#and also he might be in it. i might borrow his character model for this fic too

[tellthatbrokebitch]

pairings so far for the zombie au are: byler, hopclair (i think that's el and lucas' shipname???), eventual elumax bc ofc, ronance, vee poly with jargyle and stonathan, jopper, possibly dustin with an oc but almost might just leave him single but also that feels exclusionary but also they don't all NEED to be paired off but also-

[tumblingxelian]

If I may ask with an open enough mind, might I hear out your thoughts on the character of Chloe Bourgeois? I don't expect an answer right out the gate so don't rush on my account. I'm merely trying to collect varying perspectives over what's become a uniquely controversial character.

Oh my that is a doozy of a question, I've debated no less than three separate videos on the topic and multiple essays to boot. Still, she's on my mind and the thing I am working on is obstructing me from modelling or writing but quires breaks to let stuff load so I have time for a longer ask:

So, what are my thoughts on Chloe Bourgeois?

Exactly where to start is rather tricky, so forgive any digressions or rambles.

Chloe is thematically the everyday reality of an Akumatized person.

What I mean by this is that Akuma victims are people in states of emotional distress, tribulation or trouble. Who thanks to the enabling of a power greater than themselves are both encouraged and enabled to lash out at others with borrowed power.

These people are meant to be sympathetic, their emotional tribulation taken advantage of, their situation, methods and thought process untenable. But they do need to be stopped from doing harm, and then healing needs to begin, with some effort made to redress the issue that led to them lashing out in the first place.

Akuma victims are the supernatural theme, Chloe is the reality.

Of course, some might claim she has no reason to have issues but...

Her mother is negligent and largely absent. The time they spent together prior to Queen Wasp, consisted of Chloe praising, giving gifts and trying to please Audrey. Only to be torn down, ignored, rejected or have her efforts disparaged. The woman doesn't even get her name right and the only means by which she earned even a scrap of approval was through being cruel. Something explicitly encouraged by the show's main character which is ???. 

Though it seems Audrey got bored with her fairly quickly regardless.

Audrey is unrelentingly hostile, selfish and cruel and encourages these traits in others and only avoids turning them on a person if they are sufficiently useful, or a match for her in viciousness. You are either her victim, her tool, or a conspirator. This is a hilariously awful parent, the damage she can do limited only by her sheer lack of interest.

Andre is somehow worse.

I am going to ignore the reading undertones of subtext into things but suffice to say that ratchets him up from just a bad parent to kill him with fire parent.

What we see with Andre is a man who explicitly taught Chloe to lie, cheat, intimidate, extort and bribe people to get what she wants. She is fourteen, and has been doing this since before she was in double digits. She's not bad because there's something innately wrong with her, she behaves badly because she's been explicitly taught that was the proper way to conduct herself.

We know full well Andre is capable of reigning Chloe in, be it gently in the Christa episode or with disciplinary action in Kung Food. However he only does this when it suits him, or her actions might cause him problems. For all his alleged affection for her, or her alleged influence on him, Chloe's always on the end of a leash Andre can and will tug back on the moment he feels like it.

This isn't just bad because it's so blatantly hypocritical and self serving. It's bad, because it means he enables Chloe's most self destructive and harmful traits so long as they don't impact 'him'. Given also that he is the one who, to put it charitably, raised her, that means the consequences and fallout of her actions should fall on him.

The fact he is presumably the one who encouraged Chloe to impersonate his wife, given Audrey didn't start rewarding that behavior until Queen Wasp, is also bad parenting. Like even if you ignore the disgust factor, its just fucking awful parenting and like everything else he taught her. It contributed to the fact Chloe is a social pariah hated by most people she has to spend time around.

Because let's get to the next stage, subversions!

In most shows like ML, Chloe as "The mean girl" would be popular, or at least feared, able to pose a threat in a social context, and is usually insulated from the more magical issues.

None of this applies to Chloe.

Even if we don't treat Origins as the shows starting point, she's already only tangentially involved in class stuff. Her fathers hotels own doorman outright says she has no friends, extremely out of pocket of him. & Origins sees one of the first things said to him being that Chloe is a brat and he halfway ditches her before 24 hours are up, and keeps her at nominal arms length for the rest of the series.

We can talk about how there's reasons for this, sure, but the thing that's interesting here is the subversion.

Chloe's mean-ness has not won her friends or influence as it does other mean girls in fiction, such as Heathers or Mean Girls.

Instead, it's made her barely tolerated by her peers and this only grows worse for her as the show goes on leading to her ensuing isolation which only worsens her condition and attitude. This is something Chloe is even varying shades of aware of, as she tearfully confessed to Ladybug when hiding from her Akumatized father. She knows something is wrong, but doing things differently goes against everything her parents taught her or exemplified, so it's not a shock she struggles.

Similarly, compare how Bonnie from Kim Possible could actually out-compete Kim for the role of cheer captain. 

Can Chloe beat Marinette in anything?

No, not really, or least the narrative never lets her do so even when she does have the skills for it, such as 8 years of ballet losing to nice vibes.

This is much less interesting than the previous point because it's basically just the writers using Chloe as a speed bump which gets boring after a while.

Then consider how Totally Spies own Mean Girl, Mandy is rarely tied to the actual adventures save maybe in a way other civilians are; leaving altercations with Clover as civilian affairs.

Does this apply to Chloe?

Fuck no XD

Chloe's frequently targeted by AKuma, even when she either shouldn't be singled out, (Ivan, everyone was scared) or for comparatively minor transgressions (Nathanial, his teacher screamed at, insulted & shook him) or outright targeted by the main villain of the show. (One who has known her since she was an infant!) 

Even before she had a Miraculous, Chloe was a frequent target of violent murder attempts. But this is largely treated as neutral, or even as comeuppance for bad behaviour. The issue is, the sheer scale of what she's being targeted with is so completely disportionate to what she did, assuming she even did things wrong, that it comes off as more unfair than anything else, & liable to give trauma. 

Especially as the show has double standards at times.

I think often-times the writers neglected to actually think through their karmic punishments for Chloe.

Take Pixelator, 

Chloe is the one who recognized Jagged, helped her father, and actually did her fucking job, but is the only student not rewarded with a concert ticket despite having done nothing to piss Jagged off.

Or how when her locker was broken into she's largely dismissed and needs to threaten the principal with her father to get a response. One might say this is abusing her power, but A, it's her dads power and B, we see with Lila later that the principle will basically just bow to whoever can make the bigger fuss. This isn't a Chloe issue it's a Damocles issue and I think being upset people broke into her locker isn't exactly unfair.

Similarly, I noted above how Chloe loses to Marinette even when she shouldn't logically do so. 

A bigger example of the narrative short hand delivered is the fact we see other characters do stuff Chloe does and get free rides.

IE, Kagami can dramatically strut into a fencing hall talking the most boastful shit, actually lose more or less legitimately, Akumatize and still be treated with sympathy and become a hero.

Chloe boastfully auditions to be Ladybug for a music video, but actually is the best audition scene, but loses out to positive vibes, gets angry & through her father lashes out, gets punished & no one gives a shit about her side of the story. 

To be clear, I like Kagami, I find this comparison interesting, I just don't think the show realized that it did this or does stuff like this a lot. 

That whole episode also demonstrates what I said at the start, about Chloe embodying the thematic of Akuma, IE, anger or distress, powerful sponsor, lashing out, ETC. 

So the double standard in how she's framed and treated VS Kagami is framed and treated becomes a weakness of the writing and show. 

We also see this with stuff like her & Marinette sabotaging Kagami, but Marinette largely getting portrayed sympathetically for doing so while Chloe isn't. 

This creates the impression the problem isn't Chloe's bad behavior, it's with her mere existence.

IE, she's the audience and writer's punching bag/designated target, so it feels like the writers just kind of don't bother a lot of the time actually making her wrong or thinking through the implications of their story beats with her, or other characters' behaviour. 

This stuff is present in Season 1, much more overt in season 2 and basically caps off season 3 which is where I stopped watching.

Cos like, the villain who's known her since forever has been actively trying to utilize her through the seasons, who explicitly aimed to puther in a state of severe emotional distress, ambushed her in her own home & had her parents in his grasp.

Right after the show's hero blatantly walked back a previous ruling that kept Chloe from being Queen Bee, (& did so for selfish and if one considered HK targeting known heroes, incredibly callous reasons)

But we're meant to hate the 14 year old for responding badly?

I would also argue stuff like this is a large part of what makes Chloe such an ensemble dark horde to the fandom. Not just because one can read into things about her history and character, but because the author's hand is so heavy it actively hurts and hinders its own narrative in order to harm Chloe and so feels unfair.

Some final notes I couldn't place elsewhere:

Akuma don't usually harm their loved one's. Chloe's mother tried to kill her on sight & then kept looking for excuses to do so & finally did. Andre turned the powerful & willful Audrey into a simpering hanger on and wanted to do the same with Chloe, which again, yikes.

When fused together they declared her incapable of loving anyone but herself. A fact blatantly disproven already but even in the episode itself with her demanding their release in exchange for helping Hawk Moth. & then tried to fucking EAT HER.

Her butler, school friend and teacher seemingly love her more than her own parents.

As an aside, Sabrina's explicitly encouraged to work for Chloe by her father as it makes her "Useful" which has loads of implications. But at least one can't blame Chloe for Sabrina's character.

Madame Bustier, when Akumatized uses having "Taken care" of her father as a lure to try and get Chloe to come to her. So again, yikes if one wants to read into it as it means even as an Akuma who was upset by Chloe, Bustier perceives Andre as the threat/problem to her.

Chloe by all accounts seems to live alone in a hotel suite, not even one of the fancier, super suites but like... The walls are 50% glass with no curtains, that lead to publicly exposed areas (as we see interviews with Jagged being conducted in them) and there's almost nothing to identify it as a space she lives in. Hell, the pictures on the wall are often blank and it seems she's lived here alone since she was a toddler.

That would have calamitous impacts on a Child's psyche & development! 

Despite her portrayal, Chloe was shown to be extremely good at being Queen Bee in many respects.

She almost soloed Mayura.

She is the first person shown able to resist Akuma, got civilians out of an Akuma infested train cart & protected Sabrina during the second red Akuma swarm.

She was able to quickly and easily keep up with Ladybug on the roof tops and using a similar weapon & travel style creates a visual parallel between the two which carries implications of them being counterparts. 

But most especially Chloe proved herself a skilled and heroic combatant during Heroes Day; covering for the other heroes without orders, doing so easily & needing to be targeted by multiple villains all with personal ties to her to be brought down, while protecting other heroes.

But that never really gets acknowledged.

So much like with "Nearly being brutally murdered for being kind of a dick" this sense of narrative imbalance engendered sympathy from those who notice.

I also find it fascinating that Chloe is, despite spending her life surrounded by abusers and enablers both, that she, without any real guidance, managed to soften their behaviors on her own.

Yes she buys Sabrina presents in luew of saying sorry, but she also spends time with her and does fun stuff, Andre just buys her off. She wants Adrien at her side and the like, but she doesn't actually try to stop him from befriending people she hates, Gabriel tries to keep him locked up. She doesn't like losing, but compares her relatively mild huffiness or brief theatrics to Audrey's violent response to merely being snubbed.

She's already doing better than all of them despite explicitly being taught or demonstrated, or victimized with all the wrong lessons and is fourteen.

Chloe also obviously has a deeply unhealthy understanding of relationships as seenin in how she recreates her parents awful dynamic with everyone around her. 

IE,

Andre fawns on Audrey, who is domineering, never satisfied and harsh at best. Chloe acts accordingly with Sabrina, while fawning on her mother and Ladybug who are much the same though  for different reasons. She's internalized this deeply unhealthy dynamic and applies it to herself as much as she does to anyone else.

This is just one element of the fact she honestly seems deeply troubled on a social level. I mentioned earlier that Chloe seems to know "Something" is wrong with everyone hating her & is clearly unhappy about it. But also seems unsure how to fix it, or what the source of the problem is.

The fact she often doesn't seem to get social cues, even from people she's treating like a peer, such as Ala or Adrien, gives off the sense that her problems go deeper than just "Being a brat".

This is further emphasized by the fact that so much of her daily persona seen is her doing an impression of her mother. Or otherwise putting on a show to try and get her dad or Kim, or the principle ETC, to do something.

Because when she's "upset" it's all theatrical prancing and squeals of daddy and then it's over.

But when she's actually upset, like panicking over losing Adrien upset, or breaking down cos Ladybug chose another hero with a known identity over her (Said by Kagami in the episode so we can't pretend it's not true). Chloe usually builds up to a brief explosion followed by a collapse, or just collapses outright into a panicked, curled up state. One that in one instance seemed to be intentionally drawing comparisons to an infant, but again give what we know that says less about her & more about Andre.

Basically, Chloe's life is a performance, we rarely see the real her, because she's always trying to play a role she thinks she's meant to, in order to be liked and successful & is confused, hurt and lonely because it's not working the way her family promises or demonstrated it would.

I also think it's interesting how Marinette & Kagami both firmly instruct her to stop bothering about seating arrangements. Like, we see he react to insults and anger with anger back, but those firm instructions seemed to make her actually inclined to listen, or at least intimidate rather than rile her up.

Also on the insults front, I think it's notable with the pariah angle that Chloe did basically become an open target. No, she doesn't do herself any favors, but her efforts to do video assignments, or participate in art class getting naught but degrading insults. Or her simply not participating in Madame Bustier's birthday causing the class to collectively tear into her says a lot.

Also much like with Damocles, Chloe getting away with mean-ness is not a Chloe thing, the other students get away with it too. At most getting a mild "Well that was kind of mean" which gets shrugged off.

So again we are back into one rule for Chloe another rule for everyone else, which engenders sympathy or frustration in many of the audience. 

Also I find her & Adrien's friendship conceptually fascinating. because like... Adrien outright admits that he totally understands sabotaging a train to try and win a parents love. Meaning he both can likely imagine himself doing the same and also does not grasp how fucked up it is to think one has to go to such insane lengths for someone who treats them like trash.

Am I speaking about Audrey or Gabriel?

Trick question, it's both!

