#I've been talking about it for a while but it's finally being made a priority | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kerink · 9 months ago

Text

putting aside my issues with continuity (because i know there's a debate about what "continuity" means in wtnv) and putting aside my personal preferences, i'd like to talk about what's made me unhappy the last two seasons:

i think the story telling is bad

that's not to say brinknor aren't creative people and good writers, they are. that's why i listen to and enjoy the show. i've also read their more stand-alone and self-contained works, i know they are talented. this is not a dig on them or their abilities. if i didn't like them or their work i wouldn't bother with it

the main issue, for me, is that i think the last two seasons have been trying to cram in more ideas than the season length has air for, so we're not seeing the complete story. i think too much is being left intentionally vague for fans to play with in a way that doesn't work

year 10 ends with carlos becoming a night vale citizen and him reflecting on whether or not he's okay with that, whether or not he feels like he actually belongs here, despite that having been his main struggle while he was trapped in the dow. we saw that although carlos has committed to and prioritized night vale, and that was ostensibly enough for him to be accepted, he did not actually accept night vale back. we assumed that carlos' commitment to cecil over his work was him finally finding his place, but all it was was him finding his priorities. maybe it wasn't that night vale had rejected him, maybe it was that night vale was attempt to protect its voice, and only allowed carlos back once he agreed to love cecil like the town does

and then janet shows up. at the end of year 11, janet said that her primary motive for coming to night vale was to get back at carlos. we saw blake bullying carlos for having abandoned the university and how he's viewed as a disgrace. we saw the university staff threaten cecil. janet ruins the town that got carlos' name on the map. all of these events are congruous with the above struggle: does carlos belong in night vale or does he belong in the real world? is carlos a citizen or an interloper?

but that isn't the main struggle that plays out. other than what was stated above, and janet making a few backhanded remarks about carlos' bad science, there is zero evidence that janet's primary motive was to hurt carlos until she says so at the very end. in fact, at the beginning of the season, she stated that he primary motive was to make night vale normal. that's in line with her actions far more than hurting carlos is. hurting carlos feels like a bonus to what janet actually wants: to be in control and in charge. the majority of the season is spent antagonizing dana (which was narratively unsatisfying because it was a bland rehash of the a matter of blood arc, but i digress). carlos is not a participant in this story, he hides and he lets the city protect itself, he lets cecil take the heat for him

and when we step back and look at y11 in the context of the primary theme of y10's finale we learn the answer: carlos is an interloper

as soon as science becomes threatening again the town turns on him. they reject him, they strip him of his power, they judge cecil for being with him. the town did not accept carlos, they had a truce with him formed out of his marriage to cecil

y11 left a lot of questions unanswered: how long has carlos actually been gone? what contact did he have with the university after y1? who is still looking for him? what role does dr. kayyali and her search party have in this? was the glow cloud (all hail) the only perma-death?why did janet's explanation of the glow cloud (all hail) not kill its child too? why did the university have such a large staff? why did the entire staff turn on janet so easily and so quickly?

and narratively it feels unsatisfying because janet's stated motives were not in congruence with her actions. which fine. people lie. maybe janet was lying about what she wanted to prevent carlos from meddling. maybe she did want to ruin night vale for him but got distracted by the whole doubles thing so picked that up as a side project. maybe we only heard so much about what janet was doing to dana because cecil cares about dana and carlos asked cecil not to talk about the plan he was forming to defeat janet. i can accept all of that, i just wish we'd gotten a whiff of it instead of having it entirely being left to interpretation

so we leave y11 with questions about what the point of it all was when a) there was only 1 permanent consequence that we're aware of and b) it didn't provide us any new information. we got the most about carlos' backstory we've ever gotten, but that was really the only thing you could say came out of y11. and even learning that about carlos felt violating, felt inappropriate, furthered our question of who is carlos and what role does he have in town

and it seems like carlos felt it too, because he decides to go back to the dow. when he was there he gained wisdom about himself and who he was and what he wanted from life. he figured himself out and found his place in the night vale. after a year of having his status as professor robles of the university of what it is questioned and derided by janet and her team, and having his status as carlos the scientist hero of night vale scorned and rejected by the town, he wanted to return and gain clarity on how he picks up the pieces of himself

but that's not what happens either!

the boy shows up and the story becomes about him. we don't learn where the boy came from, how he appeared in night vale, why he's in night vale instead of desert bluffs, how the timeline supports there being two kevins when back in e106 and e209 the timeline made sure to kill the duplicate cecil. how did no one see that the boy looked like cecil? it could have been a fun reveal if everyone thought it was another little cecil (also playing into all the palmer childhood lore this season) only to bait and switch it being a young kevin. we don't learn why tamika specifically took over raising him or how carlos instinctively knew to keep the boy away from his family. we don't learn how the boy was rapidly aging while in night vale or what age he wound up stopping at when kevin took him away. we don't learn why mother lauren absorbed him instead of killing him outright, since she seemed more than happy to try to get rid of kevin. what happened to the boy's desire to be his own person and create his own timeline away from kevin's fate? isn't the finale a tragedy and not a happy ending? what did this season matter if everything he learned about himself and the world was erased? the boy does not get a full story because too much air was given to lauren and kevin

with lauren we don't learn how she re-made a name for herself in desert bluffs too, how she got in the smiling god's good graces, how she manifested the power she presented with in night vale, how her rise to power impacted kevin's control over dbt, what the state of dbt is after lauren left for night vale, what was her motivation for even coming to night vale, what did the night vale chapter of the joyous congregation think about this, did carlos' killing the centipede matter at all and does anyone care? lauren does not get a full story because too much air was given to kevin and the boy

with kevin we don't learn what becomes of his theocracy, what becomes of his control of the church, what did his speech on changing even mean and how does it impact things when he's choosing to create a time loop? when kevin said he was going to bring someone back with him, who was he talking about? where are charles and donovan and what do they think? why do kevin and carlos not interact even a single time? does the night vale chapter of the joyous congregation care that their prophet has returned and what does kevin's defending of night vale mean for their beliefs? kevin does not get a full story because too much air was given to the boy and lauren

some of these questions are nitpicks, some are good things to leave vague and up to the audience. the main issue here is that: 1) the boy does not get a beginning to his story, the middle of his story ultimately didn't matter because mother lauren erased it, and he has no true ending because we already know what that looks like and in its being a time loop it will never end; 2) lauren does not get a beginning or a middle to her story; and 3) kevin's motives are totally all over the place. does he want to change or is he still so afraid of losing control that being able to control his own terrible future brings him some kind of closure? why is the best he can offer the boy the same horrific life he's spent the last century trying to recover from?

and carlos does not get a story at all. none of this mattered. carlos wanted to go back to the dow but he never did, he never got the chance, we never saw what he did with the time that he had. is carlos doomed to living in this space of not knowing who he is or what his role is because he quite literally had to pull the plug on the one place that offered him a safe haven to explore himself?

in trying to tell the stories of 4 people, no one got a story at all

and that's what's really frustrating, it's just felt like the last two season's haven't mattered, moved along the primary story, or evolved any of the characters in satisfying ways

y1 carlos decided to stay in night vale; y2 strexcorp was defeated; y3 cecil freed himself from lot 37 and carlos confirmed his decision to stay in night vale; y4 night vale freed itself from the beagle puppy and hiram mcdaniels was brought to justice; y5 night vale fell apart and had to find a way to anchor itself in reality; y6 focused on resting after y5 and had the 2 and 3 parters, diving deeper into specific characters; y7 was about fixing time and the consequences of doing so; y8 was about the delta flight; y9 was about frank chen; y10 was another character-focused rest season concluding in carlos becoming a citizen; y11 was the university of what it is; and y12 was about the boy

other than y11 and y12, all the previous seasons had lasting consequences on the story at large. they had domino effects into how future seasons would be focused. the outcomes of those seasons had permanent changes on the town and its people. everything janet did was erased by carlos. everything the boy went through was erased by mother lauren. janet's season should have led carlos down a path of continued self-discovery and reinvention. the boy's season should have led kevin to further growth and change, and could have paralleled the palmer family story by showing how kevin was trying to overcome his own trauma and build a family with charles. maybe it's just too soon. frank chen was murdered in y1 and it wasn't until y9 that his story was resolved. maybe i'm just hyper critical and impatient

but i feel like a lot of people are noticing this trend and are speaking up about it. i was active in the fandom from 2012-2015, and then picked it up again in 2021. it wasn't until y11 that i felt that a season wasn't finished. other seasons had left me with questions, had left some loose ends, but i always felt satisfied with where we were at once the summer hiatus hit. i don't feel that way with y11 and y12, i've walked away from both now going "okay now what? so what? huh?"

i don't know. i'm kind of running out of steam for this post. the point i wanted to make is this: y11 and y12 have not had character motives that have strongly correlated to their subsequent actions; i don't feel like characters are being given complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends; and they've both left me feeling like none of it ultimately mattered

anyway. that's my two cents.

#wtnv #wtnv spoilers

162 notes · View notes

vacayisland · 1 year ago

Note

I would love to see your take on Trollex or Synth I love them so much. Maybe relationship hcs with reader? Thank youu~

@!; Starfish Wishes Trollex / Reader Synth / Reader

"Summary"! Unstructured headcannons on how Trollex and Synth would be in a relationship with the reader! "Tags"! Fluff and the two being literal dorks I love them sm. I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A REQUEST ABOUT THEM FOR AGES PLEASE ILY SM (/p)

@storydays @chamille-trash @valvalentine69

@!; Being the lover of the Techno tribe leader is an experience like no other. I'm being serious, Trollex is a big doofus at heart and he knows it, and while he's more tame in public when he's alone with you it all comes out. And while Trollex has the biggest heart you've ever seen, it's a blessing and a curse.

Standing at the bottom of the ocean was defiantly something new for you, and something you didn't exactly expect to experience - like ever. Nevertheless, you never thought you would experience standing under the ocean in the middle of a Techno rave. Trollex always gushed about them, speaking with such energy you were sure half the time he was going to explode. Yet, whenever he spoke with you about the raves there was always a common denominator that made him pause and cause him to stand still. You both knew that it was harder said than done, seeing as you were neither a Techno troll or that you could breath under water. And yet, after months of talking (and a lot of trust building as Trollex tried to find some way to make this happened) he finally did it! "You alright Starfish?" Trollex shouted over the blasting music towards you, taking off an earphone as he did so. You nearly missed his voice, despite standing right next to him as you still felt a little uneasy to join the rest of the Techno tribe on their dance floor. "Huh?" You shouted back, taking a moment to process what he said, "Yeah! It's just- it's weird!" A chuckled followed after your words, "Standing at the bottom of the ocean, listening to unmuffled music, dancing?" Trollex beamed towards you, dropping his headphones around his neck, "Yeah! You have to get used to it, but if you ever need a break let me now. I'll get Synth to take over for a moment so we can go to a quieter area."

