#accidentally wrote this man an entire backstory

[diospore]

Ireneverse Jotaro who I've decided to dub Kyutaro. (As a callback to the time he tricked Enya by signing his name as Qtaro)

This version of him never experienced the trauma in Egypt so he's pretty chill by now. Although, he doesn't have Star Platinum. Would the Ireneverse characters get the same stands as their original selves?

My take on Ireneverse is that DIO never came back, he died with Jonathan as had been believed. So, no vampire to kill all of Kyutaro's friends. Friends that he'll be making in alternate ways! I like to think he met Kakyoin during college, maybe they were roommates? And Polnareff, I'm not sure, but they do meet and become friends. Avdol does meet when his grandpa brings him by during a visit. Iggy is of course his mother's dog, Joseph gifts him to her after Kyutaro goes off to college.

Actually, I just realized they'd also be alternate since they died and all.

Irene, he's a much better father towards her since he doesn't have DIO's bullshit to worry about. He's actually present in her life lol. Although I think he and his wife are still divorced, it is on good terms.

[meloriri]

bsd 108 spoilers !!! + F Dostoevsky’s crime and punishment spoilers i guess

im not totally convinced that fyodor’s act was completely fake honestly and ill explain why! this is just a quick thought not fully thought out so bare with me

i’m sure this is common knowledge but character backstory and personalities tend to be ripped from the author’s works rather than the actual author’s personality. Example; Akutagawa and the mc of rashoumon, dazai and the mc if no longer human, etc. if not inspired by the main character, they’re inspired by the theme of that work or many of the author’s works

f dostoevsky’s crime and punishment is a novel that follows Raskolnikov, a main character who literally kills someone because he thinks he’s special and he can. ( obviously a lot more in depth in the book lol) the book follows him in the first segment committing his crime and another segment of him receiving “punishment.” The first part is actually over fairly fast but it’s still really important to note.

while Raskolnikov is a lot more anxious and cautious than fyodor, i still see the personalities intersect. Raskolnikov goes on about how he’s going to commit this murder and thinks that it actually makes him a saviour because the woman he wanted to kill was a bad person. aka; he’s killing this lady because it’ll make the world a better place, according to him. Sounds familiar? Fyodor in BSD does his wrong doings claiming its to cleanse the world from evil. I’m sure most people already know this, but I thought I’d catch you up anyway. Raskolnikov is a man of few words, never seeming to lose his composure past the drop of a facial expression. He’s incredibly intelligent in most regards and because of that he overlooks his own flaws. He’s also kind of neurotic, he talks to himself, does things on impulse, etc. He’s not good at socializing and yet he can blend effortlessly into conversations with others. He feels a lack of remorse at any of his wrong doings. I see all these traits easily in BSD’s Fyodor.

However, in the second half of the novel, Raskolnikov faces some changes. He says he doesn’t feel guilty, and he still believes he’s in the right, and yet there’s a sense of guilt in his inner conscience that’s eating away at him. Suddenly, he gets nervous, expressive, emotional, he’s rushing to defend himself because he thinks what he did is justified because of his circumstances. He thinks he needs help. Raskolnikov doesn’t face actual punishment for his crimes until the very end of the novel, instead he struggles with the inner turmoil of knowing what he did. In the most recent chapter, Fyodor has this personality switch break down where he screams out for help and basically says he cant control it because of his ability and thats not his true self, referring to the him that apathetically kills others. Similarly, Raskolnikov breaks down multiple times in the novel, saying that the him that did that doesn’t represent him fully, that he couldn’t control it, etc. He victimizes himself, saying it’s because he’s poor and ill. In fact, he tells another character named Sonia that he cant control it because he is ill. Sounds familiar?

Raskolnikov backtracks several times in the novel, reverting back to his apathetic personality before breaking down all over again. At one point, he even confesses his entire crime, before suddenly taking on a light carefree looking and claiming to have been kidding. Literally EXACTLY what just happened with Sigma in the manga.

I don’t fully believe that Fyodor was telling the truth, but I don’t think it was all just a lie like he claimed. I personally think that the note and gun WAS from himself, that he wrote the “help me” in a similar crazed panic and hid it away. When he saw it, he was reminded and broke down again, accidentally spilling a bit too much truth in what he said. He snaps back into being normal after calming down and acts like he’s still in the other personality to trick Sigma. And, given what he said, this is somehow related to his ability.

How is it related to his ability? I have NO fucking idea. Though we have seen Fyodor with another form of himself in dead apple claiming to “crime” and “ punishment” which would check out perfectly here, theres too many other contradictions for me to be confident in that at all

What do you think??? I’m going to work through my thoughts about his ability more. then maybe I’ll add to this :)

[alpaca-clouds]

My Personal Companion Ranking

I saw so many people doing this, and now I kinda feel inclined, because we are going on a full year and the brainworms are still strong.

Halsin: I wrote about this before. I love this man just so much. Again: He does not need to help you. Sure, he comes along to the Shadowcursed lands in the hope to solve the problem that he feels responsible for, but afterwards... He is not responsible for the player character and the origins. Also, he is so big and sweet and gives the cutest kisses. <3

Lae'zel: Toad girl! Ironically I could not stand her originally. But then, on my second playthrough I accidentally romanced her, and I went like: "Oh my god, baby girl, you are so messed up! Let me hug you!" And yeah, now I am obsessed with her. I especially love her development in the game, when you oppose Vlaakith. Even though I like the idea most of all, of her dealing with her feelings towards Shadowheart (and possibly Karlach).

Astarion: Yes, I know, he is surprisingly not my absolute favorite, though I do identify with him a lot. And I just love him with my Tav. I will also say, that the version of Astarion I like so much is especially the one in my head, to whom I gave already so much character development and stuff after the end of the game.

Shadowheart: She is another one, who I originally did not like a whole lot. I was originally so annoyed with her and Lae'zel bickering and with the entire "Shar this! Shar that!" stuff. But while it took the second playthrough for me to warm up to Lae'zel, I got behind Shadowheart after saving Aylin and her becoming a Selûnite. I especially love how she centers herself during Act 3 again. And I love her stupid little jokes and pranks.

Jaheira: No long text. No deep reason. I just love her sarcastic ass.

Karlach: I love Karlach as a character. However, I still do not love what the game does with her. I love how she still finds joy in life after everything. She has such a tragic backstory and all that, but she still has joy, still wants to help people, and still is just good. But oh boy. I hate how much her companion quest is a non-quest. I hate how little interactions you really get with her in act 3, especially if she is not romanced. I just dislike how little care she got in the end of the game.

Wyll: Kinda like Karlach. It is not that I dislike him as a character, but he is just so clearly underwritten and gets shafted by the writers. So... Yeah. Admittedly, I also could not quite get into her whole "Heroism, please recognize my name" stick. But most of all it is just... how little content there is.

Gale: Okay, hear me out. Originally he was among my favorites for the game. But the longer I had him in my team (he does tons of damage in the end), the more annoyed I got with him. No, not because he is a know it all (I can identify with that), but mostly because he won't shut up about fucking Mystra. Yes, partly this is an issue with the dialogue options given to me, less than with Gale. But I just... I reached the point by the half of Act 2 where I was like: Let me shake this man and scream at him. "Mystra is a fucking groomer. Let's just please go and fucking kill her!"

Minsc: I do not dislike him. And my Tav definitely is vibing with him. However... He really feels more like a joke character, and I am not laughing.

My standard party usually still consist of my player character + Astarion + Karlach/Lae'zel (depending on my mood) + Gale. Though with my Durge I currently try a run on Durge + Shadowheart + Lae'zel + Astarion/Halsin.

[bromcommie]

Hello & Happy Monday!

So...for the WIP tag game...I know I'm supposed to pick the one (1! ONE!) that I find most intriguing, but this is like a whole buffet of intrigue, so maybe I can have two? 👀 1) НОЧНОЙ РАЗГОВОР (FIGURE OUT) <- ngl, the 'figure out' cracked me up. Also, late night conversations? Yes, please!

2) what's a nice nutcase like you doing in a place like astoria 1203 <- this just sounds fun...and possibly like the title could be deliberately misleading

Thank you! <3

Hello helloo, happy Monday to you too! (but also Tuesday now I guess. It's a 2-for-1!)

Thank you for the ask, and thank you for indulging me with two (2! it's gonna be so long!) <3

НОЧНОЙ РАЗГОВОР (FIGURE OUT!!!) - Ooof, this fucking guy. I'm glad my stern instructions to myself in the title there were funny, because I do indeed need to FIGURE this one OUT and it's bugging me. It's essentially another chapter that's a part of a larger work (not naming names not pointing fingers but it's. The Work I'm Having Trouble Updating) and it was written a looong while back, which is why it's now a standalone file. I love the premise but I kinda want to tear it down and rebuild it entirely, mostly because I'm still deciding on whether I like the way I wrote the backstory for it. So. It's fun! It's challenging! It's giving me a migraine! The title's from this song about a tired traveler trying to find his way in the night. It's three conversations (Steve+Nat, Nat+Bucky and Bucky+Steve - although they barely talk at all) that happen in the night after a very not lucid, injured Don't-Call-Me-Bucky who's recently remembered the Red Room and also had a pretty rattling encounter with the code words seeks Natasha out in Europe for [redacted] something as a last resort, but instead accidentally walks straight into Steve who he's been staying away from like the Devil Himself since CATWS. And then basically bleeds all over him. (I am not immune to the wound care trope! However, this is unfortunately not that.) A lot of ugly feelings and defense mechanisms are brought up, some painful memories re: the war and the Red Room are brought up, and nobody's having a good time or really knows how to process jack shit. They all communicate/perceive love&protection in wildly different ways, and while all three dynamics end on some kind of natural conclusion it's still a lot of unfinished, unspoken business and just kind of sad. Hurt no comfort that's necessary for there to be the promise of comfort in the future, if you will. Tbh, I really want to finish/reincorporate this one. But it's just so *screams into paper bag*. Anyway. Snippet:

When Steve wakes up the next morning Bucky’s gone, like he knew he would be. Like a hurricane passing through, the foreknowledge doesn’t make the aftermath any easier. And then what? his own voice from so long ago echoes in his head as he waits for the water for Natasha’s tea to boil in the sunny little kitchenette of the motel’s lobby. 16 hours later, he’s watching the blinding stripe of the sun setting over the East River before the plane maneuvers onto the landing strip at JFK. The hell else? Then we march on, ace. We go home.

2. what's a nice nutcase like you doing in a place like astoria 1203 - oh good, thank god! So this one is a bit more fun, but it's only got a few disjointed half-scenes so far. The title is actually one of the most literal ones on the list - the fic does take place in Astoria, Queens, and it does involves a certain "nutcase". Several, even. They really don't get along, and then they almost do.

(Blame my recent rewatch of the Netflix shows for this one. Man. What a golden age that was.)

Excerpt under the cut:

It was easy to clock the combat training before, sure, but up close this guy’s… Keyed up. Wild-eyed, a little, and not in the twitchy way of the three idiots piled up outside by the ruined water hydrant, not just sheer adrenaline stoked by fear and booze and coke. More dialed-in, purposefully ruthless. Hungry. Getting up with an expression like an enraged bull in spite of the beating he just took. Nutcase, Barnes thinks bleakly. Not that he’s in any position to judge — glass houses, all that, but — “What’re you,” he croaks, “some kind of psycho?” “Says the guy who just mowed down six guys without blinking." The man spits, grimacing at the blood that lands on the stark white of the rooftop like it personally offends him. If he notices the similar spray across his busted face, his clothes, his military-short hair, he doesn't seem to give a damn. "Nice going, by the way— my man got away." "And my man's bleeding out on a fucking pool table downstairs," he grits out. He doesn't have time for this. This whole night has been one giant exercise in unpredictability, and the police sirens echoing off in the distance are problem enough without him having to duke it out over and over with some local homicidal moron who might or might not be HYDRA. "You wanna tell me what that's about?" The man levels an irritated look back at him and then shrugs, dismissive. "I don't play with my food." "Your food had intel I've been hunting for two weeks." "Tough shit. Maybe if you hadn't screwed up your goddamn trig—" His lip curls of its own volition, affronted despite himself. What an appropriate time for his ego to announce it's back from the dead and in the mix. How fun. “The hell I did. I don’t miss.” "Is that right? There's some real screwed up drywall down there that says otherwise." His voice picks up an edge of something dangerous, aiming for threatening and landing on feral as he takes a step closer, and Jesus, can he stay down already? "Unless you did it on purpose to let him know I'm coming because you work for the bastard, in which case lemme tell you, you and me have a whole different problem." "I don't work for anybody," he says, probably with more intensity than strictly necessary. "He was a civillian. I don't kill civillians." The words curl acerbic on his tongue. He doesn't. He doesn't. That, of all things, makes the man laugh, a bitter little thing that sounds like it clawed its way out of his throat, and only barely. Who the fuck is this guy. "Oh Jesus Christ, not this bullshit again— how many of you assholes are running around this place, huh?" he says, gesturing a little wildly at him. "You got a fancy catsuit under that hobo getup, too?" It's Barnes' turn to look at him like he's a few marbles short, which judging by all evidence he very well might be. The guy snorts at his confusion, shaking his head. "If you consider that criminal piece of dog shit a civilian, you’re way more out of your depth than I thought, kid.”

but also:

“Self-righteous, God's sacrificial lamb type-of-shit," he mumbles around the mouthful with distaste, staring off across the bridge. "Got himself a stupid fucking title and everything, if you can believe that. Major pain in my ass.” Barnes hums, considering, before taking a cautious bite of his own sandwich. The thick pile of fatty meat and melted cheese breaks apart in his mouth easy with a sudden, almost overwhelming explosion of flavours, his empty stomach singing praises despite the ache in his bruised jaw as he chews. He never thought he’d say this, but god bless Queens. “Catholic?” Castle grunts an affirmative. “Yeah, I have some experience with that.”