As a sort of final cap off, I quite enjoy the fact that Chloe's so aggressively defiant. Yes she can get scared & panic, but like. She spent 95% of her Stoneheart kidnapping oscillating between bored, pissed off and irritated.

One can say it's a fight based trauma response and I agree, but it's also just a fun dynamic to have for a character who'd normally be relegated solely to screaming damsel.

So yeah, I think she's a fascinating character in concept and at times execution. Who subverts, twists and breaks expected tropes tied to her archetype in fascinating ways but who's handling leaves me wanting, I hope this was useful! 

@princess-of-the-corner @generalluxun @maestro04yayyy you might like this post too!

MAJOR EDIT!

I can't believe I went through Chloe's entire persona section & neglected to mention the fact that her efforts to flirt with guys always come off as so awkward and in-genuine compared to her enthusiastic adoration of Ladybug.

[blueikeproductions]

Onyx Prime is one I have a semi complicated feeling towards.

The Prime of Beasts, and borrowing his name from an obscure Beast Wars character, he’s meant to explain why some Transformers have Beast Modes. It’s not … super clear if this includes the various Mechanimals like Laserbeak and Ravage, or Cyberverse’s various menagerie.

But presumably it does, as that would mean the deer bots seen in ONE are related to Onyx too, as they’re the only non Prime Beast Moded robot. ONE Airachnid’s toy gives her a space spider Beast Mode, but she only turns into a space helicopter Vehicle Mode in the film, so it’s unknown if she’s a Triple Changer or if her Beast Mode was an early script idea.

ONE Onyx, like Alchemist, Quintus, Micronus, Vector, Nexus, Prima, & Solus, doesn’t really get to do anything except die by the hands of Sentinel & the Quints. His Cog is donated to the main heroes, but who got it isn’t clear. I think Megatron did because of his beastly nature at that point, but I also think it fits Elita pretty well.

His design is a hybrid of his IDW and Aligned designs, taking more from the IDW design with the colors and beast kibble.

An interesting quirk is the ONE design borrows heavily from the semi confusion of his IDW design. Oynx is supposed to be a centaur, but IDW artists opted to have him stand on his hind legs, with his fore legs dangling awkwardly.

This would be turned into foreshadowing, to imply Oynx wasn’t what he seemed, revealing that he was actually Shockwave due to comic book time paradox reasons.

The awkward posture was due to Shockwave wearing Onyx’s corpse like a Pretender Shell, being unable to copy the original centaur look. Hilariously the ONE design foregoes the centaur look altogether, but nothing has clarified on if the centaur is his actual Beast Mode, or if he turns into a different creature in a BM Savage Noble fashion… His TFONE model implies he might Transform into a space dragon, or if we want to meet half way on the centaur idea, a space griffin.

As such, Onyx’s only major role has been IDW, and it technically wasn’t even him. The actual IDW Onyx was a kind shepherd who Shockwave killed after landing on prehistoric Cybertron following his failed Dark Cybertron scheme.

Pretending to be Onyx, Shockwave guaranteed events on Cybertron played out as he knew them to, as well as raising a Beast army (from all the Beast Wars characters in their most unflattering role) and securing the mysterious magical Talisman as part of a new scheme involving Unicron.

It’s always bothered me though that the one place Onyx would’ve fit well as a central antagonist would’ve been RiD15 because of it’s heavy use of animal type Decepticons. It would’ve made more sense if Oynx was the one orchestrating the crash of the prison ship, but Steeljaw makes Oynx’s mission his own: to turn Earth into a home world for Decepticons, rather than beast bots. Oynx isn’t exactly nice here either, causing problems for the Autobots, because he has a chip on his shoulder over vehicle type Transformers due to problems from his past. Something like that might’ve been better than hyping up The Fallen, causing the same problem TFP had by using Unicron too soon.

With the upcoming CyberWorld possibly returning to a RiD15 Beast theme with its Decepticons (while the Autobots remember they have more Dinobots besides Grimlock), maybe Onyx Prime has a role there?

[soulbeastdragon]

All my Charr so far.

Tidbits on each below the cut!

Renfia Mufflepaw - agender | she/her My Muse's Charr-sona. No real story to this lass. At least, not yet. She could one day develop a backstory out of the blue.

Grody Garbagegut - agender | they/them Grody is in charge of the Garbage Trash Legion [TRSH]. They were made as a joke with friends and now we have a guild 😄. They might gain a backstory and character development one day, I'm very fond of them.

Hyva The Wayward - female | she/her Hyva's my newest Charr and she's Aella and Tharissin's mother. She was a Flame Legion slave, used for entertainment in pit fights and breeding. She had many other cubs that were all taken from her as soon as they were born. She managed to escape with Aella and later gave birth to Tharissin in Dewclaw Village. (I'm still working on her backstory since she's still so new)

Aella Mistfarer - female | she/her Aella is a sellsword and a bane to the Flame Legion. She escaped with her mother, but the Flame Legion would not relent on tracking them down. Aella was done running and turned her fangs on the Flame Legion. Since at a young age, she's been fighting back and turned from hunted to hunter. When Efram came into the picture and there was talk of a new Flame Legion, Aella would hear no part of it. All Flame Legion in her eyes needed to be extinguished. Eventually, she would go into the Mists with groups of adventurers. SHe'd still come back to Tyria from time to time to see how her brother's doing, but other than that she sticks to the Fractals.

Tharissin Forgelock - male | he/him Tharissin is a mute Iron Legion Forgemaster. He's very chill and loves nothing more than to relax under the shade of a tree and fish all day. He's helped the Pact with forging armor and weapons and was recruited during Icebrood to help fight against the Dominion. After Icebrood Saga, Tharissin "retired" and resides in Elona, enjoying the desert sun and fishing on the waters.

Chance the Skritt - female | she/her Chance is a Skritt with coloration inspired by the black-tan fancy mouse. She was found by an Asura named Aezzil while she was a little kit on the shores of Lion's Arch after the fall of the Breachmaker. Since Aezzil couldn't find her scratch and she was too young to remember where she came from, she stayed with Aezzil. She likes adventures, but she's not very brave and often hides in Aezzil's backpack. She borrows thing and forgets to return them and she enjoys collecting little trinkets.

Silana Felfire - female | she/her Silana is just An Ordinary House Cat.

Rex Ghidorah - agender | they/them My kaiju toon based on my favorite kaiju, King Ghidorah

Lykos Iredyne - male | he/him Lykos Iredyne is my spliced Sylvari created by Ardjin. Lykos Iredyne is the final form of Iredyne, who was spliced with his fern hound. His actual appearance is very off-model from his in-game appearance, looking more like a leafy werewolf than a Charr (altho I used the Charr body as a base) ->

Mender Lunaria - female | she/her Lunaria is another spliced experiment of Ardjin's. She was also a Sylvari. She was Solaria's Dearheart and she escaped to find her beloved. Unfortunately, she can't keep a foothold in Tyria as the experiment performed on her causes her to get pulled back into the Mists. In the end, Solaria decided to leave the Pale Reavers so she can join Lunaria in the Mists.

Fish Lich - agender | it\they\him It came from the depths of the Unending Ocean. Its a fish, and a lich. Stinky.

[bethecliche]

beauty & the beast l suh johnny x f!original character

summary: Party boy Johnny really needs to read a book word count: 2.6k content: female reader (no mention of genitalia), no mention of skin color or hair color, no use of y/n, non idol

She stretched her arms behind her body, stretching while also yawned. Her head would go to meet her right shoulder, then turn 180 degrees to the left shoulder. It felt like there was a block of concrete weighing down her head and causing pain throughout her body, but it was all because she had been sitting for hours looking down reading a book.

It's never cool to feel discomfort while doing your favorite activity - in her case, reading books. But the excitement was so powerful and her interest only grew page after page. As a kid, she never got to read it in its entirety and as it was the theme of the next meeting with the book club, she wanted to be prepared to talk about every little detail. The only reason the girl wasn't in her dorm with a cup of tea and some biscuits was because the library only had one copy available at the moment and the rule was that single books couldn't be borrowed, so her neck had so suffer a bit.

Yeah, reading on a laptop or cell phone is a thing, sure. However, nothing replaces touching the book and smelling its pages. How many people have already picked up that book? When she finishes it, she will read in the last page the names of the people who already enjoyed the story, other ones who also entered the universe she's immersed now. Or maybe she was the first to pick up that specific copy, so her name would be on the first line. That might not mean anything to most people, but she is not most people.

With a arm now resting on the wooden table to hold the exhausted head and the other hand fingering the pages, feeling how many were left to finish, a sweet perfume entered her nose and her mind began to wonder if the fatigue is so strong that is causing her to hallucinate part of the story.

“Hey, excuse me. Can I borrow this book? There's no other left on the selft and I really need it.” A male voice said from behind, almost giving the her a heart attack.

It was late at night and the last thing she expected was people coming into the library and not leaving. She loves reading books, that's a fact. And the librarian loves it just as much as her, so the two had an agreement that the young woman could stay a little later while the old lady got everything ready to close the place. Why would she have let someone in there almost at closing time? The girl finally turned her back to face whoever was calling. She was shocked, to say the least.

The first thing to noticed was his face, and boy, he's pretty. Really pretty. His hair was short and dark, with some golden highlights illuminating his features. He was wearing a white t-shirt, a lot of chains around his neck and also a headphone with music still on. He looked like a model or a main character from a romcom. Probably the bad boy, tho. It wasn't anything an ordinary student would wear on a Thursday. Maybe he was leaving a party? Most likely. She didn't know whether to feel admiration or envy seeing such an elegant and charming boy.

Analyzing so much made her forgot that the unkwon boy made a request.

“Do you mean this book?” She pointed to the red book over the table (since it was her third book of the day) and the boy nodded, kinda rouse. “Sorry, but I started reading it a few minutes. I'll try to finish it really quickly and I can arrange to give it to you tomorrow. Is that okay?” She explained in her sincere voice, showing that she really meant it. The boy might be pretty, but a book is a book and she got there first.

The stranger looked desperate after hearing the answer.

“You don’t understand... I need to read this book right now. I have an exam tomorrow and I have no idea what happens in this story and there’s no movie on Netflix. I can not wait!” He exclaimed nervously.

The girl saw herself as a kind woman, however, when it came to books, she could be a bit difficult. However, not to say the decision would be made based on how fine he is, but dude did seemed desperate. She didn't want to feel responsible if he did badly on the test. Well, partly guilty, since he looked like he was leaving a nightclub on a weekday and hadn't studied for his test.

“Do you have to read Beauty and the Beast for your exam?” She raised an eyebrow, turning the book over. “A fable?”

The stranger shrugged and rolled his still worried eyes.

“It’s a French literature test and then a short essay on the book that we have to do during class. There’s no point in questioning it, the teacher is a pain in...” He censored himself, realising he don't know the girl enough to be mouthing a teacher like that. “It's the shortest book on his list, if you know what I mean.”

It was obvious the boy needed the book more than she did. One had a book club that was going to meet on Saturday and the other had an exam on the subject in a few hours. But it was very difficult to give up something that was grabbing so much of her attention. So only one alternative came to mind. “We can share the book now, if you want,” she suggested, “if you don't mind too.”

Maybe not actually a viable suggestion, but it was the best she could do. Party boy seemed relieved by the suggestion, he didn't even need to consider it and was already sitting in the empty seat next to the bookworm girl.

Her fingers finally returned to the pages, now flipping back to the beginning. Although she might be quite far along, the truth was that she didn't mind starting over.

He ajusted himself in the seat and leaned closer to the girl, so close that his chin hovered over her shoulder. He's tall, so tall, that felt like he could hurt his back bending like that to check the book she held. To make it a little bit harder for her, not only he was tall, handsome and reading a book right next to her face, his scent was even stronger this close and it felt so good. She hoped the boy wouldn't look at her blushing face.

Except for the occasional page turning and the boy asking her to slow down fliping the pages, the place was completely silent based on the hour. At one point, they turned to each other and the two almost bumped their foreheads together. They laughed and continued reading. It was kinda cute.

The second time reading those sentences wasn't as easy as the first. Her eyes were on the pages, but her thoughts were far from Belle's story. She tried to figure out in the back of her mind if she knew who he was, what his name should be, what his major should be. Was he popular? How cool was this party? She never saw him around her classes or her dorm, but it's not like the girl cared enough to keep up with those details... Still, a little curious how such a beautiful boy who definitely stands out wherever he goes never crossed her path. And if so, how stupid was she not to notice?

Half an hour into the study, he seemed confident about his test and his grade. “This book seems easy.” He sing out.

One hour later, he was already complaining on how boring it was and how so many pages were left. “They're both so stupid, I want it to end.”

One and a half hours into the study, he stopped cursing at the characters and felt deeply in the dream land. He had his body straight minus his head, kinda turned down. Not the best way to sleep.

Stay focused. Stay focused. Don't sleep too.

She couldn't just continue reading the book and forget that the stranger, who was now sleeping, almost had a nervous breakdown about his studies just minutes ago. Picking up the pencil and notebook that were on the table from when she was doing her homework earlier (homework and three books, yeah, she had a busy day) and started writing some notes on the last page.

The clock on the wall showed that it was past 2 am and the girl, who was also sleepy, could barely keep her eyes open. After yawning and more yawning, she went into the position that had irritated her so much during the day and with her head down, she also fell asleep.

♫ She had them Apple Bottom Jeans Boots with the fur (with the fur) ♫

A loud noise began to play shortly after. The moment she opened her eyes, she realized that her head was not bending anymore, but lying on the table. The boy, that also sleept bending on the chair, was also lying on the table and very close to her face. She thanked God that she didn't drool in her sleep or it would have been too embarrassing to drip saliva on the beauty next to her.

Adjusting her eyes, an image of a God became very clear. His face was very clean, recently shaved, probably for the party. He had a small and almost fading dot close to his pinkish and very tempting lips. Oh, man. He looks just too perfect.

His arm was also quite strong and perfect for hugging. Which was what he was doing at the moment. Not sure how, but she probably fell asleep on the table first and eventually he fell onto the table too, placing his arm to rest on the girl's back. It was a welcoming feeling.

As the song keept playing and it became a little too weird admire an unfamiliar man, she adjusted herself in the chair, causing the other one to wake up as well and begin to notice his surroundings. The librarian must have forgotten or not even noticed that the two were still there, letting such chaos happen.

