#SORRY FOR THE LONG INFODUMP…

[giallomutt]

✮ All American Massacre (dir. by William "Tony" Hooper, son of Tobe Hooper) is the long coveted "lost" Texas Chainsaw film. It would've acted as both a prequel and a sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 & 2. Despite having been entirely finished and set to release in the year 2000, this film has never seen the light of day. It's generally agreed that this is because of licensing issues, as Tony Hooper did not actually own the rights to Texas Chainsaw massacre or any of its characters, in fact, the whole production seemed to be unauthorized. What little footage circulates around the internet is VERY low quality and gives me the impression that it was all shot guerrilla style with no budget.

✮ The plot: Robert "Chop-Top" Sawyer (somehow still alive after getting chainsawed in the gut and falling off a fucking cliff in TCM2, but whatever), who's been held in a psychiatric facility for the past 13 years, is brought out to give an interview to tabloid television journalists. We'd see various flashbacks and learn how the Sawyer family became cannibals, and the movie would end with Chop-Top escaping to start a new massacre.

✮ Bill Moseley reprised his role as Chop-Top, alongside Todd Bates who played his younger counterpart. Guitarist Brian Carol (better known as Buckethead) composed the movie's score AND played Leatherface! Unfortunately, All American Massacre will probably never be released to the public, though I can hope and pray. In the meantime, there is a really cool and informative documentary called In Search of All American Massacre: The Lost Texas Chainsaw Film, that was released in 2022. It's free on youtube, go check it out! :)

[somewhatidealname]

Helmetless Gabe anon again! What if instead of going out, they just have a nice day together alone and maybe Gabe can show off his cool shape shifting with his face. I just hope V1 doesn’t get fried by looking at it for so long ;o;

his face flows like water and it happens subconsciously

and don't worry about v1! if the depths of hell or god himself can't even stop them then there's no way v1 will let a handsome face do so

[emo-crowgirl]

do you have any tips for writing the glitch techs characters? i want to get back into fanfic writing but idk how to write them

I have a few things. Not entirely sure how much it would help because Im also kind of new to writing and have no idea what counts as advice and what’s just obvious here, but here’s some things I do:

General speech stuff:

The biggest thing I do to write any character is rewatch episodes of the show to try to get their speaking style and voice locked down in my brain. I rewatch a few episodes of Glitch Techs whenever I come back from a long pause in writing or if I’m trying to get a specific character’s personality down. A general rule for me is if I can’t read a bit of dialogue and hear it in the character’s voice, I rewrite it until I can.

(Also: I cheat a little. The reason my main fic right now (HTSBD) is primarily a Chatfic is because I’m bad at writing tone and struggle with writing movement. It’s a lot easier to write how a character would write something or speak in a vacuum than write how a character would physically say something or how they’d move.)

Anyways, watching episodes and really paying attention to the character’s speaking style helps a lot for me, and also helped me see a couple of verbal tics and quirks that I never really noticed before. Like I know how “Oh Nerds” or just “Nerds” is used as a kind of in-universe swear, and I know Mitch’s usage of “Noobs” and “Blueberries” to describe Five and Miko, but I never picked up on stuff like how often Five says “Holy Smokes” or how Miko tends to refer to people as “Dudes” for example until a rewatch.

Speaking of in-universe swears: I personally swear like a “written by vivziepop” meme, which gets in the way of writing dialogue because I’d keep putting swears in places where they don’t belong. To counter this, i literally made one of those “will they say fuck” meme charts and arranged all of the characters on it by how likely they are to swear at something and how likely they are to use more mild substitutes like “damn”, “heck” or the in-universe “Nerds”, and somehow this helped me write better. So what I’m saying is those meme charts can be surprisingly useful when trying to nail down specific character stuff and keeping it consistent if you take them seriously and don’t just use them for memes.

Below the cut is a very, very long post on each of the specific characters. I have no idea if it’s usable as writing advice or if it’s just me overanalyzing and incoherent rambling.

Specific characters:

Ok so this very quickly turned into me overanalyzing and rambling about my interpretations of the characters in extreme detail. I have no idea if any of this is even remotely helpful but I seriously enjoyed writing it.

Five:

I got this from another writing tip post made by someone else on this site, but Five is petty. He’s held on to a single ruined birthday for years and as pointed out by that post I mentioned he STILL hasn’t told Miko that they have actually met before because she kept beating him in various games. Five can and will hold grudges for a very long time.

At the same time though, he’s not usually the type to hold that grudge over someone’s head or bring it up around them all that often. Depending on the context he either keeps that sort of thing to himself and essentially bottles it all up or is willing to forgive, but very unwilling to forget.

The only major exception to this is Mitch. Five gives him plenty of leeway and is usually quick to forgive a good chunk of Mitch’s assholery, or at least doesn’t usually hold much of a grudge after the fact. I’ve always kinda personally seen this as a bit of hero worship. Mitch and especially Mitch’s old streams and videos mean A LOT to Five, he credits them for basically teaching him all of his gaming knowledge and they may have even been what got him as into gaming as he is now, and he holds onto that positive stuff just like how he holds onto grudges and pettier things.

That being said, Five does have a boiling point, for both holding onto grudges and how many times he’s willing to give Mitch the benefit of the doubt, and as seen in B.U.D.S, when Five does eventually hit that point he goes straight for the kill, shutting down Mitch and leaving him without any kind of response, which is saying something because it’s Mitch “Always has the last word” Williams. He seems willing to push things to the side and forgive later in the day, but again, Mitch is an outlier and gets a lot more leeway than anyone else.

In terms of his family (more specifically just his Dad), it’s complicated. Five loves his dad, but his arrest is a very sore subject and Five will do basically anything to avoid the topic, from just dodging the topic in conversations whenever possible to literally avoiding a family friend’s entire store for years. Five just doesn’t like dwelling on things that.

And that’s outside of Hinobi. Within Hinobi, it’s complicated but in a different way. Because the store that Five works at is 100% the exact same store that his Dad worked at. There’s no way it isn’t. And then you need to remember that in-universe, his dad made some of the earliest video games that were ESSENTIAL to the development of modern games, without even acknowledging that there’s a very high chance his Dad worked on or even invented the in-universe equivalent to PONG. Making Emilio Nieves most likely the literal inventor of video games as we know it. There are definitely people currently in the Bailley store that knew him. That worked with him. Phil probably knew him at least in passing and at most personally. There’s weight here, along with some MASSIVE shoes to fill, and Five knows it, but absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. He just wants to ignore it and pretend it isn’t there.

Kinda connecting to that, Five overthinks things a lot. He stresses over the smaller things, and is more than capable of sending himself into a spiral if he’s not careful, and if something is bothering him, it’s going to keep bothering him for a long time. So maybe that’s part why he tries to avoid anything to do with his dad. Because he knows that if he actually starts putting too much thought into it it’ll be hard for him to ever stop thinking about it.

Come to think of it, we see that he’s been friends with Casino since long before his Dad’s arrest, and yet Casino mentions that it’s been a very long time since the two of them have seen each other. Maybe Five trying his best to avoid anything to do with his dad and probably kinda just.. withdrawing from everything to avoid the topic has something to do with that.

In terms of his skills as a Glitch Tech and a Gamer, Five has a very good mind and planning ability, but lacks the raw, innate skill that some others have.

Like he can outthink his opponents, plan things out extremely well, figure out puzzles and strategies extremely quickly and he’s very quick to learn the ins and outs of a game, but he doesn’t have the insane reflexes, reaction times or that general raw, natural ability that someone like Mitch or Miko has. Give him a chance to think things through for even a moment and he can easily figure out what he NEEDS to do, but he could lack the raw, unlearnable ability to actually DO it. Luckily as a Glitch Tech, that’s typically where buffs come in to bridge that gap, and he’s typically more than willing to practice and retry games until he gets the hang of something, helped by the fact that Five is a very quick learner.

Like take my view on why he couldn’t beat Castlestein. He kept every weapon on him just in case it would be useful in the future and looted literally everything, and he definitely knew exactly what he NEEDED to do, but he just couldn’t do it. If he made it to Nogrog the upside down castle puzzle and Nogrog’s final battle would have been figured out in seconds, but he didn’t make it. The enemies were too fast, the timing windows for everything too small and Five simply lacked the reflexes and raw power to get through it until eventually he was worn down to the point of giving up.

Five isn’t weaker than Miko or necessarily worse than her at games, his skills are just in a different place and it’s hard to compare the two of them. Miko has the raw power and reflexes, but he’s better at planning and strategizing. In any competitive game between them could probably read Miko like a book, easily outmaneuver or flank her or just outsmart her completely, but he needs a even a small moment to think or do a tiny bit a of setup in order to do that effectively, and Miko excels in rushing down opponents before they’re able to react. If Miko can successfully rush Five and both start and end the fight quickly (in either a game or real life), she wins easily, but if it starts being dragged out a even a little bit longer and Five is able to actually think of a plan, it’s a lot more evenly matched, getting more favoured towards Five the more time passes and the more he’s able to think.

Also (just for pure, headcanoned fun) as for Five’s place on my “swear chart”: I have him marked down as one of the least likely characters to swear, but one of the most likely to use a substitute like Nerds, Damn or Heck.

Miko:

I have a lot to say about Miko because she’s one of my favourite characters.

Four letters: A.D.H.D. If you want to write Miko and aren’t diagnosed with ADHD, I suggest doing research on ADHD. The hyperactivity, the impulsiveness, the struggles with focusing on things, the hyperfixating on her interests, her “Boredom Dance” possibly being an example of stimming while being understimulated, she’s so ADHD coded it’s insane. Whether she’s aware of this or not is up to you.

Miko hyperfixates on things. That claim about beating all the games she owns says less about her skill than it does about her sheer determination to complete any game that interests her. If Miko starts something and she’s even slightly interested in it, she NEEDS to complete it. Once she’s gotten going on something it’s very hard to stop her.

However, this can go in reverse. If something does manage to stop Miko, like hitting some metaphorical wall that she just can’t get past, or anything else that finally gets her to give up, or if she’s not interested in whatever she’s supposed to do in the first place, it’s hard to get her going again, especially just on her own without any outside force or person to give her a push.

Also, Miko can’t stand being stuck in one place for too long. She needs to MOVE, She needs to DO SOMETHING, she needs stimulation. A Miko with nothing to do or a Miko forced to do things she finds boring (for two examples: Reading and Tutorials) is an unhappy Miko.

Kinda fitting with both of those above points, Miko is very competitive. She literally tracks down the kid who beat her Rock-Em-Sockers score to challenge him personally. She’s also this competitive against herself, which is another reason why she refuses to leave a game unbeaten. If she doesn’t beat the game, the game has won. (Just look at her brief crisis upon learning that she didn’t beat Castlestien).

Miko may be impulsive, she may not think everything through before doing it, and she may be easily distracted, but she’s not dumb. Far from it. She’s very smart, especially in areas that interest her (she literally sneaks around Joystick Jr’s and fixes the arcade machines in there and she probably had to have taught herself how to do that on her own), but she’s held back by, again, that impulsivity and inability to focus on stuff isn’t an active interest of hers. Again, ADHD.

Also worth noting, as seen in Ralphie Bear is Back, Miko probably has Automatonophobia. That’s the the fear of “human-like figures”. It’s usually the fear of something like mannequins, ventriloquist dummies, or wax figures but it’s also a kind of umbrella-term-phobia that covers a bunch of stuff all at once like the fear of robots, statues, dolls, animatronics and other things that kind of lean towards the uncanny valley. From what we’ve seen Miko’s fear might just extend to animatronics, but then again we’ve never seen her in the same room as a mannequin or a wax figure so who knows.

While we’re on the subject of Miko’s mind, her reset immunity. Have fun with it. It’s implied somewhat in BUDS with the actions of her clone that her immunity extends to things like Mind Reading too and there’s probably a good chance that her mind can’t be controlled or easily altered either, so feel free to go wild on what else Miko could be immune to.

Another note: Miko cannot drive for the life of her. I wouldn’t be surprised if Five at least has a beginner’s license. His grandparents either don’t have a car and just use the food truck, which hasn’t driven in years according to Five, or have like one car used mostly to pick up groceries and supplies for said food truck. Either way Five probably either has a beginner’s license with no logical way of getting a full one of his grandparents don’t have a car, or just has a driver’s license outright if they do. I refuse to believe Miko has been to any form of driving practice, and there is a good reason Five is almost always the person driving the van. The few times we’ve seen her get behind the wheel it’s been some kind of disaster and god help you if she uses the van’s portal gun because she’s either going to miss the destination by a little, miss the destination by a lot, or arrive on location perfectly, only to open the exit portal 10 feet above the ground.

On a less pleasant note: Miko is lonely. It’s kind of implied the timeline of events with her family’s arrival went Rock ‘Em Sockers -> The Ralphie Bear Incident, with Miko originally being lonely when her family first moved to Bailey, then getting herself noticed by getting really good at the arcade games at Joystick Jr’s, especially Rock ‘Em Sockers, only for everything to come crashing down because of that birthday party, and prior to meeting Five Miko really doesn’t have any friends. Sure it’s mentioned by the creators that she knows a couple of people online but in real life she’s was pretty much on her own until meeting Five, and Miko is aware of this.

She’s also a bit of a black sheep in her own family. Her family is large and as the second oldest child, Miko falls right into that middle-child area where her parents tend to be more focused on her older sister and younger siblings. Not to mention that Miko’s interest in gaming is pretty much limited to her within her family. Sure her siblings are willing to play with her occasionally, but the rest of her family just doesn’t GET her interest in video games the same way she does. Her parents and siblings still love her, and she loves them, but there’s a disconnect between her and the rest of her family, and Miko is, again, aware of this.

Also also, it’s kinda implied that Miko isn’t very well socialized, with things like her lack of friends but also things like her not knowing about Mitch being a former streamer and having a channel or her older sister telling her about social aspects of high school despite Miko being 16 and therefore a high schooler. That last point originally made me headcanon that Miko was or still is homeschooled, and although it’s just a headcanon, I like to stick with it. I think it fits with everything else about her.

Miko is terrified of being othered. Of being viewed as the weird kid and losing the friends that she’s pretty much just gained recently. Her greatest tangible fear may be animatronics but her greatest intangible fear is going back to being friendless, and that sort of thing shows.

I’ve made a whole post on it before but I’ll paraphrase it again, but in The Glitch Modder, Mitch’s comments about Miko being weird, everyone else being unnerved by her reset immunity and ESPECIALLY Miko finding out that Five, her current best friend, also sees her immunity as weird sets her off for the whole day because of that. She’s terrified of being viewed as not normal and pushing people away from her, so it’s a massive pain point for her. That sort of thing is also why she panics more than anyone else does when Mitch accuses her of being a glitch in Find The Glitch.

Also kinda connecting to that, Miko will often try to put the wellbeing and feelings of her closer friends before her own, mostly because she doesn’t want to do anything that has even the slightest chance of pushing someone away from her. Like letting Five call her Meeks. She hates the nickname, but doesn’t want to disagree with it for fear of pushing Five away.

Miko doesn’t exactly care about her own wellbeing in combat either. Her main strategy in most things is to charge straight in and start doing damage with very little defensive options, not caring about her own injuries, damage to her equipment or collateral damage, and she’s more than willing to take the hit for Five, Ally, or anyone else she’s working with (although Mitch kinda depends on context), she’s also definitely the type to ignore her own injuries or insist that she’s fine when she’s really not.

Whether you’re writing Miko with the intention of her being a human (canon), a glitch (not canon but there’s a lot of potential) or wanting to leave it ambiguous (The funny option), one thing you have to acknowledge is that Miko’s reflexes and reactions times are canonically insane. Literally called out as inhuman by Mitch. Miko has the reflexes of someone using a TAS in real life and a physical reaction time so good she may as well be seeing the future (as long as she’s focused on the right thing).

This can be seen in her choice of games. The games Miko is shown to be best at are the in-universe equivalent to games like Guitar Hero and DDR, games that primarily require fast reflexes and good reaction times. Even the unnamed game she and Five are playing at the beginning of Castlestien appears to be a fast paced racing or maybe obstacle dodging game of some kind, and what do you know, Miko’s beaten it multiple times.

