#I had a lot of fun world building and making character connections and in the end it really probably does not matter aksldjaljksad

[alltimefail-sims]

Okay so I posted Day 1 of the Windbrook SLASHED challenge and there was an error so I privated it until I can fix it tomorrow after my therapy appointment sksksjshcksks 🙈.

I've never finished a CAS challenge ever though so I'm VERY EXCITED!!!!!! And proud of myself honestly because I suck at meeting deadlines and all that.

Anywho after they're all posted I'm gonna put them up for DL as base sims as a little gift for Simblreen so I'll be tagging them as Simblreen 2023. But yeah! That's all! Very proud of myself rn I hope you guys enjoy the sims and the accompanying little story blurbs <3

[nenoname]

Gravity Falls DVD Commentary Highlights

(just a huge, and I mean huge, dump of random quotes that stuck out to me, which I sorta separated into characters+their relationships and it's probably gonna be obvious that Stan is my fave lmao

I dunno how to make this legible for anyone but whatever, just take all these rando character tidbits. Stan Twin pranks! Sonployee essays! The concept for a post-Weirdmageddon episode that Alex insists is just too miserable but I want it anyway! The Pines family making me cry!)

Stan

"We love the idea of Stan [in Boss Mabel] having a minute to uh, having a context where we want to see him be his worst self and seeing his big brash personality in like a setting that everyone can understand, because the Mystery Shack is a little bit ungrounded because he's in his world of his characters, but seeing him out in the outside world is funny weird."

We really enjoyed the fact that he's as awful as ever and he's rewarded for it. We like those anti-morals where Stan uses his terribleness to succeed incredibly well.

I think it was a little hard for people to understand in the writer's room at the beginning of the series was that, even though Stan is following a lot of these tropes of being a miser, he's not grumpy. Like he actually loves being himself. He really revels in it like even though he's got some kind of sorrow inside, his kind of day-to-day like he's more about just the uncle who loves to hear himself and make dumb jokes than he is somebody who's mean or cruel or cynical per se.

The [NWHS] storyboards managed to make Stan this awesome action hero while still keeping him Stan. Like I like the fact that he steals a wallet in the middle of it. He steals a wallet, he smashes somebody against the wall, he sasses him but he also has this just great Inception moment. And it's because we're building to a big question about “who is Stan?”, I felt a moment of seeing him be kind of awesome further increases your “who is this guy?” He keeps going back and forth between like “oh geez my back” and you're like “all right that's the Stan I know” and then like “whoa, he just did an awesome jailbreak! Is he some kind of super villain? Who is he really?

There's more of Ford in Stan than I think Stan realizes that I think only comes out in certain moments.”

Why did Stan keep a clipping of himself titled “grifter at large”? I think he thought he looked cool in that picture. “You know I kind of have a Clint Eastwood look in this grifter at large photo. I think maybe I'll use this as an About the Author one day. I gotta hold on to this one. You know what, I'm a criminal but I'm a nostalgic criminal! Loving the past is my greatest crime now!”

I know how Stan feels in this [Principal talking to his family] scene, when somebody comes in and says like “You know what? There was a race you didn't know you were running and you're already behind, way behind.” 

And you know even though Stan is a guy who looks like he's having a fun time, I always, in my gut, thought of him as somebody who is a huge well of sadness, a loss of human connection. And that need to please, that trying to get laughs from the crowd and constantly telling dumb jokes and you know putting on a big show in the Mystery Shack, he's trying to get from them the affection that he never got from his family and lost with his brother.

Stan has been waiting for years to have a reunion with his brother. He's always felt like a screw-up. Stan once again had an idea of how he thought things were going to go. He thought that his brother was saying “I need your help” for the first time. He's going to go up there, they're gonna have some drinks, they're gonna catch up and instead he ended up shoving his brother into another dimension and running out of food and money. It's sort of his worst nightmare. But this was Stan's entire character, from the very beginning of the series, was built around this idea that he's living with this tragedy. He's a guy who outwardly seems like he doesn't appreciate family but in fact wants it more than anything in the world and feels like maybe he's not worthy of it and would do anything to prove that he is.

Seeing Stan figure out what he's good at felt important to me. Like he's never been good at anything in his life and he makes a stupid hokey joke and it suddenly turns into a profit. I felt like without [showing how the Mystery Shack was created], I was missing something and understanding why he would do this, how this would be the solution to his problem.

We would like the idea that Stan appears to win through dumb luck, that it's sort of Intelligence versus Guts but Stan wouldn't actually bet everyone's life on a dice roll. He's a cheater! At the end of the day, I believe Stan has been thrown out of Vegas for counting cards and for weighing dies and I believe he could con his way out of any game, particularly for an obnoxious wizard like this. The idea that Stan would gamble everyone on pure chance is like no. No, he's got a plan. This is the guy who escaped prison using gravity leaps, he's got a way out.

The one big thing [The Stanchurian Candidate] does is really highlights Stan's inferiority complex compared to his brother. Part of what he's doing is he's trying to be an important man here and this episode is actually a pretty good setup in many ways for Weirdmageddon Part 3. When we see Ford they're all going on this rescue mission to rescue Ford and this episode shows you just how much Stan wants to be the hero like the reason that he can't shake Ford's hand when they're in that circle.  The cold open of this where he sees everyone loves Ford and now that Ford's back, he's the best. Stan's like “well, how about I run for mayor!” It's just to boost his ego and make him feel better about himself.

Dipper and Mabel

“Straight man protagonists are really hard to write because every other character had a comedic hook. We understand that Soos is kind of this weirdo, his brain is in another place. Mabel has this exuberance and sees the best in every situation and is very creative. Stan is a crooked conman. Dipper is… the normal guy and a character like that can often feel like they don’t have agency, start to feel just reactive.

Waddles is Mabel's only love that lasts the summer. Mabel is very prone to love at first sight and Waddles is able to love back with Mabel's degree of love.

[In Sock Opera] Mabel's in love with Gabe, Dipper's in love with the Author and they're both willing to do something crazy to get get closer to that thing

There kept being layers of adjustment to make it, “okay what would it take to get Dipper to make a deal with Bill?”  1: He would have to not understand the rules of the deal. He's been tricked, he thinks he's just giving a puppet, he didn't know was himself. Classic genie rules, you get what you wish for in a way you didn't expect.  2: There's a little ticking clock that just started, which if he doesn't do it by now, he's gonna lose all this.  3: Bill rightfully points out that Mabel has been kind of not sacrificing for him and he maybe needs another ally right now  4: He was sleep deprived and actually you'll notice that Dipper blinks right before Bill arrives and that's our way of suggesting that that countdown might not have even existed

I think Dipper and Mabel are of equal exact intelligence but Dipper's insecure. He sees his accomplishments as a way to make himself better and thus is motivated to focus on things that are accomplishment type things. And Mabel is very confident and likes having fun and when she's having a good time, she has a little tunnel vision for the people and the things around her. That's one of her biggest flaws. She's actually really, really sweet when she notices and understands your pain but not when she's doing a bit, when she's doing a scene, when she's doing a gag.

Ford

Originally [the fake Author] looked a little bit more like an oddball wacky inventor and I felt he had to be pretty idiosyncratic. There's certain color things about him you'll notice. He's more or less got the color scheme of the Journal, you know maroons and golds, so that you kind of feel instinctively like maybe that's him. A lot of these motifs though we would end up using in Ford's design, as well the gloves and the coat and all that but much cooler later on but preparing you, it's Ford Lite. 

Now this is there's no logical reason that Ford would break [the warnings about the portal] up into all these books this way but up until this point he's been shown as this sort of all-knowing mysterious Puzzle Master that it felt appropriate, even though it's not logical.

It works for the storytelling so when Ford wrote that, that's when he was super sleep deprived. He realized that Bill had betrayed him, he was starting to have a hard time differentiating between fantasy and reality, he was losing sleep and scribbling all sorts of lunatic serial killer looking stuff about the end of the world.

In Time Traveler’s Pig, we see what should be a young Stanford Pines even though again, the design's a little off but we knew big sideburns, bushy hair. Although that Stanford looked a little bit more swole than this guy and that's one of the what we thought were very subtle clues in season one that helped a lot of fans figure figure everything out way too soon.

[Using the memory gun on the agents scene] needs to show that Ford's really awesome and so we could get rid of the agents and show that Ford can pretty much handle anything that Stan can't and also call back to our memory ray all in one.

There was a lot of fan speculation when we first met Ford. Generally when television shows introduce a new mysterious character late in the game, they turn out to be a villain like 9 out of 10 times. They turn out to be a villain or they're there to get killed off to show the stakes of something and like we could have made Ford evil but I always felt that that would be less interesting. The point that I was trying to get to is that Stan and Ford had this relationship that fell apart and it was both of their faults and I thought that if I'm Stan, I'd be more frustrated if Ford is actually a good guy. It would drive me insane if he's pretty reasonable, pretty rational, better at me than everything.

So we've flirted with this brief moment where it seems like he's a villain and we worked really hard to make it so that like his eyes are being covered by the reflection of the light. His dialogue is ambiguous enough here that for a moment you believe what Dipper believes, which is “maybe he's possessed by Bill.” You just saw him shaking Bill's hand, what is he supposed to believe?

I like that Ford has this photo with him, he had for a really really long time all the way through multiple dimensions. And he's probably told himself- I almost imagined if McGucket found that photo in his coat while they were working on the portal or something, like “What's this here?” and Ford would say “oh yes, that's a photo of a very important moment! That's when I…  that's when I first decided I want to be an inventor!” There would be no reference to the real reason he's keeping it. “This is me and my brother.” It would be like, “oh yes I was thinking about science as a horizon, a frontier to reach towards– you know like a boat, like a ship, like science! It's about science!”

Soos

You choose family. That you create over the course of your life and if that somebody earns being your family, like the Mystery Shack. These kids and Stan, they’re Soos' family and he's happy about that.

I feel like Soos gained something out of [Blendin’s Game]. He gains the knowledge that like “I'm tired of thinking about this man who I'm missing, who doesn't care about me. I'm going to concentrate on the people in front of me, the people that are my true family.”

Soos is a fan of the show even though he's in it. He's a big fan of Gravity Falls and [NWHS] killed him.

I always knew what I wanted Soos’ end to be Soos running the Mystery Shack. I imagine that Soos is actually way better at giving tours than Stan is because he loves all that stuff truly and he believes it. That's part of the difference. Stan’s like “um, all right suckers, this stagnant puddle is the befuddle puddle!” while Soos is like “yeah, one time I looked in there, I think i saw like a cyclops dude. Like, I really think I saw one! Like it might have been a reflection combining my pupils, but like?” and people are like “Whoa, really??”

