#Plot's a work in progress so y'know might have more might not

[mayasaurusss]

Hello, I really liked the way you write about Jinx, can you please write about how femme! the reader and Isha fall into a trap and as a result, while protecting Isha, the reader is injured and Jinx goes into her killer mode (you don’t have to write if you don’t want to) you can just write aftercare if you want

A helping hand

A/N: and here it's finally done! I could have made this oneshot quicker and shorter but then I got chaught up in writing it... and I woke up eight days later with this in my drafts😂. I don't ususally like how I handle stories, but I think that this one turned out pretty good. As mentioned in another post, it's very heavily plot driven and it's a wopping eleven pages worth of writing. My grammar, as always, might not be the top gamma. I hope you guys will enjoy it! Also this was mixed with something someone suggested on ao3!

Contains: female reader, violence, murder, mentions of saliva and vomiting, hurt and comfort, very heavily plot driven, happy ending with a happy family. Lenght: 6k/ 11 pages.

The limited air inside the vent makes you choke on your breath, chemicals and smoke filling your lungs and hollowing your brain. A loud sound echoes inside the metal hull, alerting every one of your senses. "Isha! Be careful!" you whisper-yell at the kid, who's crouching in front of you, placing her hat back on.

She just huffs in response, rolling her eyes before continuing her tour inside Zaun's vents. Isha has not been too fond of you since you entered her life; one reason could be that she thought she had to compete with you for Jinx's attention. The other reason, maybe, is that you were from topside. Piltover, The City of Progress. The city who exploited and hurt the poor citizens of the Undercity. Avid hands commanding from atop marble skyscrapers, grinning smiles sucking away the air of the lanes.

It's no wonder you're not Isha's favorite; Sevika too seemed to have a disdain for you, either because of your privileged position or for the way Jinx was distracted and dreamy when you were near.

To ingratiate yourself into Isha's favours and to make it at least somewhat pleasant for both of you to be near each other, you agreed to follow her in a walk through the lanes.

Jinx had invited you into her own private lair, after much convincing on her part. One day, she just swept you up and brought you down with her, making you walk through fissures, alleys and neon lit streets.

"You should have a tour of The Lanes, y'know, to learn how life's like down here" a flicker of a spark reflecting in her goggles as she made some of her obscure machine-thingies. "So give me one" you said, prompting Jinx to hum in thought. "I am busy today, and Sev' is too. Besides, I don't think you'll enjoy each other's company" she glanced at Isha, who was drawing Stinkmaw on her notebook. "You'll just have to settle for Isha" the kid propped her head up at the mention of her name, already looking with stars in her eyes at Jinx, not aware of your previous conversation. "What do you say Isha? Want to have fun with your new friend? Give her a tour of the Undercity?", Isha sized you from head to toe with a snarl on her lips, eyes moving between you and Jinx while her face became more and more agitated. "Come on, she's not that boring" Jinx moved back to her work, sparks flying and lit up her face, "I should know". Your face grew hot with her words, remembering what happened between you two just weeks prior. Isha gave a disgusted 'ew', before Jinx turned her head to watch the kid, a shadow of anger in her eyes. "No excuses! Come on, just go around a bit, become friends!".

"Jinx I, I don't think this is a wise idea. I mean, Isha is just a kid: what if something happens? I-" Jinx interrupted you, her voice almost lost between the screeching sounds of metal scraps flickering sparks between each other. "You'll both be fine. Isha is a smart kid, she'll get out of any situation. As for you..." she turned to you, a teasing glint in her eyes, "...will you be able to keep up with her?".

'No, not at all' you answer to her mental image, struggling to keep your pace behind Isha. The kid is fast inside these tunnels, and your body is not accustomed to their narrow spaces and to the flow of smoke and waste. The metal feels light and shaky under your weight, giving you the impression that at the slightest of pressure, you will sink beneath and break your ribs into the concrete of just another of Zaun's alleys. You steady on, carefully applying your weight where each border of the metal tubes meet, following the shadow of Isha.

After what feels like ages, you finally spot the end of a tunnel, light shining on the dirty buildings giving it a green hue. Isha crawls towards it, leaving you behind in the dusty tunnels, prompting you to follow her quickly. The kid has already jumped in the street below, adjusting her hat on, turning her back to you while she begins to walk away. You take in a deep breath, calculating the height of your jump, before falling messily on the concrete.

"Ack, shit" Isha gives you a dirty look, "What?". She just rolls her eyes, before continuing on, not waiting for you. The Undercity is just what you expected: crowds of people fill it's street, smoking and squaring you up; sellers shout to lure in buyers, presenting their merch of metal husks, hundreds of different flavours of tobacco and pieces of meat that you'd rather not know from what they came from. At the far corners, gang groups threaten and push against each other, their blades glinting with a malicious look. The streets are lit by bright neon signs, filled with all possible smells and gasses, overcrowded to the point that you're short of breath. Distantly, you can hear the sound of machinery evermoving, of water and air and of shipments departing from shore. The city itself beats and pumps, like a living heart.

Everything is suffocating; too loud, too much. And what's worse is, everyone knows that you don't belong. Their eyes are envious, angry, a dangerous hate barely hidden beneath their scleras. Hell, Isha, the kid who is known to have a kind heart, can barely hide it. For a moment, too caught up in your mind and it's worries, you miss Isha turning around, entering a dark hallway. You follow her blue locks until you're far from people, now only surrounded by high walls and some couples making out in a corner. On one wall there are signs of damage: claws and dents and what looks to be a... strange green goop staining the bricks, along with scraps of metal of an exoskeleton.

You find Isha sitting at the corner where the street opens, back against the wall. You are not too sure what she is doing: after all, she has proved to be rather uninterested in you. What you don't realize, not at first anyway, is that she had run through the crowd into the alley to lure you away from that noisy hell so you'd have time to get used to it. Sliding down next to her, your clothes drag down the dirt and dust of years behind them. Silence feels heavy above your head, the distant sounds of the crowd the only thing keeping you at least a bit sane.

Isha has found a pastime in rolling the hem of her hat on the ground, trying to make a perfect spin with it. The sounds of metal against concrete screech inside the hallway, attracting more than just one pair of eyes. You can feel Isha's reluctance to begin so close to you, probably thinking to herself that it was a mistake waiting for you. When the silence feels too heavy, then you finally speak. "Isha...listen" the hat spinning stops abruptly, it's hem catched between Isha's thumb and index finger. "I know you don't like me" she's surprised that you decided to face the problem right away; it's not something your people are known for. "You've made it all too clear these past days. I know you are wary of me; I know the Undercity is wary of us". The kid's eyes are now on you, studying, squaring you up, detecting any lies that you may hide under your sweet words.

"But... I am not my city. I know what you have been through and I am..." you falter for a moment, thinking that you're starting to sound a little too guilty and invested in this, and that she may recognize this as insincere. "What I meant to say is... I would like to be your friend, if you want to".

Isha doesn't answer you right away, but you see a small smile spread on her lips. You breathe a sigh of relief at successfully bringing down her walls.

She jumps back up, extending her hand to yours, palm open and a curious smile on her face. You take it, careful to not push your weight down on her before you too stand up.

"Come on, let's go home. This is good enough of a tour for me today", you take Isha's hand, ready to walk back to Jinx's, before something clutters inside the hallways, spreading its dull, hollow metal sound everywhere. The sound gets closer and closer, the item of its origin stopping its course at your feet. It's a cylinder shaped, stubby looking object; drawn on its surface are what you recognize to be Jinx's drawings, imitating a grinning gaping mouth of some evil creature. The red light you are so familiar with, the one which with Jinx blows her enemies to bits, is off.

"Well, look what we have here. The runt of that crazed bitch and Piltover's finest trash". From under the fuming tubes, a tall, scruffy looking man shows up. His hair is in a buzz cut style, thin muscles tightly attached to his bones, making him look starved and unkept. Black tattooed run over his forehead and cheeks, giving his sulken eyes even more of a crazed look. His goons all show up after him, exiting from their hidden spots. "What do you want?" you try to sound though, but the wavering of your voice only gives away your fears. Isha hides behind you, clutching tightly at the fabric of your pants.

"Oh we don't want anything from you. But you see..." he reaches to fish something out of his pants. You see it before he shows it: the hem of a knife. He slides the blade out of its sheath, glimmering dangerously in the dark. "...that darling bitch of yours took something from us. Well, to be honest, someone. Someone very dear to our group" you look in between you and Isha, then at the distance between you and the goons, trying to think of an escape.

"What do you mean? How do you know Jin-" he laughs creepily, a little too high for your tastes, echoing between the walls. "How do I know Jinx? Everyone knows Jinx!" he gesticulates with the knife still in his hand, dangerously close to hitting himself in the eye with it. He inspects the blade with something dark inside his thoughts, dulling the colour out of his eyes. With a creepy and disturbing smile on his lips, he runs his finger along the line, blood trickling down its shape. He seems to take a sick kind of pleasure from seeing red staining the metal. "I gotta give it to her though, she really aimed high: fucking someone from Piltover is something none of us would dirty ourselves trying to".

A vein under your skin pumps blood into your brain faster, giving you the prospect of an annoying headache, "Watch that tone-". "Never thought that that small, smart runt would become what she is today. Powder really outdid herself", you don't miss the cruel smirk which paints his lips, enjoying infecting your relationship with Jinx. "Powder?" the name doesn't ring a bell, and you're left with the man's ominous eyes peering into your heart, telling you that 'you don't know anything'.

"Oh look, trust runs so deep between you two that you don't even know her real name! Did you really think a parent could ever name their child 'Jinx'?" the rest of his group laughs and mocks you like their leader is, like a hoard of sheep follows their shepard. "I don't need to know her name. If there is a reason why Po- Jinx is keeping her real name a secret from me, I am not gonna pry it open from her" you can feel your heart pump blood faster into your veins, that small headache becoming stronger and stronger as anger takes hold of your actions. "Mhm? Just like she kept her family's deaths a secret?" those words feel heavy when he speaks them, clearly holding some truth behind them. You try to remain calm but anger and fear are affecting your judgment. "W-What? What the fuck are you talking about?" their ugly laughs fill your ears, only aiding in alimenting the fire at your heart. "After our little...fight, he changed. He started to hang out with the wrong people, doing the wrong things..." slowly, ever so slowly, all of them start to circle around you. One, two, four, six of them, sporting grinning smiles, stalking you like hyenas.

"But he would have been the same has always, even if he had become dumber than he was. He would have been alive too, at this moment, if Vander hadn't intervened". None of what this man is saying makes sense to you. He's talking to you, but his words are meant for others: for his friends, for Isha, for Jinx. You, once again, are reminded that you're not welcome here. In their eyes, hate and hunger swirl, creating a whirlwind that sucks away at your courage, "Just...what do you want from me?!".