This borderline superhuman raw skill comes at the cost of puzzles, tutorials and really any moment where Miko is required to sit and think becoming her greatest weakness. Again Miko’s not dumb, but a mix of being unable to focus on the right things, being easily bored and that constant need for stimulation and to actually DO something makes puzzles difficult at best and unbearable at worst for her. Can Miko solve a puzzle on her own? Yes. But she’s just not made for it, doesn’t like doing it and WILL attempt to brute force it if possible. So Miko tends to be unable or more often unwilling to do these sorts of things.

I still think my headcanon about Castlestien’s fake wall is the best example of what I’m trying to say: My headcanon is that the Blade Demon of Truth CAN be beaten, but he’s a puzzle boss that can’t be beaten through normal combat. Miko’s fake wall is a speedrunning glitch that Miko stumbled across by accident because she would rather brute force a seemingly impossible fight until literally finding a way to clip through a wall and skip the fight entirely than try to figure out whatever puzzle needs to be solved to beat the fight legitimately. Could Miko have figured out the intended solution on her own? Eventually sure. But Miko’s sheer determination and unwillingness to do something she hates was simply too strong.

I’ve already compared Five and Miko’s skills, but Miko and Mitch is a whole different story. I want to get into their relationship and how they interact once I start talking about Mitch next, but i think it’s important to get this out of the way now.

Miko has better “raw skill” than Mitch, or at the very least is equally matched or close to equally matched. Her reflexes are better, her reaction times are better, she’s faster than him, Mitch literally calls Miko’s skills inhuman by his own standards, but they’re still evenly matched in a 1 on 1 competition between both of them, possibly slanted in Mitch’s favour. Both of them THINK they’re better than the other, but in reality any straight competition between them will probably end in either a draw or inconclusive.

This is because sure, Miko has more raw skill, but Mitch, just like Five, is very good at strategizing and planning. He can read people, he knows how to get into people’s heads, he knows how to prepare and plan his next moves. And Miko’s patented strategy of rushing down the opponent before they can react doesn’t work very well against him because Mitch still has the raw skill and ability to hold his own against Miko.

Miko relies on rushing her opponent down and trying to take them out before they can think of a strategy or begin preparing for anything, and even if someone does manage to outsmart her, she’s so fast that a lot of the time even if someone can predict what she’s going to next, they might not be able to physically react fast enough to stop her, at least not without some kind of pre-existing strategy or setup or something to give them an advantage. The longer an opponent lasts against Miko, the longer they’re able to think and strategize ways to get past her, and the more her “rush opponent and don’t let them think or set anything up” strategy starts to fall apart. Mitch, even running with the most Miko-Favoured estimate of their skill differences, is still more than good enough to go against Miko without a proper plan and can either drag out an encounter long enough to strategize and figure out ways to tip the balance in his favour, or just win against her outright. This kind of balances the two to the point where it’s kind of a coin toss as to who wins in a fight (in-game or otherwise) between them.

In my own headcanons, no one in-universe really knows who would win in a completely fair 1v1. Miko and Mitch both think THEY would win, obviously, but ask anyone else and they wouldn’t be able to give you a concrete answer.

Mitch:

One of the first things I feel should be said about Mitch is that his ego may be massive, but it isn’t misplaced. It’s not a case where the huge ego is a cover for even larger insecurities or the trope where someone constantly talks big only to be unable to back up what they say. Mitch really is (more or less) as strong as he claims, and that status as the highest ranked Glitch Tech in Bailey is something he earned legitimately fighting the toughest glitches he could find on his radar. The glitches he steals from other techs barely make a dent in the total amount of xp he brings in and if Mitch says he can take out a glitch, he usually isn’t lying.

That being said, this ego does mean that if Mitch does get in over his head, either fighting a glitch or doing something in a game, it will be a cold day in hell when he admits it and backs down, at least without someone else stepping in for him. He’d never directly admit that he’s been beaten, and it can take something short of a miracle to get him to admit that he’s wrong, but he can find ways to indirectly say it, keeping his ego intact when possible.

Using my own work as an example because it’s the best one I can think of right now, in HTSBD, Mitch never directly calls for backup, even when he knows that he can’t do something himself. Instead, he always waits for someone ELSE around him to bring up the idea of calling for backup and then supports their idea. Instead of him basically saying “i need backup, I can’t win this”, it’s someone else’s idea. Mitch isn’t calling for backup because he’s in trouble, someone else is calling for backup because THEY’RE in over their head, and Mitch just so happened to support THEIR Idea.

Also, I kind of view Mitch like a fusion of Five and Miko, with a dash of assholery mixed in for taste. He has Five’s mind and planning ability an Miko’s raw talent, but he also has Five’s pettiness and Miko’s competitiveness and stubbornness. If someone wrongs Mitch, he’ll remember, he’ll hold a grudge and he’ll ruminate on it for a long time.

When it comes to fighting glitches (and probably other situations as well), Mitch is strange yet perfect balance of “Pure Speedrunning Effectiveness” and “The Flashiest Show Off You’ve Ever Seen”

What I mean by this is that I’d argue Mitch fits the description of the “Combat Pragmatist” trope. He does whatever he needs to do to win quickly and effectively, screw the rules or typical etiquette, and he does things with brutal efficiency. He doesn’t care about the rules or morals of it (For an example, in Age Of Hinobi: “You’re Mitch Williams!” “And you’re not.” *Kicks kid off a cliff*) and he doesn’t care if something is overkill or bending the rules or not intended to be used a certain way (like overclocking his gauntlet), he just wants to win.

But at the same time, Mitch is an egotistical show off. He wants to win as effectively as possible, but he also wants to show off how much he’s winning. So what you get is stuff like his initial fight against the Copycat Glitch in BUDS, with Mitch stylishly dodging and trash talking as much as possible (even with no one else to see it), mixed with Mitch overclocking his gauntlet and hitting the glitch with a point blank gauntlet beam that’s about as large as the glitch itself, regardless of how much overkill that is or the risks with overclocking (which as mentioned by Mitch, Hinobi really doesn’t like its employees doing in the first place).

Also, Mitch is a massive workaholic. As said by him in Age Of Hinobi, this job is everything to him. In many ways it’s all he really has going for him, and a part of him is terrified of the prospect of losing that. Besides just being extremely competitive, that’s part of why he’s so determined to keep himself at the top of the leaderboard whenever possible. I’m his mind, that score is everything to him, and although there’s very little that can actually challenge that score to be honest (Ignoring the second highest score held by Bergy and his level 1 glitch farming, which Mitch refuses to see as a threat), a part of him is extremely defensive of it whenever something even remotely threatens to come close.

Also, Mitch may be a bully, but he draws the line at physical stuff. Mitch gets into people’s heads, he manipulates and makes fun of people, and he steals glitches, but he refuses to physically hurt anyone. Closest thing we have to that is Mitch constant upping the power of his resets against Miko until threatening to “wipe her clean” (which.. fair. I’d be the same if all of a sudden I encountered something that resets didn’t work against when that shouldn’t even be possible), a low-power, seemingly harmless gauntlet shot to knock Miko over, and Mitch trying to shoot Miko with his van’s portal gun to get her off his van. There’s also Mitch and Miko’s brief game of chicken in Smashozaurs where Mitch very clearly panics when he realizes that Miko isn’t backing down and he’s about to hit her with the van (Notice how all of these include Miko). Mitch just avoids physically hurting people. A deleted scene even points out that the massive gun Mitch pulled on Casino should have just harmed the possessor and would have (probably) left Casino unharmed.

Every character kinda has their own way of dealing with Mitch.

I’ve already gone over how Five tends to give Mitch a pass or the benefit of the doubt when possible, and otherwise he mostly just deals with it.

Zahra also mostly puts up with him, but won’t hesitate to respond with her own comments, sarcasm or just snark back at him. It doesn’t typically do much because it’s Mitch Williams, but it’s something.

We see that Bergy just kind of takes orders from anyone who outranks him without questioning.

I say that Haneesh just tries to ignore him, but the two of them don’t interact much on screen so feel free to come up with your own dynamic there.

Nix

And then Miko pushes back against everything Mitch has ever and will ever say and/or do.

Miko and Mitch do NOT mix. Peak “Siblings that hate each other” vibes. It’s like oil and water unless they have someone else (typically Five) acting as a mediator.

The dynamics are peak. They both have a large amount of siblings, they’re both extremely competitive, I view their skills as basically equal at least to the point where you can’t really predict who’s going to win, Mitch is an asshole who is very annoyed having to deal with “the new techs” and Miko is one of said new techs. They’ve been rivals at best and enemies at worst since the moment they met.

On that note, god help us all if Miko and Mitch learn about each other’s skills in DDR-like games. Because we’ve seen Miko’s skill for ourselves in Setting The Score and an unused animatic for season 3 shows that Mitch ALSO has some insane DDR-like (technically an in-universe Just Dance equivalent but close enough) skills. If those two ever end up going against each other in DDR or Just Dance it’s going to go on until they both collapse from exhaustion or a glitch crawls out of the screen, at which point they’d probably start fighting over who can capture it first.

Also worth noting that for most characters, they’re able to point at at least one redeeming quality about Mitch. Like sure he’s a jerk but you have admit that he’s a really effective tech or good at games, or that he was a good streamer prior to joining Hinobi, or even that he’s a decent leader when he’s not trying to screw everyone else over. Miko’s competitive nature and her already being against Mitch as a concept means that she either refuses to acknowledge Mitch’s skill or just views it as competition, she refuses to listen to a word he says if he’s the leader and she had no idea about Mitch’s past until very recently, with her first impression of the guy being the Hinobi Smash Competition, followed by Mitch wiping her new friend’s brain. She views him as stuck up asshole who keeps stealing her kills and messing with her, and it usually takes a third person (usually Five) being present in some way to stop the two of them from at the very least arguing.

Also contributing a lot to that dynamic, they bounce off each other uniquely too. Usually, if Mitch messes with someone, like I mentioned before everyone has their own way of dealing with him, and a lot of that ends up being trying to ignore him or just just going along with him, sometimes calling him out on his bullshit if it’s a particular problem or if Mitch genuinely crosses a line. Miko though. If Mitch messes with Miko, basically every single time without fail, she will have some kind of response. Like sure Zahra might snark back at him occasionally, Mitch probably doesn’t WANT Five to snap at him again and everyone has a breaking point eventually, but Miko actively tries to go against him in every way imaginable to her. She’ll disobey orders, mock him right back, use her own gauntlet equipment against him, figure out exactly what he’s trying to do just so she can get in his way, even get others to do the same sometimes. To Mitch, Miko seemingly runs on pure spite against him, and vice versa to be honest.

However, this status of Miko and Mitch being enemies can vary greatly, and everything I just said about Miko and Mitch’s dynamic only really applies on days where they’re outright enemies. It actually depends almost entirely on how much of a dick Mitch has been recently. Because the more of a jerk Mitch is, especially to Five and Miko, the harder Miko pushes and fights back, and if Mitch isn’t currently being a jerk or does something actually nice for a change, his dynamic with Miko cools down a whole lot, going from enemies to something more like friendly rivals or even outright friends of a sort. They’re still incredibly competitive and won’t hesitate to mess with or snark at each other in a much more minor, more casual way, but they’re not actively arguing or fighting and will get along mostly fine, albeit while still annoying each other. Miko has basically unintentionally become a karma meter of sorts for Mitch. The more of a self-centered jerk he is, the harder Miko swings back at him.

Also I kind of headcanon that Miko scares Mitch just a little bit. Not in a “They’ll overtake my rank as a Tech” way, although that is a small fear of his when it comes to Miko and Five working as a team, but like in a physical way. Because from Mitch’s perspective, Miko has superhuman reflexes, never seems to tire herself out and has a habit of just ignoring setbacks and injuries and refusing to say down, along with a complete refusal to obey any form of orders and a single minded, almost machine-like determination when it comes to certain tasks, who almost seems to have made it her mission to ruin his day specifically. Not to mention that she also has a never before seen complete immunity to resets, aka one of the few tools techs have access to that are meant for use on humans, and it’s implied that that’s just scratching the surface of what she’s immune to. And did I mention that she has red eyes and purple hair like some kind of anime character? I’m not necessarily saying that Mitch still believes Miko is a glitch or has always believed that, regardless of if you’re writing with the intention of that being true or not, but I am saying that in Find The Glitch, he DEFINITELY at least convinced himself for a brief moment.

Moving to Five, Mitch definitely prefers him over Miko, but he still views him as one of the noobs or one of blueberries in his own words. Five doesn’t actively go against Mitch at every opportunity like Miko (although he is often an accomplice to her), but Five’s literal presence has some weight to it that Mitch doesn’t want to acknowledge, but kind of has to.

Five is a massive fan of Mitch’s old content. He credits Mitch’s old stuff for teaching him everything he knows, and there’s a good chance that Mitch’s gaming content or tournament appearances were what got Five into gaming in the first place, or at least played a big part of it, and I already mentioned in Five’s section that Mitch tends to get a pass in Five’s book even when he tends to hold grudges with everything else. The man’s STILL holding onto Miko constantly winning against him and and refusing to mention that they have actually met before and Miko and Five are practically inseparable, and yet he continues to give Mitch passes and second chances.

Point is, Five looks up to him. A lot. And Mitch wasn’t always a complete asshole. Sure I’m willing to put money on those traits still being there to some degree when Mitch was streaming pre-Hinobi, but as mentioned in canon, he’s changed a lot since becoming a Glitch Tech. BUDS made a point of that.

Also, with a headcanon I have blatantly stolen from Rose Tinted, the old streaming and tutorials Mitch leaks out occasionally. He’ll give someone tips on a game or say something extremely helpful one moment, sometimes not even realizing he’s doing it, and then go right back to being a prick. The old Mitch is still there, just buried deep down.

Despite what Mitch says and how he can act, he does care about his teammates, all of them. Sure he’s a dick but if he sees any of the rest of the techs in danger, even Five and Miko for as annoyed as he can get with them, he’s very quick to go “Oh wait those are MY idiots” before dropping whatever he’s doing to go save them. He doesn’t like to show it often, but he’s a good person deep down, and he does care.

And on that note, in my mind there’s no way he can’t see how much his old stuff means to Five. How much HE means to Five. Even if he refuses to admit it out loud, he knows that Five looks up to him, and there’s no way in hell he doesn’t at least feel slightly bad about being a dick to him. Messing with everyone else, that’s one thing, but Five was and still is a fan of his, Five thinks and expects him to be better than this, there’s a connection that no one else really has with Mitch, and constantly messing with him, constantly disappointing him with every prank and every haze and every stolen kill has a lot more weight to it than Mitch is used to and honestly comfortable with.

And this feeling builds up for the entire series in my interpretation of everything. Five yelling that he “doesn’t even know who Mitch is anymore” in Age Of Hinobi maybe stings a little, but to Mitch at the end of the day, he doesn’t know Five. To him, Five is just like that one kid in the tournament who stopped in awe only for Mitch to kick them off a cliff. Maybe it has some more impact because it’s real life but still. Five finally snapping at Mitch in BUDS though. That one hurt. That was the culmination of probably countless instances of Mitch being a jerk, messing with Five, and Five forgiving but not quite forgetting until finally boiling over, and by now Mitch knows Five much more. He’s not just that Hinobi Smash Kid anymore to Mitch, he’s a coworker, a fellow tech, someone who he’s (been forced to) work with several times now, and like mentioned before Mitch does care about the people he’s close to. He knows Five as a person, he knows that Five looks up to him, and disappointing him yet again only for Five to finally call him on his bullshit HURTS. I think that’s a good part of why Mitch doesn’t have a response.