@!; Honestly he has the biggest heart, loves you to death and will do anything to make sure you're happy and well. Furthermore, he will do anything to protect you. Other than his tribe, you're his number one priority and he won't ever let you forget that and will remind you constantly. Mostly shows his love through spontaneous actions! Such as grabbing your waist and hugging you tightly while twirling around, making a CD that is a mash-up of all your favorite songs (or your own songs), or just deciding that today was going to be you and him day. I feel like he shows a lot of his affection through physical contact and quality: hugs, cuddles, kisses, swimming together, listening to music, spinning disks, having you next to him during raves so he can steal kisses from you. Loves to also make you flustered. It's the cheekiness instead of him.

@!; Defiantly a family guy! Expect him to be home with you, and the children, when he isn't doing his leadership gigs. Also, expect there to be kids and at least 3-4 of them, and expect him to love and spoil them to death. Those are his babies and he will not let anyone harm them and he will make sure they're raised not only right but also with everything he could possibly give them. Though is defiantly the type to understand if you want fewer or more kids, or if you need time between each egg catching. he knows it's difficult to raise kids without him there all the time. And while he tries to be there all he can, running the Techno tribe is a lot of work and he can't always be there. But you'll be damned if he misses something important for his kids. Never, ever, will this man miss something for you or his kids. First dj session? There and he's their biggest fan. First steps? There. First glitter ball game? You know he's rocking their colors. Birthdays? His schedule his cleared on that day for decades. Somehow finds a balance between life and work to keep the tribe happy and safe while also being the best dad he can be.

@!; Big prankster and goofball. The type who, when he sees your sad, cheer you up either through cuddles or a well meaning prank. He loves you to death, and I will say this time and time again because it's true, and he doesn't want to see you upset or sad. It makes him sad! So he'll cheer you up with his second best medicine, laughter and smiles! The first is obviously raving.

"Hey starfish, can you come here?" Trollex called you from the kitchen of your shared home, causing you to lean your head back on the couch. You tried looking at him, or tried to get a hint of what he was doing. It was one of those days were all you felt like doing was nothing. You just wanted to lay on the couch and completely space you, looking at the wall for any sort of inspiration that would never come. It made your nose scrunch and your head hurt to think that your boyfriend could possibly think beckoning you from your current place of hibernation was a good idea. Though seconds later, after not seeing you budge, he called again, "I promise, it'll be good!" So reluctantly, you mustered the strength to push yourself off the couch and onto your feet. Despite how heavy your body felt, you pushed through it to enter the kitchen where Trollex stood all too suspiciously; His hands were behind his back and this big grin was spread across his face. You knew he was up to something but you couldn't guess what it was. "So.. I know that you're having a bad day." He started, trying to contain his excitement. "So I decided to get you a gift!"

Did the gift happen to be something you absolutely loved, and had been ranting to Trollex about anytime it had crossed your mind? Yes. But was it also a bitch to get out because Trollex used every box and paper bag and gift wrap you two had laying around to wrap it? Also yes. You were so sure that the gift wrap and the boxes and the bag would never end, but it got you laughing and smiling at how ridiculous the whole thing was. Trollex and you literally spent 15 minutes on the kitchen floor unwrapping it all, then another 5 minutes laughing your asses off about it.

@!; Overall, he's an amazing lover and I love him so much. He will give you up, he'll never let you down, he'll never run around and desert you. He'll never make you cry, he'll never say goodbye, he'll never tell a lie and hurt you. But he will rickroll you as a prank while playing around with his turntables, giving you your own private concert. And this man will absolutely cackle at your expression like the gremlin he is and apologize later.

@!; Being Synth’s lover is getting to know the Synth behind “Synth”; which is much more complex than the outward, rave-loving and happy-go-lucky person Synth is always described and known as. And sure, while you fell in love with that version of Synth, you couldn’t help but fall deeper for him the more you got to know him, and in turn he fell harder the more he realized you accepted him and the more he got to know you.

@!; You first met Synth at a rave, which you had been invited to by Poppy as an olive branch to get to know some Techno trolls. At first, you weren’t sure why she would invite you to such a loud event, knowing you were rather sensitive about noise and iffy about meeting new people, especially people from different tribes. Yet, you also knew it would be rather rude to decline the invitation. Not only because Poppy had asked you personally, but also because it was a party for another tribe and you weren’t sure how they reacted to declined invitations. You had feared they took it horribly, like if you declined it would mean you hated them or something along those lines. So, to not make anyone upset you decided to go.

And, as you had expected earlier, you kept close to the edges of the party and watched everyone else; Having even taken a seat upon the disco floor out of tiredness of standing for too long. Yet, you didn’t want to leave encase Poppy wanted to introduce you to someone, or if it would count as rude to leave before a rave had finished. So you stayed, despite the overwhelming feeling you got from being in such a crowded and loud environment. “Yo, Bro!” Someone shouted, and you had thought it was towards someone else. Seeing as you didn’t know who the voice was coming from and you were just sitting in a corner doing nothing interesting, you had little reason to think someone was calling to you. Yet the voice shouted, this time closer, “Yo! Hello!” and then you saw someone waving their hands in the background, which caught your attention rather quickly. It was a Techno troll you had seen before around Poppy, and a few other Trolls. While you never spoke to him personally, you knew a few things about him. Such as, his name was Synth and he was quite loud. At times, you were able to hear his voice from across Trollstopia, and it always caused a slight fright in you at the sudden noise. “Bro you okay?” Synth swam over to you, hanging upside down with glow sticks in hand and some hanging around his neck. You hadn’t known at the time how much this first interaction would change your life, how much Synth would affect you. All you knew is that you wanted to run and hide. You were glad you didn’t.

@!; Synth wasn’t the most emotionally aware troll there is, while you were exactly the opposite and were way too emotionally aware for your own well being. As such, you two were able to balance each other out. Synth helps you calm down from the stress and emotional pressure of carrying everyone’s troubles on your back and you help Synth by pointing out social cues and things he was overlooking in his fun-seeking ways. You both helped each other get more in touch with your friends and with each other. Synth usually helps you calm down, not by raving with a large group of Techno trolls (though he used to before you exploded to Poppy, not wanting to hurt Synth’s feelings and she told Synth) yet by having dance parties at your pod. Dance parties meaning it was only you and Synth with your feel-good songs and you two would either dance together or do something else like scrapbooking, cooking, baking, etc. Something he tries to sit down and help you through your emotions. At first he tried giving you suggestions, but they weren’t the best and he learnt to just let you get it all out. Something you didn’t even need him to listen to, you just needed him there.

@!; Cuddling with Synth means there’s always a nightlight nearby! Poor Synth is terrified of the dark, and it really troubled him to be in a room without any sort of lighting (which is how you figured out why he always carries glow sticks with him). At first, Synth tried to be strong for you and cuddle at night… but he didn’t even last 2 minutes before he yelled out in pure terror.

“What? What?!” You exclaimed, jumping up from your place in bed as Synth was just freaking out. You were just about to doze off when he had begun to do so, and you were sure he didn’t have a nightmare because he hadn’t even fallen asleep… or closed his eyes for that matter. You could see the purple glow of his eyes through your shut ones. Though Synth didn’t seem too keen on answering you straightly, as he just blubbered out, “What what? What who? What where? And sometimes-” “Synth.” But you cut him off, cupping his cheeks to make him look at you. To which he drew back a little, his eyes widening in shock for a split second before he became a ball of nerves. He laughed, nervous laughter. And you seemed to realize instantly what was happening with how frequently his eyes darted around the room, trying to look for something. You didn’t know he was afraid of the dark! “Synth you should have told me.” You would mumble before scrambling to turn on your bedside lamp, much to Synth’s relief.

From that day on you had a nightlight in your room for Synth.

@!; Synth gave you a rave name the first 3 hours he knew you and now that’s the only thing he decides to call you. You weren’t sure why he did so and when you asked Trollex or Laguna they just said that’s how he is. Trollex even shrugged. You’re stuck with it, so get used to it because he means that rave name with the up most endearment!! <3

@!; He’s a little hard in the head. Didn’t know you liked him until you told him out right and even then he didn’t understand and said he liked you too. You gave up and Trollex had to explain to him what you meant, to which he paused and shouted to you as you walked away, “I LOVE YOU!” To which Trollex stared at him with the most bewildered look and you got absolutely terrified.

@!; Has taken you water surfing and urchin acupuncturing if you’re cool with it! And if you need he’s here to hold your hand and help you through it. Has also shot water at you with his water powers. Was his hands in the shape of little guns? Yes. did he also say “pew pew” as well? Yes. Did you then also purchase a water gun to be able to do it back? Yup. And was Synth so shocked the first time he got pew-pew’ed with water back? Mhmm. But then did it dissolve into a huge water fight anytime you guys pew-pew’ed each other with water? Of course!

@!; Other than being scared of the water and being an avid raver, Synth sometimes struggles with self esteem issues; mostly, he fears that he’ll let people down and disappoint them. Which, when you first heard him explain, you were shocked to hear! You always thought Synth didn’t really care what other people thought of him, despite caring about people and their well being. You don’t know why you thought that way, but you just did.

“So that’s why I’ve been acting so off the past few days, yo.” Synth explained to you the whole fiasco about his cheerleading side-gig, which he did more for fun than anything else. Though Synth expected a slightly more emotional reaction out of you than other trolls, he didn’t expect to see you almost crying. “Yo, are you crying?!” “No! No, I’m fine!” Yet you only sniffled. “Bro… don’t cry because then I’ll cry!”

You and Synth connected on a deeper level that day, as you explained you also tended to feel that way around people. You both decided to make a pinkie-promise to be able to tell each other anything since that day. @!; I love Synth so much, 10/10 lover.

.ᐟ this work is published and owned by @vacayisland. please do not plagiarize, copy, or steal this work; like, reblogs, and saves are appreciated :D

#trolls band together #synth x reader #trollex x reader #synth trolls #king trollex #dreamworks trolls #trolls fandom #trolls #trolls 3 #trolls dreamworks #trolls world tour #techno trolls #trolls trollex #trollstopia #trolls 2

362 notes · View notes

ninaswritingstuff · 6 months ago

Text

One reason I haven't updated shifting priorities in well over a year is that I've been fixated on an AU of my AU in which Bernard is thrown into the mix.

Like, Tim has been so fixated on trying to clone Kon that he has pretty much completely ignored his body. That cloning tube and Kon's DNA are pretty much the only things he cares about. And he's tried and failed 99 times. He's running out of Kon's DNA, nothing has worked, so he gets an extra boost of desperation.

He uses his own DNA as a stabilizing agent.

So, fun thing about cloning is that it requires a donor egg. The genetic material of the egg itself is removed and replaced with the complete DNA of whatever you're trying to clone (don't quote me on this, this is my recollection/understanding of how they made Dolly).

Tim, who in this AU has the parts that would produce a human egg (trans!Tim or AOB, dealer's choice for the purposes of this run-down), decides he's going to cut out the middle man and use his own.

Only to find out that he's pregnant. It doesn't really click in his head until he's gotten his egg and already started the 100th attempt (forgetting to remove his DNA from the egg before adding in Kon's), so when it finally hits him, he's staring at a cloning tube with a (finally) viable embryo.

So he goes out and gets himself a pregnancy test, and this is where he crosses paths with Bernard. Bernard just kind of stumbles across him in the local CVS, and at first thinks he could try to reconnect and made shoot his shot, only to realize exactly where he's found Tim.