McGucket

They hired a bunch of people and then they erased their memory. That’s my explanation for why there's like such amazing inventions that would take whole teams of people. McGucket secretly hired a number of contractors and erased their minds. Like I think of McGucket as being like a really sweet nice guy completely in over his head who just like “oh well, once I've erased one guy's mind, I gotta erase ten more guys’ minds to cover it up” and it just sort of builds into like “I guess I'm kind of this kingpin of crime and I'm starting a cult I didn't mean to. Whoopsy daisy!”

When we get to Ford and see their backstory and see their relationship, it just makes all the stuff that happens with the portal and what happens with Ford and all that more poignant that he had someone there who was not only his friend but also a voice of reason and telling him to stop and that he wouldn't listen to him, as opposed to Ford being down there on his own with nobody to bounce off, anybody to say “hey wait a minute, is this a good idea?”

“McGucket was the assistant and he was maybe this assistant who was sort of put upon and Ford kind of brought a college buddy together with him. You know Ford as somebody who lost Stan, and even though he rejected his brother, he kind of needs that other person and he tried to find that in this kind of sweet prodigy and he just pushed him too far.

[The test scene] is meant to show sort of what it was that McGucket needed to erase, what it was that drove him to madness. It was partially seeing the Nightmare Verse and the way it messed with his head and also partly just realizing that this thing has apocalyptic consequences and he doesn't want to be a part of it. And if he can't destroy it or talk Ford out of something, he can forget about it.

Because If Ford's weakness is pride, McGucket's weakness is weakness. He's got a kind heart and he can't stop people, he can't destroy things. I mean he should have basically knocked Ford out with a wrench and take this thing apart piece by piece. He's the one who understood how to build it but I think he's kind of a follower and I think he's the kind of person who could get suckered in by a cult leader. He’s the kind of person looking for instruction and he really respects Stanford and can't bring himself to uh, he's like “I just got out of a bunker! I don't want to go work for another guy down in another bunker! This is my third doomsday cult this year!”

Stan and the kids

Stan and Mabel have such a different life perspective it seemed natural that at some point they would get to a major conflict

Seeing Grunkle Stan and Dipper bond like, I sort of believe that both of them are bad with women and both of them would rather believe there's a giant conspiracy than that they have they just can't get ladies 

Can this idea about Mabel's relationship with Waddles actually reveal a rift between Mabel and Stan where Mabel and Stan actually get along pretty well in the series you know? When they they're both such strong stubborn personalities that when they conflict, they conflict hard like in Boss Mabel. But this idea that Waddles is sort of a metaphor for what Mabel loves and Stan loves Mabel but he doesn't really think that anything she thinks is necessarily smart or right. He loves her like “guys she's my sweet niece but she doesn't know anything you know? She doesn't know anything about a pig” She forgives a lot with Stan but like Waddles sort of represents like the purity of her deepest love and the idea that Stan would threaten that is genuinely a shock

In the previous season it ends with Dipper giving up his journal and there was a lot of argument about “oh is it lame if he just gets his journal back?” Another thing we struggled with, we knew that Stan knows the importance of this journal he wouldn't give the journal back to Dipper so it was a bit of a convolution we'd written ourselves into a corner. We wrote ourselves out, we said “okay he's photocopied it. he's giving it to Dipper because he knows that Dipper's really precocious and he'll never stop asking.”

“We knew that we wanted everything to come to a head when the kids are going to discover Stan's secret and they're going to discover it in such a way that they only get little bits and pieces and they have to decide for themselves based on the limited information. Is Stan's a good guy or if he's a bad guy? Ultimately that decision will be a decision of heart versus mind. And Dipper's mind, Mabel is heart and they're fighting with the scraps of information they have.  Should we trust our heart about how we feel about this guy over the course of the summer and everything we've been through or should we trust the clues? That seemed like a believable way to get Dipper and Mabel to begin a rift between them that is resolved by the end of the series.”

The way Stan acts in [NWHS] is like, to me part of what feels so grounded about it is like I'm a child of divorce and like I know that when parents or parent figures know that hard times are coming for the kids. They kind of lay it on thick they're like who wants ice cream you know what I mean? Like Stan being extra nice to them at the beginning is like it's kind of a realistic thing that that adults do when they know like big changes are coming.

I felt it was really important that we added the scene where they're at maximum bonding. They're up on the roof, they're shooting firecrackers. Stan knows in his heart that when his brother arrives everything is going to change in ways he can't predict and he's really savoring this moment because he knows, even if things goes completely smoothly, which they don't. the kids are still going to be mad at him, especially Dipper for basically lying.  They had this big meeting after the end of Scaryoke where of course Dipper also crossed his finger but Stan crosses his fingers and says “oh I'm telling you everything” and he knows that the kids are not going to be happy about the fact that he's been keeping this all from them because they've done amazing things together already and he should have trusted them before now. 

This act break is them saying, “wait, Stan might be a random grifter who maybe killed our real uncle!” That's pretty heavy for any show let alone a cartoon show.

What that would mean for them if all this stuff is true is so much further than just like, “oh he lied to us about a couple things.” It's just like, “no he's straight up just some random dude that we don't even know uh and the guy that I've been pining for this whole time is dead!”  We really try to stack the deck so it's like Mabel's perspective and Dipper's perspective are both kind of racing to see who gets in front and there'll be a moment where it's like yeah you kind of buy with Mabel she feels good about about Stan and then this scene is the most you’re ever with Dipper where we discover this huge crazy curveball and this feeling that you have looking at this newspaper and looking through these fake IDs this is how Dipper feels all the time.  If you want a window about what it's like to be Dipper, this moment where a giant conspiracy reveals itself out of little pieces and seems to suggest that no one is trustworthy like that's that's where Dipper lives and this to him confirms every bit of suspicion and every bit of paranoia he's ever had and he's willing to run with it. 

I love these characters so much that, for me I was like “I need to see Stan saying goodbye to the kids at that bus. And I don't want him to be some guy who isn't Stan, who doesn't even remember the kids.” That would be really dramatic. It might make you cry more but to me it doesn't actually mean anything. Their relationship which they've built, he was willing to sacrifice his memories to save them. That's how much they meant to him but because he was willing to do that, I think he deserves to get him back.

Stan and Ford

But I think Stan's hope is, that in Stan's mind this is going to play out one way which is that; he's going to free his brother, his brother's gonna come out of that portal after 30 years. Stan's probably imagining that Ford is weak, emaciated, wrapped in a blanket, that he'll stumble forward, through a beard. through blurry eyes, he'll be “my brother, is that you?” He'll embrace Stan, he'll hug him, he'll say, “all these years I thought I was goner but you saved me! I was wrong to mock you, I was wrong to call you the stupid twin! Dad was wrong about you! You're the greatest man and let's be friends again and who are these niece and nephew?” Like that was what Stan was kind of hoping. He knows it's there's a million things that could go wrong, including potentially the destruction of this dimension, but he so desperately needs to believe that he can make up for the problems of the past. He's hoping for this but he knows that things are going to change

When I started the series, I always knew Stan had a twin but all I knew about Ford from the jump was that he's everything Stan Isn't. So Stan is a guy with a huge chip on his shoulder, he's kind of a loser at life. There's somebody who is a winner at life or at least was a winner in all these ways that Stan wasn't.

We realized that in order to bring out the maximum amount of frustration in Stan, [Ford] needed to have a bit of a heart. Like here we see him being kind to the kids, he's not he's not all bad which is what's so infuriating to Stan. The idea that he would quickly get along with the kids when he can't get any respect from them. Ford is designed for what would bring out the most amount of conflict in the family. What would be Dipper's hero, what would be Stan's rival and who's somebody that we could empathize with. I mean, it’s  hard to empathize with a character that comes out and punches one of your characters in the face, basically before he almost says anything.

You see that at this age, that all the stuff [in their room] that would cross over, that would appeal to both of them. It's not just like “there's science stuff here” and then there's “what Stan would be into.” but no, they both like all this.

There was also a version [of ToTS] where early on, they'd rigged the school water fountain. They did sort of like a caper, it was science and a scam together when they were in elementary school but we decided to save the science for the science fair stuff.

We played around with the idea that you would see them working together doing little science games or pulling little pranks. There was actually a scene that some of it was even storyboarded where they're in a treehouse together and Crampelter and his friends have tracked them down and are begging for their lunch money and Stan and Ford have used their jerkiness and geniusness to rig up like a water balloon throwing machine that knocks Crampelter in the head. I remember him saying, “oh no, my old-timey paper crown!” We were really hanging a lampshade on all these sort of Little Rascal cliches.

Ford's not a villain. You know he's getting in Stan's face and saying “I want my life back” but hopefully by the end of the episode even though you don't root for his perspective, you understand his perspective where it's like Stan ruined his science project, Stan shoved him into the portal, Stan took over his house. He’s not completely unreasonable to want it back and he's not completely unreasonable about his request. He says “okay you've got till the end of the summer” and Stan's little look there tells you everything you need to know about how he feels about the situation.

We needed pressure to be at the point where Stan and Ford recognize their lifelong rivalry and Ford does a sincere apology to Stan and almost more importantly, he acknowledges Stan's intelligence. He says “you wouldn't have fallen for Bill's nonsense.” He recognizes that his brother has a kind of intelligence he doesn't.

I always imagined that as kids, Stan and Ford were like this dynamic duo. They were getting into scrapes and like planning pranks and with Stan's creativity and Ford's genius that they were an unstoppable awesome team, before life turned them against each other. I imagine that as kids they were always swapping glasses and tricking their parents so that they could get double presents. And this is a move they did back in New Jersey constantly. We had to figure out who's gonna make a sacrifice and how and even though it's Stan who agrees to be “I'll be the one erase my mind, it's fine, it's worth it”, it's a sacrifice for both. Ford at this point is willing to get his brother back and he has to lose him again. 

Stan and Ford, when they can finally work together, do bring out the best in each other. They just have been missing it for so long.

Post-mind return, Stan and Ford get along and that scene where they both threaten the bus driver gives a hint of what would happen if their powers were combined. We've never seen them working together as adults, they would be a really formidable duo.

Pines Family

[The Blind Eye has] such a great scene between Mabel and Wendy. We don't have a lot of scenes that are just them hanging out and she can kind of be like the cool older sister. Mabel's so obsessed with boys and Wendy's just like "yeah, whatever. They're a dime a dozen."