"Jinx and that sister of hers took our friend from us. Our boss. Now-" with mastered precision, he makes the blade jump from his hands, now it's tip pointing towards the ground. Something that you can only describe as burning hatred and killing intent paints his features, before he screams a rallying cry, "It's our turn taking everything from her!".

That is enough for the whole lot of them to pounce. One moment, and they are all on you; punching, kicking, twisting your hair in their grasp, snarling and mocking. In the confusion you lose Isha, not being able to distinguish her blue locks in between all that green and grey. For a split second, after they consume their gloves on you, no one is holding you down. You take the occasion to slip away from their grasps, falling backwards into the opening street. You take a second to choose what to do, and as you run towards the crowd once again, following where you assume Isha went, a feeling of anger rises in your stomach. The sound of the busy street echoes, a distant reminder that you have a life to return to, but something tugs at your heart to look at them in the eyes. Blood pumps fast in your veins, alerting every muscle, every bone, every fiber that danger is near, you need to go, but your heart, brain, the pride you take in begin still alive overtakes your judgment. You stop to look at them, the prospect of a challenge in your eyes, of saying 'Look at me!' and incite them to follow 'I am still alive!'.

They look like ravenous beasts, hunched backs and gleaming eyes, angry snarls on their faces, hate coursing through their veins. The leader of the group, the scruffy looking one, fishes something from his back and places it on the bottom of his face: it's a mask, made with grey metal and sprayed with fake golden accents to give it a more classy look. On the side there's a circular opening with a single point in the centre. He takes a syringe and inserts it in the hole, pushing the top down and filling the hollow cavities of the mask with purple gasses. He takes in a deep breath, eyes rolling backwards, before his body goes through a strange change, twitching and moving like he had been shocked. When he looks back at you his eyes are a deep, neon pink, the same shade of colour that paints Jinx's eyes. He moves towards you, pushing and snarling at his friends like a dog with rabies, breaking their bones on the walls, before, with all the air in his lungs, screams, "I'm going to enjoy skinning that piltie's clean skin away from your body!".

You don't make it far before, with an uncanny precision, he throws his blade towards you like a spear, metal sinking inside of your left side, dangerously close to your kidney. A gasp leaves your body before you fall on the floor, blood oozing from the wound. Hundred of needles pierce at your flesh, blood paints the concrete and your mind fuses with the flesh of your brain. Then it all stops; you're back in the alley, cold spreading from the wound throughout your body, followed by a unbearable heat. The blade is snatched from your side, an ear shattering scream erupting from your throat. He is on top of you, already inching the knife to the base of your neck, planning to stab you there, wanting to see the life leaving your body in the most gruesome way possible. "I can't wait to see the look on your girlfriend when I am going to bring her the eyes of her most loved!".

"Bye bye, piltie" you brace yourself for your end; you can almost already feel the knife lodged in your throat, but nothing happens. You hear the sound of a metal hulk resonating in the hallway, before he is knocked down by something thrown with force against his face. You recognize it to be the exoskeleton of the arm you saw before, lying around. The rod which was the building foundation for its making has been thrown on the man's ugly bat-like nose, making him bleed red.

Isha stands behind you, still in launching position, before she runs over to you and tries to help you up. When you do, white behind your eyelids blinds you, pain making your head spin. He gets up again, an animalistic wild look in his eyes. He moves again, muscles hardened with purple veins running along them, drool falling down the space between the mask and his skin. Before he can assault you again, Isha throws something at him: the bomb he himself kicked before, the one Jinx had made, moves through the air, soon to be the second object to hit his ugly face today. He recognizes the object and pales when he sees a red light zipping faster and faster, its grinning mouth inching closer to him.

A colorful light shines on the walls, paint of blue and pink shades falling down like rain; sparks of fire following the natural course of an explosion, fading out of existence a moment later. You run with Isha, hand in hand, away from this horrid place. This time, you don't look back.

A trickle of sweat falls down Jinx's temple while her eyes are focused on connecting two tubes of plastic together. Electricity flows through them, sending sparks flying dangerously close to her skin, before they are connected by the metal snaps on each of their ends. Jinx smiles as her creation takes its first movements, loudly clapping two copper coloured, round, small discs together, before stopping once again. Her fingers twist the key positioned on its back and the mechanic monkey comes to life once again. When her work is finally done, she puts it next to the other one she made hours prior.

The one meant for Isha is coloured with golden accents and decorated with graffitis all over. When turned on, it quickly smashes the plates against each other and plays an off-tune punk song if the button on its right leg is pushed; its eyes are golden, mimicking Isha's own. The one meant for you is far softer than the first: soft shades of pastel mix together with Jinx's characteristic pink, swirling your colours together. Instead of plates, it has a small, roughly knitted red heart in its hands. The left eye shines bright pink, while the other mirror's yours. There are no graffiti on it, except for a small heart on its chest, one near 'your' eye and a 'Jinx' on its left side.

She can't wait to see the look on your eyes when you will see it. She could never quite well express affection like other people do, so giving you gifts was what she did best. Just as she dreams of your face, she hears quick, loud steps coming closer and closer to her. "If you are Caitlyin, I appreciate your obsession with me, but I am in the middle of-" she recognizes Isha's laboured breaths and your pained groans before she can finish the phrase. And when she turns around, her face pales and her blood freezes. Isha has a panicked look to her face, one that she had never seen before; and you? Sweat falls with heavy tears down your face, the shade of your skin so much paler than it usually is, making you look almost dead. Your hand is tightly clutched on your side, where your hand is stained with...blood?

In a fraction of a second, Jinx is on you, hands checking at every curve of your body, focusing on places you might be hurt, while she asks question upon question, filling the air with a sense of urgency. You can only describe the look in her eyes as pure dread. If you didn't groan with pain every few seconds, you'd think Jinx was the one to have gotten hurt. The next few minutes are a whirlpool of movements and colours, making you spill your lunch on the floor. Soft fabric meets your back, suddenly naked with only your bra to cover your chest. Blood oozes faster out of you and you can feel your conscience leaving. Nothing else besides the red on your skin and the blurred shades of blue and brown exists for you.

"...ont worry, I al... got m... sis...er out of ...ble". When after wetting your wound with water, Jinx presses gauze on your body, you are suddenly brought back to life, violently. It feels like someone is crushing with all their might on you, despite Jinx applying the right pressure to the wound. If someone were to walk in right now hearing your screams, they'd think you were begin murdered. After what finally feels like an eternity, you are lying again on her bed, almost lifelessly. You don't have time to answer Jinx's questions, before you fall into a deep slumber.

Half an hour passes by, and the world seems sealed in a bubble of silence. Nothing moves. nothing makes noise, nothing happens. The only thing that does make noise are the voices in Jinx's head, screaming loudly at her for having let you go alone. 'You should have been there', 'See what happens when you let people into your life?', 'She is hurt. She might die. It's your fault'.

Their loud screams are enough to make one go crazy, but despite how confused she is, Jinx finds a will in herself to speak, to silence them. With her hand, she nudges Isha, getting her attention, and mouths "What happened?".

Isha doesn't answer. Her eyes burn holes into the metal of the helix, bottom lip tightly sealed under her teeth, before something in her breaks. She rushes in Jinx's arms, hiding herself into her chest, crying until the tears are gone and her throat is raw. They stay together, tangled into one another, for a while, until their bodies are cold. "Isha, what happened?" Jinx repeats.

Isha gets up, running over Jinx's desk and returns with two different coloured pencils. On the ground she draws a scene: you and her, hand in hand, with frowning faces; behind you six grinning figures, one taller than the rest. Green splattered on the ground and high walls. Jinx recognizes this place immediatley; she's been there just a couple of weeks prior.

Walking to her desk, she grabs her trusted gun and more than a dozen of bullets. A deep, hateful scowl paints her features, eyes shining brighter than usual.

Tonight, the undercity shines and roars with fervor. Its lights shine bright and the shouts of its inhabitants brings it to life, beating strong, like the heart of a dragon. The city seems to sway in tandem with Jinx's white cape, almost bending to her will but also shielding her, hiding her in its crowds. This is home. This is all Jinx has ever known and ever will. She knows it's streets like the palm of her hand: where to leave her mark, the highest places she can reach from which she can put a bullet in between her enemies eyes, which vents and tunnels will take her back home.

She knows exactly where you had been hurt, and if her predictions are correct, they're waiting for her there. And she's gonna give them what they want. The allway is far too serene to be one of the city's main ways out to the perimeter where steel factories and shipments are. It's uncharacteristically quiet, and by Zaun's rules, that means danger.

Jinx steps on the green gooey substance, observing the dripping of your blood leading to the city's main street, and anger boils inside her at that view. The square is empty, except for a series of tubes and a pitfall to its left. Just as she thought, she begins to hear steps coming into her direction. They had been expecting her.

"If you weren't trying, and failing, to ambush me, I'd say you have a crush" the man behind her simply scoffs, his breath coming out ragged and metallic from under his mask.

Jinx turns around to see a tall man, breathing through what she recognizes to be a mask that henchmens of shady organizations wore to enhance their physical abilities. After a moment, she recognizes blood staining the man's pale skin, half of his left hand blown off, rudimental replaced with a metal prosthesis at the last minute. She can ignore that just fine, but the exposed muscle of his left cheek makes her want to puke. "Wow, and you're even more grotesque than I thought" a cruel anger swirls inside her eyes, her lips curling up in a snarl. "What? Were you so anxious to try to kill me that you couldn't even let your wounds heal?" he laughs at her words, men closing in on her much like they did hours prior to you.

"We were waiting for you, Powder" the mention of that name pangs at her heart. Subtly, she touches the top of her gun, ready to draw it at the first sign of danger. "I figured. How do you know my name?" "A man can know much...if he is in the right place, at the right time" he falls silent when Jinx laughs at his words, anger making a vein in his head pop. "Damn. I thought you were pathetic already, but this whole 'supervillain' talk only makes you seem more of an ass than you already are" much like Jinx, he grabs the death of his knife. At the sign, his men form a half circle around the blue haired criminal, directly closing the only way out. "You won't talk all that shit after I sink my blade in your throat" she can't help but feel compassion for these poor bastards. Faintly, she can already feel their blood falling on her skin while putting bullets between their eyes. "I would like to see you try" she changes her body stance, right side facing them while she takes out her gun with her left hand, making a show of placing the bullets in. Unlike what she thought, they do not follow her; instead, the leader seems relaxed as ever. His dark eyes reflect hers and for a second Jinx can see a dangerous, maniacal glint in them and a cruel grin on his lips.

"Oh I did try, and succeeded, with your little piltie bitch-girlfriend" her breathing stops, heart missing a beat, and time seems to stop for a moment, before it all starts to spin again, faster and faster as she gets angrier and angrier. "You should have heard her screams. The sweetest I've ever heard" she imagines you, clutching at your side, tears in your eyes and spit falling off your mouth; begging for him to leave you alone, to let you go. His features are lost under a black veil and painted over with a red open mouthed smile and tight eyes, not unlike the monsters that she has to fight with every night, as he raises the crimson blade and-.