“Ho.ly.shit!” The brunette muttered under his breath as he denied the call he was receiving and checking the time. 4 am. The bookworm turned to him with an optimistic smile, even though she knew he was frustrated upon to realize they both slept. His eyes were almost closed, avoiding the light from the smartphone screen. “I'm sorry, someone is looking for me thinking I'm still at the party. It's just that I- Oh, God. What am I going to do?”

His hands went to his bronzed face, slapping it in disappointment and to keep him awake. It was dawn and he was still tired, his test was getting closer and closer, there was no way to have hope now. He do regret going to a party mid-week and thanks God for taking only two shots.

“I.. er... I can try to explain the story to you.” Suggested the frequent reader. "If this is for a literature class, just telling you what happened literally isn’t going to be enough, and it’s clear you didn’t quite get the story. You kept mumbling on how absurd it was.”

The stranger gave a huge smile that lit up his face. All the stress was gone. That seemed to be the most beautiful thing he had heard in days.

“That would be... so good! I will be forever grateful...” As he lifted his hand to his heart, feeling light by her help, he them noticed how tired she also looked. He was not expecting a good and nice night of sleep spreaded in a library table, so if he was feeling shitty... “Wait... Did you read the book? Did you finish it last night? I'm so sorry. You should've slept too.” Pretty boy placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder and gave her a worried look. If he feels tired, can't imagine how she's feeling.

“I fell asleep before the end, but I made some notes for you up to the part where I stopped.” She pointed to the notebook in front of them. “To be honest, I already know the story. My mom read it to me when I was a kid. I don't remember that much but can't be that hard to assume a fairytale ending, right?”

The brunette breathed a little more easily. When he noticed the position he was in, although satisfactory, he took his hands from her shoulders and put them in his own pocket. “You know a thing or two about books, huh?”

Not that she was trying to brag, but it was the truth. She knew a little too much about books, especially fiction.

“Maybe I should come to the library more often. I can learn a few things from you.” He propose.

Not wanting to miss the opportunity, she responded excitedly. “I'll be available. For you.”

She hadn't meant to come off as flirtatious, but fuck it, she didn't feel guilty about it. It was a nice feeling. She already slept with him, right? A suggestive phrase won't kill.

“I don’t want to ruin the obvious mood, but I don’t have much time. The test is in a few hours and I want to go to the dorm to get some proper rest beforehand. Tell me everything you know about this book.”

In a few minutes, the girl explained the entire plot of Beauty and the Beast and what he needed to look at the notes, not forgetting to say that it would be good for him to read the book afterwards to get a sense of closure. The boy just laughed, he wasn’t going to touch that book any time soon.

“Thank you so much, you’re saving my life!” The two stood up from their chairs and the handsome model ran his fingers through the reader’s hand and placed his lips on the top of it, maintaining eye contact. “I don’t know if I’ll become an avid fiction reader like you, but I would definitely love to hear the reviews if you're up to tell me.”

“We can always watch the live action.”

In a few seconds, in a bit of shyness for what was said, she collected the books thrown on the table to return to the library entrance and slung her bag over her shoulder. The boy, who had nothing but his cell phone, just ran his hands through his hair waiting for her to finish tidying up.

“By the way, my name is Johnny. Suh Johnny. I'm majoring Psychology.” With the introduction, he took her hand again, squeezing it a little and feeling its warmth. With his cool style, this was not the course he seemed to attend.

She also introduced herself as an English major in her third semester.

Johnny nodded as if he knew exactly who she was. “You’re the one who gave the speech about using artificial intelligence in undergraduate work, right?”

Smiling nervously, she nodded. “You saw my presentation? I thought it was just for other students in my course.”

“I was walking past the auditorium at the time. It's kind of hard to ignore a smart, pretty girl like you. So... uh, I see you later. Right? Thanks again.”

Johnny gave the girl a soft smile and turned to the door, running quickly to get out of there urgently. He had butterflies in his stomach.

The girl, now also smiling, was so enchanted that she didn't even realize that he was supposed to take only the sheet of paper with the notes and not her entire notebook. But she would realize in a few hours when she arrived at class without the material and this would be a perfect excuse to look for Johnny around campus. Maybe this would be the beginning of a romance story that neither of them would have to rush to read.

[greatwyrmgold]

In a recent bout of malaise, I binge-watched Geoff Thew's worst anime (plural) of the year videos, and have thoughts about his picks for each year's worst anime (singular).

2018: My Sister My Writer

A good start for the series. I mean, it's not a good anime; those have no place in these videos. It's a brother-sister incest anime with countless technical failures in its artistry. But Geoff isn't just picking this anime because it's gross and incompetent; it also half-asses the incest, and Geoff makes a point about how that makes it even worse than normal gross incompetent anime.

Conception at least commits to its bit so that people who, for some reason, want to watch an anime about magic threesomes can kinda enjoy it. But My Sister My Writer wants to have its cake and eat it too, to "be trashy without being seen as trash". This alienates the people who actually like that flavor of trash, while still indulging in the trashiness enough to alienate people who don't. It's "an anime for no one," which makes it worse than other bad anime almost by default.

2020: Gibiate

(I will get to 2019 later)

In contrast to prior years, there's not really a "point" to highlighting Gibiate as the worst anime. It's a massive failure of plot construction and technical artistry and showrunning, but not in any way unique to Gibiate. All four of the other anime on Geoff's list were bad in distinctive ways; Dragon's Dogma's clumsy political screeds, Peter Grill's entire premise, Shiraneko Project's homeopathic pacing. Even Hatana Illusion's lazy character writing and sloppy worldbuilding stand out more than anything Gibiate does wrong.

Gibiate is just poorly constructed. It's a high concept with bad animation and a worse script, but they're bad in ways that a lot of animation and scripts are bad, just more so. Its most distinctive mistake was hiring Yoshitaka Amano as a character designer, but most of its problems are unrelated to that mistake.

I kinda wish Geoff let his grudge against Hatena Illusion's phantom-thief bait-and-switch overwhelm his objectivity that year. In principle, there's nothing wrong with highlighting an all-around stinker, but it seems a bit silly when it would be so thoroughly eclipsed right after Geoff aired that video.

2021: Ex-Arm

"Some things are obvious because they are right."

—Lanipator

On paper, Ex-Arm has a stronger story than most of Geoff's Worst Anime winners, which might be the faintest praise I've ever damned something with. Its story is not good; by all accounts, it's just a narrative framework for cyborg combat, ecchi, and half-remembered philosophy borrowed from better science fiction. But that mediocre, derivative story deserved better than this.

Visual Flight, the studio who adapted Ex-Arm, had effectively zero relevant experience. A live-action TV director was handed a company that did some outsourced model work for From Software and decided that he had a team capable of "declaring war on all the science fiction series of the world." If you're reading this post, you probably know he lost that war without fighting a single battle.

On one hand, Ex-Arm's flaws are almost purely technical in nature; its narrative is weak in ordinary ways. On the other hand, those technical flaws are without peer; its bad animation is some of the worst animation in the industry, its bad storyboards stem from production woes few anime can survive, its bad compositing is almost imperceptible next to those other flaws, like the dark mirror of great compositing.

The sheer hubris of Ex-Arm's creative leads turned mere technical flaws into an object lesson on hubris.

2022: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer

Geoff doesn't bury the lede about the very personal reason why LBH was both the Biggest Disappointment and the Number One Big Kahuna Worst Anime of 2022 (there was a format change that year). It has bad pacing and worse visuals, but Geoff was mostly pissed that one of his favorite stories ever was turned into an animated piece of garbage.

I don't mind Geoff ranking anime according to his personal taste, but in this case his anger eclipses any discussion of what actually makes the Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer anime so bad. He briefly describes what makes the manga great, briefly describes the most unremarkable set of complaints you could make about a bad anime adaptation, and goes on an unhinged AVGN rant.

2023 part 1: Kizuna no Allele

(Due to a format change, in 2023 Geoff separately named a "worst" and a "most cursed" anime. Also "best," but that's not what this post is about.)

Kizuna no Allele is the only anime on this list I've seen a single episode, and I agree with Geoff's critiques. It's utterly devoid of substance, its style is incoherent at best, and it shills NFTs. But aside from the NFT thing, it's bad in ways that make Gibiate's failures look unique. If it wasn't for the NFT thing and the baffling way it decides to advertise Kizuna Ai (by barely including her in the show), I doubt Geoff would have enough critique to fill an "honorable mention" sentence.

Dull anime make for dull roasts, which might be part of why Geoff did a new format for 2023.

2023 part 2: My Life as Inukai-san's Dog

Geoff Thew identified this as the "most cursed" anime of 2023, and I sincerely hope it deserves that title.

You know what I said about My Sister My Writer not committing to elements that alienate ordinary audiences? This anime doesn't have that problem. I regret finding out this anime exists, and will not force this cursed knowledge on anyone who doesn't seek it out. Google at your own risk.

2019: High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even In Another Life

If I was gonna rank Geoff's picks for the worst annual anime, this would be my top pick.

As you might have noticed, his worst anime picks from 2020 onwards were mostly just bad in normal ways. Leave out the personal despair of L&BH or the...everything of Inuskai-san's Dog, and you've got a handful of anime from different genres with very similar failures.

Almost uniquely out of Geoff's "worst anime of the year" contenders, High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even In Another Life has a strong enough story for its themes to be criticized. And those themes are what Geoff tears into.

HSPHIEEIAL (pronounced hsfeeeal) is about a bunch of high school prodigies (natch), including "the world's greatest politician" and a top-tier businessman (both seventeen years old), getting isekai'd into and fixing a dystopic fantasy empire. That's a potentially interesting premise; I picked up the first volume of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom because of how interesting that concept is. But HSPHIEEIAL handles that concept even worse than either of the Realist Hero chapters I bothered reading.

The Freyjagard Empire isn't a messy tangle of institutions entangled not just with each other but with the means of production which make Freyjagard's society possible. Ending its reign of terror doesn't require understanding how the different loci of power interact and intersect, or cautious political maneuvering, or even a few instances of surgically applied force.

The politician uses his politician power of "shooting people" to shoot the evil ugly emperor, the businessboy uses his capitalist power of wealth accumulation, and they start working with the nobles who worked for the emperor to build a new utopian society. The implication, intended or thoughtless, is that the Empire was only bad because the guy in charge was an inherently evil dude, and now that inherently good teenagers are in charge, the lackeys and organizations that served the evil emperor can be trusted to work for the greater good?

Anyways. That utopia, which our prodigies create with their prodigious skills and modern technology out of the canvas of a world whose institutions had to be razed to the ground before starting over, is "just another modern capitalist democracy". They were inventing a new society for a world where democracy was a foreign concept, and they didn't reach any higher than the status quo.

Between this high-level overview and some details I've left out (especially the businessboy's part in the plot), it does kinda seem like the story sees institutions of any kind as a morally neutral tool that leaders use to shape society in their own image. Democracy is not good because it empowers the common people or incentivizes certain types of behavior in its elected officials; it's good because it lets people choose inherently good people to be their leaders instead of being stuck with whichever royal brat happened to be born first.

That's not just bad politics; it's mundane bad politics in a context where you could get away with writing just about anything. To quote Geoff:

While other anime [in 2019] have been uglier, and boring-er, and at times even more rage-inducing-er, none of them come anywhere near being that existentially depressing for me. To think that an artist could go to the lengths of constructing out an entire anime fantasy world, and writing out a grand, serialized epic about its utopian evolution...only to end up saying "Eh, this is as good as it gets," because for all that imagination they've failed to dream up anything better... That kills me a bit inside.

Do you see what I'm saying? HSPHIEEIAL is bad in a unique way. An interesting way. To quote Geoff again, just moments later:

The real point [of the video] is for all of us to have some fun at the expense of anime with problems that I think are funny, and given how my brain works, this is the one that gave me the most to make fun of, by far.

I don't want to say that was lost in Geoff's later "Worst Anime of [Year]" videos; 2020's silver-medal loser, Hatena Illusion, gave Geoff a lot of distinctive failures to make fun of. But it's the silver-medal loser, and it lost to Gibiate, a series that just has a derivative nonsense plot and mediocre production quality. It looks bad, but it's not Ex-Arm bad, you know? It's not bad in a way that you can roast it for twenty minutes, twice in separate videos, and have new stuff each time.

Gibiate is, by my reckoning, ordinary bad. Not "4/10" ordinary, but "bad in the ways many 4/10 anime are, just not all at once". Same with L&BH, aside from Geoff's love of the source material. Same with Kizuna no Allele, aside from that one time it shilled NFTs. Honestly, mostly same with Inukai-san's Dog if we include 4/10 hentai.

[literatureismyentirepersonality]

Is Heathcliff Byronic in your opinion?

I'm not a great fan of the term in all honesty. It tends to be slapped on all Gothic and Romantic heroes willy nilly and while it's a useful social and literary context, 90% of the time it becomes reductive. A Byronic character is ultimately a celebrity insert, which Heathcliff is absolutely not.

He does, however, have some character elements which are evolved from the basic Byronic hero model that the Brontës engaged with furiously in their juvenilia. Emily and Anne's juvenilia is largely lost, but we know that their world was relatively similar in shape (the geography and characters were nearly identical, but all the siblings had their own canon, which they fought to establish over each others') to Charlotte and Branwell's.

Angria, Charlotte and Branwell's principal play world, featured heavy politics and war in a world full of extreme Byronic figures. There were multiple different characters who were modelled on Byron, but they borrowed also from the Duke of Wellington and other heroes. Drinking, affairs, charismatic cruelty, brooding and cheerful destruction are all prominent traits of their favourites. Charlotte would eventually begin to bring romance into this world, which Branwell seemed to chafe against by reactively making the Byronic figures even worse.

Gondal must have contained these figures to some extent, but was more female focused. Stories of love predominated, as well as Romantic tales of imprisonment and isolation. Emily and Anne may have been whump girlies. The majority of this work is lost though so we don't have much idea of the extent to which they might have engaged with their siblings more political Byronic figures, but it's safe to assume that Emily read stories that contained Byronic heroes and was immersed in the culture producing them.