And never let it be said that Bernard Dowd is a coward.

So he squares up and heads over, and ends up basically being Tim's moral support for the remainder of the pregnancy. He had even planned to be in the delivery room with Tim when the baby was born (which didn't happen because the baby decided to arrive a month early and in the most traumatic way possible).

He's not actually expecting anything from Tim. Clearly, Tim's got enough on his plate, and he's clearly still not over whoever it was who got him knocked up. So Bernard's mostly just trying to be a good friend. And if something eventually develops, well. Bernard certainly won't complain.

Bernard was thrown for kind of a loop when Danny came along, but delayed twins are a thing, so...he just kind of rolls with it. It's Gotham. Weirder things have happened.

He puts a lot of time into helping Tim out with the not-twins, and maybe kind of starts to think of the kids as maybe sort of his. In, like, a dad-that-stepped-up kind of way. Bernard is honestly surprised by how down he's turned out to be for basically co-parenting with Tim.

They end up building up a working system over the next few months, with Bernard coming over after school to mind the kids so Tim could get so rest in. By the time the not-twins are a month old, Bernard's kind of...moved into Wayne Manor. In an unofficial capacity.

And just when things seem to have reached a sort of equilibrium, Bruce dies. Or, well, it seems pretty overt that he's dead. Bernard's been in the know (to an extent) since Tim brought Danny home, so when Tim tells him his theory about the portrait of Mordecai Wayne, Bernard (funky little conspiracy theorist that he is) believes him.

Tim ends up leaving Danny and Ellie in Bernard's care so he can go and hunt down enough proof to bring Bruce home, with encouragement from Bernard (and the condition that Tim maintains regular contact while gone). It's not easy, being a single parent to twins is even less easy, but Bernard fully believes that this is something Tim needs to do, and he was already pretty much done with school, so he doesn't have to worry about college until the fall.

BruceQuest occurs largely unchanged from canon, save for the fact that Tim is less passively suicidal throughout. And when Kon finds him in that sewer...well, Tim's half-convinced he's talking to a hallucination, so he mentions the not-twins.

After that encounter, Kon makes a bee-line for Gotham, and gets to meet the babies. One thing leads to another, and Kon and Bernard end up co-parenting while Tim's off saving Bruce's bacon.

When everything is handled and Tim's back home with Bruce not too far behind, the three of them end up having to have a discussion about what they're gonna do moving forward.

Endgame TimBerKon.

#timkon clone baby #timberkon #i think there's less fudging of the canon timeline in this version #but it's been ages since I've read anything pre-Red Robin so I'd have to go back and check

103 notes · View notes

stiltsthegm · 1 month ago

Text

What if you just had fun?

When I'm really bored at work and need something to distract me, but can't get TOO distracted (due to the aforementioned work), I like to watch challenge runs. This inevitably leads to me getting other videos that are tangentially-related to the game that was the subject of the video I just saw, and that's how I stumbled upon this one:

youtube

And it was fascinating to me in a way that made me feel a need to say something about it. Not in, like, a mean way (I'm aiming for a gentle ribbing, at most). There's been thoughts stirring in me for a while now about how disconnected I can sometimes feel between the ways I experience games and how "content creators" play games that are simply fascinating to me.

Although I do recommend watching at least some of the video to get the gist of what's happening, I'll do my best to accurately summarize the main thing that prompted this whole post. The author has played Skyrim a lot, almost always with a bunch of mods, and nearly always played it the same way: stealth archer. However, he recently tried a challenge playthrough that essentially forced him to engage in a bunch of systems he never paid much attention to before: alchemy, blacksmithing, mining, herb gathering, and shouts to name just a few. He even found himself using fast travel less, because it meant he could do gathering and transmutation magic while going to his next destination instead of going out of his way to grind out everything right before he needed it. This ended up giving him a greater appreciation for how an un-modded Skyrim actually works and is deeper than he originally gave it credit for.

My first reaction to this was perhaps a little uncharitable: "Were you even playing Skyrim at all until now?"

In a previous video he made (which I also watched), he talks about why stealth archery is so popular. He posits that it's the only combat method that plays well with Skyrim's other systems, since its damage scales well, it's precise (very little worry about hitting friendly NPCs), it's the easiest way to engage in stealth mechanics, and it's just generally pretty powerful. I'm mostly sympathetic to that opinion, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't find stealth archer to be my favorite way to play.

However, I was completely blindsided by someone saying they didn't engage in so many of these other systems. Like, yes, you can simply buy armor and weapons and potions, so alchemy and blacksmithing isn't mandatory. You can ignore it if you want to. But to not EVER try to engage with it?

I've encountered this sort of disconnect before in a way I found much more frustrating. You see, I really like the Civilization games, but I'm kind of bad at intuiting the systems at play on my own. I often look up videos from much smarter people to help me build a foundation of understanding so I can then at least make terrible choices on purpose rather than on accident. I was watching one particular Youtuber's reactions to some Civ 7 gameplay previews and found myself constantly baffled by the statements they were making. There were several little things that irritated me, but the one that finally made me turn off the video was a criticism of Civ 7 trying to implement story events like Paradox games do. They mentioned they hated that kind of mechanic and completely ignored the writing, just picking whichever choice offered the best mechanical advantage at the time. It was then that I realized this analysis video was going to be completely useless to me. We had very different priorities, and they had no interest in considering the changes from any angle other than the very narrow one they've always used. Like, sure, maybe it will end up being bad, but this is one preview video of one playthrough. Being angry at just the concept of story events seemed absurd.

There are folks out there who like "solving" video games. They find the most efficient, most powerful thing they can do, and they do that. Over and over and over again. I think what hit me most about the Skyrim video was that I wasn't expecting to find that kind of playstyle applied to that game. Skyrim exists so you can play in it. I sometimes make characters that run up to guys and hit them with a big sword not because it's the best way to play the game, but because it's just funny to hit guys with a big sword. I explore the map because Skyrim's world is beautiful, and I like simply being in it. I gather herbs because it gives me something to do while hiking and I like how the plant's graphic changes after I collect it. I do things in Skyrim not because I'm forced to, but because I want to explore what the game has to offer. And lately, I sometimes choose to not do things because I want to play a role.

The more I thought about Thane's Skyrim video, the more I grew fond of it. It starts out as just another challenge run where he's thinking about mechanical efficiency, and ends with him appreciating just how many different things he can do in the base game (Building a house! Marriage! Praying at shrines!) and how these systems interact with each other. That's neat! I genuinely love that someone who plays these games from a completely different mindset than I do can keep an open mind and learn to share my love of these mechanics. I wish I saw it happen more often.

#skyrim #sorry for yelling about youtube essays #genuinely no shade to the skyrim guy though he seems chill

28 notes · View notes

mephistopheleswasrobbed · 4 months ago

Text

Ahh, I don't want it to be over! But alas, here we are, so let me tell you about all the gay moments in Peaceful Property one last time:

We begin the episode with Home and Peach sitting next to each other and saying sentimental things. Framed by a flamingo. Which is literally a symbol of love (because they're pink and monogamous).

Saying your meeting was destiny while looking each other in the eyes lovingly is somehow not the most romantic line in this episode. It comes pretty close, though.

Back in the action, Peach is extremely worried about Home, alone with his would-be murderer.

And when evil lawyer mentions the possibility of Home being dead already, Peach loses is completely. (Though, in a parallel that is funny to me, exclusively, he's again held back by two *according to themselves* oh so weak women. Just like in Kan's home when one woman was enough to completely immobilise him. I'm really not sure why Panpang is so insistent that Peach is so much stronger than her)

Peach knows that they don't have enough time to waste it on those useless cops so he sacrifices himself by confessing to a crime he didn't commit, so at least Kan and Pangpang can try to rescue Home. That's some ride or die devotion right there.

A found family bond so strong it single-handedly derailed these scooby doo villains' evil plots several times.

Pangpang (seen here cosplaying as a ghost pizza) knows that in true romance fashion, Peach must be the one to save Home. (And because we've already established that physical strength can't be the reason, I'm choosing to believe it's the strength of his love for Home that's giving him the advantage.)

So Peach arrives just in time (there's that destiny, that soulmate timing) to prevent Somkid from stabbing Home. And I've previously talked a lot about how much Home has changed because of Peach, but let's take a second to appreciate how much Peach has changed because of Home. He went from hiding behind his little sister at the sight of a ghost, to jumping without hesitation at an armed murderer to save Home.

And once Somkid has been distracted, Home's first priority is, as they always do when there's danger, to go check on and help up Peach.

And then he just keeps holding him while Somkid is busy coming to the realisation that all the evil shit he did was meaningless.

There is no way Mr. Real Estate Heir doesn't know how to tie a tie. This is an excuse to share some comfort before the funeral and it is as understandable as it is boyfriend-coded.

There's been a lot of Home/Peach doing something the other had previously done, and here's one more:

Just like Home before, Peach also notices immediately when something seems off with Home and wastes no time to go to him and see if he needs to offer help or comfort.

And what is the problem? It's, of course, the impending separation that has Home moping over an electric stove cooker thing.

But well, after almost watching Home die, again, Peach has realised he doesn't want to leave. Because even if Home goes back to the US, at least he'll be around the memories they've made together. So Peach decides to stay.

And despite the excuse he comes up with about dialect speaking ghosts, we, and Home, know the real reason.

The "I love you and I don't want to leave you" might be unspoken but Home hears it anyway.

And Home has also finally figured it out.

So he's not leaving either.

And Peach might be a little obtuse about it at first

But Home's real dream has always been to have a family. And he knows he's finally found his. Grandpa knows he's finally found his.

So Home makes it clear to Peach.

And Peach gets it this time.

(Of course, then they immediately have to make a joke out of it because those two might actually be allergic to seriously talking about their feelings for each other. But the message has been recieved, anyway)

Their absolutely perfect timing can only be explained by soulmate shenanigans. (also look at him smile)

Even the universe is trying to tell them to embrace the gay. With their Cok Long bar turned Cok Long restaurant.

The dialogue from the beginning plays again, over shots of their family meal. And with the expression of destiny, the camera focuses in on them. Because while "family" is for all five of them, their "destiny" is just between the two of them. And they look so soft and happy in its glow.

And they look at each other when they laugh, and we leave them to their truly happy ending.

(And maybe one day in the future they will be able to plainly say "I love you" to each other without having to hide it behind five jokes and three metaphors, but until then, they know the truth of it anyway.)

Lesbian Corner

Kan has come to seriously trust and believe in Pangpang. And Pangpang, who felt like a useless burden at the beginning of the show, is made better by it.

And in reverse, Kan, who's been completely serious and focussed on revenge for the last decade, who'd had trouble letting loose and making connections with others even before her father's not-completely-but-in-effect-death, has found in Pangpang someone who can not only make her smile, but make her make jokes to make others smile.

Just like Home and Peach, these two also complement each other. They make up for each others shortcomings and both grow into happier, more well-rounded people through each other.

And with that it's over. Except not quite because I've still got some extra that didn't fit here.