At the point where the show was canceled, Mitch is just starting to go through some major character development. Mainly being less of an asshole, and in my own opinion Five and Miko are the main things driving that change. Five is, whether he’s aware of it or not, essentially guiding Mitch towards niceness. He’s shown himself to have WAY more patience with Mitch than he honestly deserves, he’s one of the only people who doesn’t immediately write Mitch off as an asshole in most scenarios and like I said before, he has that connection to Mitch that makes disappointing him repeatedly really sting after a while. Actively or not, Five is essentially holding out a hand and nudging Mitch towards being a better person, a more social and less asshole-ish person, more like his original, pre-Hinobi self that still sometimes shows itself only for the current, egotistical asshole Mitch to bury it again. And whether she’s aware of it or not, Miko is forcibly shoving Mitch away from being an asshole by effectively being karmic punishment for Mitch’s assholery and making it much harder for him to slip into his old habits, lest he’s forced back into conflict with Miko. Five somewhat unintentionally directs him to being a better person and Miko somewhat unintentionally directs him away from getting worse.

However, that’s just my interpretation. With how the show got cancelled basically any part of Mitch’s character development/redemption arc is up to interpretation. What causes him to change, how much he changes and if he’s even aware that he’s changing at all is entirely up to you to do whatever you want with it.

Moving onto something lighter, despite no longer being a streamer himself, Mitch does keep up with what’s going on in the streaming world. He definitely watches the Furious Four (although that’s kind of a given) and I think there’s a very solid chance that the anime character he was watching on his gauntlet in Tutorial Mode was an in-universe Vtuber.

Also, Mitch likes cats. We know this because not only does he own one (or at least owned one, as we’ve only seen her in a video from several years ago just before he got hired as a tech and don’t know his cat’s exact age), a grumpy old asshole of a cat named Miss Boosh (which actually raises the question of what came first, the Cat or his Catchphrase), who Mitch loves, and also because of how he mentions that Mobile Cat Collecting game in The Real Glitch Techs and his attempts to 100% it. He even seems to have spent money on it based on his “it was free to play… at first” line.

As for what games he likes, canonically it’s anything with a competitive scene. Basically any game that lets him go against other players and show off his skills, especially shooters and fighting games. He also canonically is a fan of and really good at the in-universe equivalent of Just Dance, as mentioned before, and I’m willing to bet he’d probably be a fan of DDR or Rock’Em Sockers even if we’ve never seen him play them on screen.

And as for games he canonically doesn’t like: Retro games. The simplistic and dated graphics, the janky controls, the insane difficulties and the fact that most of them are singleplayer or very simple co-op, he just doesn’t vibe with them.

This actually has a kinda funny headcanon attached to it for me because ive theorized and headcanoned that Glitch Techs takes place in the very late 90s or the very early 2000s, more specifically the year 1998. It just has a bunch of more advanced technology than our 1998 because of Hinobi’s existence as a tech company and the invention of Plixels.

The thing is, Chomp Kitty canonically came out in 1993. Five years before Glitch Techs takes place according to my theories, and Mitch considers Chomp Kitty a retro game. This means that at least in my own fics, Mitch’s definition of a retro game is kind of strange and heavily vibe based. Yes, chomp kitty came out five years ago, but to Mitch, it has the same pixelated and old style of a retro game, has the same janky controls and difficulty of a retro game, is singleplayer apart from a basic scoreboard, and was originally made for arcade machines. Ergo, it is a retro game to him, even if it isn’t technically retro in an age sense.

This kind of has its own comedy with Five because not only is Chomp Kitty mentioned to be one of Five’s favourite games, but Five has a pretty deep connection to retro games as a whole on account of being the son of the guy who fucking invented them. It’s a dumb little headcanon I have, but Mitch writing off Chomp Kitty as a retro game is probably one of the only things that can cause a genuine argument between the two of them that and it’s probably the only grudge that Five would ever actually hold against Mitch for a long period of time.

Zahra:

From this point onwards, my rambling gets a lot less detailed and shorter because I struggle to write the characters more. It doesn’t help that Zahra, Haneesh and Bergy all have a lot less screen time than Five, Miko and Mitch. So a lot of details are more surface level stuff, headcanons and just listing off canonical information from the show and the Show Bible that the creators released.

This is probably kind of a given, but research muslim stuff. Cultural things, religious practices, important terms, all of that. Ask people with knowledge and do research on how to write Muslim characters well. I made a short list in my fic notes of things to remember (mainly things regarding Hijabs because I originally kept forgetting details about them and honestly how to spell the word at times) kind of late into writing chapters and even if it hasn’t come directly into play while writing yet, I still think it’s helpful to have on hand.

Zahra is pretty chill. Cool, typically calm under pressure, pretty cut and dry and sarcastic at times. She’s pretty no-nonsense and has a tendency to just be blunt and say what everyone else is thinking or what’s on her mind. The show bible also mentions that’s she’s a quick study of people and tends to hold people to high standards too.

However, there’s a hard limit to that cool and calm persona in my mind.

This is kind of a headcanon, but in my view Zahra acts very calm under pressure, just look at her sniping or scouting things out on missions, but once something does get her to crack and she actually starts getting stressed over something, she tends to swing hard and fast in the other direction. I mostly tend to focus on stuff like her snapping at Mitch in The Real Glitch Techs (“Why don’t you try to hack something FROM THE BACK OF A MOVING VAN”) and her crushing on Five in BUDS. Despite how she appears and presents herself, Zahra actually feels emotions very strongly, but it takes some outside force or unforeseen event giving her a good push and breaking past that emotional armour of hers to see that side of her, and even then it doesn’t tend to last long.

Her own weapon loadout accidentally serves as a kind of metaphor for it. Her main weapon of choice is a sniper rifle. Something that requires calm, focus and the ability to remain steady under pressure. But once something gets close the first thing Zahra reaches for is a massive greatsword and a minigun, two weapons made to blindly obliterate anything in front of her without much calm or control at all, with Zahra attempting to delete whatever threat came close to her with as much firepower as possible before she goes right back to sniping.

Also this is pretty much pure headcanon, but I like to think that Zahra is very good under physical pressure, but completely folds under more personal social pressure. Sniping, taking out glitches and providing support and healing while under fire? Zahra’s Cool, Calm and Collected. More stressful social interactions or god forbid a dealing with a crush? Zahra’s trying her best to keep up appearances while internally screaming.

Surprisingly enough, Zahra really doesn’t have much canonical information about her, not helped by a focus episode on her being a part of the cancelled season 3 that will never see the light of day. We don’t know anything about her family, her living situation, anything. Even in the released parts of the show Bible, Zahra is the only person that not only doesn’t have a listed game preference, but also doesn’t have the reason Hinobi picked them mentioned anywhere in or out of canon. Even Nix with his exactly 4 appearances in the entire series has his game preferences and reason for hiring listed, but Zahra is pretty much a blank slate here.

So in general, if you can get her personality and/or speaking style right (my main recommendation is to rewatch episodes with her in it until you can picture her voice pretty clearly), you can do pretty much whatever you want with her. She’s not quite a blank slate, she has a pretty defined personality, but her lore and any potential deeper depths of her personality could be whatever you want it to be as long as it sounds close enough to be canon.

As for her abilities as a tech, I have a few headcanons on that.

Mainly, i think Zahra is amazing at long range, but sucks at close range. My rationale for this is her weapons. Zahra is a solid 20/10 when it comes to sniping. Her aim is literally insane enough to shoot several moving projectiles out of the air in extremely quick succession. But like mentioned before, her close range weapons are a greatsword and minigun. Two weapons that are made to deal as much damage as possible, quickly as possible, with very little actual aiming required. The sword is large enough that basically anything near her WILL be hit by it, and the minigun is a minigun. In other words, i think she’s compensating for a lack of skill or at the very least a lack of aim up close.

At range Zahra devastates anything unlucky enough to come into view of her scope, but if something gets close Zahra tries to reduce it to a fine pixelated mist as quickly as possible with either a one shot from that sword or by laying down fire with a minigun because she knows she won’t last long in a prolonged fight up close. Kinda helping with my headcanon here is that one of the support options she keeps on hand is a smoke bomb and glitch-bait hologram, which would let her get away from close combat and get back to a range she’s more comfortable with. Even her minigun helps with this because it lets her lay down cover fire and then back up to a better range.

Speaking of her support options. She’s the go-to support and essentially field medic of the team. Everyone else has some buffs (especially Mitch), but Zahra has WAY more, and her buffs tend to be stronger and last longer compared to what everyone else has. Speed Boosts, Strength boosts, those hologram-escape-options I mentioned before, she has them all.

When it comes to medical stuff, i headcanon that along with those support options, Zahra is the only member of the techs with full access to healing equipment, either because she’s spent time maxing out that part of the tech tree or because she’s the only one who’s fully certified and licensed to be able to use the advanced stuff, the same way Nix mentions needing a “Plixelcraft License” and/or special training to be allowed to use the advanced plixelcraft stuff.

Sure everyone else probably has some basic healing supplies, the older techs are probably taught first aid for obvious reasons and glitch items can be used as a temporary fix (human body isn’t exactly made of plixels, so the benefits from a plixel based healing item from a game won’t last too long, just like powerups), and Zahra definitely isn’t bringing anyone back from the brink of death or fixing life threatening injuries, but she’s still the one that’ll keep you in the fight and fix any mild to moderate injuries sustained during a fight, or at least speed up your recovery so you can get back on patrol tomorrow instead of two weeks from now. For any truly serious life threatening stuff she isn’t fixing you there and now, but would be able to keep you stable and minimize any further injury until you can be brought to HQ’s medical wing with actual doctors or a hospital. She’s a teenage field medic, not a real medical doctor.

Haneesh:

I struggle to write Haneesh more than anyone else. I don’t know why. He’s just really hard to write for some reason and I have no idea why that is. My main tip that I’ve been using for myself is just rewatching to get his voice down. After that as far as I know I’m writing him completely OOC by the seat of my pants because Haneesh confuses me.

Actual lore-wise, Haneesh is a former esports gamer. He’s apparently been some kind of prodigy since he was 6 according to the show Bible, before eventually getting some extreme burnout due to the pressure of it all that led him to quit professional esports altogether, with Hinobi seeking him out and recruiting him as a tech not long after. The show bible also mentions that he’s kind of laid back and given that, his past in esports and whatever noodle incident happened the last time he was in charge of a squad of techs, I’m willing to bet he doesn’t like being under pressure too much.

He also has a heavy interest in the more technical aspects of being a tech, think hacking, plixelcraft and how glitches actually work going off of his knowledge in Alpha Leader.

As for how i write him, i mostly lean into that interest in the technical stuff. I don’t write him explicitly as “the smart one”, I do whatever I can to try to avoid generalizing characters like that, but I do view Haneesh as one of the more knowledgeable people in the group. If you ask him a question about glitches, hacking or anything in that general range of topics , he’ll either have the information you’re looking for or know where you could get it. Like sure Mitch and Nix in my fics have plenty of experience and have picked up quite a few things over their time as techs, but they’re more street smart in my view while Haneesh is more book smart.

Mitch and Nix go “aim for this specific spot on a glitch, it’s their weak point” because they’ve figured out over the last few years of glitch fighting that hitting a glitch in that specific spot does more damage like 90% of the time. They may not know for certain WHY it works, just that it does and they probably aren’t going to question it.

Haneesh goes “aim for this specific spot on a glitch, it’s their weak point” because he’s done his research and knows that that specific spot is more exposed or has less Plixel density or is closer to the root form or whatever the actual reason is. He knows that it SHOULD work and knows WHY it should work, but might not have ever actually tested it before himself.

For example, He knows that Multiplayer Glitches are able to respawn and how they do it, but he might not have actually seen it happen before in person and might be missing some information that you could only really know if you’ve personally dealt with a multiplayer glitch yourself.

His knowledge also isn’t infinite. He has more than a couple limits where he just has to go “yeah I have no idea”. A lot of things are just too complex, especially when talking about glitches. Hinobi literally has its own team of scientists and specialists analyzing and researching these things and they’re STILL kind of unknowable and strange. Same goes for hacking, plixelcraft, Hinobi stuff and anything else he’s spent time learning. He may be good at hacking and programming, but there’s plenty of things that are just out of the scope of his understanding and knowledge. He may be more book smart than the other techs, but he’s still a 16 year old patrol tech, not a Hinobi scientist.

Gear and physical activity-wise, I mostly try to contrast him with Zahra. From what I’ve seen and kind of headcanoned, each pair of techs either compliment each other and add to each other’s strengths, or contrast each other to cover each other’s weaknesses. Like how Five is good at planning things out but struggles raw-skill-wise and therefore might struggle to actually go through with what he’s planned out, while Miko is completely insane with raw skill and physical ability but cannot plan or think ahead for the life of her. Together, they make up for each other’s weaknesses.

So I’ve headcanoned that Haneesh is primarily focused on Melee Combat, contrasting Zahra’s focus on sniping and attacking at range, and Debuffs, both to contrast Zahra’s buffs and support options and because of Haneesh’s interest in coding.

So in combat. Haneesh and Zahra work very well together. Haneesh fights at close range, drawing aggro away from Zahra and debuffing anything near him, while Zahra picks off threats from afar and absolutely SHREDS anything that Haneesh debuffs. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Zahra was capable of supplying buffs from long range using her sniper as well.

Also, we see in Alpha Leader and it’s mentioned in the show bible that Haneesh has an interest in Plixelcraft, making platforms and simple structures out of plixels. This also works well with Zahra because it means that Haneesh can make platforms and cover for Zahra to snipe from, giving her better angles and keeping her further out of reach from glitches. Hell, we even see them do something like that in Alpha Leader.

But again, all of this could be out of character because I have no idea what I’m doing with this guy. I am pretty confident with the headcanons for his loadout though.

Bergy:

I also kind of struggle with writing Bergy.

The way I see him, Bergy’s kind of the last thing you’d expect a glitch tech to be. But he also fills a very unique role in the glitch “ecosystem” in Bailley

Because all things considered, Bergy ain’t exactly peak glitch tech material to put it lightly. He’s a nervous wreck, he has a tendency to panic when dealing with any mildly aggressive glitch and his aim with a gauntlet sucks, especially when he’s panicking, which again, tends to happen when he sees any glitch above like level 3. Mitch doesn’t even really bother giving him orders because honestly, what’s he going to do against any truly dangerous glitch?

Speaking of orders, we see that Bergy just kind of takes orders from anyone above him without questioning it. Mitch could tell him to jump and he’d ask how high, not because he likes Mitch, but because he just likes taking orders I guess.

Also curiously, the show bible mentions why Bergy was chosen and I have some conspiracies about it. I’ve already made some post about it somewhere, but Bergy was chosen by Hinobi for being overly positive on Hinobi message boards and just generally being a pretty good, social person. He’s a big outlier among the rest of the techs because they all have reasons for being hired that make a bit more sense for techs. Mitch is a gaming prodigy and has been a regular tournament winner since he was a kid, Haneesh is a former semi-pro or possibly even professional esports player, Miko and Five took out an entire arcade of glitches with no training, plus Miko’s reset immunity, even Nix with basically no information about him was brought in for “completion of achievements” and going by the standards of everyone else those had to be some impressive achievements.

But Bergy was hired in for reasons that don’t necessarily line up with what Hinobi usually looks for in a tech. So it makes me kind of theorize if he was even meant to be a glitch tech in the first place. Maybe he was originally hired to work at the store’s front desk or even as non-monster-hunting, genuine tech support. Those jobs match up way more with his reason for hiring. Only for Bergy to become a glitch tech a bit later. Maybe he found it way better than whatever he was originally hired to do. I’m sure Phil wouldn’t mind the extra tech on patrol.

Anyways, about that unique role he fills, Bergy is essentially a scavenger in the glitch food chain of Bailley. A garbage man almost. He goes out and hunts all of the low level glitches that the other techs avoid in favour of the stronger stuff that gives more XP and is more fun and flashy to fight. And because everyone else avoids doing it and because low level glitches are so easy to take out (Miko proved you don’t even need a tech gauntlet some of the time), Bergy can capture a TON of them over the course of a shift and rakes in a metric TON of XP. I headcanon that he’s actually the second highest on the leaderboard behind Mitch because of this. It isn’t flashy, but Bergy is essential just because of how he hunts all the stuff that no one else wants to. Without Bergy on patrol the town would be overrun by a massive amount of level 1-2 glitches. The job sucks, but someone has to do it, so it may as well be the one guy in Bailey that enjoys going after the weaker glitches and doesn’t WANT to go after anything stronger.