[whoslaurapalmer]

gomens!!!! season 2!!!!!!!!!!! a collection of thoughts

-first of all. mother of goddamn fucking mercy, david tennant -his FACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -he was out there putting his whole entire BEING in this role and good for him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! goddamn

-related i loved crowley getting angry in ep1, that was gorgeous

-aziraphale the. landlord. LANDLORD??? -would aziraphale have charged rent in the first place? -he has no need for money vs keeping up human appearances vs he's petty but not like. landlord petty -show!aziraphale, though..........................

-idk. hold on i'm gonna say this now -i feel weird saying........'i might not have agreed with this choice' like especially weird here about this particular show because. -can i say i didn't dig a particular choice made by the man who co-wrote the book and co-wrote the episodes based on the book he co-wrote -like, i think that's just, entitled of me? or something like that. -but also. am allowed to disagree with neilman.

-like. the opening scene was Interesting (-also goodness is crowley not just the doctor in that scene. like damn. where's that post from a couple years back that was like 'david tennant knows his niche of playing near immortal beings with an attachment to a sentient vehicle, and can't drive' or whatever -anyway crowley really is just the doctor, living under different circumstances) -clearly there was time before eden, like, that's been very firmly established in all canons, otherwise when would crowley have fallen -i just didn't particularly. care to see it? -i think, crowley and aziraphale meeting in eden in particular, under those specific circumstances, under that discussion of ineffability vs free will, who did "Right" and who did "Wrong", was important, and -i felt like that was just being rehashed, here -and sometimes that vibe is important to continue -- do i think it was adequately addressed in all ways in s1? -- but sometimes i thought we were just doing the same sort of vibe over and over. and i wasn't sure if i liked it or not, if i thought it was narratively important or not -but!!!! the opening scene in ep 1 also matters a great deal for how ep 6 turned out.

-and there's also..............book!aziraphale+crowley and show!aziraphale+crowley are operating at VERY different spots on a character arc, this has been discussed before, even by neilman i think, and the tone of the show and what the scenes discuss are going to alter based on that

-like. there's stuff i disagreed with or just plain didn't LIKE in the first couple episodes -- then between watching 2 and 3 i accidentally saw spoilers for episode 6 -- and i was like, oh no, i don't like that. what the actual fuck, i hate it. that makes no sense. -- but then i got to ep 6 (and i had read a few meta posts in the meantime bc they kept coming up on a doctor who blog i check regularly) and i was like. it's. fine? it worked out better than i thought it would, actually. -so going through my original notes while i was watching to type them up is like. well i didn't like that. but i see why it was important.

-so now i'm like. well that initial ??? feeling went.......nowhere? cause i guess it's..............fine? hmm. and now i do not know how i feel about it as a whole. idk.

-like!!! i really didn't care for the extra backstory. like i just. i just didn't particularly care one way or the other about watching those scenes, they were just, meh to me, really. and i still feel meh about them, even in saying, yeah i guess that mattered to where they wind up -idk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! just. idk.

-ANYWAY!!!!

-you know miranda richardson was a choice, not complaining it's just very funny??? that she was madam tracy and now she's shax

-OH SHIT AND NINA WAS SISTER MARY LAST SEASON?????????

-okay but this is TERRIBLY funny, aziraphale just going 'we just gotta make them fall in love!' y'all. aziraphale. do you hear yourself.

-every day has really grown on me, hearing it so many times. find myself just casually humming it. although it's one of those songs that my brain insists on crossing with another song it thinks sounds similar, which happens a lot, so i also kept imagining it as, accidentally in love during the first few episodes.

-me, thursday night, after watching 1+2: did they just donna noble gabriel me, typing up my notes right now after watching it all: .............you know what, you could kinda say they did, in a way

-i have. little to absolute zero knowledge of any religious canon. quite frankly. but i do idly wonder about, the, actions and thoughts of god vs the actions and thoughts of the angels -oh especially with metatron!!!! if the metatron is supposed to be 'the voice of god' -but there is that stress in the book and in s1 about, they don't know. that's the thing, the angels and the demons don't actually, legitimately, 100%, know whether or not what they're doing is legitimately what they SHOULD be doing re: god and satan's actual wants in terms of existence and earth and fate -but we do see a little of that with job and quite honestly i wish i WAS up on religious canons to have more thoughts for that

-SPEAKING OF JOB!!!!! that was peter davison??????? i had no goddamn idea. i do want to go back and rewatch that -ty was an absolute terrible delight as ennon, what the fuck. oh my god.

-i had NO IDEA OR INCLINATION WHATSOEVER that crowley's apartment was hell-appointed. -seeing little analysis posts of people going 'aziraphale you have to see that crowley is LIVING IN HIS CAR and yet GABRIEL GETS A ROOM IN THE BOOK SHOP, THESE TWO HAVE NOT COMMUNICATED A SINGLE THING IN THE PAST FOUR YEARS, OR THE PAST ABSOLUTE AGE' by god. yeah. ugggggg :( -he's just living in his fucking carrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

-oh oh i loved muriel, oh my god. muriel, you sweet little bean -i love the scene where muriel is in the bookshop and muriel is mostly cast in the light from the window and aziraphale is mostly cast in shadow, i loved that

-i love that aziraphale keeps a diary. that's so fun

-people have pointed this out in doctor who as well about tooth and claw, but the difference between david tennant's actual accent and the accent he does as characters pretending to be scottish

-CROWLEY CAN FEEL WHEN THE CAR IS DRIVEN UNDER THE LIMIT????? HE CAN FEEL THE BENTLEY????????? -look. -look. -i'm not saying it but i'm thinking it. if he can feel the bentley and someone in the bentley. god. can someone please go write the fic. -no i don't know where on earth that sort of scene would take place in canon especially given that the two of them clearly have Very Little Concept Of Physicality With Another Human-Shaped Being, do not BOTHER me with petty details, it NEEDS TO EXIST and i don't have the time to do it by god please someone do it

-i can't say exactly what i mean by this like if pressed i cannot give examples but sometimes there would be dialogue and i'd go, ah. that's finnemore -cabin pressure is still top tier, okay.

-oh many people have said this by now but THAT CROWLEY'S IDEA OF ROMANCE IS SHELTERING FROM THE RAIN -crowley. -crowley.

-so getting shot or getting blown up would've discorporated them but crowley ingesting laudanum just. makes him drunk -you know what. i'm gonna say this one is on me bc honestly for atwq reasons as well i should read about laudanum

-nooooo god they were so cute in episode 5 - 'can i watch? <3' - 'YOU GAVE AWAY A BOOK??' - 'we don't dance.' TONIGHT YOU DO, CROWLEY

-that aziraphale's idea of romance is dancing............ -how many angels can dance on the head of a pin -AND THAT HE WANTS TO DANCE WITH CROWLEYYYYYYYYYY

-i love nina's. it's not genre awareness, but it's..........plot awareness? shenanigans awareness? something like that -speaking of nina and maggie though i was rather neutral on them as well like. no real feelings one way or the other

-'rescuing me makes him so happy.' !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -i love threatening!aziraphale a great deal. -see there's also........about aziraphale -i think it's easy to get aziraphale wrong, from a fandom standpoint. he's not a character i have any inclination to try and write in a fic honestly because i think. he has a great deal of layers in him. i mean not like an onion but. oh this thought is getting away from me -i just mean like............i think the one thing i would want to keep in mind is, aziraphale is just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing, that's key -and you have to balance that with him being an angel. and a bastard. and an angel. and a bastard -and i think there's lots of different ways to interpret those things into a fanfic and i don't know if i've ever seen it done................just right -like. in the of course fandom classic demonology or the tri-phasic model of trauma i think a lot about aziraphale being described as like............having such a severe kindness aubrey thinks of it as a KNIFE. and like a knife that he is wrapping in gauze in order to interact with her because he knows she is so unsettled by his capacity for kindness. -and i always roll that around in my head and wonder if i really, truly agree with it. because i think. yes. but also. no. -and show!aziraphale and book!aziraphale ESPECIALLY are at very different ends of Aziraphale In General -sigh. idk.

-'i haven't always been a demon. and they never change their password.' oh that was DELIGHTFUL -okay but see also. re: crowley -i've brought this up before but i think, when i first read gomens when i was..........16?? ish???? 15?????????? i didn't think a great deal, if at all, about crowley being technically a 'fallen' angel or of him having. any great angst about it, and that reading, pretty much stayed with me for a long time -but like, i get where it comes from? the angst? -i mean. there would have to be some feeling there, quite frankly. -i just thought a lot more about 'sauntered vaguely downward' which i think you can take at face value, or, as covering it up -idk all of this to say, sure i'm coming around to it. that line was particularly fun

-about the second apocalypse i was like 'ohhh this is what crowley and aziraphale meant by like. the end of the world wasn't the big thing, is the big thing is heaven vs hell' -and then metatron said SECOND COMING and i was like OH, SHIT, THOUGH

-'it's a container. it's bigger on the inside.' are we sure we aren't just watching doctor who -i.............guess i liked beelzebub and gabriel more than i thought i would -i appreciated THAT extra backstory, bc otherwise. that was. i mean not necessarily out of nowhere -- we do know angels and demons, besides crowley and aziraphale, negotiate with each other bc of hastur and michael with the hellfire and holy water -- but also would've been still. out of nowhere -!!!!! that it's like!!!!!! it IS that easy!!!!! to just be with your person, and want to be with them!!!! and it's NOT AT ALL that easy!!!!!! and it is!!!! and it isn't!!!!!! -that you have to give up Something, probably. but that what you get is. love. and it should be so easy to just walk hand in hand away with someone and be with them (-and also. that sometimes it's going to take work. you're not always ready right away, with nina and maggie) -and the other point here is like. the ultimate end here is not a fight between heaven and hell. that will go nowhere. and maintaining status quo isn't sustainable either, things are constantly changing, the only way forward is genuine discussion and collaboration and. maybe sometimes love. -and also that beyond aziraphale and crowley's STUNNING LACK OF COMMUNICATION...............they can't leave earth. (i mean aziraphale does but bear with me) gabriel and beelzebub have no stake or interest in human beings. but crowley and aziraphale have been there the whole entire time. they stopped the apocalypse for somewhere selfish reasons but also because they've got a personal duty to earth and what they love about it. as well as each other, but also, earth and humans and comforts and. all these other worthwhile things -and it's where the two of them are, too!!!!!!!!!!!!! aziraphale's book shop, crowley's car, a place where the two of them always are. always come back to. always have. -until it's not. :(

-'nothing lasts forever.' -aziraphale!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -my GOD

-the kiss really is, terrible to watch and that's like. that is the point, i do agree with the posts that say that -it's not supposed to be romantic bc it's NOT a romantic moment at all, it IS very sad and desperate and embarrassing and. heartbreaking. soul-crushing. i watched that whole scene with my hands over my face from the agony of it all. -and they really never have. done anything physical or physically romantic like that before, why would they have? as an angel and a demon and with THEIR STUNNING LEVELS OF AVOIDANCE AND NO COMMUNICATION -so yeah, by the time we got there, i was like, no, i get where you're coming from. i see where this goes with how show!aziraphale stands. he clings a lot harder to.........an idea of Goodness in a way that hurts him and especially crowley, and has more of a......loyalty? an at the end of the day sort of loyalty to heaven that is more surface for book!aziraphale

-quite frankly i don't intend to seek out any fix it fic because like.........this isn't the kind of thing that is, say, successfully, fixed, in a, fix it. like.............this is the sort of thing that's gonna be agonizing to try and repair between the two of them. and that, i'm looking forward to, i think. -and like, even if aziraphale wanted to get out of the elevator? if he wanted to change his mind? (which, i don't think he does? he's so upset he's avoiding everything else and just COMMITTING to this.) he CAN'T. he knows he can't. heaven would absolutely not let him out of that elevator to go back, now that he knows what metatron wanted him for.

-oh i always forget derek jacobi is metatron!!!!! look at him go!!!!! coming in, getting a little coffee (i love the 'has anyone ever asked for death?'), ultimately being such a fucker. i LOVE him. -bbc really does have 3 actors, don't they. -i know it's just that good actors find their way around and literally everyone has shown up on doctor who. i mean, you can do this with classic who, too! onslow my bone-idle beloved from keeping up appearances shows up somewhere along the line in trial of a time lord. -it's just fun to joke about :)

-i think a big thing existing here is also..............no one knew what to expect out of a second season? because we got all of the book. even if the sequel had existed in vague plans out there in the universe, just unwritten, the only one who knows what's in there now is neilman. as an audience we didn't know what to expect -and a lot of things happened in this season!!!! a lot that people WANTED!!!! and then all of it ended in a VERY UNEXPECTED HEARTBREAK -that does track with the rest of the season -but is also. not at all what anyone thought would happen, in a season 2, in any way shape or form -and i'm still rolling it around in my head. will be for a while. would like to watch s1 again. and reread the book again

[feraltuxedo]

Fic Recs: Musician Crowley AU

Give Crowley an instrument and he'll have my heart. There are so many excellent AUs with that trope, and a whole lot of them are still on my marked-for-later, to be savoured like a good piece of music. I love all flavours of Crowley's musicianship - whether he's a rock star or a violin virtuoso. Somehow, it just makes sense.

Anyway, here are some of my favourites.

Reunion by snae_b Rating: E Words: 22920 Summary: Aziraphale runs into an ex that he's never quite fallen out of love with.

We don't see Crowley actually making a lot of music in this story, but it hardly matters, because what we get instead is a rock star catching up with his bookshop-owner ex after a decade apart. And they do a lot of catching up. In the bookshop. Above the bookshop. In Crowley's hotel room. I love the chemistry between the two characters in this one, the bittersweet romance of reconnecting after so long. But it's also incredibly funny and steaming hot.

Bi M' Aingeal (Be My Angel) by IneffableToreshi Rating: T Words: 4905 Summary: Crowley has a crush on the beautiful man who comes to see him play and sing every Friday night. On this particular night, for the Valentine's Day celebrations, the guitarist decides to try out a special song that he wrote himself...