"Don't you fucking dare" her throath feels raw when she speaks, almost as if she's spewing pure black hatred with each word. "Or what? What are you going to do?" 'He thinks he's the shit, huh?', she thinks, loading the storage to the brim and finally raising the barrel of her gun to aim on his forehead. "I am going to enjoy blowing your brains out"

'No one hurts the people I love'.

The next few seconds are a blur of colours and movement. Her body moves before her mind can understand what is going on. She ducks under something coming at her, kicking at the figure and sending them flying a few feet away from her. Someone pulls at her braids and she yelps, momentarily confused; in a fraction of a second, she blows their hand off, crouching and punching in the face a second figure. The blood on the ground, spilling from the screaming man gives everything a shape again and she's back to the alley. Three men are down, two unconscious and one debilitated. The remaining ones look at her up and down, before the leader nudges them, kicking their shins.

One of them takes a metal rod from his side and swings wildly at Jinx, paying no attention to where he hits. She dodges him with no effort and when he stops momentarily to rest his arm, she knocks his weapon from his hands and hits him in the neck with it, white replacing the colour of his eyes. The other, after seeing the bodies of who used to be his companions, runs away, leaving his leader behind; but before he can make it far, a bullet runs fast through his chest and he falls to the floor, lifeless.

He is the last one standing. "Heh, you call yourself a leader, but you couldn't even save your men". His teeth grind harshly against each other, sending jolts of pain through his mouth, "Shut the fuck up".

But Jinx doesn't. No, she's going to enjoy torturing the life out of this fucker like he did to you. "You didn't even lift a finger. I didn't know Zaun could have such a coward walking through its streets".

He finally snaps, spit flowing out of his mouth as he screams, staining the mask inside "I said shut up!". He breathes in the chemical Jinx is so familiar with, huffing purple clouds out of the mask with a metallic sound. Once again, he feels the rush of the substance in his lungs, blood circling small purple bubbles throughout the body, strengthening his muscles and blanking his mind. But this time, his body starts to twitch and shake, slipping out of his control.

The heart beats faster, the lungs lose their air and move erratically, blood flows freely through his body and bones morph, stretching and breaking and strengthening. His muscles cannot be sustained by the bones anymore, and he falls to the floor. The space inside his ribcage feels tighter, his lungs can only provide so much until finally, his body stops changing and he can stand up, much taller than Jinx now.

The blue haired criminal looks incredibly unimpressed with her opponent's new shape, her eyes studying his moments and planning the next few seconds. That grotesque creature lunges, pushing his whole weight on the top of his body, falling messily when Jinx dodges him. She ducks under a clawed swing, rolling through the space between his legs; then, while he is confused and looking for her, aims at his neck.

The bullet lodges itself into the skin, remaining snugly fit between flesh. The scream that leaves him could have woken up the dead. His nails dig into his neck, trying desperately to yank the bullet out, but to no avail. He turns and turns, like a cat chasing its tail, before dizziness gets to him and he falls to the floor, spilling saliva all over the concrete. When he looks around once again, he is face to face with Jinx's gun, staring at the black hole of the barrel. "You made a mistake crossing me, today. Let this be a lesson" she tilts the gun until it's flat against his forehead. He is not capable of forming words anymore, they die at the base of his throath, leaving only emptiness behind. For a moment, she can see in his eyes something that resembled her, many years ago: a scared animal, one that does not understand what their fate will be. But when her mind reminds her of how viciously he attacked you, and how you are lying in her bed, with no assurance that you'll wake up, anger bubbles once again behind her eyes, clouding her thoughts.

"I'm sorry" is all that he hears, before his body falls to the floor, life leaving his eyes.

Her heart feels cold, as well as her body and mind. Jinx, in her own kind of weird way, is already trying to make peace with the fact that, once she comes back home, you might be gone. All too often in her life she had to come to terms with the death of her loved ones, and all too often, she was directly involved with their demise. She can already picture it: you on the bed, blood staining your clothes and the mattress, Isha on her knees, crying her heart out. She, coming home, seeing your dead body lying on what used to be your little shared creek, shielded by the world, falling to her knees and her heart finally giving out to pain, soon to follow you.

From the crack inside the wall, she can spot the helix of her home, the one she'll soon walk over to reach you. She tries to move, but to no avail: her body doesn't let her. Her muscles are reduced to mush, her legs feel like lead and her heart heaves on her rib cage so much that she had to bend down, clutching at her chest to try and ignore that pain. She could stay here forever, stalling time to this single minute, winding it back over and over and over again, all for the purpose of pretending she's still with you, back in your apartment in Piltover, laying naked on the bed with serene smiles on your faces.

But she can't. Even if she could stop time, right here and now, what could she do? Nothing would change. You'd still be dead, she'd still be heartbroken, the bed would still be cold on your side.

She slips inside the crevice, body molding to its shape, before she is face to face with the entrance to her home. She's so lost in her dread and fear that, for a moment, she doesn't hear the sound of laughter from the inside. When her mind recognized the sound, the pitch of the voice she so longed to hear, tears prickled at her eyes and hope filled her heart. She rushes towards the sound, almost tripping down the helix and falling to her death.

There you are. Laying on the bed, laughing weakly as Isha gesticulates and shouts loudly, imitating some sort of monster. Every little light inside her home has been placed near you, probably by Isha, and lifts your figure with a myriad of colorful shades. You look like a living painting to her.

You can't even process seeing her when she's already on you, touching you everywhere, checking your pulse, grabbing onto your legs to assure herself, to make sure that you...

"Are you... really alive?". You could crumble right here and now under those tearful eyes of hers, so soft and beautiful, looking almost powder blue. You stretch your arms to reach down to her, hugging her close to you; "I am, I am". Jinx takes a moment to process your hug and your words; and when she does, when she's certain that you are alive, that you are okay, her walls crumble away.

She pulls you down towards her, wanting to reciprocate the hug, but impatience gets the better of her and instead pulls herself on the bed, halfway reaching you. Her head rests on your belly, tears staining your clothes when she feels your hand on her back. "I thought-! I thought you-" her words die in her throath when she feels your fingers cupping at her cheek, pulling her to rest on her knees and look into your eyes. "I know, I know. I am okay".

Tears fall freely down her cheeks once again, her bottom lip wavering before she takes refuge in your body, hiding her tears on your lap. "I am so glad! I am so glad...".

Once her tears dry, she pushes herself to look at you, eyes puffy and red. "You are okay" she says, and you're about to assure her once again, but something tells you that she's really talking to herself. She climbs on the bed with you, quickly resting her head on your chest. You can't help but smile at her, ready to cuddle together when you realize you've let someone out of the picture. Isha looks at you both with those big eyes of her, pouting. She knows exactly how to push your buttons.

"Come on kid, get in" come Jinx's words, quickly followed by Isha tangling herself in between your bodies and closing her eyes, sleep already overtaking her. "Man, she sure takes a lot of space" you chuckle, placing your hand on Isha's head and stroking her locks between your fingers, hearing a small contented sigh from her. "Yeah, but she deserves it". A heavy silence fills the space, one that you usually pair up with tranquillity, but who you quickly realize is loud for your lover. "Jinx... I am okay" stopping them from screaming in her ears is hard, but when you are with her, they vanish off of existence. Your voice brings her back to reality, as well as reminding her that you have gotten hurt. Letting herself relax after the storm is something she's not used to. "I know" but she can try.

Starting this conversation will be a pain, you think to yourself, but you need to tell her.

"...He told me your real name, Jinx. And, what you did". Quick snapping sounds, mixed with hushed voices and distant screams fill her head in a second, getting louder by the second. She doesn't find in herself the strength to answer, too tired from the day's events; but nevertheless, listens. She leans on the bed, eyes dark and attentive. The scent of your skin fills her nose and she braces herself for your next words. "But...I don't care".

What?

"I don't know what you've been through, but... I don't need to know. You will tell me if you want to". It all stops. Every sound, every shout or whisper, every heartbeat or pulse of electricity. It seems, for a moment, that all becomes white and quiet, before the world starts to spin again. You feel her strong fingers push you more towards her, one cold hand under your clothes, right where your wound is. "Thank you toots, that means a lot".

Less than twenty seconds of silence later, she's already pestering you with her worries again, "Does it hurt? Do I need to give you som-" you interrupt her, taking her hand in yours. Normally, you would be a little annoyed by her continuous train of words, but she needs to be reassured. She needs to hear it from you, how many times it takes. "I am okay. I just need you here with me".

That seems enough to let her finally bear down her worries and she quickly rests on the bed, eyelids heavy and a yawn in her throath. "...I made you a monkey...gift" she slurrs over her words, already slipping in and out of conciousness. "Oh really?". "Yeah...". You too are about to follow her shortly, and before you let sleep overtake you, you reach behind and place a kiss on her forehead. "Goodnight Jinx" she smiles, catching your lips in a quick peck and pushing her nose in the crevice of your shoulders; "Goodnight toots".

Bonus ----------------

When Sevika came home that night, after her usual gambling and drinking out in Zaun's bar, she certainly did not expect to find the messily tangled body of limbs that were you, Jinx and Isha.

As quietly as she possibly can, she takes the chair Jinx sits on while doing her evil scientist machineries and sits next to your bed. Placing a cigar in between your lips and lights it, blowing the smoke away in the opposite direction. She looks back at the bed, multiple coloured lights shading your peacefully sleeping figures. She stays silent for a moment, before she crouches on her knees and shakes the tip of the cigar, firing crumbling pieces of tobacco down on the floor. "They do look pretty cute".

[allwormdiet]

Sentinel 9.4

Back in the saddle again

You know, I'm not sure if tinkers actually are "supposed" to be smart. The other examples we have to work off of besides Kid Win are Bakuda (constant state of fucking around and finding out until it killed her), Armsmaster (he of the dumbfuck raid boss solo plot), and Dragon (actually no notes on Dragon's relative intelligence), plus Chariot in just a minute here who literally only succeeds at being a mole because the Protectorate allows him to succeed as a ploy

I'll concede that they're adept engineers and scientists, sure, but you can know how to build a nuclear reactor and still be dumb enough to build it in your backyard. There's no single measure of intelligence that everyone measures high on, that's just not how it goes.

Then again like two-thirds of this chapter are lowkey about Kid having self-esteem issues so like, I get that he's being hard on himself. I feel like half the cape POVs we've gotten so far have self-esteem issues, never mind Taylor Hebert Queen of Self-Image Problems

I'm gonna skim over a lot of this fight like I had in 9.3, but while this can't feel good for one's confidence, honestly I'd mostly just be relieved. Like, yes, let the villains whose powers are Railgun and The Fucking Sun take it easy on me, that's fine, I like my body parts staying in the configuration they have.