“in the storyboard, the postcard that Soos is holding up from New Orleans actually said Vegas and at the last minute we got really worried that people were gonna see that and think that that was a clue that Stan was Soos's deadbeat father. And because like our audience, we've trained them to look for clues and to connect dots, they start connecting dots that are not connected. And I called a late retake because, and I see people be like, “wouldn't that be cool if Stan was actually Soos's father” and I hate that headcanon. Whoever's listening and you think “that's a great idea!”-- that's a terrible idea!! Because it means that Stan ran out on his kid and then came back in his life. And weirdly pretends to not be his dad. It flies against the moral of this entire episode which is like, you know this guy who is Soos’ blood relative like cast him out and didn't come back and didn't make time for him and all these people did. These people are Soos’ real family and to say “Stan would be Soos' real father more if he was genetically–”, I'm like “no, no forget that!” Like relationships are about what you do. To me friendship is thicker than water and family is something you can create so I really didn't want anyone to think that we were suggesting that because to me, it actually wasn't just the wrong idea, it was like thematically against what the show's about.” "

"[In NWHS] Every character faces their worst possible choice, which is “Mabel must choose between Dipper and Stan” and “Soos must choose between Stan and the kids,” like “guard that thing with your life. I'm not going to explain to you why.” I believe that Soos would do anything to guard Mr Pines's secrets and these are the only two characters that could possibly make him doubt Stan, these two kids that he loves so much."

"For [DD&MD], you want to set it up as being like [Ford]'s like the coolest toy that's down in the basement that Dipper really wants to play with and he is not allowed to play with him."

"The first three quarters of the series are sort of about Dipper's crush on Wendy and this final quarter is sort of about his crush on the Author. He's such a fan of this guy and he's so used to being denied that which he's a fan of and he's never found anybody who cares about his nerdy stuff. Mabel doesn't care, Stan doesn't care, Soos cares but on a different level. He's so hungry for the approval of somebody like Ford This idea that they would bond over a nerdy board game felt like sort of the way to do this big idea in a sort of grounded way that I like better than like Ford presented Dipper with the Five Trials of the Genius Boy. “I passed these when I was your age! Can you do it too?” and it's like nope he just likes the same dork game that he does."

"The arrival of Ford is creating the two sets of twins starting to pair off between the Brainiacs and the Maniacs"

"Actually I enjoyed that [Ford putting the die in a cheap plastic case] got a little bit of a reckless side because it shows you the Stan part of him. The Stan part of Ford, the little bit that likes a little bit of danger, he likes a little bit of risk. If he would show that side, it would be in when he feels at ease, with a kindred spirit. Around Dipper he’d be like “isn't this pretty cool?” He'd never be that irresponsible around Stan.  I like that Dipper is sort of a little bit of a Achilles heel for Ford as well. Ford has certain blind spots and Dipper exacerbates some of those just because he's willing to encourage, he's willing to “yes and” Ford towards whatever dumb idea he might have."

"Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford, they're all characters who need each other. Without Dipper, Mabel's just in a fantasy land. Without Mabel, Dipper is just sort of just spiraling into misery, spiraling into his own neurosis and not being pulled into those social situations, not growing as a person."

"You want [Stan] to be true to our various awful grandfathers, so I feel like for the most part you know that [being shitty to women] a plausible thing for Stan to do, that you only forgive because you know he's not a role model. Nobody wants to be like Stan. The kids never look up to him. The only person who looks up to Stan is Soos and Soos is enough of a comedy character that you understand the joke is “oh this guy thinks the worst way to live is good.” And then at one point you realize why. We made it clear why Soos looks up to Stan is because he gave him his job. He gave him a father basically, he’s essentially Soos’ father. And of course Stan who's had a life of just chaos and disappointment, the only person who would be a surrogate son is [Soos] but also Soos has the biggest heart in the world. So only the biggest heart in the world could forgive all of Stan's many flaws and also if Soos can love Stan, then maybe there's something in there worth loving, then maybe we can too."

"Stan, even when he's sweet, he still has to threaten to murder his niece and nephew."

"I do think the value of [Stanchurian Candidate] is that we're learning just how important it is that [Stan]’s seen. At this point, the kids have become a surrogate family. At the beginning of the show, they were just kind of a little nuisance and then he kind of tried out getting the family from them that he never got from his brother and the idea that he would lose them to his brother is his greatest nightmare and the only way he can really express that is by trying to be impressive to them and trying to be his brother's rival."

"Ford offers Dipper this apprenticeship because Ford sees Dipper as somebody who's special like himself. That Ford's great flaw is arrogance. He believes that there's special people and everyone else and that you can be held back by your siblings. That human attachments are actually weaknesses. The song and dance that he's giving Dipper right now is the exact song of dance that he gave McGucket back when they were younger which is like “sure you could continue working on your job and computers but you and me are different. We're better than everyone else, we have a path that no one else can understand. Only us can do this.” And it’s a very seductive idea for Dipper but he starts to be a little insecure here. He’s kind of “I can't believe it” and he's sort of right to be suspicious because Dipper is a smart kid but Ford's projecting. Ford loves Dipper because he sees someone who tell him yes to everything. He'll never challenge him and if Dipper had taken Ford's apprenticeship,Dipper probably would have gone the way of McGucket, turned into a kind of insane paranoid hermit with no friends, just kind of losing his mind. Like it's a seductive offer but also ultimately Dipper needs to learn not to try to grow up too fast."

"This entire time Dipper's been having this journey of self-discovery and seeing his future as this wonderful thing that he can't wait for. Mabel has been, piece by piece, seeing her idea of the summer fall apart."

"As Ford and Dipper's relationship grow stronger, Stan and Mabel also find much more sort of connection. They both feel like the sibling that's getting kind of sidelined."

"I think [amnesiac!Stan] would be hardest on Soos, second hardest on Ford but Soos would show it. Probably third hardest on Mabel, fourth hardest on Dipper just because where their hearts are. Dipper's not heartless, that's a testament to just how heartbroken those other characters are."

Series goal+ The Finale

"So our idea was; the memory gun can erase a concept as designated by the dial. It stores it. It records you and it keeps that recording and that if you watch that recording things start to come back a little bit, that it hasn't actually completely erased it from your mind. It's more sublimated somewhere where it's really really hard to reach and in the series finale, my concept of Bill is that; if he hadn't gotten in all those forms and fought Stan, Stan is the one that destroyed Bill. Were it just the mind eraser itself that he would be sublimated somewhere but he was weakened in the mindscape and destroyed in the mindscape. But Stan's memories were being sublimated and by looking at the scrapbook in the same way that McGucket's memories come back, they start to come back to the surface."

"I think part of what makes [NWHS] work also is that it has the strongest ticking clock. Yeah, I mean. it has a literal ticking clock. Also the sun is going down it's also, the town is starting to drift apart as the characters are starting to drift apart. There's just such a sense of Doomsday and even though we have like a three-part apocalypse, to me nothing feels as apocalyptic as this episode now."

"The entire purpose of [ToTS] is that Stan and his brother have had this huge rivalry that remains to this day and threatens to tear apart Dipper and Mabel and briefly does, and then Dipper and Mabel are able to find their way together, which is meant to repair Stan and his brother's past."

"Here we're teeing up the rest of the conclusion of the series which is just “whoa this is different. The status quo is shifted and is it going to shift us?” and that was the mission of this entire story was shift. Shift things such that it pits Dipper and Mabel against each other so that they can ultimately make things right and fix their uncles’ trauma in the process."

"“Let's try to set things into motion such that all of these characters who we love, who love each other are placed at maximum odds”. So Ford's entire existence in the series is basically a wrench in the relationships between Stan, Dipper and Mabel, that Stan has had a sibling who he didn't get along with and they've grown up having this horrible rift. Dipper and Mabel are these two twins who love each other but are very very different and are at this sort of volatile growing up moment where if something goes wrong could they turn out like Stan and Ford."

"[The convincing Gideon] scene works for me because it sort of represents the full completion of Dipper's Wendy Arc. Even though he's talking about Gideon and Mabel, he's really talking about himself. That idea that you can't force someone to love you but you can strive to be someone worthy of loving. It really does come down to like be the best you, you can be and the right person will see and feel that."

"It was gonna be W1, W2, W3 and then some kind of goodbye story. I remember it being something vaguely about some sort of other time travel. Bringing Blendin back because he just kind of vamoosed in the middle of this big story. There was that discussed like time traveling back to the first day when the kids arrived. The challenge was thinking of a valuable arc. So like each episode needs to have like a new problem and a new resolution and I was trying to brainstorm what's something that could feel valuable for like a final episode after the apocalypse, after Stan's mind has been erased and he's in the process of getting it back. "

"The thing I remember I wrote one out it was it's the last day of summer. Dipper and Mabel are packing uh they're planning to go home, they're feeling like nostalgic, they kind of don't want to leave. Blendin shows up and he explains that there's all these time bubbles left over, these weird anomalies because of all the time business and what Bill has done and just to watch out and be careful. Then Dipper and Mabel actually accidentally trip into one of these bubbles that are sent back to the very first episode or actually beyond the first episode, their first day in Gravity Falls um and somehow this was meant their character arc was to go from being like a little sad that they're going to leave Gravity Falls to seeing what it was like on the first day. When they were scared to be in Gravity Falls. The idea is like their first day they're like “oh Grunkle Stan, he's this weird old man and we hate living in this house and like we missed our place of comfort back home! And this is a kind of scary new adventure that we don't like.”  The kids see their own growth and realize like “the way we felt about going to Gravity Falls like we don't think we can handle it, is how we feel about leaving.” That feeling of going into a new experience means that something new and exciting is going to happen you're going to grow. There was some thought that maybe over the course of that episode, Stan would get his memory back and something that the kids had done in the past would help him in the present, get his memory back.

"What's supposed to be happening here isn't that Stan's entire memory reappears in an instant. It's supposed to be a couple days of work and we see the beginning of that process when he looks at the scrapbook and then we're kind of jumping ahead a few days. maybe a week of just intensive memory therapy with Stan before he gets there."

"When we were trying to crack the half hour episode after Weirdmageddon, it felt like we were just kind of wallowing and Stan not having his memories. It was a very depressing thing. And we didn’t get to have Stan for the last episode, which was like “it's a great it's great i think you get the emotion like in this episode. It tears you apart when you see it. You could last a little bit longer on it. But going much longer, then you just feels like well what are we doing? Why are we just kind of wallowing in our own sorrows for no good reason.”

"When we had discussed the idea of an episode beyond this episode, a fourth episode, it was basically 20 minutes of [amnesiac!Stan]. This is so intense, you might think you want it but good lord, this is enough."