#i'm so glad they got a real proper happy ending #i'm not a hater of open or bittersweet or even sad endings #but those five deserve to be happy and p'dome's words had me worried for them #also i will miss them #and i will miss all of you #this is the first time i have participated so actively in the weekly discussion around a show #and it was a lot of fun #ok i need to make a joke now because i'm actually not any better at talking about feelings than home and peach #but i can't think of one #cool. bye then.#peaceful property #peaceful property the series

42 notes · View notes

skyward-floored · 1 month ago

Text

Sunlight

Downfall iau, checking back on Wind and Four and everybody again :) I've been working on this one for a while, hope you all enjoy! Helpful previous fics for context are this one, this one, and this one (but not 100% necessary to read this one lol)

(small blood/injury warning)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wind woke up feeling... well, less exhausted than he had when he'd fallen asleep at least.

He stared up at the ceiling of the room he and Four had landed in, his brother nestled up against his side. It was just a sofa bed tucked in the corner of what Wind guessed was a sun room or something, but it was comfortable at least.

Sun had tried to convince them to sleep in the more secure area downstairs, but Wind had refused. He wanted to know when Sky would get back as soon as possible. Plus Legend was sleeping up here too, and the thought of being away from him was... weird. There were a few emergency hiding spots up here if it was really a problem anyway, and so Sun had finally given in.

“Wind?”

Wind turned his head at the soft question, and saw Four looking at him, his younger brother’s hair a mess and eyes still fuzzy with sleep.

“Morning,” Wind said quietly, and Four breathed out, closing his eyes again.

“Morning.”

Wind watched him for a minute, lines of sunshine mostly blocked by the blinds sending stripes across Four’s face. He looked about as weary as Wind felt.

“You feeling okay?” Wind asked, and Four nodded, pushing some of the hair from his face, and reopening his eyes.

“I guess. You?”

“Same,” Wind shrugged, and Four let out a little huff of a laugh.

“Well, maybe breakfast will help,” Four said, and he sat up, yawning as rubbed his eyes. “I hope there’s eggs.”

“I hope there’s bacon,” Wind sighed, thinking longingly of the bacon Malon had been making yesterday that he hadn’t gotten to taste a single strip of. His mood immediately dipped at the sharp reminder of Malon though, and Four must have picked up on it with the way his face also fell.

“I hope she’s okay,” he whispered, and Wind nodded, his throat tight.

“I hope so too.”

A soft knock at the door made Four and Wind go quiet, but before either of them could worry much, a familiar voice asked about coming in. Relief swept over Wind as he called back that it was okay, and a feathered wingtip poked inside, both him and Four perking up.

“Sky! You made it!” Wind said with a smile, and Sky walked in, returning it.

“Yeah, I did,” he replied, and Wind didn’t miss the dark circles under his eyes. “Not a scratch on me. I heard talking and figured I’d come check on you two and fill you in.”

“Any news?” Four asked quietly, and Sky sighed, sitting down on a chair.

“Not much,” he said grimly, rubbing his forehead. “Nothing about Malon, or Twilight. Things are busy out there though. We’ve been trying to monitor the radio— we think Hyrule is still their priority, but I heard at least one notice about you two and Legend and Ravio. We also picked up some chatter about investigations, and we’re a pretty likely target here for them to check out since we’re relatives. Me and Sun think it would be best for you all to stay below now,” he said apologetically, and Four and Wind both shrugged.

“If it’s safer that way,” Wind said, then fixed a smile on his face. “I wanted to see down there anyway, so this is just an excuse to do that.”

Sky chuckled. “Well I think you’ll like it. Sun actually got breakfast ready down there, so grab anything you brought, and I’ll show you around after you eat.”

Wind and Four nodded, and Sky left the two of them to get dressed and gather the measly amount of things they’d brought with them. It didn’t take either of them long— the hardest part was cramming the sofa bed back in the way it was supposed to go to be a sofa again— and soon Wind and Four were headed to the kitchen with their bags.

Legend was already there, sitting on a stool and tapping a finger against a glass of milk. He looked like he hadn’t slept a wink, and maybe it was Wind’s imagination, but his eyes seemed a bit red.

“Good morning,” Wind said to him, and Legend acknowledged it with a nod, taking a silent swig of milk.

“You two got everything?” Sky asked as he appeared from around the corner, and Wind and Four nodded. “Great. This way, then.”

Sky stepped out of the kitchen and Wind and Four followed him, Legend slipping off his stool and trailing after. Sky led them through the living room and to a door in the back that led outside, sunshine spilling through the few bare-leafed trees in the yard.

“Um, I thought we were going down, where..?” Wind began to ask, but Legend cut him off.

“Sky knows what he’s doing. Relax.”

“I am relaxed,” Wind huffed, but didn’t push it. He wasn’t in the mood.

They walked across the yard, shoes squishing in the carpet of wet leaves and mud. It was a chilly morning despite the sunshine, a little foggy too, and Four shivered a bit, walking closer to Wind. A familiar shed slowly came into view through the fog, and Wind raised an eyebrow at the small structure.

“Isn’t that where Sky woodcarves?” Four whispered, and Wind nodded. Strange how it looked exactly the same as in their world.

Sky led them inside, pulling the door shut behind them as they looked around. The whole place smelled of wood shavings and sawdust, but Sky didn’t stand around to smell it, instead striding forward and pushing a small chest away from the wall. Wind leaned in to look, but there was nothing there except... wall.

Wind frowned, and Sky chuckled at his reaction, kneeling down and feeling his hands along the wood. He carefully positioned his hands, then pressed three of his fingers in seemingly random spots on the boards.

Wind heard a click, and then a trapdoor opened up in the floor, revealing a ladder that disappeared into darkness.

“Whoa... that’s not like that in our world,” Wind said with a hint of excitement, and he saw a curious smile on Four’s face.

Legend didn’t look surprised, and he walked silently to the trapdoor, Wind and Four hurrying behind him.

“Careful with the climb,” Sky warned, pressing his good wing close to his body. “It’s pretty dark, and the steps are a little uneven. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve dropped something on my way down because of it.”

He smiled as he said it, and Wind snorted, moving so that Legend could go ahead of him. He didn’t really want to trip.

Wind and Four followed as soon as Legend’s head disappeared, slipping down into the darkness. Sky took the rear, and pressed something on the wall once they were all down. The door neatly slipped closed again, the only light coming from a small stone Sky took out of his pocket, and they all climbed steadily down the ladder.

It was small in the tunnel, and Wind felt uncomfortably like he was descending into a sewer, but the further they went the more it opened up, and it steadily grew brighter as well.

Wind heard Four let out a little noise of surprise as he reached the bottom of the ladder, and Wind couldn’t help doing the same as he looked around.

They’d ended up in what looked something like a mix between a large basement and a cave, somehow both comfortable and rough looking. It was obviously hewn from the rock, with powers of some kind of Wind had to guess, and the floor was smooth, with lights set up around that lit the cave in a warm glow. The spot where they were standing was something of an overlook, a gentle slope beside them that led to a lower area, and Wind peered over the railing, seeing crates of what must have been supplies against a wall below, and two women moving them around and chatting with each other.

Every bit of space was being used for something, though Wind saw a door that must have lead to a different area... maybe where the beds were? He even heard water running down from somewhere, and hints of fresh air on the bit of wind he was picking up, but couldn’t see where they were coming from.

All in all, the place was a lot bigger than what Wind had been expecting, and he and Four stared, flabbergasted.

“Huh?” Wind finally got out.

“We know a few people who were willing to help us out,” Sky said with a smile, running a hand along a smoothed wall. “This isn’t much, but it’s as secure as we could make it, and very few people know how to get inside. You guys should be plenty safe here.”

Wind exchanged relieved looks with Four, and even Legend looked a little more relaxed down here. They were safe.

“That’s great,” Wind grinned, and Sky smiled.

“Glad to head it. Hey Arty!” he called, and one of the women looked up.

Her blonde hair hung partially over her face, held in a tight braid over her shoulder, and it took Wind a second to place her even with the familiar name. Her face slotted in as his Aunt Artemis after a few moments though, and he blinked. He was less surprised at the sight of their other aunt then some of the people he’d seen here so far, but it was still jarring. Especially with the reminder of his uncle it brought with it.

Wind‘s stomach churned a little. Are she and Warriors..?

“Will you see if we have any extra clothes that would fit these two?” Sky asked Artemis, seeming not to notice Wind’s sudden angst. “They don't have much at the moment. I’ll help you once I’ve shown them where breakfast is.”

“No need, I’ve got it,” she called back, and then turned and walked straight through the wall.

Legend looked at the two of them like he expected them to be surprised, but Wind and Four barely even blinked. They were used to Artemis ignoring things like walls and doors. Wind was more surprised by the fact that she was here at all, and his head was still sort of stuck on that.

“...Ah. You know Artemis too?” Legend said as Sky began walking again, and they followed him down the slope. It wasn’t really a question.

“Um, yeah,” Wind replied awkwardly. “Does she... what does she do here?”

“Helps out with stuff,” Legend shrugged. “She usually goes out and helps get people out of situations they’re stuck in, since her powers are good for that. She was friends with Sun when they were younger, I don’t know the whole story.”

Wind nodded, rubbing his arm, and Legend gave him and Four a suspicious look.

“...What is she to you in your world?” he asked, and Wind and Four exchanged looks again.

“She’s... our aunt. She’s married to Warriors,” Four said quietly, and Legend’s expression creased.

“Huh,” he muttered, and didn’t ask any more questions, striding up to walk next to Sky.

Guess that answers that, Wind thought with a dull pang in his chest. It looked like she and Warriors might not even know each other here.

“Oh, hey Hyrule!”

At Four’s call Wind looked up, and he smiled as he saw Hyrule standing in the doorway they were about to head through. The healer looked about as tired as everyone else did, but he still smiled as they reached him, letting Sky affectionately nudge him with his wing.

“Hi,” Hyrule smiled, circles under his eyes almost as bad as Legend’s. “Here for breakfast?”

“Yeah. And it sounds like we’re going to be staying down here for a while after that,” Four added, and Hyrule perked up just a little.

“That’s great! I mean, not great you have to hide, of course, that’s bad, but... not many people stay here very long,” Hyrule admitted, scratching his neck. “I see a lot of people, but it’s mostly them getting supplies and stuff, or stopping by on their way to go other places.”

“Well you’re stuck with us for now,” Legend said, and despite his flat tone, Hyrule looked happy.

“Sooooo... breakfast. Please tell me you have bacon,” Wind begged as he changed the subject, and Sky laughed, Hyrule’s smile growing a bit.

“Assuming Aryll and Ravio haven’t eaten it all, yes, there’s bacon,” Sky assured, and Wind whooped, stomach growling. Sure things were terrible, and he was still worried out of his mind for Malon and Twilight, and extremely homesick, but the prospect of bacon very much cheered him up.

Four seemed to think similarly, and they headed into the living area, the delicious smell of breakfast wafting through the air.

(...)

After breakfast, during which Wind met this world’s Aryll and was relieved to find she was very much like their own, Sky showed them around as promised.