Such a sweet meet-cute set during a folk night at a pub. Crowley as a Gaelic-speaking folk singer and Aziraphale as an adoring audience member. All fluff and tenderness and a wonderful use of song to communicate feelings. There's a wonderful atmosphere to this and it's all due to the unique setting.

The Piano Serpent by journeytogallifrey Rating: T Words: 3893 Summary: Aziraphale owns The Flaming Sword, which is one of the premier gay bars in London. Everyone knows this... except for their pianist, Crowley. While the regulars take bets over whether he's the clueless straight person he seems, Aziraphale just tries to prevent himself from falling further. But one night Crowley plays a song written specially to honor their regulars, and Aziraphale can't hold the truth in any longer. How will Crowley react? Will the truth really set them free? Based on the post where Billy Joel's The Piano Man is really about a clueless straight pianist in a gay bar. Or in our case, 'straight'.

Surprisingly tender for what's really quite a silly premise . This is an ensemble piece set at a gay bar, and in the course of this one-shot, we get to know all the regulars. Their fun speculation about just how clueless Crowley the pianist is is combined with loving notes on their own backstories. And in the middle of it there's Aziraphale serving drinks, and Crowley playing his songs.

Or Be Nice by charlottemadison Rating: E Words: 151366 Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale are neighbours. And...it does not go at all well, until it does. A human AU in which Aziraphale is a bookseller, Crowley is a drummer, and they are both petty disasters in the worst/best way.

“So what’s your deal?” “My-my-my deal?” Aziraphale stammered. “I’m a bookseller, is my deal.” “Oh,” Crowley replied, sounding as uninterested as it was possible to sound. “It’s just, I couldn’t help overhearing, and --” Aziraphale swallowed hard. “You really are an accomplished musician. But I thought -- for after 11PM -- perhaps we could reach some arrangement?” “Arrangement?” Aziraphale felt his his smile turning forced. “Such as, perhaps, playing the drums *before* eleven? Instead of after?” Crowley stared blankly at him. In fact he stared for so long that Aziraphale briefly wondered if he'd lapsed into ancient Greek again, which he was known to do in bad dreams or during panic attacks.

An absolutely epic tale of neighbourly disputes, featuring two supreme bastards trying to one-up each other while maybe accidentally falling in love. The back and forth is hilarious and drives the entire story. Crowley is a drummer and he loves to drum. When Aziraphale is asleep. I love how the drumset is weaponised here. But in the course of the story, classical-music lover Aziraphale learns to appreciate not just the drumming, but Crowley's musicianship in general.

The Greater Tadfield Friends Of Music Autumn Concert by CopperBeech Rating: E Words: 27878 Summary: Anthony Crowley, marketing consultant and competent amateur flautist, finds he can at least flee the smoke and congestion of London if not the golden handcuffs of his job. He’s got no personal life to leave behind; he likes things anonymous, and rough, and even a little dangerous, and far enough from home that he won’t have to deal with entanglements. So what’s he doing obsessing about a mannerly, daintily groomed, kindly man who he’s not even sure is gay? And how’s he going to cope with a hotbed of gossip, a lovelorn tubist serenading the witch next door, and an irascible music director with a Black Belt in baton-throwing?

I absolutely love a small-town setting and this story is such a fun and strangely nostalgic look at amateur musicmaking in that context. Crowley is a newcomer trying to find his place in an established society (both Tadfield and the orchestra) and Aziraphale is the privileged benefactor of the town. But there's a whole host of characters around them that gives this story so much flavour and makes it a real delight.

[selcaby]

My fanfic, a master post

Now that I’ve posted, oh, more than two different stories on AO3, it’s time for a post that lists them all.

First and longest, there’s

Artificial Shortages

Mirabel finds her Tío Bruno living in the walls. He's in terrible health, is failing at self-care, and says he just wants to be forgotten.

The miracle still needs saving. But Mirabel’s new top priority is saving Tío Bruno.

People have called this a “more realistic” version of Mirabel finding Bruno in the walls. I’m not sure if that’s what it really is, but it’s definitely less Disney and more angst (and spiders).

It’s an AU that’s just like canon until one not-even-all-that-bad accidental injury tips Bruno's physical and mental health into a horrible downward spiral. If only he’d asked for help, he’d be fine. But he’s Bruno and he can’t bring himself to do that. Mirabel’s horrified and makes saving him her top priority, but it’s easier said than done. Expect lots and lots of Bruno sadness, but also a happy ending.

And a rather different multichapter work:

The Seasons Change In Turn

Casita has fallen, but some of its mysteries remain. For one thing, where is Bruno?

A story for Encantober 2023.

This is my attempt at a fast-moving mystery story with a twisty plot, based on the Encantober 2023 prompt list. Is this a stupidly overambitious undertaking for a slow writer like me? We’ll see.

Next:

No Use Crying

The Madrigals have a new cat. Unfortunately they didn’t okay this with the local small rodent enthusiast, who’s hiding in the walls. Can Bruno protect his friends without upsetting the children, revealing his presence, or getting ensnared by the cuteness?

I wrote this short story for Encanto Milk Day in 2022. It’s actually the first completed work of fiction I’ve ever published, and I’m quite proud of it. It’s Bruno in the walls again, because that’s a topic that fascinates me. What can he do when the family’s new pet starts hunting his rat friends? No cats were harmed in the making of this fic; Bruno’s too much of a softie for that.

The next three stories were written for Encantober in 2022; I’m in awe of the people who managed all 31 days when I only managed a few!

The Green-Eyed Rat’s Caterpillar

Luzette bought an old hand-made picture book in a yard sale. Her friend Nita says it’s impossible.

A little one-shot about some modern characters who discover something that Bruno made. The item first came up in Artificial Shortages, but no knowledge of AS is required to enjoy this one.

Endurance

If he said her name, called for help, she would answer. Probably. Possibly. He’s never tested it, because he’s always tried to protect her from needing to worry about him.

A little bit of backstory from Artificial Shortages. In the walls, Bruno is protecting more than one niece, but at great cost to himself. Can he stay strong as his body grows weaker? I’m not entirely happy with this one. I think it lacks some things I would have liked to put in, but on the other hand it was written very quickly, and for me that’s an achievement.

See Something Terrible

When Camilo loses his gift, he is stuck in the most embarrassing shape possible.

This is my third Encantober story, and it’s completely different. A silly scenario involving Camilo and Bruno, or rather, Bruno and the little man who came back with Mirabel and Alma on the horse, and who is unaccountably getting hugs from Camilo’s mother and aunt ...

Señora Grijalva Requests a Book Report

The triplets are 15 and their teacher wants them to write yet another book report. But Julieta is too busy to read, Pepa just rereads books she’s already reported on, and Bruno hates writing about “meh” books yet is too self-conscious to write about his favourites.

Then Bruno has an idea. An idea that makes all three triplets’ homework much more fun.

But he’s reckoned without Señora Grijalva’s ulterior motive.

Something different: teenage triplets, a teacher OC as a main character, and my take on how a much younger Bruno does visions. Also a magical shop.

Two Cats In The Yard

Four days after Casita falls, Bruno tells Mirabel about an intriguing and confusing side to his gift.

A fluffy short story I wrote as a tribute to the Discord server Casa Brainrot and my fellow writers there. To say any more would be to spoil the fun.

Trifles

It’s Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) in the new Casita, and there’s a Christmassy surprise on the dinner table, courtesy of Bruno and Mirabel. But Bruno hasn’t turned up to eat. Alma goes to talk to him.

Written for a Secret Santa in 2023. A bit of fluff, a bit of angst, a bit of (British) Christmas (via one of Bruno’s visions) and a postcanon Alma POV.

Finally, for completeness, shoved right down to the bottom so you won’t notice it, is the very first fic I posted:

Between Frames

With their house in ruins, the Madrigals fall back on their neighbours' hospitality. Osvaldo "Not-Special Special" has room for Mirabel and one of her relatives, but he's not prepared for who Mirabel brings with her.

Wherever Bruno's been for the past ten years, he obviously brought home enough bad luck to topple the Casa Madrigal. Still, the other Madrigals insist someone's got to take him in, and Osvaldo's drawn the short straw.

Sounds promising, right? Unfortunately I didn’t make a proper plan before I posted the first chapter, and I’ve never managed to work out how the rest of it should go. I might continue it one day, but don’t hold your breath. Still, there’s one chapter, and I don’t think it’s terrible.

I’ll try to keep this post updated as I write more.

[hasturmcfuckface]

OH MYGOD OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY. OKAY . HOLD ON YES I CAN HELP WITH THIS

The most important thing to know about faroeverse is the fact that it tackles the narrative topic of fridging, specifically the fridging of female characters. Faroe's story is about surviving in a world that, metatextuality, did not want her to survive.

FIRSTLY: follow @saturnniines on twitter and tumblr! i believe moth is more active on twitter and is kind of The faroeverse guy. also the writer of the fics i'm about to send you!

SECONDLY: a collection of some of the faroeverse works! there's another one out there but i don't remember who wrote it which is sad because it's really good it takes place in the dreamlands :((

fic one, "godhood and girlhood," separates faroe's kiy fragment, jane, as her own person through her explorations of gender.

fic two, "fresh static snow," is this au's version of the yellow arc and it's actually so much sadder imo because it swaps fv!jane and canon!john. faroe gets her dead dad's fragment, arthur gets his dead daughter's fragment. very sad. there's a comic i made for it linked at the bottom of

Some other AU world stuff beneath the cut that's not necessary to know but Is very fun:

Some important other characters:

-Jane Doe. A fragment of the King in Yellow who has chosen her own identity. She's a lot more reserved than John is, her fights with Faroe are ice-cold rather than loud and aggressive, and she has a tendency towards anxiety. She's an absolute sweetheart a lot of the time. She's a transfem lesbian and her relationship with Faroe is definitely romantic, both of these facts are important to the themes of the story.

-Parker Yang (also known as Uncle Park!) Her dad's best friend, and another father figure to her when she's little. Parker shows up far earlier in the story and helps raise Faroe after the bathtub incident. He loses custody of her when Arthur dies, but they reunite when Faroe is a teenager, having run away, and pick up the old family business (aka detective agency.) He later shows up again in the story after being presumed dead, and fills the narrative role of Detective Noel.

-Daniel Saltzman. He really sucks in this timeline, he projects his loss for Bella onto Faroe and has really high pressure and expectations of her to be a "perfect woman." The narrative with him focuses less on reconciliation and forgiveness and more on how your childhood doesn't need to shape you.

-Teddy Hart. The first entirely fanmade character! He's essentially what Bella is to canon Arthur, with the added caveat of the fact that they were in a very forced marriage (see: Daniel Saltzman). He dies when Faroe, fleeing in a panic, accidentally left the stove on. The house burned down with him inside of it. There are whispers that Faroe did it on purpose. She didn't. She misses him, even if she never loved him the way she was "supposed" to.

-Alexander. Remember that kid Oscar talked about in his backstory? This is him. He's in this.

-Addison "Addy" Larson. Wally couldn't do it in this world, he couldn't sacrifice her, so she got the chance to grow up and be just as vicious and power-hungry as him. When she learned of his plans for her when she was little, she decided to complete them--by sacrificing him instead.

-Jupiter. Kayne thought it would be really really funny if this timeline had a character like Yellow too, the other half of the king imprisoned in a mortal body. They skip Faroe and goes straight to Addy.

-Denise "The Butcher" Collins. Pretty much a genderbent regular Butcher except she has some other stuff going on. She's Faroe's butch awakening (no pun intended--Faroe gets the idea to disguise herself as a man in s4 because Denise does it first). Somehow also gayer than the canon Butcher.

And now for some fun facts!

-It takes place in the early 1950s; Faroe is 29. She has access to a lighter and an aerosol can. She uses this power well.

-Faroe plays the violin, not the piano!

-Jane's voice is exactly the same as John's, just with a different cadence and speaking pattern.

-Instead of Owlexander in season 5, Faroe and Jane get a skrungly black kitten they name Bowl. Faroe carries her around in her bag or hood. It's exactly as adorable as you're imagining.

Faroeverse?

Ok SO

I've arrived to the point when I want to get into the Faroeverse.

Tell me where to start and whom to follow pls!

Are there fics? I'm aware of the surrogate series only and that's not it is all I know 😅

[thewillowbends]

I keep seeing this argument that Deckerstar is a bad pairing. It really wasn't. It was, in fact, extremely organically done up through the Fox era. Understand that it's not that Chloe and Lucifer's relationship wasn't developed past S2. It develops through S3 just fine. A key part of the narrative is that they're regressing and sabotaging themselves precisely because Lucifer isn't taking his own advice to his mother that they can only move forward not back. Deckerstar stagnates and starts to crumble in S3 because they won't let it move forward, and Lucifer realizes he has to take the leap at the end and tell her the truth so they can move forward together. So through S1-3, Deckerstar is fine. Well developed, even.

The Netflix era is where it all goes to shit, and it does for two major reasons, which I go into below the cut:

1.) Misogyny. I cannot stress how ridiculously sexist the Netflix era is. Joe and Ildy hate women. They don't realize they hate women, but they do. It infiltrates every part of the Netflix era narrative.

Up until S4, Chloe is the straight man to Lucifer's more manic behavior, but she is NOT a flat character by any means. Her acting and characterization is more subtle, but it is very complex. In fact, we know more about details about her character's backstory than we do his since the show never bothered to touch what actually happened with the rebellion. I'm not joking when I say I used to recommend this series precisely because of the female characters: not only were they well done, but they weren't young, sexy twenty-somethings. They were mature women in their thirties with lots of baggage and emotional complexity.

