategies differ for different kinds of writing. When I'm working on a poetry collection, it sometimes takes years to accumulate enough individual poems that fit together for me to start working on the arc or through-line of that collection. This just for context, since you did ask me about prose.

Whether for fanfiction or original fiction, I've found that I can only keep up my motivation for a longer piece if I am absolutely obsessed with it. Was wird aus uns was born from the immediate aftermath of me seeing Rebecca in Vienna, reading the book and pretty much every single fic on Ao3 and just needing those two fools to be okay. That one really came out of pure obsession. Nie wirst Du was a lot more considered and since the plot is quite complex, I did plan things ahead of time.

I'm going to try and sum up some of the things that I need in order to sustain my focus for a longer piece of writing under the cut!

I need to be absolutely obsessed with the initial idea. No matter how interesting a concept or fic idea is in theory, if it doesn't have that spark of obsession I might toss it around in my head for fun, but I won't actually write it. If an idea doesn't grip me enough that I'm constantly looking forward to the next plot point I'm "working towards", then I'll get bored and abandon the piece. This is especially true for fic. For Was wird aus uns, the first plot point everything was moving towards was their first kiss. Then Christmas, and then, finally, Danny's collapse and the changes that it brought. With Nie Wirst Du, I was constantly hooked, tbh. It's a little bit like a soap opera in that it has many twists and turns, very complicated relationship dynamics and many big feelings. Some plot points I was working towards there were the tea party and the costume ball. Once I knew what the fallout from the ball was going to be, I had a much better idea of how things would continue to escalate develop.

I figured out how I need to approach plot. A friend of mine is a hardcore plotter with detailed outlines, diagrams and everything. I used to try and approach plot like that with the result that by the time I'd thought everything through, I was bored and didn't actually write the story anymore. The thing I do is apparently called pantsing. It means I know the inciting incident of the story, maybe a few major plot points and I have at least a vague idea of how I want it to end. There is an overarching structure, but it's loose enough that it keeps me interested. I can decide to add or take away smaller plot elements without having to do major rewrites.

There needs to be a drive to the story. I need a sense of movement when I'm writing. Even if a story is set entirely in one place, there needs to be some undercurrent of change or development. If the story feels static, I don't have any way of getting a character from point A to point B.

I write the things I want to see. If you find yourself looking through Ao3 thinking "I wish someone had written about xyz", then that might be a sign for you to write the fic you're looking for! For example, I needed a happy ending for Danny and Ich, so I wrote one. Then I became really interested in learning more about Rebecca as a character. Who is she outside of the stories being told about her? To find that out, I needed a story where she was alive and since I didn't want to write a prequel, the idea for Nie Wirst Du was born.

I hope this was somewhat help or at least interesting! It also really helps to have a person who's just as excited about your story idea as you are. They might ask you questions you hadn't considered and give you a whole new insight into what you're writing. Feel free to ask more questions about this if you want. This was really fun!

[missingmywing]

Minato did not sign up for theatre shenanigans, what a shame Ryoji is dragging him into it anyway, and he's having fun with it anyway.

Day 5: Royalty/Vampire (Ao3 Link)

Ryoji and Minato are roped into trying out for the drama club’s winter play, in part because of their chemistry, in part because the drama club is short on people for background subplots. So Minato is pushed into the role of beleaguered princess, while Ryoji is the vampire infatuated with her. Minato is long-suffering and Ryoji is having the time of his life.

This chapter gave me so much trouble, you have no idea.

Also fun fact, a lot of inspiration for this chapter came from my friend convincing me to start playing the dating sim JACKJEANNE. It’s a really good game, and the vibes are immaculate.

Song I was listening to (from the first play in the game): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB6KTTTZeSo

I also watched some Vanitas no Carte amvs so uhhhhh there's a bit of those vibes in a couple of parts.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

By December Minato had resigned himself to the fact that his third year was going to be comprised entirely of being dragged into various antics against his will.

While he’d been vaguely aware that the drama club existed he’d never expected their paths to cross in any meaningful way. He had no interest in acting. He definitely wasn’t volunteering to be in a play. He wasn’t interested.

As with most other things this year, he was recruited despite his own opinion on the matter. The club members were two people short of major characters because… something to do with how the characters were portrayed meant the remaining club members couldn’t or didn’t want to do it.

He wasn’t exactly sure of the reason because he’d been tuning out the club president’s begging of his help because he was not interested.

Naturally Ryoji was, and Minato found himself dragged to a rehearsal for the winter play after school to try out for a part he didn’t even particularly want. Ryoji was very lucky that Minato liked him so much.

And of course he was going to be put in a dress again if they liked him.

Minato sighed and read over the script. There was a general overview of the plot of the play - a samurai bumbling his way through a western style kingdom dispelling spirits and killing monsters to rescue the emperor’s kidnapped daughter in order to prove his worth and marry her - and Minato was supposed to be trying out for a princess supposedly suffering from a ghost haunting.

The twist was that the “ghost” was actually a cursed vampire in love with her and drinking her blood at night, thus leading to her waning health. It was a subplot that took up an entire third of the play and ended with the vampire breaking his curse out of love for the princess (and purifying royal blood apparently) and marrying her.

He supposed it fit the fairy tale feel of the play, but the whole premise was just ridiculous.

Ryoji was grinning in pure delight as he read through the script, though, so Minato pushed his exasperation to the side and read through his own audition parts. It was… about what he’d expected of it, really. Cliche and cheesy, the princess was demure and distant and quiet and generally as skeptical of the main character’s skill as everyone else in the play.

And then her interactions with the vampire were…

Alright he hadn’t been warned that they were secret lovers, that changed the whole arc’s plot.

“Seriously?” he asked Ryoji, waving the script in his direction. “Did you know about this?”

Ryoji beamed at him. “Why do you think I agreed to try out?”

“Because you’re a being of chaos who lives to torment me?”

“See, keep up those dramatics and you’ll do just fine!”

Ugh.

That said, he wasn’t enough of an asshole anymore to blow it off and not put in any effort so he memorized the lines. One of the senior members of the club was acting as a stand-in for the hero for their first meeting and he nodded encouragingly as Minato stepped onto the mock-stage in their chosen classroom. A couple of the other club members were around - acting as judges most likely - but any other club members or auditioners had been kept out.

He almost wished Ryoji - or Aigis, who had apparently also gotten roped into helping with this arc - were here so he wouldn’t feel as ridiculous as he did. He’d spent plenty of time learning to function socially last year so he was charming and courageous enough to at least pass this off as a non-issue but it was still… not his idea of fun.

The club members seemed to heavily disagree and were very impressed by his performance.

And thus he successfully auditioned for the play and got the part. Apparently so did both Ryoji and Aigis which meant he wouldn’t be getting any peace until the performance was complete.

“How does this keep happening to me?” he wondered aloud with a sigh as he sat on the couch in the dorms, Mitsuru, Yukari, and Shinji around.

Yukari sent him a dry look. “You keep letting Ryoji do what he wants.”

There was that. “It’s usually not worth the effort of fighting it.”

“There’s your problem,” Shinji snorted.

Mitsuru’s expression was amused as she flipped a page from her stack. “It’s not such a bad thing, is it? It gives you a broader range of experience.”

“I know,” he murmured, skimming the script. “And that’s his point - living to to fullest and experiencing as much as we can while we have time to do so. That doesn’t make me any more excited to be dragged into this.”

Pain flickered across her and Yukari’s faces as Shinji grimaced and Koromaru let out a soft whine and padded over to hop onto the couch and lean against him. He patted the dog and shrugged at the others. It was what it was, even if they didn’t like the reminder.

He looked up as the door swung open to admit Ryoji and Aigis with Junpei and Chidori trailing after them and let out a heavy sigh as he saw both Ryoji and Aigis holding their scripts. Ryoji’s grin upon catching sight of Minato was meant that he was about to be dragged into practicing.

They at least took mercy on him and pulled him up to his and Ryoji’s room so he wouldn’t be subject to SEES’ constant attention as well. Which was… something, he guessed.

“The princess, the vampire, and the hunter,” Ryoji mused as Minato flopped back onto the bed, leaning against the dresser. “Somehow this feels almost nostalgic.”

“Please don’t start fighting for real in the middle of the play,” Minato muttered. “The last thing we need is for you two to destroy the stage.”

“Of course not; it is merely a play after all.” Aigis tilted her head as she read through her script, a hand on her chin. “And the fight scenes seem relatively short as well.”

“We’ll also be using prop weapons, no guns or two meter swords.” Ryoji added with a laugh.

“No real guns,” Minato amended pointedly. “They have models that Aigis will be using to try to shoot you.”

“I won’t miss,” she vowed gravely.

Ryoji leaned away with a joking wince. “I mean, you could miss a little.”

“Pretty sure she’s supposed to hit you at the end of the arc, and that’s when the princess intervenes and asks the hero to help her convince everyone that the vampire isn’t horrible.”

“Somehow you were both the princess and the hero.”

“Pretty sure I was just the princess, and I only had to win the hunter over given we all agreed not to tell SEES while they were still coming to terms with everything else at Yakushima.”

“I do not believe I was too difficult to win over,” Aigis murmured, almost to herself.

“Only because you didn’t want to risk hurting Minato,” Ryoji pointed out with a small smile. “It took you a while to warm up to me, even with Minato’s word. You really didn’t trust me.”