Also just working off that and the kind of logical step that a lot of low level glitches would be harmless companion pets or items and weapons that can’t do anything unless a human is actively using them, i headcanon that Bergy is just sitting on a massive stockpile of weapons and items from various video games that he’s quite literally just found lying around somewhere. You need a healing potion? He has it. You need a sword? Bergy will hand you the master sword, a halo energy sword and the blades of chaos. You need some specific item to beat a glitch? Give Bergy some time to sift through his gauntlet’s inventory and he might just have a replacement.

Equipment wise, i headcanon that Bergy brings in a ton of XP, so he’s actually a very high level with a massive amount of the tech tree unlocked, although he only uses a small amount of it, mostly since he only fights very weak glitches. I kind of headcanon that he uses a lot of scouting equipment. Locating and Tracking Glitches, some stealth stuff to sneak up on them, maybe some stuff to trap glitches in place or slow them down, that sort of thing. He TECHNICALLY has a lot of really powerful stuff, but he doesn’t need to use it because he only hunts the low level stuff, and doesn’t WANT to use it most of the time because he’s just not made for combat.

In a team setting, I say that Bergy probably provides support through the two things he specializes in. The first thing is Scouting. He can track glitches from long distances, ping their locations and keep everyone else informed.

As for the second thing, Bergy may be bad at combat. His physical ability is lacking and his aim sucks, but Bergy is also sitting on a massive stockpile of various weapons and items, and he knows a couple of people that have much better aim than he does. If Bergy has access to some kind of Mitch-Level Glitch Oneshot Beam, he probably doesn’t have the aim or physical ability to effectively use it. But he’d happily hand it to someone that can. And that’s ignoring the potential of the powerups he has on him. Invincibility, extremely powerful healing, straight up extra lives that won’t bring someone back from the dead (glitches have limits), but will block or negate some massive hits to create the same effect, stuff that Hinobi’s gauntlets might struggle with or just might not be powerful enough to recreate. Sure it’s either one use only or has a massive cooldown time since they’re glitch items, but who cares, Bergy’s just gonna find more the next time he goes on patrol. Sure he’s limited by whatever random items he has on him, but he’s also ONLY limited by whatever items he has on him.

On another note, despite Bergy’s tendency to panic and bad aim, in B.U.D.S we see that Bergy is actually pretty good with a bow and is cool and calm while fighting the horrific monstrosity of the episode, and there’s a few possibilities with that.

Bergy is capable of being very competent, but not as himself. He used his DND persona as some kind of alterego and it boosted his confidence a whole lot. (Kinda unlikely considering that he got nervous and wanted to leave before being replaced by a glitch)

Bergy is just really good with a bow for some unknown reason.

If Bergy is in a situation that’s just stressful enough, his panic somehow loops back around to being calm and collected. Like put this man in a life or death scenario and he just pulls some genuinely insane competence out of his ass with “Zahra sniping” levels of calm and focus, beats the glitch and then goes back to his regular self afterwards. Or at least he appears calm to outside observers. Inside Bergy is 100% panicking so much he barely knows what’s going on.

I think option 3 is the best one, but I’m not sleeping on Bergy having some genuine skill with a bow. I’m willing to give that to him as a signature weapon like Zahra’s sniper or Miko and that sledgehammer.

Also: Bergy’s name is canonically Cecil Bergoch.

Nix:

Nix is a blank slate, and you can do whatever you want with him.

I’m serious.

This man has like four appearances total.

He is as close as you can get to a canonical OC in this fandom.

Also his name is canonically Adam Michael Nix.

As for how I personally write him, this is going to be one big ramble about Nix in my own fic and pure headcanons about him because again, he’s basically a blank slate. All you have to do is watch any of the like 5 scenes he appears in and congrats, you’ve seen his entire canon character.

Nix is kind of an enigma in my eyes. He’s kind of on the outskirts of the friend group and his main connection into the group is Bergy and Mitch. In canon, it’s only really Bergy that’s arguably close to him and him and Mitch don’t interact much, but that’s my view.

No one really knows much about him. No one knows any details about his personal life, no one but Bergy really ends up working with him for long enough to get to know him and the only people who know that his name is actually Adam and Nix is actually his last name are Bergy and Mitch.

(A detail from my fic: Bergy just casually goes “oh yeah i already knew that” on the topic of Nix’s name. Meanwhile Mitch mutes the group chat just before Nix’s name is revealed and doesn’t react when it’s brought up. Mainly because he muted the chat. Then a few chapters later he talks to Nix in private and isn’t surprised by his name, and also calls him by his name later despite again, having muted the chat and missing Nix’s name reveal. He already knew.)

The fact that Nix works two jobs, one job at Hinobi and one job at Joystick JR’s, doesn’t help with that degree of separation between him and the others. It also explains why he barely appears in the show. He works multiple jobs and physically can’t be around as much.

For minor personality stuff: I gave this man a fixation on video game secrets, achievements and collectibles. Mainly because it’s mentioned in the show bible that he was hired due to “competition of achievements” and I’m willing to bet he got some insanely hard ones to get hired by Hinobi. This man knows a lot of video game secrets, and enjoys achievement hunting.

Also in canon: Nix is mentioned to be very studious and favourite games are tactical and strategy games.

In my mind Nix, despite not working as much as the other techs, is still surprisingly knowledgeable and street smart when it comes to fighting glitches. Like I said before, he’d probably go “aim for this spot, it’s a weak point” because he somehow picked up that shooting a glitch there does more damage like 80% of the time. He may not know exactly WHY it works, but he knows that it does. But at the same time, he will get right to researching things if he has a question. Like if he started questioning WHY that weak spot only works 80% of the time, he would start looking things up until he knows EVERYTHING. It just takes a push to get him going.

With Nix and Bergy, the only canon connection he has, I’m confident that they’re friends. They’re seen on missions together, the show bible mentions that they’re frequently paired up because “their loadouts and skills compliment each other” and Castle Crashers is one of the few times when we Nix interact with ANYONE.

As for their dynamic, it is my full belief that whenever Nix and Bergy are offscreen and not a part of the current episode, they’re halfway across town going on a completely separate adventure that could easily be its own episode, plot and character arcs included. Like at any point during The Glitch Modder you could suddenly switch the perspective to Nix and Bergy and it would be like changing channels to another show that’s already in progress.

(A gag I really wanted to do in HTSBD for a while was someone getting stuck with Bergy and Nix on patrol at the beginning of a chapter and then by the end of the chapter they show up after being absent with Bergy and Nix the whole time having gone through some completely unseen adventure and character arc.)

Also, in canon Nix is 17, the same age as Bergy, and probably joined around the same time as them. My version of Nix is 18, the same age as Mitch, and joined Hinobi around the same time as everybody’s favourite asshole. This is because I headcanoned everyone’s ages way before I got my hands on the show bible so everyone’s ages are just ever so slightly different. My version of Nix is 18, my version of Zahra is 16 but right on the cusp of turning 17 when in canon she’s 17, my version of Five is 16 when in canon he’s 15 (but probably very close to turning 16), tiny changes that are almost entirely because I wrote the characters with certain ages in mind before actually learning how old they are. My version of Bergy is still 17 though. That sounds incredibly wrong to me for some reason but that’s his canon age.

As for Nix’s loadout, all we have for canon details is that according to the show bible Nix and Bergy’s skillsets complement each other and Nix getting into Plixelcraft in Im Mitch Williams. So it could be whatever you want.

I mostly headcanon his loadout as a kind of “trapper” loadout. Restricting movement, preventing glitches from escaping, plixelcraft walls and barriers, that sort of thing going with Bergy’s “scouting” loadout. Bergy can find and track glitches, and Nix can keep them in a certain area or lock them down once Bergy finds them.

I also like focusing on plixelcraft with Nix. Mainly because of what he mentions about needing certification to be able to use it. My own headcanon for it is that basically all techs have access to plixelcraft. Haneesh makes plixelcraft barriers and platforms for Zahra, Miko’s hammer is plixelcraft, Zahra’s minigun is plixelcraft, the axe Five briefly uses in Ralphie Bear is Back is plixelcraft, basically any of those untextured, one-solid-colour objects the gauntlet makes is plixelcraft, but that’s just the basic stuff. A bunch of preset options the gauntlet makes automatically. Haneesh can make a platform or wall, but he can only use a couple of preset shapes that he unlocked from the tech tree. The stuff that needs training and certification is the advanced stuff, where you can make whatever you want, with whatever code or purpose you want. That’s why it needs training and special certification.

Haneesh can make plixelcraft walls and barriers, but ONLY those walls and barriers with preset options, and the only real offensive value Haneesh could really get from his plixelcraft would be something like making a big block of plixel mid-air and hoping it falls on a glitch. Meanwhile Nix is limited only by his own creativity, programming ability and the obvious limitation that he has to make new stuff beforehand. Can’t exactly create and program an entirely new plixelcraft object while being attacked by an Elden Ring Boss.

Also kinda connecting to that whole “Nix has two jobs and can’t work as a tech as much” thing, i headcanon that despite working as a tech for as long as Mitch, Nix isn’t a very high level and doesn’t have too many things unlocked. He’s not a bad tech, he’s pretty knowledgeable about tech stuff, no slouch in combat and he’s definitely the muscle/bodyguard whenever him and Bergy are paired up to go after anything higher than Bergy’s usual weight class, but that second job combined with a few other factors means he’s a lower level than he probably should be for this time as a tech and his options for gear are somewhat limited compared to a tech like Zahra or Haneesh.

That’s another reason I say he uses a lot of plixelcraft. It lets him get around the limitation of his low level and use whatever he wants. Nix isn’t a high enough level to get a minigun? He’ll use plixelcraft to make his own custom one. Maybe even make it float around and attack things automatically if he can figure out how to code that.

I also think this pairs with Bergy for another reason: Bergy has a massive stockpile of glitch items on him and can provide support by just handing another tech whatever they might need, as long as he actually has it on him. Meanwhile Nix’s plixelcraft means that he can MAKE any item or weapon that someone might need at the moment, as long as he’s worked on it beforehand and has the file for it on his gauntlet. Basically these two together are a walking Swiss Army Knife. If you need a specific tool, Either Bergy has an item for it or Nix can make it.

And again, Bergy and Nix’s skillsets and loadouts mesh well together. Bergy has an extremely high level and access to a ton of extremely powerful tools and weapons from grinding a metric fuckton of low level glitches every day, but lacks the skill and ability to properly use most of them. Meanwhile Nix is fully capable, but has a lower level than he honestly should due to him not being able to work as much (and when he does work, he usually doesn’t get to fight glitches that are very strong) and because of that doesn’t have access to as many tools. So they fit together perfectly.

Overall, Nix is really malleable, and you could honestly do whatever the hell you want with him. He can be bent incredibly out of shape before starting to sound OOC, so have fun!

[cicicolorao]

Some quick ray headcanons framed around Laserhawk Rayman’s college years. Thanks to Stitch (@aiienloser) for helping me out with the specifics!

Click Read More to read a buncha them!

- Pescatarian, since a lot of the Glades is covered either by beaches or swamps (looking at you Rayman 2). Longer fangs keep those fishies from slipping away! However most of his diet consists of fruit! Need that glucose for energy.

- His tongue is reaaaaally long, and alongside his stretchier skin it lets him grimace to scare enemies away, or taunt them. However, it also allows him to get himself a nice nectar snack from flowers and pollen! A nice stroll around makes Ray a particularly big pollinator. :)))

- in general a lot of his body is very elastic, and his bones have a bit of give. It makes him real bouncy, and makes landing from big distances less shocking to his being.

- Speedy mother fucker. From running to climbing, Ray’s good at parkour and gymnastics, and uses that speed as an advantage, since he’s kind of a glass cannon.

- Doesn’t have a standard sleep cycle like most animals, however this is just a common trait of beings from the Glade of Dreams. He can stay awake for weeks, only to take a “nap” for days on end. If left undisturbed, he could even sleep for years, without eating. Just means that he’s lethargic when he wakes up.

- His body parts connect to each other with a sort of energy similar to magnetism, and with concentration that energy can “stiffen” up, creating the facsimile of arms and legs. His limbs can extend up to 5 feet away from his body, but with practice they can go further. If they do go further, the energy thins out.

- His hair doesn’t have a hairline, it extends down to his face to look like peach fuzz. The peach fuzz is also found across his body where you’d find body hair. The longer strands in his head can move similar to a tail, either consciously (like helicoptering to glide), or subconsciously (like when he emotes). It’ll move on its own even when it’s brushed back.

[rebo-chan]

Hello, everyone. To today's episode of Tumblr user Rebo-chan loses her mind and assigns each and every Vongola guardian a flower that I have painstakingly searched high and low for (I wish I was being dramatic, I got too invested in this as I worked on it). Is this done in a state of mania? Perhaps, but I am diseased by COVID-19 as we speak and this is what I will do with the time I am meant to be resting with. Nonetheless we must get started. Content under the cut, because I can NEVER make a short post. It's against my core beliefs clearly.

Sawada Tsunayoshi:

The European Orange Lily (Lilium bulbiferum)

My reasoning for this starts with the fact that the "lily" itself has a lot of different meanings, but the important aspect of the lily is that its considered the spring flower and represents often meanings of renewal and rebirth. The very messaging for our sweet boy, a life restarted after he meets his mentor. An orange lily specifically has meanings dipped into warmth, joy, passion (In regards to his devotion to those he loves), 'welcoming' to new opportunities in your life (lol), and most importantly - confidence and pride. Something that he grows to be over the course of his renewal, pride in his friends. Confidence in his strength to protect them. KHR is a story about a nobody becoming somebody strong enough to protect them, even and especially when they falter themselves. It should also be noted that in Hanakotoba (Japanese flower language), orange lilies represent 'revenge and hatred'. Which I think is a factor of Tsuna we can't ignore, as sweet as he is, TYL Tsuna's actions become darker the more you think about them. Tsuna can and has killed when a villain has overstepped too far, and never forget that he just wanted to know "who" Yamamoto's attacker was. For no reason, just to look at him, maybe shake his hand lol. Fr though, that boy's made of fire, both to keep his loved ones warm and to burn their enemies. I think the orange lily fits him nicely.