"Bill singing “We’ll meet again” was something that just felt like the perfect reference because this is kind of an ending about endings in a lot of ways and we know we know Bill's going to be defeated. We know that people like Vill and have grown attached to him and for him to sing “We’ll meet again” is sort of the perfect mysterious way to say like “I might be going, I might not be going.” It’s a reference to Dr Strangelove, a movie that famously ends with nuclear apocalypse and the song “We’ll meet again” so it's for those pop culture savvy. It's already tinged with a kind of a fear and an irony and the apocalypse built in, so it's perfect on a number of levels."

"The concept of the Zodiac as existing in our current canon is this idea that the prophecy was that friends and enemies would need to come together, seemingly impossible alliances would need to be made to stand up to Bill for this prophetic moment. You know that characters like Gideon who was who used to be an enemy, characters like Pacifica, like Robbie, that we've reached the point where thanks to the kids’ kindness and growth, they are now friends with Pacifica, they've resolved Robbie's jerkiness, they've helped McGucket with his memory. They've even overcome this issue with Gideon in W1 and so it seems like friends and enemies have all been restored, leaving only one thing which is Stan and Ford have to shake hands. And their pride once again is what dooms the entire world but they get so close."

"It's clear Stan, even though he's being stubborn here and holds things up, he's ready to do it.  He clasps Ford's hand and then Ford can't help but correct his ignorant brother with something that doesn't matter at all after professing how important all this is and how important it is to put pettiness aside, he's the one who ends up being petty in the end."

"I like that Stan [during the deal] is just thinking “all right, think white, think white, think white.” He's like “think about nothing but sitting on your lazy boy.” "

"Stan and Bill had never interacted in the series up until this moment  because he had just been taken over when he was asleep. We'd seen a lot of Ford and Bill, but Stan and Bill has never happened. And Bill sort of represents all the mystery and weirdness, and Stan is the guy who just wants to have a good life and protect his family. He's the one who never invited Bill in but he's willing to take Bill out."

"If Mabel's going home with a pig, Dipper's going home with this symbol of his friendship with Wendy. And even Stan he's wearing that Mabel sweater. That's a visual symbol of; he's softened up, he's embraced family, he doesn't need to be the tough guy all the time."

[blackholesun321]

Shanks Doesn’t Have A Dream! And I Can Prove It!

Ok, y’all, can I talk my shit again? Because I have thoughts and feels about our good old one-armed favorite disaster of a party pirate, Akagami (Red-Haired) Shanks. I’m going to be completely honest: I may have had this rant before, but I can’t find it, and no one else has this take. I need to talk about my vision of him that I’m like 60/40 percent sure is correct canon-wise and would explain so many of his—let’s call them quirks.

I think one of Oda’s beliefs and the teachings that One Piece has so blatantly told us about, such as personal freedom, charting your own destiny, and making your own adventure along the way, are a reflection of Shanks’ character as someone who never got that chance and never would. That, to me, makes him one of the saddest characters in One Piece.

Let me cook here. I’m not going to cite anything because I don’t want to, and I do that enough already in college, so we’re running on trust me: I’ve read the manga and watched a lot of theory videos. So lock in because this is gonna be long.

Anyways, back to my thesis. Shanks is a character of contradictions. He was the youngest person to ever become a Yonko (but then Luffy came in), probably one of the strongest men of his generation. He regularly fought the world’s strongest swordsman for fun. He has a crew whose members each have over a million bounties on their own and are so physically or politically strong that they can stop a war in its tracks just by waltzing in and saying "stop." Not only that, he stopped Kaido in his tracks and made him turn around. His father was the Pirate King and claimed him as his successor; he could even be tied to the Celestial Dragons. He’s charismatic, and when things need to get done, he gets down to business.

On the other hand, he’s also a goofy guy who regularly gets blackout drunk, has a horrible sense of pant style, parties his life away, and thinks bullying kids is the height of comedy. He cares about his kid to the point that he forgets to be a responsible Yonko but also wants to fight him for the One Piece. He seems so blasé about everything but is obviously, in the background, making connections and being all sneaky about something; he has plans but also didn’t decide to go after the One Piece until after his prime. He’s been stagnant but moving and shaking around the world, all for some big ideal, some big plan, something huge.

It is my stance, idea, theory, if you will, that all this makes sense if you look at it from the viewpoint that nothing—not the planning, not stealing the fruit, not the power growth, or making his way to Yonko status, not building his crew, even the hurry-up-and-wait—he’s been doing all these years, his whole life? Is because he’s hasn’t made a single decision for himself since Gol D. Roger died.

Outrageous! You cry! Shanks, a man who supposedly spouts on about being free and charting your own course and being a pirate? Is none of those things? Impossible, you will say. I will ask you how you got into my house and to please leave. But aside from the pirate bit, yes, and I can prove this. Calm my chili-baby’s and listen.

Yes, Shanks had his life taken from his adventure, his destiny set and marked right before the Loguetown execution. It is my belief that all this can be laid at the feet of—drumroll, please—Gol D. Roger himself!

Gasp! Crying! Fainting in the audience! I know, what a twist. Let me explain. In a flashback, we see Roger talking about Ace. It was Roger’s belief that Ace (his child) would be the savior of the world, the new Joy Boy, destined to destroy the World Government with what they learned from the Poneglyphs and Laugh Tale. He believed their generation was too early and that the next would usher in the new world. Ace would be his true successor. A little narcissistic, but a man like Roger probably couldn’t help but be. Not just that but it probably felt prophetic he found Laugh Tale of course that had to mean something?He was also dying as it was and put things in place for Ace to survive. He told Garp where he was so Garp could take him away with Rouge—a safety net, that sure was useful. Once she ya know, died.

With the understanding that the next generation would usher in the new age, Roger took aside a thirteen-year-old Shanks and revealed everything. He told him about the birth of the new Joy Boy, everything about Laugh Tale, and how he believed his son would usher in this age. I believe he gave Shanks this purpose: to pass on the straw hat to his son and help him become a man strong enough to fight the World Government. I think little traumatized Shanks, who is about to lose his father and has had the weight of the world put on his shoulders, takes it to heart and buries everything he is to fulfill his captain's last wish. And that’s horrible. I’ll get into the psychological implications later, but holy shit, Roger, what the fuck? He’s thirteen! And about to watch you die!

But yeah, doesn’t this make sense? Why the hell when Buggy wanted to go after the One Piece, did Shanks hold back and say they should wait, losing his brother because he has a secret his captain entrusted him with. Why the hell did they know about the Gum Gum Fruit and were searching for it? Why did Shanks spend so long on a little island like Fousha in the East Blue? Not only was he looking for the fruit, but he was also looking for Ace! (And maybe Rouge.)

Why has he been making all these connections but doing jack shit with them? Why did he become a Yonko but claim no territory for fucking years on end and do nothing really with his status? Why does he rely on such a small crew of such powerful individuals? Why does he party his life away, seem almost aimless, and not start to go after the One Piece until Luffy reaches Gear 5?

Because he’s the one to pass on the legacy; he’s the placeholder, a cog in the proverbial machine that is fate. He made sure Joy Boy would exist. And now that the dominoes have been placed and are falling fast, he’s going to challenge Luffy and make sure he’s strong enough to fight for it—strong enough to take on the World Government, the Celestial Dragons, and Imu—and then hand him a big red button to help do it afterward. That button will be all the sneaky shit he’s been doing in the background.

He’s been the bridge between his captain and this new age. Sure, it was too early, but his influence rippled out through the people he trusted and touched in his life. The same way Rayleigh trained Luffy, knowing what he was preparing him for in the next part of his journey, waiting years for him to arrive at Sabaody.

And all that needed to happen was the dreams, adventures, and sacrifices of a young boy. It’s almost poetic—a son for a son (or sun, in this case). My therapist says I make light of dark shit so I don’t have to emotionally feel the pain.

And now we get into the sad portion of today’s episode. Prepare the tissues because this is why I think Shanks is one of the saddest characters in One Piece.

Because think about it: Shanks’s life was charted for him; his adventure and future were stolen, decided with the reveal of Laugh Tale and all the secrets around it—everything, all so the next generation could one day rise up and bring a new dawn. Shanks never got to have a dream because it was stolen from him. He’s a walking, talking empty automaton, fulfilling his captain's dying promise made by a grieving thirteen-year-old.

He is dreamless, and for a man who is, in some sense, the freest in the world—can go anywhere, can do anything, is powerful enough to stop wars—he’s still trapped, chained to a future he can only wait for.

I don’t think he knows who he is outside of this. I don’t think he thinks he’ll live beyond it. (Which like I will fucking cry because this is gonna be kinda true.) I don’t even want to call it an ambition. Duty, maybe. Damned promise, more likely. And it’s ruined every relationship outside of it he’s ever had. Aside from one—

(Don’t even get me started on him and Mihawk and miscommunication, failed expectations, and Mihawk being the epitome of everything Shanks isn’t. With his dream chasing to the ends of the world, ending up unfulfilled and alone. Finding companionship and what he thought were similar drives in each other, but once Shanks lost his arm and his hat, he realized Shanks was never fighting for something he wanted. And it broke him a little; it broke their relationship—one of the only relationships Shanks chose for himself, with nothing to do with his mission.

And Buggy—he gave up his brother, was forced to leave him alone, and couldn’t say anything, couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t destroy his dream. And he couldn’t even be selfish enough to make him stay. Like, oh my God, the drama.)

Doomed yaoi aside, the only thing and person I think that messed up his perfectly made plans is Luffy.

Sweet baby Luffy wasn’t so sweet before the Red Force arrived. In the manga, it is mentioned that he was an angry, bitter child, lashing out almost like Ace to a degree. But Shanks, by just being kind, by being good, and by reaching out and teasing this little ball of anger, transforms him, saves him in a way. He gives him a drive, a dream, and a morality to live by. He gives him everything he never got—everything stripped from him. Shanks turns him into the type of person a special kind of Devil Fruit might call out to and get eaten by.

Nika chose Luffy because Shanks saved him by just being good and kind, giving this kid something beyond his anger and bitterness. Shanks gave Luffy the idea of freedom, and in return, he allowed Shanks’s perfectly clear mission to shatter. I think this Shanks makes the first real decision in his life: he goes, "Fuck, well, we’re backing this horse now," and Luffy becomes his child—not his captain's, but his future to bet on and help grow.

And I fucking love that. Luffy saves him just as he saved Luffy, in a way. And that’s his kid, his successor, more than it ever was for Roger. I will die on this hill. (If you want, you can even look at it as Shanks finally choosing a dream all his own and it’s Luffy.)