“You were a Shadow, after all. An enemy, even former, is not so easily trusted.”

True, she’d been wary for a while. But she’d put her faith in Minato - something he still didn’t fully understand - and come around to viewing Thanatos as an ally in keeping Minato and the world safe, and Ryoji as a friend.

She wouldn’t have pled with them both so earnestly to survive if she hadn’t.

Ryoji shrugged it off. “Well you did come around, and we can use the experience to help us with the play!”

“So who’s subbing in for the hero and king in my introduction scene?” Minato deadpanned as he waved the script at them. “I’d rather not mime at empty air.”

“Aigis would probably be a better hero, and I can play the king. We might have a problem when all five characters are in the same scene, though…"

“That will not be until the end of the arc. We can deal with that problem when we get to it, yes?”

“True enough! So the scene starts…”

~ ᙙᙖ ~

The rehearsals weren’t bad - were actually pretty fun, once he got used to it. They were exhausting, but at least he had a relatively small part overall and the lines were easy enough to memorize. Aigis and the guy playing the hero were easy to bounce off of too, which was nice.

Ryoji and Aigis also worked well together - though the level of intensity between the two of them was… good for the play, but it just made him pinch his brow in exasperation. At least they seemed to be having fun with it.

He was not looking forward to his first scene with Ryoji.

They hadn’t even begun practicing for it yet, but he could already feel the mortification anytime he skimmed through the script. They were already probably the worst-kept open secret in the school by this point and showcasing their relationship on stage in front of anyone who came to the play was not something he’d ever intended. The plausible deniability of it was dwindling by the month…

Not that it would really matter, in the grand scheme of things, but rumors were annoying enough without actively fueling them.

The things he did for his boyfriend…

“So,” Ryoji said cheerfully a couple of weeks later, dropping back onto the bed with a small bounce and a grin, “we’ll be having our first scene together soon, so we should practice.”

Minato sighed, dropping his bag heavily on the desk as he slumped against it. “Really…?”

“Come on, it’ll be fun!”

If it hadn’t been in front of dozens of people, maybe.

Minato sent him a dubious look and flipped the script open to the scene. “The hero stumbles across the princess and vampire having a ‘tender moment’, thus realizing that they are secretly involved. They have a conversation in which the princess asks the vampire to ‘whisk her away’ and he promises to do so soon, which leads to the final scene where he tries to kidnap her, fights the hunter nearly to the death, and then the princess intervenes and asks them to leave him alone.” The look Minato sent Ryoji made him snicker. “And we have to do this in front of dozens of people.”

“So what?”

“You know what,” Minato muttered with another sigh. “Life was easier when I didn’t care about anything. Now people annoy me.”

Ryoji’s expression softened. He pushed himself up off the bed and walked over to lean against Minato and slip his arms around him, pressing his cheek to Minato’s hair. “Are you that worried about it?”

Well, no. It was exasperating and he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be put on stage in front of so many people, and the ribbing and increased whispered rumors would be irritating, but it was the inconvenience rather than anything serious that bothered him.

“It’s fine,” he said, nudging Ryoji back. “I’ll tune it out.”

A soft hum was his response and Ryoji pressed their foreheads together. “I’ll be here,” he promised.

He knew. Ryoji always was. Always had been - no matter what Minato needed, Death, Thanatos, and Ryoji had always been there.

Rather than responding Minato reached up to rest a hand on Ryoji’s shoulder and closed his eyes with a soft murmur of, “Ever at my side - but how far are we to go? If we are to stay here we are surely to be torn apart. But if we are to leave we shall be ever hunted by those who wish for my return. Is there no true freedom to be found?”

A squeeze of his waist was his response as Ryoji continued the script. “We shall go as far as necessary to be together. To the very ends of the earth if we must. I will stay by your side and protect you no matter the challenges - if I must fight off mercenaries, armies, or the world itself I will hold and cherish you forevermore.”

“Pretty words do not a promise make, my beloved.”

“You think my words empty?”

Minato opened his eyes and pulled back to glare at him. “I think your life and strength more limited than you may believe,” he retorted. “Would you leave me alone in your battles against the world? Abandoned with naught but ash and stakes to hold? You may fight mercenaries and armies and the world itself, but can you swear you would triumph?”

Ryoji hesitated, casting his eyes down. “I would fight to the last.”

“The last is no good if you do not return to me. I do not want you to die for me, I wish for you to live with me.”

He caught Minato’s hand and brought it up to his lips - which wasn’t in the script but it was a very Ryoji thing to do - and sighed. “Right though you may be, it brings me naught but pain to be parted thus from you. Hiding in the shadows, sneaking through your window, stealing you away for but a few moments in the silence of night… ‘tis an agony we must bear. My unbeating heart has been yours since first we met and yet I cannot even give it to you properly.”

“And mine yours. Would that I could be spirited away from this pain without dooming us both.”

“I will find a way - this I swear to you!” Minato’s breath hitched in surprise as Ryoji suddenly pulled him close and ducked down to press his lips against his throat.

He was supposed to have a line here but his mind had blanked out at the unexpected motion and all he could say was, “If you do that on stage we’re going to get kicked off.”

Ryoji paused and pulled back, blinking at him. “Is that too much? I thought it symbolic, given he’s supposed to be a vampire.”

“It’s still a school play, you can’t start being too scandalous on stage.”

“Is that scandalous…?”

“Most people consider it to be, yes,” Minato deadpanned. “That’s too intimate unless it’s dramatized right.”

“I could bite you instead.”

“If you bite me on-stage I’m kicking you off myself.”

Ryoji laughed and bumped their foreheads together. “Alright, alright, I’ll tone it down. For the sake of our director if nothing else.”

“We’ll find out how they want us to perform it later this week either way, but given how they have us doing the rest of the play I doubt they want it to have a too serious a tone…” The drama club leaned hard into the “drama” part of their name so they were more likely to want a loud, melodramatic rendition of the scene than a quiet intimate one.

Which was easier for Ryoji than Minato, whose attitude on melodrama was to avoid it as much as possible.

“True enough. So we have to the end of the week to memorize that part of the script!”

Which meant practice. For both them and Aigis, who showed up at the end of the scene to accuse the vampire of trying to attack the princess and instigating a fight scene. The hero was supposed to be on a balcony above them ruminating on his own journey and accidentally eavesdropping on them, but he fortunately didn’t have any lines until after the hunter and vampire began their fight so the three of them could practice alone.

Minato was very relieved that they didn’t have to involve the rest of SEES in their practice sessions.

The rehearsals continued relatively smoothly - though not without their own stumbles or minor disasters of forgotten lines or arguments about characterization or the occasional near fistfight between the director and one actor or another - and Minato watched the final dates creep ever closer with trepidation.

The role came easily enough by now, and he, Ryoji, and Aigis had settled into their characters and the relationship between them well enough that scenes between the three of them rarely had to be reworked or altered, but…

Well, the other actors weren’t quite so easy for he and Aigis to work with. Aigis in particular made others stumble after one of her line deliveries was a bit more monotone or disjointed than they expected. The director liked it because he said it made the hunter feel cooler and more mysterious, but it tripped everyone else up a lot at first. They adjusted, slowly, and Aigis adjusted to meet them, but it was a learning curve for everyone.

And he and Ryoji kept getting a lot of raised eyebrows, rolled eyes, and ribbing after their “private scenes” where the princess and the vampire were sneaking aside for a quick conversation here and there.

And then there were the costumes.

Once they reached the point where the performance was close enough to begin rehearsing in costume, suddenly Minato was being shoved back into a dress - a big, heavy dress - twice a week on the stage in the auditorium. He at least wasn’t the only one - the king’s robes were just as heavy and ridiculous - but he was envious of Aigis and Ryoji’s minimal layers.

Granted they still had to mock-fight in theirs while he mostly stood around so maybe they weren’t really any less hot than him in the end.

Ultimately the couple of months leading up to the final performances went fairly smoothly aside from the usual mishaps. He only tripped on the dress and nearly face-planted once - and Ryoji and Aigis were both suddenly there to catch him causing raised eyebrows from the rest of the group - only a couple of prop swords were broken, Aigis only knocked Ryoji off the stage twice, the hero somehow manage to fall off the balcony once a week but was never injured, the king kept finding increasingly ridiculous ways to throw himself onto his throne with shock and despair when the princess and vampire revealed their relationship and overall Minato found himself having quite a bit of fun despite his disquiet.

Ryoji did jokingly offer to bite him for real in the reveal scene the first time they rehearsed it and Minato was not at all joking when he threatened to throw him off the stage if he did. Aigis volunteered to help.

Ryoji didn’t bite him.

The rest of SEES were vocal about their excitement to see the play - well, Shinji didn’t care and Ken was trying to play it off as usual, but the rest of them kept bringing it up - and Minato generally ignored them. He had no doubt they’d be there for the first performance, but he’d deal with that when they got there. Until then he wasn’t thinking about it.

(Wasn’t thinking about how much they would recognize in what Minato, Ryoji, and Aigis were putting into their characters.)

Several of his Social Links had also declared that they would be showing up to watch the play and Minato just groaned and told them that they really didn’t have to Not that they listened, but he tried.

But no matter his wishes the days still crept past and suddenly it was the week of the performance.