Thank God he actually has a chance to feel like he's contributing, without the horror of accidentally killing someone

Wow, Trickster sucks. Why do they put up with this guy?

So, somehow I doubt he's somehow lacking in a specialty, but from the description of his apparent focus issues (plus the fact that taking medication to help with focus nearly took him out) I wonder if the way his tinker stuff goes involves having a bunch of little things, if the lack of focus is somehow a sign of what his specialty actually is.

Oh fucking boy

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay (sarcastic)

Also I don't know why they specifically would go to cities that have already been Endbringered but there's a real "kick them while they're down" energy to it that I do not care for. Goddamn jackals.

Is it the "another tinker" thing or the "that wasn't Armsmaster" thing that he's more excited about lmao

Weld's adapting a little better to his role, and Clockblocker is able to keep his mouth shut and play along, so things are improving.

I dunno man, it's a citywide apocalypse, does bedtime matter anymore?

Hey what the

Fuck

is going on here

Tinker-to-tinker communication

Y'know, now I'm curious what the wages are for a non-Tinker Protectorate member. Obviously Tinkers can have it made if they've got something the higher-ups want, but is Miss Militia making enough to own a house? Is your income tied to merch sales?

Think this is the first time someone has outright said triggering as a parahuman rewires your brain to some extent. Curious to see further elaboration on that.

I think if you're gonna hire a mole, you should make sure they can lie convincingly. That feels like step two.

(Step one is "make sure you can trust this person to be a mole for you")

Fucking gottem

Well hey Kid, looks like you're pulling your weight after all

Current Thoughts

I do think Sentinel is a neat arc but I'll admit, in recounting and rereading this it lost me a little bit. That might just be the Travelers fight though, I could feel the lack of stakes to the fight like a gap between my teeth.

Kid seems like a solid character, classic impulsive inventor with an actual exploration of what that impulsiveness does to his work ethic and self-worth. I'm glad he gets a chance to shine here and I hope he figures out his exact specialization so he can stop being so down on himself

The Wards do seem to be coalescing into more of a team as things progress, sure would be a shame if the resident lone wolf was to fall for obvious bait and disrupt that or something.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Hi there, I hope your day is going well! I have a question regarding the race of a character I'm hoping to use in a story I'm making, and would love to get your insights.

The story is a post-nuclear-fallout setting following two characters who are researching a cure for aggressive radiation poisoning and fighting the will of a malevolent and sentient slime-mold.  The characters dont have official names yet so I'll nickname them as Vessel and Scientist, and I'd like to focus on Vessel for this question specifically. 

Vessel is a Black woman who was originally working as a scientist on a team tasked with experimentation on slime mold growing in radiated zones, which became sentient during her time working on it. She was ordered to kill it and was unsuccessful, and as a result died on-site. Her death was downplayed to keep the lab running, and she wakes up post-mortem very much not in the same zip code or in the same time. (The reason her nickname is Vessel is because the slime mold she attempted to kill resurrects her and is using her to try and return to the lab it's from to rejoin the mother culture (the slime mold is like a combo of the aliens from the movies Life(2017) and Venom(2018))).

The story itself is dealing with some themes like the exploitation of marginalized groups by wealthy militaristic powers, the idolization of western sciences and the consequences of doing so, destruction of the land for profit, the struggle of individual vs collective (man vs man), and the challenge of building community. Based on these themes and the setting, I'm drawn more-so to portraying BIPOC as my protagonists, as opposed to white characters, because BIPOC have largely been the driving force of any dramatic and radical change in our present society, and I'd like to spotlight them in my work as protagonists and not just Important Side Characters. 

THE REASON I'm hesitant to commit to Vessel being Black has three branches,

1) the plot line i've designed would deal very heavily with depersonalization, the state-sanctioned poisoning and death of a Black woman, being used by a force beyond the characters will, and the internal/external struggle of essentially fighting yourself to maintain control of your Self/Body; 

2) I'm not a Black person, and the plot for this character would deal with a lot of very heavy stuff that Black people experience every day, 

3) and it feels very thematically/contextually similar to Haitian Zombi's, which I've been researching since seeing your responses discussing them compared to western zombies, which makes me hesitant to explore if it's getting into territory I shouldn't be interacting with, y'know? (The concept for this story was initially 'radiation zombies', so that's the background I'm pulling from as I'm making the story.)

I think she's a compelling character, intelligent, brave, resilient beyond belief (with a love interest in the Scientist as the story progresses), but if my concepts for her are crossing boundaries and perpetuating stereotypes (like stoic Black woman, not allowed to be soft, etc) I'd rather have a second pair of knowledgable eyes look it over before I commit with my whole chest. 

I deeply appreciate any insights you may have, thank you for your time!

Hello! This does seem like a very intriguing story, and at least you caught where the problem points could be. So that's good!

I definitely say that if you want to get into symbolism similar to, but not OF, Haitian Zombis, you absolutely ABSOLUTELY need to do your research. Specifically on what things might be tied into closed practices, just so you know to avoid them. Research in general involving medical racism too, if you want to know how deep the rabbit hole gets with Black bodies and western experimentation, because there's plenty there too.

I would say since you sound aware of your intention and some of the concerns, go ahead, and I would highly, HIGHLY suggest a Black sensitivity reader. Someone needs to tell you if you've (literally) lost the plot, preferably before you release anything.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

i have been trying to make this into a coherent post for days and have gotten Nowhere so you will have to put up with this borderline incoherent trail of thoughts instead. okay here we go:

dorelaine sounds like it was meant to be a mondegreen of darling (or vice-versa depending on what perspective you're seeing it from) which lends some credence to the WHRP's insistence that ronald dorelaine Must be the creator of welcome home (again - "must be," not "is," which is odd.)

wally as a self-insert for dorelaine? this information sponge who kind of exists to learn from his friends/loved ones on our behalf, the audience surrogate, a slate so blank he didn't know what a clown was until someone asked him to draw one. what about a character like that would cause someone to draw on their own traits to write him?

in that same vein, wally being not only a self-insert but an Ideal Self? if so, what about the above traits would have been Desirable to dorelaine? wally being representative of a desire for some kind of "fresh start"? or perhaps of flawlessness by way of (initially) not knowing there are flaws to be had? ignorance is bliss and all.

y'know. i was talking about this in a metaphorical sense and was gonna go on about how like i wonder what it will look like the further things progress and wally deviates more from this aspect of himself (assuming he hasn't already. dorelaine probably was not quite so attached to his house, for one thing) but i think this might be one of the only contexts in which a literal(ish) possession story could work - i.e. how far do you think someone would go to discard their original identity and become their ideal self?

i was gonna elaborate on that but then i realized i was just describing the season one plot twist from surviving romance.

[spoilers for surviving romance, obviously] by which i mean: yknow how it turns out that the protagonist, who is now the MC of the novel the entire story takes place in, actually used to be the author of the novel? and the whole thing was written in an attempt to justify her own suffering (without actually unpacking any of her trauma or the defeatism that was beaten into her by her circumstances) by giving her idealized self-insert (the original MC) a happy ending after a series of borderline comedic acts of cruelty - something she felt she would never be able to achieve herself? and how she only remembers this after repressing it long enough to form relationships with the other characters in the novel after being thrown into a life or death situation and realizing that they all have a lot more depth and interiority than the original novel's narration afforded them? yeah? Yeah.

that's not the Whole plot twist but it is the part of it that's the most relevant to this post.

but hey, maybe there's no literal possession/reincarnation/transmutation/Whatever stuff going on. in fact, for now i'm confident in that not being the case, at least not literally. but i still think if wally being some kind of self-insert or at least being based on ronald dorelaine in some capacity is canon, then it is worth noting bc like. wally As We Understand Him so far exists to absorb and reflect the world around him and the people in it in order to guide us, the audience. if he turns out to be a self-insert on top of that, then he also exists to reflect his creator in some form. for as much as everything seems to revolve around him (even when we Know for a fact that whatever happened had an effect on the other neighbors as well) it's kind of hard to imagine wally existing as his own guy; he always exists in relation to something or someone else.

one has to wonder how he feels about that. he seems confident that it will all work out in the end (whatever "it" is) but, well. this Is a horror story.

something about what i said a while ago, about the puppets being more affected by unconscious decisions - "things left unsaid," in particular.

still think about Metaphorical hauntings in welcome home though. that one guillermo del toro quote - "What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? A moment of pain, perhaps. [...] An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber."

"ah but doesn't home also lend themself to a good possession story?" so close! i think whatever's going on with home is closer to necromancy/a state of Undeath than anything else. i will not be elaborating at this point in time <3

..... possible future holy trinity imagery with dorelaine, wally, and home? father/son/holy spirit? unlikely but Could you imagine.

ah. i think here is when the thoughts run out. thanks 4 reading.

[ofstormsandfire]

OH OH sages of the calamity if you will…

I will indeed!

so. spoilers ahead for both botw and hyrule warriors: age of calamity if you want to avoid them. like, the Main Plot Twist of age of calamity. also some plot spoilers for the sage quests in totk. putting the rest under a cut o7

sooo. y'know how hyrule warriors: age of calamity had a really fun plot twist of "the people who helped link take on the divine beasts in the botw timeline got brought to the aoc timeline to help save the champions."

(also now that I think about it they might have foreshadowed tulin being your main buddy for the rito questline in totk... because it was teba who came to help revali, tulin just got yoinked by accident too)

the botw timeline, presumably, still exists. and is progressing at roughly the same speed as the aoc one.

imagine, if you will, that a repaired terrako Notices Something's Up There. passes this info on. and, well, the champions are well aware that they'd be dead without help from the warriors of that future.

they can help! (also, they're like. the only ones who can help due to something something "things get a little weird if you have multiple versions of the same people in the same world for long, we're lucky it worked out at all with the sidons")

(...I may be planning to try and use that plot point to bring back the main timeline's champs? maybe. if I can make it work and it doesn't feel narratively unsatisfying to me. We Shall See.)

anyway. when link wakes up on great sky island, he wakes up with terrako there. he's confused. rauru is confused.

he gets A Lot More Confused (and so does tulin) when they're midway through the rito questline and aoc revali comes crashing in (somewhat reluctantly) to help.

