#and its not like. worldbuilding tangents or anything its just the characters going on and on and on and on and on

[glitchfang]

i am someone who can handle gen 7 having long and drawn out cutscenes. and to a degree, i sympathize with this because i also tend to go on long tangents in my writing that i have to edit out after the fact so as to not kill the pacing (literally what happened when i tried to write the dusknoir fic last night btw. on the plus side i now have some content to put into a lore post perhaps)

but damn does reborn push my limit with how wordy it is

[alienpupy]

alienpuppy's trangender polyamorous furry oc intro masterpost

might edit this later- making this so people know a minimum about my characters to send asks abt and stuff. feel free to inquire about literally anything regarding these characters at any time, I'm always happy to talk about their story!!

note that these particular characters i've had/been developing for 5 years, and i kind of have a plan to make a graphic novel about them eventually, but its a fun side hobby of mine so no promises or anything. long annoying tangents and discussions of nsfw stuff during this post also jsyk, feel free to skip stuff as you read

So! The main story of my furry ocs revolves around these 4 main characters: Honey, Blaze, Lynx and Dahlia. (i came up with a lot of these names when i was 15 and I'm sticking to them) I'll do individual intros for them later in this post but I want to get some notes abt the setting done first.

Its set in a modern non-magical reality where people are furries, and its important to note that them being animals here is very much an aesthetic and symbolic choice rather than a fully thought-out worldbuilding thing. Their animal species are not analogous to human races or ethnicities, and only selectively affect their personalities or behaviors (for example, they experience heat/rut cycles because i think that shit is hot and has interesting effects on character's attitudes to sex and their relationships, but a dog person and a cat person can and do have babies together in this world and its not weird.) You could say that functionally they are all the same species, just one that varies wildly in phenotype.

Additionally, all the main characters live in a single major city during the "present" of the story. They're all young adults, roughly between 19 and 24 and have varying social/class backgrounds. These guys are very much inspired by my real life and friends of mine, but they aren't 1-to-1 based on anyone, I just put a lot of traits and psychological characteristics of people I like and am close to in these guys bc that makes them feel real to me :3

Also since they're all trans I'll also specify that transition care is relatively easy to access in this world (free healthcare style, like in Canada where I live) and them living in a major city where lgbtq+ people are generally very open and accepted. They do have to deal with the acceptance (or non-acceptance) of their families though.

I'll give them mostly sfw intros here, but I'll probably make another post at some point to talk about their sex lives bc thats a huge part of how I think of these guys. If and when I make that graphic novel, its going to be primarily erotica. They're not all in relationships, but they do all have sex with each other and they each have their own kinks and everything

ACTUAL OC INTROS:

Honey (she/her): Bisexual disabled trans woman, royal poodle, up-and-coming actress and pop-singer, Blaze's girlfriend and Dahlia's childhood best friend. Roughly 5'9-5'10

She comes from a high-society rich family, and was able to transition early, but despite (or maybe because of) her class privilege, growing fame and family's (heavily strings attached) support, she struggles immensely with performance anxiety, pathological perfectionism and gender dysphoria. Basically she's hardcore internalized that if she isn't the most perfect, beautiful and successful woman then she isn't worthy of any of the things that make up her identity and self-worth.

Her disability is purposefully not specific to a real-world health problem, partially because I don't feel at all qualified to depict any one specific disability, partially because it's more or less an extrapolation of a design choice i made at 15. I gave her those translucent skin patches because i thought they'd look cool, and only after did I decide they're probably something more. I haven't given it a name, but it's a degenerative genetic illness that gives her very thin and fragile skin, chronic pain that affects her mobility, and impairs her vision.

When she has any time to herself outside of her career, she does a lot of fancy self-care stuff like baths and doing her own nails, etc. Music and acting is genuinely her passion though. She likes video games but mostly cozy ones. Her animal crossing island is the most curated, decorated, aesthetic thing you've seen in your LIFE.