Will Oda see it this way? Probably not. He has a habit of brushing off stuff like this; I think he’ll make Shanks’s character into a noble man dedicated to stopping the World Government and not even think about the implications of tying all that to him at such a young age. But I do think Shanks expects to die when Luffy comes to fight; I think he wants to, just how Mihawk wants to die from Zoro’s blades. Because what is there beyond this? (And again, parallels!)

And I believe he will live! (Not Mihawk—he's gonna die.) Shanks will live, and symbolically, Luffy will free him from this self-imposed duty, this promise made by a child. Shanks will have made, even unwittingly, the thing that would free him, allowing him to move forward in a world where all the purposes he needs to find are his own.

And holy shit, that’s a lot for him, but then Blackbeard will happen, and he’ll die only having known freedom for a short while. Luffy will cry and create a new dawn, and it won’t be for nothing—except it will be for everything to Shanks.

In conclusion, Shanks doesn’t have a dream of his own. He never had a dream; if he did, it was squashed out of him in order to fulfill a promise set by his father, Gol D. Roger.

He loses his brother, loses his control over his destiny, and as his father sets such things into motion, Ace, Roger’s child, will become the new Joy Boy.

He makes a connection with someone outside of that mission and purpose, and in doing so, creates the opportunity for his own freedom and his own choice in Luffy.

Later down the line, Nika/Luffy will eventually free him in the same way he created his own freedom back then, giving him a new choice going forward. They will free him from the mission that was placed on his shoulders as a thirteen-year-old child, and afterwards, he will consequently be killed by Blackbeard, and everything will be horrible, and we will all cry. The end.

I hope everyone enjoyed this thesis on Shanks. Feel free to use it and steal it to your hearts content. I would love to write more if anyone has any questions or things they want to ask; I will be opening up my ask box for questions. I would love to go into more detail on his relationship with Luffy, his rivalry with Blackbeard, and how that ties into all of this, as well as his relationship with Mihawk (fuck man the parallels!!) or maybe Buggy. (Which I have less on it’s just really tragic.)

[felassan]

BioWare: "Our devs are fans, too! Just like you, they have a lot of love and passion for the #/DragonAge universe. We asked our team “What does Dragon Age mean to you?” and here’s what they had to say." [source]

Image transcriptions:

"What Does Dragon Age Mean To Us? “Dragon Age was my first RPG and my first love. It opened possibilities for what games were, and what they could be. These games are about adventure, connecting with people, and making sometimes fun, or sometimes difficult, choices. I love the world, the lore and, most of all, the characters. To me, they are the heart of it all!” – R.. Designer “Dragon Age means epic stories with human motivations driving them. It’s about magic and lore and uncertainty, but it’s also about finding a bunch of misfits and outcasts who end up becoming your family.” – T.. Senior Writer “I have worked on the Dragon Age series since DA2 and have been on The Veilguard project for the entire time. To me, this is a premier fantasy RPG, and I love character building.” – L.. Design Director “Working on Dragon Age has carried me through some really difficult times in my life, and it’s so good to see when it helps other people in the same way.” – J. Art Supervisor"

[doodlinge]

my writing tips, that i think people will find useful:

- write dialogue first and THEN make a scene around it.

i like to do this sometimes for multiple reasons. first, if you’re in a flow of good ideas, getting dialogue done will be a future GAME CHANGER. you don’t have to be stuck fussing over little word choices because you just do it when you have a good idea, and it works! fuss over it now, save time for descriptions later. second, the characters you’re writing usuuallly wont be able to read eachother’s minds. we people do everything by communication and talking! so, map out what you want your scene to look like through dialogue! i like to do mine as a screenplay or movie script, so that way i can ensure that the characters are speaking Like Real People (tm). and THEN I READ IT OUTLOUD >:)

- map out your chapters before you start to write. seriously, do it.

so, personally, my favorite part of fanfiction and writing is the planning stage. and i like doing it on paper, but we’ll get into that after this. first, you get the idea, the spark in your brain that could make an AMAZING story, comic, or au. that’s the general premise to work off of! write that down, if you need. next, do a VERY rough draft of what you want to happen—specifically, the 3 main points of your story: the beginning event, the middle event or climax, and the ending event, or your point A, B, and C. work off of and build up (or build down) from each of these core events of your story, planning the small events that lead up to The Big Guy (or B). these ideas or premises for each leading event can and probably will be VERY, VERY rough, but once you’ve got the rough idea of what will probably happen done, you can get to work on MORE PLANNING (sorry guys. learn to enjoy it)

- PLANNING PART TWO BABY WOOO (plan out your chapters. and if it doesnt work when you’re writing it, that’s okay!)

this is what you will do before you write your chapters, that works for me way better than just going in with no plan. personally, when i started to write the fic i’m currently writing, i mapped out all the rough details that i want to happen in the climax chapter of my story, because most people find the middle the hardest part. since i already had an rough idea of what would have happened before the climax with my previous planning stage, i already was able to connect how all of the buildup would lead into the climax of the story pretty easily. every action in your story will have a consequence, big or small, and that all will lead up to your protagonist bursting into tears or the main couple confessing their love or the final, epic battle between the protagonist and antagonist! if, when you’re writing, the rough idea you had just isn’t working out, you can either a: redo it completely if it’s a huge problem, or b (my favorite): work around it in the moment and improvise. i ended up making my fic’s climax way better just because of the extra scenes i added in while writing, but since i had my original plan to work off of, everything was a lot easier.

- make every scene with a motive to accomplish

most people know this one, but i thought it was good to add in. whether it’s to flesh out the world around your characters with fun and shenanigans or to give the audience a little more insight into a character who will be useful in the future, every scene and every chapter should have a purpose. when people act, they also like to give their characters motivations, and for a while, i wasn’t sure how that could connect. however, now i understand. let’s say a character is trying to motivate another one to be brave and face their fears, but character a is actually only interested in their own interests. character a’s motivation is to be self-serving—they’re not as concerned with helping character b, but instead, they want to help themself. this shows a lot about character a! when you have a purpose for every story beat and a motive for each character, it can help you flesh out the character much better.

- show don’t tell (and what i interpret that as)

okay, so for a while, i had NO idea what show don’t tell even meant. i LOVE writing about my character’s thoughts, their interests, their perspectives on what’s going on around them. character analysis is one of the best parts, for me! but there are ways to show what a character is thinking without the use of heavy description. for example, take this part from the fic i’m currently working on right now:

the character i’m writing for had not mentioned her mom the entire chapter, but when you go back and analyze her character throughout it, you can see major hints that part of why she who she is stems from her trauma with her mother. when she connects to an older adult female figure and feels understood, the issues she has are shown and not told, clear as day. by using dialogue and trusting your audience to connect the dots about your characters, you can make a better-written story! remember motivations; sometimes, characters don’t even know they have the motivations that they do, and the audience has to figure it out based on context clues. leave room for intrigue and mystery! think; if you were this character in this situation feeling the way they felt, what would you do? what would you say? why would you say it, and what would that reveal about you?

- write one story beat per day and WRITE ON PAPER

the word count, for me, doesn’t matter. if the quality of your writing is good, and the pacing gives audiences room to breathe, then that’s enough! quality over quantity, in my opinion. if you’re not up for writing, PLAN CHAPTERS! plan scenes, plan events! plan dialogue, make it fun! that is writing too. for me, when i have the planning done, i go with the One Story Beat Per Day Rule. if you get one small event done each time you write, you’ll be finishing The Big Event you wanted to accomplish in no time. and if you’re in the middle of a big story beat and you just need a break, i’d say to take one…. and later, come back with a notebook and a pen and think. paper has helped me write better because the flow of thought just keeps going when i’m focused, and i think it might work for a lot of people.

- remember, YOU CAN DO THIS! MAKE IT FUN!

writing and finishing stuff is really, really hard. but if you get one small thing done for the characters in your story, comic or au each day… you’ll eventually have an amazing, finished story. make it fun for yourself. listen to music, act out the scripts, use color theory, analyze your characters and don’t make it a chore! every small step contributes to getting to the top. make something you will love to write, and that you will love to read. make something for yourself, because in the end, if you enjoy it, the audiences will enjoy it.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Bonus note relating to that fantasy culture post I reblogged.

You know what really helps build up fantasy cultures? Making them interact.

Here is my most extreme example: my orcs, descended from a species of pack-hunting wild boar type animals, and my centaurs, chalicotheres that evolved a very weirdly consistent form of chimeric twin body shape.

The ancestors of the orcs used to hunt the ancestors of the centaurs. They were basically the only major predator of that species. This began long long before either group could ever be considered "people" but only stopped after both groups evolved equal levels of sapience and had many violent conflicts over it.

The centaurs defended themselves more and more, the orcs got more clever with their hunting, and then at some point they were no longer animals but all people, and what was once a dynamic of predator and prey became a dynamic of enemies at war.

The orcs surrendered. They abandoned their ancestral lands, conceding to the centaurs. They lost a lot of their culture, most of their important heirlooms, because so much of their ancestral history was so deeply centered on following their migrating prey and treating them as a sacred animal and using their hides and bones.

But that prey is a people now, and it is so very obviously the wrong choice to cling to that old culture. They had to start over.

And the centaurs became an isolated people, keeping everyone out, orc or otherwise.

Generations later, can they ever reconcile their past? Can they draw a line between animal and people and forgive the morally neutral act of simple predators hunting simple prey? When did it cross that line? Can these two opposed groups become friendly, after all that happened?

And then their cultures actually have a lot of similarities that happened to come from different roots.

The orcs are warrior folk who live in family groups and practice ancestral veneration.

So are the centaurs.

But the orcs are like that because they're descended from pack-hunting predators, while the centaurs are like that because they were the migrating herds of prey trying to defend themselves.

By having both of these groups in the story, even if they're not entirely central to the plot, I've already created a dynamic that makes the whole world feel more alive and occupied and gives it a history beyond the main characters and their own lives.

Following the plot, only focusing on worldbuilding that is plot relevant, that's all well and good and I encourage it! You don't want your story to drown in your worldbuilding. But man, it is so much fun to add those extra details and create connections between your people groups that extend far beyond the actual plot and the main characters. I think it can really make the world more immersive.

Sometimes I read fantasy, and it feels like the worldbuilding is shallow and flat, only there if it serves the one major plot line. It's like the rest of the world doesn't even exist. And I get it, I understand the tight focus, I know why so many people only want to write the small handful of characters and only stick to details that are plot relevant.

I just also really really love stories where the world itself is full and alive and you can see where there could be many many more stories to tell beyond the limited perspectives of the main characters.