It was… stressful. Last minute panic and nerves and stage fright all around, forgotten lines and prop mishaps, costume adjustments, line adjustments, and endless arguments as tensions ran high as the first performance loomed. Minato, Ryoji, and Aigis seemed to be the only ones unaffected by the tension - though their previous experience with Nyx at the top of Tartarus likely had something to do with that.

It was hard to be frightened by anything after that.

And so the day of the first performance arrived, they ran through the play in one final rehearsal in the morning, and then it was creeping into evening and the auditorium opened for people to begin filing in. The rest of the crew kept running around and glancing out of the gaps between the curtains and generally making themselves more anxious while Minato leaned against the wall doing the assigned reading for history and refusing to acknowledge the crowd outside. If he pretended it wasn’t there he wouldn’t have to think about SEES undoubtedly in whatever ridiculous seats Mitsuru had reserved for them and wouldn’t have to overthink their potential reactions to the events of the play.

“Ready?” Ryoji asked directly in his ear, and he reflexively elbowed him in the stomach.

The boy doubled over wheezing while Minato sent him an unimpressed look. “Why did you decide to do that?”

“Just getting into character!”

Right.

“You'll have plenty of time to skulk menacingly and grab me from behind in your introduction scene,” he said blandly, returning to his book. “I'll try not to elbow you this time.”

“I would appreciate that…”

“Please do not injure our vampire half an hour before the curtains rising!” The director called as he hurried past.

Minato rolled his eyes. “It’ll take more than an elbow to injure him, he’ll be fine.”

Ryoji pouted at him as he plastered himself to Minato’s back, dropping his chin on his shoulder and wrapping his arms around his waist. “I’m hurt - I thought you were supposed to be on my side!”

“The princess might be but we’re not on stage yet.”

“No, but we will be soon,” Aigis said as she joined them, adjusting the model gun on her waist. “It is strange to require a physical gun, even if it is merely for show. I never required an evoker.”

Minato hummed, hand drifting to his own empty waist where his costume did not have any weapons. Seeing the other cast with their weapons made him miss his own, but his role didn’t have one. “You get used to it.”

She frowned but before she could speak the director called everyone’s attention for one last pep talk - mixed with some overview warnings about common mistakes - and then directed everyone to their starting positions to be ready for the curtain to rise.

Their arc was the second in the play after the opening and travel by the hero to the lands to the west, so they had a while to hang back and watch from backstage. They could see bits of the crowd from where they were, and against his will Minato found a tension settling in his chest. This was nothing even remotely as difficult or dangerous as even a standard Tartarus run, but it was also wildly out of his comfort zone and area of expertise.

Ryoji and Aigis, naturally, were immune to such mundane human concepts such as stage fright. Minato was too to a degree but still.

Why had he let Ryoji talk him into this?

He watched the opening act and mentally traced through the story in his head to make mental note of his cues.

The story began in Japan - or a variant of it - in feudal times. The hero was a wandering samurai without any particular accolades to his name who nonetheless fell in love with the one of the emperor’s daughters and courted her in secret while they tried to find a way for him to win the emperor’s favor. The story took a sudden twist when she was whisked away from the palace by a sorcerer from the west, and the samurai was the first to volunteer to hunt her down and return her safely home. In return, he would be promised her hand. The emperor agreed, and away the samurai went after bartering the journey from a trading ship.

The first arc took place partially on the ship and partially in the port city, where the sailors and merchants were plagued by sirens luring their men to their deaths. In order to get information about the sorcerer, the hero agreed to help the city get rid of the sirens.

There were a series of mishaps and failed attempts and one near-fatal scrape from the hero of trying to get maidens in the town to outsing them, attempts to harpoon them, and an attempt to bargain with them before the hero remembered the kami-blessed flute he’d inherited from his grandmother from her time as a shrine maiden for the goddess of music. His grandmother had told him that there wasn’t a more beautiful sound in all the world, and so he took the next ship out and began playing the flute as soon as the sirens began singing.

(The boy playing the hero had spent many afternoons frantically begging the band to teach him how to play a traditional wooden flute in order to make this scene work, and Minato had been impressed by his dedication. The band had too, apparently, and at least one argument had broken out between them and the drama club president over trying to recruit him.)

It enchanted the sirens so much that they stopped singing entirely, and in the silence he demanded that they leave and never attack humans again. They agreed on one condition - that he taught them to play the flute. He agreed in turn, and the bargain was struck. He taught them to play and told them how to make the instruments and in return they left the city.

The hero returned to the city triumphant and was told of the sorcerer’s cursed kingdom to the far north. The fastest way to get there was to head east towards the forested kingdoms, where they could offer more direct transportation there. The hero thanked them and moved on, which was the cue for the intermission before the second arc and Minato took a breath as the curtains fell closed to the audience applause.

The crew quickly scattered across the stage to change the props while the boy playing the hero collapsed into a chair and accepted a bottle of water from the director.

“So far so good, just keep it up,” the director encouraged them. “It’s gone smoothly so far, now we just have to hope that no one falls off of any balconies or breaks any swords.” He sent a pointed look at both the hero and Aigis - the two most common offenders. “If we can get through the fight scenes between those two without anything breaking we should be in the clear in terms of props. For lines, remember to enunciate and project. Mics can only do so much with the way they’re balanced.” That got looks sent at both Minato and the emperor’s daughter, because neither of them were good at loud and they both got monologues thanks to the roles they played in the story.

Monologues and a scene where they were begging for their lovers’ lives to be spared, which meant they had to make it sound heartfelt and they’d both been told multiple times to be louder and more passionate. They’d mostly gotten it - thanks to practicing together a few times and in Minato’s case one uncomfortable practice session between he, Ryoji, and Aigis that had sent all three of them into unpleasant memories of Yakushima - but it wasn’t something that came naturally to either of them.

Minato was going to have to lean on those memories of that uncomfortable and upsetting confrontation in the Dark Hour of Yakushima’s beach, wasn’t he? Granted Aigis and Ryoji probably would be too…

He let out a sigh and shifted to brush his arm against Ryoji’s at the director turned his attention to directing the prop team. Ryoji slipped their hands together and squeezed it reassuringly.

“It’ll be fun,” he murmured.

Minato snorted. “Fun isn’t quite the word I’d use. Especially the final fight scene.”

“Just project!”

The look Minato sent him was withering. “I’m going to be projecting Yakushima.”

Ryoji winced at the reminder while Aigis sighed softly. “As much as it pains me, that was also the event I was thinking of.”

“Well, yeah. It’s…” Ryoji trailed off, expression going distant as his mouth twisted down. “Yeah. It’s similar. We knew that.”

Minato squeezed his hand one more time before pulling away. “We did. It’ll be fine. Come on, we have positions to take up.”

“You have a position to take up,” Aigis corrected. “I do not come on until two scenes from now, and Ryoji has three.”

Minato waved them away and walked over to lean against the throne next to the king.

“Do not break that,” he warned, casting a quick glance towards the director. “Our dear director would have a fit.”

“I’m aware.” Minato pulled away from the throne and clasped his hands in front of him, channeling as much of Fuuka’s shy demeanor as he could. “Ugh. I never want to wear one of these again.”

“It looks good on you!”

“So I’ve been told. That doesn’t make it any more comfortable.” His voice dropped to a mutter. “Why are there so many layers?”

The king snickered. “Welcome to theater. If it’s any consolation I’m also dying, and so are our emperor and sorcerer.”

“At least it’s not just me.” And at least he didn’t have to fight in it. The sorcerer did, and she’d been miserable in all the costumed rehearsals.

“Alright, everyone in position - intermission is over in one minute!”

Minato took one final deep breath and tried to relax as he curled his shoulders inward and ducked his head. The princess was supposed to look timid and sickly in her first appearance - most of her appearances, really - so he had to at least try to match the body language.

The curtains rose and he was nearly blinded by the spotlights - closing his eyes and ducking his head while he waited for them to adjust. The crowd was nearly blocked out by it.

A minor relief.

The narrator began outlining the overview of the arc as the hero came on stage and bowed before the king to make his plea for transportation to the north.

The king stroked at his false beard - hopefully didn’t misjudge and yank it off like he had once or twice in rehearsal - and considered the hero. “The north you say? Why, that is quite the long and dangerous journey. I do have a carriage that can traverse the paths, aye, but you will have to prove yourself worth it. Tell me: what have you to bargain with?”

The hero straightened and raised his chin. “I have my sword, my pride, and a variety of skills felling beast and spirit alike. If there’s aught causing trouble in your kingdom or castle I can remove it.”

“Oho? Spirits you say? Why in that case I have just the task for you, swordsman. My daughter here is plagued by an evil spirit,” he gestured to the side and Minato dipped into a silent curtsy - he spent the first half of the arc with almost no lines to push the princess’ characterization before the sudden flip of realization in the second half - as the king continued, “-and we cannot discover what it is no matter what priests or exorcists we bring in. Perhaps you will have better luck with your experience of many travels.”

The hero bowed with a hand on his sword, and Minato made the mistake of glancing past him and catching sight of SEES sitting in the reserved seating. Of course they were. “I will do all in my power to banish this spirit and bring your daughter peace from this curse. Do you have an infirmary I may first visit? I would like to speak with them of the symptoms this spirit is causing.” He was glad he didn’t have any lines to remember in this scene.