(also - unsure if I want to go this route, but it's entirely possible that the people who went to the aoc timeline straight up Don't Remember their time there. maybe they never remember it. or maybe they remember it again once they run into the other timeline's champions. there are a lot of loose threads I have yet to figure out but it would be a really cool fic y'know?)

highlights include -the climb up to colgera being Much Less Of A Hassle thanks to revali's gale. when he can be convinced to use it, anyway. -daruk might show up a bit early specifically because I want him to see yunobo being Weird. (and also I think it would be funny if link had to drag him away from the marbled rock roast he might be too old to eat anyway) -there is so much fucking crying between sidon and mipha and dorephan. I don't think :) she can heal :) dorephan's injuries :) I also think it would be funny if she showed up to help with the sludge like at mipha's court and then Turned Around. -fun fact! riju can die during the gibdo assault on gerudo town. it's fucking heartbreaking. she drops to one knee like urbosa did during the aoc cutscene and everything. I think the ~parallels~ of urbosa showing up Just In Time would be fun. also, like, more lightning where gibdos are concerned cannot be a bad thing -throughout the fic zelda is in contact with the champions via terrako. totk link really wants to talk to her and then just kind of starts crying once he does.

so yeah uh. another fic that would be really cool if I had more solid ideas for it lol (and if ao3 would separate the damn botw and totk tags like they should have to begin with-)

[lixenn]

Cider, Raspberry and Lavender for my fellow Germanic mutual

*Hands you a badge, a funky t-shirt, a bunch of waivers and some safety goggles*

Welcome to Lix's Friendship Club! We're a small bunch but I'm sure you will fit right in!

*grabs your hand*

Let's give you a tour then. Since you've signed the waivers... You did sign them right? ... You did. Excellent! So, as mentioned in the waivers the Club will not financially compensate you for any damage you may suffer during your membership. However, we do have a support group, so feel free to drop by anytime if you need some help!

Now, onto the fun stuff. *gestures like a city guide* On your left you can see the Gremlin Cave. That's were the magic happens! Y'know all the stories and the ramblings and the characters? All coming straight from there. *chucks feral plot bunny back into the Cave* Ignore the wild animals, they're harmless really. *shoves the racoon away that tries to bite you* Well, maybe consider investing in some protecitve gear.

But never mind, there's still more to show you, where should we- *sound of explosions in the distance* Ah yes, the Lab! You might want to put on those goggles dear, they like playing around with the dangerous chemicals in there. *Another explosion, louder this time* ... Actually I think it'd be for the best if we skip that one, they're currently working on flame lore and they really *BAM* stopped caring about collateral damage days ago and weshouldgetoutofhereasap! *drags you far away from potential fire hazards*

Puuhhh, that was close. Now, where were we? ... Ah, the tour, yes. Well, thankfully we already ran to the next place, the Crochet Corner! Be careful to not get tangled into the yarn, it can quite difficult to get out once you are trapped. ... Hmm? What happens here? Well, there are several projects in progress. At the moment we're working on a yet another baby octupus, but there are plans for more clothing in the future. We're all very excited about that!

*Ding dong bing bam*

Oh, is it lunch time already? Then let's conclude the tour and you can go on your merry way, yes? ... Lovely! Now, don't be a stranger and contact me if you have any questions and concerns. Once again I welcome you to the Club and hope you enjoy your time with us!

See you soon~

-----------

...

Yeah I don't know how this happened either.

Anyways, if you can accept the fact that I'm a totally awkward gremlin that writes the most random shit (see example above), I'd love to be friends!!! You seem super cool and nice 🥰

Ask game

[kdramaxoxo]

i think the thing that's not working for king the land is the plot not really plotting?? like much hasn't happened in terms of an actual development in arc but the love story has started - which i think is not very common in other dramas. usually by the time our leads properly fall for each other, and admit their feelings (especially when it's opposites attract or a soft enemies to lovers) we have more of an idea about where the plot is headed? i don't know if this makes sense or if I'm just missing something as an international viewer relying on subtitles but i think the progression in the love line actually highlights that much else isn't really happening in the show.

both sarang and gu won feel like passive characters outside of their romance plots because they don't have any clear obstacles, and they don't even seem to have any goals - not really. sarang is clearly quite complacent and unambitious (which is realistic and i quite like that tbh! not everyone needs or wants to be a girlboss) people are mean to her but no one's really being a hindrance to her work or life. yes gu won is looking for his mom but that frequently takes a back seat to him pining over sarang and he's clearly not interested in the company politics.

so honestly yeah - i think that's where the gap comes with king the land. it could work better if they focused a bit more on the other leads' problems in their lives - like that glimpse into da-eul's family life was really intriguing and well done, and so was that scene with pyeong-hwa and the slimy pilot. the show really just needs to hit that balance and I'm pretty sure that would be enough to make it genuinely good instead of just nice, y'know?

so sorry for the dissertation! feel free to ignore please i just needed to put down my thoughts haha.

hope you're having a great day and taking care! love your blog and i love dropping by everytime i open tumblr to learn your takes on the most recent dramaland shenanigans and look at pretty gifs 💕💕

* Posts this ask and backs away :P *

I also have thoughts about King The Land, but I am desperately trying to catch up to The Kiss because there is NO way I'm missing that! I like to finish dramas before I make official statements about them but listen...I might not get to the end of this one if I'm honest.

I will say this: King The Land is not a BAD drama imo, but is it GOOD?? Then again the leads are stunning and the ladies friendship is amazing so there's that! I also want to add that I don't need a fluff fest rom com to be like perfect at all - it's just lacking a lot of depth and feels a little uneven so far.

I think that's all I'll say until I'm caught up to episode 8 ;-)

[accirax]

hi accirax. multiple months late apology to never responding to your theory part i got tired (i am the laziest girl in the world). my bad. probably should have sent you this earlier. anyway remember when i said i felt weird when i first got your response to my theory. you'll never believe what happened when i submitted my story for critique

hi vivazaki!!! no worries on not responding to that theory. to be honest, i'd assumed we'd just reached the point where there wasn't much more to be discussed without the plot progressing to give us more evidence. i too am terrible at remembering/mustering the courage to send people messages, so don't feel bad about that at all.

i'm sorry you (presumably) felt weird again when submitting your story :( putting your work up for critique is always scary, especially if you're extra sensitive to potential rejection. i know there was at least one time when i cried in class due to receiving less-than-stellar feedback on my art. so, it's totally normal to freak out a little bit when subjecting such a personal part of yourself to scrutiny! hopefully in the future you can either find yourself in a position where you won't have to be critiqued too often, or you can (mostly) find peace in knowing that most people who critique your art are doing so from a place of enthusiasm and wanting to see your creative work progress even further, and not hatred. although, if the person you submitted your story to was just being a hater, then i send my politest "fuck you" to them.

i'm so excited for the return of both DRDT (obviously, i made a whole post about it) and P:EG (which i am ALSO working on a post on rn!). the DRDT fandom definitely felt a little low power mode these past couple of months (understandably), so i'm really looking forward to when we're all buzzing with theories and analysis again. i've already seen a lot more art circulating around than i did the past couple of months, and it's all really great! hopefully i'll have the time to draw something DRDT-related again soon; i miss those guys.

P:EG, on the other hand, will be awesome to have those communities form for the first time! obviously, there are people who have already been making art and theories for this past year and a half(?) (myself included). but, once we have an entire chapter's worth of information about the cast, i can only imagine that things will pop off and solidify even more. not to mention, chapter 1 will presumably come with EVERYONE'S full set of FTEs??? that's insane. not only do we get the mystery and whatever but we can unlock literally everyone's trauma. that's gonna be so important when it comes to determining a mastermind or whatever.

i don't know much about kill/cure-- although i did watch the trailer yesterday-- but i'm sure that'll be cool as well! it's always great to see more fangans go into production, especially actually playable ones. i know from personal experience that making a fangan teaches you a hell of a lot about what goes into making a good story, so i'm glad that more people will be able to learn from experience in that way. means that there might be more danganronpa-y works from former fangan authors in the future, y'know? >:)c

[loveharlow]

i admire u sm, you don’t even knowww girl. First of all, 4 graduating!!! I fr feel like a proud mum, well done 🎓!!! That’s such a huge accomplishment. Secondly, ur writing & immense attention to detail and plot points- impeccable. Svn is constantly on my mind.

I’m just rambling on ab life here, so I apologise in advance for the waffling below, but basically- my one aspiration in life is to become a singer-songwriter/performer. Ever since I was little, it’s been my dream: on Monday, I sing, on Tuesday, I sing, and on Wednesday, I sing some more- I hold so much passion for singing. In the next 5 years of my life, I want to have recorded a country-pop album alongside a talented producer. I write songs/come up with loose ideas for songs as frequently as possible, and I have both a vocal coach who I’ve been seeing for 5yrs,& additionally, a singing teacher who I’ve just begun lessons with. My VC has been giving me tips on songwriting and stuff, which is brilliant, n I also have some musical theatre singing exams July 6th! 🤞

But in regards to songwriting, I struggle to conjure up differentiating song topics- they’re always the same subjects, which is rlly boring icl! And because of that, the lyrics I write are also incredibly repetitive across the board, as they all speak of the same topics. Now, I THINK I’m making slow progress with my songwriting skills, which is awesome, but I can’t for the life of me come up with song topics that are true and from the heart, as well as differentiating.

SO sorry for rambling on like this ml!! I j needed someone to talk to.

If you have any random pretty words or phrases that might spark some inspo for me, that’d be wonderful, or any general advice- it’d be so so greatly appreciated.

I adore your work btw!!! Keep being amazing, and I’m sooo excited for next chap of svn! You’re killing me 🩷🩷

🪩🌇🪐

This made actual tears well up in my eyes you have no idea🥺 and thank you sm! Graduating was something I was actually scared I wouldn't be doing so I've been patting myself on the back for the last couple of days.

And good for you! You found a passion and are working towards making it your reality, that's such an icon thing to do ughh🥰 Also, good luck on your exams sweetie, you seem like a such a sweetheart and I'm sure you'll do amazing!

Ahh yes, the artist's block. Writers, Artists, and Performers always experience some kind of blockage that stops us from being great🙄 I'm not sure what advice to offer though, what pulled me out of my slump was realizing that I couldn't be afraid to put myself down on the page.

When I first starting writing, I was inspired by the things I was reading so some of my earlier pieces aren't fully me. But I realized that if I follow in the shadows of others, I'll never have my own. Maybe try getting more in-tune with yourself and who you are as an individual. Don't be afraid to use your personality, life experiences, and quirks in your work! Try to become effortlessly comfortable in your own skin, don't worry about the feedback you'll get after. Try and try again, y'know? You could also try looking at life through the eyes of people around you inspiration (if they're okay with it, of course), get the chance to use your music to tell someone else's story.

As for those random pretty words, OF COURSE?? I love looking through unique names/aesthetic words so I have a couple already scattered throughout my writing docs:

Hiraeth (one of my favs) - a homesickness for a home you cannot return to or that never was.

Ephemeral - lasting for a very short time.

Illuminate - to supply or brighten with light

Synodic - relating to/involving the conjunction of stars, planets, or other celestial objects

Obeisance - any action that shows deep respect for someone/something

Aureole - a radiance encircling the head or body, as in religious paintings

Morphean - of/relating to Morpheus, to dreams, or to sleep

Some names (can still be used as words)

Calista (greek) - most beautiful

Valkyrie (scandinavian) - chooser of the slain

Aurelia (latin/roman) - the golden one

Ivy (british) - climbing evergreen plant, also associated with loyalty and devotion

Primrose (british) - first rose (associated with protection, safety, and love)

I hope you make it where you desire in life and I hope I could help, even in the slightest! xx

[ceruleanrequiem]

ANE - Look how they massacred my boys

Let's go for the massacre! Most of the male characters follow the current trend of emasculation: they are either comic relief, or extremely dumb, or angry authoritarians, you name it. But all these categories have something in common: villains in ANE are ALL men.