From S4 onward, the dive in the quality of the female characters is staggering. Linda becomes a mother and that's all she wrote, y'all. It subsumes the majority of her character's plot purpose. The therapy scenes dive in quality along with it. She goes from being one of the most interesting side characters to just...a terrible friend and therapist who serves little real plot purpose. (For that matter, TWO women get pregnant in the Netflix era, and not a single fucking moment is spent with them thinking over the choice to have this baby or how it would impact their lives, even though these are both women in their forties with difficult life situations that would make babies extremely inconvenient. It's just automatic that they want them because lol women made 4 making baby, right? Yet the two father have entire episodes dedicated to their fears and anxieties over it. Unbelievable.)

Ella was always boring and fairly flat (which is fine - she's a side character, they're supposed to be less developed!), but she finally got interesting in S5A only to be given an extremely gross storyline where her love of bad boys accidentally leads her date to a serial killer, where we then get to watch her internalize that guilt and horror in S5B instead of grappling with it meaningfully. S6's solution to this is to let her meet the man she "needs" to treat her right. Also gross. (At least she got to grapple with it somewhat, I guess. You know who also dated and was manipulated by a serial killer but never got any of her pathos over it examined? THE LEAD FUCKING FEMALE CHARACTER.)

Maze is just....completely fucking off the rails. Her character is abrasive and abusive but never has any meaningful repercussions for any of it but is then framed as badass and assertive. Punching people doesn't make her a strong woman. She's just a violent asshole who expecting everybody to serve her emotional needs while overlooking theirs.

Goddess goes from having one of the most complex, fascinating, and moving antagonist arcs in the whole series in S2 to showing up in S5B just so she can take her abusive husband back. In other circumstances, this would be fine because they're gods and human rules, power dynamics, and morals don't need to apply, but compounded with all of the other misogyny around it, it's awful.

Eve is...holy shit. I cannot even begin to start with how clearly she was only ever designed to be a Deckerstar cockblock who shoves Chloe out of the colead role so they don't have to develop her. She's great in S4 right up until they no longer need her, and than she just goes completely off the rails. They literally make her the crazy, hysterical ex girlfriend wrecking Lucifer's life. When she showed up in 5B, I nearly had a fucking aneurysm, y'all. Imagine having such a great character and completely fucking wasting her the way they did. Moreover, imagine sticking her in an f/f pairing that had so much incredible potential to be interesting but which was just thrown together because lmao, bisexual people just be like that, right? Our love lives don't require development or complexity. (Or sex! Because you can bet that once these women are in romantic, loving, monogamous relationships, their sexual desires barely exist. It's all tepid kisses and sultry jokes but passion goes out the door, apparently. Bis and gays can marry, y'all, but we apparently can't fuck. Oh, and we definitely got to Hell at the end of the day, too!)

Oh, but I can imagine wasting her because the most wasted female character of them is Chloe Decker, the literal fucking colead. What goes wrong in the Netflix era is a lengthy list of issues, but perhaps the biggest one I see people skimming over is that they never bothered to give their female colead an actual character arc. After S3, Chloe stops being a person. She's just a thing to move around on the chess board for Lucifer's character. Her character background is routinely gutted to serve the plots of other characters, particularly male characters, usually in the pursuit of ANGST. We spent three seasons watching Chloe deal with things in a fairly logical, rational manner, even when she was scared or didn't understand things. In S4, we toss that all away because having Chloe turn into a hysterical women who runs off to another fucking continent so we can have some dumb betrayal plot that splits Deckerstar apart AGAIN for an entire season and so we can shove Chloe's storyline aside so they don't have to tackle the miracle reveal. S5A manages to be a brief, shining moment where my bad bitch S1 Chloe returns, but then right back into S5B we're shoving her into a passive role where she exists to be sad about Lucifer and....nothing fucking else. S6 is...I cannot even begin fam. They gut her character's history of having her father literally murdered and her daughter kidnapped by a corrupt cop so they can prop up Amenadiel's story by making her the stupid white woman who doesn't understand racism and thinks the system is perfect.

SHE WAS MARRIED TO A LATINO MESTIZO MAN. HER DAUGHTER IS A MESTIZO LATINA GIRL. IN WHAT FUCKING REALITY WOULD SHE NOT KNOW WHAT RACISM IS? SHE LITERALLY HELPED LUCIFER AND AMENADIEL IN TWO DIFFERENT SEASONS GET A YOUNG BLACK MAN OFF UNFAIR CHARGES. IN WHAT REALITY DID CHLOE DECKER EVER FUCKING THINK THE SYSTEM WASN'T FLAWED? SHE'S LITERALLY A VICTIM OF POLICE CORRUPTION. JESUS CHRIST. IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY.

And then there's...God, so much else in S6 that's just jaw droppingly sexist, the kind that's almost shocking on television in the year 2021. She can't have the piece of the blade because power makes her going fucking insane, apparently. She finds out she's going to be a mother in episode 5 but literally doesn't bother checking that she's pregnant until four episodes later??? Her daughter from her previous marriage stops mattering as much as the one she has with Lucifer?? What?? She suffers through six seasons of obstacle to be with Lucifer, gets a whole six months with him, and then she spends the rest of her human life alone, raising two children by herself, having to lie and traumatize her children to maintain some stupid goddamn time loop. (How insulting to stay at home and single parents to act as though the work they do every day isn't extremely difficult, time consuming, and draining.)

No big deal, though, guys, because life is just a blip you see! The writers told us so! (We won't get into how grossly evangelist that thinking is, not to mention thematically contradictory - if life is a blip, why the fuck is it determining human eternity?? Why does fixing racism or other damaged human systems matter??) Because women literally exist just to suffer for the men to do what they need to in this story, apparently. Their feelings and desires don't matter. Chloe watches her daughter fade away in 6x10 telling Lucifer to abandon her and apparently has not one word to say edgewise. It's all good!

One final note on the miracle reveal...let this go down as the single most outrageously wasted thing I've ever seen introduced in a show. You literally have a character who is a gift from God, and that's what you come up with? Literally, thousands of options to play around with why she was put there, abilities and purpose that could have linked her arc to Lucifer's to develop alongside his to prop up the narrative...and they blew it. They had THREE SEASONS to come up with something interesting, and they just don't. It's just mindblowing to me. I cannot imagine being that incompetent as a writer.

But conclusion: they didn't view Chloe as a person the way they did Lucifer. They didn't see her story as valuable as his, so they never bothered creating an arc. The problem is that she is the COLEAD OF THE NARRATIVE and a huge part of Lucifer's life, so by crashing her narrative, they also crashed his, because the two are intertwined.

2.) The writers saw Deckerstar not as key part of the narrative that drove Lucifer's character development and propped up a key part of the found family theme but as a way to consistently frustrate the audience and keep them engaged by constantly keeping them waiting for the payoff that never came.

Think of all the great moments Lucifer and Chloe have with other partners that they never have with each other. Think of all the great couples moments that get handed over to other, less important couples in the show.

Eve gets the devil face kiss with Lucifer. Chloe never gets anything like this with him.

Marcus gets Chloe's an emotional confession about the pain of her father's death. She never even gets to discuss this with Lucifer after.

Eve (and lots of other men and women) gets to have fun, kinky sex with Lucifer. Chloe has passionate, public sex with Pierce. Lucifer and Chloe never do either of these things together. They're the lead couple, and they get a whole two barely PG-13 sex scenes, one of which canonically leads to pregnancy.

Eve and Maze get a big wedding scene. Amenadiel gets to commute and be with his family and see them grow. Lucifer and Chloe get neither of these things.

Trixie gets to talk about her mother being happy with Pierce in S3. She has a big, powerful family moment with Lucifer and Eve in S4. In S5B, Lucifer doesn't hold Trixie and Chloe in their moment of grief over Dan's death, while other characters openly embrace in the background. Instead, Deckerstar has two fights across two episodes instead of finding comfort with each other. In fact, all of the great little family moments we expected with TRIXIE after S5? Went to Rory instead. Trixie gets tossed to the side.

Rory's sole purpose in the narrative, just like Eve, is to split Deckerstar up.

The thing that should kill you is that they did this on purpose. They told us they did. Joe openly said they wanted to frustrate fans. They basically damaged their own story and found family narrative, stripping away all the emotional intimacy from S5B and S6 that would have propped up the underlying themes in order to make fans want more by giving them nothing. For six seasons, we waited to see Deckerstar get together and be happy together...and we couldn't even have that. They never get a fucking break. Amenadiel gets handed the story and rewards of a narrative that Lucifer did all the work to receive. In the end, Deckerstar literally exists just to generate angst. We were asked to invest and then never got paid the dividend of that investment.

tl;dr it's not that Deckerstar is a bad pairing. It's that the writers actively sabotaged it by being sexist idiots with no respect for their lead characters' narrative. They went for the laziest, most superficial route possible to drum up drama and pretend it was deep. Great job, guys! You gave D&D a run for their money for fucking up the landing, that's for sure.

[honourablejester]

Shadow & Bone Reaction

Okay, so I watched Shadow & Bone last night. Stayed up until 5am to manage it, so this is going to be muddled, but howandever. Spoilery and involved first impressions from someone who has not read the books below:

Right, so the Ketterdam crew are my favourites. Obviously. This was guaranteed

All three of them, I cannot decide between them

Jesper is a gambling addict which does grind my miserly gears a bit, but he’s also lovely and adorable and quite possibly the most badass person on the show, which is an achievement, and his interactions with Inej are beyond adorable, so I love him with all my heart

That thing Inej said to Alina? Whenever you need it, my hand is yours? That is me for Inej. More on this later

Kaz is a vicious little gremlin of a man with a badly hidden streak of loyalty, and he’s exactly my stripe of guile antihero, so of course I adore him madly

The absolute chaos of them just … accidentally poking their oars into the entire rest of the plot is beautiful beyond belief. They’re just there and mucking things up for everybody like someone threw a bag of spanners into an engine, and it’s beautiful

I was surprisingly really on board for Mal and Alina. Particularly them as kids, this pair of tiny scrappers against the world

I also loved the whole First Army part at the beginning. Like, Mal’s pair of friends, Mikael and Dubrov, they’re adorable (and I fucking screamed later, with the machine gun, you bet), him and Alina in the camp, his friends teasing him about her, him stealing Grisha grapes for her. The show got right in on the friendship and the love there, and honestly I was there for it

The Darkling, on the other hand …

Right. So. I expected him to maybe be … more subtle than he was? I mean, I think everyone’s expecting him to go villain here, so it probably wasn’t supposed to be that subtle, but …

That moment where Alina decides to kiss him. After being separated from Mal, with no communication with her old life, and with Kirigan being all sad and incredibly intense at her at random moments. Like. Long, long before we get to his whole forcibly altering her body to control her moment, I was looking at her kissing this dude and going ‘Oookay, okay lady, that’s, that’s not a good plan. I get that it’s Ben Barnes, do not blame you there, but that’s so not a good plan’

He just kept coming on so fucking strong, you know? The whole intense ‘I’ve been waiting for you my whole life’. He was bleeding desperation and control from the get go. And like, lots of people have those in this show, but where someone like Kaz or Inej feel like ‘I will stab you in the face right fucking now to get out of this alive’, Kirigan is very much, yes, ‘I will swallow your entire city in darkness and give a nice little speech about it to captive dignitaries who I’ll then murder because they shouldn’t have opened their mouths’

There’s more power there than the others, I think, so it feels less like ‘I’ll do what I have to do’ and more ‘I’ll do what I want’

Which his backstory was an interesting show on, yes, how he started out just as desperate as any of them, and then vengeance and black magic ate him. As it does. But still. He comes on too strong

(And the collar. The collar. Not even the massacre later matched that one for me, though Genya’s casual mention of him ‘gifting’ her at 11 came close. But it didn’t match the collar for visceral no. He mutilated Alina to implant a control device within her body. He can die in a ditch with his head covered in pitch and set on fire now. I can’t with him. No)

So, yes. Excellent villain, definitely, I just expected him to maybe take a bit longer to show it?

His minions are adorable, though. The two married heartrenders, Genya and the Durast she has the biggest danged crush on (gotta say, when Kirigan said he needed him for later, I was honestly expecting him to kill him for something, to hurt Genya, did not expect David to be in on the whole mutilating control collar thing)

The show did a lot of work humanising the various factions, so when you get moments like Jesper vs Ivan, round 1, you don’t want either of them to lose, because Ivan has a husband to go back to, and Jesper is Jesper. And then Jesper can’t shoot a pretty man in the face, and we’re golden

(Sidenote one: that scene was badass, holy shit, Jesper was playing with him, it was incredible)

(Sidenote two: Jesper vs Ivan, round 2? Less sympathetic on Ivan’s part)

(Sidenote three: the Ketterdam three vs Kirigan’s everybody was just, god I love them, we’re going to be straight badass all down the line, can you beat a centuries-old shadow sorcerer with a flashbang? An inferni with a knife? A heartrender with a gun while playing with him the entire time? Come to Ketterdam and find out! I love them)

Now. Now. The main thing for me. Inej. Inej and Alina and Kaz

The scene in the Little Palace where Alina shows her power. Ignoring everything that promptly went tits up for everybody. The look on Inej’s face. The look on her face. Hope and faith. From Inej, who’s been so hurt and desperate so far. Oh, that killed me. So much. I was there like, Alina, Alina, it’s not your fault, but you better be worth it, I know you don’t need the pressure but if you have to let anyone down, let it not be Inej. Not her. And Kaz Brekker, you sociopathic mushroom, do not fuck this up for her. Okay? Not this

And then he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He gives up a million kruge and potentially everything he has so he doesn’t have to break Inej’s faith. I loved him there. Right there

And like, he was trying to weasel something out of it. He was still trying to bully Alina all the way to the end, even after she saved his life, because he didn’t want to lose everything, he wanted to have some way to be able to bring Jesper and Inej back with him, because otherwise he was walking back to a city that hated him with literally nothing, since he’d mortgaged the Crow Club on Inej’s debt, and she’d walked out on him anyway, and he’d let her. So he tried to bully Alina, tried to force some way to let Inej come back, without actually forcing Inej. Just, you know, the saint she loved instead, and a woman who’d also just lost everything, and maybe could have used those jewels to stay ahead of pursuit for a while, but that’s not his problem. That’s not his problem