[carionto]

Pressure and Release

Human: *hmm-ing at a set of dials and gauges*

Alien: What seems to be *translation unit catches up with the information they're displaying* OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE!!! GET TO THE ESCAPE PODS NOW!!!!

H: Shh, it's fine, I'm just experimenting.

A: OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE HORRIBLY!

H: Hey! Rude. *turns a dial causing a loud hissing noise* It's just air compressors and hydraulics.

A: *due to not dying, is beginning to relax* Why do you need up to 200 atmospheres running through these systems. We have invented alloy-specific magnetization mechanisms. Please, why do you keep insisting on these volatile and explosive means?

H: *turns the dial up* Because... *releases the pressure again, loud sudden hissing sound again* That's a cool sound.

A: Just because you think something is 'cool' doesn't make it-

H: *interrupts with another air build up and release sound without breaking eye contact*

A: *leaves*

H: *continues to play around*

_________________________________________

Okay, so I wanna get this off my chest. I find myself now for the fourth time starting a fun little activity, doing it for months on end, having a blast, and then almost suddenly dropping it entirely. First time I wrote some short stories or something every day for about six months and put it on deviantart. Then some longer form stuff started cropping in, sort of continuous narratives or whatever, and I stopped. Second was running a open D&D campaign with a persistent world but ever changing party, each session a sort of one-shot with a decision that would impact the whole world and what future sessions would exist. Not even 10 sessions in I felt under pressure to continue and build upon what I had already and just couldn't and stopped. Third was another kind of TTRPG, this time running my own server for Lancer. Again, open one shots, but less connected and I would hopefully get some of the players to want to run their own games within this freeform framework that I directly lifted from a D&D server I was in, even had some of the same people join as players. Few months later, I felt this massive pressure from myself to run games and come up with new scenarios that I just froze up. I cancelled game after game and just eventually abandoned the server and the resources I had made. Fourth time was here on tumblr itself. Back to writing some short form stuff on a fairly regular basis, almost daily for some time even. Had a blast, and then longer form content started creeping in. I thought I wanted to write some stories with an overarching plot and recurring characters and connected storylines, build up and pay off, that sort of thing. Again, I created this massive pressure by myself for myself of myself to do something I apparently can't. I created this sense of expectation of myself "Well, I started this, I should finish it, but where do I go, what do I do, how can I connect this?" And then this self-inflicted pressure got to me, again. And I stopped.

What I have known for a while, but couldn't put into words is that I don't want to tell a big long epic story or anything like that. I don't have one of those in me and forcing something like that only makes me shrivel up and run away. I have a world, several in fact, in my mind. Entire continents of a low fantasy character driven political intrigue and drama based world with tons of rules and restrictions, thousands of years of history, strong personalities for the main actors and so many individual scenes with them and the supporting cast, and a timeframe for when the overarching story happens and how it ends. But no story itself. Just scenes. I have a high fiction sci-fi world, again, with very distinct factions and races, most of the details I have written out back when I was a teen in a physical notebook with pen and pencil. Lots of historical points and events, how the races work, their domains if you will, near magical powers I try to explain with plausible science. Tons of specific details. Even drew each of their common symbols, how one of the languages is structured, schematics of how their cities are planned, and details on other planets in the system and how those might be important later. But, not a single individual character or story. Just dry facts. And then we have the loose sci-fi world I've created here. Bunch of different angles and perspectives, some comedic, some more serious, even put Cthulu in there. Many short and mostly self-contained stories and episodes of various humans doing things an exaggerated version of humanity would do. There is potential for a number of expanded and longer form stories here, some I attempted, and as mentioned, what ultimately made me stop. I don't have a book in me, and I don't want to write one. I just like to write little snippets and I want to get myself to accept this idea that, no, it does not need to become more than that. Because every time I start going down a path where it feels like it should be more than a one page thing, I seize up, start thinking that I need to do this, panic when I can't come up with anything, go silent, and give up. It just does not work for my brain. And that's fine.

[azaharinflames]

I wonder if Lou’s also excited for the backstory that Tommy is going to get from this hurdle/thing from Tommy’s past. The more a character is fleshed out the more they’re here to stay. Also I agree he’s way too excited about the episode to point to anything other than Buck and Tommy strengthening their relationship even more.

Honestly - I think it makes a lot of sense. Like, he's been building Tommy's backstory since he came back for Season 7, and who knows if Tim has listened to some of his ideas. So far, what he said in one cameo lowkey was followed by what we learned later on in canon (his Dad not being the greatest, per se).

To me, Tommy is just a world of possibility. Tim has finally a 'new' character that works really well in-universe, that has established links to nearly all characters, yet someone we know actually little of. I'm sure exploring that is both interesting and fun, for both Tim as a showrunner, and Lou as an actor. We also know he holds a special fondness for Tommy, so I'm sure this is being special for him.

Also, you made a great point. You give a character more background, and more ties to the world, and you feel them feel more rooted down... their chances of staying grow every time we get more attached to them.

And the thing is - and sorry for making this answer so long -, even with Taylor we didn't see an attempt this big. We had a half-assed storyline with her Dad that felt too little too late, and other than her being a reporter and the stuff with her Dad, we had... next to nothing. We didn't know about her life, and we didn't have her connected to other characters. Hell, they've gone as far as to give Tommy a car, when they could've used Buck's Jeep. All of that is world-building, and not for nothing.

All in all, we agree. For someone who loves Tommy this much, it just wouldn't make sense for him to be so excited if this is the episode he leaves, or the episode the couple he genuinely enjoys breaks up. And again, it would be downright mean for him and Oliver to describe the ep as fun, or to be this excited for it if his fans would be either disappointed or heartbroken by the end.

(there is also the fact that Eddie has the A plot, and the more dramatic one at that. Either the ep is full of drama, or Bucktommy has a more comedic SL that is not as big or as bad as we're fearing/thinking)

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

(The following is some rambling, FEH Spoilers ahead if you care)

I hope at the end of FE:Heroes life, that instead of it just becoming a forgotten mobile game, a fully fledged game is made out of it. Because I really do think having a FE game that have shorter Saga's would be really fun to play through. And just how much Alfonse could be challenged in a full game where he can MASSIVELY develop instead of the time strides he's made in the mobile game.

Of corse of a full game they'll need to change several things such as how much of their army is made up of heroes from other worlds. But having this HUGE skeleton with FEH for a full game could make one of the best, if not the best, Fire Emblem main line game.

Like, we have the set up to have Alfonse really turn into his own. He's gets to talk to past heroes and other world versions of those heroes. There is so much he can learn from them all but more importantly, so many people to compare him to. Just feeling like a failed leader because all these heroes that saved worlds are around him, while he's a prince in a world that's currently in a war with his neighboring country.

He keeps feeling this way until he meets the Summoner (Avatar Character). Someone from another world who isn't a hero. They're just an average somebody in that world. Even though they are able to use a Devine weapon that belongs to his family, he fights with them and grows closer as friends. He learns that it doesn't matter name or status, but what you do with your own strength to help everyone you can. And even when you can't save everyone, you can always work together with others to raise you and everyone to the point where you can save more people than you could alone.

While the first two Books of FEH didn't really do much for Alfonse, I do think in a full game they would be able to have a better foil with Bruno through these early parts. While Veronica is a very tragic character, she is more so Shernna's foil through the first book and then becomes a fascinating character through the rest of the books (so far). If the story would follow Alfonse's point of view, it would do wonders to REALLY push that foil with Bruno more and more until that foil changes into irony and tragedy that was played in the later books.

While Book 3 was one of the biggest breaking points for Alfonse's charcter, I really do belive that if Alfonse were to have a stronger written connection with Bruno early on. The death of Bruno would hit harder. We know Bruno and Alfonse were childhood friends to the point Alfonse's first actions we see is looking for Bruno (Under his fake name, Zacharius). Hell, you can make this hurt even more by adding an underlying feeling Alfonse had for Bruno. But seeing as Bruno meant a LOT to Alfonse at such a young age, where he was still getting compared to his father and other heroes. To just have someone that wouldn't judge you, have fun with you, and make you laugh. Most people would devolve some romantic feelings for that. While this seems more fanficy just because "Lead turned GAY for Enemy?!" It's use in a story here would push character development further.

Some of the best stories ever written i've read are about building up the base of a character. Only to destroy EVERYTHING about them. Leaving only their bare core and true thoughts on display. Only for them to either have the story end with such a melancholy finish that it just feels. Or give that charcter a way to rebuild themselves stronger, more ferm in their ideals then ever to change the odds. Alfonse is someone, if given enough time and attention in a full game, to be this charcter. He already has enough set up within FEH for this to become real. He really is burdened by the form of media he's in.

I don't really have any closing notes after that but yeah. Alfonse is actually one of the best Fire Emblem Lords when you think about it. Put him in the next smash game

.

[vedurnan]

my elden ring player characters

the elden ring dlc comes out soon, is everyone excited? let's talk about our elden ring characters. i will begin.

i played through elden ring right after the game released when almost nothing was known about it, and so my first encounters with its world were full of mystery. i had no idea what was awaiting me so i imagined my first character as a foreign knight from a land across the sea, the very distant kin of an ancient warlord, just like the game's story describes our player character. this gave birth to...

i loved how her history and personality came together in my head naturally as i played through the game and came to know its world. we walked in parallel together through a strange digital landscape and made big decisions in the game before the community of players had figured out what the consequences of those actions would be. it lent itself perfectly to the "doomed knight" character she took on as our travels continued. she's a strength build with a lot of fire incantations on the side, very fun to play for me :)

next i wanted to try a dexterity character with bleeding damage, and that playstyle made me feel like a cheating asshole because it was so strong, like i was some kind of cunning & depraved highwayman...

unlike lorence who came into the service of the evil serpent from a faraway place, i imagined myrtle as a gelmir local, someone who is totally adapted to the nightmare landscape & murder ecosystem of the mountain of blasphemy. lorence and myrtle both fit dark souls "invader" archetypes very cutely in my mind, and when i play as either of them i like to use my recusant finger every once in a while even though i am terrible at pvp. beware dude, we will get you!

i also wanted to try something really different which i had never tried in any of these games before, a pure sorcery character. the royal academy atmosphere of raya lucaria was fun to adventure in but didn't feel like a type of character i wanted to inhabit, so i imagined once again that this new sorcerer was from lands far away...

i think u can see my earthsea fanfiction showing here, but that's fine with me. i imagine ternfeather as someone from perhaps a bit farther away than lorence, having only heard vague stories or out-of-date historical information about the lands between. i imagine the voyage was long and difficult and he must have been looking forward to a warm welcome from his new colleagues, but instead they started shooting glintstone shards at him :(

i use a lot of sleep magic on this character, which can make some combat encounters very difficult but others extremely easy. that highly specialized feeling seems fitting for a character with an academic background to me, & i also enjoy how sleep magic is connected to a folkloric figure of mixed or indeterminate gender within the game's story. very satisfying!

as i played through the game on these characters i became really enamored with the FLAME OF FRENZY and i knew i had to play a character centered all around it. i also wanted to play a very faith-focused character build so this worked out nicely...

i tried to play odile very close to her backstory as a random frenzied commoner, so she doesn't wear any armor other than her clothing and usually only uses a club and frenzy incantations (although sometimes i can't resist using vyke's spear). following the frenzy storyline through the lands between and into the depths under the capital was so fun, everything about it is dope 2 me :)

damn this made a long post! i like to imagine that these four adventure together kind of like a darkest dungeon party, or like service industry workers or something. they are all from very disparate backgrounds and don't always get along that well, but the circumstances of their dying world have bound them together as companions

[katyspersonal]

I had a fun dream regarding the Elden Ring DLC!!! In fact, it was a DLC for the DLC. Apparently it was my brain's spin on "how it could have gone differently", centered around at least 3 different endings (?) that I got to try! It was hard to say whether I was playing or actually being the main character and experiencing all this (best type of videogame-based dreams!)