“Why naturally! In fact, I will bring the infirmary to you! Guard, bring the matron would you? I would like to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible!”

Minato began zoning out and watched from the corner of his eye as the guard bowed and walked off stage - hitting a quick high five with his girlfriend where she was preparing the props for the second half of the arc - and mock bowing to the matron who rolled her eyes at him as she stepped up to the edge of the curtain. They waited for the filler conversation between the king and hero to reach its cue and then returned to the stage.

He was almost a prop himself for most of this part - the king and matron had a conversation with the hero about the princess’ symptoms of weakness, pale skin, exhaustion, and all the other usual effects of blood loss. The hero would ask about the living situation in the castle, the religious practices, the diet, and a variety of other questions that were ultimately meaningless other than a hint here and there.

(The princess apparently wasn’t fond of the heavily spiced food of the south - garlic and thyme in particular was offensive to her palate apparently - and silver jewelry made her skin itch. Minato thought including those in this conversation was a bit too on the nose but it didn’t really matter.)

His gaze drifted across the crowd, curiously scanning for familiar faces.

SEES was SEES naturally, although why Mitsuru’s father was here was a question he was not going to ask. The man had been more hands-on with the school since Thanatos killed Ikutsuki, but the drama clubs’ play? Really? Whatever, he didn’t care.

Most of the student council were also here, as were half the kendo team, and all of his Social Links who were - or had been, in Keisuke’s case - students. Thankfully the only non-student Social Links here were the Kitamuras, who Minato had invited himself because this seemed like the type of thing they’d like. A part of him wished that Akinari, Bebe, and Mamoru were still around because Akinari and Bebe would have loved this, and Mamoru probably would have had fun ribbing him about it.

At least he could still send Bebe and Mamoru letters telling them about it, but it still sent a pang through him to know that he couldn’t do the same to Akinari. The boy’s mother was here though - he caught sight of her smiling at an aisle seat. Minato talked to her occasionally still, often on that same park bench, and he’d invited her here hoping she’d enjoy it. Nothing could replace or bring back Akinari, but sometimes doing things that you knew they’d loved could make you feel closer to them. She’d liked the idea, and he just hoped she’d like the play.

Minato was drawn from his musings by the king leaping to his feet - he somehow managed to make the action more dramatic each time he did it, they all swore by it - and shouting that they would get to the bottom of this no matter what and save his daughter.

Cue scene change, where the hero, guard, and matron began inspecting the castle for any signs of spirits and putting up “wards” against them. Minato was only in half the scene before he got to step off stage while they finished the “inspection”, jumped to the next morning, and Aigis made her introduction calling them idiots and claiming it to be a vampire - which they didn’t take seriously at first. So she declared that she would prove it and set a trap for the vampire that he would fall into that night.

The lights went out and Minato had to dart across the stage - without tripping over the dress again - to lie on the fake bed while Aigis and the hero “hid” around the corner. The lights came back on with a blue tinge, and Minato could hear Ryoji sneak through the fake window and creep towards the bed.

(He’d never gotten a satisfactory answer to why the princess didn’t warn the vampire of the trap other than a shrug and “plot”, and he’d long stopped thinking about it.)

Just as he reached the bed the hunter and hero leapt out and attacked him, driving him back, and he recoiled from the hunter’s silver dagger with a loud cry before fleeing. The hunter declared it proof enough, and this time the hero and king agreed.

Minato finally had his first lines - the princess protesting when the king and hunter suggest more secure quarters for her such as the high tower or the rooms near the dungeons. They begin weakly enough - complaints about the loss of comfort of her quarters, of the chill of underground or drafts of the tower, of the seclusion from the rest of the castle and dangers therein - and culminate in Minato’s first discomfort of the play.

He had to turn from the king and address the crowd directly, beseeching them as the princess was beseeching her father, and it was more nerve-wracking than anything else had been because there had never been a crowd in the rehearsals.

His gaze flicked frantically across them for something to latch on to to anchor him and found himself accidentally locking eyes with Mitsuru. Which was unfortunate given the lines and context could send a message he really didn’t want to send, but it was too late now.

“Am I to be a prisoner in my own home?!” The princess demanded to nothing. “Locked away at your whim because of the actions of a creature I have no control over? Am I to pay for the sins of others simply for existing in a way that they covet?” He really wished it hadn’t been Mitsuru because he saw her slight wince and felt a twinge of guilt. He’d apologize and clarify later.

The king quickly jumped in to pacify the princess and the hero offered an alternative solution of more traps and protective wards around the princess’ room to prevent the vampire entry. The hunter was clearly and vocally displeased with the whole affair, but the princess wouldn’t budge and thus neither would the king. Thus, the princess stayed and the hero and hunter laid traps to protect her.

And Minato’s scenes as a prop disappeared as he took an active role in the plot. Not too much - the main speaking characters of this arc were the hero, king, matron, and guard - but enough that he didn’t have time to zone out anymore as he had to keep track of lines and cues.

The smaller conversational scenes passed in a blur of information exchange and gossip about rumors and the woes of a king protecting both his kingdom and his daughter, until suddenly the lights were dimming and turning blue and it was time for the scene he’d been both anticipating and dreading. They’d practiced this scene so many times that he didn’t even have to think to recall the lines, but the very large audience watching was an uncomfortable awareness in the back of his mind as he leaned out around the corner of a prop wall and glanced back and forth across the stage before stepping out.

The princess snuck out of the castle to meet with the vampire, careful not to be seen, while the vampire snuck out of the shadows to surprise her. Given it was the revelation to the audience that she and the vampire were lovers rather than enemies it was supposed to put them on-edge and surprise them.

The problem was that Ryoji also liked to try and surprise Minato which put him on-edge.

So he was fully expecting the boy to try to sneak up on him for real - only to realize with amusement that while Minato might not see him the audience could, and their reactions of sitting up and leaning forward gave away where he’d be. So when Ryoji grabbed him from behind his startled reaction was fake and he didn’t punch him in the face like he nearly had several times in rehearsals.

The princess pulled away and whipped around with a gasp as the vampire laughed in her ear, smacking his arm lightly and scolding, “Stop startling me like that!”

“But you make it so easy,” he teased back, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “And your reactions are so sweet!”

She huffed at him, catching his hand in hers. “You may find them less sweet as time passes if you do not desist.”

Another laugh and he suddenly pulled her close, making her gasp as he dipped her back. “Nonsense, for you are the sweetest of ambrosia and naught could change that my dearest lily.”

“You may come to regret those words in time,” she retorted, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. “If I am a sweet lily then you are a rose of the sharpest thorns - but though thorns can be cut away lilies can be no less poisonous.”

“What sweet, gentle poison it shall be that takes me then.”

This would normally be the point where Minato would shove him off and accuse him of being too cheesy but he didn’t get a say in that here. So instead he just sighed in quiet exasperation and continued the script. “I would rather you remain at my side than flee my presence so readily, my love.” He was never going to live this down. Never. “Already, others seek to tear you from my side.”

The vampire’s face twisted into something pained and he lifted the princess back to her feet and pulled her close. “They merely care for you. They see the toll I take from you-”

“-Of my own free will-”

“-and wish to spare you further pain. I can hardly fault them for that. They wish to protect you.”

“Their protection is merely a cage - a manner in which to bind me down and control my life! I do this of my own decision, to spare you the hurt of a far greater curse, and with full awareness of the consequences.”

“That does not negate the hurt it inflicts upon you.”

“A temporary hurt,” she retorted. “Once the curse is lifted you’ll no longer need rely on me and I will return to my former self.”

He sighed, leaning down to press his head to hers. “The temporary nature of it does not negate the hurt. Would that I could avoid it altogether…”

Ah, there it was. That flicker of a distant look in blue eyes, Ryoji’s own memories of Death’s toll on Minato surfacing.

He reached up to cup his face and murmured, “‘Tis my own burden to take on, regardless of toll.” Ryoji’s eyes softened and he tilted his face into the touch. It warmed him for a moment, then Minato pulled himself back to the role, the princess’ wishes. “Would that we could away from this place, live free of burden and expectation and endless oversight. You and I, and the freedom to break the curse and live without risk of separation.”

“I could steal you away in an instant, yet we both know that would only compound the problem,” the vampire said with a sigh. “They would hunt to the ends of the earth to find you, as they should.”

“So sweet your words, yet it is your thorns I covet. I’m no fragile flower to wilt upon being plucked, despite your words. I wish to stay with you and no curse shall dissuade me. If it dissuades you, then we are merely to lift it and I offer my royal blood to purify the corruption.” She leaned close to the vampire, pulling him down. “Remain at my side, free of the taint you abhor so, with my lifeblood your sustenance so long as we both live.”

The vampire shuddered, tightening his grip on her. “You offer much - promises so tempting I fear I may not the strength to resist.”

“Then don’t.”

“Perhaps I won’t…”

His head dipped down beneath Minato’s chin, and Minato tilted his head back to give the illusion of the bite - if Ryoji bit him for real then they were going to have a talk - as Ryoji skimmed his lips down and pressed them to Minato’s pulse.

They were never going to live this down.