Kaz Brekker is a vicious horrible gremlin of a man, but not to his own, mostly, as much as he can avoid it, and like … did they know in advance what I like? Because that was it

(Him entering the fight on the skiff solely to save the other two, everyone else can die, but he’s going to dive Jesper clear of the Cut and hammer a volcra’s head in to save an unarmed Inej, that was beautiful. Even if I was a tiny bit annoyed at Inej for panicking and throwing her weapons away while outnumbered by flying things. No. Keep them close to stab anything that comes near you, honey, don’t throw them into the darkness. But Kaz saving his Crows was beautiful)

Also, to go back to Inej and Alina, just a little. How much do I love that Inej’s knife saved them all? Inej kissed her knife and planted in the Darkling’s chest, and it did fuck all to him, but then it’s the knife Alina used to take her freedom back and save them all

Inej’s knife freed Alina. Gave a slave her freedom back. Gave her saint her power. Not by killing, but as a tool to break a chain. I can’t. I really, really can’t. Whoever wrote that episode, thank you a lot

You may have guessed, I have feelings about Inej, and Alina, and Kaz, and freedom, and faith, faith in another power and faith in yourself and those you trust, and it’s all tied up in a knife and a debt, and people offering freedom to each other against their own best interests, and I really can’t with them. I can’t. I’m inarticulate over here

Like, this beautiful man did this hideous thing, made this horrible vicious collar, and then all these scared, battered little outcasts and ex-slaves and current slaves gave each other tiny moment after tiny moment after tiny moment that allowed them all to free each other

I can’t

And then Alina gave Inej her knife. The little letter opener that she’d robbed from the Little Palace. The little symbol of two tiny orphans having each other’s backs against the world. Alina gave that back to Inej

Inej’s knives are a whole thing. Kaz gave Inej a job, a way out of slavery, and it’s both joy and horror to her, freedom and damnation, she doesn’t want to kill people but that’s what knives are for, and it’s a freedom she sometimes forces herself to surrender out of trust in Kaz, and then she does kill people, but it’s to save those she cares for, to save Kaz, and then her knife saves them all as a key, not a murder weapon, and Alina, for whom knives are also a symbol of protection, for herself and those she loves, and now freedom as well, gives Inej hers as this tiny gesture that means so much …

And earlier, Kaz stopping her from killing the Conductor, and it was for his own reasons, it was because he needed the man for a job, but the fact that he did that meant that Inej’s first kill wasn’t a murder, an assassination to save herself, but a clean kill in defense of someone else. A kill she could explain to her saints. Especially the one that showed up, because Alina knows all about that

(And when her knives run out, when she’s lost them all on the skiff and is facing death, it’s Kaz who saves her, who pays his debt and preserves her freedom, because he can be trusted with them, with the knives and all they mean …)

And the two things Alina gives them. The knife for Inej, and the jewels for Kaz. A gift for the woman who saved her, and a bribe for the man who threatened her. And it’s exactly what they need. Both of them. It’s freedom and forgiveness and hope for them both. And she had no idea, she just gave what she had at the time. A saint by pure accident, like she’s been all along, but it meant the world. Sometimes all a person needs is one thing. A knife, a chance. A hope

Whoever was writing the thing with the knives, and the saints, and faith in yourself and those around you, you are a genius and I love you

And, like, I should move on. There were other things in the show. Nina and Matthias, I’ve pretty much not mentioned them at all (they are adorable, even as they’re basically Stockholming each other, and then the last episode hit, and everything was good, more or less, for everyone else, so that last fucking punch was a lot, thank you so much), I just …

Knives and faith. Inej, Alina and Kaz. I love everybody, but that was so much the thing that caught me here. That’s what I’m mostly getting out of this show right now

[hello-nichya-here]

Why are so focused on whether Ursa is an abuser or not when it is clear that the real abusers where Ozai and Azulon? And before we complain about her actions, we should take into account that Ursa was a victim of kidnapping who was forcibly bred/raped to produce super-powered heirs for the Royal Family. Considering that IRL women are traumatized by their rape babies, it is amazing, imo, that Ursa cares at all for Zuko or Azula. Especially when they take after their rapist/abuser like Azula does.

I'm going to ignore the fact that the kidnap and rape are a retcon of Ursa's original backstory (she knew Ozai her whole life, got along with him, and consented to marry him). I'm going to ignore that and answer assuming that Ursa has always hated and feared Ozai.

Yes, Ozai and Azulon are the abusers and are the ones who caused their family to turn into a tragedy. But that doesn't change the fact that Ursa (and Iroh) demonized Azula for the crime of being a misguided kid doing what her father was teaching her, while simultaneously remembering Zuko's humanity. It doesn't matter that they never meant to neglect her and make her even vulnerable to Ozai's psychological abuse - they still did it, and it was absolutely unfair.

Even "Zuko Alone", the episode that has Azula acting out and doesn't turn Ursa's neglect of her own daughter up to eleven like the comics did, shows that Ursa is making some pretty serious mistakes in her parenting. When Zuko throws the bread on the turtleducks, she is appaled but she asks him why he did what he did, yet whenever Azula acts in ways that are clearly just an immitation of the things Ozai is teaching her, Ursa asks, with Azula still in the room "What is wrong with that child?". Zuko is allowed to make mistakes and unknowingly immitate someone else's bad behavior. Azula, the younger one, should just magically know better and realize that her father, the man she was raised to believe could no wrong, is actually a piece of shit.

Ursa has every right to hate and fear Ozai and to be scared about what being raised by him could mean to Azula's future and identity. She does not have the right to blatantly favor one kid over the other, and to blame Azula for trying to please her father - a man Ursa knows is extremely manipulative.

I like Ursa. I don't believe she was bad person, and I want her to be able to reconcile with Azula - I fucking wrote an entire one-shot dedicated to that. And I do feel bad for her, especially when I imagine what it would have been like to married to a man like Ozai, regardless of whether we're talking about their original relationship or the comics relationship.

But that doesn't change the fact that Azula has every right to be mad that Ursa punished her for the things Ozai did. Ozai and Azulon are the real monsters, but Ursa and Iroh are guilty of accidentally blaming a victim of said monsters for her own abuse. Zuko and Azula are the only ones who are truly, completely innocent, because they were children, not adults who should have known better.

[strawberiitea]

anyways so currenly i'm working on a... project (?) if you will.

anyways so before i did anything i started writing notes/bullets about it to figure it out.

while it is helping, (messily albeit) i over detailed and derailed a lot

mans ended up creating hcs instead </3

but that's not what this post is about

basically i'm posting this now (not because i have a gun held to my head by trick. no. not at all :]) to share the accidental backstory i created/hc'd for wilbur with some OTHER hcs of mine (tommy and wilbur being found family specifically)

because this fandom needs more pre-l'manburg wilbur content god damn it

enjoy :]

____

(copied from my note pad)

considering how im derailing again- throwing in wandering traveller wilbur meeting this dumb little 13 year old kid with cuts and bruises. dirty clothes and mismatched socks. baby blue eyes with a gap in his teeth that fucked up his braces.

the kid touched his heart.

wilbur had this solo mindset- he was on his own, and he was all he needed. (*cough* absent phil *cough* wilbur raising himself *cough* wilbur leaving home because it wasn't ever his home to begin with)

he didnt need anyone else, he was his own company and that was Okay.

then BOOM. 13 YEAR OLD.

this gremlin child annoys him at first, but god damn this man got attached a little too quick

he starts befriending the kid because hey! he was loud and entertaining and provided good company.

he was lonely after all.

its not like he had a choice- the boy followed him around talking at him whether he liked it or not

he starts to learn more and more about this boy- how he's an orphan, how he's gotten himself into skirmishes with the server's highest authority, how he has no family or protection, or how he lives on the side of a mountain.

his heart aches for this boy he just met 3 weeks ago

he got into fights. he had no home. no family.

just like him.

so he offers the boy to take him in.

sure, it was a small van with practically no room and one bed- but it was at least an improvement from the conditions this boy has been used to his entire life.

and it was sudden for the kid. he was an annoyance, a pesky bug you want to flick off of your arm, a shadow that followed you everywhere.

truth be told he didn't know how to respond to the genuinity of the situation.

because yeah, he got attached too. they called him clingy for a reason. but he didn't expect any reciprocation.

he felt embarrassed.

it might've only been 3 weeks, and maybe they started a drug scheme last wednesday- because hey, the kid was fun to have around- but it was like they both were the family they never had. a missing puzzle piece.

in the end, the boy said yes.

also the mental image of these two dumbasses living together in this tiny van is fucking hilarious let's be real

____

that's your content for today. feast

i wrote this at like 4am and i fixated

a lot of this little "project" involves worldbuilding because mmsmmdmdmmdmworldbyilinsgjad and i actually wrote,,,, 2 other things for this,,, if y'all wanna see that,,, perhaps

i wrote fucking dialougue mans never sleeps

this is all but a base for all the things i could write for this concept

[viridiave]

NARUMITSU <ATTEMPTING TO READ THE SUBTEXT PLATONICALLY>

*Wrote all this some time last month so I might be off- really really off- also full disclosure I too am a Narumitsu shipper- this is just me giving myself a bad time doing the impossible and having fun XD

-I am going to fail sooner or later. Looking at you, Bridge to the Turnabout.

FIRST GAME >Turnabout Samurai -Yep. We're jumping right in with 'unnecessary feelings'. I'm going to be put on a stake for this. -This is going to become the main argument with any and all homoerotic subtext present in the first game- that it was unintentional. They didn't actively start making it gay until the second game, and even before then the producer for the games had to warn the development team not to try and insert these themes for fear of getting it wrong and lose the fanbase they'd accidentally caught the eye of. I can still create arguments for why this specific, hilariously meme-able line could be read romantically of course- but as far as the game development team at the time was concerned this interaction was never meant to be read as romantic. -Unease and uncertainty are... very valid feelings for Edgeworth to feel at this very moment and as much as I'd like to joke that he was feeling uncertain about his sexuality after seeing his childhood friend as an adult, this line was really just likely meant to lead up to the conclusion of Turnabout Goodbyes and Edgeworth's character arc for this game. His perfect win streak had just been shattered in a case prior. In this case, he was meant to persecute the lead actor of his favorite show- and in some ways his helping the defense can be taken as his biases getting the better of him. His sense of justice and his entire worldview is about to be overhauled, and I can see how he would regard this budding doubt in himself as an unnecessary (heh) distraction from what he believes is his true purpose in life.

>Turnabout Goodbyes -Edgeworth wanting to keep him away from DL-6 has its own section mostly because of how stubborn he becomes when it comes to Phoenix's insistence in particular. It's clear that this stubbornness is a front, I will concede with that- but there are merits to his initial reluctance in accepting Phoenix's defense. It's evident that Phoenix himself has grown over the course of the game so far, but in both of the times that he faced off against Edgeworth in court, his victories were... a tad bit contrived. For instance in Turnabout Sisters, Phoenix really only wins because Mia was being channeled and blackmailed White as he was about to leave the stand. Turnabout Samurai is a little better- but had him rely on quite a lot of coincidences (proven later to be substantiated) that surfaced during the trial. This is nothing to say of the deeper reason Edgeworth has over dissuading Phoenix from taking his case ("You in particular I cannot ask to do this.")- where I can make an argument for his pride and/or concern over Phoenix's career as an attorney. The stakes are relatively high here as well- if Phoenix fails, Edgeworth is incarcerated, Manfred von Karma goes free, DL-6 goes cold once again with no hope of getting re-opened, and everything that Phoenix has been working towards as an attorney would have been in vain. DL-6 is a case that has ruined many lives- it'd make sense if Edgeworth himself felt as though it would be a waste of time and effort to take this case because of how convinced he was of murdering his own father prior to Gourd Lake. He'd grown up for the past 15 years with a nightmare and a death sentence over his head- I wouldn't be surprised if he simply gave up and accepted that he was going to die at the hands of his prosecuting mentor. Even if he were acquitted for the murder of Robert Hammond, his perceived involvement in DL-6 would have thrown a wrench in his freedom- any lesser attorney would have given up on that. And this is unloaded BEFORE Phoenix tells him about the true reason as to why he became an attorney. -Phoenix's insistence to defend Edgeworth in this case can easily just be read as platonic- his complete, unfettered faith in Edgeworth's innocence is heavily influenced by that class trial, for better or for worse. While I'm perfectly happy to imagine that Phoenix's attachment to his idealized version of Edgeworth grew into something deeper sometime in the fifteen years that he hasn't seen him, I do believe that Phoenix in particular really is just that much of a sentimental person. This is to say nothing of his nature as a defense attorney- and what little time he's managed to spend with Mia has taught him that unbridled trust in his client is what gets him through the day, and he's putting it to practice here. Edgeworth was what he has been working towards the moment he decided he would practice law- as Phoenix at this point in time still believes that he could do no wrong despite seeing what Edgeworth is truly like in court. -Cutting into the meat of Phoenix and Edgeworth's shared past, I made a point earlier to say that Phoenix's perception of Edgeworth as a person is idealized. Every memory that Phoenix has had of Edgeworth prior to the events of the first game were from their childhood- and they had 4-8 months (plus one year if we're generous with the retconning some of the official art gave us) MAX to develop a friendship so strong that Phoenix makes major life decisions just to meet with this man. The fact that this time spent together was ENOUGH for Phoenix in the first place is... really hard to skirt around. To quote Dan from GameGrumps "this is something that you would only do for someone you're trying to marry" and if one of them was a woman I guarantee this ship would be canon already. But then again- since this is Phoenix Wright in particular somehow I can believe that he really is just that sentimental- and that isn't always a bad thing. He'd managed to save Edgeworth twice with this conviction after all. When Phoenix sees Edgeworth, he doesn't see a demon prosecutor, he sees his childhood friend who aimed to become a shining example of justice following in his father's footsteps. They address how shaky his foundations for becoming an attorney were in the Phoenix Wright Files once actually- going through a mini-existential crisis because he'd become an attorney with the main goal of saving Edgeworth from what he'd become, and now that he's accomplished that he's just kind of... lost. Edgeworth himself manages to pull him out of this, though. -man that hurts my case a lot actually but to be fair I was banking on failing -I just didn't expect it to happen so early even with the first game -in fact ESPECIALLY with the first game -though I cannot for the life of me wonder how I can come up with a heterosexual explanation for why the buildup towards Edgeworth telling Phoenix and Maya about his nightmares reads so much like a stunted love confession. I'm serious- just read any high school shojo manga ever. You'll find that it hits a lot of the same beats.