Also yes, I'll do my best to color-code these flowers~

Gokudera Hayato:

A Red Fressia

So, its quite hard actually to find any sort of 'red' flowers that aren't about some sort of romantic-esque devotion. Just being a red flower inherently puts you in that category of 'passion, love, marriage' meanings when it comes to flowers. It's a real struggle, but luckily he's our only red character amongst the Vongola kids. Okay, so the Freesia is represented by the concept of friendship and ultimate trust. I think it was easier for me to find a flower that represents devotion or duty and tack it on to Gokudera, but I think that's just looking at him on the surface. The story behind the freesia is that the botanist who found them in South Africa decided to name it after his friend as a symbol of their friendship. Very lovely :)<3 For all of Gokudera's dutiful affection for Tsuna, a lot of it is based on the fact that Tsuna was his first friend and the person who he trusted first. His eventual character growth and bonding with the other guardians came as he allowed himself to trust them, when he realized that his 'duty' that he believed to be absolute was above his bonds. Rather, it's his bonds that strengthen his resolve to be the perfect right hand man. Due to the intense representation of friendship and trust, freesias are given to a loved one to represent commitment to them, not unlike Gokudera's commitment to Tsuna and therefore the Vongola family unit. It should also be noted that in Hanakotoba, freesias also have a negative meaning which is childishness and immaturity which I do feel is something that Gokudera has to work through in order to become the best version of himself and has done quite well at by the end of the series. He's our little friendship blossom :)<3 Yamamoto Takeshi: Himalayan Blue Poppy

Let me start this by complaining that 'blue' flowers are so fucking rare, it took me forever to find something matched and was also color-coded with Yamamoto, that didn't dip into too indigo, because of the rarity of a nicely blue flower. To start, blue as a color has all those lovely Yamamoto vibes of being calming, easy on the mind, tranquility, all that beautiful stuff we know Yamamoto to be. (It's almost like Amano color-coded her characters guys..) Poppies themselves got a bit of cultural significance in the West, being the flowers given to WW1 soldiers after they'd passed as a way of remembrance. They're also known for growing in desolate war-torn areas, just a patch of poppies as well as having many soldiers buried with a poppy with them in honor. With that the poppy itself has themes of death, honor, lessons, tradition and remembrance. With Yamamoto’s connection to the Poppy flower, Yamamoto himself is..pretty death-coded. HEAR ME OUT. HEAR !! ME OUT!!!! Varia arc, Squalo ‘dies’ against Yamamoto. Future arc, Tsuyoshi is killed for Yamamoto being involved with the Vongola, Shimon with Yamamoto himself getting nearly killed and then that big moment where he offers to kill Daemon in retaliation for what was done to Kaoru. While not canon as well, the primo fillers are about Yamamoto dealing with the fact he DIDNT kill daisy and how he felt he had to be less easy-natured and actually go for the kills from now on. And of course, his attempt during daily life when he could not do what he loved anymore. He’s VERY death-coded y’all. But the poppy itself isn’t just some omen of death, but the lessons one can gather from those who have passed. Yamamoto’s own battle style is about taking the lessons of those before him who carried Shigure Soen Ryu and then growing upon that to carve a new and improved future for himself and those he cares about. He adapts to their lessons, what Squalo and Tsuyoshi have to teach him. On the fly, continuing the Shigure legacy and creating more moves to eventually pass on to the one that succeeds him. In general, he carries any lessons he has up until the end of the series and tries to never make the same mistake again. Whether that’s his lessons against the Mists he’s battled, his loss against Squalo for not having a proper sword style, and though he doesn’t get a chance against Gamma again, he’s always understood the importance of teamwork. That being said, he’s not just a poppy. He’s a Himalayan Blue Poppy. You see the himalayan blue poppy has a different meaning outside that of the ones that the other poppies do. With its rarity, it also represents success, potential, pursuit of dreams, and possibility.  Yamamoto is the Vongola family’s prodigy, a natural born hitman, the star baseball player on his team. Stuck at a crossroads between his dream and being able to be in a position to protect the ones he loves. An impossibly difficult choice to make, yet Yamamoto handles it with ease. He just won’t choose! He’ll do both! Which fights very nicely with the Hanakatoba meaning of the poppy. “Fun-loving” “A reminder to remember happiness.” Along with general blue color meanings of tranquility, that is Yamamoto to his core, I believe. When things get their worst, he is there to remind everyone that it is never as bad as it feels. To wash away the blood spilled, that is the role of the Vongola Rain Guardian. His crossroad isn’t an issue to him, because that’s not what he fights for! He fights to make things easier for everyone, so they may remember happiness. That sort of thing doesn’t exactly need him to make a choice on his path. Now, does it? If he’s forced to choose, he will just carve out new possibilities for himself and the ones that he loves with the lessons he’s learnt. 

Lambo Bovino: Green Envy Zinnia

Contrary to the title, the green envy zinnia has nothing to do with envy. Quite the opposite, actually. The zinnia itself represents endurance (HEAR. ME. OUT LOL), lasting affection, joy, and various other things. So, the zinnia is super fucking tough, again hear me OUTTTT. They bloom all the way from springtime to autumn, something pretty unheard of from flowers which gave them their meaning. A green envy Zinnia specifically represents growth or a journey. Wishes of a healthy and successful growth. And I believe that is the hope for Lambo, as he progresses through the series. He is quite literally a child, both himself and TYL. But that’s just the thing for him, to the one that chose the guardians (Iemitsu, it’s very implied that it was Iemitsu), Lambo is an INVESTMENT. And a correct one if twenty years old Lambo was anything to go by. Not only that, the zinnia represents a joyous endurance. This doesn’t have to be painful for him, and it’s not as he’s allowed to both be a kid in Tsuna’s care while also holding on tight when told to stay out of the fight. (“You have to take the younger me wherever you go, he wants to go with you.”). And as a bit of an angsty little hehe on my part, the zinnia also represents missing those who have passed, that you remember someone and love them even now that they’re not with you. (“Seeing you all again, I thought the day would never happen. It’s making me emotional.”) Honestly, judging by how Lambo fights when he gets the opportunity to properly do it, he just isn’t weak. Destroying Kikyo’s box animal, fighting against Ooyama, and of course against Levi too. In Hanakotoba, the Zinnia represents loyalty. He is their youngest blossom, enjoying being around the one he considers a brother with hidden potentials to grow into someone with the ability to be Vongola’s shield. If the ones he loves ever make it to see that sight, of course. 

Ryohei Sasagawa: Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) 

Okay, so the yarrow is first of all a funky flower. If you’ve never seen OTHER colors of the yarrow flower, I implore you to google it. Especially the red ones? Why are you so pretty? Lucky enough for this flower (and me I’m starting to lose my mind here, this was a much bigger task than I thought it would be) the different colors don’t change the meaning of the flower here which is neat. It also unfortunately has no hanakotoba meaning either. So, anyway. The yarrow. It represents a warrior’s bravery, protection, and healing. The healing comes from the fact that its a commonly used herb for bruises, cuts, and sprains. There’s also huge folklore around it which affects its scientific name, as Achilles used yarrow to take care of the men he was in charge of. This flower was also used as a ward against evil, where people would hang this outside of their homes in order to protect them from evil getting inside. A superstition developed around this leading to Yarrow to be named the devil’s nettle to refer to the belief that the devil would come around and shake the yarrow that people hung up due to wanting to curse them. This flower also represents strong everlasting love, to the point where a little tradition propped up where people would shove this flower up their nostrils whenever they had a nosebleed so if they dreamt about their crush it meant that they liked them back lol. Yall there was so much rich lore on this flower, it’s super neat. More than I could fit in here. Anyway, I’m sure yall see the connection with Ryohei acting as the group older brother, being the motivating factor for them. He was the first to go up during Varia arc and set the tone for the rest of the battles, that the Vongola would win. Last to show up during future, representing that all of them had finally been reunited. A draw against Aoba, again the very first battle, almost symbolizing HOW shimon would end. He’s the strength in their arms, acting as the last person to leave in future arc until they were ready to go. Taught them and helped lead them to make decisions during that arc. It’s almost his duty to protect the younger ones, even getting up on Hibari’s case in the fillers for not helping out his younger classmen. We can’t even dismiss the way he would prefer to shield Kyoko from everything that they go through, and getting aggressive with Tsuna when Tsuna broke something he thought both of them saw eye to eye on.  Not much rattles him, honestly if you pay attention to his scenes, only getting the most nervous and agitated TRULY when he fears he won’t be able to protect someone (Asking Tsuna how Kyoko reacted to the news, Tozaru getting on his case about Lambo coming to the battle) Otherwise, he’s his happy loud confident self ready to tackle on anything for the sake of the family. Destroying the misfortune that attacks the family with their own body, the yarrow represents that duty well. For every bruise the younger one gets, Ryohei has the ability to heal it. For every fear, Ryohei tackles it first. Acting as a ward and protector for his family. Hibari Kyoya

Clematis (Etoile Violette)

Clematis is a climbing flower, to start with. One of those flowers that grow along walls and vines. It’s a very adaptable flower, able to work with various environments and thrive amongst them. They’re known as the traveler’s joy, meant to wish travelers good luck and act as protection to those who pass by them. While also having a more negative reputation, having “killed” other plants by outcompeting them considered having done the devil’s work. (The plant is actually considered invasive aha oops) The clematis though, itself represents mental fortitude, cleverness, and the ability to find hope in perilous situations. Hibari himself, I mean just that back and forth reputation is just him, no? Acting as Namimori’s protector, keeping a watchful eye on the town while also being utterly terrifying for Namimori students and almost overwhelming to those competing with him. (Dino will only find escape from Hibari in death, Mukuro is the same) But, he is also undoubtedly Vongola’s wall. Similar to Ryohei, not once throughout the series really and truly faltering. The clematis itself with its representation in mental fortitude can be given to someone when they need mental strength. I think the best way to represent this is directing you to that moment in Shimon arc when Tsuna, while not physical beaten, had been mentally tormented by everything that had happened and Hibari came to his battle to Adel. A simple, but strong “Little animal, your face right now is dull. Watch my fight.” It’s in that fight Tsuna gets his mental strength back, being given a hint to answer the question he’s been stressing and faltering over. Then there’s future arc, having been the only one TYL Tsuna trusted with the plan. Kokuyo Arc, Gokudera seeing an already defeated Hibari and taking him to the battle. Varia arc, the gang realizing that if Hibari is fighting next then they may have already won it and refusing to succumb to the poison in the sky battle. Rainbow arc, Tsuna considering them in that list of people he “just expects to help him.” He has the ability to be their hope, to be another factor of their strength. Where Ryohei is holding them up on the physical aspect, Hibari is absolutely their mental strength. (Isn’t it charming that the two eldest are the pillars of their group? I think it is). Also, in Hanakotoba, the clematis represents moral beauty and order. And that’s just the kinda man who could run something like the discipline committee, isn’t? The special thing, finally is that the etoile violette represents a sense of freedom from troubles. A free man, unchained himself and choosing to help those younger than him. Sometimes for the thrill of a battle, sometimes to actually help them with the reputation of a devil. Unpredictable, but still trusted.  It’s the sky that allows the clouds to roam freely, but even someday that sky will be beaten to death. 

Chrome Dokuro

Lupine (Blue Bonnet)

The Lupine flower is before anything else, a second chance at life. A recovery from one’s trauma and the admiration that comes from that. Its gratitude and kindness put into one. There’s a legend around the lupine flower about a land full of drought where Native Americans had believed would be saved by selflessness and yet no one had come forward to do anything, until a young girl came forward and offered the last of her possessions. The rain came to fall at her sacrifice, and hundreds of lupines had blossomed from the ground saving the tribe from drought and hunger as the seeds of the Lupine could be harvested to be eaten. The Lupine represents that the world will always give back if you are willing to help. Chrome, from her introduction, is told to be a girl who has nothing. With two parents who want nothing to do with her and no friends by her side. She runs forward to save a kitten and is gravely injured. With neither of her parents willing to help her, Chrome wonders if she is going to die here but is offered a deal by Mukuro. It’s here that Chrome is offered her second chance and she spends the whole series trying to return the favor to Mukuro. All while healing from her own trauma, the type of trauma that “no one could care about her”, as she is offered food and bonds from Tsuna, Kyoko, Haru, I-pin, Bianchi, Hibari, and so many others. It's in her second chance that she gets to experience what life truly had to offer her, as thank you for her continued selflessness. It’s that gratitude that she represents and the never-ending desire to give when she doesn’t accept Mukuro’s assistance anymore with her organs because she can no longer give him anything now that he’s out of Vindice Prison. She resolves that she will become someone who can protect the people she and Mukuro like. Her confidence isn’t perfect and she falters quite a bit, not believing that her powers are as great as those around her. But, that’s okay, because her goodness has brought her to people who have got her back until she can figure herself out. She has Mammon to correct her when her illusions are seen through that they are well made, but she’s just dealing with professionals and that’s why they’re seen through. There’s Tsuna who relies on her blindly, never doubting her strength to protect them as he asks her to act as defense during Shimon arc and protect Enma from his attack. Alongside with Fran, she is trusted to protect Yamamoto and Gokudera in the final battle against Vindice and taken with Tsuna against Jaegar. She has a lot of space to continue growing, but Lupin also represents voracity and happiness in Hanakotoba. She has her second chance to learn all about that, or as Mukuro put it to her, “An ending is merely the beginning of another cycle.”

Rokudo Mukuro

Aconitum (Wolfsbane)

Wolfsbane is also referred to as Monkshood. This is another one with pretty rich lore with its connection to werewolves. It’s referred to as “queens of the poisons” and has a pretty negative message to it on the outside. First of all, this thing’s poison? TOUGH AS HELL. Delirium, frothing at the mouth, vision impairment, and of course the classic coma<3 It’s got an uncanny resemblance to what rabies actually looks like. Fun, right? Okay, fr though onto its meaning. Wolfsbane is an omen that danger is nearby, not unlike the unnerving feeling Tsuna gets whenever he senses Mukuro nearby. Said to have come from Hell itself, the saliva that has dripped down from Cerberus himself. Not unlike our sweet boy. But, being an omen does not always represent something bad. Is he bringing the danger to you, or is he warning you of the true danger that lies past him? It’s a little bit of both. Aconitum represents concealed wisdom and caution in decision-making. But it also DOES represent protection, a proper and true warning of the dangers of the wild. That beauty does not always mean safe. For his twisted sense of vengeance and believing that taking over the world is the only way to destroy it for the sake of what was done to him, he isn’t necessarily wrong for being enraged about what happened to him. Yet, despite his hate, he doesn’t drag those who he cares about further down into it than he has to. He sends Ken and Chikusa away when they are going to get caught, he never uses Chrome for anything besides as a vessel to help her, and he says during Rainbow arc that if he forced Fran to continue past his limits he’d be no better than those nasty adults of his past. Aconitum balances sweetly between light and darkness, similar to Mukuro. He won’t admit it, but he cares for those amongst the Vongola. He infiltrates the Millefiore and sends the Vongola information after Tsuna’s death, he helps Chrome form a barrier around Enma so he could be safe from Tsuna’s X-Burner. And, of course he teams up with Vongola’s team during the rainbow arc. These are undoubtedly kind actions,  but when Tsuna gets angry at Mukuro during Rainbow claiming that he didn’t believe that Mukuro was the type to abandon his allies, Mukuro says that that was just his idea of him. Even though it was Chrome ultimately rejecting him, he instead pretended that he really was some big bad heartless person. Definitely, Mukuro is no angel, but also he’s no demon either. He’s.. just a human at the end. The aconitum’s dance with both light and dark, a flower that tries to warn, can be read both good and bad depending on how you look at it. His rejection of his ‘official’ position as part of the Mafia, yet acting as the Vongola Mist Guardian when their goals align. He’s as confusing as the duty he embodies, but he succeeds nonetheless in ensuring the family is untouchable in his deceptions. After all, the best way to fool your enemies is to fool your allies first.

[simbleleven]

Mutuals will post their OCs and I scramble to see if they got any info pages so I can comment on whatever shenanigans they‘re up to.

[intheeveningsunrise]

Okay…i haven’t read mha fanfic in about two years but I found myself searching on Ao3 and came across your fic with Akatani and Izuku.

Your work is amazing! I just caught up on the second part and there are tears in my eyes.

My heart breaks for Akatani. You write him so well. I’m really glad that you make him into a fully fleshed character as opposed as a shadow of Izuku.

I can’t wait to read more of your work. And expect comments from me because you’re absolutely phenomenal.

I hope your Masters/PhD is treating you well (as well as any college program let alone those two😂).

I really appreciate the hard work you do!!!! ♾️ kudos.

Ahhh!!!!????? Thank you so much??? I have been reading your comments on ao3 as they've been coming through (i read every single comment, even if i don't reply) and those alone have brought me so much joy! You and someone else picked this up roughly at the same time and read it through, haha, so someone must have recced it somewhere??

I am now going to go on an epic ramble about mikumo i am so sorry ive been activated i keep meaning to write more of him but i'm so busy, please accept this in lieu of an update. this is over 1k words beneath the cut oh my god i could have just written half the chapter. directors commentary, i guess??

I'm so glad you enjoy it. I'm so glad you love my tiny little son! his characterisation is deeply important to me, especially because i wanted to compare and contrast Izuku as much as possible, and giving into the parallels between AFO and Yoichi. Mikumo came to me more or less formed, and though his character evolved over the course of writing the first work, since I kept the vast majority of it unpublished until it was mostly done, I was able to keep him very consistent!

For the story I'm telling, it felt absolutely crucial that Mikumo and Izuku are and are not the same in important ways. Mikumo is a coward - that's his thing - and Izuku is heroic. But Mikumo still wants to help people, and in the very first chapter, he nearly helps Bakugou from the sludge villain, and it's only his fear of his father and All Might that holds him back. Izuku, by contrast, is heroic and helps people to a fault. There is nothing that holds him back - Mikumo considers Izuku to be the better of the two, while Izuku considers Mikumo to be the better, because despite every ounce of fear that undercut every move Mikumo made in the fist work, he still helped.