Heathcliff contains several obvious Byronic influences: his charisma through cruelty, his laughing wickedness, his broodiness, his drama BUT he is not a simplistic Byronic hero. His Byronic broodiness is not the product of the usual Romantic drama of affairs or deep and sudden tragedy. Byronic heroes tend to have suffered unlikely and shocking things— married to madwomen, dramatic and gothic illnesses, etc. What is striking about Heathcliff is the realism and natural progression of circumstances that produces him. Economic disadvantage and racial discrimination place him as the ultimate and obvious punching bag in a dysfunctional family where he suffers the effects of paternal distance, alcoholism and Cathy's struggle against misogynistic societal expectations. Not only is Heathcliff a natural product of his environment; the people around him are too. Part of Emily Brontë's genius in creating Heathcliff is that she grounds him competely without losing the drama of his more Byronic cousins.

I think he has Byronic element and his relationship with the Byronic archetype is interesting— but I still hesitate to call him or any sophisticatedly constructed character Byronic. (Even Rochester!)

[dyradoodles]

Hiiiiii! 💕 I was just wondering….. what are your preferences for Zack & Seph? Do you ship ‘em, is it up to circumstance, does the age matter to you/do you consider their age and their gap? Why not even throw in how you fell in love with Zack & Seph to begin with? Do you have sources?? MLA format for Zack’s fandom page???

*plops down on floor*

Details plz! ❤️

Ah yes hello person that I definitely do not know, who definitely didn't see me say I could write an essay about this very subject on discord LMFAO

I'll put the actual essay under a cut for people who don't want to scroll through my Many Feelings about these two lol As a TLDR to your questions:

Yes I ship them, but also Yes it's up to circumstance! Yes I consider their canon ages/the age gap (which most visibly manifests in me only drawing them platonically if I'm drawing Zack as a Second/with the puppy hair, or writing a fic taking place during CC)! I was actually into Aeriseph first and stumbled into ZackSeph fics, and realized it was a similar dynamic, but with someone who spent time with Seph canonically before he went bananas! All of this was before CC came out and I've been loving these characters for 20+ years!

To borrow a phrase (from crylin iirc), honestly, I like just seeing them standing next to each other, romantic or no LMAO <3

NOW, FOR THE ESSAY.

So to expand on what I said earlier, I think it's obvious from my blog and ZS server that I ship these two LMAO That said, the way I ship them is based heavily on the era of fandom before CC was a thing. I got into FF7 around 2002 (possibly earlier, I just don't have the dates on drawings that old), five years before CC came out. At the time, we knew next to nothing about Zack beyond the very short clips of him in OG. So, fandom did what fandom does best, and tried to fill in the blanks!

Some of the efforts to figure out who Zack was went all the way down to his name, because it's Zakkusu in Japanese. So you'll see him as Zax, too - There were heated debates on whether to use Zack or Zax. And no last name! Fandom had to come up with surnames themselves. We also didn't have much of a reference beyond his polygon model, which seemed to have darker skin and, (as many fics described it) violet eyes. It was also assumed that, since he was a First who worked closely with Sephiroth, he was probably around Sephiroth's age. You likely already see where I'm going with this, laying all that out lol The Zack I draw and write is very much based on that time period, and if I'm honest, that's the character I really ship with Seph. I still joke in my fics sometimes that Zack's last name might be Donovan or Darklighter, etc., which are old fandom surnames!

Now, obviously CC came out and threw all this on its head, because we finally got a whole GAME about this (important!) minor character. I have many beefs with CC's writing and Square's insistence that so many of their characters need to be child prodigies (they can't ALL be prodigies, Square!!!). With Zack going from an assumed early 20s to suddenly being 16, and all the craziness of CC's plot, the way I approached the ship changed as well.

This is where I would firmly say my stance is: I don't think Seph had any interest in Zack romantically, in CC. Because that's a kid lmao If I'm engaging with the Compilation as a whole, I definitely lean way more into the mentor/mentee relationship for the two of them. As a personal rule, I only draw them platonically if Zack's got the puppy hair, because that was the most obvious visual cue I could think of that could draw that line between Zack's teen years vs. adult. If Seph managed to not go insane, then yeah, later in life I could still see them getting together! But clearly that's already AU territory lmfao

Ultimately, what I like best about Zack & Seph is how they treat each other (while Seph is still sane lol). That goes for platonically and romantically. Zack is so genuine and kind, and treats Seph the way he always wanted to be treated - like he's human. He can joke around with Seph in a way most people simply can't. Meanwhile, Seph treats Zack's feelings with respect, even during the times he's laughing at Zack for being ridiculous. He's also honest with Zack. He answers truthfully when Zack asks what's wrong, and it's clear that it's because he knows Zack is not a threat; Zack will take Seph's feelings seriously, too. I can enjoy the drama of the trauma and heartbreak that comes with Sephiroth's descent into villainy, but my favorite stuff definitely involves a lot of Nibelheim fix-it fics lol

Despite all the changes CC made to Zack and his relationship to Sephiroth (RIP Second in Command Zax Donovan/Darklighter/Knightblade, my beloved), their actual dynamic with regard to how they treat each other stayed, miraculously, intact. That's the real reason they're still my favorite characters, and how my enjoyment of FF7 has remained as strong as it is after literal decades. Square can retcon as many things as they want in the Compilation, but they'll never stop me from making art and fic of the characters I grew up with. Unless I get a C&D for some reason LMFAO Until then, I'll keep enjoying my AUs (and if anything, I have even more reason to enjoy them now that AUs themselves are canon - you bet your ass I'll be in the AUs where ONLY OG happened and I can ignore everything else LOL)

Thank you for the questions!! It was fun to get all my thoughts written down in one huge chunk, as opposed to my typical disjointed ramblings to my friends. Hopefully it was an interesting read!

Sources:

Fanlore. “Zack Fair.” The Organization for Transformative Works, 2 Jan. 2023, fanlore.org/wiki/Zack_Fair.

Doodles, Dyra. "Way Too Much Fandom Lurking." Dyra's Childhood to Adulthood, Copious Amounts of Fanfiction, 3 Apr. 2024

[salamiimommy]

Im_Sorry_Buddy’s description for as many of the designs in FTFO as I can find rn bc I need to keep them all together in one place for reference so I might as well share it for anyone else

Any edits I make to the original text will be shown in [these] yes I have been updating it, last combed around chapter 5 while also updating with the latest chapters. Buddy has confirmed this post is accurate !!

[MAJOR DESIGN SPOILERS MENTIONED. marked with **. it’s organized by character with their first outfit on top and changes after in order to how they appear. pls be careful looking through if you’re new.]

[Ink is first and he has. a Lot of outfits so there’s a HUGE chunk of text to scroll past to get to everyone else LOL. Broomie is second]

First, some heights. The tallest Gang member is Horror (4ft 10 inches), then Nightmare (4ft 9in, though his tentacles make him seem larger than Horror), then Cross, Killer, and Dust (4ft 7in), then Ink is the shortest (at about 3ft 8.5 inches). Of the Sanses, only Outertale Sans is shorter than Ink (at 3 ft 5inches).

Error is a couple inches shorter than Cross, Dust, and Killer at 4ft 04in (because Error 404 joke). Dream is approximately 4ft 3in (my headcanon is he’d get taller than that if the Multiverse wasn’t so negative. Plus Nightmare has 500 years on him). Blue is 4ft 7in. Red is 4ft 6.5 inches just to make him mad that Blue is a little taller than him. Core Frisk… is 4ft. (Yes, they are actually taller than Ink. Yes, I did a double take when I realized that. The fandom has lied to me.)

[The Papyri] average around 6.8 to 7.2 ft. Edge looks even taller than he actually is because of the heels on his boots. I will say that Toriels are taller than the Papyri at maybe about 7.5 to 8ft. Other than that, I don't have exact numbers in mind, heh.

[the website I used made the Sanses all child models bc they’re so short wHEEEEEEEZE also like it states the Paps n Tori heights are the averages, different AUs are different heights. also also the rectangle in the back is Broomie's height]

Ink:

Ink sleeps in pajamas that are a lighter shade of brown. It’s a standard long sleeve button up pajama shirt and pants.

Ink's soul has the appearance like broken pottery. There are visible gouges where he dug his fingers into his soul.

Ink has had a couple different outfits. His former "hanging around the Castle" outfit was a too big brown long sleeve and loose brown pants (that did resemble the pants the Comyet Ink used to wear except they were completely brown and went all the way down to his feet). Those clothes were destroyed when Error grabbed him in chapter 6 (where Ink spent chapter 7 wearing Killer's too-big coat) so [then] Ink [was] borrowing one of Cross's black long sleeves and another pair of brown pants (these have more of the "pleated" design of Comyet Ink's new pants and also go down to his feet) .

[CH 12 HT!Toriel visit] “He was happy to choose a cyan hoodie and dark blue joggers. Well, he was happy except when it came to choosing the shoes.”

[CH 26 Ccino visit] “His black turtleneck, pants, and green vest” [from his Arc outfit.]

[CH 27 onwards was a black long sleeve shirt, pleated brown pants, and his scarf with the hood.]

[CH 32] “[…] wear his brown scarf and hood, along with his loose brown pants. […] Aster had apparently brought along a black tank top for him. The tank top fit well enough and the collar was high enough that it lay under the collar of his scarf but it obviously did not cover his arms, […]Doctor Toriel stepped out before returning with a pair of long fingerless brown gloves.”

[CH 44] “[…] a light green long sleeve, his hooded scarf, and a pair of dark brown pants from the drawer right beside him.”

[CH 45] “[…] his hooded scarf, a comfortable black long sleeve, his light green [cargo] pants, and a brown satchel with a long strap. He hung the satchel cross-body over his shoulder”

[CH 46 around the castle] “[…] a pair of rather short brown shorts, leaving […] much of his femur uncovered”

[CH 46 Ccino visit] “[…] a turtleneck that matched the light green interior of his hooded scarf and brown pants”

[CH 46 Sciencetale visit] “[…] his comfortable black long sleeve and the detachable light green pants-to-shorts he preferred.”

[SHIELD OUTFIT] A long purple cloak with a hood that, when up, almost covers his face (meaning his eye lights can glow from beneath the shadow of the hood). It's more off of his face when he's curious and excited, but falls further over his face when he's scared or uncomfortable. The purple cloak has a silver clasp in the shape of the Delta Rune. Underneath the cloak he wears a silver tunic, black belt, and purple leggings. His boots are black and go up just to his “calves”. When Ink is Shield, he covers the ink splotch on his face with white paint.

[Ch 26 he added]”[…H]is scarf (minus the hood, which was tucked into his satchel) around his neck. Its ends were folded in so they did not hang out of the bottom of his brown coat.”

[ARC OUTFIT:] Whenever Ink needs to publicly work for Nightmare, he wears an outfit with a bit of a steampunk aesthetic (as “encouraged” by Nightmare so that when people look at Ink, they don’t think “medic” or “healer”). Nightmare wants Ink to keep his identity (and the fact that he’s the Gang's medic) a secret so he wears a mask outside of the castle. The mask appears to be made from brass and copper metal that’s been painted black (with the exception of a few accents). It covers his face while his hood covers the rest of his skull.

The mask is fashioned after a mix of a gas mask for the bottom half and steampunk “brass goggles” for the top half. It is all one piece and the way the “metal” is crafted makes it looks like an owl’s feathery face. Ink’s eye lights are not visible through the goggles and the dark lenses (plus the shadow of the hood) makes it seem like he is constantly giving what I call the “Sans's empty socket glare”. The bottom half of the mask has two “valves” for exhalation and inhalation that are actually functional (cleansing the air he breathes), but are flatter and are symmetrical, unlike real world versions tend to be. There is a bit of metal between the valves that looks like an owl’s beak. The bottom is mostly black with some brass accents for the bottom half. He can easily remove the mask to reveal his face and replace it in a moment’s notice.

Ink wears a brown steampunk overcoat with a hood. Seven black buttons go up his chest (to the left side of his sternum) to close it. Under the last button, the fabric opens up in an upside down “v” shape, preventing the coat from covering the fronts of his legs. The hem of the “tail” of the coat falls just below the backs of his knees. The collar of the coat covers part of his neck. Around his left forearm is what looks like two black snake designs wrapped around his arm (like the snakes wrapped around the Staff of Asclepius).

Under the coat he wears a dark green vest (It was the only big bit of green that Nightmare allowed because he really doesn’t want Ink to even be associated with green magic.) Under that vest he wears a black turtleneck undershirt that nearly goes up to his chin. His pants are black, and tuck into brown boots. (Ink ditches the boots whenever he can).

Over the coat, Ink wears a thick black belt that has many pockets on it. Every pocket has a unique symbol and every one is filled with medical supplies like bandages, healing food, several antidotes, etc. Attached to his right thigh is a small satchel with more medical supplies. In the small side pocket of the satchel (this one is to the front so its easiest to reach), is [REDACTED]. On his left thigh he wears what looks like a long brown holster that goes down to his knee. Seven pockets go down it in a line. Inside are… you guessed it: more medical supplies.

Ink wears black gloves that leaves just the tips of his fingers exposed. The back of the right glove gets what looks like a bronze analog clock sewn into it. The tops of his fingers are exposed so he can more easily use his magic to heal others and [fix codes]. They’re reinforced so he can grab a blade without it cutting right into him.

[Ink now wears the scarf as well, minus the hood, with the ends folded so they do not hang out of the bottom of the coat as of Ch 27.]

[SCARF in CH 26] “The hood was attached by a few buttons that were the same shade as the rest of the fabric, letting them blend into the scarf and make it appear to be one solid piece. The outside of the hood was brown. Its interior was a light green, like the color on the pinkies and sides of Prism's gloves. It was also the color that Ink's eye lights often turned when he used green magic.

The brown scarf's tails were long enough that the ends still hung down by the bottoms of Ink’s calves after he wrapped it around his neck. The hood hung loosely around his head but stayed up even when he moved around. The green interior of the hood was clearly visible, contrasting the exterior nicely. The "collar" was loose around his neck but thick enough to easily cover the new marks that had been scrawled onto his bones.