The focal point was Divine Gate being destroyed and Miquella being spat back out, in his accursed child body again and the "plot" started when we returned some things/feelings to him to make him active. The amount of dialogue he'd provide depended on the amount of Crosses we visited, and before returning them he was completely limp. In either case he was labeled on the map as 'Heartbroken Miquella' or something. There was one 'default', ending that needed passivity sort of. There were plenty of quests and things to do still that were required for the plot, but provided you didn't do anything "special" it ended up in Miquella basically building a Noah Arc very quickly. Yes, because some unknown force triggered the great flooding that was coming. It would basically destroy the world Greater Will and Fingers created so far, and yet let it be made anew. The good side of it was, that since Death is connected with water in Elden Ring world (souls of those that didn't die properly assume Jellyfish form, Godwyn became a sea creature, Tibia Mariners) a LOT of people were coming back with the water but in pure form. Children of the Stars without their rotten flesh and all. This ending felt bittersweet though; having done so much to 'uproot' the fundamentally wrong things Two Fingers melded into this world, he still could not find the courage to let his friends die yet there was no time to separate their bodies from flesh like Ranni and victims of Astrologers' experiments... Effectively, preserving """filth""" into new world and saving what he could save.

The second ending somehow stopped the flood by effect, granting it protection of his gentle pale yellow light (not to be confused with the oppressive gold of the Erdtree!). Protection from any Outer God and from corruption and rotting from within. That however would result in people like Malenia, Godwyn (Prince of Death), Romina etc getting sealed into yellow crystals for the 'next 1000 years' so they could not corrupt the world but alas they could not be healed still. This ending was centered on Miquella comprehending that no, Radahn wasn't "corrupted by sinful world" into becoming a warmonger compared to younger self but war WAS his nature. And for many people, alas their nature was 'necessary evil' without which the world would be a hollow place. So he accepted he could not "save" some people because that'd not be them anymore. However, he could still let the world rest in Heaven by putting it in preservation for a long time. Not cleaning, just preserving from evil, external or internal. And how this secret ending was achieved? ......by marrying Miquella, which included a large variety of activities in order to distract Leda, avoid Leda, lead him away before Leda appears, sending more friends to talk to Leda, having Dane and Leda shipped (lol okay??) etc hfhygxjjh Because if you messed up this part, she'd not let you close enough to Miquella and you'd be set back to flood ending XD

Third ending had to do with the darkness!! It was a secret one, where you would seek rifts Messmer left along the way where he used Base Serpent powers too much. The rifts were patched out by the earth itself, but you had to reopen them like wounds. Reverse Crosses collecting! Because.. if they all were opened, you could access the Lightless Abyss that Base Serpent came from and force it into the world! It would extinguish any and all light of this world leaving only blue star-affiliated one. A bit like Ranni's ending but EVIL!! Creatures of golden light would get striped from it though (Queelign copes and seethes lol). It ensured a lot of horrors being unleashed though and consuming every "weak" person. Tarnished, Albinaurics and other lightness were remotely safe, but those born of gold and under Ring and relying on it were FUCKED. Especially Marika's family. They'd remain defenseless and be the first to get swallowed, so from now on they'd need protection. And whereas blue stars remained the age would be darkness swallowing all of them until only one remained. I as a "player" knew it'd explode to bring the light again.. but other characters didn't.

.....yet when I wanted to try this unleashed Abyss ending, Miquella himself stopped me by stabbing me with Bewitching Branch (not swinging it, specifically stabbing) and I woke up from very intense feeling of love and yearning for him lol fgfggh The last thing I remember how scared he was that he barely stopped... all that. But I just suddenly found him the most appealing person in the world, as if I never loved anyone else. I can't even describe how it felt. It was like.. every cell of my body suffering and only his touch could cure this torment. I had to lay down about 20 minutes to finally calm down gjfggd I am actually embarrassed by it, especially since intrusive thoughts followed, but also I guess it wasn't my fault? Very weird type of alarm clock though 💔

[angelsdean]

Which hobbies do you see canon Cas do and why? I am interested in your perspective on his character. Do you think he would still like physical hobbies because they remind him of humanity and the reality of being in control while being connected to the world he fell in love with, or do you think he would stay away from more physical hobbies because they remind him of his time as a machine and soldier? Or something completely different from those reasons? Like Vic, please, I wanna know what you think about his interests, about the way he moves on earth post-canon and how his perspective on things might change, or not.

Hi, Val !! I'm sooo sorry it took me so long to get to this ask. I did the silly adhd thing where i told myself "i'll get to this later when i have more time to answer properly" and then....my brain forgor :(

Anyways I have a cas hobbies tag and I really really think he would actually enjoy sports a lot!! For some of the reasons you listed but also because it's a way for him to use a lot of the stuff he was trained for in a new and fun, recreational way instead of as a weapon.

Cas has a very strategic mind, he's spent billions of years being a soldier and he's also charismatic and someone we've seen other angels turn to as leader (like during s9). I think a lot of his skills would transfer well from battlefield to sports field. I also think Cas likes to do and be active and in motion. We see him get very impatient with things that take time. He doesn't like waiting for doors to be unlocked lol, he abandons cars when they "suddenly stop working", he needs stuff to happen now. Which is why, contrary to popular fanon I really don't see Cas doing more meditative hobbies like knitting and gardening. In 15x06, when Cas is talking about fishing, he says he "had a friend (Dean) who always praised fishing for its meditative qualities. Wish I found it more relaxing." Dean loves quiet, slow, meditative hobbies. He loves fishing. He loves working on cars. Building things (emf reader, ma'lak box), even stuff like cleaning out his guns, taking them apart and putting them back together. It's a lot of doing stuff with your hands and also being alone with your thoughts. I think Cas would, perhaps eventually, come to enjoy some of those types of hobbies too, but I think he still leans toward more physical hobbies. I said it in this post but I really think Dean would be the one more interested in knitting (adhd boy needs to keep his hands busy) and gardening (similar vibe to fishing -- meditative, outdoors).

Aside from sports, I think Cas would also enjoy some more unconventional or risky hobbies. I can see him getting into making weird art, sculptures out of found objects, glass-blowing, welding, skydiving (to Dean's horror), deep-sea diving, cave exploring, probably some illegal stuff too like this post suggests, and idk leading a heist, you know normal stuff.

While I totally understand the idea behind giving Cas peaceful meditative hobbies post-canon, and I think he would enjoy some of them for a time, Cas would eventually grow bored / frustrated and want to try something new. I can totally see him being a "serial hobby starter" and just constantly getting into "new" hobbies and buying all the supplies and gear and then like, a week later he's over it and Dean is throwing his hands up exasperated (but fond) like "CAS! Where the hell am I supposed to put all your mosaic crap now??? The garage is already full!"

[tentakilly]

Unpopular opinion but the SCP community thinks so objectively(as in one way) that a subjective(as in creative) explanation is immediately disliked or hated because it isn’t the normal sci-fi jargon.

(Rant/vent)

For being an extremely talented community of authors and artists and for being the world’s biggest collaborative writing project this community really, really hates a creative idea or observation that doesn’t fit a pre established cannon(just classic its always just classic).

A couple years ago on the SCP subreddit there was a kid asking how reality bending works there was over a hundred comments explaining the sci-fi world building and the op repeatedly responded to those comments with confusion they just kept explaining. When a commenter came in and explained it like it was an artstyle that comment and the ops comment thanking the commenter for helping them understand were downvoted into hell. You had to sort by controversial to find it.

A while back there was a post about how they didn’t understand SCP-3999 and wanted a little bit more explanation. All of the notes were filled with people explaining there hatred for the story and why it was bad. When the op kept asking for why the hate I other than it wasn’t scary they got shat on for it.

A while back on an old now dead account I commented on an SCP power scale meme(making fun of power scaling) that we could have them try and scale Darling Pink(and actual scp) because magical girls are allways a power scaler’s weakness(an actual problem in power scaling communitys). This joke was met with so many people going like “you can’t do that 682 solos” in a non joking way.

Speaking of 682 someone a while back said that there headcannon for it was that it was a thought experiment and that comment was met with so many people going “wrong 682 is an actual creature”.

One time there was a conversation about how there was this really good tale(forgot wich one) but a lot of people didn’t finish it because it was really long and wasn’t the kind of story they enjoyed. That conversation was met with “just finish it” and “if you don’t like it/understand it just read it better”.

Would you believe me if I said that all those examples came from my experience. This god damn “community” nearly killed my passion for art and writing on several occasions because I thought differently than everyone else.

Just like I’m belittled and looked down upon irl I’m mocked for thinking differently here no matter the site. It’s been like this since I joined the community at 10. No one bothered to ask if the questions came from an insecure child and mocked her relentlessly. Telling her, her art was bad and wouldn’t improve. Telling her she didn’t deserve to have her art seen by the world.

To this day I’m scared of posting officially on the wiki dot because i know my art and stories will get mocked relentlessly because they’re different. Because they’re mine. Because they’re a part of me. You guys nearly killed apart of me because you couldn’t handle a very obvious child’s questions about the story and world you built together. Because a child was looking for a place to hide from the world that was hurting her and you failed her and made her actively scared of participating in a community that’s supposed to be collaborative. The community that raised her.