Blaze (he/him): Bisexual trans man, hyena/pitbull hybrid, Honey's bodyguard and later lover, Lynx's QPP/best friend/roommate and Blue's younger brother. Roughly 6'4-6'5

He comes from a really rough place, growing up in poverty and in an abusive home until he got kicked out and taken in by Lynx's parents when he was 14. He worked many odd jobs right out of high school, eventually working as a bouncer, finding he has a bit of a natural ease working security jobs thanks to his height and size, and eventually becoming Honey's personal security agent (I neither know nor care about the specifics of private security companies, this is a plot device to get the story started and because I think bodyguards are an inherently hot concept)

He's a trans man who's always been alienated by his peers because of his lived experience of abuse, his hyper-masculinisation due to his physical size and appearance, and his queerness. He struggles to let himself be truly be vulnerable around anyone, especially when it comes to expressing his desires. He very strongly feels that unless he is working for it, he isn't worth anyone's attention, and that everyone else's happiness and safety is more important than his own. Abysmal self-esteem painted over with chivalry basically.

His hobbies include reading (usually non-fiction but he LOVES sci-fi and detective novels), working out and cooking! But he doesn't take much time for himself usually.

Dahlia (she/he): Pansexual transfem genderfluid pig, Honey's best friend since early childhood, resident NEET and party animal. Roughly 5'8.

Dahlia comes from a similar (but lesser) place of financial privilege, but instead of being forced to perform perfection by her family like Honey, Dahlia lived through a ridiculous amount of parental neglect. Dahlia has never really had anyone to take care of her, just authority figures to give her rules and let her figure out everything by himself. She started her transition a bit later than the other characters because of this.

She has a bombastic, dramatic personality and as a kid and teenager acted out all the time, often sneaking out of the house and interacting with anyone she thought was interesting. Eventually, once she was a bit older, this lead her to develop a habit of flirting and hooking up with random older guys, which, would you believed it, fucked up her self-image even worse than before! A large part of her character arc is learning that people (other than honey) can actually respect and care for her, regardless of whether or not she's sleeping with them. Her arc parallels nicely with Honey in this way, because while Honey has to learn to not hate herself for not having a cis body, Dahlia is terrified that transition (esp bottom surgery) will make her less desirable sexually (and thus less worthy of attention).

When she's not partying, she plays a lot of video games (she's surprisingly good at fighting games, and FPSs but also plays a lot of more chill games like stardew valley and slime rancher).

Lynx (he/they/it): alloaro transmasc genderqueer fag, mixed species (hyena/lion/goat?) college dropout, stoner, artist (?), works part-time at a gas station. Blaze's QPP/FWB/best friend and roommate. Roughly 5'6-5'7"

Grew up lower middle-class, the adopted son of two trans lesbians (Onna, a lion who keeps her mane after transitioning later in life and owns/tends a small gay bar, and Radia, possum, disgruntled multi-disciplinary STEM academic). Only one of the main 4 to come from a pretty good home, but as all people, he still managed to develop some issues on his own. He's a classic case of ADHD making it impossible to decide what to do with his life mixed with deep trust issues stemming from bullying in elementary school.

He is always making a joke of himself, friends with everyone but close to no one other than Blaze. He sweeps every one of his own feelings under the rug while always trying to help everyone he's vaguely friends with through their own crises (not that he's actually good at giving advice, but he'll offer weed and snacks and a couch to crash on) and still manages to be awful at texting people back.

Him and Blaze became friends when Lynx was 10 and Blaze was 12, and when Blaze was kicked out of his parents place two years later, Lynx's moms were very happy to take in a trans kid in need. They've been living together since, and moved out together for college and work.

Hobbies include smoking weed, drawing, painting, making/modifying clothes, video games (esp vintage games, but he's not picky) and spending a pretty good portion of time keeping the appartment clean, since Blaze works a lot more than he does (Blaze has higher standards of cleanliness than Lynx does, but they make it work. Lynx rlly appreciates having a friend who can pay most of the rent)

[bloodgulchblog]

Have you seen that YouTube video where some guy reads every Halo novel back to back and then reviews them? If so what did you think

The Brian David Gilbert one? Oh yeah, all my friends showed me it when it came out. (It was honestly kind of cute seeing how many people thought of me immediately.)

Rewatching it to refresh myself because it's been a couple years and a full-novel reread for me since the last time...

High fiving BDG because the Master Chief parts of The Flood were definitely the most boring parts.

He didn't have anything to say about First Strike which I think is a shame because I think it's better than The Fall of Reach and actually has A Theme I Find Interesting.