There were only a few rooms in the base, but at Wind’s guess you could probably fit a good fifty people down here before it would get uncomfortably crowded. And there were a lot of beds, which when Wind asked about, Sky explained that they often smuggled supers and other folks through here on their way to other places, and they often stayed a few nights. Nobody stayed long though, apart from a handful of people like Artemis and Hyrule.

But there were still some other people around. It was interesting to see who Wind and Four already knew and who they didn’t— Wind nearly jumped out of his skin when one of Wild’s friends showed up, but seemingly had no connection to him. It was also hard to know what to say to most of these people, especially when most of them did double takes at the sight of Four.

There may not have been many of them, but telling them the story they’d decided on for cover was weirdly exhausting. They’d gone with distant cousins, and though it wasn’t the best cover, it was better than trying to explain a whole different dimension... thing. Wind wasn’t sure how convincing they were though.

Especially since both of them almost called Artemis aunt at least twice, and by the time they moved on from talking to her, a glint of suspicion rested in her eyes.

At least exploring was fun. Wind and Four may have been tired, but they weren’t so far gone that they didn’t want to poke around an actual secret base. Hyrule showed them some of the most interesting things, and Wind even found a tiny side passage that lead to the flicker of fresh wind he’d felt, finding a little underground brook.

It all did an excellent job of keeping his mind off of things, and Wind appreciated the distraction, especially with what they’d decided at breakfast. They were going to keep monitoring the radio, and Sun planned to head out with Artemis once the sun set to look for Twilight, but the rest of them couldn’t help with that. Not while they were all high-profile and stuff. Legend argued up and down to be allowed to go, but Sun had rebuffed all of his arguments until he was finally forced to admit defeat.

Which Wind was sure meant he was going to try and sneak along, but he’d think about that later.

Right now he was letting his mind wander away from homesickness and arrests, and trying to be a good distraction for Four and Hyrule. He didn’t see much of Legend, but figured he was with Sky, since he didn’t see much of him either.

Maybe they were sleeping. They both looked like they needed it.

“Uno!”

Wind scowled, glaring over at Ravio as he waved his card in the air with a grin. It was sometime in the afternoon, and having found a couple decks of cards, they were all trying to teach Hyrule some card games since he knew pretty much none of them. Except go fish, somehow.

“That’s good for him, right?” Hyrule asked, and Wind huffed and nodded, glaring at his own huge hand of cards. All but one of them was yellow. And the color was blue.

“Yep! If he gets rid of that one, he wins,” Aryll explained helpfully, and Hyrule nodded. “But Four also has an uno, so he might win first.”

“Your turn,” Wind said as Four smiled, and Hyrule looked thoughtfully at his cards, obviously thinking through his next move. Then he gently placed a draw four on the deck.

Giving Wind four more cards.

“It was all I could play,” Hyrule said sheepishly as Wind groaned, the other players laughing at him.

“The deepest betrayal Hyrule. I’m beyond hurt,” Wind bemoaned dramatically, picking up his cards. Three of them were yellow. “Who shuffled these?!”

The laughter grew, and the game kept going, but Wind’s attention was grabbed from it when he saw Sky walk by, giving the five of them an amused look. He was headed for the ladder that led out, and Wind swallowed.

“Oh— here, give my cards to Four,” Wind said, quickly standing up. “I gotta ask Sky something. Don’t wait for me.”

“No don’t give me his! Just skip his turn until he comes back!” Four squawked, and Wind left to the sound of Aryll doing her best to make him take them.

“Hey Sky?” Wind asked hurriedly, jogging up to him. His uncle paused and looked over, a questioning look on his face, and Wind swallowed. “I... can I go up with you? I think I forgot one of my bags.”

“I could just grab it for you,” Sky offered, and Wind shuffled his feet.

“Well... yeah. I... I also wanted to talk to you,” he admitted quietly, and Sky studied him a moment, face calculating. Then he nodded.

“All right. I have some dishes up there I need to wash anyway, so you can help with those. But no dilly-dallying,” he replied, and Wind nodded. “And if I say to hide in the spot Sun showed you yesterday, then hide.”

Wind nodded, and they both began to climb, the tunnel feeling longer going up. Wind kept pace though, even when Sky’s feathers tickled his nose, and they were soon back at the top and heading into the house.

Wind quickly found his bag inside, relieved he hadn’t actually lost it since it was the one with his toothbrush, and then joined Sky in the kitchen, setting it aside and taking the towel Sky handed him.

“I’ll wash, you dry,” Sky said with a smile, and Wind returned it.

They scrubbed dishes in silence for several minutes, Sky’s wing occasionally brushing Wind’s arm. Golden sunshine spilled in through a window, making the whole room seem warmer, and a little crystal dangling from the windowsill sent flickers of rainbows across the wall. Wind watched them while he gathered his thoughts on what to say, but then Sky looked over at him, and Wind swallowed.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Sky asked, moving the sponge in a steady motion across a plate.

Wind swallowed again. “Right. Um. I was... sort of wondering, if... well. I was kind of...” Wind sighed. Better to just get it over with. “...Warriors. I wanted to ask more about him.”

Sky nodded, a conflicted look crossing his face. “Legend told me he was there yesterday.”

“He was. He was the one who... who got Malon,” Wind said quietly.

Sky breathed out, staring at the dish in his hands for a long moment while the bubbles slowly popped. “I guessed as much. Legend skimmed that part a bit, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. I almost can’t believe it.”

“But that’s the thing,” Wind continued, drying a little more forcefully than necessary. “I think Warriors helped us.”

Sky’s eyebrows went up. “What?”

Wind looked over and met Sky’s eyes, setting the plate aside. “Before anyone came to the door, me and Legend saw Warriors from the roof. He was just standing there and staring at us, even after I went to go warn everyone, I think he was trying to give us a head start. And later, when... when we escaped, he froze the door behind us, in really thick ice. I think he was buying us time,” Wind finished in a whisper. “He did get Mo— Malon. But he didn’t get anyone else.”

Sky stared at Wind, then breathed out, running a hand through his hair. “That does sound like something Warriors would do.”

“But Legend doesn’t think he helped us,” Wind added quietly.

“Legend is... dealing with a lot right now,” Sky said, pain showing briefly in his eyes. There was soap in his hair now. “He’s always resented Warriors for the choices he’s made. This didn’t help, I’m sure. And his mother did just get arrested.”

“I know, but it’s like he’s not even giving him a chance,” Wind said. “That’s not fair!”

“It’s a tough situation,” Sky said softly, handing him another dish. “Try to cut Legend some slack, Wind. Warriors has been out of his life for years, and he doesn’t have the same context towards him you have.”

“I know. I’ll... try,” Wind sighed, setting aside another dry plate. “So... you really think it’s possible he helped us?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. I wasn’t there, but while Warriors has made some... difficult decisions, he’s got a good heart. I still trust him with my life. But at this point I think we’ll have to wait and see how things develop,” Sky sighed.

Wind nodded, and silence fell over them, the splash of water and clink of dishes the only noise. They’d finished with the plates and moved onto bowls when Wind hesitated, looking over at Sky.

“...I actually have another thing I want to ask about,” he said.

Sky looked up, and gestured for him to go on.

Wind breathed out. “Hyrule... he said something to me after we got him out. I haven’t told anyone in case he was wrong, but... but he thinks Time might—”

Something thudded.

Wind jumped, nearly dropping the bowl he was holding, and Sky froze, ears pricked. Wind could tell that it had come from the front door, and he swallowed, hands suddenly shaking. It hadn’t seemed like a thud of someone trying to break down the door again, but... had it been?

“Sky?” he asked quietly, and Sky carefully set down the bowl he’d been cleaning, giving his soapy hands a quick rinse.

“I know. Don’t worry, if it was someone here to search, we’d be getting a lot more yelling by now,” he said, obviously trying to sound reassuring as he wiped his hands on his pants. Wind saw him swallow. “I’ll check it out. You... better hide though, just in case.”

Wind nodded, and Sky went to the front door, his pose relaxed and casual. Wind hesitated at the sink, then quietly crept behind him, hiding in the living room doorway while Sky went to the door.

He knew he was supposed to hide, but there still hadn’t been anymore noises, and definitely no yelling. Plus Sky might need backup, Wind wasn’t going to just leave him.

Wind poked his head through the doorway, just enough that he could see the front door. Sky walked up to it and looked through the peephole, but obviously didn’t see anything as he drew back a moment later with a confused look.

“Who is it?” he called loudly, and several tense seconds went by, silence stretching out.

Sky furrowed his brow when there was no answer, no further noise or anything, and he slowly pulled open the door, Wind craning his neck so he could see who was there.

And was treated to the sight of Twilight slumped against the wall, holding his arm tightly to his chest with dried blood in his hair.

Wind’s heart stopped.

Twilight raised his head and blinked at them while they stared in shock, circles like bruises under his eyes, face sweaty and pale, and he swallowed.

“Um— h-hi,” Twilight stammered, and Sky grabbed his nephew before he could collapse, quickly tugging him inside.

“Twilight— Twilight. By the three, we thought for sure you’d been arrested!” Sky gasped as he held his arms, and Twilight quirked the faintest of smiles.

“They tried,” he mumbled as he swayed, and Sky quickly caught him, Wind noticing Twilight shake against him.

“Okay— it’s okay now. You’re safe here, we’ll fix you up,” Sky reassured, adjusting his hold and gently stroking his head. “Come here.”

He slipped his arm under Twilight’s, putting his good wing around him. Sky practically carried him in, and Twilight swallowed, looking dizzy at the movement. Wind rushed forward the moment Sky toed the door closed, and he looked frantically at Twilight, the alternate version of his brother looking like an utter disaster.

“Twilight,” he managed to stammer out, and Twilight looked at him, the same quirk of a smile on his lips.

“Hey,” he breathed, and Wind’s stomach tightened at the dried blood smeared on his cheek. “Y-you made it.”

“Yeah, I-I did,” Wind replied, waves of shock and relief still pouring over him. “And Four too, and also—”

“Hey Sky?” a voice called, the sound of the back door closing accompanying it.

Wind looked behind him, and began to rush to the doorway as he saw Legend walk into the other room, his expression vaguely annoyed. Legend turned and saw him, and sighed.

“Wind, Sun wants you downstairs, and Sky—”

Legend cut off the moment he looked behind Wind, his eyes going huge as he took in the sight of Sky supporting his missing brother. Twilight raised his head and looked at him, and an utterly relieved smile pulled at his cheeks.

“Twilight,” Legend said in a thick voice, and bolted, Twilight lurching forward to catch him halfway and hugging him tighter than anything.

Legend hugged him back, and Wind stayed quiet as Sky set his wing around his nephews. Twilight clutched at his brother like a lifeline, and Wind looked down at his feet, the familiar ache sharp in his stomach. He’d do anything to be able to hug the Twilight he knew.

“Twi they got Mom,” Legend whispered suddenly. “They were at the house, they—”

“I know,” Twilight said wearily, his face grieved as Legend pulled back a little. “We kn-knew this would happen someday.”

“But they got Mom,” Legend said thickly, and Twilight closed his eyes, a pained look on his face.