Fortunately that was the cue for Aigis the enter the scene as the hunter leapt on stage accusingly and the hero scambled down from the balcony. It was the first of the two fight scenes between the hunter and the vampire while the hero hurried to assist the collapsed princess. The princess swore him to silence of what he’d seen, while the hunter and vampire had a sword fight on the opposite side of the stage.

Minato wasn’t sure how much of their past experience Aigis and Ryoji were pulling into the fight scene but… given his own approach to the play he doubted it was any small amount. So long as they didn’t go overboard it would be fine.

The fight ended with the vampire retreating and a transition to the throne room, where the king was in hysterics about the vampire nearly “kidnapping” the princess, the matron was fussing over her, the guard was pacing and ranting about needing to up the guard rotations, and the hunter was attempting to force them all to be quiet and listen. The hero and princess stood in silence and watched the hysteria - something Minato was relieved about because there was no way he would have been able to remember his lines with everyone shouting over each other like that.

He mostly tuned out the scene until the end, where he had his next lines once again protesting being locked away. This time the princess was overruled, so away she went to the final part of the arc where the vampire broke in to break her out.

There were a couple of scenes in between of the hunter talking with the king determined to catch the vampire and the hero monologing wondering what he should do about the situation - whether he could interfere and help the princess and vampire as a parallel to himself and his own love, even though his own chances of gaining transport to the sorcerer depending upon his defeat of the vampire, what was the right thing to do - and Minato appreciated the break because the last part was going to be the most difficult.

Ugh, projecting.

But the scene arrived regardless, and Minato returned to the dark stage to the room set. The lights came on, and it was time for the princess’ monologue of being trapped in a cage and how she wished to be swept away to freedom - just in time for the vampire to break through the door in order to do exactly that.

Minato had to focus on not tripping, Ryoji’s hand tight in his, as he was pulled up and down the set stairs with the spotlight on them. Realistically, he understood why they had the pointless run around the levels of the set to build tension and portray time passing before going to the opposite side of the stage for the final confrontation in the throne room set.

Practically he really wished they could just run directly across the stage rather than dealing with the stupid stairs.

But he didn’t trip and they made it to the other side of the stage only for the hunter to leap out and confront them, accusing the vampire of stealing away the princess for his wicked ends. It drew the other characters to the throne room as well, each (aside from the hero) with their own accusation for the vampire. The princess tried to protest, but none of them listened and the vampire pushed her back behind him as the hunter attacked him.

Which gave Minato a distinct sense of deja vu, as it had every other time they’d practiced this scene before.

It was different, everything about it was different, and being in their ridiculous costumes should have broken any similarity apart, but…

His words being completely ignored, the flash of white and gold and red of Aigis attacking the black and blue of Ryoji, her dark, narrow glare as he leapt back and his cloak flared out behind him, the flash of her hand sending a bullet flying and Ryoji doubling over and curling inward in pain -

It was as much Minato as it was the princess that lunged forward and leapt between them with outstretched arms and a cry of “Stop!” because memories overlapped reality and they’d been here before-

Aigis stopped short with widened eyes, prop sword resting almost against his chest just as her fingers had over a year before, Ryoji crouched behind him. And it was different - wood rather than sand beneath their feet, a silent audience rather than crashing waves to their left, bright yellow spotlights shining down rather than a green-tinged moon, and it was Ryoji crouching down behind him with a prop sword rather than Thanatos looming over him with a real one but even still- even still-

Minato’s heart pounded in his ears as he told her to listen to him and Ryoji reached out towards him in concern and Aigis wavered a step back with confusion and pain in her expression-

It was an act, they all knew that and were cognizant of that but the unpleasant memories it brought forth were all too real.

The hero stepping in to stop the hunter and explain to the characters in the scene - and the audience a bit - about the situation that had led to this and why the vampire didn’t wish to harm the princess was what broke the immersion of it for them and Minato sank into a kneel beside Ryoji. Originally the script had had the princess standing silently, but Minato had gone through the scene once and come up with a justification for her kneeling beside the vampire as though examining his injury because no matter how many times they did this scene Minato’s knees became no less weak and shaky and he’d rather sit down to regain his composure for a minute after it while the hero’s part of the scene played out.

Ryoji sent him a wan smile as Minato touched his shoulder, hand reaching up to touch his, and Minato would have been worried about them breaking character if the rest of the cast hadn’t told them before that their reactions were perfect for the scene.

(SEES knew them well enough to ask questions though, he already knew it, and he supposed a year and a half was enough time to have passed to finally come clean about what exactly had happened at Yakushima.)

So the hero took main stage for a decent time while everyone else stood in shock before the king collapsed - somehow more dramatically each time, Minato really was somewhat impressed - back onto his throne with a wail that his gentle, beautiful daughter had been hiding such a terrible secret from him.

The princess finally stood once more and declared that she would not stand idly by while a curse took someone who didn’t deserve it, especially when that person was someone she’d come to love so dearly.

(Another difference that still echoed with him - his flat, unmoving declaration to Ryoji in December that they would fight Nyx and he would pull Ryoji from her himself because he refused to do anything less.)

Her words moved the other characters so much that offered to help break the curse rather than attacking the vampire - even the hunter reluctantly helped with her own experience with curses - and there was a short time skip to the king declaring that the princess and the newly-cured former vampire were to be married. The hero was invited but politely declined with the explanation that his own love needed rescuing from the evil sorcerer.

He was ushered away with the utmost speed with the promise that if he rescued his love before they wedding then they both were invited, and given transportation.

Minato was just glad to finally be done and gratefully collapsed onto a bench next to Ryoji and accepted a water bottle.

“Nice job, that was as excellent a scene as usual!”

Minato waved half-heartedly. “Now only two more times through the rest of the weekend and then I can let it go forever.” At least SEES wouldn’t be there for those. Minato yawned, leaning against Ryoji for a quick nap through the final arc of the hero infiltrating the sorcerer’s kingdom, winning the help of several of his unhappy minions, and sneaking his way past the many guards and to the final confrontation to rescue the emperor’s daughter.

It was mostly miscellaneous tasks to earn the help of people in the kingdom, broken up by the occasional dramatic fight, so Minato wasn’t too bothered about missing it. It was standard fairy tale stuff anyway.

The hero finally defeated the evil sorcerer and saved his love to return home and receive the emperor’s approval and permission to marry his daughter. The lights faded out as they shared a kiss, and the audience exploded into applause.

They had one last appearance for the curtain call to bow to the audience, and then Minato was finally free to change out of his costume and back into his regular clothes with great relief. Why were costume dresses so hot?

Granted it was very, very cold outside and the sweat froze to his skin and made him shudder uncomfortably as soon as he stepped out of the building. Ryoji plastered himself to his side in an offer of warmth but that didn’t really help when Ryoji naturally ran cold. Aigis was equally unhelpful, being made of metal. At least he wasn’t hot anymore, he supposed… he’d spent most of his life chilled thanks to Death, so at least he was used to it.

SEES was waiting for them in the courtyard and greeted them excitedly, declaring that they were going out to eat as celebration for the successful play. Junpei slung his arms over Minato and Ryoji’s shoulders cheerfully, teasing them as much as praising them, while Yukari had nothing but praise. Chidori and Ken were talking about the themes of the play while Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Shinji were giving them surveying looks that meant they would absolutely be asking questions once they got back to the dorms. Koromaru was darting circles around them excitedly, clearly having enjoyed the show as well (though how they’d gotten him in was another question Minato wasn’t going to ask. He’d snuck him into the movie theater after all).

It warmed him more than anything else could have, even as he rolled his eyes at Junpei’s teasing.

He never would have volunteered for himself, but… he’d had fun with it despite everything. Which was and always would be Ryoji’s point, he knew. Making memories and having experiences, good and bad, because the end was always closer than one thought and every moment was one that counted.

So as SEES pulled them toward the train and Ryoji’s hand intertwined with his and Aigis brushed against his shoulder Minato didn’t regret anything.

~ ᙙᙖ ~

So this was a lot of fun to write. Plays are fun to script out, even if I had to cut out a lot of the details for times sake. Minato having fun despite himself, and despite the bad memories it brought up. More details about what went down at Yakushima! I’ll probably come back to this and write out the actual event eventually, but until then here’s the gist. It was… a time. But everything turned out for the best in the end, so there’s that.

Bebe and Akinari would have loved this, and I stand by that. If I’d had more time I would have written out a conversation with Akinari’s mom at the end too, but I’ll come back at a later date for clean-up and expansion (like I did for Velveteen Shadows) once I have time.

Guess who ran out of time and pre-written chapters because final projects caught up with me? So tomorrow’s chapter will either be shorter or late, but it will be done and it’ll be a bit of a time skip into Shadow Ops era and exploring how the Persona thing works between them now after spending so long with their souls merged, even if Ryoji is an individual person now.

The final day will be a separate thing, because you can’t give me an afterlife prompt for these two and expect me not to take it. Despite these fluff chapters I’m still an angst writer first and I like writing stuff for my version of The Seal (as long-time readers or anyone familiar with the Velveteen Shadows prompt series knows) so that’s going to be fun too. It just. might be a few days late. because Masters degrees and final presentations.