If Ink wanted to, he could detach the hood and tuck in the ends to wear the scarf under his Shield cloak. He could even wear it hoodless with his Arc outfit if he wished.”

[INKS FINAL OUTFIT in CH 47] Ink's new brown coat was shorter than his old Arc one, with the straight hem stopping at just below his pelvis.

There were only four black buttons holding it closed instead of the previous coat's seven, though Ink found that he also liked how it looked when he left it open.

Even when fully buttoned, the coat opened up just below his collar bone, leaving a standing collar up top instead of an attached hood and revealing a bit of the light green turtleneck that safely covered the tattoo-like marks on his neck and sternum.

[…] an upright light green heart was embroidered on the shoulders of the coat, subtly indicating his profession as a Healer. Just beneath those hearts, cut-outs ran from his shoulder to above his elbows and revealed a matching green interior.

He traded his old black gloves for longer black ones with stitching designs that matched the light green of the interior of his scarf, his shirt, and the medical hearts, leaving the tips of his fingers and thumbs exposed and the black double-clock on the back of the hand. His wide, pocket-filled black belt also remained, as did the brown holster of pockets down his left thigh. His brown satchel was moved to his right hip, now hanging crossbody instead of being attached to his right thigh.

The black pants he designed had zippers hidden under small bits of overlapping fabric up around his femurs, which gave him quicker access to the area if needed. He could technically turn the pants into a pair of shorts with two unzips but Ink was hesitant. He was too uncomfortable with the idea of showing the binary code marks on his bones to consider something shorter like Prism's overalls, even with the thigh-high brown sock providing an extra layer of coverage on his left leg. Like Prism and many other Inks, he chose a design that left his heel and toes bare. Unlike Prism and many other Inks, the tight-like sock had a swirling green design down its outside.

Other than the pant leg, his prosthetic was bare, allowing a bit of the design to be seen due to his abhorrence for shoes. Maybe it was due to the presence of the colors (instead of white) but Ink was much more receptive to showing the prosthetic off than any of the marks on his bones.

Ink's Arc mask was attached to his belt and hung near his satchel, out of the way but within reach just in case.

His hooded scarf completed the outfit, with Cyan and Gold once again taking up residence at the ends of the tails. Broomie floated at his back, with the tip of their handle pointing out beyond his right shoulder while their black brush flicked close to his left ankle.

[**CH 41 Ink’s right leg has been cleanly amputated] “above his knee, halfway up his femur.”

[**PROSTHETIC in CH 46] The prosthetic resembled a skeleton monster's right leg with several notable differences. The socket was a bit wider than the bone to fit his stump and provide support. The pylon beneath the knee resembled leg armor more than a skeleton monster's individual tibia and fibula. The basic shape and outline were a similar thickness to his bone leg though.

The mechanical foot part was currently covered by the shell that went over it. Based on the images that Doctor Toriel had shown Ink, there were distinctive joint areas for the ankle, knee, and toe beneath the casing. […] the toe was one unit meant for balancing, support, and propulsion.

The base of the prosthetic was colored a medium shade of gray […] while the design on the casing was one of the simpler ones.

The prosthetic covers were the same style for the entire leg and foot. They had the appearance like jagged light green lightning or filled cracks in repaired pottery, which stood out sharply and boldly on the metallic black background. The moment Ink had seen what was labeled as a "kintsugi-inspired" design, he knew that was the one. The green not only matched his eye lights, his magic, and the interior of his scarf, but the 'filled-in' look of the pattern reminded him of his soul.

Broomie:

Cross:

Cross [used to wear] his old Royal Guard uniform from Xtale. He has his scar, and his eye lights are usually both white. They do not turn red no matter how angry or emotional he becomes. His bone and knife attacks are tinted purple.

[CH 14] “His jacket was different. It was just a couple alterations. A black X-like design on the shoulders of both white sleeves. The large white X-sash was now black. Along the bottom hem of the white jacket were simple black cross-stitches. It was little things but the decals broke up the white in his outfit.”

[CH 45 pjs:] “Cross had grabbed a plain black tank top and loose black sweatpants.”

[CH 46 Ccino visit] “[…] he changed into a black hoodie and pants instead of wearing his more recognizable outfit.”

[GUARD OUTFIT] […] a set of silver Royal Guard armor and a purple cloak. A large Delta Rune is emblazoned on the chestplate in black. The armor also comes with a silver helmet but he did not wear it on the [first] Aftertale mission. When he is acting as Guard, he either covers his scar with white or wears the helmet to hide his face.

[**CH 37] “[…] vertical cracks split the bones by his eye sockets, resembling the scars of his creator. His eye lights burned a volatile purple, their form shivering like they were struggling not to change shape. [CH 38] […] glowing purple cracks on his skull looked like a Gaster’s scars.”

[**CH 42 has healed the scars completely]

Dust:

Dust wears the standard Sans outfit but it looks like its a paler color in places because of all the monster dust. His shoes are gray for that reason. Dust always has his gray hood up unless it’s knocked off his skull. Unlike Killer and Horror (and Cross), his hood does not have fur. He wears his Papyrus’s tattered scarf. His eye lights have a blue center and a red ring around the outside. They can occasionally turn white if he’s feeling peaceful. His bone attacks are indigo, leaning more towards blue than purple.

Dust sometimes sleeps in a light blue t-shirt and dark gray pajama pants with a drawstring. Other times he forgets to change and plops into bed in his usual t-shirt and shorts.

[CH 46 Sciencetale visit] “[…] he pulled at the hood of the hoodie he was wearing. He had seemed to like the dark indigo color[…] Dust's scarf was tucked into the hoodie, leaving only a small bit of the collar visible. A pair of sunglasses covered his distinctive eye lights. Black sweatpants and sneakers completed the outfit.”

Dust Papyrus:

To Ink, Dust Papyrus looks like the barest outline of a ghostly shape of the head, scarf, and hands of a Papyrus. He’s extremely faint and blurry, with binary codes making up his outline.

[**CH 46] “[…] ghostly gloves gained a red color and an equally ghostly skull took form. Finally, [Ink] could clearly see Phantom Papyrus.”

Killer:

Killer also wears the standard Sans outfit except his undershirt is a black turtleneck and his hood has fur on the rim. His soul is usually visible in the form of a red target. When he goes Stage Three, it blurs and thick black liquid pours from his eye sockets and mouth. He never has eye lights. His knife attacks are red while his bone attacks are tinted gray. [Liquid Determination leaks constantly from his eyes.]

He tries not to sleep so he does not change into pajamas.

[CH 4 comment] Killer's Stages are inspired by something he has in Something New/"Killertale". Long story short: "Stage One": Killer is pretty much Sans. This Stage does not happen anymore. "Stage Two": Default Killer. "Stage Three": Killer is out of control and will attack anything. "Stage Four and Higher": run.

[**CH 26, Killer can now renter Stage 1, though he has not done it in yet. Liquid Determination is also not constantly leaking from his eyes. CH 27:] The black marks beneath his eye sockets were thin enough that they could be mistaken for drawn lines.

[**CH 44 showed that the liquid Determination is still affected by his emotions:] “Killer glowered at him. The black lines beneath his eye sockets thickened a little.”

Horror:

Horror has the usual Sans-style outfit. His has fur lining the hood. Horror’s jacket is a bit tattered and shows signs of being torn and sewn back together in a couple places. His left eye is not his own one, he took it from a dead guard in his AU. It’s is a glowing red iris and can go out like most skeleton eye lights. His bone attacks are tinted a faint red. [Horror has two eye lights regularly, just one of them is. big and red.]

Horror has pajama shorts and a t-shirt but he often forgets to change into them. (He’s trying to teach Ink to be better than him at it). [CH 45] “Horror was in a gray t-shirt and black shorts.”

[CH 36] “…those unsettling, mismatched eye lights.” [CH 40] “His right eye light returned with his health (and his hope)” [proof for two eye lights]

Nightmare:

Nightmare doesn’t change clothes. He is his goopy octopus self. When he is particularly angry or in a “mood”, his aura is much darker, like he’s surrounded by shadows.

[**CH 28] “His form rippled, and suddenly he did not appear to be made of black sludge. Instead it was like he was glitching darkness, his form flickering and rippling at its edges as his eye light thinned to a slit and and his fingers sharpened to claw-like points. Ink caught a glimpse of his teeth and was horrified to see they were unnaturally pointed[.]” [His eye also glows a toxic cyan and he smiles with too many teeth. And his tentacles are unmoving most of the time.]

[**CH 37] “Corrupted's grin grew wider, revealing that his jaw had indeed become unhinged like it was broken.”

[**CH 40] “The shadows that held Ink barely resembled Nightmare anymore. He had merged with the darkness, leaving only a toxic eye light visible as his presence expanded […] smoke-like tentacles […] his sharp-toothed smile, which was far too big to fit on Nightmare's face without breaking it apart, oozed with black sludge.”

[**CH 40 returns him to his regular goop form.]

Dream:

Dream has his “current outfit” (the one with the yellow jacket-tunic thing). In the present he always looks tired and has shadows under his sockets.

[**CH 37] “Actual fire rippled in its wake, burning a violent gold. Four wings tore themselves free of Dream’s back, twisting and writhing like each individual feather was made of golden flames and his facial structure was lost in shuddering fire. His eye sockets filled with fire, burning away his eye lights.

[…] Although Dream’s mouth stayed visible through the flames, his teeth sharpened and his fiery grin grew so wide it froze on his face, unable to falter. The fire was such a thick covering over the remainder of his skull that an initial glance made it seem like that smile was all that was left of his face.

His clothes did not burn but they too became flames, curling and lashing in the air like they were mere moments from bursting out into a firestorm and consuming everything in sight, Dream included. Only his circlet remained solid, incandescent upon his fiery head like a halo that matched the glowing intensity of his wings. It was as though the sun itself had taken the form of a dreadful Angel.”

[**CH 39 returns him to his regular intact outfit.]

[**CH 43 sees a peek of] “…a bit of his collarbone that was blackened like it had been burned by flames,” [we don’t know the extent of the burns]

[**CH 45] “The burn scars were actually one big scar centered on his sternum, right where his soul rested. The bones of his sternum, clavicles, and frontal ribs were blackened like charred wood with a thick, circular shape in the middle. Tendrils spread out like wisps of flame, giving the scar an appearance like a black, stylized sun.”

Blue:

Blue is more “Swap” than “Blueberry”. His kerchief is a darker blue color, and he wears a black-gray Royal Guard-inspired “battle body”, blue gloves, and blue boots. His eye lights are also blue. They become blue stars if he is happy and plain white if he’s terrified. His bone attacks are tinted blue.

[**CH 38] […] the slash through the heart sealed, leaving a deep scar much like the one [Ink] himself had gotten from Horrortale Undyne's spear.

Error:

[CH 2] “[…H]is tear marks stained red-purple by the blood that ran from his sockets.”

[Ch 7] “[…] a bit of a black skull and a single haunting red eye socket was visible. A distorted, yellow-ringed blue eye light stared down at them, observing them in silence, before it shrank to a deranged pinprick.

Black, dust-covered skeletal fingers grasped the edge of the portal, not reacting as the edge cut into his hand and what looked like glitching blood dripped down his phalanges.

His black jacket was torn, with the blue ends of its sleeves splattered with monster dust and specks of brownish-red dried blood. His pants were even more discolored, more gray than black and so stained by what must be blood that they clung to the red bones of his legs. One of his shoes was gone, and the strip of fabric around his neck (which might have been a scarf once) was so tattered it resembled a bloody blue bandage more than anything else. Even with his blue-lined hood pulled up over his skull and covering his face in shadow, he was easy to identify.”

[CH 20] “Error's skull stopped melting but the damage was done. Almost half of his head was gone, leaving only his eye light and a bit of his jaw untouched on that side.”

[CH 22] “[…H]is eye lights, which glowed so brightly they almost looked poisonous.”

[CH 48] “He had also fixed and washed his clothes. […] his scarf was no longer torn.”

[**CH 22] “Most of his mandible and zygomatic arch had been repaired. The hole in his skull wasn't anywhere close to being closed but although the tangle of codes in his skull were still horribly warped, more of the bits that were Error's own were visible.”

[**CH 37] “[…] a jagged scar that went from the top of Error’s repaired eye socket, up his forehead and over the top of his skull, and back around to the front through his jaw, where it curled back up and ended at the bottom of his eye socket. It marked exactly where the damage had once been.”

Geno:

[CH 29] “Geno mostly resembled the average Sans, except for the red scarf, melting eye socket, minor glitches, and the large gash across his chest. […] A line of red dripped from Geno’s mouth.” [The glitches around Geno’s eye can come and go, either on command or due to his emotions (negative emotions adding more glitches).]

[**CH 35] “Geno's chest wound seemed a bit less severe and there wasn't a trickle of blood coming from his mouth anymore.”

[**CH 36] “[…] heal the slash across his chest. His eye socket remained melted”

Fresh:

Prism:

[CH 12] “The other Ink still wore mostly brown, but the outfit was much more elaborate than the simple brown pajamas Ink currently wore. The biggest things Ink noticed were the sash of colored vials across the other's chest and the giant paintbrush at their back. And the reflection had a lovely brown scarf.” [He writes on his scarf like og!Ink]

Solus:

[CH 21] “This Ink's outfit was similar to Prism's but with one distinct difference. Part of the "collar" and ends of his scarf were the deep blue of an integrity soul. The other Ink's sleeves and pants were also torn, revealing most of his arms and sections of his legs.

Black marks were visible all over his bones, with a few peeking up just above his scarf. They weren't simple binary codes like Ink's own marks, he realized. They were scars. Physical scars that someone had painstakingly carved into the other Ink's bones […] curling up his jaw and chin.”

[CH 24] “His brown sleeves were mostly gone, showing most of his arms, while his pleated brown pants were torn enough to reveal bits of his tibias, fibulas, and femurs. His ripped pant legs were uneven, their bottoms stained with a black liquid that could be ink or his own blood. The brown leggings Ink wore under his pants were absent from Solus, leaving the bottom parts of his legs and his feet completely bare.

[…] One of his eye lights often shifted color and shape whenever he blinked, sticking mostly to pastels or a stoic, guarded gray. The other was always the deep blue of an integrity soul no matter what emotions he felt or what shape they became.”