Rightful recognition of Contact Harvest as pretty damn good.

Rightful recognition of the Forerunner Trilogy as dense oldschool-style SF with deep worldbuilding. (Also the San'Shyuum thing.)

I disagree with him about, and have significant problems with, Kilo Five. He is correct that Kilo Five actually delves into some of the dark places in Halo in a way it really needed, and I would even say that its writing is extremely engaging by Halo novel standards. However, while he does notice the obvious parallels between what ONI is doing post-war and the kind of shit the CIA has pulled again and again irl, I think he misses some of the subtext I see where it feels like it justifies some shit a liiiiittle too much if you know the author's irl politics re: the military. He also doesn't seem to notice the character assassinations (particularly of Catherine Halsey) that I and a lot of other fans see/object to in those books. I kind of gaze into the middle distance with a haunted expression at the suggestion that these are the ones to read if you don't touch any of the others just because they are, ironically, so heavy-handed and feel like they treat certain kinds of evil as inevitable in a way that actually feels way worse to me than the excuse plot offered by the earlier/lighter Halo novels. (But idk, that's me? Nobody is committing a crime if they disagree with my frenzied insane person red string diagrams about Kilo Five.)

I'd swap Pariah for Dirt in the Evolutions anthology if it were me, but I think these are solid standouts.

Broken Circle is neat but really nonessential he's not wrong.

A one-sentence review of New Blood is probably not enough space to get into how fucked up the Spartan-IV program is, but yeah. New Blood is fun if you don't find Buck's first person narration annoying. (It comes and goes for me in that one.)

BDG you're an absolute sweetheart, I think Hunters in the Dark is kind of goofy in a way I cannot in good conscience ignore if I'm gonna review it. But it really really is so much fun and I love that one a lot anyway. The "it's like Halo 3... 2" observation is solid.

High fiving him again because I also found Last Light disappointing. And it is also a me problem.

Fractures!

Hell yeah these are all good pulls from Fractures, I would say Shadow of Intent is the pick of the litter in that anthology for me. Interesting that as a Kilo Five enjoyer he didn't single out Rossbach's World, which is the last we've heard about Osman and Black Box. (Also, that one is good.) I think Oasis is worth an honorable mention because I'm an Envoy stan, and the Forerunner stories are interesting but I wouldn't go for them if you don't already have a healthy interest in the trilogy.

This tangent is so fucking funny now that we know more things:

Oh BDG, oh buddy, it's really not for the people like you and me huh. (Disclaimer: I have no idea if BDG likes the Halo tv show or not and I have no desire to dig up evidence about it.)

Also, while you're here, this is the bloodgulchblog origin story:

Smoke and Shadow is fun so it's a little sad that when he ends that sentence with "whatever," I can't actually say he's wrong to. (Sorry Rion your part of the lore just.... hasn't... touched anything that touches anything else anymore.)

ENVOY IS GOOD AND EVERYONE SHOULD CARE ABOUT IT okay okay I'm cool I'm normal, anyway. Envoy is the Halo novel that restored my faith in reading Halo novels and reminded me that authors can care and know how to do nuanced, interesting themes in this space. It's great. Everyone in this book has war refugee trauma (except the Spartans which have Spartan trauma) and that's incredible to me. Please care about Envoy if you have spare room in your heart for Halo side characters.

I am cheered to see someone indifferent to the Veta Lopis stories, but I still feel petty for feeling it.

I don't have a lot to say about Legacy of Onyx here but it's always so fun seeing someone else suffer and care.

Bad Blood, the Blood is Bad now is a fun joke but lol yeah. It does have this very vital moment where Chief and Arbiter talk, though. For the first and only time in years.

PROPS FOR NOTICING THE YA NOVELS they're actually pretty nice.

"The Master Chief is the protagonist and boy does he shoot some people" is most of how I feel about Silent Storm and Oblivion too, I know they have their fans but Troy Denning's Chief books don't do much for me personally.

Renegades hadn't had its followup Point of Light yet but yeah, Spark stuff is interesting.

I had to remember that oh yeah, there are multiple books now that didn't exist when this was made. I wonder if he read them?

OKAY I THINK THAT'S ALL I HAD TO SAY as always if y'all want specific book opinions, I might have a tag for them. Or just yell in my ask box, I'm sure I can scrounge up some thoughts.