“We’ll just have to get her back,” he said, voice oddly slurred, and Wind straightened, suddenly noticing the sheer amount of red staining Twilight’s shoulder.

“Sky!” he yelped, and his uncle dove forward as Twilight’s knees buckled, face white and sweaty. Sky carefully lowered him to the floor, and Legend dropped to his side, eyes huge as Wind hurried back over to him as well.

“What happened?!” he gasped, and Sky quickly looked Twilight over, starting with his bloody shoulder and giving the rest of him a quick examination.

“Something grazed him here,” Sky said, quickly pushing up the bloodied shoulder of the shirt Twilight was in. “And there’s something up with his arm. I think he’s just exhausted otherwise, but... I don’t know for certain. He’s got some blood on him here too...”

“We should get him downstairs,” Legend said, face almost as pale as Twilight’s. “Hyrule can help him, and that’s where the supplies are.”

Sky nodded, and Legend and Wind helped him lift Twilight up, Twilight’s skin clammy where it brushed Wind’s. Twilight let out a soft groan, and Legend clutched at his hand, fire in his eyes.

Wind scrambled ahead and held the door open for Sky to go through, his head spinning with mixed relief and fear. Twilight had made it, somehow he hadn’t gotten arrested, but he was so banged up and seemed near delirious... Wind couldn’t help being worried.

But he was also so, so relieved.

Twilight made it.

Wind watched Sky carry Twilight out, Legend supporting him with a wild look, and swallowed, hurrying after.

#sorry about the slightly abrupt ending but this was already wayyyy too long #i'll do more at some point of course :)#downfall iau #writing from the floor #fic #tw injury #the base is designed like the cave on Skyloft in skyward sword #not exactly but that's the basic shape #Aryll hangs down there a lot but not too much #she's got powers but her parents have hidden them pretty well so far #don’t know if she’s quite old enough to go to school yet also so that helps #anyway i think that's all enjoy

19 notes · View notes

hpowellsmith · 11 months ago

Text

Happy birthday, Royal Affairs!

It's been a year since Royal Affairs came out and I've been over the moon about how it's been received. It's meant that I've been able to write full-time, make Honor Bound as rich and detailed at high speed, and do a lot of physical and mental health recovery after various periods of burnout. I'm really grateful for everyone's support, here and elsewhere, and it really makes a huge difference.

I had so much fun returning to the characters after a while away for the epilogue - if you enjoyed the game at release and haven't replayed for the epilogue, I very much recommend giving it a go!

After beta testing, I wrote up a retrospective about what came up and how I organised my work. I thought I'd share it for some insight into my process, for players and authors. Here it is:

In Crème de la Crème I ended up adding large branches to the plot during beta, but I was fortunate not to have to do it this time around. Mostly it was building on what was there or bringing certain things to the forefront, or adding a few different ways of navigating situations.

As feedback came in, I was lucky enough to have so much that it became unwieldy to act on it in one go, so I made a priority list.

Highest priority was game breaking bugs or large continuity problems like Dominique's final game scene switching to Beaumont's.

High priority was smaller continuity bugs like the game confusing who you were romancing or whether you had or hadn't done a particular action earlier.

Medium priority was things like small scene additions or multi romance responses, or tweaking first impressions of characters, and so on.

Low priority was nice-to-haves like allowing a character to be romanced only late on.

Alongside this, I fixed typos and made small adjustments - easy wins that added polished. There were also some major sweeps that I did: a stat test clarity sweep, a stat change sweep, a reduction of tests in casual conversations, and repetitive words or phrases.

Stat test clarity:

I picked 3-4 stat tests at random from each chapter, copied their text into a separate document, and highlighted words that reflected the stats. For example: for Authoritative I had things like "I order them to..." "I tell them what to do", "I stay aloof to maintain my authority..." and so on. I edited testing choices to include these keywords, and also edited the stat guide to include them.

Checking all this had the side effect of helping me spot unnecessary tests or points where the stat being tested just didn't match the situation at hand.

Stat changes:

There are a lot of points where stats can change, and not all of them made sense at the start of beta. I did variations of this sweep several times, including the Action Skills, NPC stats, and adding a lot more chances to boost your Powers of Persuasion. Again doing this check helped me spot unnecessary or unintuitive tests and changes.

Tests in casual conversations:

This was again something that I iterated several times. Some of the commentary about Crème de la Crème said that the stat tests felt punishing or too difficult, and an early playtest from my wife flagged that some of the tests in Royal Affairs felt unfair. Why should a character's relationship reduce when you're trying to be affectionate, if the circumstances aren't in a state where that makes sense?

So I stripped out a lot of this, generally replacing a success/failure with flavour text (such as a Subtle MC perhaps being, well, more subtle about holding hands with someone). In some cases, where a character needs to be drawn out of themselves to talk more emotionally (Beaumont or Hyacinthe, on occasion), or they see the conversation as a contest or challenge in some way (mostly Javi or Trevelyan), I left them in. But I liked that they were a rarity rather than default.

Repetitive words or phrases

As I was writing, sometimes I noticed that I was overusing phrases, so if I got that feeling I would make a note for the sweep. In the end there wasn't as much as that as I thought, but there were a lot of qualifier-type words that reduce the impact of a sentence - "a little" was one, or "really", usually in dialogue - or filler words like "down" in sentences like "you sit down beside them".

I also looked for phrases like "you know" or "you suspect" to spot places where I could express whatever it was that the MC knows more elegantly (this is something a former colleague told me once and I've never forgotten it!)

More involved edits

With some major things that I did change, I'd put them on my to-do list before beta but they were either unwieldy and I wanted to start testing sooner rather than later, or I wanted to check whether other people agreed. It was great to have more opinions and mostly they confirmed what I'd thought. With others, I studied the feedback to gauge whether the effort of making the changes would be worth the payoff. In most cases, I decided to go for it.

In general, this stage involved adding things, including:

more worldbuilding details to give more context to the plot

more teacher interactions throughout; added scenes as well as offhand references to other classes; more about Clemence and Vere and expanded outcomes to their storyline

romanceable characters responding to players romancing other people: in the moment, checking in about where your relationship was at, and a set of final breakup conversations if it was left until the very last minute (this was a very big undertaking and would have been better to do earlier - a lesson I've taken to Honor Bound)

lengthening the main suffrage debate

adding slow-paced romance dynamics for two characters (I was really keen to do this but was disciplined about making it low priority - it was a lovely idea and I knew I'd enjoy doing it, but it was very much a nice-to-have compared to other things. I was delighted to be able to do it!)

more communal scenes with classmates to give more of a sense of living in each other's pockets

adding an option to confide in Asher about a particular plot point and for them to assist with it if wanted (I was so happy about adding this: it's one of my favourite Asher moments, even if few people see it!)

tweaking some of the friendship/romance conversations to add more emotional chat (mostly this applied to Javi and Hyacinthe; there was a bit added to Asher and Dominique at Verdancy)

more pet time

more narrative and conversational responsiveness about whether an imperilled character was romanced

more Javi asexuality chat

more detailed outfit descriptions throughout with more choices about what to wear

generally expanding some scenes to give more breathing room to important moments

In the end I added 45000 words to the game during beta testing, thanks to feedback from editor review, continuity testing, and copyediting. Testing took place during late December 2022 and January 2023, and I massively appreciate everyone who contributed to make this big game as polished as it is!

#choice of games #royal affairs #creme de la creme series #interactive fiction #game writing process #if writing process

62 notes · View notes

scrollypoly · 2 months ago

Text

Life Update

I've been p inactive recently, especially with original posts and talking about my fic or headcanons or stuff. I kinda just wanted to talk about what's going on and what the outlook looks like rn ^^

For the past couple of years or so, I've been struggling more with what I believe is undiagnosed ADHD and possibly even autism, as well as depression and a rebound of my anxiety. This is due to a slew of things, one of which is we moved a couple years back to a new state where we didn't know anyone at all. It was a culture shock, going from a big city to a very small town (200 people!!), and while I liked the move to a more rural and peaceful area, it's not been easy.

What's been especially difficult is finding good jobs and keeping up with my college courses. My first job put me back in the closet essentially, as I would constantly be around coworkers making hateful comments and would even go so far as to harass customers that weren't gender conforming or even just decently dressed. I went from that job to working one that completely overworked me, from being yelled at for things out of my control, working long hours, and at some points not even getting my full paycheck. I left this job only a couple months ago, and I only worked it over the summer. But it was enough to completely shred my anxiety, and I'm still working on calming myself down.

All of this, coupled with the painful death of my grandmother recently, has left me feeling pretty much isolated and alone in my area, and I have yet to find good friends that I can talk to like I had back home. I still have those friends, but the persistent exhaustion of life, trying to juggle full time work hours with online classes that are a struggle for my brain, and everything else. Last month my brain just. Broke. I had been on a persistent slide of a breakdown and I was just hanging on until I could have a break.

I finally made that break for myself. Over the holidays I visited @benilos and gave myself a break. I have my next term of classes off, and I'm gonna be using the time to use my newly acquired health insurance and get 1. Diagnoses, and 2. Medication or some got dang therapy. That's the plan for now at least.

For the past couple of years now with all of this going on, writing and drawing havent really been priorities. Right now they definitely aren't, in fact I will probably be putting my fic on ao3 on a indefinite hiatus. My brain is too much of a fried egg to be able to write it, and I've been holding guilt at being unable to write for it or update it, to the point that right now I don't feel much happiness at the prospect of writing it. I won't be abandoning it, for anyone that reads it and is worried. But it is definitely going on the back burner.

In the meantime, you may see me posting generally about my AU or benilos's AU too, since we have an official crossover. I'll be trying to drum up motivation to begin working on it, and that'll come in the general vicinity of just. Talking about my stuff. Interacting with other people in this fandom still gives me anxiety spikes, iykyk, but my inbox on my side blog, and my dms are still open as well. Things are probably just gonna be slow for a little while.

If you've commented on my fic, or reblogged or liked any of my posts or art or writings, I appreciate you so much, especially if you reblog my stuff cuz no one reblogs anything anymore lol. Thank you guys for staying around this long 💗

#my posts #important #pinned #faq #my writing #my art

16 notes · View notes

call-me-liquid · 4 months ago

Note

Could we maybe get an analysis on her “stop making villains like Magneto, they suck” video?

Also, I for one am sat patiently for that Flowers In The Attic analysis.

FItA Lorch Analysis coming next.

For right now: Part 3, Final round. FIGHT!

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Lily Commits Elder Gay Mutant Abuse, feat. "Eldritch Lily" (Part 3)

8:30: "And making these characters hop in the giant death robot so they can randomly do some heinous act of evil so you feel less guilty for wanting to bring them down is very telling about your priorities as a writer." [We're still talking about Korra, for context.]

I'm highlighting this quote more than anything as a means to really dig into the big stink with Lily's media analysis here. I've said something along the lines of, "I kind of agree with her, but not actually," several times while writing this, and this is exactly why.