[phantomoftheorpheum]

if shawn found out about the cheating episodes ago i would’ve continued to keep a revenge plot in the back of my mind for his possible motive.

but because he only found out about the cheating in ep 7 AND they specifically made sure to show us him realizing what happened under his nose, i don’t think it would make sense for them to turn around and say he found out a while ago and is getting revenge as a member of the BR team. i feel like that theory can be put to rest - unless there’s some other unforeseen motive driving him. but the cheating/love triangle stuff was his only plot this season so any motive must have to do with it.

but maybe i’m wrong! maybe the writers will make it happen somehow. they’ve made plenty of decisions this season that i don’t quite understand haha.

Yes, I would agree that it definitely feels much less likely after this most recent episode!

The framing of the scene where he's lifting weights and has the flashes of Noa and Jen does heavily imply that he's just finally putting the pieces together. At the very least, they clearly wants us to interpret it that way. It's the most likely explanation. Particularly if Jen is going to be an antagonist, but even if she's not. At this point it feels very Occam's Razor.

But I do think, technically, another interpretation of that scene could be that when he's thinking of Noa and Jen, he's just ruminating on this relationship that happened behind his back and that has driven him to try to get revenge. I think it is vague enough to technically reframe if they really wanted to, but it doesn't feel like it ties in to the rest of the plot very well. It also feels like it would just be really hard to explain- like, okay, he finds out Noa cheated on him back when she was in juvie and he's mad about it, but then he just says/does nothing about it until that particular person she cheated with stumbles back into her life (and the Rose stuff started right away in the season, so someone has clearly been planning it for a while, but Jen and Noa don't reconnect until right as the Bloody Rose stuff is starting up, so how would he have had time to plan that?) and he was just prepared to suddenly jump into revenge mode? That doesn't really make sense. As far as we know, Shawn doesn't have any particular ties to the church or to horror/film/spookyspaghetti, and those seem to be the biggest elements of the season.

If he is an antagonist, it feels like it could only really work peripherally, imo. Like he could have given someone the phone numbers, or something along those lines. And he's just been so background this season. I don't want to say that they wouldn't do something like that (making the reveal a character who has very limited screen time), because they literally did last season, but I'm hoping they don't do that again. I really, really want the main antagonists to be characters who have had a major presence in the season.

I think they have much better options for the BR plot, so I definitely agree.

I do think there's still more to come for the love triangle (I mean, it's not really a love triangle anymore because I don't see any world in which Noa and Shawn want to get back together) in the finale, because they did make the choice not to show the confrontation between Shawn and Jen, which is a really strange choice when you've been dangling this, "What's going to happen when Shawn finds out??" question over our heads all season, but then they don't even show the immediate fallout? That makes me think that there's a reason they didn't want us to see that scene, and right now that seems to point more to the idea that Jen is hiding something about what happened.

[theprogrockbstheorist]

Theprogrockbstheorist’s Guidelines to Conceptuality in Prog

Concept Albums:

This is probably going to be an important definition for many of the essays that I will eventually do, so I’m more writing this an a reference point for what I define as a concept album. 

A concept album is an album that is in some way, shape, or form based around an idea. That’s it. This can be as loose as a thematic or musical concept that all the songs on the album share, or as intense as a rock opera. Musical concepts aren’t limited to the composition of the songs as well: they can be as broad as “How crazy can we make the production on this album?” or “Let’s make all the songs loop into each other!”. For the purposes of my essays, I will be separating concept albums into levels: 

A non-concept album is an album that has neither a thematic concept nor a musical concept. 

A Level One Concept Album is a concept album that has either a broad thematic concept but no musical concept, or a broad musical concept without a thematic concept.  A ton of albums probably fall under this category, so a “level one concept album” doesn’t really hold much significance. 

A Level Two Concept Album is a concept album that has both a thematic concept and a musical concept. The thematic concept can be as broad as simply “urbanization” or “mental health”, but for it to be a level 2 concept album, all the songs must have a musical concept as well. This musical concept can be as simple as reoccurring melodies or chord progressions. 

A Level Three Concept Album is a rock opera, essentially. You’re moving beyond simple concepts here, and plotting out a story line and characters. These are pretty much guaranteed to have recurring musical ideas and motifs, which can signal characters like in an actual opera. 

Conceptual Songs: 

Now, of course, sometimes concepts are limited to just one song, or, if part of a larger concept album, may be focusing on one aspect of that concept. These too can have levels similar to concept albums; just the majority of the time, they are shorter (side-eyeing Thick as a Brick, which can be counted as both a concept song and album). 

These songs usually are more specific than concept album, and tend to cap out around 20 minutes due to vinyl limitations in heydays of prog. There are some notable exceptions, but those are exceptions. Here a few types of conceptual songs: 

The Suite is a song of unspecified length that tells some sort of story or has some sort of concept underlying it. For the purpose of this blog, the main difference between an epic and a suite is the length: suites can be any length, epics are going to be defined as being 15 minutes or longer or taking up an entire side of vinyl. 

The Epic is a song that is based around a concept that takes up an entire side of vinyl. The whole album is not typically based around the concepts presented in the epic, however it does take up at least one side ("Karn Evil 9" takes up all of Side B and then a bit of Side A as well). 

Both of these types of songs will follow an adjustment of the levels system presented above, because typically these songs contain both a thematic and musical concept. 

So, a Level One prog suite/epic is a song that has both a thematic message and a musical concept. This thematic message can be incredibly vague, but it needs to be present. Otherwise, it’s not really a suite nor an epic. 

A Level Two prog suite/epic is similar to the rock opera in that it has named several characters and a defined story. You won’t really see suites as I’ve defined them do this, so this is also kinda an epic-exclusive level, however “The Necromancer” by Rush clocks in under 15 minutes, and has named characters and a plotline, so this isn’t really a hard rule. 

Oh, and btw, you don’t have to agree with my definitions!! If you think I should revise any of them, let me know!/gen. I just feel this is important to get out of the way for when I enter the “Is X album a concept album?” debates. 

[archduchessofnowhere]

What is the most historically accurate film of Sisi you have seen?

Can you rank all of them you have seen from most historically accurate to least?

what one is your favorite?

thank you!

Hello! One of my major goals (?) on this blog is to make an Ultimate Tier List of Sisi Adaptations, but I still haven't been able to. But here is an overview of the media that I've watched so far, ranked for most "accurate" to the least:

Sisi (2009): By far the most historically accurate Sisi portrayal that exists. I've already talked about it a bit the other day, but this mini series covers from Elisabeth's engagement until her coronation as Queen of Hungary, and includes important events such as her daughter's death in 1857, the Italian War of 1859, Elisabeth's illness and departure to Madeira, the abuse her son Rudolf suffered in hands of his tutor and her intervention to stop it, among other things. We even get as a side plot her brother-in-law Maximilian and his ill-fated adventure. It is clear that the writers knew the history they were adapting, and put care in having as much historical moments as posible. Which incidentally is also the series biggest weakness: it's too short for the amount of events it covers. The pacing is too rushed and many of the story lines are not properly developed. It is not entirely accurate either: the writers couldn't (or didn't want to) get away of the romantic myth and put great emphasis in Elisabeth's marriage as a great love story (weirdly this didn't stop them from romanticizing her friendship with Andrássy either). I pity that this wasn't a full series because it had the potential to be a great show.

Elisabeth das musical (1992-): my favorite piece of media about Elisabeth ever. I also already talked about it but for a musical whose argument is that the assassin of Empress Elisabeth is trapped in a loop in the afterlife in which he forever must tell her story while he's judged for his crime this is a surprisingly accurate and nuanced take of her life. While a bit outdated now (the idea that archduchess Sophie was an evil mother-in-law or that Sisi and her father had a close relationship have been disproved for a while, for example), I think this musical actually got her personality, or better, it got that we can't truly know her: she was a complex person, she was full of contradictions, she was human.

Sissi Trilogy (1955-1957): a classic is a classic. A heavily romanticized take on the early life of the empress, these movies are not particularly accurate, but they're fun to watch nonetheless (except the third one. The third one is a bad movie, fight me)

Sisi (2021-): I'm weirdly fond of this show, I'm sorry. Like I know that objectively is a very trashy, poorly written attempt at a historical drama, and yet I can't help but finding it fun to watch. And for all its flaws (which are PLENTY, and I complained a lot about them here), at least it tried to do something different with some of the characters. I vaguely remember someone saying that RTL is like the CW of Germany, so following the comparison I would say that this show is kinda like Reign: a hot mess that you either love to hate, or you learn to love with time.

The Empress (2022-): my deep dislikeness for this show is no secret to my followers. In fact I owe them a review, which I begun but never finished, because every time I enter the doc I'm reminded of how much of a disappointment this series was for me, and I don't want to keep writing (I will eventually I promise it). This series has all the problems of the 2021 Sisi series and none of its redeming qualities. If you go through my livebloging tag you'll find what I disliked, but to put it short: this series is so disconnected of reality that can't be enjoyed as a historical drama, but it is so poorly written that can't be enjoyed as a piece of fiction either. It's just not fun to watch at all.

The King Steps Out (1936): The only time in history that the USA attempted to make a Sisi movie, and yes it ranks even lower than The Empress that's how inaccurate this is. This was an adaptation of an operetta (that would end up being the basis for the first Sissi movie), and other than "emperor is expected to marry his cousin but end ups falling for her sister instead" the story has nothing to do with history. I also just didn't like this movie at all.