Other canon content for handy reference:

Cross is afraid of cows

Spaghetti is (probably) Ink’s favourite food

Ink scratched himself to the point of bleeding while stuck in his AU

[CH 24] ‘Solus’ did not speak much, instead preferring to use sign language and gestures. When his hands weren’t moving in small, careful motions, they held onto the blue edges of his stained and torn brown scarf or clung to his equally battered and scarred version of Broomie.

[CH 40 Broomie’s magic is…] black for portal creation, which would be useful if Ink's own magic was blocked off again. Brown for shielding simply because Ink liked brown, yes? Purple for enhanced durability to allies. Cyan for non-harmful entanglements. Blue for damage to moving targets. Green for Broomie's own regeneration capabilities only, unfortunately. Yellow for precise distance shots. Orange for damage to targets that were still. Red for purely corrosive splatters that could melt through flesh and bone- and Corruption. [Ink only has black and green magic.]

Broomie is referred to with they/them pronouns

Paprika loves dino egg oatmeal, like UT!Papyrus

Only Ink, Broomie, and Dust can see Phantom Paps. Only Dust can hear him.

If you have any links to other comments Buddy has made about any designs, or other quotes from the text, pls link them so I can add them ty !!!

[decks-writing-blog]

Free Them Chapter 1/3: The Hole in the Simulation

Summary: Gordon frees the AI from the simulation.

[A/N] Another fic I finished writing like 2 months ago but didn't have time to edit and upload because I was busy with Halloween stuff. Here it finally is though. Also, I'm sure people have done Aperture AU's with the HLVRAI cast before but this is my take on the idea.

~

“I believe you.”

It was barely more than a whisper but it had Gordon flinching anyway. He spun his desk chair around to confront the intruder.

Doug Rattmann. His gaze averted, he stood in front of Gordon’s cubicle, a steaming cup of coffee in his thin hands.

“Huh? What?”

“I believe you,” Doug repeated.

Gordon wasn’t in the mood for company but he wasn’t quite frustrated enough to be rude about it either. “Uh… thanks. What do you believe me about exactly?”

“The AI in the test simulation you played. You said they’re alive and thinking and feeling. I believe you.”

In hindsight, he couldn’t have possibly been referring to anything else. Since finishing it, the amount of times Gordon had argued with his co-workers had been rather high. It’s all anyone talked about with him anymore. Doug believing him wasn’t surprising. Rumor had it he thought that the Companion Cubes were alive. Still though, it was nice to be believed for a change.

“It makes sense,” Doug continued. “We have all those brain scans for the GLaDOS project and the simulation used them create its characters, right? That’s what I’d heard anyway.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Borrowing them took some convincing but we did it.” As head of the simulation project, using those scans had been Gordon’s idea. The plan was to create as realistic a digital world as possible so having the simulation model it’s most prominent NPC’s off of real human brain data made sense, right?

The ‘little’ prank his coworkers had played on him by telling the simulation to treat the world like a violent video game and even directly putting the Resonance Cascade in had helped with that by really pushing the limits of it. But that didn’t mean Gordon was happy about it. It was supposed to have just been a friendly gameified workweek at Black Mesa, mostly focused on interacting with the world and the NPC’s in it. But violent or not, the simulation had still modeled the main NPC’s off of real brain data and it had done a better job of it than Gordon had predicted even if the others didn’t believe him about that. They hadn’t talked to any of the Science Team or Benrey so they didn’t know.

Doug shifted his hold on his coffee mug as his eyes darted to the opposite side of Gordon’s cubicle, never once resting on Gordon directly. “So the AIs basically have their own little brains. The others say the simulation isn’t that advanced yet and that proof of that is the fact that we’re nowhere close to ready to put Cave’s brain into a GLaDOS machine yet. But making a brain is different than uploading one. The AIs are alive but they’re trapped. You should free them.”

Gordon had thought about doing something with the simulation a few times. Find a way to keep it running even despite his coworkers rightful objections over how much power that took. He’d even been thinking about taking it to Cave Johnson himself because he might sign off on the idea even just to see if anything happened if the simulation was allowed to run indefinitely. The main external thing making him hesitate had been the chance that Cave Johnson might decide to shut it down entirely. He was known for being an asshole just for the sake of being one sometimes. But ‘freeing them’ didn’t exactly describe that. “What do you mean ‘free them’?’

“Give them a way to interact with the world. The real one. Or… what we all believe to be the real world. Who knows if it is in actuality? I’m not sure how. You have much more experienced with the simulation than I. But I’m sure that they are trapped and that you can help them if you try.”

Listening to what Doug Rattmann had to say when it came to anything touching on what was reality or not, maybe wasn’t wise. But despite all his eccentricities, he didn’t get his position at Aperture out of luck or nepotism. He was at least as smart as anyone else here, probably more so given all the, ‘you must be crazy’s he no doubt had to deal with while on his way to his current position. Something Gordon now had a small taste of with being called ‘crazy’ for believing his AI friends were real. … Maybe Doug was right and the Companion Cubes were sentient too. A thought to chew on later. First came this ‘free them’ idea.

“I’ll think about it, I guess. And if I come up with a way to ‘free them’ or whatever, I will.” Assuming it was reasonably possible to do anyway.

“Good. Good.” Doug nodded. “I hope to meet the AIs if ever given the chance.”

“Uh, I’ll keep you up to date on them then.” If for no other reason than Gordon appreciated being believed finally.

Conversation apparently done, Doug turned and left. No ‘goodbye’ or where to reliably find him for the promised AI updates. Oh well. Doug was made his way around the labs fairly often so no doubt Gordon would run into him again eventually.

~

Dr. Coomer had said Gordon’s suit had a hole in it that he’d wanted to crawl through. Scared out of his mind – it had all felt so real – at the time, Gordon typically tried not to think too much about it. The hand that had been cut off was even the same one he was missing in real life – supposedly not planned by his coworkers – so it had brought back a lot of that old turmoil. (In real life, he thankfully didn’t have a gunhand but instead a prosthetic, high-tech and made by Aperture so not exactly normal but a more proper hand nonetheless.) Which was why it had taken him so long to finally come back to considering the words themselves, brought on by Doug’s suggestion.

The ‘hole’ Dr. Coomer had been talking about hadn’t been in the one the HEV suit. Crawling into Gordon’s virtual body wouldn’t have brought him any closer to the real world. No the hole could only be referring the hole in the simulation itself that allowed Gordon to access it. So in theory all Gordon had to do was create some more holes, ones that could be ‘crawled through’ to reach the real world.

Far easier said than done but this was Aperture Science. They did what they must because they could for the good of everyone. In this case, specifically for the good of Gordon’s AI pals. Aperture was also an expert in all things robots. A whole big team of people were literally working daily on creating a giant robot that would be in charge of the whole facility. Gordon was not looking forward to when it was finished and Cave Johnson’s brain was put into it as was the plan, but it did result in there being lots of robot resources around. Making robots an obvious thing to consider.

All he had to do was make some robot bodies that could hopefully house the AIs and hook them up to the simulation so his friends could crawl into them. It wouldn’t be easy but was well within his capabilities. The hard part would be the physical aspect, actually building the robots.

The models around the lab currently were too limited. Neither of the kinds of turrets could go anywhere under their own power – not that Gordon would trust the Science Team in turret bodies anyway given how trigger happy they all were. And the cores weren’t complete yet and thus their railings weren’t done being built, and even when they were, they’d only be in certain places. Gordon needed to make robot bodies that moved entirely under their own power. Making them look human and like their intended recipient's model from the simulation was tempting but he did not have the skills to pull something like that off. Nor did the facility have the means to easily build such parts anyway. He had to work with what was available.

Thus ultimately what he ended up with was a design for a larger core with arm and leg attachments. With help from the Robot Assembly Department he even got it built. It wasn’t the most elegant thing in the world but it would do especially as a test of his ‘hole in the simulation’ theory.

Telling people what he was doing got him more ‘are you crazy?’ looks and even a few comments but the simulation project was his baby so he was free to do with it whatever he wanted. Unless someone above him stepped in and interfered anyway but if need be he could probably find a way to frame this as being good for the company too. Thankfully no one seemed inclined to try that route. Thus he had help hooking the robot’s empty ‘brain’ up to the simulation before strapping himself in as well.

Naturally it dropped him in front of the Chuck-E-Cheese. Next to him was the empty robot, a copy of his player model because that was the quickest to implement. Based off how he looked in real life but low poly, it had a weird and creepy vibe to it. Getting the graphics to look realistic and/or pretty for this project wasn’t high priority yet and thus readable had been the only thing they’d gone for. He quickly turned away and made his way into the restaurant, leaving it out there for now.

Nervous about what he could say to the team, he hadn’t run the simulation since the video game had completed. As a result, everything was exactly how he’d left it. The birthday party decorations were still up and his pals were seated around the table. … Mr. Coolatta was missing though. Gordon could’ve sworn he’d been in the corner. But it had been a several months, misremebering such a small detail wasn’t out of the question.

The team of course wouldn’t know it had been months since last they’d interacted. To them, Gordon would’ve just left and come back after only a few minutes. Thus it wasn’t surprising Dr. Coomer stood to greet him with a smile as he reached them but that didn’t stop it from feeling weird. By all rights, the three of them should be angry with him for abandoning them so long. But they didn’t know and thus weren’t. Hopefully if they ever found out how long it had been, they wouldn’t mind.

“Hello, Gordon! Did you get my message?”

“I did, yeah.” It had come to him in the moments he was being drawn out of the simulation. Something that shouldn’t have been possible. Which had made it the final nail in the coffin for convincing him that these AI’s had gained self-awareness. “And uh… I think I might have something better than putting you in a different video game.”

“So this is a video game then?” Bubby asked as he stood too.

Admitting it at this point wouldn’t hurt since he had a solution… hopefully. “Yeah. It’s uh… it’s a video game. Or maybe more accurately it’s a simulation that was told to host a video game inside itself so it made a video game world out of its given assets.” Including creating more when such was needed, like the aliens and the Chuck-E-Cheese. How it had come up with said Chuck-E-Cheese was still a mystery. But that was more proof that this project had gotten more complex than intended.

“I guess that makes sense,” Tommy said. “But… that means… that means we’re not real, right? You’re the only one who’s real.”

“Uh… I think you guys are real. I mean, something existing only in a digital space doesn’t mean it’s not real, right? You exist in the computer. All my thoughts are electric pulses in my brain. You’re thoughts are the same just with less organic matter involved.”

“I think, therefore I am,” Dr. Coomer said. “What is your idea though? How are you going to make the fact that the world we exist in depends entirely on how long you’re willing to leave it running for, better?”

“Right, yeah, that. It’s why I’m here.” Despite the reasonable amount of confidence he’d had coming in, he was suddenly not so sure anymore. This was the reason he’d avoided coming back. How did you tell someone that their world, everything they knew, was just a test for a bigger project? “First though I should say that I’m not a theoretical physicist, that was a lie for the game. I actually work almost entirely with computers. I kinda made this simulation, with help but… I was in charge of most of it.”

“You’re God then?” Bubby interrupted, not sounding terribly impressed.

“Not really. I created the program and gave it stuff to work with but it put it all together, procedural generation and all that. So if anything, I created the god that created you. But anyway that means I’m basically an expert on it. Despite that, I don’t know for an absolute fact that my idea will work. It’s worth a try ‘cause it might but don’t get your hopes up too high yet. Now that you’ve been warned though, I guess there’s nothing else to do but try it, huh? Follow me.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and led the way back outside. Out here it was more obvious than ever they were in a simulation. The parking lot surrounding them extended all the way to the horizon. The game had ended after all, the simulation continued but it wouldn’t keep building the game unless told to resume doing so.

The robot’s empty model stood a few few away from the entrance, still creepy as ever. If this worked Gordon would insist a different model be used for the next ones.

“Another you?” Tommy asked as they gathered in a semi-circle around it.

“No. It just looks like me because it’s the model that was easiest to implement for this test. Its not even the same kind of entity, I altered it quite a bit. Think of it as a hole in the simulation. There’s an empty robot on the other side. I’m hoping you can use this as a gateway to that robot and thus uh… be free of the simulation.”

“There’s only one,” Bubby said. “You expect us to share a robot body or something?”

“No. I only made one because I’m not sure if it’ll work. If it does, I’ll make more for everyone else. But uh… I guess that means you guys have to decide who gets to try it first.” In hindsight, maybe Gordon should’ve just made three of them. Only freeing one from the simulation when the other two were right here was uncomfortable to say the least.

“If this works, will Sunkist get a robot doggy body too?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah, I could probably do that.” Gordon hadn’t given any real thought to Sunkist before, too focused on his friends’ freedom – though could he really call them friends when their relationship was based on a lie? But it should be doable.

“Okay. Be sure to make her perfect. I’ll go later because I want to go with her. So you two could um… play rock-paper-scissors for this one.”

“On guard Bubby!” Dr. Coomer snapped around to face him, raising his hands, ready for the duel.

With a shrug, Bubby complied. “Rock, paper, scissors,” they said in unison. Bubby landed on rock and Dr. Coomer, paper. “Damn it. Best two out of three.”

“You’re on!”

“Rock, paper, scissors,” they said in unison again. This time Bubby landed on paper and Dr. Coomer scissors. How he did it when his model shouldn’t be able to make that gesture was a mystery. But if anyone could figure out how to cheat in a more complex hand gesture from within the game, it would be him.

Stepping back, Dr. Coomer raised his fist in the air. “Victory!”

Bubby crossed his arms with a small huff. “Whatever, cheater. I don’t wanna be a fucking guinea pig anyway.”

Dr. Coomer turned to face the empty player model. “How do I step in?”

“I was kinda hoping you’d know since you’re the one who tried it with me.”

“Hmm… I guess I did, huh? There’s no way it would’ve worked with you though, would it?”

“I doubt it. At best you would’ve just broken the equipment I use to connect to the simulation.” It was intensive enough that Gordon had to be eased out of it, woken from the pseudo-sleep state it put him in. So getting jerked out of it as the equipment broke wouldn’t have been great but it wouldn’t have seriously hurt him, it had failsafes in place after all. Not that that would’ve made it not scary. “But even if it hadn’t worked, you wouldn’t have been able to actually interact with the world in any way. You would’ve just been stuck in VR pod.”