>Rise From The Ashes -It's in this case that we observe some of the consequences that the intial upheaval of Edgeworth's worldview in Turnabout Goodbyes causes him; distrust in the enforcement of the law. Not exactly the time for him to be dabbling in another, meme-able brand of unnecessary feelings. Several things like the Prosecutor's Office's relationship with the Police Department starts to waver with the murder of Bruce Goodman, and this becomes the final nail in the coffin for Edgeworth's worldviews and values as a prosecutor. His and Phoenix's teamwork in this trial becomes prevalent- the story behind the King of Prosecutors award represents this best despite it's currently incomplete state. The backstory behind this award paints an ideal of justice in the courtroom wherein the truth comes out as a result of the efforts of contradictory forces. A broken halberd that can cut through any shield (the prosecution) and a broken, unbreakable shield (the defense). Read as representation the text becomes something of a metaphor for the ideal justice that manifests itself in the best parts of Edgeworth and Phoenix respectively- the duality of their opposing professions rather than something that is limited to their relationship. -The same argument that I've used for Phoenix's unwavering belief in Edgeworth's innocence in Turnabout Goodbyes can be used for this case as well. -Though Edgeworth still goes M.I.A for a year after this case, it does grant his disappearance a bit more context as to why exactly it is that he left- and I'll be taking a tiny liberty with this and apply the interpretation that the Miles Edgeworth Files grants us, and that he left in order to better himself and grow as a person, a prosecutor, and as a friend to Phoenix Wright. It's... difficult for me to want to read this as anything but romantically-charged because the narrative beats are NOT lost on me (the dialogue makes this especially hard. send help.)- there's a possibility that Edgeworth at this point in time realizes the value in having a better, more functional dynamic with the one defense attorney who he considers a true equal in court. This dynamic will allow for less chances to encounter missteps and errors in any verdicts handed down in court, and if Edgeworth is to pursue his ideal of justice- Phoenix Wright is undoubtedly essential to this endeavor. The aftermath of Rise From The Ashes is indicative of this newfound goal of his- the symbolism behind the old King of Prosecutors award and the two halves of the evidence list certainly helps this case. -<"It seems all you do is worry about me." -Miles Edgeworth, Rise From The Ashes> For good fucking reason Edgeworth. You were accused of murder and have implicated yourself on the stand for DL-6 just a few months ago- and if the Investigations games are anything to go by, you're more of a danger magnet than PHOENIX is. I had to say it. The first Investigations game takes place over the course of 2-3 days and the sheer amount of shit that Edgeworth had to deal with in between that interval truly makes me wonder how Phoenix Wright ended up with the title of danger magnet. And THIS time- Edgeworth's car becomes a crime scene because his corrupt superiors needed a convenient way of transporting a corpse. There's VERY good reasons to worry about the livelihood of Miles Edgeworth. -Okay I... can't believe I forgot about the chessboard. Here's the kicker- the one we see from his office isn't even the only one he owns. I... legitimately cannot give you ANY purely heterosexual, platonic explanation for why Miles Edgeworth has THREE (THREE. I CANNOT OVERSTATE THIS. HE HAS T H R E E OF THESE FUCKING THINGS. GOOD GOD. HE CAN'T BE ANY MORE EXTRA.)(there exists a similar, portable set in the Investigations games- and he has a new set by the time of Dual Destinies) sets of custom-made chessboards with personalized, highly-specific red and blue designs made purely to depict his rivalry with Phoenix Wright. I fold. I give up. I forgot about the chessboards I wAS NOT EXPECTING TO FAIL THIS E A R LY- -You know what the real kicker is with Rise From the Ashes? The main argument that I have introduced back in Turnabout Samurai does not apply here. Rise From the Ashes was made as a DS-exclusive case and did not exist in the original GameBoy version of the Trilogy. Which means if there is homoerotic tension written in for this case (and there happens to be a lot. the chessboard is proof enough.), then we can safely assume that the writers at this point were well-aware. So yeah- maybe don't feel TOO bad about the unnecessary feelings line- because ever since then the writers have been playing off of that and it SHOWS. -Is there really a point to this I'm just- everything is stacked against me tryna interpret this platonically -Like I know I make a point to say that a romantic relationship isn't the end-all of all relationships because this franchise LOVES pushing the Found Family dynamic and I'm an absolute sucker for that -good god by the time Dual Destinies rolls around I'll probably just give up and happily say they're happily married -that's literally what they act like don't even pretend

[cyberdva]

The Haunting Of Queen Mary's Castle-  C.B  ~P.1☆

 ☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

Main Masterlist

Colby Brock Masterlist

Summary: Sam and Colby had the bright idea to drag their friends to Scotland, and where would the perfect video location be? How about Queen Mary’s haunted castle? It didn’t help that aspiring physic, Y/N wasn’t too happy to head out of the country, but Colby was there to help. And maybe he wanted something more than being there to help her. Could the spirits be on his side for once?

Word Count: 4k

Date Uploaded:  8/31/20

Warnings: Cursing

A/N: This fic is from the vault. I wrote this around January of this year, I start school again in two days and the work and stress load is going to be horrible, especially with it being half in person, half online. I hope to get some more creativity back when more pressure is put on me. I have plenty of ideas with just not enough passion and time. It’ll trickle back one day.

 ☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

“Holy Shit…” Colby held his camera closer to his chest as he walked closer towards the breathtaking Neidpath Castle. It’s aura seemed to engulf the curiosity of the young man. His friends splurged on a ten hour trip to Scotland for a quick Youtube video series, he knew near the end, half of them would be begging to go home. The comical routine played its key role in every single episode, no matter what the occasion was. It did make good money to be completely honest. Although, that wasn’t the main focus of their careers. He found himself under a tall bridge-like banister connecting its way to the entire estate. Next to him was his long time roommate, Corey. He sported a bright yellow hoodie in large contrast with Colby’s black one. It was sort of funny, each of his friends had a unique personality, yet connected so well. Of course, they were wearing their own merch. It helped the sales go up, not to mention it was awfully comfortable. A perk to the business if you say.

“And we thought the church was cool…” Sam, Colby’s best friend and other handler of the videography series on their channel, gaped in front of him. This place was bigger than any other private plot they’ve ever visited! It was a couple thousand dollars to rent out for the night, but with the palace’s history it was born to make a hefty income.

“We have this all to ourselves!” Colby nudged Sam, he handed the camera off to his friend Jake, who was talking a mile a minute to the other attendees. A new face poked out of the regular bunch.

“Are you gonna catch me when I get scared, Y/N?” Jake stuck his face in the view of the content woman. Her persona seemed quite drained due to the long trip. She was partially new to the Youtube platform, especially with ghost hunting. Not like Y/N was easily frightened, unlike her friends, it just wasn’t her go to for a cheap thrill. Nerves were indefinitely strained, since it was the first time out with the entire group. Nothing Jake couldn’t fix.

Her laugh trickled out blissfully, ”Wouldn’t Tara get jealous? You don't want to get on her bad side? Do you?” He quickly shook his head and gave a hesitant reply with his sheepish smile.

“We get this all to ourselves?” Colby queried. This place was double the size of the Trap House by far, they had to be scared shitless by the time they left. There had to be some sort of restrictions or a down sided catch to it all.

“Did you do any research on this place?” Y/N  slid up behind the unfocused main man, a small quirk to her. Colby jumped a smidge in light shock. He wasn’t expecting anyone to be genuinely interested with the property. Colby mentally cursed for being so jumpy.

“Jesus Y/N, you scared the shit out me.” He replied, not answering the girl’s question. Y/N met Sam and Colby way back in highschool. Each of them slithered their way into the other’s channels and have made frequent appearances. They definitely weren’t strangers, even though it seemed that way with fans. Y/N had more paranormal encounters out of all of the boys, despite a bit of distaste towards the topic. She was lugged around on long adventures to help them with videos. Some of her videos ranged from ‘‘accidentally’ joining a cult to “selling her soul”. She was the wicca-pedia they needed to not get possessed each trip.

“Ok pussy.” She walked off to talk to Corey, the pair oddly all had a strong connection from somewhere, and Colby sighed as to quickly put on his cheery online persona once more.

Sam waved up at a vacant window as the group, “Hello!” The woman replied unknowingly and aroused quite a shock of embarrassment. A faint giggling came from the couple in the back, “No,no, I do it better.” Corey got a hold of herself, “A Ra-Ta-Ta-tah.” The two burst back into their ceremonial laughs and briefed on about some TikToks they watched on the remotely silent ride from the airport. 

Sam turned back around to see the shorter woman. Notwithstanding her first place in line, “How is he gonna get a kiss kiss? Very ugly to me!” The duo rounded up to each other and laughed on their way up the trail, leaving the others confused and focused on talking to the groundskeeper.

“I’m assuming you are the caretaker of this?” The blonde one waved more at the older woman. She seemed more on the reserved side and peeled her eyes at the sight of a camera. A lovely addition to the already uncomfortable scene.

The woman gracefully approached Sam, “Yes, Yes I am. My name is Katrina.” Sam went on with the lady into a dark back door. The young adults glanced on in uncertainty. 

“Yo, why are they going off by themselves?” Colby asked Jake. The first rule of all of their videos was not to go off by yourself. Bad shit always follows. “He literally was like-”

“He’s been looking at her ass like all day.” Jake joked back, Corey attentively diverted himself from Y/N to get a jump in on whatever that conversation had morphed to.

“That’s whatever the fuck he was doing.” They all snickered and continued on with the inappropriate jokes. Editing this would be like a field day to Reggie.

“Is Kat gonna think…” Colby looked around jokingly, getting another round of laughter from the friends.

“I don’t know..” Colby softly replied. He pressed on to dumbfoundedly impersonate Sam’s girlfriend, “Oh it’s not cheating if he’s not in the same country.”

“It’s sexual relations Jake.” Y/N whispered at him. They continued to poke fun out of the cougar-lady, but her and Sam rushed back soon enough. Just in time to ask questions. 

“Uh, that was pretty much the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Sam pulled everyone aside with a smug look on his face. He honestly always had one of those. The blank stares that were thrown back at him weren’t what he expected. 

“Uh Sam what does that mean.” Jake chuckled. He looked around at everyone not able to catch on. The seriousness of the situation began to settle as everyone genuinely thought Sam could have done some weird shit with that groundskeeper.

“All I have say is that was quick man…” Colby scraped some gunk off of her nails while waiting for following instructions.

Sam obviously didn’t understand, “To fill you guys in I had to learn, kind of, where all the specific light switches were. I didn’t even look around. I just kinda looked at the ground until she saw.”

“You were like that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” Colby turned the camera to focus on him and Jake mocking Sam’s slight happiness by seeing fancy rocks.

“It was only the stairs!” Sam said defeatedly, he didn’t want to spoil the real first looks.”That’s just giving you a little hint, but um, I asked her if she could you know fill us in on some of the information of, likewise castles here, the hauntings or any deaths and she said she knows some information.”

“Oh cool…” Colby was already quite unenthusiastic about this idea anyways. Katrina retreated out of the building quickly with keys in her hand. She sprinted over to all of them.

“Look it’s Sam’s new girlfriend!” Y/N cheered. Sam spun his head around, probably pulling a muscle in the process. The pure look of utter horror could not be more hysterical. Sam became flustered with a loss for words, his face tinted with a light shade of pink. Before he could muster up any sort of retort Katrina, the groundlady, came jogging back to the group.

“What’s some of the backstory about this castle?” Jake asked, he spun some rings around in his hand. Paying no mind to the other plot line adhering to his right.

“This castle was built in the second half of the 14th-Century, but there was another castle built before that in here. That was built in 110,so uh.” Few ‘Wows’ and ‘Oohs’ cut her off. “That was quite a while ago, but the Neidpath was built by the Family Of Fraser’s and they built a Buddha made castle. This one was burned down by the English army. After a guy named Simon Fraser, who’s the cousin of Braveheart, was captured and executed and that’s why the Buddha made the castle was burned to the ground. Another family built this castle, which was besieged in 1650 by the Cromwellian army. Legend says that this was the only stronghold of the Scottish borders which actually withstanded the siege. Whether it’s true or not, we don’t know, but what we do want you to know is that one-third of the castle collapsed, non-existing anymore.” She spoke with absolute passion. The place had so much rich history, the surrounding observers listened with extreme intent, not to miss one sentence in case it may help their investigation.

Colby raised his eyebrows at this question, “One-third of it?”

Katrina continued on, “Because of the siege. We do have a dungeon in the castle as well.” Everyone went silent.

“A dungeon?!” Jake nearly dropped a silver band he was picking on by the mention of this. His personality perked up and suddenly the whole crowd was uplifted. Finding weird places in “abandoned” areas is always a plus side, but this tops all of it.

“Guys shut up!” Y/N whacked Jake with her phone, he stuck his tongue out while rubbing his shoulder. She didn’t want to leave too bad of a first impression. It would be mortifying if something went wrong and the owner already hates you.

“Is there a dragon?” Corey brought everyone back to the topic of the castle, he didn’t want to be there a minute longer, but in this group you just do what you’re told and shut your mouth.

“We do have quite a big colony of bats under the roof, so I’m not sure if you really want to go down there Mister.” The group laughed and groaned at Katrina’s statement. Running into bats could be the worst thing to encounter.

Corey nodded in response, “So there are dragons.”