He helped at Hosu, and fought against one of his own mentors, and was physically punished for it. He tried to help Eri, and Shigaraki nearly killed him for it - and he did save Eri, hoping it would kill him, because he was just so tired. He has really strong morals, paralleling him with Shigaraki, who grew up in functionally the same world as him, and still strives to help people even if it's going to hurt him.

Just like Izuku.

I think his quirk was truly my favourite way of expressing Mikumo on a kind of meta level? His quirk is - anything. Quirk Creation. He can do absolutely anything he wants. But he uses inefficient quirks, resorts to the same quirks over and over again - he could just any quirk that would crush 1A in training, but he chooses not to. He doesn't have the strength to, sure, but he has no genuine desire to. I love making theoretically overpowered characters that get nerfed, and while he's nerfed by his health at the moment, in the future when that's resolved (because of course, it will be), he's going to be "nerfed" by his own pure disinterest in heroics.

I think that's a unique angle that people don't go for often in fics, or stories in general - if there's someone who's annoyed by or resentful of the system, e.g., a tragically overpowered hero that doesn't care about being a hero, but soon learns that it's their Obligation and Right to do it, and then come to enjoy it. Or they have a bitter arc, that spirals into becoming an antagonist, you know? Or it's an alternative story about how they use their powers for that same job in a different way, for example, think the Support Course/Inventor Izuku AUs. I wanted to write a character that - could. The equivalent of like, Momo still has her creation quirk, but she doesn't want to be a hero, or even hero adjacent. Maybe she just wants to work in accounting or HR or something. I plan to give Mikumo a job where his quirk will come in very useful, but isn't at all a prerequisite or something that'll make him exceptional at it. More than that, Mikumo's attitude towards quirks, both in general and his own, is that they're cool, but don't really make much difference. He likes knowing how they work, likes to play with quirks himself if he ever gets the chance to, but he's not driven by a desire to "do cool things" or "have crazy strong powers". He doesn't care about a cool quirk to give him a fighting advantage. He doesn't even want one. He doesn't care about it, accepts that it's a facet of the world he lives in, but wants no part in upholding it - it just completely doesn't interest him.

Mikumo is a coward - but he's also a pacifist. And I mean that he's a coward insofar as, he's scared of doing this things, deathly scared, and he does them anyway, because it's right. But he doesn't fight unless he's furious - a la Overhaul - and his actions are almost always in self-defence. Even his knife, that he carried everywhere, was exclusively used for his own protection (that i have a backstory half written for but it's really dark so i don't know if i'd ever post it). When he felt threatened by Izuku, he threatened him with the knife, even when he was fighting against Stain, he chose to use a barrier quirk over an offensive quirk. Mikumo isn't exactly a tank, but he's a defender. He's the barrier. The only reason he went back to the League during and after Kamino is because he believed Izuku was dead - he believed that his actions had gotten his brother killed, and he now had an obligation to stop the worst as best he can.

Izuku, by contrast is full-force, all in, 100% OFA from the get go as much as humanly possible. That scares Mikumo as much as it inspires him - Mikumo is terrified of their father, and Izuku reminds him of AFO a lot. On purpose, even. Izuku is possessive and righteous, and encapsulates everything that AFO had wanted in a son, and if Izuku hadn't been born quirkless, had been born with Mikumo's quirk, AFO would have had his ideal child - but would Izuku have withstood AFO's manipulation to hating heroes? Debatable. Mikumo was largely indifferent, and didn't hate them - he was just fed AFO propaganda that heroes hated him, specifically. That heroes wanted him, specifically, dead, because he's AFO's son. Would the same fear have worked for Izuku? Who knows!

Mikumo has had a very sad, difficult life. There are those "Implied past non-con" tags on the works that readers probably figure out is part of his extreme aversion to touch, as well as the fact that his only reliable sources of physical contact include, in no particular order, his violently abusive father (physical and emotional), his "brother figure" shigaraki, who is incredibly unstable, noumu that he trains with, the doctor, and kurogiri. At least Kurogiri was not explicitly hurting Mikumo. Like so many kids in bad situations, he just wants to do better, and he wants to be safe, feel safe, and have people who care.

and he has that, now, but Mikumo is under the impression that he's on a time limit, and it's running out fast. He needs people to think he's okay, so that he doesn't die a more painful death because they try to help him, and he also doesn't trust anybody enough to actually tell them the truth. Izuku trusts them, but he doesn't really know that he can. A lot of them, rightfully, don't trust him - barely reformed villain, caught stealing knives within days? Doesn't know how to talk to other students without unwittingly dropping weirdly loaded comments about his trauma?

He's suicidal, a little more passively so now, but he's content to just enjoy some nice things while he gets to have them - good food, a warm bed, warm clothes (and that's another fun parallel - they both have shockingly bad taste in clothes and think the other's is worse), and at least some people who don't outright hate him. That's as good as Mikumo can hope for, and it's better than the life he had.

Things will get better for him. He'll get happier, he'll feel safe, he'll have a world that wants him, and he'll be free to navigate it however he pleases - and he'll always have Izuku with him, too.

okay im sorry forgive this absolutely insane rant that you did not ask for i hope you enjoyed it anyway?????

[pjsk-story-summaries]

Our Happy Ending Event Story Summary

TL;DR: In an attempt to keep Phoenix Wonderland happy and allow the troupe to follow their dreams, Rui proposes that Wonderlands x Showtime becomes a freelance troupe to Shosuke and Keisuke. After getting tentative approval as long as they perform one more show at Phoenix Wonderland, he tells the troupe. Tsukasa and Nene are immediately on board, but despite their insistence, Emu affirms her decision to stay at the Wonder Stage.

Though they all try to stay positive, they're all saddened by the fact this will be the end. They decide to put on The Tale of the Traveling Troupe. The Virtual Singers decide to put on their own version of the show to cheer them up.

Emu reads over her script, saddened by original ending of staying together forever. Hinata comes by and notices her sorrow. Emu tells her that she has to stay behind, because this stage was where she fell in love with shows with Grandpa. She wants to see her friends off with a smile.

The next day, the Virtual Singers invite the troupe over to watch the show. Emu, worried the others will be concerned by her red eyes, has MEIKO lend her the Mikudayo costume to hide behind. Though the show's ending changed to have the three leave but return once their dreams came true, Emu still found herself near tears.

After rehearsal, Emu stays behind to wait for her brothers. She starts crying once she's alone. Nene had forgotten her phone back at the stage, so Tsukasa and Rui follow her. They find Emu there, sobbing. Nene yells at her for trying to hide her feelings, and Tsukasa declares that while he understands Emu's wish to see them all leave with a smile, it's okay to cry now. They all end up teasing and crying together.

The Otori brothers arrive shortly after. They tell Emu to leave with her friends. She should go see the world and learn all about it, so she can bring what she's found back with her. It's what Grandpa had told them to do, after all. The stage will be fine, because her selfish wish to protect it is no longer her own. Emu decides to follow her friends.

The final show is a huge success. As a parting gift, Shosuke gives them contact information for three potential troupes to mentor with, as well as a promise to always be allowed to perform at the Wonder Stage.

Fan translation (WxS Translation Team) / Song (Kirapipi★Kirapika) 2DMV

Chapter 1: Emu finds her brothers going over attendance statistics for the park. She's pleased to find the numbers increasing, and that people liked the 30th Anniversary show she put on with the Phoenix Stage earlier. Her friends put so much into that performance, and it paid off. However, she and her brothers recognize the time for goodbyes may soon be approaching. The thought makes Emu sad, but she wants to see her friends off with a smile.

Emu brought the survey results to the Wonder Stage. The rest of the troupe is glad to see such positive reactions, and how much it forced them to grow as actors. Tsukasa reveals how he had asked for more ambassadorial experiences after the ArcLand performance, and that despite the rejection, it was what landed them this performance. Tsukasa and Nene want to keep finding ways to gain new experiences. Emu wants to support them, but Rui's having a hard time deciding. He announces that he'll be leaving practice early that day.

Chapter 2: Rui secretly went to the Otori household to discuss the troupe's future with Keisuke and Shosuke. He proposes that Wonderlands x Showtime becomes a freelance troupe so Tsukasa and Nene can keep learning as actors in different places, but they'd still be able to support the park by performing there occasionally. He also asks permission to ask Emu to come along.

Keisuke points out the issues providing this special treatment could bring to the park, and is hesitant about letting Emu go. Rui insists, and they cave. Keisuke decides to consider the proposal.

Chapter 3: Rui proposes the freelance idea to the troupe. Tsukasa and Nene are excited about the possibility, but Emu knows she's going to stay here no matter what. Rui understands this, but still asks again. She'd still be able to make people smile while traveling, after all. She refuses again. She will protect this place Grandpa loved so much.

Later, Nene asks if there's anything they can do to convince Emu to come with them. If Emu isn't with them, then it's no longer Wonderlands x Showtime. Tsukasa's near tears about the ordeal. Rui receives a call from the brothers officially accepting their freelance proposal.

Chapter 4: Rui goes over to the Otori household to discuss specifics. Rui reveals Emu declined the offer, so the brothers will create three contracts. They also ask if the troupe would stay to put on one final show for the park's upcoming anniversary. Rui knows his troupe will agree. It will be the last show they ever do together.

They all discuss the plan in SEKAI. Emu realizes how sad everyone seems to be, despite the fortunate opportunity. She decides to make sure everyone leaves with a smile and proposes they do the tale of the traveling troupe. Everyone agrees. She's glad they're all smiling now.

Rui hesitates a moment before exiting the SEKAI. The Virtual Singers notice how sad he looks. This show was made for him, after all, and the ending is about them all performing shows together forever. MEIKO proposes doing a show to cheer them up- their own rendition of the tale, but with a changed happy ending.

Chapter 5: Emu reads her script alone in her room. The ending makes her remember how happy she was to finally have a troupe way back when. She has to keep smiling so they don't worry.

Hinata stops by to offer some extra hot chocolate. She notices Emu's hidden sadness. Emu talks to her about her conflict. She still hasn't changed her mind.

Emu remembers back to a childhood memory. Grandpa had taken her to see her first show at the Wonder Stage. Emu fell in love with shows then. Grandpa explains how shows have the power to take you to any wonderland, and that this place will always make her smile. The real world isn't full of smiles all the time, but shows can drive her to change that.

That's why she can't leave this place. She will see her friends leave with a smile.

Hinata goes downstairs to talk to her brothers. She reveals how sad Emu really is about this. They don't want to intervene in the troupe's business, but they want to see Emu smile more.

Chapter 6: Emu arrives at the Wonder Stage first. She's worried the others will worry about how red her eyes are. MEIKO pops in to ask if she'd get them all to go to SEKAI to watch a special show. Emu asks if she can go early to hide her red eyes.

The others arrive to find Emu wearing the Mikudayo costume. Though confused, they go watch the show. The ending changed from "making shows together forever" to recognizing each of their individual dreams. Though they separated ways, they'll come back to perform again together someday.

Emu's happy about this ending. Still, she can't stop herself from crying. She hides her emotions behind the mascot costume and a cheery voice.

Chapter 7: After rehearsal, Emu stays behind to clean the stage. She's happy to see all her friends leave so happy. She can't stop herself from crying once she's alone. Emu remembers some important moments in their troupe's history- meeting Tsukasa, then Nene and Rui, the Halloween show, and the island, and Project Wonder. It only makes her sob more.

Rui, Nene, and Tsukasa are touched by the Virtual Singer's show, but concerned over Emu. They know she tends to hide her true emotions. Nene realizes she left her phone at the Wonder Stage, so they all turn back.

Rui hears Emu crying near the stage. Nene runs over. Emu tries to deny that's she's crying, but Nene yells at her for trying to hide it from all of them. If she's going to cry, they'll all do it together. Emu wants them to all be smiling when they have to say goodbye. Tsukasa jumps into his introduction speech before explaining that he shares Emu's wish to see them all smile. Still, they're allowed to be sad right now. He immediately starts crying. Emu laughs and calls his face silly, to which he teases her back. Nene comments how she meant for this to be serious but now it's ridiculous. Rui says it's just like them before crying himself.

Shosuke and Keisuke arrive at the stage. They had been looking for Emu, but feel the need to say this to everybody. Though they wanted to support whatever Emu decided, they realized this isn't for the best. They want her to go. She's just a kid. She should be exploring the world, learning about it to bring the dreams back to the park. They had done the same, after all. Grandpa told them to. Besides, the dream to protect the Wonder Stage isn't just her own selfish wish anymore.

Keisuke appreciates Rui's concern over the park, but tells him not to worry about that anymore. They've done so much for the park, this is the least they can do. The Wonder Stage will always be open to them.

Tsukasa, Rui, and Nene ask if Emu would follow them one more time. She says yes.

Chapter 8: The day of their final performance as Phoenix Wonderland employees arrives. They changed the ending for their show, too. Seiyurin, playing the village elder's daughter, tells the troupe to go out and see the world together, bringing smiles wherever they go. The village will be fine while they're gone.

At the finale of the show, Emu overhears a little girl telling her grandpa how much she loved the show. The crowd was filled with smiling faces.

After the show, the troupe discusses how well their send-off went. The others stages promised to put on shows here while they're gone, something they're all grateful for. As a parting gift, Shosuke gives them contact information for three groups willing to mentor them. The troupe says one last goodbye to the Wonder Stage before ending with a big "wonderhoy!"

[coffeeliqueurs]

hmmmhmmm does finch have any hobbies? what was he doing before becoming a bartender at the nightcap? what was his childhood like? 🤔

YAYYY thank you for the ask Karo, I'll answer them in order

'Does Finch have any hobbies?':

Finch has a couple of hobbies, he spends a lot of his time outside of work resting. But when he's not asleep he's usually drawing or reading! He's something of an artist, it's a hobby he's had since he was a kid but was never particularly interested in it as a career.

He mostly reads mystery and detective fiction. Most would think he'd jump at the chance to solve a mystery himself, but he isn't keen on it and feels guilty about digging into peoples personal affairs.

He also collects keys!! any old antique keys he can find he buys.

I know canonically the bartender has a cat, but he's much more of a dog person, so he has a wire fox terrier called Agatha! Aggie for short.

'What was he doing before becoming a bartender at the Nightcap?'

Finch isn't native to Tsara, infact he moved there in a hurry after an accident back home when he was around 19.

His first year in Bukovie was spent homeless, almost every day he could be found in a local library curled up in a corner reading any books he could to get a better grasp on the language. He would've spent much more time like that if the head librarian at the place hadn't taken notice of him and offered him a place to stay.

After that he steadily found his footing within his new surroundings and the rest is history.

he's in his early-mid 30s now so it was a long time ago!!

Before the prohibition kicked in he was working at the spire lounge like canon, but afterwards? unemployed. unemployed as hell.

this unemployed era is also why he's in debt by the way, he couldn't pay rent and was about to get evicted

He has no higher education and his demeanor was too unprofessional to hold down a job for long so he was jumping from place to place for a while with minimal pay before landing in the nightcap, and luckily Vincent was lenient enough to forgive his blatant disregard for the dress code. After all, a more casual and friendly bartender did lend itself well to the mixed bag of clientele.

In fact his uniform only lasted the first shift, the next day he showed up without it like nothing had changed at all.

'What was his childhood like?'

Messy!

Finch was not born with the name Wren Finch, infact it was an identity shoddily thrown together in an effort to protect himself.

Finch was born to a family of locksmiths in a small town in Anglia. (I THINK that's what it's called, it's the country bjorn mentions Scotians having a long hatred for/rivalry with!!)

Sort of a situation of dads a locksmith, mums a locksmith, grandpas a locksmith, great grandpa was a locksmith and on and on as far back as he knows.

He'd always had a fascination with locks and keys, preferring to spend days inside the families business learning the tricks of the trade rather than outside playing.

Unfortunately that skillset can be used for worse, and when a young openly transgender teen felt isolated and unloved... well he starts working for the people that will provide him with what he lacks.