Not Sisi Media But Features Sisi As A Character:

Ludwig II (2012): I LOVE Hannah Herzsprung's Elisabeth. She gave us a Sisi we never saw before: the friend. She is Ludwig's friend and wants the best for him but this doesn't stop her from criticizing him; she loves him but also loves her little sister and is FURIOUS when Ludwig dumps Sophie. To me this is one of the most loving takes of her that exists, and for that I adore it.

Ludwig (1973): THE BEST enigmatic and mature Elisabeth, period. Romy is sublime, every one of her scene feels like a master class in acting. I don't rank her over Hannah's Elisabeth because I don't like much the plot they gave her (they turned her friendship with Ludwig into a sort-of-romance and she also mistreats Sophie), but in terms of acting this is by far the best performance.

Mayerling (1936): Elisabeth appears only for one scene played by a woman that looks nothing like her only to give love advice (???) to Mary Vetsera and then leaves. An absolutely boring and forgettable portrayal, I don't know why they even bothered including her (also fyi this movie is bad).

Ludwig II (1955): literally who is this woman. She's Elisabeth in name only, they stripped away everything that made her interesting and turned her into a cardboard cutout romantic interest for Ludwig II (who's straight here LOL). Worst Elisabeth that I've seen so far hands down (btw this movie is also bad minus some scenes).

Special Mention:

L'aigle à deux têtes (1948): This isn't a Sisi movie nor features Sisi at all, but the character of the Queen is clearly inspired in Elisabeth. Here we follow the widow Queen of a fictional kingdom and an anarchist that attempts to kill her but ends up being protected by her. It's the adaptation of a play and it shows: the action happens in closed spaces and it's made up mostly of dialogues. It is a psychological movie (and also an enemies to lovers romance lol), and it may be boring for some since it's mainly just characters talking, but personally I loved it.

[madsfrank]

The DLCs of New Vegas and Their Philosophical Importance in the Order of Release Date

Looks like September has brought about a fervor for New Vegas and this will be one of my entries to add to the pile. Some of this information is loosely based upon the actual game and in areas where interpretation is left up the the player, I did take some liberties. Overall this is just for entertainment and shouldn’t be used as definitive evidence for what exactly happened between these DLCs.

In New Vegas, the DLCs become the defining points of the game. They are designed to teach a lesson to the courier and hence the player about “what to do now?” In the post-apocalyptic wasteland. These DLCs are packed with philosophical takes and messages that vary depending on the type of person the player is or the future they have chosen for New Vegas. Here, I dive into the philosophical identities of the main factions and important individuals through the DLCs that connect back to ideology and plot. By no means is this a perfect explanation. I keep some parts vague that are supposed to be left up to the courier’s actions. However, this is to be used as a mental guide for the driving factors behind characters and the major messages one is to learn.

P.S. on each dlc section the main character’s past will be in chronological order as best as it happened to my knowledge as not everything has exact dates.

Dead Money:

The worst dlc in terms of gameplay but also has the most long standing message to relay back to real life and the main game.

Dead money follows the story of father Elijah. And Veronica and Christine. Elijah was a terrible elder in the BOS and with such left during a loss to the NCR in 2276 at Operation: Sunburst during the Brotherhood war (his next in line McNamara took over and they were weakened by this point so they went underground). Elijah then became obsessed with finding ways to destroy the NCR and in the process took his pupil (Veronica) away from Christine and when Christine (on a mission to kill him BOS orders) tracked him down finding tech in the Big MT (locked her away where she suffered brain damage from the testing the labs did).

He stumbles upon the Big MT during his travels in which he experiments on the Yangtze prisoners with explosive collars and beefing up his plan and defenses before going to the Sierra Madre in which he learned the location from Ulysses. He returns to the Think Tank after being captured upon his first entry (and escaping) and damages the robots to take control of the train network in order to escape. Which he does.

HERE IS WHERE THE STORY LINE CONJOINS

during this time another force Ulysses (spoken about more in later DLCs.) who was traveling to hunt the courier and find the past secrets of America and re awaken the old world to rise as a new home, a new power, saw this conflict. He points Elijah to the Sierra Madre and it’s hidden treasures which he hopes will kill the former Paladin and saved Christine to learn about the BoS which he realized was weak.

He then spoke to the Think Tank and challenged them to remember America. When they remembered a glimpse of the old world and what they fought for, they gave Ulysses instructions to return to the divide as “the voice of the old world” was left in the untouched missiles that had the power to reshape America through destruction much like the courier had done to his divide when they passed a package through the region containing middle codes that activated some missiles and mostly destroyed the place he called home and the place the though could become more powerful that the bull or bear.

Dead money focus on the ideas of letting go. Characters who can’t let go of goals or the past. Take Dean domino, still wanting to hold onto Vera Keys who was dead to her own disease and hand at the depression of being captured in the casino by the operator of the casino who was obsessed with her. He also is still determined to find what Sinclair kept hidden away in the vaults. Long after it would have mattered with the end of the world. Christine is obsessed with killing Elijah even though his lost ideals will lead to his death by the courier anyways. Much like how the operator of the casino was obsessed with keeping Vera locked away.

The courier has to also let go of the treasure they had found. The gold. They must let go of it and this is the most straightforward message. Caesar wants an idealistic society but when when he gets cancer, he can’t let go. House wants a idealistic old world society that he can never let go of (hence the strip)

It answers the question of “this is what I think is best for the post apocalyptic wasteland” and how most of it is just people clinging into a past victory or experience. (History would be Caesar and Joshua teaching the Blackfoot and beginning to take tribes over and becoming power blind.)

The NCR clinging to the constitutional law and pushing people who are just surviving in the wastes out via taxes and old world political ideals. This is also under the same message.

And of course, Elijah, he’ll best on power and controlling the Mohave to lead the brotherhood to victory, ultimately nearly destroyed his own people and went mad for the “power” of the Sierra Madre. Thinking he can make food from the vending machines and what not to build a new society where he can take over the Mohave (he begins to forget his brotherhood ideals.)

The gold in the vault is not that useful but it proves that this endless search for one’s own power was unfruitful. That even if they had seen the “gold” they would not be able to bring it back. AKA put there ideals in place.

Honest hearts

The story of the Malpais legate.

A new cannanite who joined the followers to spread his Mormon religion. Joined by Calhoun and Sallow. They were then held for ransom by the Blackfoot tribe along their pilgrimage and Edward Sallow trained them to use weapons because he was super smart and read books as a linguist and taught them to fight like Romans. Sallow become the leader of the Blackfoot tribe with Joshua as his first Legate. He takes the name Caesar and becomes mad with power as he makes his newly formed legion stronger soon after. It is during this time that he begins to take over the 87 tribes within a rough timeframe of like 25-30 years. He then spread to overtaking the NCR who had found the Hoover dam and wanted it for power as they spread throughout the region to establish rule. With five reports on killing Graham, the legion still held strong.

During this battle, the NCR managed to lure the legions more experienced legates and such into Boulder City where they were detonated. These legion individuals were under Joshua’s command.

Caesar (sallow) did not tolerate the loss of Hoover dam, he threw Joshua over the Grand Canyon covered in kerosene after the first battle.

But he lived. He states he found his faith again and lost the pride that Caesar had blinded him with. Even though his religion moves him to forgive Caesar, he still would easily strike down his followers while in new Canaan (his home)

That is until Caesar sends fourth Ulysses. For he brings the White Legs that he trained to destroy his home. In which Daniel (a missionary) and a few survivors including Graham would move to Zion and assume power amongst the sorrows and dead horses.

Graham’s story is one of redemption and blind revenge. He doesn’t know what the right course of action is anymore. He just has blind rage towards the Legion and now Caesar again. His story is heavily impacted by what happens to the leader of the White Legs when they are sent to hunt down Graham and the tribes in Zion.

Walking Cloud’s story is much of the same with Daniel trying to curb her rage by hiding her husband’s death. It’s like a microcosm of what’s to come with Joshua.

He has to grow as a person and realize that blind revenge will only sabotage his faith and morals and make him no better than the idealism that surround Caesar and the others like Elijah and House. His whole story is dependent on the helping of others and learning to assist rather than to take over or have full forgiveness to bad people or have blind rage. He must find a centre. A balance.

Old world blues

The story of a society stuck on loop.

The scientists in the big empty cannot accept the new world. They keep making new inventions for the old world which are fruitless, futile, and harmful to others. It is through this that following an ideology without change or recognition becomes dangerous. When Ulysses poses the question of them knowing their own history, it causes them, forces them, to remember their own past and what they have done. It ties together the main factions as well. Are all the main factions doing is forming a idealogical society that doesn’t reflect the views of the new world? Are they all just stuck on loop to try to create their own perfect vision which in the end will fail?

Each scientist also struggles to connect themselves to their more human form and loose empathy and compassion. They lose their humanity when the courier and Ulysses find them. Going as far as to trap a human away for experiments that will go nowhere (Christine).

In the end, these scientists have to find their humanity and use their tech to help the wastes instead of hiding it away (like the BOS to a extent) they have lost the connection to what it means to be a scientist and to help others as they shut themselves away and refused to acknowledge the new world as well, much like mr. House.

Mobius breaks free of the constant science that the Think Tank is up to and attempts to stop them from possibly hurting the wasteland. He also destroyed the data to the memories of the old world for the other scientists in a attempt to stop them from destroying the world with their science again.