I think a lot of people come at media criticism from a very flawed position because of the way the grading works in our school systems, of all things. They judge it like there is the possibility of getting an A+ on your show, movie, novel, video game, etc. For the purpose of reviews, as a quick way to indicate quality/how much you recommend a piece of media, I understand why critics would use scoring systems like that-- but when it comes to analysis, that's not really a useful approach. There are technical skills and proficiencies in execution that you can grade media on like that, but even they have their nuances. Conceptual ideas presented in media, however? No dice.

There are certain filmmakers in particular who I fully acknowledged are very skilled at their craft-- I still strongly dislike their films. I don't agree with the conceptual ideas they have to present, and I don't think they convincingly rationalize their position textually, subtextually, or otherwise. With that said: I think most media produced, regardless of quality, is a net positive for the intellectual landscape of humanity as a whole. With the exception of media that is actively harmful in a very direct way, disingenuous propaganda, or particularly egregious cases of cooperate slop, I support any creative's ability to add to the long-form conversation art and creation offers. Those highly proficient filmmakers I ideologically disagree with, their ability to articulate their worldview so genuinely, and clearly helped me as a creative articulate why I disagree.

With all that said, it's clear Lily doesn't think in that regard. Lily has taken media crit she has heard from other sources. She has just retrofitted it to whichever property she wants to rip into. If it superficially applies enough that she can misrepresent a piece of fiction with an argument, she will apply it across the broad. Approaching media crit like there is a definitive way to "score" fiction on its conceptual value, like it's a high schooler's end of term essay. Context be damned.

What she is articulating here is a valid criticism of certain fictions that try to present morally complex villains. This is a complaint I've made myself over properties like the first Black Panther film (which, thankfully, they at least did their best to rectify in the second). But not Kuvira. Not Magneto as a whole.

9:07: "Which would have been interesting, and led to some criticism of the main characters for trying to restore the same monarchy that has previously failed the people."

They weren't trying to restore the monarchy. They were protecting the prince from assassination. I feel like it'd be pretty tyrannical of the Avatar to say, "fuck you Earth Kingdom, you don't get your royal family anymore," without their say, Lily . . .

9:18: "Maybe talk about the United Republic being a literal concurred settler state."

YET AGAIN LILY'S CRITICISM BOILS DOWN TO, "I HAVE NEVER READ A COMIC."

9:30: [Lily takes like, the 12th bullshit pot shot at the creators of Avatar.]

I've ignored it up until this point. There's been too much else to talk about. But Lily has assumed an absurd amount about the authorial intent of everyone she's discussed in this video-- including Jack Kurby's intent when creating Magneto.

9:40: Lily fumbles through some final point here with two sentences that make no sense when put together about how this is all people doing tropes badly, but if you did it well then the trope wouldn't exist and aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

God please strike me down.

10:10: Lily calls this all propaganda.

Again. She's sort of right in the abstract, divorced from the content of her video. Wrong when taken in context of what she's talking about. SOMETIMES "sympathetic villains" are used as political propaganda. Sometimes, they're a legitimate expression of a creator's misunderstanding or mischaracterization of an ideology. Sometimes, they're an earnest dissection of the ideological concept.

Good argument of specific pieces of media, retrofitted, flattened of any nuance, used to discredit a thing Lily doesn't like across the board.

We're in a timeloop.

10:25:

God is dead and we have killed him.

11:01: "The problem is that this idea of all villainy being nuanced and complicated has just never really been true. Evil people in real life will often just invent justification for evil things they already want to do. And there's a point where someone crosses the line of evil so much that nothing they say earns them sympathy."

Lily thinks people commit acts of extreme violence and atrocity for . . . Fun, I guess. Disturbingly enough, this tracks real well with how she's justified her own abhorrent actions in the past. When other people do bad things, it's because they like it and are bad. When she does a bad thing, she has a reason, and therefore, it's justified. Another self-tell Lillian.

11:42: "The problem with my idea for these kinds of villains is that they inherently make white people of any gender uncomfortable."

GOD FINALLY FUCKING DONE THIS GOD FORSAKEN VIDEO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Pray for me, the fucking psychic damage I just fucking took for you guys.

I suppose the only take away here is this:

The thing that's so exhausting about Lily's videos is the complexity of the degrees in which she is wrong. She's developed, for lack of a better word, a talent for laundering good arguments in a very disingenuous fashion. I wouldn't go so far as to call what she does plagiarism. Her work is more than just stealing other people's arguments and regurgitating them back-- but what she does is a spiritual cousin of sorts.

She bootlegs intellectualism to sharpen it into a shiv she can use to stab at anything that displeases her. The same way she weaponizes her marginalized identity, she weaponizes honest and thoughtful media analysis aswell.

This video was, frankly, barely even about Magneto. Barely even about sympathetic villains. She has no interest in the material that was the topic of this video-- not even enough to do a bare-bones Google search beyond looking up vague facts she could massage into supporting her claims.

A lot of those very early X-Men comics are fucking rough. They include shit like Charles expressing some very creepy thoughts about a (I believe then) teenage Gene Grey. Some very yikes dynamics with the then mostly/arguably entirely white mutants acting out very on-the-nose imagery associated at the time with the black liberation movement. And some very questionable framing and dynamics due to the fact that, real life marginalized groups typically don't have dangerous superpowers.

However, you can almost sense the moment when Kurby started to take the reigns and make the X-Men into something really special. Not to imply that Stan Lee is a bigot or a bad writer, he had very good intentions. By his own admission, he did his best work as a collaboration with his artists guiding the story along with him (sometimes, well, functionally being the actual writer, no offense, Lee left a bit of a complicated legacy, we can't get into it right now.) Anyone familiar with Kurby's work as a whole will know just how profoundly humanist he was with the stories he told.

Despite what Lily arrogantly implied here, he always intended Erik to be a very sympathetic character. Even as a "villain," a sympathetic character vaguely coded as an "extremist" black activist was kind of bold for the 1960s. I can't tell you for certain what ol' Jack's authorial intent was, the man very rudely died 3 years before I was born so I never really got the chance to ask him-- but dare I say this was his best attempt at laundering the idea that maybe "radical" activists actually maybe had a point? To an audience who would have been VERY against that idea if presented to them outright at the time? Even now?

Media does have the power to shift cultural perception-- even if that takes time. In the early 2000s, when I was taught about Malcome X for the first time as a child, even then, 40-some-odd-years later he was presented to me in a negative light. It was in the context of him being the inspiration for Magneto, however. The emotional connection I had to that character made me question whether that characterization of Malcome was entirely fair-- even though I was too young and didn't have the full context to grasp what I was being told at the time. I do believe to some extent that Magneto's popculture relevance has helped preserve the legacy of some of the more controversial activists in history. By being a figure people can personally connect with. Of course, it's all more complicated and messy than I'm making it sound, however. It's unfortunately very easy to flanderize figures of history, boil down their motives, and flatten their narratives. A character in a story, detached from any direct sociopolitical baggage, is something you can form a bond with. Something that can (if handled properly) promote empathy for their real-life equivalents.

There absolutely is a conversation to be had about certain ideologies or positions being more often than not, for practical or political purposes, cast in the antagonistic role in fiction. However, Lily's thesis here, boiled down to the bones, has been disproven ten times over by the abject failure of shit like The Comic's Code Authority and The Hays Code. People don't emotionally connect with squeaky clean moral paragons as much as they do messy, complicated, emotionally challenging complex characters-- even when you paint them as the abject villain of the story.

People fucking adore Magneto. He's a cultural icon. Even before the FoX-Men movies came out, he was probably one of the few comicbook characters your mom could name. Vaguely recognize, at the least. And yes, that doesn't always translate into people being charitable to "radical" civil rights activists in real life-- but doesn't necessarily harm it either. Anecdotally, it helps, if but just a smidgen.

Anyway, get fucked Lily. Magnet Daddy FTW.

P.S. X-Men '97 is really good. Also, it's 100% alluding to these two having fucked. Maybe outright confirmed it by now, I'm not totally caught up.

I mean, we all already knew they totally were lovers, but.

Come on Disney, give the people what they want. Make 'em kiss. These poor old men have been having sexual tension for like, 60 years.

17 notes · View notes

bingeeaterblog · 8 months ago

Text

A love letter to touka kirishima

For the entire time I've been back into Tokyo ghoul I've centered on one lady specifically. Touka has been my favorite character, there's something alluring about her that draws me in.

When we first meet her, it's that sweet waitress front. With a bat of the eyes and a "welcome in" she sells it well. Our second meet with her it's red. A pretty girl slicing a man in half. Not that he didn't deserve it but still. It's such a drastic change and if Rizes turn didn't set the tone for the series Toukas did.

Her reveal puts it into perspective that anyone could be a ghoul. Even a cute waitress from a humble little coffee shop.

Our third and the setting meet with her is her saving kaneki from Nishio. Stating herself as one who isn't to be fucked with. When Kaneki reveals he used to be human she feels... Jealous. Sure the insult hurt but that fact he tasted that freedom before..? He had everything she longed for.

Touka has always had this fascination with humans, maybe it came from her father. She yearned to be in their world highschool and Yoriko giving her a chance to experience that. She forces herself to eat human food. Both to not waste Yorikos efforts and to feel normal for once. Even if it means making herself violently ill.

Anteiku made her feel that way too, talking with humans and ghouls alike. It made her dream of a world that she could be herself without being human. But that's just, not possible is it.

She grows attached to kaneki, it's not intentional but it happens nonetheless. Maybe it's his sweet nervous smiles or his endearing book obsession. He's nice and sees the good in her, something she didn't think was possible.

His connection with his little human friend reminds her of Yoriko, it makes her want to preserve that friendship between them in hopes of saving her own.

When Kimi tells her she's pretty, specifically her ghoul parts, it's unbelievable. A human sees that in her? A human can love a ghoul? I wondered if that made her hope.

When Touka was younger her brother left, rejecting the human esc or life yoshimura was offering them. While touka basked in the opportunity to live an almost normal life ayato was disgusted by it. Humans are what took away dad aren't they? When ayato pipes up about it she initially takes it as jealousy, sure he's bitter she's living the good life! She doesn't even see his abandonment when it happens.

Did Dad leave too? Where did those doves come from? Did they get him? Does everyone leave in the end? Is she that unlovable?

Her theories are proven right when Kaneki leaves too, white stalk hair leaving her life

She was so worried about him when he was taken, probably the only person genuinely losing sleep over him. And then he just... Leaves. He promises to see her again but touka doesn't believe that.

Touka throws herself into her studies, striving for kamii. Sure she DOES wanna get into there for her own reasons , biology and all that. wanting to know where she came from how she works. What they living weapon inside of her shoulder blade means. But she wants to feel closer to Kaneki.

Her job at anteikus on hold, they'd just recovered after the break in, finally open again. Her studies are her priority trying to busy herself.

When kaneki does come back, she's angry. There's a deep longing and happiness that he's okay but she pushes that away in favor of giving her a peace of her mind. She hits him and the contact after so long is euphoric, then there's the crash. Kaneki has never been good at consoling has he? She tells him to never come back, something she doesn't mean but he takes it as truth.

Touka doesn't see kaneki again after that. Besides for right before his "death".

She has to abandon her old life, they've been discovered as ghouls. That's something she can never run away from.