And unluckily for him in his years taking jobs as a picklock he eventually stumbled into becoming a bystander to a murder, the victim being somebody that he had given the killer easy access to. Even more unluckily for him the killer, his employer, didn't feel like leaving any witnesses alive.

He suffered a near fatal injury and upon recovering from you know, almost dying, realised that if news got out that he'd miraculously survived, he'd just be subject to another attempt on his life.

So he changed his identity and fled the country to live in Tsara as a sort of weird self administered witness protection.

he appears very laidback but trust me that bitch is NERVOUS AND PARANOID!!

Luckily for him his life is much calmer now than it was when he was a teen, up until the events of the game that is ajjds

THAT WAS A LOT. THANK U FOR THE ASK AGAIN

[cordiwinkswinsagain]

Wanna trade au infodump stuff

bestie absolutely

Arggg I don’t have any like big plot things I want to infodump T-T yall will have to wait for the Playlist Explanation posts/the fic to really get all the good stuff

So! Today everyone, we will be reviewing all the cut plot points!

Would you believe me if I said back in the very beginning stages of this AU Purpled was not infected??? The idea of him being infected only manifested a whole week or two after my original idea. But I had an idea before that.

The idea was that he’d be in an illegal fight ring to earn himself money, becuase that was dramatic and I liked it. But as I realized I actually wanted to have a plot for this AU, I scrapped the idea in favor of the vaguely similar but more buildable “Purpled is also infected” idea. 

In this alternate scrapped ideas universe, Tommy did not know about the fight ring but was suspicious because the ring operated at like midnight and Purpled was losing sleep over it. I wrote out a couple of blurbs when this was still canon.

The part that made it into canon was (vigilante) Tommy busting the fight ring, actually! In the og, he did this and finally figured out what tf Purpled had been doing at 1 in the morning for four months. Now, in the canon version, he does this and meets Phil along the way, kicking off the hero subplot. Purpled is not part of this.

Now, the second scrapped idea! Punz pushing Purpled off a roof. He technically didn’t die in the og version, but he was kidnapped by Quackity after like two minutes of being a little bit dead. This was used as a way to seperate Tommy and Purpled, and not much else. I actually only scrapped this fairly recently compared to the other scrapped ideas (a week or two after I actually started posting about the AU on this blog I think) 

It was actually like weirdly not thought out??? I was just listening to “Fall Little Wendy Bird Fall” on the Playlist and vibing tbh

So the scene was supposed to go like Punz had beef with Tommy for some reason (which he doesn’t anymore but Tommy certainly still has beef with him) and he confronts Tommy on the roof where Tommy was like frolicking or whatever with Purpled and Purpled doesn’t really show up until the end of the scene but Punz shows up like “Its Brittiny bitch” and Tommy is like “FUCK” and Punz tries to kill him by either slicing him up like prime sushi with his axe or pushing him off the very tall apartment building.

He ends up backing up Tommy to the edge but right before he’s about to kick him off Purpled yanks Tommy away and trips over the edge himself

And ofc Tommy’s like “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK JUST HAPPENED IS MY BEST FRIEND DEAD WHAT IS GOING ON” and Punz is like “I just fuckin pushed my brother off a roof what the fuck” and he runs away like the sad man he is

Tommy runs down and finds like some blood. But no Purpled. And he’s kind of relieved but also kind of breaking down because at least he knows Purpled is alive because there’s no body but like is he ever going to see his best friend again wtf is he supposed to do now.

And so Purpled wakes up in Unfamiliar Location #38743786 and is like “Hurh wut” and Quackity’s like “Hey bro you just fell off a roof but don’t worry I saved you from those people who pushed you off” and Purpled’s like “ONE OF THOSE WAS MY BEST FRIEND ASSHOLE” and Quackity’s like “Is this your tragic backstory” and Purpled’s like “HE’S PROBABLY HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN” and like. He’s not wrong. He totally would.

Unfortunately this was scrapped because I had a better idea but something else like it may come up in the story ;)

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[spookythesillyfella]

Hiiiii so ignore my previous reblog that wasn’t me. Me. Me wish to know more. Abt funny puter n funny meter. May me please know about funny puter n funny electric meter relationship, because I find it soso interesting that in their backstory they’re kind of oposites of each other with each sorta trying to avoid being one another, but their relationships looks to be very fine actually? Did they work it out? Do they just ignore allat happened? Are they okay? Do they go to parties?

I NEEEDDD TO KNOW SPOOKS MY FRIEND PLEAAASEE

PLEEEASEEE

(^ this is all said in a cool non-chalant manner btw not desperate at all)/j

YES YES I CAN TALK ABOUT THEM YES YES I WIN I WIN I WIN I WIN YAYAYAYY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

at the very beginning of electraceyz creation [a few monthz – a year after their creation] they didn't have much of a relationship to speak of ; tracey waz . for the mozt part . kept in solitary confinement for studying . and colin kept going on with hiz daily dutiez and tazkz helping around the lab

however . once tracey waz alzo introduced to work somewhere around a year ½ after their creation . colin noticed them a lot more ; he waz fazcinated by finally seeing another one of hiz kind [a sentient machinery] in hiz environment [let alone a brethren made up of the same metal and wire az you were] and generally wanted to obzerve them more – leading up to thoze 19 ½ yearz of hiz life . he had only interacted with rezearchersz . so he wanted to see what interacting with someone like him would be like [have i mentioned thiz guy iz extremely bad at socializing ? that he haz no clue how to talk to real people ? or have i done a good job at implying that cuz yeah he suckz at it]

over time . az theze two were subjected to more and more work dayz throughout the yearz . they grew quite cloze – colin would alwayz try to help tracey with their tazkz and defend them from scoldingz . and tracey [who waz often ignored and dizregarded by the people at the facility for not performing az well az the computer] felt like they were finally SEEN by someone . even if that someone waz . in a senze . a rival ; they would eventually start hanging out even outzide work hourz . where they got more of a glimpze into juzt how deplorable one anotherz conditionz were

tracey didn't live in a fancy lab like colin . in fact . it waz quite a dingy area with a lot of broken machinery – it almozt looked like an out-of-service lab that had been haztily rebranded az theirz – but it waz quiet . izolated from mozt of the world [thiz iz where tracey would even dizcover their love for playing the guitar . az their room provided them with the ability of strumming without ever being noticed ; both a blezzing and a curze] ; colinz room . on the other hand . waz in the mozt priztine conditionz – clean . futuriztic . well-equipped to suit hiz every need [although there definitely weren't many needz to him bezide eating and sleeping . az theze two were hybridz of technology and living people] – but . az tracey noticed . he waz alwayz monitored – cameraz scattered everywhere and a reazercher alwayz right around the corner – it made tracey sick to the degree privacy didn't exizt for him

and . while colin saw nothing wrong with being conztantly monitored – and . why would he be ? theze people gave him life ! hez grateful to have been treated with such kindnezz all throughout hiz life – neither of them would really realize how deep thiz monitoring went . at leazt for a while

becauze soon . colin would start to forget a lot of the timez shared with tracey . their converzationz . what they got up to together.

tracey would soon dizcover that a majority of hiz memoriez stored in hiz drivez were being trashed during hiz weekly maintenance checkz – specifically becauze they didn't correlate to work . or to the specific purpozez the people at the facility had in mind for him ; traceyz solution to thiz waz to start making back-up filez for colin . which turned out to be a successful plan

and . az more time pazzed . the two would begin to drift away ; they hung out lezz . they talked lezz – in part becauze colin waz alwayz getting whizked away to azzizt in a "secret project" that even HE didn't know what waz about – but tracey still tried to be there for him . even if he couldn't remember a majority of thingz about tracey

the lazt time they had seen one another before colin waz taken away to fulfill hiz "true purpose" . tracey had promized they will "save him" . that they will azzizt them the same way he had done for them . that they wouldn't let him forget anymore ; colin inzizted that it wazn't such a big deal – that thiz would be juzt a small update to hiz hardware and software and that he'd still be him . that he wouldn't need any saving

and .. he waz partially right .. it WAZ an update to hiz hardware and software ... but it waz very worrizome ...

The Operation waz a succezz . for the mozt part – it waz functional . it could thrive in the environment prezented . and it could now monitor every move made in the facility . in every room.

tracey had tried to vizit the computer multiple timez during thiz period . but they were almozt alwayz declined entrance to itz room ; at some point . however . they ended up sneaking in – unbeknownzt to the reazercherz . but completely expected by The Operation itzelf

tracey tried to reazon . to talk – to explain that they simply mizzed "their brother" and that they juzt "wanted to see if he waz up to hear a little tune they'd been working on" [which waz partially true – tracey had alwayz tried to showcaze their guitar skillz to colin – but it waz obviouz that they juzt wanted to see what happened to him and eaze their worry] but waz met with hoztility ; a long monologue talking about how "thiz izn't them" and how "they need to accept their true purpoze of being a machine" . that "their humanity will only be their downfall" and tracey waz beyond convinced that they had to do something about thiz – they had to put and end to it before it was too late

tracey went through so many trialz and tribulationz to try and get to the point where they could unhook colin from the syztem and free him – from looking for information in unexpected placez . to sneaking around in areaz with denied accezz . to almozt getting themzelvez decomizzioned multiple timez [which would actually prove to be very uzeful for their plan . but what waz a hugely rizky move] but . mozt importantly . biding their time ... waiting for the perfect moment to strike ...

and . when that moment came . they acted ; their plan went through – they succeeded – but . to ezcape the certainty that they would BOTH get decomizzioned if caught . they both ran away

they both spent quite some time in recovery – tracey giving back the computerz memoriez and explaining all that went down when he waz hooked up – and tried to think of where to go from here ; they couldn't get a job – they'd be found out immediately az "the prized machinez of the big inztitute that went rogue" and be returned to them . only to end up dizmantled – without a job they had no money . without money they couldn't buy a houze or food . and without thoze thingz ...

however . colin hatched a plan – he put hiz digital world to good uze and uzed up limited energy to power it up and provide shelter for theze two

theze two went through so much shit in the span of a decade and a bit . and their relationship had alwayz been tumultuouz . but i feel like they've finally reached a point where they can actually enjoy one anotherz company without worrying about the conzequencez ... itz juzt kind of a shame that colinz humour iz more bazed in dad-jokez and punz . while tracey iz more drawn to teenage boy humour

[catharsis-in-a-bottle]

thoughts about vetinari and sybil?? eyes emoji

HI LIESMYTH i had to break out my laptop to answer this because i can't type fast enough on my phone...

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS. many of them influenced by fanfiction and not actual discworld canon. i am not even sure of the extent of their dynamic in canon yet because i haven't read all of the watch novels, but regardless in all of these books sybil is either a main character One (1) time, or she is a very minor character (I Am Mad About This). as such my thoughts sort of have to be extrapolation anyway

when it comes down to it i think i have three angles on vetinari and sybil (all very personally biased):

the Old Friends Angle - they are friends from boarding school, they meet each other for tea, they generally actively talk to each other, etc. from this angle, i see vetinari and sybil as having a genuine rapport and enjoying each other's company in a platonic way, which seems closest to the scraps we get from the actual books. regardless of angle, i think sybil and vetinari get along not just well, but interestingly. vetinari would be more than happy to listen to sybil rant about dragons, sybil would be more than happy to subtly make fun of people with vetinari, and their combination of Total Frankness and Subtle Bastard create such a collision of opposites that they break through Incompatible and get to "we're going to have weird conversations but we're going to enjoy it the entire time"

the Happy Throuple Angle - the vetinari/vimes/sybil triangle works out, whether vetinari and sybil are attracted to each other or sybil gives a Stamp Of Approval on the vimes/vetinari situation, etc. i think this one feels the most unrealistic of the three. from what little of sybil's perspective we get, we know she cares about tradition to SOME extent, and we know vimes cares about maintaining ankh-morpork's idea of masculinity, so both of them would have so many hang-ups about the throuple situation that they'd hang up the whole thing in the closet and never mention it again... this situation also begs the question "what the hell is going on with vetinari's sexuality" but i think it's boring to say he must be gay in all situations. let the man fuck around. let him flirt with the duchess of ankh-morpork. anyway, i say the Happy Throuple is the least realistic situation, but it IS the most fun for me to write. (probably because it's the easiest, if i'm being honest w/ myself)

the Messy Divorce Not Talking Shitfest Angle - this once again comes from my obsession with the vimes/vetinari/sybil situation....so what if the aforementioned hangups about tradition created Catastrophic Dilemmas, or what if vetinari is gay and attracted to vimes but not to sybil but still asks for her approval on the situation... what happens when sybil is put in that tenuous position..... GOD i read the BEST fic the other week called The Old Kings of Quirm Did It Too by bissonomy (who has also written the funniest vetinari fics in the world) that put forth this dynamic and it feels so real... it's like. what if we gave genuine attention to sybil's perspective in any capacity, specifically from the standpoint of her views on tradition and desire for monogamy. i'm going to lose my goddamn mind

idk in general i like thinking about sybil's perspective because the books present her as Interesting Character who then just becomes The Main Character's Wife, and if we take that at face value we can end up with any of the above angles (the 1st basically complies with canon, in the 2nd sybil [in fanfiction] becomes the Invisible Wife who either dies so vetvimes can get together or gives blanket approval of vetvimes with no explanation, in the 3rd we comply with the nature of her marriage to vimes wherein vimes literally barely mentions her and hardly spends time with her - in that sense we can get to the Divorce just from actual canon details). BUT we can also arrive at all these angles by going beyond how sybil is presented in canon. the Old Friends dynamic becomes what i described in that paragraph, which is based more on extrapolation than canon; the Happy Throuple comes from thinking about sybil as being genuinely attracted to vetinari and/or wanting to break past vimes's views on masculinity (Putting the Commander to Bed my beloved...); the third comes from exploring sybil beyond "Yay I Got Married So Life Is Good Now" and wondering if she truly loves vimes, or if vimes truly loves her, and from perspectives like bissonomy's fic. THIS BECAME ABOUT MORE THAN JUST VETINARI AND SYBIL SORRY I GOT SIDETRACKED

this is unorganized and way too long so here are my conclusions:

vetinari and sybil should be allowed to be autistic about their respective interests together

it would be cool if they fucked

it would be cool if they wrote letters to each other

it would be cool if they had a messy love triangle and created a Divorce Situation

AND my ideal vetinari/sybil dynamic is actually the terrible transgender lesbian stressed-out love triangle that i am currently writing. i want vetinari to actively cause sybil's bisexuality crisis. peace and love on planet earth

[grapefaygodude69]

watch me become national geographic reporter about sober dude cuz,,, dont have a reason but head canons are fun :o)

other sprites i remade [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

down there's the sprite edits cuz i made these vvv

AUTISTIC YAPPING DONT MIND THATR ... SORY MY ENGLISH IS BAD???

ALSO SH MENTION TW IG \\\\\

the fact that he was sober for example would have been in the past but has never been seen by anyone other than his moirial once but thats a long story,,, how to get him to calm down and get back on the slime is to just pap him until he stops hissing and give it to him and he'll just eventually want to take it again. the thing with karkat is the example of gamzee naturally being an asshole and using his strength against people instead of like in his stoned state barely using it or teasing people by lifting them up,,, my point is karkat almost got choked to death because of gamzee being sober around him, he just attacks anyone around no matter what. the state of being sober for the clown is kind of very overwhelming and gets transelated in violence or whatever something like that for no apparent reason even if its the kind of wholesome thing about him, after that incident with karkat, he got high again it took him like idk maybe 4 months to stop saying sorry for hurting karkat like that because he didn't meant to and its silyyyyyy how he's basically more "sober" (as in more calm) and nice when he's high and more voilent and whatever when he's actually sober.

the other thing is that sopor itself is kind of like alcohol in the sense of how it can effect people differently, gamzee gets high but also very tipsy from it so he needs to sit down most of the time and not move much or he might just break something falling over he isnt much of an active guy but he isnt lazy y'know but being addicted to it gives him extreme withdrawal symptoms which also can be another thing that fuels the violent behavior. but that's all pre sgrub, but post sgrub the meteor shenanigans go on with multiple murders because of the obvious he's pissed and his boyfriend got impaled yadda yadda… gamzee never does recover from the constant need for sopor but learns to put his anger into more productive things that i dont have an idea for but ehhhhuhuhhhhhyh yeahs that's it bye :o)

day 150

[antlersish]

Im obsessed w the idea of goblin tav and Wyll. The drama potential is sooooo good the possible tension etc. i would love to know more about their whole deal

OOOO BABY long essay-esque rant incoming because I could talk about them for DAYS (also my ask box is always open if you have more questions about them hehe, I promise not every one will be answered with a multi-page rant)

First of all: I'm working on making art/comics/Ao3 fics for all of this but art and writing are hard and take a long time :,) so look forwards to those lmao. Second: everybody should make a goblin tav please please please I love goblins I want to see more of them. If one more goblin tav exists because of me I can die happy.