“Another reason to be glad that plan failed then. But I guess there’s nothing else to do but to try with this. See you on the other side hopefully. You too Bubby and Tommy! Let’s’a go!”

Stepping towards it, Dr. Coomer lifted hand to touch its chest. At first just pressing against it but then with a little more effort, clipping into it. This ‘player’ entity had been altered to allow for this interaction, hopefully creating a passage through it into the robot on the other side but the model hadn’t been. It jerked and spamsed as Dr. Coomer pushed more of himself through. The blank face made it creepy and unsettling to watch. Gordon forced himself to not look away until Dr. Coomer was entirely within it. A few seconds later, the model stilled.

“Did it work?” Bubby took a step closer.

“Something happened,” Tommy said, mirroring Gordon’s thought. Something had happened, whether that something was it working was hard to tell currently.

“I’ll uh… have to disconnect and see. So I’ll be… not right back but back as soon as I can.”

“Okay, see you soon, Mr. Freeman.”

~

As always it was like waking from a nap. Never a restful nap though because it wasn’t a restful experience most of the time. The experience allowed him to feel and even smell everything. Even if it wasn’t quite as strong as real life currently that still included the pain of having his hand cut off and the stench of rot. They hadn’t implemented taste yet but they were getting there.

Once he was finally pulled fully back into reality, the release sequence began. Starting with the helmet encasing his entire head. As the most important part, the computer took it off for him, keeping his hands strapped to his sides. Once it was off though, he could finally see the pod around him. Unfortunately he could smell it too.

Supposedly the Cryo team had sent over only pods no one had died in but all three of them had a weird smell that Gordon’s team could never quite banish. Even if he couldn’t tell what it was exactly, it never failed to make him feel unwell. He should’ve insisted harder they create their immersive VR pod from scratch. They’d had to replace most of the internals anyway. But now that they’d put that work in, he couldn’t exactly justify it.

Thankfully because it wasn’t cryosleep, just deep VR integration, it took only a minute or so before the lid was allowed to pop open, letting in fresh air. Unstrapping himself, he pushed it the rest of the way open and stepped out into the test room.

Small and circular, it had contained only the pod and it’s backup on the other side of the room. Said backup pod had been gutted and messily altered to connect to the robot’s empty ‘brain’. That robot had been facing him when he’d gone in. Now though, it was facing away, seemingly studying the nest of bundled wires and cables that had become of the pods inner workings. Which could only mean that it had worked, right?

Gordon took a step closer. “Uh… Dr. Coomer?”

The large core with arms and legs turned face him. Its eye, capable of being any colour was set to deep green; a fitting colour for Dr. Coomer. “Hello, Gordon!” The voice and tone was exactly the same.

“Did it work?”

“Is this the real world and not another layer of the simulation?”

“This real.” Probably anyway.

“Then I would say that it did work. And Gordon, it is beautiful!” The panels on the core body were designed for emoting, allowing him to widen his eye in awe. “I have never seen anything more beautiful! I can not… there are no words to express how grateful I am for this experience, Gordon. Thank you.”

“Wow. I’m… glad it worked.” Gordon should’ve thought of this a long time ago. He’d have to thank Doug for ultimately leading him to the idea whenever he next came around. “Wow, I actually did it. How you feeling? Everything working like it’s supposed to and stuff?”

“I assume so.” He turned to the side and did a little back and forth march. There was a slight wobble to his stride but nothing egregious. At worst mild adjustments might be needed to improve his balance.

“Good. Good. Let’s go um… I’ll show you around and do some tests and stuff.” Introduce him to people so they could finally see what Gordon meant when he’d told them the AI’s had gained sentience. While also making sure everything worked as intended.

“What about Bubby and Tommy, Gordon? Will you go back for them?”

“Of course. I’ll make some more robots for them now that we know for sure it works.” They’d all be free in no time. … Or maybe not ‘no time’ but soon.

~

Next Chapter

[stellaferous]

SPOILERS FOR THE RECENT GLADION & MAGEARNA EVENT !!!

some of my fav scenes from the story 👇

all in all i really liked this event !! i'm happy that whenever DeNA writes stories with Gladion at the forefront, they end up being more fleshed out instead of the typical "shallow friendship" stories they usually make, i suppose this says a lot about gladion's character as a whole 👏

random dump on some scenes in the event:

i love when he said get lost to colress LOL i know it's part of his character to be blunt but i didn't expect that to be his response 💀

so did lear not host a party at all and lusamine just asked to borrow his manor as part of her plan??? either way she's clearly rich enough to make such a demand 💀💀

i know a lot of us were shocked to see gladion pair up with magearna of all mons, but it honestly makes PERFECT sense 😭 it's an artificial pokemon who loves to be researched upon and gladion fears it will end up being alone because of this, THIS EXACTLY PARALLELS SILVALLY 😭😭😭 his sense of justice and moral compass is so strong like this fits his character perfectly he just doesn't want magearna to suffer a similar fate

cool to see that his "sygna suit" was really just a fancy outfit he had to wear for the event and was not modelled specifically after magearna, but i guess we can headcanon that lusamine tailored that suit for him as part of her plan lol

also i honestly loved to see that gladion is capable of being formal when he has to LOL i know a lot of people object the idea of him becoming aether president but i personally dig the idea, regardless what people think happened between him and lusamine i feel like taking a job where he gets to care for pokemon and research them ethically (in a way he thinks is right) is a perfect fit for his character

^ to add a bit to this, i also like when he can just act like a rich kid with manners when he needs to, but the second someone acts against his morals he just goes back to being stubborn and brash 😭 all this fits my headcanon that sometimes he helps out his mom with aether foundation work by travelling to different regions to care for pokemon/assist pokemon professors, etc + my headcanon of him being able to speak more "proper" when needed IS NO LONGER JUST A HEADCANON 🎉🎉🎉

i LOVE when he has nice interactions with his family, especially his mom 😭 definitely a hot take but i'm perfectly fine with lusamine repairing her bond with her kids, the SM USUM timeline stuff is a bit messy but in my opinion i prefer when after she recovers from the neurotoxins shenanigans she earnestly works to fix her relationship with her kids, because i personally believe that even in SM she was supposed to be redeemable--not because "she deserves it", but because her being redeemed could strengthen the story's message about navigating a tragic family and fall from grace, ofc this depends on your interpretation on these events in the first place but i always felt like a happier ending was better suited for the aether family (i made another post abt this a while back lol... might rewrite it again)

also gladion calls her mom while lillie is more formal and says mother right??

to sum it up i love this story because everything abt gladion is true to character + his motivations for wanting to care for magearna are perfect + i love the little things they added to his character esp for confirming my headcanon + more interactions with his family + not like DeNA's typical "friendship" stories + IT FINALLY GIVES GLADION THE SCREENTIME IT DESERVES EVEN IF THIS EVENT FEELS A BIT SHORTER THAN OTHERS 😭😭😭🎉🎉🎉💗💗💗

[winterandwords]

📝 Contextual use of physical description and how it informs a character's identity

THIS IS NOT WRITING ADVICE! At its core, I guess it's about showing-not-telling, but I'm not into issuing instructions. There are no rules here.

It's an approach I take in my own writing that I've thought a lot about, refined over years, and am sharing because it might be useful or relevant to other people. I am in no way saying this is the only way or the best way or the way that will suit your story or your characters. It's the way that suits my stories and my characters. OK? OK.

I use physical descriptions very sparingly and rarely outright state someone's height, build, hair colour, or eye colour. When those traits are mentioned, it's usually from another character's perspective - what would they notice and why? I tend to refer to physical traits only when they inform a character's personality and experience in relation to the story.

This is partly because I love the idea of readers imagining my characters how they see them. Do I have a clear image in my head of every character I write? Yes. Do you have to have the same image in your head? No. It's also just a matter of preference. I don't particularly connect with straight-up physical descriptions of characters in stories. They're not bad or wrong. They're just not really something that clicks in my head as significant when presented as a list of details.

Example: Noah from November Breaks and Spin Cylinder

So what does he look like?

Noah is in his mid-forties at the beginning of November Breaks and getting closer to fifty in Spin Cylinder. He's 6ft 4 with a muscular build and broad shoulders. He has greying dark hair that's short in the flashback parts of November Breaks and longer in the later parts. He grows a beard before the present-day section of November Breaks. His eyes are dark blue. He's conventionally very attractive. Does he look like a big, built Jeffrey Dean Morgan in my head? Yes. Does he have to look like that in anyone else's head? No.

(Did I choose his height because that's my spouse's height and it's really handy to have a living human reference for height, build and physical strength so I can ask someone things like "Could you lift that?" etc? Also yes. Welcome to why that specific height and build shows up in my MCs more than once)

At no point do I outright state any of those descriptive traits (apart from his eye colour, but we'll get there in a minute). So how do I show them?

People get out of Noah's way in the street. He's accustomed to it but feels not-so-great about it sometimes, suggesting that it relates to a consistent aspect of his appearance.

He feels uncomfortable in small spaces, for example, not feeling like he fits right at tables in cafes (borrowed from my spouse's experiences and something I would never have thought about on my own because I'm 5ft 2)

He can physically overpower other adult men easily and doesn't feel intimidated or threatened by objectively threatening people or situations, even when there are weapons involved.

He can move corpses around without much effort.

Brett's first impression of him is He could really hurt me (desirable) with the observation that he looks like "someone who could throw a heavy punch" and has "shoulders that could hold up the world" and "arms that could crush the breath from my lungs and stop my mind from racing" (Brett is a very poetic masochist)

Brett also mentions "Silver like the strands interrupting the dark of your hair" when he's remembering a grounding exercise that involves counting things of a chosen colour.

Perry flirts shamelessly with him, refers to "Those big blue eyes" and asks if he used to model with "You look like an advert for everything you’re wearing" (Perry is a delightful twinky surfer who is one of the lighter elements of the books and a joy to write)

Noah is neither surprised nor flattered that someone assumes he might have been a model when he was younger, showing that he's accustomed to moving through the world as A Handsome Man rather than being perceived that way by one person who happens to find him attractive.

Growing his hair and beard is part of an attempt to distance himself from Clichéd Contract Killer Aesthetic. These traits are first referenced by Max, who has known him for years, as recent changes at the beginning of November Breaks, and Noah talks about them as aspects of his appearance that he struggles to reach decisions about or make peace with.

His mid-life crisis is also referenced at the very beginning of November Breaks, giving a suggestion of his age.

He goes to the gym. It's about routine and control, not about looking a certain way, but it still indicates what his physical build is likely to be especially when combined with Brett's descriptions of him.

Another layer of connection between his appearance and personality is that he never once describes himself as being good-looking, fit, strong etc or shows that he values those traits. Why does this matter?

Trope subversion, my beloved! Noah could easily be perceived as an aggressively no-homo big macho meathead tough guy based on his appearance and his job, but he isn't. At all. He is, in fact, 100% pro-homo, charming and polite, and has extremely refined tastes, valuing luxury not for status but for quality.

His observations of other people rarely relate to specific physical traits. Rather, he compulsively notices how people behave and how they connect with their environment and the people in it. How everyone else looks is mostly irrelevant to him. How he looks is mostly irrelevant to him too.

This isn't as much to demonstrate depth (this isn't a "not like other men" situation, I promise) as it is to show the privilege inherent in not having to care about his own looks because he's always been perceived as attractive. This exists in contrast to Brett, who is fully aware of the power of his appearance and knowingly uses it to his advantage at every available opportunity.

If you want to see any of this in action, November Breaks lives on Tumblr at @novemberbreaksbywintersimpson. Spin Cylinder's WIP info is here (correct as of August 2023) and snippets can be found in my #spin cylinder tag.

That's it for now!

I have lots of topics like this that I could happily ramble about if anyone's interested. I really don't want to come across like I'm telling other people how to write or suggesting that I know better than anyone else - I'm not and I don't. I'm just an obsessive weirdo who thinks a lot about everything.

Let me know if you'd be interested in similar posts in future about other aspects of how I build characters and stories 💜

[bunnysuitconman]

How do you feel about Glitchtrap being the mimic, To me and what I seen from posts I really don’t like it at all. Glitchtrap in help wanted was not even it character it seems and it was just mimic dressing up in a Glitchtrap suit as the mimic loves to wear suits. This means Glitchtrap never was a character it was all the mimic, you don’t got to replay to this as this is a spoiler but I needed someone who knows about the mimic that I can vent out some of my anger, I just hope Glitchtrap is in help wanted 2 or maybe it just mimic wearing a new suit.

RUIN SPOILERS

uh, straight up he ain't to me

again fnaf's storytelling can be bad, horrific even. But unless it's made way more explicit or developed more, i'm having a hard time beliving glitchtrap and the mimic are the same being because they're so dissimilar.

i've complained about this so much already AND I WILL CONTINUE just under a cut

if the mimic is spesifically trying to mimic william afton via showing us the child murders and stuffing us in the animatronic suits at the pizza party ending, why is he in a random cloth mascot suit and not in sprinbonnie, the suit he did all of his murdering in, help wanted is a VR game in universe, and glitchtrap is explicitly a digital entity, it wouldn't be very mimic like of the mimic to intentionally deviate in a massive way from the person they're mimicing. Steel wool used to have springbonnie in place of Glitchtraps model, Glitchtrap was a very intentional choice.

Also, again the whole "it's the mimic because glitchtrap is repeating vanessa" only he has like two whole lines and in help wanted is very much implied to be not all there, saying basic things such as "hello?" and "can you hear me?" isn't really enough, especially since the mimic as i know it is only able to borrow other peoples voices and glitchtraps is wholey unique, and he's implied to have extended conversations with vanessa to get her working with him when what we've been exposed to of the mimic is while more complex than i thought of before is very single minded about goals. if glitchtrap is the mimic and they want out so badly why are they focused on torture, subjicating people into compliance , i know it's scrapped but why would they care about fucking with vanessa so much they make her unknowingly order roses under a fake boyfriends name called brad and sign it off with a death threat. Thats not to mention, since when does the mimic, the thing that mimics people have powers to enter human peoples minds, possibly lock their minds away, or be able to fully possess people? thats some supernatural ghost shit! The mimic as i understand them isn't able to do this level of planning or have these abilities.