I have other posts planned, just need to finish translations, but you might notice that most of my points made in these two posts were plot-based. So, again, no need to call me names (and even if you do, I won't change my mind anyway)

First, the emasculated ones:

LEIFTAN: I'm over the fact that Leiftan, who previously talked about leaving, out of nowhere was blackmailed offscreen by the script and stayed, otherwise there would be no way to have interactions with him. But for me, I'd rather he hadn't come back in ANE if he was to become another HH lapdog. And they ended up using as a device in the Earth plot, making the Leifstans lose TWO episodes with him because of it, in a season that had nothing of romance compared to before. Fine, Leiftan wants to "be someone better" and stop being a daemon, but as someone who has been frustrated by not being able to be NEITHER a villain nor a daemon in TO, that was disappointing.

MATHIEU: And yes, I know the idea was to bring in a himbo and have him mature as the game progresses, but gosh… the script didn't help one bit. Eel is so dumb that the only conclusion we come to is that Charles (after all he is sooo evil) considered the faerys so inferior that he didn't even bother to send someone skilled to go look for his daughter, in his mind they would be too dumb to be suspicious of any clue Mat left: like not making an effort to learn alchemy and not getting along with HC, then a big coincidence happens and he's the most likely cause of it, but NO ONE realizes. I thought he pretended to be an idiot and to this day I am sure that was the strategy, but nothing was said about it, I don't think the company even thought about it. HC was the only one who in an indirect way saw that something was wrong, but by force of the script she was forced to keep quiet until she almost died on Earth because of him. Being a simp of Koori and Lance and making me spend maana with useless conversations in the beginning did not help me to keep my interest and I ended up not only changing LI, but agreeing with HC in everything regarding him. I can't believe they took Ezarel out to put this loser in ANE. What is the excuse for this? Renewing the plot because they were afraid to address the adoption issue or something since Ezarel practically adopted the infanticide? Or because it would be too difficult/controversial and they decided to change it? If that's the case, they were rather incoherent, considering how brave they are in terms of non-hetero couples's destinies. Well, it was no use, because Mathieu was just another wasted plot/character. As the saying goes, there's no point in casting pearls before swine.

CHROME: WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY LITTLE KING????? Despite being nothing more than a Karenn simp in TO, Chrome had his qualities at the time. Smart, focused, studious, an excellent alchemist, a friend, he was the one who reaches out for Leiftan asking help to avenge his parents. Guys, do you realize he was sharp enough to see through Leif's goodboi facade? Then in ANE Koori has the nerve to say that "he was not fit for the meticulous work that is required of an alchemist," I had no reaction. I must remind you that it was not Chrome who blew up the Alchemy lab in ANE's first episodes the first time we see him, hein :) (and even so she's still described as "EXCELLENT ALCHEMIST". Oh c'mon!). In ANE he has become another himbo, he has no abilities other than to turn into a wolf, thumbs up, not even can he foresee enemy attack and save dumb friends from dangerous creatures in the forest. Because, y'know to exalt Karenn they need to diminish Chrome, whatever means possible. It's never the opposite.

Now Characters who were EXTREMELY DUMBED.

NEVRA: I haven't liked Nevra since TO, his personality didn't appeal to me. In ANE he would be totally indifferent to me… IF NOT for the way he treated Leiftan, demanding that in less than a year he would be 100% recovered and available to the Guard to be treated like a mere hound by everyone. I doubt he did the same thing with Lance… oops, wait, by force of script Lance was in jail for a year and already came out with his mind reformed! And if we draw a parallel, he complains about Erika's behavior who somewhat disapproves him for Nevra not being the way he used to be, almost demanding him to treat her the way he used to, even if you are not on his route.

Erika does to Nevra what Nevra does to Leiftan, but then it's impossible, right? The others MUST give in to his orders, but HE can't give in because "he has changed", "lost friends and/or girlfriend". And if the writing addressed the situation in this direction it could have been really nice, but obviously no, we had none of that. I understand the situation, however it "explains but doesn't justify" it.

But I like the fact that Nevra by the position he occupies, his austere expression doesn't match the "Captains Marvel" of the Guard, since he doesn't need to force any demonstration of power or draw attention to himself by whatever means necessary, he already naturally exudes that aura and so it's much harder to subdue him than Mathieu and Leiftan. Nevra can even oPprESs royalty, who feels so intimidated (that's the feeling I got from the character sprite at the time) in his presence that the character resorts to bad jokes instead of talking to him normally. And if she musters the courage to speak out, it is only because of panic attacks caused by a trip where she was forced to go because company demanded it.

Ah, but let's not forget his authority breakdowns and that's where the character is destroyed. First of all: Ewelein tells Erika that they're short of resources to make healing potions, I assume as Guard leader Nevra must be informed of that as well? Was he informed? I guess not, plot conveniently says nothing about it. If they're short of resources, they won't have more than one potion to protect his skin on Earth, correct? Which means THEY CAN'T take their sweet time on Earth, they need to hurry. But what happens? Nevra decides to assert his authority and force them to eat. NEVER would Nevra expose the Guard members that way. Any justification related to "better eat because the mission is risky, long, dangerous, you will need strength" goes downhill. In the Genkaku mission nobody ate anything before or during the mission, and it must have been at least a day of travel + a whole day investigating that building. In a mission on Earth of course they had to eat before, but NO ONE remembered?! Eating on Earth would cause them to lose time and still take unnecessary risks as it conveniently ended up happening. And from Erika's descriptions, she was so anxious that she wasn't hungry, weren't the other HQ members also anxious at least a little? In other words, Leiftan was kidnapped solelly thanks to Nevra's dumb decision, it's all on him, it's his fault. (it's actually the fault of whoever thought up and developed that plot, but that's okay). Even so, I HIGHLY doubt that Nevra and Lance couldn't stand some hours without food.

Now the Toxic ones :D

TENJIN: Of course, right? lol I won't take too long, but this is probably the second cruelest villain in the game according to the crimes he committed, losing only to Charles. You already know what I think, more and more I am understanding what the "show, don't tell" means, thanks to hive that gives great examples this season. Koori's main characteristic is that she is always joking and we never know when she is telling the truth or not. We only heard her version of the story, and what we heard from his version was very little, so as much as the game forces Erika and her to be best friends, I don't trust her.

Did he really "take power" and nobody said anything? Did he manage to convince everyone? Like, everyone?! We see from the map that Genkaku is continental, he would need to go all over the kingdom trying to convince them and from what we saw of Tenjin, he is so paranoid and tyrannical that he would never leave his castle. Or are you saying that thanks to the magic of the script he controls everyone's mind just like the magnanimous HH does? Because that one, by force of script, controls the minds of everyone there!

Or do you mean that he has spontaneous popular support? If this support is spontaneous it is because the reign of Koori's family was not good then, and hers wouldn't be either. Ok, we saw that he seems to have immeasurable charisma to fool her parents, and even the Councilors to the point of changing the legislation and removing her from power, BUT as far as I remember, coups don't happen by themselves. Again: didn't anyone from the three sectors of kitsune society support her? Because Tenjin tells us that the faerys of Genkaku thought she had been KIDNAPPED by Eel, and he said his soldiers weren't that happy for that. It's been five years (I guess she arrives at the same year as Mathieu, two years after the sacrifice) and you'll tell me that Tenjin haven't sent somebody to retrieve her? If he were that bad he wouldn't respect Eel's sovereignty, they're on bad terms already what difference would make to attack the HQ to take his wife back? None! But we hear nothing about Tenjin attacking Eel, which means he's prudent enough to avoid sending his people to fight a lost war (after all HQ has an ice dragon), therefore avoiding getting his reputation tainted. As an usurper, he would need support to keep his position, otherwise he would have been deposed the first day he declared himself king, a VERY powerful support for that matter huh? Either from the peasants, the military, or the nobility.

And from the looks of it, Koori didn't have the loyalty of any of those three, for we hear NOTHING about resistance in the north, no one respects her enough to fight for her because ur durr Tenjin was too powerful. C'mon guys, are Tenjin and Koori the only seven-tailed kitsune in Genkaku now or what? And even if players blame Tenjin for "mindcontrolling" his people in order to justify Koori's isolation, we hear nothing about Tenjin erasing the kitsunes memories of her in order to manipulate them, we only know that he bruteforced his way into the kingship by killing her parents.

But I'm pretty sure that Canon Tenjin's support didn't come from the military: all the sprites of kitsunes we saw next to Tenjin had only three tails, so it seems that the army in canon doesn't seem to be that strong. And I don't think a powerful but paranoid leader like Tenjin would allow his escort to be composed of such weak kitsunes. Not to mention that we don't hear anything about him exterminating other kitsunes whose number of tails is higher, the script doesn't explain ANY of that to us.

Since in ANE women are saint and perfect, we can only conclude that his support is spontaneous because the script wanted it that way. After all Koori's parents are powerful and smart to rule a kingdom, but at the same time they were so dumb to be fooled by Tenjin. Well, like parents, like daughter huh? Anyway, I said more than I should have, but Genkaku is one of the biggest holes in terms of plot, not bad for a villain who was written only to be a macho regicide, huh?

CHARLES - The cruelest, most cartoonish villain I've ever seen in this game, and he gave me extreme shame. His existence alone is a major plot hole, because in TO when Erika looks at Leiftan she feels something familiar, comforting, a feeling that she described as being a feeling she had for her mother, at the time I thought that her mother was aengel, not the father. Not to mention that she lost contact with her grandmother from her mother side iirc, meaning it confirms that the faery blood came through her mother. And again, TO shows us how fondly she remembered her father, as much as he was stern (as every big company owner is) he had a good heart and one example was that he was very fond of cats. And Erika realizes in ANE that her room was rebuilt, he remembered every detail of her room, no matter how much some minor details were left out. The mother even divorced Charles because he's kept talking about Erika all those years. But then the company wasted this very high potential villain with the cheapest plot that time and the superiors allowed: "we are experimenting on faerys, and I am the head of the organization MUAHUHAUAH". Was he useful for the plot? Yes, but at the very cost of the plot anyway. First case of Literary cannibalism I've ever seen.