OK splitting this into two sections: Nuzh as a character/his backstory + Nuzh's relationship with Wyll.

Nuzh's Backstory/Character Concept:

First off, I fucking love goblins and I was sad about the way BG3 treated them lmao. Seriously, like-- no good goblins? It's totally fine to kill goblin children?? (This isn't me shitting on the game, I'm biased because I'm goblin-fucker-3000 over here). I play a lot of goblin PCs in D&D, and Faerûn is the setting of "token good one" (Drizzt), so I knew I wanted to make a gob. Rogue is just my favorite class to play in 5e, so: goblin rogue.

Nuzh's character & backstory evolved over time as I played more BG3 and sunk my teeth into the lore. He's specifically from the tribe you encounter in Act 1 of BG3, and was raised in the cult of the Absolute. (I ignored canon timelines, ik that the Absolute stuff hasn't been happening for that long but in My version it's been happening for like 12-ish years).

Nuzh (originally "Nine") is Sazza's younger brother. The two were orphaned when Nuzh was around eight or nine years old, their parents having been killed by adventurers. Around this time, Gut and Ragzlin were beginning to convert to Absolutism. With the new cult taking over and no parents, Nuzh and Sazza had to grow up quick. Both learned to be valuable to the leaders to protect themselves.

Nuzh was fast, sneaky, and smart. He learned to kill quickly and silently, make explosives and traps, and generally made himself invaluable to Gut and Ragzlin. Sazza was always getting captured, so he learned to pick locks. Nuzh drank the Absolute Kool-Aid hard. He was young and vulnerable, and the cult/Gut specifically offered something to belong to. A purpose. From ten to seventeen, he was subject to a cycle of cult conditioning and abuse at the hands of Gut and Ragzlin.

At eighteen, it went wrong. Nuzh's raiding party was attacked by "a monster"-- the Dark Urge in Slayer form. In my Durge playthroughs, Nuzh died in that encounter. In my Nuzh playthrough, his raiding party was slaughtered and Nuzh barely managed to escape underground. He was badly hurt and lost and ended up stranded in the Underdark. He found a deep gnome village and broke into a house to try to find food and medical supplies, only to pass out half-dead in some random gnome's hut.

The gnomes were kind enough to fix him up/not let him die, which is why Nuzh is fond of deep gnomes. He had a massive crisis of faith at that point-- in his eyes, the goddess he'd worshiped his whole life had let his friends/family die and left him for dead. With the gnomes, Nuzh spent a lot of time learning artificing and helping them defend their village from duegar-- initially as repayment, but then he started to like, learn morals lol. He also began to break some of the cult programming once he was out of his pack's environment.

Nuzh spent the next four years basically wandering the Sword Coast & Underdark-- sticking to areas where he wouldn't be murdered on sight for being a goblin. He read every book he could get his hands on, started helping people, and started realizing that the Absolute was a lot bigger than just his tribe. With the dual goals of 1. saving his family from the cult and 2. finding out what was really going on with the Absolute, he made his way towards Moonrise in search of answers. There, he was captured by the illithids & tadpoled on board the nautiloid.

Nuzh and Wyll:

As a player, I fell in love with Wyll when I saw his dorky Smash-Bros-esque intro, without knowing his character's opinions about goblins. I decided I Needed that one. I had been planning on romancing Astarion originally lmao, so there's a universe out there where it's Nuzh/Astarion.

Nuzh and Wyll definitely have an enemies-to-lovers thing going on. Wyll sees an Absolute-cultist goblin, who saves the goblin prisoner in the Emerald Grove. Nuzh is on thin fucking ice for Wyll-- the only reasons he didn't kill him when they first met were 1-- the tadpole connection and 2-- the fact that Nuzh fought against the raiding goblins at the grove. Wyll still thinks it's pretty likely that Nuzh is a spy or traitor at worst and an amoral killer at best for most of Act 1. It doesn't help that Nuzh has a -1 to CHA and is blunt at the best of times. Meanwhile, Nuzh doesn't trust Wyll, because 1. Wyll has shown open hostility towards him and 2. Wyll is clearly keeping a lot from the group.

Some trust begins to build throughout Act 1 as Nuzh and Wyll both prove themselves to be good people lmao. They're both stubborn/hard-headed, good-aligned idiots in their early twenties, which ends up making them have more and more in common. Some key developments:

Wyll chooses not to kill Karlach and is disfigured by Mizora. This makes Nuzh trust Wyll more and begin to recognize that some of that secrecy isn't by choice, that Wyll is a guy in a shitty situation, and that Wyll will try to do the right thing even if it costs him.

Nuzh is consistently kind and loyal, even if he's not necessarily "nice". He saves Barcus from his own kin, he saves Arabella and Mirkon, he refuses to turn Astarion in to the Gur hunter, etc. Nuzh is an offputting little man, and he's grumpy and a pragmatist, but Wyll begins to see that he'll go out of his way to help people.

Nuzh learns that Wyll is a Ravengard. He immediately has sympathy with the whole "can't go home" thing, but he honestly doesn't really know the significance of the Ravengard name-- which means he just treats Wyll as Wyll, not as Wyll Ravengard, son of Ulder Ravengard.

Auntie Ethel is a biiiig turning point for their dynamic. Wyll and Nuzh are the two who actively push to save Mayrina, who refuse to cave to Ethel's bargains, etc. After Ethel, their relationship goes from "begrudging respect" to some level of trust.

The goblin camp sees Nuzh confront a lot of trauma all at once. He's betrayed by his sister, he's reminded of the physical and mental abuse he went through as a teenager, he realizes that he can't really just "save" his family and change their minds. Wyll sees how hard Nuzh is trying, how complex the issue is, and how difficult it is for Nuzh. He begins to see goblins as people lol, through like-- watching Nuzh interacting with the pack, realizing that Nuzh and the goblin children were orphaned by adventurers like him, seeing Nuzh try to trust Gut and Sazza only to get betrayed.

Nuzh fully earns Wyll's trust by fighting Minthara and Sazza once Sazza reveals the location of the camp. He can't bring himself to kill his sister, but he won't let her kill innocents either.

They're both "outcasts" at the tiefling party. While the refugees are obviously grateful, Wyll is a devil-pacted warlock who looks like a monster and Nuzh is a goblin. There, they end up hiding out together and talking. They start to realize that they both like each other as people, and they're both drinking, and they end up kissing.

This is getting Really fucking long so I'm gonna shorten it down to vague summaries, lmao, but:

Rest of Act 1: shy, nervous crushes on each other and flirting. Nuzh has had sexual relationships but never romantic ones, so he's unsure of how to handle his feelings for Wyll. Wyll is feeling extremely conflicted because he's a hopeless romantic and doesn't see loving a goblin as the kind of fairytale romance he wanted, plus like. Nuzh is both a goblin and a man, and there's no way he doesn't have some internalized feelings about both of those facts. They begin to get close and really get to know each other.

Act 2: back-to-back trauma throws them for a loop. Relevant to this: I multiclass Wyll as a paladin in every run dhdhdh. Wyll has a bad fucking time during Act 2. Mizora yanks his leash again and demands he save "Zariel's asset". He learns his father is nowhere to be found at Moonrise. He breaks his paladin oath at Moonrise by striking down an "innocent"-- the warden-- in an attempt to do the right thing. He begins to spiral a little bit, because he's starting to believe that he'll never get out of his pact or repair his relationship with his father and he just ruined his "last chance" at being a good person by becoming an Oathbreaker. Nuzh, meanwhile, has his whole thing where he learns what the Absolute really is, sees Sazza again at Moonrise, and is still grappling with turning on his pack. As all of this happens, their relationship does progress, but it gets kinda messy. Like, they're making out every night but one night Wyll freaks out and pulls away and Nuzh thinks he did something wrong. They're very gentle and emotionally supportive with each other, but Wyll won't admit that he's breaking down and Nuzh doesn't have the CHA score/emotional intelligence to help. This culminates in: Wyll sort of snapping under the stress when they find Mizora and threatening to kill her unless she lets him out of his pact, even knowing that would damn him to eternity as a lemure. It's unclear if he's bluffing or not, but Mizora caves.

Act 3: After Ketheric is defeated, Wyll begins to level out. He has a tangible goal again (saving his father) and he's free from his pact, and he's started to accept the idea of Oathbreaking and of forging his own path. This is when he formally sort of accepts his feelings for Nuzh and asks him to have a real relationship. I won't get into Act 3 too much because it's mainly just the two of them like, being actual lovers, but a couple of things I will mention are: because they're both men and Nuzh is a goblin, Wyll's "proposal" is a much less "we're going to get married" thing than in canon, and more of a commitment. Nuzh and Wyll also have sex for the first time a lot earlier-- the night after killing Ketheric lol. Nuzh freaks out at Ulder over how Ulder treated Wyll after they rescue him, and Wyll very kindly tells him to back down. Ulder in general has very conflicting feelings about Nuzh lol. They end up having the Blade of Avernus ending, and definitely adopt like 7 stray children as wards.

ANYWAYS I'm so sorry this is so fucking long DHDHDH ik you didn't ask for an essay BUT I have a lot of thoughts about them...

[primarilymedievalish]

Jumpscare in your inbox! It’s me! How much of the information you shared about the corruption in ESMP would be known by scholars of different empires? Does the Crystal Cliffs Academy have a medical branch (using healing magic and whatnot) that researches it?

unrelated completely, do you have any other headcanons about gnomish culture not shared in your fics?

seriously, full permission to infodump :)

have a good day!

Hi Lore!

At the beginning of this, they know very, very little. Rivendell would be the only one with any experience to speak of, and it hasn’t been an issue there for generations. Everything the empires learn, they learn through trial, error, and observation. This limits their options considerably. Furthermore, the corruption’s direct and indirect effects make it more difficult to effectively share this knowledge, especially considering that the empires were already far-flung with few good roads between them. I tend towards the late medieval in my empires worldbuilding, which means that even under good conditions, travel is going to be very slow by our standards. The corruption slows this to a glacial trickle. The empires are effectively isolated from each other.

While in my worldbuilding, the Crystal Cliffs Academy hasn’t been built yet, Gem and various others in the Crystal Cliffs are very important in researching corruption’s medical impacts and treatments. This centers around the Apothecary, run by Gem and Lucy. Through observation in situ, examining and dissecting animal specimens and cadavers, experimenting with corruption removal, and taking care of its victims, a fairly substantial body of work is assembled. Much of this, especially in the beginning, is notes on what doesn’t work. Copies are shared as soon as possible with the Crystal Cliff’s allies, but this is still decades before the printing press, and handwriting and travel are both slow. By the time anything useful has been learned and shared, the corruption is already entrenched in all the lands surrounding. Everyone is more or less on their own.

One of the first things learned by the people of the Crystal Cliffs is that corruption is strongly attracted to magic. Initially, they leave spells and crystals over the corrupted sites to try and cleanse them; however, they soon realize that this encourages further corruption while draining their resources horrifically. Soon after, they learn how difficult it is to remove. It is in the Crystal Cliffs that it is first attempted to remove corruption with a combination of physical and magical means, and this happens due to desperation. Cleaning spells invite further growth, and cutting it out just isn’t effective. Gem in particular uses this knowledge with Lucy in the Apothecary to experiment with removing corruption from people, in combination with the information she gleaned from studying the bodies of its earliest victims.

Afterwards, although the Academy only opens after Xornoth is banished, corruption is absolutely a topic of study among the scholars there. I haven’t put too much thought into what happens to the Academy after the finale, which gives us a very narrow window in which Gem leads the completed Academy, and she and her peers ensure that their recent experience is immortalized in several different tracts and manuscripts on the topic, ranging from the medically- and magically-focused to the natural and philosophical.

The other empires also experiment and discover what they can about how the corruption works. The Grimlands and Pixandria, similarly to the Cliffs, compile tracts on the topic; Gilded Helianthia and the Overgrown have fewer formal scholars, but still make useful and used observations on corruption’s nature, behavior, and impacts, as well as its more-effective counters. 

You also asked about gnomish culture, and I absolutely have headcanons! Shrub’s lore is what got me into mycology, so my thoughts about the gnomes are definitely very influenced by this, especially mycofabrication and the “wood-wide web”. Mycology is really, really cool :D

Gnomish material culture revolves around mushrooms and fungi. Many of their material goods are derived from mycelium, which they coax to grow in certain ways through a combination of magic and long cultivation of skill. It’s not just food; sturdy textiles and strong buildings alike are all persuaded out of the hyphae. This is inspired by real life—mycofabrication is a very interesting field of research, and all kinds of things have been grown from mycelium. (If this is at all interesting to you, here is an interesting article.)

Gnomes grow food crops besides mushrooms, such as grain, root vegetables, leafy vegetables, and fruit trees; they also forage, and keep animals. However, mushrooms are key to all of these activities. Mushrooms keep the ground lush and fertile, and all the things that grow upon it green. I know you said I could infodump, but I would end up writing an entire essay about how absolutely vital fungal networks are to real-world ecosystems and how deeply entrenched they are with pretty much every plant you’ll ever see, and I’m here to talk about the gnomes. In short, mycelial networks are already integral to just about everything, and the gnomes embrace that. Their fungiculture is intertwined with their sylviculture, their agriculture, and pretty much everything they do.

I had some difficulty coming up with good ideas for gnomish dwellings at first, despite our seeing reproductions of them built by Shrub in the Undergrove. This is because the visible mushroom is a fruiting body, not a permanent structure. It does not, and isn’t supposed to, last. A mushroom cap’s month of existence isn’t really enough for a house. (The exception to this is things like bracket fungi, which keep growing year after year in larger and larger shelves.)  However, I noticed the houses in the Undergrove generally either look like mushrooms, or are made of mushrooms. Therefore, I decided that most building materials are grown from mycelium, and occasionally are created aboveground to look like mushroom caps as an aesthetic decision; the rest are mostly underground. Gnomish construction is not a matter of building as much as it is growing.

Shrub’s clothes are not very medieval. I decided to go a little bit anachronistic, and make gnomish clothes visually more early modern, but not wholly confined to historicity. In Frosty Winds Made Moan, I wrote:

“His spring-green gnomish cotte, her sturdy, baggy breeches that gartered so nicely beneath her knee; his agaric-spotted boots and soft, strong stockings, both grown from twining hyphae and not tanned from leather, nor cut from woolen cloth like the hosen he could not allow herself to grow accustomed to: these were the lesser of her griefs, but they cut her all the same.”

Some textiles are prepared from mycelium in a way not unlike flax; others, like Shrub’s boots and cloak, would be grown. Linen, hemp, wool, and leather are also used for their specific properties. Dyes also come from a variety of sources; most of the ones Shrub would have encountered would be derived from mushrooms and garden plants in a variety of bright and lively colors.

Socially, gnomish culture places a high value on autonomy and interconnections; differences are embraced, and no one is ever thought to be fully alone. Everyone is tied together, knit to their souls just like every trailing root in the forest and field. Strangers are always given welcome. Everyone, always, has a hearth to call home and a person to share it with.

Lastly, gnomish music is highly improvisatory and polyphonic, with ever-changing harmonies joining and breaking in every line, and no single tune held truest. Work songs are sung freely, often, and jointly. While the voice is the most favored instrument, pipes, drums, recorders, harps, and various other instruments are also made with care and used with abandon. Whether in joy or in sorrow, the gnomes are joined together with song.

Bonus: Rose Berry sketch I did last summer :)