My oc Toby Miller. I’ve posted about him only once compared to the rest of my SCP ocs and that’s because he’s so deeply connected to my struggles of being understood that I’m afraid of taking about him despite him being the main character because he will be called stupid. He will be mocked for being different than all the other official characters. He will be belittled and be nothing more than a dumb kids oc.

Yall can’t look beyond a surface level understanding and when people’s interpretations of a story vary vastly you get mad and kill there want to participate. It sucks.

[krispdreemurr]

oh oh i have an interesting discussion/query ! what do u think the meta purpose of making kris act like they do at the end of chapter 1 was? specifically like the imagery of a kid in a green/yellow shirt manipulating a red soul, pulling out a knife, having red eyes and grinning evilly cause like... i feel like deltarune definitely incorporates the memory of undertale throughout? like its advertised as a game for people who finished undertale and theres lots of references and things that are only as impactful if you had an emotional connection to the original game, like spamton neo and gaster saying "have you been looking for me?" and just.. so many things but most interestingly imo being that ralsei almost comes across like a fanonized "cinnamon roll" version of asriel that was so popular way back when? ofc he's more than that but thats like. a Part of him anyways what i mean is like, when chapter 1 released many people (myself included) saw that and instantly assumed that kris was being controlled by chara because of how strongly chara-esque (*especially* to the fandom, like ralsei) the imagery was, only for chapter 2 to come out and many people (myself included^2) completely disregarded chara as having any bearing on the story whatsoever and that kris is just themself trying *not* to be controlled by us. i think we can all agree that the latter is correct, and some people were clearly smarter than me in chapter 1 and deduced the truth even then (e.g. lynxgriffin in their comics), but i am left wondering what the point of that was almost? i thought you might have some interesting thoughts on that, cause like, if kris's frustration with the player is essentially the main plot of the game (give or take), the allusion to chara was a little bit 'distracting' for the fandom i feel like? some ppl are (somehow) still confused & blaming chara even! i guess im just wondering, what if kris had wore a different shirt and menaced the player in a different way at the end of chapter 1? do you think it would have improved the story to eliminate the possibility of confusion, or do u reckon toby fox want us confused? idk LMAO just thinking aloud atp. just been on my mind the past few days bc in retrospect, while the intro to deltarune is obviously trying to trick you into believing this is "undertale 2", post-dark-world the game is unambiguously super different, to the point where it feels a little bizarre that there'd be a red herring *after* deltarune already smashed the notion that it's a prequel or sequel into pieces doesnt it?

i think it's most legible to me as an attempt by Kris to psych us out that they sort of get lucky with thanks to toby helping them!

like, obviously they have no way to know you've been menaced by nonbinary children before - the specific parallels aren't a thing they're reaching for. but they're trying to get the player freaked out, and toby sort of lends them a helping hand by making them coincidentally charalike.

it's not the first time he's had a character freak us out with knowledge they don't have (thinking about sans and the talking flower in grillbys), and it's not the first time in Deltarune alone where a parallel is arguably sheer coincidence in world but happens to echo something to the player. i don't think it's like cheap or anything - toby fox does a really good job building up a language of associations and connections and motifs and then sometimes uses that to trick you just the tiniest bit lmao

but just like Chara, the ways to see thru the trick are there if you're looking. if you pay attention to Chara, you learn their oh so ominous faces and scares were originally just a thing they did to have fun with their brother, and maybe you get an appreciation that they were a child trying to scare you in childish ways. similarly, if you talk to everyone in town, you learn that Kris is a prankster by nature who delights in freaking everyone out (and also someone who would eat an entire midnight pie), and maybe you get the chance to go "oh, they're pranking me, huh?"

a little like Chara, Deltarune ch1 uses Kris to ask if you've been paying attention to the material. did you notice this really, really wasn't Undertale? and if you did, what conclusion do you reach about this new kid?

[brb-on-a-quest]

I had a thought last night, and even though the only canon bat source I've had is WFA, and I've only *just* started getting into fanfic, so characterizations may not be accurate/have been done before, but IDK. I need this to exist out there.

Timothy Drake-Wayne writes fics sometimes.

It started off with the necessity of creating so many fake IDs. One thing led to another and Tim was coming up with backstories for all the Johns, Marys, and Joes that he invented while doing his Gotham digital surveillance. After all, he was trying to make these people's fake IDs look as real as possible, which meant more than just a name on a couple of sheets of paper.

It means creating a fake digital footprint. For each one.

So, on the rare occasions when things are calmer, and he's not immediately needed, he sits on his computer and types out head cannons for each of the OCs he has created. He spends a lot of time doing research on different cultures, neurodivergencies, physical abilities, and backgrounds to try and 1) paint accurate pictures and 2) learn. He hides the world building tidbits in a secret folder that he's taken so many measures to hide from Oracle (she already knows, but she doesn't actively look after finally figuring out what the folder of names, complete with physical descriptions, life stories, and preferences is out of respect for Timothy). (Also, all this writing knowledge actually comes in handy for crime-solving things, but he doesn't fully realize it at the time).

Tim even went as far as to make social media accounts for some of his favorites and posts bits and pieces of the head cannons to make them, again, seem like real people. Just in case. As a precaution. You never know.

Jason finds out somehow, in a freak accident and collision of siblings that so often happens. Tim is sweating bullets, trying to steel himself for the endless teasing. He is fully prepared to delete every single file that's in that folder and deny that it ever exists for all eternity.

Except Jason doesn't. Jason's too much of a literary nerd (granted, he prefers more classic literature than social media fics, but this is another thing he can connect with his little brother on- he's *excited*) to tease Tim about the writing. He kind of persuades Tim to take more time for his hobby because Tim has some markings of talent in his very specific creative niche. Tim may have also convinced Jason to try it exactly once, to create a fake Twitter profile for Mr. Darcy and create shitposts from his point of view. He has a great time with it once, and then he moves on (but sometimes he creates other accounts for other characters that Tim doesn't know about).

They make a pact between the two of them not to tell the others; they'd ask too many questions and make it less fun.

But every once in a while, Tim would walk into Jason's place to crash for a bit, steal all of his Red Bull, update Jason on his writing projects, and get writing advice.

[nolita-fairytale]

burn your life down: the director's cut, or rather, fun facts about this story now that it's over

luca's last name in my fic is davies, and formally davies-bernardi. bernardi in italian means 'strong as a bear' which, was truly a perfect coincidence that i originally thought it sounded good hyphenated with davies. it felt like the perfect little nugget to drop in here.

this one kind of took on a life of its own. I thought maybe a headcanon or a few chapters, then 46.5k words later... before writing a fic, i always like to map out where i'm going, because it helps me zero in on what story i want to tell. as someone (and who hasn't, truly) who has plenty of abandoned fics, i like to get clear on what story it is i want to tell before beginning to write so that i know it's a fic worth writing for me. no, i don't think finishing a fic should be a marker of success, but where i'm at right now, it feels like the best way for me to see if i have a story to tell or not.

speaking of stories to tell, the reason i wanted to have our main character divorced was because i wanted to try something different. i wondered how i could differentiate this mc (while keeping the reader neutral so you could picture yourselves in it if you wanted to) from others that i have written / will write in the future. the divorce and growing apart is actually kind of inspired by my previous upstairs neighbor who i met a year after his divorce. i wanted to imagine what the inner world of someone who had experienced a divorce that wasn't messy, but its relationship had just run its course and i the end, left two people who weren't sure who they were and how to talk to each other anymore would be like.

music and playlisting really helps me envision and feel into the world that I’m building. I ask myself questions like: what does their love sound like? what does this relationship shound like? how do i want the world i'm building feel, and how do i convey that in sound? and then of course, what songs could underscore certain moments of this chapter? listening to the playlist i create as i go really helps me get into character aka enter the world of the story when i'm sitting down the write.

so many of my fics and interactions are based on my own real life experiences, which is why they often feel so human and so real. i weave in little details like conversations i've had, a person i reminded of. i often write dialogue after i've imagined the scene in my head down to the cadence of how characters speak to one another to make sure it feels grounded.

speaking of, we've got to talk about the food in this fic, something that you all complimented me on at the very beginning! it was important for me to have the food feel deeply personal to reader, and be an expression of her identity through the years. yes, i wrote it with an mc with asian heritage in mind. however, i wanted to make space, again, for you to picture yourself in this fic, which is why mc's ex and family were written with japanese heritage.

a lot of the dishes were inspired by dishes i've had that were similar to what i think her culinary pov would be, and a lot of it is the way that i cook as well. i am not a chef by any means, but i am AM a home cook who occasionally does pop ups who very recently discovered my own culinary pov. food for me is something that not only helps me express myself, but has helped me connect to parts of my own identity. in so many ways, as someone who describes themselves as a cultural melting pot, food helps me feel closer to myself; it helps me find and define, and express who i am.

the culture of food and the role it plays in allowing us to connect was really important for me to weave into this story as well.

for the mikkelson twins, i pictured timothee and pauline chalamet as jesper and mathilde.

for the kimuras: rina sawayama would play astrid, darren barnet would play joe, and gia kim would play lina.

let's talk about luca's character development: so many things were so will poulter-coded/borrowed for will poulter, which felt right to do considering he wove his own life into the luca's tattoos. examples? the nike book, the kendrick lamar on the playlist, how much internal work the man has done on himself.

in the end, I initially had mc have a way bigger freak out than she did -- that it would be her final: holy shit am i ready to be loved moment, but as i wrote it, it ended up being luca who brought up the main conflict. it just ended up going in a different direction and didn't feel right to go with my original plan, because she felt so in their relationship already that i pivoted.

i watched a lot of travel and lifestyle copenhagen vlogs because i'm obsessed with youtube.

after season 2 of the bear, i wanted to explore what positive relationships with mothers could look like in these characters. that's why mothers (and single mothers) are the superheroes of this fic.

i knew i wanted this fic to be about these things: second love, loss, trusting the beginning that comes after the end, inspiration, following your heart, and mothers. these are the guiding principles that i used when writing, knowing that these were the pillars i wanted this story to be about.

looking forward: i am working on two oneshots that will live in this world, one about marcus visiting again -- an eat, pray, love for him of sorts -- that's about mothers and loss and life. the other one is a fun, sexy little smutshot that will hardlaunch their (she and luca's) restaurant so keep an eye out for those. truthfully, i've only just started workshopping the marcus one and am prioritizing finishing my carmy fic first.

opening myself up for q&a! feel free to ask any questions about this fic or my writing process in the comments.