COMIC RELIEF:

ORGELZ - He's just like Tenjin, the difference is that Orgelz is a coward, which makes him a satire on villains. They probably wrote Orgelz like this because the fandom was dying to see how handsome Nevra's father was, and after they saw that we were simping for villains, they changed tactics and created an ugly Orgelz, as well as writing that he was not the father, but another usurper who killed Nevra's father and took over. I don't understand this company: they're not afraid of killing and splitting non-hetero couples apart, but apparently they are afraid of how quickly the audience falls in love with the villains they create, no matter if the villains are toxic or a murderer. In terms of plot he doesn't add anything either, as much as people say it served to make Nevra think and talk to Erika (in an attempt at moral ambiguity that didn't make a difference in the end), Tenjin essentially said the same thing as Orgelz, WITH WAY LESS WASTE OF MAANAS, and back then Nevra didn't even bother to think about it, when he could have. It was convenient, just as it was convenient to go to Yaqut because the company owed us a Nevra arc.

THE "WHATEVER" CASES:

KARUTO AND ZIFU - I put the two together because they serve the same role, fatherly support, but nothing beyond that. But for a change, hive doesn't seem to know how to write non-hetero stories without someone ending up dead, betrayed, or becoming an extremist.

JAMON - I have no opinion of Jamon, I think he fits more into comic relief, maybe. He's pretty much "whatever" in my concept. In terms of usefulness in the plot he adds nothing.

LANCE - Lance is another case that I don't think has that much plot relevance if you don't play his route. The only usefulness is that he keeps Erika from having more moments with the routes, because in the rescue moments he is always the one who saves her. And this was being forced more and more because Erika is unable to decide whether she is strong or weak, in the end he was just a plot device to facilitate the scriptwriters' work who would not need to write different scenes with the other three, SACRIFICING THE ALREADY SCARCE TIME we wanted with the routes. To this day I can't come to terms with the first 'opportunity for romance interaction' we could have had: the one on the ship when Erika falls into the sea and the LI could have gone after her. No, instead, I had to endure him and more other moments that I, as a non-Lancer, was not in the least bit interested.

They even tried to imitate Marvel and make Lance the new Thor, put him in as comic relief because he couldn't speak the word electricity. And ok, he appeared at the end to stop Erika from killing Charles. Seihai in her place would have already said something like "fratricides have no moral right to lecture me" and killed Charles anyway, precisely because Seihai is sure that somehow Charles would escape and kill faerys again if he had the chance.

For someone who was so furious before because he was in Eel as boss, Erika should have spoken up sooner. But coincidentally the plot demands that Erika forget and they take so long to talk about Valkyon that his words in ep 18 are worthless at this point, Erika's path, be it aengel or daemon, is already mapped out, so for me his speech was kind of useless.

[mestos]

I JUST FINISHED WATCHING M26!

LITERAL CHILLS. My hands are sweating as I'm typing this. Now I can appreciate your art about it even more!

The movie was great but I feel there's something missing but can't point it out. It feels... short?

!!Spoiler for next:

I know it'a fiction but damn, Conan, how could you handle that (probably adrenaline?). And how'd you know it was Haibara who saved you(not that I'm conplaining), it's practically dark under the sea and you have no goggles!

-the fan that's fan-ning

Welcome back anon!!! Sorry this is a bit late, working during holiday season got kinda hectic 😔

Y'know, I get you on the fact that it feels short. I let the movie marinate in my head for a bit, and its been a good couple of weeks now since I've seen it, and I do have to agree that the plot progression from point A to B was kinda disappointingly short.

I think from my POV, as Haibara takes more of a damsel role, it kind of disappoints me that the movie hypes up her kidnapping but she is saved not too long after. I feel this way about the Mystery Train arc too lol that for a Haibara centred movie/arc, she's still treated as a B-plot. And that bothers me a lot.

As a production I get the limits. They can't afford to make too much alterations on the status quo as a long running franchise, which is why they can't quite afford to spend time on already a pretty huge decision (the B.O making direct contact with Haibara after the canon explicitly has moved on since then) so they have to find a way to return back to the floating timeline somehow.

But it's a bit contradictory at the same time, given the fact that they've explicitly established a continuity going on here—Irish & Curacao being explicitly referenced, Akai & Amuro motifs referencing Darkest Nightmare, etc—so at that point, I feel like they could have done much more to adjust the plot with some liberties.

One of the biggest weaknesses about the movies is that they'd market a specific character as a focal point of the movie to grab your attention and make you watch it, only to find out they're actually just the last 5 mins of the movie (The Scarlet Bullet left some scars in me 🥴). This movie surprisingly subverts this where Haibara actually takes a decent amount of screen time and a LOT of plot importance, but it still, mysteriously feels tacked on at the end of the day. I only feel this way because I felt that the movie would jump between intense scenes but not pad it long enough to make lasting impact—Conan & Haibara repeating their iconic glasses exchange was very cute, but the sudden shift between that scene and the next was just off by just a beat imo, for example—and Haibara being saved literally in the first operation Conan goes out to get her felt like the challenge & consequences were a bit too easy. Where was the struggle? Just the suspense? It didn't really feel rewarding to see her get saved, despite the intensity of her kidnapping.

Where I would make the changes? I feel as though the last part of the movie should have interwoven with the rescue in itself. Not that the little coffee exchange wasn't cute, but in the greater picture I feel as though they could've rode on that wave of suspense & thrill and receive a greater payoff than what we had. But, well, that's just me.

Might be asking too much for a detective conan movie 🤪

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

What are your thoughts on Veilguard?

I have soooo many thoughts, anon. I'm currently working on a long post that goes more in-depth about everything while I'm on my second playthrough, but to give a more brief overview with spoilers:

I enjoy playing Veilguard. I think it looks great. The character creator is great. It's fun to play. I love all of the companions; that's always one of my fears whenever first playing a game like this, like "oh god, what if I don't like one of them? What if one becomes the new Sebastian??"

Thankfully, that didn't happen. The only one I have any beef with is Manfred, and that's because he's a little cheater, how else does he keep winning at rock, paper, scissors??? I think I won only one game with him in my playthrough... suspicious, Rook can't possibly be THAT bad.

Anyway, my personal favorites are Davrin and Neve, but honestly? I love them all.

I thought it did a lot of things really well, some things even better than previous games.

I played as an elven Grey Warden warrior, Nesryn, and I had fun with her. Usually I don't play as warrior characters but the combat is actually fun with a sword and shield this time. She was definitely charming/humorous/"purple" in personality. She romanced Davrin, and honestly? Even outside of the romance, which is very good, her dynamic with him was a huge highlight of the game due to their bond over being wardens. It added an extra layer to the romance, and their banter with each other was just *chef kiss*. Also, Assan is their son and I love him, too.

I could gush about them forever. I don't know how his romance feels when you're not a warden, and I'm not romancing him on my second playthrough [though I am giving him longing looks from a distance] with my current lord of fortune Rook, but I imagine it's just as good.

There's a lot I like about the game...

But... it also did a lot of things worse than the previous games, and I have a huge bone to pick with what they did with Morrigan. Like... Morrigan's role in this game is, in my opinion, the worst thing they could've done to me, a Morrigan enjoyer, specifically. Like, did we not play Origins? Did we not pay attention to anything about Morrigan and Flemeth's relationship?

And can I just say that lore dumping is not a great way to do storytelling...? Nor is retconning that cutscene with Solas and Flemeth at the end of DAI. It's not really even the lore itself that bothers me, it's the way it was delivered a lot of the time where I'd just sit there like.... you couldn't figure out a way to deliver that better?

I acknowledge that it might be partially my fault for watching all of Solas' regrets one after another and then going to talk with Morrigan that made me incredibly bitter about that whole thing... but in my defense, the game makes it clear that it wants you to do everything you can before progressing the story. I wasn't someone who missed out on a lot of stuff due to recruiting Davrin too early; my friend who already finished the game warned me about that.... but that tells me what I should be doing, no? So of course I gathered all those damn wolf statuettes, of course I'm going to watch them all at once.

Oh, and the plot twist with Varric's death? ...y'all.

Again, I'm not even mad that Varric died. If anything, I totally expected it, but like... you're gonna do it like that? Really? Okay.

I'm writing that long post, and I'll answer any other asks that come my way, so I'll just say that my current feelings are that it's a fun game and I enjoy it, but the jury is still out on whether I think it's a good dragon age game, y'know?

[syrupspinner]

i just completed Aerial_Knight's Never Yield 

can you believe some places dont include the apostrophe in the title? like it's not proclaiming who spearheaded Never Yield, its a statement

my only experience with runners, as a genre, is through bit.trip. I beat the first game and played a bit of the second. this game, which I'm gonna call AKNY for short, is honestly a pretty good second example.

the controls make a lot more sense that bit.trip. I remember complaining that duck was down but kick was Y so I had to switch to keyboard or something. in akny, you've got the colour-coded cardinal directions, which applies to both the dpad and face buttons: up is high jump (obstacles you need to high jump are always red), left is midjump (yellow), down is duck (purple), and right is sprint (blue). straightforward, easy to nail in a split second, this is good. it's a little silly that you have two jump buttons, because yes there are obstacles colour-coordinated to mid that you can clear high, but it's still pretty elegant with how simple it is to grasp

the plot is... uh, minimalist. there's no dialog, so here's what I've got. you've got the main character, who i just kinda called Runner in my head. he escapes from a tube in a lab and spends the rest of the game dodging the authorities about it. there's also another guy, implied to also be from the same tube situation, who I called Swords cuz he's always got some swords floating around him. Swords is king of the streets or something, he's the strongest guy around, and Runners out to take him out and claim the crown. that might be wrong, especially since it seems like the sequel is more fleshed-out, but the story isn't all that important anyway. watch the cool guy do something cool and then play a level about it

I really dig the style. if anything's gonna sell you on the game, it's the vibes. the music is ultimately a bit simple, but they're all really solid hiphop instrumentals. the design is... it'd call it comic-like, but it's more like a graphic novel almost. it's not vibrant but it's still colourful, y'know? oh, speaking of style, I love the level where you're running up a building and you've got this really funky camera angle, added such a cool visual flair. 

that's kinda it! the game is pretty short, I beat the campaign in like 2 hours I think, and a lot of that is from killing myself when I missed that stupid coin in the school level. y'know when people call a fighting game character honest? that's what this game feels like to me. it's as stylistic and badass as the budget let's it, and I respect the hell out of it. totally worth playing.

and then there's endless mode.

I understand this was added in an update. you run laps around a gym dodging randomly spawning obstacles. youve gotta play for, according to my research, 30 minutes straight of this for all the achievements. woof. so... I just kinda got to it. it took me three days, across... I'd guess three or four hours of attempts. I put kitboga on my other monitor and reached the world's stupidest zen state, just reacting to the obstacles. if you wanna keep track of your progress without pausing all the time, I'm pretty sure it took me about 165 laps. thats a bit egregious. there's already an achievement for 30 laps, which I think works great as a threshold of basic capability. like, if you can do 30, you can do it forever, kinda like how crypt of the necrodancer only asks you to get a 10 run win streak before saying "okay it wasn't luck you can do this forever if you wanted to"

not enough to ruin the game by any means, especially since it's optional. this game has a great soul and fun gameplay to back it up, absolutely worth trying out! just a heads up, don't expect triple-a polish, keep your expectations realistic for an under-the-radar indie.