[dogtoling]

hey do you have any tips for making splatoon ocs? I’ve never played the games but i’ve seen plenty of gameplay and lore videos and i want to make an oc but i have no idea where to start! You have super duper cool ocs and I thought maybe you might have a few good pointers for starting to make one!

first of all thank you, and second of all I have no idea what i'm doing but i might have some advice for making splatoon OCs. Really what kind of OC you want to make and how in-depth you want their story or footing in the world to be depends entirely on the individual person. It's pretty important to have a solid understanding of the world and setting but especially if you've done the research, you should have a pretty good understanding of how the game works, so that's already a good starting point.

First off, what I feel is important (and what i dont follow myself nearly as much as i should) is to figure out what kind of character you WANT to make, and then start drafting a basic concept based on that. When it comes to Splatoon, there's a lot of species to pick from (although Inklings are by far the easiest because they have the most context). But Splatoon also has a very unique setting and the world has potential for a lot of wacky things that you couldn't really focus on in other fandoms. So again, I don't do this that much myself, but making an OC that is clearly connected to the world and has a direct link with the series identity is always a good call. Once you have a strong start and a solid understanding of what kind of character you're working on (and you can change this later, OCs often evolve when you use them) it's a really good place to get started.

For example, you could make an OC that works at the grocery store (boring, we do that in real life). Or you could make an OC that works in collecting and selling Super Sea Snails from the woods and in the market stalls - we have markets, but there's also a hook of something that's Purely Splatoon, at its core - it is relevant to the WORLD SETTING.

(And also, by making up professions and minor things about the world, you're not married to what canon says or doesn't say. For example, everyone making their OCs work with Grizzco is kind of struggling with a vastly underdeveloped setting where Nintendo is still calling all the shots, because Grizzco is a real thing in the world, so you don't really have the freedom to make shit up and have to deal with whatever they say even if it's ridiculous.)

Second, and this is kind of important especially for people who aren't super involved with Splatoon: turf wars aren't EVERYTHING. Splatoon has weirdly broad worldbuilding for the type of game that it is. Turf Wars are just a sport - an extremely culturally important sport, but Inklings have Lives outside of Turf War and there's likely Inklings who don't do Turf Wars at all! What this tangent is getting into is that don't be afraid to set your OC footing that's unrelated to Turf Wars, and don't be afraid to break rules and come up with your own things for the world. There's a lot of wacky things going on and not everybody is going to do the exact things that are shown in the game. The curse and blessing of working with the Splatoon setting is that you have to be prepared to make up a LOOOOOT of headcanons for how anything works, because we really don't know a lot about... well, anything. The upside is that you can get really creative if you want to. Basically, it's good to use the game as basis, but you can really go places if you ONLY use it as basis and make up new stuff from there.

In terms of actual OC design: Inklings and Octolings are the easiest to work with due to the variety of designs we see for them in games and concept art. But if you're looking for other species, here's a list with species that appear in the Splatoon world. However assuming you're working with Inklings, I'd recommend looking at different species of real-life cephalopods if you want a character to feel unique. Base traits off of real squids or octopuses that exist (you could even use species as inspiration for what the character is like otherwise), but even outside of species, Inklings can have a LOT of variety in their body structure. So my point is you can do a lot more with Splatoon OCs than just making them a carbon copy of the playable characters in the game. Play with their body types, or eye shape, eyebrows, nose, ear length or shapes, et cetera. Inkling masks are also a good way to create interest in the design.

More Inkling-specific design: their tentacles. Now, if you're making a squid OC, they'll have 6 tentacles on their head - typically four shorter ones and two longer ones, although the game doesnt seem to differentiate on those much, judging by some hairstyles. Octolings however only have four tentacles, and they have suction cups on the outside. This is kind of the same as above: there are many canon hairstyles to pick from, but also don't be afraid to go nuts and do weird stuff with the tentacles. Inklings are known to trim their tentacles, cut them up into blocky shapes or even cut them into long strips or super-specific hairstyles that don't even really resemble tentacles anymore, and of course you can do different color combinations, scars, piercings, tattoos even. And of course if you're looking at real-life species as inspiration, you will probably end up getting ideas for the tentacles based on that. Basically, tentacles are often THE THING that sticks out about OCs.