The history went on, “It was quite widely used during the 14th and 15th century because that was the only reason for the whole county.” The darker side of it all became slowly prevalent. It wasn’t just a posh place the others expected it to be. 

“Prison?” Sam posed. This just got a lot weirder than they all expected.

“Yes. You’ll be able to get into it because there is this rough opening through, which was made in the 17th century, but before that the only entrance to the dungeon was through the trap door from the guards. I should have shown you that, but I’m not going to. You’ll find it by yourself.

“Oh god…” Colby rubbed the bridge between his nose, an inevitable  headache was beginning to form.

Sam tittered, “Are we just going to fall through? Is that ok?” He got no proper answer, which set his worries on the run.

“So, the last prisoner was there in 1594, I think. We know there was a teenage boy like a 14 year old boy who was just pick pocketing people and he ended up here. The note didn’t say that he actually came out of there again.”

“Like meaning it’s haunted?” Colby preyed on.

“Uh, it is haunted!” Katrina stated blandly.

“Fun for us!” Y/N shrugged to hide her panic. Colby glanced at her. He sensed her anxiousness, he didn’t want her to be upset. Definitely not in the shitty environment. Of course, he cared for her, he just didn’t know how to open up and tell her. Would this really be the place?

“We do have our own one. Her name is Jean Douglas. She died in 1750, she was the daughter of one of the owners of the castle and she died of a broken heart.” The mood fell, a breeze pulled through and messed with the mics. Leaving just a sprinkle of static in the footage. Just in time.

“She was engaged to a young man, but he wasn't wealthy enough to win her family over, so he went abroad to win his fortune and fame and because he was away for far too long she went really sickly and pale and she didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep, so she was really frail when he finally came. When he was riding his horse through the archway she was at the window and he failed to recognize her because she was so altered and broke her heart and she died on the spot.”

The group had a silent reaction to the news, not knowing how to react.

“Ever since then she is walking through the castle being very tall, very gray, very pale looking, weeping.”

“What’s her name again?”

“Jean.” A tiny shiver racked through Sam’s body. He didn’t tell anyone. Just not to set anyone off. Now he really didn’t want to face this spirit.

“Have you ever seen Jean?” Y/N asked, trying her best not to be insensitive with the approach. These things are held really close to some people. Their experiences could be life changing, for others it could most certainly be a lot different.

“No, but I do have ghostbusters coming in several times a year and I asked what was the best recording ever and they were like ‘We got brilliant ones of screams.” 

“Ah..”

“And I was like inside of the castle. I’m here sometimes on my own in the middle of the night at midnight, one, two, three o’clock. When I have to lock up after the events and such. Do I really want to do that with screams in my head? No I don’t, I said no.”

“Alright sounds like it’s a nice haunted Scottish castle.” Sam tried his best to play off his uncomfortable feelings with humor. It did not work.

“I’m going to do the dungeon now. I’m not telling you what I’m going to do now and then the place will be yours” Katrina headed back into the castle with an odd vibe. 

“So, she’s gonna make us fall down the trap door, wow.” Jake leaned in for slight commentary.

“How much do you want to bet that we’re going to die?” Y/N grabbed her backpack to locate her wallet and pulled out a twenty.

“I bet 15.” Corey grabbed his wallet too.

“Guy, that is so sad though…” Colby came into the center of all of them, “Ok, that story. Imagine your husband comes home on a little horse and you're in this window, literally right there and then you die on the spot because he's like ‘Who’s that?’ It’s a tall, frail old lady that’s crying everywhere.” Colby clung to his sweatshirt, “Oh that’s so creepy!”

“Colby if you ever do that to me you’ll have to go back to VidCon alone again.” Y/N was putting in her best bet and threw a five at him. “You can use that for your ticket.” He blushed, just like Sam moments before.

Sam added more commentary from behind the camera, “They’ve heard screams within the castle.” Katrina came right back out with her deafening personality, handed the keys to Sam and hopped right back in her small, blue car, and left with no exchange of words.

“She creeps me out.” Jake in discomfort. To be fair, she is a creepy ass old lady who owns a castle in the middle of nowhere.

Corey turned away from the groundskeeper's car and shrugged off his jitters, "So we have a castle to ourselves...”

“This is amazing!” Sam couldn’t contain his excitement.

“No Shit. I still can’t grasp why you all buyout expensive stuff like a castle.” Y/N gripped the abundance of bet money and slid it all bad into her bag.

Colby inspected the property more in depth, as if he was waiting for a ghoul to poke out at any given time, “This is where we’re staying tonight.” With a grand motion upwards Sam panned the camera up and down.

“And you guys...” Sam pulled the camera away from the stronghold and directed the frame to the rest of his friends,”..have not even seen the inside at all.”

“I know, I know.” Colby pulled his beanie down his head, the enlightened sun seemed to cascade into the clouds with a faint breeze.

“Let’s go find our cottage, get ourselves completely set up and ready for the night. Take some pictures before sun down and then go into the castle, because like we can’t lose this sunset and we got to figure this out.” Sam did some weird hand movements in front of the camera and handed it off to the other’s opinions.

Colby nodded his head up and down in agreement,” Yeah definitely.” Jake wandered around with a rock and for the most part everyone said eye to eye.

“Unfair treatment. I wanted to go in now.” Y/N gave a side glance to Sam and Corey brushed his hand over her playfully. She walked back into frame,“All I gotta say is, Colby Brock Hot Edits.” Colby walked up next to her with a shit-eating grin in approval. Who doesn’t love Colby Brock edits?”

“Shut up, you’re just jealous that there’s no Y/N L/N hot edits for you.” He playfully jabbed back at her with a growing flutter in his stomach. He fucking hated that feeling to no end, but it was such a drug. Only when she was around.

“Alright let’s go, I’m bored as shit.” Jake came back with his new pet rock and put his arm around Corey. Sam cut the camera and went down the forked path. Right down the road was a cottage for visitors.

“Hey Y/N,” Colby came jogging up to the colleen, “Did you see any weird stuff yet?” He shoved his hands in his pockets, a symptom of his bashfulness, he began to rethink his uncolorful wording in his sentence. He just had the sudden urge to go up to her and she wasn’t complaining one bit.

She looked over at him, “No, not yet. I just got really put-off by that lady. She just was so…” Her eyes connected with his and a glistening highlight overcame the peaking iris. The words weren’t verbally there, but he understood what was there.

Sam cut her off, “Dude. Look how big this place is.” It was rationally smaller than their house back in LA, but it was sizable for an ancient brick living space.

Jake made the most commotion out of the seven, “Whoever is first picks where they sleep!” He dashed ahead of the group and everyone picked up speed, almost dropping the rock he just adopted.

“I think there’s only like three beds.” Sam panted. No one paid much mind to him and kept running. They all toppled into the door and Corey unlocked it, which left the rest to run up to a room. Jake took the first one to the left, Sam tumbled into the one across. A room had a small couch for Corey and last, but not least…

“Looks like we’re bunking L/N.”

“Fuck you Brock.”

Sam peaked his head in, “Guys, we have film some shots of the place. Come on.” The three made it to the living room where all and sundry were. Sam grabbed his camera and got everyone in shot.

“What?!” With grand motions each person stood up in their acts of shock. Even though it had been there for a solid five minutes the audience always has to be entertained.

Colby turned around, “Yo! We got a TV too!” A small Toshiba was put on a step stool. It would probably gain no use tonight anyways. It looked like a piece of crap too, thank god for Youtube.

They all got up from their seats and went to uncover the rest of the place, “This is nice, very cool.” Colby led them into Corey’s room. A huge bed frame was around a pink canopy bed. Old photos and paintings of the fortress were hung evenly around the perimeter. Sam went through the rest of the rooms and told everyone to head off and get ready.

The guys took cold showers and Y/N soaked in a muddled bath in the basement. She didn’t like it here. Her mind couldn’t unravel much. Sam was stationed upstairs doing a camera touch up with Jake by his side talking about the new Harry Styles album. A half an hour later everyone was wearing at least one faction of Sam and Colby merch, phones were charged and beams from flashlights slid across the floor like a jumping snake.

The group divided into pairs as they walked to the castle. The sky grew much darker than expected and it felt like a looming spirit chipped away at the warm function of friends. The camera was whipped right back out.

“Alright, we are all showered, changed, and ready to explore the castle before sunset.” All went under the arch while the audio was whacked around by the wind.

Colby turned from his conversation to the viewers, "I’m still like flipping out that we’re staying here tonight. That’s crazy!” His lantern swung below him and the towering castle was engulfed by the purple skies. “Look at this place! Look at that beautiful sunset!” He yelled.

Y/N raised her eyebrows, “Since when were you PG-13?”

He blandly stared at her,”Shut up I need to make money,” He looked back at the camera, “When I was like blow-drying my hair and stuff after my shower, my hair dryer was insanely powerful. There’s obviously a lot of energy in it, like the voltage.” 

“I thought he said blow-j-.” Corey chimed in. He shut himself up so they wouldn’t get demonetized, it would be a funny way to go down though. Y/N and Colby giggled along with him. It wasn’t a rare occasion that they all were out laughing and joking, just the side chick with the haunted castle. 

Corey swung his flashlight up and down, “His blow dryer started smoking and like almost blew up.”

“So, what I’m saying is the spirits could use all of this energy to talk to us.”

They all made it to the castle and it was around five-thirty. There wasn’t much to do at this time, but she was always watching. There was something about to happen they could all feel it and that thing, it wasn’t going to be good.

 ☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

Part 2? Send me an ask if you want it!!

[oumakokichi]

Welcome back!!! I’m not sure if you’re taking any requests regarding analyses/meta, but if you’re looking for any ideas/when you have the time, do you mind doing a character analysis on Shuichi Saihara? I understand that he’s the main character but there is a lack of analyses about him. Although there are few, most explore his role as a protagonist/relationships with the others rather than digging deep into his character/personality. I just feel like there is more to him.

Hi anon, thank you so much! I’d be happy to write a character analysis for Saihara. I’m pretty sure I wrote some pieces specifically about his character back in the day, but those are all pretty old by now, and there’s definitely so much to talk about with his character.

Obviously discussing Saihara in-depth will cover spoilers for the entire game, so be careful when reading!

It’s interesting that you bring up the fact that Saihara tends to lack more character analyses, because I feel like this is kind of the result of a few different factors. First of all, there’s the fact that he was never originally advertised as the game’s protagonist. I know that the bait-and-switch with Kaede left many people conflicted; even years later, I see a lot of people saying that while they like Saihara a lot, they would’ve preferred for Kaede to live, or that they still don’t know quite how to feel about his role as a protagonist as a result.

Combine that with the fact that Saihara is simply so different in his role in the game than either Naegi or Hinata were, and I think this leaves a lot of people either uninterested in analyzing him as an individual character or unclear of where to start. Ndrv3’s themes as a whole are such a drastic departure from the Hope’s Peak arc of the first two games that Saihara himself sometimes tends to get overlooked, despite the fact that I firmly believe no one would have worked better as the protagonist of the game precisely because of these very different themes.

This itself is an interesting proposal, because at the same time, I also believe that ndrv3’s cast had the biggest potential for every single character to be the “protagonist” of their own narrative. Not only is this just straight-up alluded to with the reveal that Kiibo was actually the audience proxy, and therefore the “protagonist” through which most of the audience were experiencing the killing game in chapter 6, but we even get brief playable moments with both Maki and Himiko, further driving home the narrative that these characters all had the potential to be the main character. You could even argue that the abundance of ahoges in the ndrv3 cast is a tongue-in-cheek joke about how many people must have had “protagonist syndrome” when auditioning for the show.

But having a cast full of potential main characters still doesn’t negate the fact that Saihara was simply the best choice possible for the protagonist of ndrv3 specifically. I don’t believe we would’ve had nearly the same experience without viewing most of the events through the lens of his inner narration and character growth, and that his specific role in the story as the detective was the perfect way to encapsulate the game’s themes of truth and lies.

Let’s begin by discussing Saihara’s actual personality: he’s timid, riddled with anxiety, and incredibly prone to doubting himself and his own abilities. These traits are at the core of his arc of character development throughout the story, as he constantly struggles with his own feelings of inadequacy and lack of self-worth despite being the most vital contributor to everyone’s survival in the class trials.

Even before he’s revealed to be the true protagonist of the game, these traits are incredibly easy to see from an outside lens. By playing as Kaede, however briefly, we nonetheless get a good look at what Saihara is like even in chapter 1; his lack of self-esteem and debilitating issues with anxiety and doubt are, if anything, even more noticeable when put into such stark contrast with Kaede’s optimism, self-confidence, and attempts to bolster the group into working together and believing in one another.

In fact, it’s through Kaede that we first get a glimpse of Saihara’s backstory, and slowly come to understand that his timidity and anxiety are largely shaped by his past trauma. Saihara feels personally responsible for ruining a man’s life after accidentally uncovering the truth of the man’s crimes, then later learning that he was attempting to get revenge on the person who murdered his entire family. The knowledge that he not only ruined this man’s attempts at revenge, but that this person actively hates him with a passion, has left Saihara emotionally scarred and deeply afraid of even maintaining eye contact with others.

As simple as this little bit of backstory is, I really love it in all of its presentation, because even in chapter 1, it begins to paint a much clearer picture of what Saihara is like. His inability to say no to people and attempts to please everyone begin to make a lot more sense knowing that he is incredibly afraid of being hated or blamed by other people. His reluctance to come into his own as a detective or acknowledge his obvious talent makes perfect sense knowing that he can never fully “bring justice” to a number of crimes, and that his job is by definition one that sometimes makes other people miserable by shedding a light on the truth—even when, sometimes, it might be better to leave the truth covered up.

This established backstory also immediately sets Saihara apart from previous protagonists like Naegi and Hinata, by first shaping him into a separate character who we get to know in chapter 1, and only later re-introducing him as the actual protagonist of the game. This isn’t to say that Naegi and Hinata don’t have established character flaws, or that we don’t know anything about their life prior to the killing game. But these two are very clearly set up to be more of the “everyman” protagonist than Saihara ever was: characters who the reader can insert themselves into by some degree, and whose primary traits tend to revolve around feeling “average” or “mundane” in a way that your typical reader will usually relate to much more quickly.