[neutralskeptic]

I also write fanfics, y'know.

Good morning. I guess I should mention the two fanfic projects I've been plugging in work on, TOATF and OddMORI. TOATF, or The Odd Adventures of Travis Fields, is the result of me getting bored back in July of 2022 and making a mockup of what the plot of the still-in-development EarthBound-esque RPG Oddity could've been with an AI (Yes, I admit that I screwed up there). Nevertheless, I liked the story so much that I started rewriting and rewriting back in September of that year, and after years of effort I finally started dripping chapters through on AO3 around a few months ago. Progress has been slow, but that's mostly due to ME being slow, if you get the picture. I should practice consistently getting chapters out, especially as my schedule becomes more cluttered these days. https://archiveofourown.org/works/51026467 It's pretty decent, I think. OddMORI, as the title might suggest, is an as-yet unreleased Oddity/Omori crossover working off of the plot framework I've refined for TOATF, taking a bunch of experimental crossover stuff I've come up with and trying to integrate them with the characters and setting. It doesn't get as much work put in as TOATF, but it does get pretty fun to write at times! For now, it'll still remain unreleased, though, altho I may post more snippets of it here if I got any. I started work on it back in the first half of 2023, I think? These are my two main projects, although I do have a LOT more crossover ideas to drop. My brain feeds on well-made crossovers and generates them when not doing anything in particular lol. This should be it for the morning, so seeya!

[cosmicwhoreo]

If The Squeak Squad were in the anime, what would Vezzpa relationship with them be like?

A'ight, let's kill two birds with one stone. And lemme just say something here, I REALLY wanted to have more doodles explaining this, but then I remembered how lazy I am and just thought screw it I'll just type it out, it's faster-

Well, first of all; how I'd introduce them is as a band of misfit thieves that go around the galaxy stealing things from meager pick-pocketing, to elaborate heists. Ocean's seven-eleven type stuff. And their next target happens to be the king of Dreamland's vault of ridiculous amounts of wealth. Unfortunately, their first attempt was a failure and nearly got them caught by Meta Knight, putting the safe on supreme lockdown. And DDD, feeling like wanting to keep his trove extra secure, wants to hire EXTRA muscle to keep things secure. Unfortunately, he went about and hired the very group that tried to steal from him after they saw the all the fliers and took it as an opening. All because DDD thought Daroach was cool-looking. And the rat took advantage of the king's naivety and tried and sweet-talk the rest of the group into being none the wiser. Unfortunately, the person Daroach needed to REALLY charm was the person who had ALL of the safe codes and details; The ever unimpressible Vezzpa who actually found him more repulsive than charming. Because... Well, she wasn't a fan of pests.

This of course, caught him completely off-guard because NOBODY has ever not fallen for his chronic-flirt tactics, or has called him "a malformed, misogynistic mouse with jaundice". I mean, it's not the first time somebody had insulted him... But it was certainly the first time they were so alliterate and upfront about it... And it hit him where is pride was, but he still needs to try and find a way to get her to sweeten up to him so she might share SOMETHING OF A HINT to at least ONE of the safe codes... Plus his track record of seducing ladies was at stake of being broken ALONG with his successful heists and he wasn't about to have THAT!

AAAAAaaand that's all I got- So, yeah... Ol’ Vezzy wouldn’t think to highly of him and already be WAY too suspicious of him to even give him the time of day, let alone a scrap of code. And Daroach would at most try and find a way to get on her good side as a means to an end and only come out furious that she has more than two brain-cells to rub together.

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 12

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I’m outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I’ve missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly. -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I’m using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what’s said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn’t matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

Let's bring this thing home! It's time for the conclusion of the essay series!

Conclusion With a stupidly long essay series behind us, it's time to look at what we've learned! Let's go back to Part 1 and review what we needed from Van Zieks's character development for a fully rounded redemption arc, shall we?

1) Present an antagonistic (possibly immoral) force who personifies Ryunosuke’s biggest personal obstacle/weakness, in this case racial prejudice. 2) Humanizing traits begin to show. OPTIONAL: A backstory to justify any immorality he has. 3) Over time, Barok has his realization and sees the error of his ways. 4) Barok atones for his immorality, not simply through apology but by taking decisive steps. 5) The cast around him acknowledges his efforts and forgives him.

And looking at the main game (plus additional dialogue), we have...

1) Antagonistic force:

Etc. etc. I have many of these. We can all agree that as an antagonistic force, he does his job quite well. CEO of Racism and White Privilege in the flesh. It works, since we as the audience get very frustrated and want to see him defeated.

2) Humanization:

Giving him an old friend to be a defendant was a brilliant move, really. Albert's reflection on the friendship and the person Van Zieks used to be really helped flesh him out and make him appear more like a human being with, y'know, emotions and weaknesses. The little snippets of dialogue in his office really help too. Presenting evidence can also lead to fun tidbits. All in all, considering how gruff and distant Van Zieks is, they really did their very best to humanize him. The writers were given very little to work with but they exploited every opportunity to come their way.

OPTIONAL backstory:

Again, I don't think we needed a tragic backstory to have a well-rounded, redeemable character. Still, it ties in very expertly to the game's plot and the motivations of quite a few other characters. The story of Klint van Zieks and his death isn't necessarily Barok van Zieks's backstory, it's the center of an intricate web which also holds Kazuma, Stronghart, Gregson, Jigoku, (S)Holmes, Mikotoba, Sithe, Drebber- I could go on. A LOT. So because of how very integrated it is into the main narrative's recurring themes and characters, I'll give it props for being relevant and well thought out. The bigger question is: Does it justify his immorality? Not entirely. I think the game could have gotten more out of this if they'd involved the other two exchange students in this tale just a bit more. They could have given more attention to how Jigoku's aggressive behavior in the trial impacted Van Zieks, and explained whether he might've suspected Mikotoba of sabotaging (S)Holmes's investigation. If the narrative had done that, all three Japanese people to come to London would have been ‘the bad guy’ in Van Zieks's eyes and it would have given more credence to his racial generalization. They could have also given more attention to how the people around him reacted to Genshin being the Professor, because I'm sure Stronghart and Gregson stoked the fire in terms of xenophobia. As it stands, there isn't really enough there to justify hatred of an entire race as opposed to just one person.

3) Realization/Redemption

We see him already start to realize the error of his ways around the end of 1-5, which is technically only about halfway into the full narrative. Unfortunately, thanks to 2-2 being played afterwards (but chronologically set before 1-5), any progress made in 1-5 can become invalidated in the player's eyes. Growth works best when it's done linear. Don't get me wrong, flashbacking to earlier times when a character is still more morally tainted can work well, but it needs to be executed properly. Barok's behavior in 2-2 is downright insulting towards the audience itself and therefore, it causes emotional friction when relaying the narrative endgoal of redemption. It also makes it extra jarring when we hit 2-3, and suddenly Van Zieks is meant to be relying on the protagonist's desire to expose the truth. How on earth can we as the audience trust that Van Zieks believes in Ryu's abilities when we just came fresh out of a case where this man actively sabotages Ryu's efforts?

Still, the line of redemption continues from 2-3 into 2-4 well enough. He admits that he was wrong- that his hatred was illogical and that he needs to change. This is the very definition of redemption. I need to stress once more this is not to be confused with atonement, which comes next.

4) Atonement

Here it is. It's not enough to simply acknowledge mistakes; one needs to work hard to fix them. Since Van Zieks is the defendant for two whole episodes, equaling roughly 20% of the full narrative and 67% of the time following his first true realization (chronologically), there isn't much that he can actively do to atone. Because remember, not only do these actions need to fit the situation he's currently in, they need to fit his personality. These two limitations ensure the atonement mostly takes the form of dialogue. Of apologies.

One might want to point out that he never apologizes specifically for his racism, but there's a reason for that. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that there isn't a single character who ever uses a word like “racism”, “xenophobia” or even “racial prejudice” in this game. It's for the same reason you'll never see an Ace Attorney character utter words like “alcoholism”, “drug abuse” or “depression”. These things may be implied very strongly, to the point where you'll know for certain a character is suffering from it, but it's never given these exact labels. It has to do with the tone of the game. In Great Ace Attorney's dialogue, Barok van Zieks is only ever described as holding “a deep hatred for Japanese”, which is then the only thing he could apologize for. And he does, so long as you aren't looking for a literal phrasing of “I apologize for my deep hatred of your people”.

Regardless, he can't take more active, decisive action until he's freed from prison and two scenes with Van Zieks later, the game has ended. He still manages to take two actions, though! The first is to publicize the truth of the Professor, taking the blame of the mass murders off Genshin's shoulders (and losing his own privilege in the process). The second is to take Kazuma under his wing as his disciple. I'm not certain there's anything else the narrative could have had him do. What is decisively missing, however, is the following:

5) Acknowledgment

The above aren't good examples of cast acknowledgment that Van Zieks is taking part in a redemption arc, rather, they're the best I could find. Characters are acknowledging that he's changing- that he's being kinder to them and they can get along with him now, but they're not acknowledging that he caused hurt in the first place. This, in my opinion, is the Great Ace Attorney's biggest narrative flaw. I've talked before about how Ryu's reaction to Van Zieks's racism is 'indirect communication', a typically Japanese manner of dealing with negativity. I've also talked about how Ryu is not in a position to speak up, as he's a literal minority who is there to represent his country in an official capacity and can’t afford to make enemies. However, characters like Susato and Kazuma are far more outspoken in their opinions, as is Soseki. The only one who ever calls Van Zieks out on his racism is the British judge, and even that is done very meekly. When an old crusty white guy is the one who condemns white privilege in a cast full of minorities, you've got a problem. The Japanese cast's refusal to acknowledge that Van Zieks's words were harmful is like Team Avatar telling Zuko that sure, he can join since he's a good guy now, but never once acknowledging that he burned down villages or betrayed everyone's trust in Ba Sing Se. There's something very vital missing, see? If indeed the cast had called Van Zieks out more actively on his harmful ways and how necessary it was for him to change, he in turn could have taken more atonement steps in response.

So, for the conclusion: Does Barok van Zieks tick all the necessary boxes for a complete redemption arc? Yes. In a very technical sense, all the requirements are there. But does that mean it's a successful arc? Not necessarily. The game has a few slip-ups, a few things not executed as well as they could have been. For that reason, whether the audience is satisfied with the arc is entirely up to them. Taking into consideration that they had to cram a whole lot of story into just two games- the second game in particular, I can acknowledge they did their very best with the limitations that were there.

And there we have it! That’s all I could think to say on the matter. I hope everyone who read this till the very end enjoyed it, maybe even learned a thing or two. I’m always open to questions, input and constructive criticism!