Touka is a brash impulsive mean girl, she's a bit bossy and impatient but under those walls she's soft. At her center she's so lonely, aching for someone to stay with her. She cares so deeply about the people she loves and will throw herself into danger at the change to avenge or protect them.

I will always sing her praises, she was a phenomenal character, I won't talk about her portion in re because today is meant to celebrate her. She is my favorite character ever my favorite girl alive.

Happy birthday Touka !!

#tokyo ghoul #touka kirishima #art #fanart #touken #character analysis

32 notes · View notes

artsymeeshee · 5 months ago

Note

Hello! I just found your laundry list of art last week, and I have to say…I LOVE IT! Love the instinct comics, Ford being cool never ceases to make me giggle, and I loved the autumn drawing. I’ll admit, that one had me in tears…made be believe in the what-if’s of my own family. What they…could be like someday. Or what I wish they were. Thanks for the tears, they were much needed.

Anyway! This is what I came to message you about! Although,…I am extremely sorry for the late message. I tend to check back into tumblr at…weird hours of the night. Heck, it’s almost the next day as I type this. I seriously need to sleep more. So! I had a few thoughts on Stan and Ford relationship, and I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Just a disclaimer, I’m kinda basing this off my actual life as I find these characters mirror personal events very closely! I am also a writer and soon to be author! Might post some archive of our own content about these two soon. Also, and this is the most important, I have NOT read book of Bill yet. So plz…no spoilers. Anyway, long introduction aside, let’s begin!

In my personal head cannon of these two, which I don’t imagine is “too” different than how anyone else could see them, Stan and Ford have an extremely awkward and emotional conversation after Weirdmagedon. Why? B/c they’re both, to some degree, emotionally numb. In my opinion, why wouldn’t they? They haven’t spoken to each other in 40 years, properly, and they have repressed a ton of their emotions since then. It’s hard to bring that back up. (Speaking off of experience) I’d say even harder for Ford. Stan, thanks to the twins, has learned to loosen the locks on his heart while Ford kept running away from those emotions to defeat Bill. Just like his ambitions, that was the main priority, and everything else later. To me, this would explain why Ford never bothered to talk to Stan properly since coming back during the show. He wouldn’t know how to. If they were to talk, and this is where the writer in me comes out, I’d write Ford as the one that needs it most. He’s been traveling dimension for decades, running from the past that held him back…but he has no anchor now. Stan becomes that anchor, paralleling what he wasn’t when Ford was lost. And Ford…he just breaks. Like, completely breaks. And Stan is there with him, breaking like he is, but still there for him brother. Finally back after all those years apart. And as someone who has been on the side of neglect from one’s own brother…nothing would be me happier if we went to connect. Just like Stanley and Ford. And eventually, soon to be sailing on the seas to connect even more.

Phew…that was a lot. Sorry for the rambling. Told you I had some ideas! So, what do you think? Do you see Ford acting like this? If not…why? Genuinely, I’d like to know. Anyway, thanks for taking your time to read this. Again, sorry for the ramblings. Oh! One more thing, I know you aren’t taking art request right now, but would you be open to take them in the future? Say in 2 months time? Anyway, bye!

Well first off, thank you! I appreciate it! :D

And to answer your headcanon, I agree on it. Stan is definitely more open to talking, especially thanks to the kids. I mean there's still moments where it's hard and awkward for sure. And Ford would for sure have a harder time opening up, especially with the constant guilt and mistakes that replay over and over. And there's always that lingering feeling of "well, Stan has to hate me for what I've done" and it's always so surprising when Stan tells him differently and he never once hated Ford. Sure, was angry but never hated him. He had too much self-hatred to feel that way with Ford. And as many times as it needs to be said or repeated, it really makes all the difference when they tell each other how much they love and care for each other. As Alex said, "they're both so damaged, they desperately need each other."

As for the requests thing, most likely not. Only because I'm entering the busiest time of year for my work so it's gonna be a miracle if I even have enough energy or motivation for drawing if I'm not completely burnt out.

#ask #water-god19 #long post

88 notes · View notes

cottoncandy-cult · 10 months ago

Text

Little Ghoul Lost Ch.1

Some spoilers, so read at your own risk.

Sho stood talking to Leo and his captain, he had just managed to recover an anomaly alive as he was required to do by Alan. They were currently going over the details of his report, making sure everything was in order before they turned it in to Dante. "Sho!" A little girl had collided with Sho's leg, clinging onto him tightly to the surprise of his friend and captain. "(Y/n)?… What the hell are you doing here?" Sho had kneeled down to the little girl's height after prying her off, her tiny hands clinging to his own. The little girl was all smiles, though a new scar on her cheek made him feel like something was off. "I get to come here too! Big brother said so." She had happily rocked on her heels, showing off her uniform though it had no broach or dorm attached to it. "Hey Shohei…" Hyde approached, his usual smile not present. Sho's head had snapped up to look at him, a harsh glare holding a silent question about why his little sister was at Darkwick. "What. Happened?" Sho had nearly growled out the words, he had completely forgotten about Leo and Alan's presence, but his dear baby sister was just now noticing them. She was 9 years old, and though she vaguely resembled her brother if you didn't know about their relation you wouldn't initially assume anything. "There… was an accident involving an anomaly… A lot has happened, and we can discuss it in my office, all you need to know right now is… (Y/n)'s a ghoul…" Hyde spoke softly so their little sister wouldn't hear as he scratched at the back of his head, he wasn't any happier about it than Sho was. Hyde didn't like it when Sho became a ghoul either, but at least Sho was a bit older when it happened. Sho could only stare at his sister in horror, though her innocent gaze was distracted with the 2 other males who were crouched to her height to get a good look at her. "How long?…" The younger blonde questioned his elder brother, observing how she shook hands with Alan as a greeting. Sho moved to stand, facing Hyde after he finally forced his face blank to hide his horror and sorrow over the situation. "About 3 months… I've been petitioning with the school to let her come here as a special circumstance, she'll be technically attending here but we had to call in a favor to get her a special teacher since she isn't old enough for our current curriculum. Of course she has to be assigned to a dorm, so I don't want you to freak out if she doesn't end up in Vagastrom." Hyde raised his hands as Sho's eyes got dark, his head tilting in question at the idea of her being put out of her brother's supervision. Sho didn't trust any of the other dorms to take care of her, sure Vagastrom could be a bit rough but at least Sho was there to handle anything that happens. "Are you really ok with that? How do you plan to take care of her if she's staying with the other dorms?" Sho crossed his arms, staring down his elder brother. Hyde wasn't entirely sure how to answer, simply sighing as he continued to nervously scratch at the back of his head.

"Look, she might still end up in Vagastrom. But the headmaster said that since she is now considered a student of Darkwick she must be placed, all the captains will be gathered for her placement. As a teacher I will be attending, since you're her brother too I can see if you can attend as well. Personally, if she was to end up in a different dorm from you, I think Hotarubi would be the best-case scenario." Hyde did his best to soothe his younger brother, they were the only family (Y/n) had and while Hyde and Shohei weren't particularly close they could agree that their baby sister was their first priority. This time it was Sho's turn to sigh, running his fingers through his hair. "I'm going to your office later, so you better be there. I have questions." Sho turned and picked up his little sister, interrupting her conversation with Leo who had whined about Sho being rude. Hyde had quietly agreed, the only good thing was that (Y/n) was largely unaware of what all had happened. She believed it had all been a nightmare, she didn't fully understand her circumstances and simply took joy in getting to be with her big brothers again instead of just getting to see them for special occasions. Though both brothers knew she'd learn about it eventually, they only hoped that they'd find the words to explain things to her when the time comes. "What's wrong Sho?" (Y/n)'s bright (E/c) eyes took in her big brother's darker eyes, concerned about how discontent he appeared. "I'm fine, just a bit surprised. I see you've already met Leo and our captain." Sho glanced over at his friend and Captain, both males curiously watching him as if he was an anomaly as he interacted with his little sister. "Mhm, Leo is a little weird buy Alan is nice." She giggled happily, Sho couldn't help but smirk at Leo's pout and Alan's attempt to hide his smirk behind a gloved hand. "That's good, Alan is the captain of this dorm, so you'll be seeing him quite a bit. If anything happens when you're here and I aint around, you should go find him." Sho knew how rough his dorm could be, so he wanted to make sure she knew who she could go to if he wasn't around for some reason. Not that he planned to leave her unattended there, but accidents happen all the time and he wasn't so stupid to not think about covering his bases.

"Ok, what about Leo?" The little girl tilted her head, noticing how her brother specified Alan. "I mean, if you can find him sure but he's better at recording things as they happen then stopping them." Sho smirked at his friend, Leo had huffed and stuffed his hands in his pockets while glaring at Sho. "That's so not true and you know it." Alan had ignored Leo's pouting, instead speaking to (Y/n) directly. "So how do you like the campus so far? You excited to be coming to school here?" Leo huffed over being ignored, but watched quietly as the little girl rambled to their captain about how excited she was to go to school with both her brothers. Leo leaned, his hand coming up to hide his mouth as he whispered to his friend. "So, how you gonna handle this? You aren't seriously gonna try and babysit her the whole time she's here, right?" He raised an eyebrow, a small smile on his face. Sho raised an eyebrow as well, looking at his friend as if he was an idiot. "I'm not gonna leave her completely unsupervised, I don't care what dorm she's in. You're just gonna have to find different ways to make money or go without, I can't keep covering for you anymore and carrying your end of everything. It's not even just the money, the last thing I need is her doing what I do. I know the kind of consequences I get for the things I do, it's one thing when it's me but it'll be hell before it's her." Sho's voice was low and firm, he had thought of setting boundaries with Leo before because of how controlling and ungrateful the shorter male was. It was one thing when they were friends before Darkwick, but now that they have to live together it was getting under his skin. Leo looked shocked for a moment, which surprised Sho because he thought his friend would just immediately act offended. "Sho, can you make lunch?" The little girl had tugged on her brother's shirt gently, looking at him with a curious gaze. "Sure thing, go back with Hyde and I'll bring it to you when it's done. Gotta do a little shopping first." Sho sat the girl back on her feet, patting her head as she nodded and ran over to her eldest brother who had took her hand so that she didn't get lost. "We'll see you at my office Shohei, we'll talk more there." Hyde waved to his younger brother, leading the little girl back down the path away from the dorm. Sho watched them walk away, crossing his arms before he walked away from his friend and captain quietly. The circumstances weren't beyond them, to become a ghoul one had to make a deal with a demon and that isn't commonly seen among younger kids. So, they let him go, even if they had questions it could wait until later. Leo retreated to his room, chewing on his friend's words and thinking over what would drive the taller male to put his foot down so firmly. Meanwhile Alan returned to working on an anomalous vehicle, he highly doubted such an innocent little girl would end up in this rough and tumble dorm. He knew Sho was gonna be away more than usual, so it was up to him as a captain to find a good balance between letting Sho have a bit more leeway and reminding him of his duties and work.

#fluff #fem reader #x reader #tokyo debunker #shohei haizono #hyde #Shohei x little sister reader #x little sister reader #x ghoul reader #candy cult vault

43 notes · View notes