Along with the princess quest room and the heavy implication that the princess quest ending is canon we might of killed Glitchtrap at his source while severing his connection to vanessa, why would the mimic still be around if they're also Glitchtrap?

Glitchtrap and the Mimic are just so different in actions and personality that it feels like a massive reach that they're the same being. It would suck if we well and truly killed off the scraggly little bun for real in security breech but like, damn atleast william afton came back one last time to give us the run around. because so far it's straight looking like glitchtrap and burntrap where seperate entities from the mimic Again i don't really expect much from fnafs storytelling but, like, come on.

[kaurwreck]

What characters/references do you hope to see in a possible Order of the clock tower arc of what do you think Agatha will be like? Based on the few appearances she has I think she’ll be a MoriDazaiFyodirSasaki type but you know.

Kafka Asagiri, by his own admission, draws inspiration for his characters from their namesakes' works and lives:

I draw inspiration not only from the author themselves, but also from their works. I like to look at particular scenes from those works of literature to then come up with the character [for my story]. For example, if we take Fyodor and look at this character, he is completely different [than the real-life author]. He has absolutely no similarities to Dostoevsky. I took inspiration from Dostoevsky's book, The Brothers Karamazov, in which there is a scene where Ivan has a conversation with the devil. I based Fyodor off of this.

I've noticed that his Western characters tend to resemble more closely their namesakes' works than their namesakes' lives. Which isn't to say the Japanese characters do not also borrow from the namesakes' works (they do, prolifically; I can cite the source material for much of Dazai's more iconic dialogue).

But in addition to Fyodor, who Asagiri acknowledged above more closely resembles a character than the author himself, Francis resembles Jay Gatsby; Louisa resembles Jo March; Steinbeck resembles Tom Joad; HP Lovecraft resembles Cthulu; Bram Stoker resembles Dracula— etc.

To some degree, the distinction isn't especially meaningful. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, clearly drew from himself and Zelda for Jay and Daisy, even using quotes from Zelda for some of Daisy's dialogue. Further, I'm sure my impression that the Japanese characters more closely resemble their authors might be related to the popularity of autobiographical fiction in modern Japan. And there are, of course, exceptions (such as Ranpo).

All of the above to say: I'm almost certain that most of Agatha Christie's personality is drawn from Judge Wargrave from And Then There Were None rather than the author herself, who preferred to project a more understated, self effacing presence. (Although, bsd!Agatha's title is a reference to Dame Agatha Christie's, and her reclusiveness could be modeled after irl!Agatha too.)

I'm not sure how familiar the fandom is with Wargrave; I studied And Then There Were None in middle school, but I don't know if it's still commonly taught or not. He's decisive, commanding, cold, calculating, and deeply sadistic. He acts as the narrative's detective, judge, jury, and executioner but only as a pretense for satisfying his own self-admitted lust to kill. He claims he only desires to murder the guilty, but he also appoints himself the moral arbiter of guilt and meters out suffering relative to the degree to which he's decided the others are guilty.

It's nakedly apparent that he is not interested in justice but in pageantry. He curates the setting and plays with the others like they're dolls, or more aptly, like he's a well-fed outdoor cat and they're the local bird population. In that sense, he isn't like any of the characters you mention above. He's a mastermind like them, sure, but he lacks Mori and Dazai's self awareness and insight, and Fyodor and Sasaki's ideological passion. There is nothing he seeks to protect, like Mori and Dazai, nor any institutions he seeks to destroy, like Fyodor. While he wants you to think he's avenging unpunished crimes like Sasaki, the justice he delivers is more arbitrary.

He just wants blood and artistry, but he also wants moral authority over those he deems beneath him even though he knows he isn't innocent. I think we've already seen that in bsd!Agatha. In Dead Apple, she sits in her ornate throne and, with serenity and pleasure, informs Ango that she will destroy Yokohama at dawn. She has her perfunctory justification (to stop the spread of Shibusawa's fog), but her eagerness, projected authority (over a foreign government, no less), imprecision (bombing the entire city rather than seeking to subdue or execute the perpetrating skill user), and method of execution (launching a convicted skill user to suicide bomb the city) speak to her bloodlust and sadism. When Shibusawa is killed and her attack is recalled, she openly pouts because she was looking forward to the destruction.

Quite frankly, I'm not convinced Agatha would make a compelling primary antagonist. She doesn't have any interest in Yokohama absent the opportunity to enact mass murder from a distance, and only if there's some national security justification, however superficial. She's modeled after a mastermind, but her position is too high, and her sights too macro to make use of Judge Wargrave's detailed pageantry.

The One Order may be enough to coax her attention, but again, her attention is too impersonal, and her sadism is too broad for the relationship-based conflicts on which bsd is built. She will not engage directly if she does engage, but by proxy. It's interesting to watch Fyodor and Dazai play their hybrid 4D chess-Go game because of their chemistry and understanding of themselves through the other. Agatha will not descend from her literal and figurative tower to meet them on any meaningful interpersonal level; Judge Wargrave certainly doesn't. Instead, she works best as a specter over Yokohama; an existential threat from a more powerful foreign power.

There are more than a few reasons to involve her more in the plot, but not on her own; there would need to be another, more intimate antagonist for bsd's structure to work. That said, I would love a secondary conflict based on foreign policy and statecraft; I thrive there, and I've been so hungry for more information about the bsd universe's distribution of powers and interests. Maybe a foreign conflict will erupt and new characters who can match Agatha's level of state power will be introduced because of the One Order; or Ango's treason; or the sudden global spread of vampirism that crippled several national governments; or the leggy calamity that was just extrajudicially released from imprisonment by a 10 y/o to whom he's now loyal; or the internationally notorious political assassin Mori is hiding in his basement; or the prior collapse of Standard Island; or Chuuya's mass murder of MANY foreign military guards in Meursault ft. his feral poses for the camera; or the destruction of what seems to be the most prominent if not only prison equipped to contain skill users given they transported Russian and Japanese nationals to its location off the coast of France; or the assassination of the general of the one world army the United Nations just formed and now can't dissolve; or that said general was assassinated within, like, a day of his appointment by someone who should not be under public scrutiny given he previously assassinated multiple Japanese leaders; or any number of recent canon events.

So, there's certainly fertile ground for a higher level conflict, and Agatha might work if set against other, similarly positioned state actors, but I'm not sure how interested in or equipped Asagiri is to write political intrigue. Or where the international community and Mushitaro should even begin re: addressing what just happened.

Notwithstanding any of the above, I do hope bsd!Agatha has a much younger trophy husband just like her namesake.

[goodqueenaly]

Having recently read Thomas Costain’s The Black Rose, I have now also finished another Costain historical fiction novel, The Moneyman. To (very) briefly summarize, The Moneyman is the story of a real-life figure, Jacques Cœur, a merchant raised to the nobility by King Charles VII of France and made the king’s chief finance minister and one of his closest advisors, only to be disgraced and exiled after a false accusation of murder is laid against him by that same king. As I mentioned in my last post, The Moneyman is supposedly GRRM’s favorite of Costain’s works, so I was very intrigued to see if GRRM would borrow any ideas or character models from The Moneyman for his Westerosi works.

Unfortunately, once again I find very little to parallel with ASOIAF. The titular Moneyman himself might be as rich as Littlefinger, but the charges of embezzlement falsely levied against Cœur would be all too accurate if laid at Littlefinger’s door. Indeed, Cœur's deep, honest, but not sycophantic loyalty to Charles VII - a willingness to tell the king the truth coupled with a desire to look out for the best interests of the kingdom - could not be more alien to Littlefinger, whose selfishness and dishonesty are central to his personality. (In fact, the closer parallel to the Moneyman might be someone like Enguerrand de Marigny of The Accursed Kings.) I suppose you could compare Cœur to say, Davos Seaworth - the honest common man raised to the nobility by a grateful king - but Cœur is, well, defined by his substantial personal fortune in a way Davos obviously is not (because he has none, of course), nor can Charles VII’s petty jealousy of Cœur's wealth (and his subsequent willingness to condemn his devoted servant on trumped-up charges) be compared to anything in the relationship between Davos and Stannis. 

Now, is it possible that GRRM took a bit of inspiration from Cœur's trial at the end of the book for Tyrion’s trial at the end of ASOS? Maybe. Just as Tyrion was falsely accused of poisoning Joffrey, Coeur is falsely accused of poisoning Lady Agnes Sorel, the beloved mistress of King Charles. In both cases, the author makes very clear that the accused was not in fact guilty of the crime by setting the reader in the accuser’s point of view at the time of the supposed poisoning, while simultaneously using circumstantial and/or outright fabricated evidence to make the case against the accused seem that much more damning. (Nor, indeed, is an explanation lacking in either case: the author makes clear many times, through Cœur as well as other characters, that Agnes Sorel is too sickly to live long, while Littlefinger explains the Joffrey poisoning plot to Sansa in pretty plain terms after the Purple Wedding.) Just as Tyrion’s physical proximity to and post-murder handling of Joffrey’s wedding cup helped sell the testimonies to his guilt at his trial, so Coeur’s administration of medicine to the dying Agnes Sorel is used by the prosecution to portray Coeur as a fiendish poisoner. Too, much as Taena Merryweather falsely testified that she had seen Tyrion pour poison into Joffrey’s cup, followed by Shae's false testimony as to Tyrion and Sansa’s allegedly conspiracy, so on the stand at Cœur's trial Jeanne de Vendôme fabricates an elaborate story of poisoning which she supposedly witnessed firsthand. Additionally, just as Pycelle (correctly) reported that Tyrion had taken poisons from his stores in order to falsely suggest that Tyrion gave poison to Joffrey, so one witness at Coeur’s trial - a doctor whom Cœur privately derides as a “great windbag … pedantic and opinionated and yet at the same time servile to all forms of authority”, not too far off the mark from Pycelle himself - seizes on Cœur's real, though harmless, mercantile association with the East to falsely link Cœur to the “Eastern poison” which supposedly killed Agnes Sorel. Cœur also offers to confess to a crime he knows he did not commit, in order to save his alleged co-conspirator (though he later rescinds this proposal); somewhat similarly, Kevan offered, in vain, to have Tyrion confess in exchange for permanent exile at the Wall (an offer that I think was genuine on Tywin’s part). 

Now, while Cœur is not allowed to offer any defense on his own part (much as Tyrion was not at his trial), Cœur, unlike Tyrion, actually gets exonerated for the poisoning allegation, thanks to the testimony of an honest doctor who identifies the flaws in the case against Cœur. (Though Cœur is convicted of what Costain asserts were equally ludicrous charges and forced into permanent exile.) Of course, Costain didn’t invent the idea of trumped-up charges and patently untrue accusations in a legal trial (and Costain himself clearly states in his introduction and epilogue that he has, so he believes, adhered as closely to the real history of Cœur's downfall as possible), so it’s not that I think GRRM is uniquely indebted to Costain for Tyrion’s trial. Rather, while I think both are borrowing the same old tropes for similar stories, I can also acknowledge that this specific usage of those tropes may have been part of the inspiration for GRRM. 

[darlingpoppet]

hi thanks for the liminal spaces update! i was wondering what sort of styles the characters are wearing?

Hey anon thanks so much for reading and thank you for your ask!!

I seriously plundered the tumblr hipster blogs circa 2013 for this story, lads, let me tell you!! I’m not sure I described very well the fashions everyone in this story is wearing lest I fall into Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way territory but these are the sorts of images I had in mind for each of the characters who have made an appearance so far (sorry in advance for the potato quality of some of these images… also just in case it needs to be said, the hair & skin colors of these clothing/hairstyle models may not necessarily reflect those of the Hadesgame versions of these characters, which are the versions I’m working with in this story):

ZAGREUS

Recently Super Groupies came out with this literal Zagreus inspired zipper jacket… it only came out this year but I can still see someone in the 2010s wearing something like it so I just described him as having this exact jacket LOL. I imagined him arranging it a bit differently than the model however, instead he wears it with black skinny jeans and colorful high top converse shoes.

It’s actually really easy to imagine Zagreus as your typical millennial/gen Z college kid without too many alterations…

just look at these boys with their extremely Zagreus-looking hairstyles haha! The boy wearing blue in particular was the inspiration for Zag having those chunky square-cut diamond earrings… it’s cute to imagine them poking out from under one of those knitted caps!

ACHILLES

I like to imagine that the Achilles of this story has a bit of a gender-fluid/genderless approach to fashion, so I picture him wearing a lot of the things that were popular with hipsters of all genders, such as flannel, low-cut t-shirts & tank tops, long necklaces, chunky/slouchy cardigan sweaters, skinny jeans, and wide-brimmed hats. He wears his hair long or ties it up into a messy bun.

At home both he & Patroclus do a bit of the athleisure thing, so especially pretty soon he’s gonna be in crop/tank tops and sweatpants a lot (or in nothing at all haha!!!)

PATROCLUS

Idk I think I just see Pat as that sort of natural class-act who can wear a plain t-shirt or a band collar shirt with a nice pair of slacks and dressy shoes and look ultra sophisticated without even trying. Maybe he does that 2010s thing of wearing an unbuttoned vest over the shirt or he’ll borrow a pair of suspenders from the “2010s Recession Hipster Dude Starter Pack” every once in a while, but overall he doesn’t need much (but also imagine he’s holding a book wherever he is lol.)

Also of course, that full beard and man-bun look of the era is so quintessential and fits him perfectly!

THANATOS

I actually lived in Japan for all of the 2010s haha so I pictured Than more like the sort of young men I would sometimes see around Tokyo with multiple layers of long, knee/ankle-length cardigan robes/jackets, and those wide, billowing pants in perhaps a parachute or bontan style.

As for the gorget necklace… you know how sometimes you find a cool accessory in a vintage shop or whatever and you’re like “I am going to make this thing my entire personality for the next year”? hahaha yeah that’s Than here. Something gold or brass like the top picture that he wears under his black collared shirts, like the bottom picture.

I might come back to this once Meg makes an appearance, but for now that’s all I’ve got! Thanks for asking, this was fun <3