This makes sense for the Hope’s Peak arc shared by both dr1 and sdr2. These games in particular are centered around the narrative of a “talent-driven society” where only the most talented, elite in their field are rewarded with entry into the “best school in the country”—a narrative that is no doubt supposed to be commentary on Japan’s extremely competitive academic system and society in real life.

With Naegi, we see perhaps the best example of a truly average, normal person thrust into a group of these whacky elites. We trust Naegi almost instantly as a protagonist, specifically because his lack of any particular superpower-like talent makes him more relatable to the reader. And his contributions to the trials and eventual friendships with the other students are meaningful precisely because they prove that you don’t need these incredible talents or make outstanding contributions to society in order to be a fundamentally good person who helps others and forges real, genuine bonds with people.

Hinata’s narrative takes this idea of averageness among “the elite” and takes it a step further in terms of narrative complexity: not only does Hinata lack any sort of talent or trait that would make him stand out, but specifically because of this, he desperately craves a talent of his own. Hinata is incredibly easy for readers to relate to as someone who, in a competitive society where talent is everything, feels useless and meaningless without an elite-level talent of his own. This struggle with identity and self-worth in a talent-driven society is something that most readers will also have experienced on some level, and so makes Hinata instantly relatable and likable for most people.

Which takes us back to Saihara—again, I want to stress how different the setup for his backstory and even his personality are from our previous two protagonists. Saihara isn’t meant to be a self-insert for the reader, or instantly identified with the same way Naegi and Hinata were.

Even other bits and pieces of his backstory and home life, which we learn from his FTEs with Kaede in chapter 1, as well as portions of their salmon mode together, show how incredibly eccentric Saihara is compared to the other two. Saihara doesn’t come from what one might call a “typical home life.” He’s estranged from his wealthy, celebrity parents, and lives with his uncle, who is also a detective. His FTEs reveal that he’s spent his time wrestling alligators and, to put it nicely, being a huge weirdo for most of his life. He’s not our “everyman protagonist” by any means; he’s yet another whacky Danganronpa character who happened to be thrust into the protagonist spotlight through his role as a detective.

In short, Saihara is not what most people would expect from a protagonist in any story, let alone a DR game. He’s certainly not the “everyman,” between his established backstory and somewhat eccentric home life. And he doesn’t have the usual set of traits most people would expect from a protagonist, either. Unlike Naegi and Kaede, who are by and large optimistic, cooperative, and somewhat confident in themselves, or Hinata, who is assertive and forward-thinking, Saihara is… extremely pessimistic, anxious, and lacks any confidence in himself whatsoever.

And yet, in spite of all this, I think many people can and do relate to Saihara. I know I certainly do. Having a character who explicitly struggles with issues like anxiety and depression, not only as the result of the killing game itself (which would understandably fuck anyone’s mental health up irreparably), but even before entering the game, is something I absolutely love about ndrv3. Saihara is hardly the only character to struggle with these issues within the DR franchise, or hell, even just within ndrv3 itself, but it’s hard to ignore how textually canon his depression is when he spends multiple scenes in chapter 5 lying in bed and thinking, “there’s no reason to live, there’s no reason to live” over and over again.

Saihara’s specific set of character traits may set him apart from the “average” reader, but for people who struggle themselves with mental health and self-worth, I think his character hits close to home in a very different way. Over and over again, throughout the narrative, Saihara is called “weak”—by the people around him and even by himself. This “weakness” is a fundamental part of his character that simply wasn’t there with Naegi or Hinata; while the two of them were certainly considered “average” in one way or another, they were never described as “weak” or “lacking what it takes to survive” the way Saihara consistently is.

And it’s true, on some level, that Saihara is what most people might consider “weak.” At the very least, he’s dependent: quick to latch on to anyone who shows him even the slightest sign of affirmation or support, reluctant to admit to his own talent or take credit for his own accomplishments, and unsure of whether he can actually meet other people’s expectations without some kind of helping hand or support.

We see him immediately grow attached first to Kaede, then later to Momota, constantly seeking out a larger, more charismatic personality to hide behind. He’s so unsure of himself that he would rather let other people who he sees as “more likable” or “more crucial” to the group get all the attention and the spotlight; we see this lampshaded somewhat in chapter 4, when everyone nonetheless begins to single him out as the main reason they’re still alive, and he’s clearly baffled and uncertain as to how to reply to the praise and recognition.

Even what little we see of his pregame self from his audition video fits within this framework. Despite a lot of fan portrayals of pregame Saihara (often called “Inchara” or “Kagehara” in a lot of Japanese fanworks) as someone undeniably “evil” or “irredeemable” for actively wanting to participate in a killing game… in the end, all we really know about him is that he is desperate to die. He talks about wanting to kill people, yes, but the emphasis is placed on how much thought and effort he put into his own execution. Even before entering the killing game at all, we can clearly see that Saihara went in with the specific intention of dying.

He wants to play a detective if at all possible, but it’s clear that he’s desperate, nearly feverish, at the idea of “being a part of the world of Danganronpa” at all, in any capacity. This obsession itself feels like a form of unhealthy attachment, and is a clear sign that he (and most of the participants, if we’re reading between the lines) is so damaged and downright suicidal that he views getting 15 minutes of fame on his favorite TV show as the absolute best way to go out. In a word, he’s still “weak,” long before becoming the fictional character version of “Shuuichi Saihara,” and it’s this weakness that Tsumugi herself says she wanted to encapsulate in the show, by making him “weaker than anyone else.”

It’s this “weakness” that I honestly love best about Saihara’s entire character. Because while a large part of his character arc is certainly about becoming stronger and more confident in himself, it’s also a fact that his “weakness” never explicitly goes away. His depression isn’t just magically cured by the end of the story, and he doesn’t wake up one day deciding that his struggle with suicidal thoughts or feelings of worthlessness are over. If anything, chapter 6 ends with a huge subversion of this “magically cured” trope in most fiction, by having Saihara embrace his own weakness as something that actually helps him arrive at a third option when presented with the seemingly black-or-white choice of “hope vs. despair.”

Saihara is, as he admits himself, “weak.” He’s unable to choose the forward-facing optimism that “hope” represents in the killing game—moreso if that “hope” only contributes to the cycle of the killing game itself, enticing people into wanting to see more and more of it. But he doesn’t pick “despair” either, exactly. His inability to choose between this forced dilemma is specifically because he realizes how sick and cruel it really is, and empathizes all the more deeply with the suffering he and his classmates went through. It’s this “weakness” of his that allows him to really put into words how much pain they all went through, and how their pain matters, regardless of whether they’re fictional or not.

It’s an incredible moment in the game, and probably the point at which he became my favorite protagonist in the DR franchise, as well as one of my favorite characters in the series overall. Saihara’s character arc, unlike Naegi and Hinata, was never about “moving forward” or “choosing hope.” He says himself that he’s not the kind of person who can simply make a choice like that. Rather, his arc is about toeing the grey line between “truth” and “lies.”

As we mentioned earlier, Saihara is a detective. In any mystery novel, a detective’s role is to seek out the truth and expose it, no matter how tragic or upsetting the outcome might be. So it’s interesting, then, that by the end of the game, Saihara ultimately comes to understand and even value the concept of “lies.” For someone who knows exactly how painful the truth can be, and who is unable to simply live life optimistically in spite of that truth, the recognition of “gentle lies” told for the sake of helping someone cope, of finding meaning in an otherwise meaningless or cruel life, is incredibly important.

Unlike the Hope’s Peak arc, which sort of placed “hope vs. despair” as some very black-or-white battle with a clear winner (even when some aspects of the series, like dr3, also sort of suggest the idea that it’s an ongoing cycle that keeps repeating itself), there is no real battle or winner between the concept of “truth and lies.” In the end, both are equally important. Saihara both embraces his role as a detective and acknowledges the power that the truth has on people, while simultaneously acknowledging that lies (and therefore fiction) also has power and can be used to influence people and even inspire the world.

This character development is just absolutely fantastic to see, after watching Saihara struggle with so much pain and grief over the course of the game. Seeing a character actually acknowledge the importance of “lies” and “fiction” precisely because of how important of a motivator it can be to depressed, broken people is incredibly satisfying, and not something we often get in most stories. The fact that Saihara is so undeniably “weak,” that he isn’t the type of character you would usually expect to live to the end given how suicidal and deeply traumatized he is, makes his survival at the very end all the more of an uplifting message.

You don’t need to be “cured” to find a reason to live. You don’t have to magically wake up with the most positive, forward-facing outlook in life. You can be “weak” and depressed and hurting inside, and in the end, you still deserve to live, and have the opportunity to find meaning in your own life, whether it’s through truth or fiction.

This has gotten pretty long by now, but I hope I could make it clear exactly why I love Saihara so much. I understand people’s dissatisfaction with the protagonist-swap, and while I perfectly understand that he isn’t for everyone, he’s still a fantastically written character in my opinion, with a wonderful and meaningful arc of development that really resonated with me, as someone who also has struggled with similar mental health issues. I think the decision to do something extremely different from Naegi and Hinata was an excellent decision, and while I still love both of them as characters in their own right, Saihara is just so compelling both as an individual character and the protagonist of ndrv3.

Thank you for the question anon, and thank you to those of you who read to the end! I hope I could offer a decent character analysis!

[nautilusopus]

do you have any favorite books?

Coraline by Neil Gaiman is the obvious answer lol. Still my favourite book to this day, obviously hugely influential in my own bullshit. Seriously check it out if you can find a copy, it’s pretty short and absolutely worth your time.

The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt and its sequel (The Devil’s Other Storybook) are more of an anthology of short stories starring the Devil, who occupies every role from vague background presence to put-upon protagonist that are funny and thought-provoking and genuinely clever and that pissed enough people off that it was a banned book for a while. “The Imp in the Basket” is the kind of short story I wish more people knew about and wanted to sincerely discuss what actually happened at the end.

ugh i haven’t read a book i actually enjoyed in over ten years at this point uhhhhhh

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I think potentially the only classic I had to read in school that I genuinely liked and actually finished in one sitting on my own time. And I think the first time any themes a book had for me actually clicked and I was able to do any kind of meta analysis of it completely unprompted. Baby’s first literary comprehension. Slaughterhouse-Five is a semi-autobiographical piece set during the bombing of Dresden in WWII, and also some period in the “future” (the 80s lol), and ALSO on an alien planet as the protagonist is abducted and taken to a human zoo. The story is told achronologically, and I feel is hugely influential to my own shit where it skips around, building a narrative almost entirely by juxtaposing specific moments in time against one another. It's surreal and thought-provoking, and if you only ever make yourself read one classic, it should be this one. *

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. Bear in mind this thing has fuck-all to do with the movie, and while in retrospect I now am able to enjoy the Don Bluth movie as its own thing, I remember being fucking furious when they busted out a goddamn magical amulet. It’s a different kind of story, but is more magic realism than outright fantasy, and the titular rats get a lot more backstory, as does the late Mr. Frisby iirc.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. God that book fucked me up. It is about a snotty porcelain toy rabbit that gets dropped overboard a ship into the ocean one day, and the various owners he has over the years as he changes hands, and the impacts they have on him, and it makes me fucking cry every time and is to date the only book to ever do so so fairly warned be ye. Fucking shit I wish I could dish out gut-punches half as good as that book could.

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman, which in and of itself is an angry rebuttal against everything the Chronicles of Narnia has to say, as well as Christianity in general. You’ve probably seen shit floating around about the HBO series, which I have not watched. Lyra is a horrible gremlin child running wild around a parallel universe Oxford until she accidentally stumbles onto a conspiracy that goes all the way to the Church which unofficially runs the government and eventually starts an interdimensional war against God. The first two books I think are better than the last one, which really drags in spots (and in a twist of irony had Lyra’s sexual awakening censored from the North American release which like... come on man). Absolutely worth checking out though, especially if you’re an angry pedant like I am.

Tales from the House of Bunnicula, by James Howe. Honestly the entire "Bunnicula Expanded Universe"(???) is great, but in particular I'm mentioning this sub-series because I think it actually kind of taught me to write. The framing device used is that they're being written by Howe's pet dog and sent in to him to publish by proxy. On top of having just a lot of good storytelling tips for beginners (how to create a plot! how to create character motivations! how to write female characters like actual people!), they're also fun little satire pieces of various kinds of genre fiction. Like, the third book is a riff on Harry Potter and making fun of all of JKR's worst writing tendencies, like her compulsion to phonetically write out everyone's fucking accent.

these days i'm just too picky to enjoy books anymore idfk. you have no idea how fucking disheartening it was growing up with actual taste (snooty snooty snoot) and watching everyone go nuts over stuff like divergent and eragon and maximum ride and fuckmothering twilight and shit. like, yeah misogyny absolutely played into why people shat on it because teenage girls aren't allowed to like anything, but lest we forget they were still shitty books guys. that never stopped being true or anything. and you were a social pariah if you didn't like them and that sucked. and then a couple ostensibly good series, like harry potter and artemis fowl and hunger games just dropped the fucking ball for one reason or another as they went on and never picked it back up. i think the mid 2000s almost singlehandedly just killed any real enthusiasm i had for reading altogether (this is not even getting into the fact a lot of really fucking bad "grown-up" novels came out around that period too. whole era was a baaaad time for books). so here i am writing, i guess, because i've decided you fuckers can't be trusted to make anything good yourselves. if you want something done right...

(*I like to think if Cloud wrote a book he’d write something like Slaughterhouse-Five. I think at one point I was even working on a fic along those lines -- a fictional story vaguely based off the burning of Nibelheim and the fall of Shinra that was written, in-universe, by Cloud several years later. Abandoned it just because of how fucking complicated it would be to do. Might come back to it one day.)