In the process he ends up shutting the Big MT off from the rest of the wasteland with a barrier and shuts himself off with robo-scorpions he built. He left the Think Tank and made sure that the scientists would be too scared to leave by sending false messages to them and making them fear creating new technologies.

But when Elijah, Ulysses and others arrive, the Think Tank tries to push further to escape Mobius’s plans. By this point his own ideals had begun to deteriorate due to his use of chems and he had begun to go mad with the robo-scorpions and looses his own sight of fighting for the wasteland.

The courier then must confront him upon their own arrival and help the Think Tank and Mobius understand the world outside the Big MT and to stop loosing sight of the science that could save the wasteland and to stop living in a loop of the past from trauma.

Lonesome road

In my opinion the most confusing dlc

Ulysses’ tribe is destroyed by Caesar and his home with the twisted hairs (Dry Wells) was taken over by Vulpes who betrayed Ulysses by killing his group instead of working with them and Ulysses was forced under the Legion flag. He served as a nondescript courier for the Legion during this time as well and became a very powerful spy asset to Caesar.

It is also at this point we learn that it was him who discovered the Hoover Dam. Causing Caesar to go mad with the idea of it.

When Caesar became obsessed with the dam, Ulysses could not stop him. Even though he knew it would kill Caesar. Ulysses had seen how far Caesar would go to take the dam when he witnessed the burning of the Malpais legate.

Upon exploring the wastes for Caesar, he found the Divide and due to the destruction of his own tribe, saw it as a home for himself. He thought it could be better than the legion or the NCR. He stayed for a short time and wanted to use it to out think the Legion. However it was then taken over by the NCR while he worked for the Legion and while he was not there to protect The Divide (nor could he save it single-handedly) the Legion then sent supplies to take The Divide over. Placing legion soldiers and NCR soldiers within the town at once.

This is when the courier unknowingly brings a NCR package from Navarro containing launch codes for the missiles that lay under The Divide. This would lead to the bomb going off after the courier left and destroying The Divide and NCR and legion within (making them into the marked men. Filled with hatred with their factions for abandoning them).

Ulysses nearly died but was saved by medical Eyebots. Who were activated with the bombs. They believe he was a pre war soldier with the American flag on his back.

He blamed the courier and returned to the only man who accepted him, Caesar, in 2277 after the loss at Hoover Dam. This is where he would witness the burning of Joshua. (He was not actively in the Legion while the first battle happened).

When Caesar learned that Graham had lived, he sent Ulysses out after him along with the White Legs. This would be his last mission for Caesar as he left soon after to better himself and reawaken the history of America. During this time he took a temporary break as a big Horner farmer and a courier.

Later on, he found about about the old world technology in the big empty and travelled there. He followed the irregular weather patterns from The Divide to the Big MT in which he used the geographical maps there at the weather station to map out where he would build his base back at the divide later on where he wanted to face the courier.

This is where he meets Elijah and Christine.

During his time as a courier, so a bit in the past before meeting Christine and Elijah, when he was retired as a bighorn farmer, he was hired to carry the platinum chip. But when he saw the couriers name on the list he told Nash that they should carry it instead as he wanted to see the courier dead on this important mission for destroying The Divide. He thought the wasteland would kill the courier instead of him having to himself.

When the courier survived Benny and the Khans. He vowed to bring the courier to him in The Divide.

When the courier is in The Divide, they are forced to walk the lonesome road and go through the travels and horrors that Ulysses had to go through when The Divide was destroyed and in the end, the courier is faced with Ulysses wanting to destroy the Mohave and deciding to make him see the light with the couriers faction or killing him.

Ulysses can also be forced to accept that it is these individual people that hold the new world together and that the old world and it’s pointless to murder all who wave the flag of the bear and bull. An important development in the concept of him “letting go” of the old world and his idea of a home. His idea of building up something as great as the old world once was. Ulysses is still a man. He’s still idealistic in that he wants to form his own home. One based in old world values with new world truths and while the divide seems like a decent plan for him, he soon falls victim to blind rage for the NCR and Legion. Yes, they both help to destroy his home, but in turn, he becomes just as violent as they were to him. Which removes him from this new independent plan and sends him spiraling into only removing the ideologies of the bear and Bull.

(He also makes it very clear that even a independent Vegas would fail under house and maybe even under the courier. So this part is truly left to the couriers own faction.)

This dlc is all about the importance of home. And that it may not be the place where you were born. It also touches on how to move on from a home. Moving on from idealistic ideas out in place by factions as well. Seeing the world for what it is and truly being alone.

Another important character here is the copy of ED-E who has been created by the Enclave by a doctor with good morals and who didn’t want to see his tech harmed (Whitley) and he sent this ED-E to navarro not knowing it had fallen to NCR forces. This Ed-e contained more logs on Enclave scientist Dr Whitley than the original does after the original was damaged but both contained lost information on the Enclave that Whitley had sent out to try to send to other parts of the Enclave. However the original was taken down near Primm. The copy had data downloaded from the original ED-E upon the courier entering the divide.

This is just important as it established another character desperately searching for navarro even though it has fallen. With the hollow words of its old master and a goal (much like houses, Caesars, and Elijah’s) that can never be accomplished.

Overall, idealistic societies are formed off of the opinions of the few. These societies falter as we reduce them to just a namesake. A flag. There are people within these flags, caught up within the ideals of their leaders and rulers. Even Ulysses becomes blind to his own former goals of a community of people working together without a flag. A home. Until those individual people are recognized, until they, the small groups that lie among the Mojave, the tribes and those in towns like the divide before it’s destruction, are recognized as part of the world they inhabit instead of just ideals of their masters and gods….war never changes.

[rmwb-fanfics]

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party - what type of fanfiction do you write/currently write? You mentioned an RU fic?

Morning/evening/afternoon anon! Thank you for asking, hope you’re well.

Well, I write a lot of fanfiction, (Pirates of the Caribbean, Jurassic Park/World) but the only stuff I post is for Harry Potter.

I have two fics posted, both in a WIP state. There’s one other that I haven’t posted and I’m waiting to be finished before uploading, here is the list.

Available:

Regretfully Uncaring (RU)

My long fic. My baby. I looooove it with all my heart. Currently rewriting/editing the vast majority of it because this was really my first proper toe into creative writing, and as it’s gone on my skill set has improved considerably and, as I say in the summary on AO3, I want the story to be as accessible and enjoyable as it can be to the most amount of people.

It’s a werewolf fic, but it’s also a lot more than that. As the name implies it’s about regret. The name actually comes from something an addict I know told me, where when you’re hooked on something you regret your actions but you can’t get yourself to care. It’s about learning how to love again. It’s about acceptance, revolution. But really it’s about addiction. I say all that from the perspective of the author. It’s a ton of other things and my readers get different stuff out of it I’m sure.

It’s an ensemble cast story, so the perspective shifts quite a few times per chapter. I think there’s something like 20 characters that each lead a role at some point. Plenty of pairings, but the focuses are Harry/Ginny and Ron/Daphne. There’s time travel, there’s world building, the entire plot is essentially original and that’s why it’s my Bebe.

Because Regretfully Uncaring is a test run. Once the tournament concludes in chapter 28/29, it’s basically just a Harry Potter version of my original work that I poke away at. I want to make movies someday, and maybe Hollywood and general audiences as a whole will be more up to some original stories and less remakes/sequels because fuck I have so many ideas and this really is one of them.

FFN | AO3

Big thanks to @curse-04 and @muib92 who I can’t tag for some reason. Their genuine interest in what I’ve written has kept me going through so much, more than just writing. Even if you’re the same person with an alt account, I appreciate it.

A Short Life Full of Long Years (ASLFOLY)

Yeah so I don’t have as much to say about this one. Only reason it isn’t a one-shot is because my brain can’t just let things end so here we are. It’s a post-war soul bond fic, again: Harry and Ginny are the focus here. Together they go travelling in search of Andromeda and Teddy, who have gone into hiding in the muggle world somewhere in Europe. They have a vague map without any marked destinations, oh, and a vengeful Death is after Harry since his survival in the forest. I really wanted to explore what a soul bond post HBP/DH would look like, and I’ve enjoyed myself so far. Eventually, if I feel like it, they might become a secret agent duo. At the moment I have very little plan for this story, i just like writing it as it goes. People have loved it so far, so there’s that.

FFN | AO3

Biggest thanks to @fizzyginfizz for leaving the best review I’ve ever received on any story, let alone ASLFOLY. I still think about it.

-

So yeah that’s what’s uploaded, that’s what I tend to talk about. The stuff I won’t post is pretty simple.

My PotC fic is a follow up to the fifth film that explains Davy Jones and Jack’s actions in the Sea of Thieves portion of the story line. It’s pretty good and I’m thinking I might eventually post but there’s only like 20k words at the moment.

My Jurassic Park/World fic is just a rewrite of the latest film. Call me stupid or whatever but I was hella invested in the Jurassic story and I was looking forward to the conclusion/follow up after Fallen Kingdom. But *NO* they had to FUCK IT UP. Anyway it’s pretty damn good as a story but I will never ever post this one because no one is learning about my obsession for Jurassic Park that intimately.

Thank you for asking anon and sorry for rambling. Going to grammar edit this now, have a wonderful day.