The next best thing? Clothes. Full disclosure I really hate designing outfits (because I'm bad at it) but clothes do a lot to build character. Now, in Splatoon, clothes are REALLY not a problem because the game has such a big focus on fashion that you will never run out of options when it comes to what an OC should wear (Inkipedia has full lists of all gear from all games). But if you want to get really in-depth about what your character dresses in, there's also been blurbs of what kinds of brands the different clothes brands are and what kind of style they are known for - they have loyalists, basically. When it comes to gear, I personally don't like using the in-game gear much, mostly because I hate having to go out of my way to look at reference every time I want to draw a character. But there's a lot to choose from, and if you want to be original with it but still stick to the brand, you could make your own modifications of existing gear or make up fake new gear for your OC to wear.

But as a rule of thumb, what everyone wants from their OCs is different and I think the most important part is to just make something fun that brings you joy. So I hope this helped maybe? (I need to start using my own advice...)

[k--havok]

😭"what are the biggest challenges writing your WIPs?"

Thank you for the ask!!

I did already answer this question here but I think I can expand!

Another point of contention I have with my WIPs is that its hard for me to figure out when I do not have enough or when I have Too Much of an idea. What I mean by that is... sometimes you have an idea but then when you add a lot to it the original premise doesn't quite work with what you want, mainly because there is not enough of the original premise to maintain the weight of the rest of the story.

An example I have of this is Waking into Divinity. I have a LOT of ideas for where the story can go which mainly take place in the demonic world of Gehenna. The entire second book of the series is about Rylie gaining powers and learning about their true inner strength and what it means to be a leader. There are also a lot of politics and a brewing war that happens in the second book, and the third and fourth (possible!) books are expanding on that and the consequences of Casrath's bad decisions lol.

But the premise of the story? The original idea with no politics or demon world or anything of that nature? A meme idea of "what if a demon showed up in your apartment one day and declared he was your soulmate and was so pathetic you just adopt him as your roommate?" like yeah haha that's funny but where do you go from there? And thats when the spiral of ideas begin. Like a domino effect. And now that I have all this serious new material, I need to revist the original premise and rework it a bit.

Other times you don't really have Enough of an idea and you get stuck. An example of this is a work I have on hiatus called A Colloquy between Gods. I have roughly 40k words for it and am nearly at the halfway point. I know what I want to happen next too. But I feel I am writing in circles as I have not developed the characters enough. Nor is the worldbuilding fleshed out enough either. And I do not really have enough fresh and unique ideas for it at the moment either.

I know I'll eventually get back around to finishing it. But the story is a bit more literary than what I normally write about so I worry it will fall flat. Self-doubt and writing ability gets in the way too at times. Sometimes you have a great idea for a story, but you know you don't quite have the writing chops to pull it off.

I could go into a whole other tangent about that. I probably will... but not here haha!

[canyoufucksoniccharacters]

CAN YOU FUCK KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA?

Here he comes, rougher than the rest of 'em. The best of 'em, tougher than leather. You can call him Knuckles. Unlike Sonic he doesn't chuckle, he'd rather flex his muscles. He's hard

Our oldest character thus far, in terms of game release dates! Not counting Metal Sonic, since his fuckability status is currently MIA until Sonic himself is tackled. Funny enough, this one's gonna be pretty easy, despite how major of a character he is- but I'm getting ahead of myself. As usual, we'll start with Sonic Channel archives, because clearly those are a reliable source of information. Clearly. No sarcasm there whatsoever. Totally.

Hm. So... Sonic Channel says he's 16! Oh no! He's not fuckable! Welp, you heard it here folks, you can't fuck Knuckles Th

Oh. This again. Gentle reminder that these ages are nowhere to be seen in the original Japanese manual. They were likely made up on the spot by some guy Sega USA with very little communication between anyone who may be an even remotely qualified to say anything on these ages. Oh, and here's proof that the age is not listed whatsoever. Alongside a link to the entire Japanese manual.

So, that's out the window! How will we ever know if Knuckles is fuckable? How could we ever, ever know?

... Oh.

So, as we've covered previously, Rouge is, in fact, very thoroughly fuckable. She is the most sexualized character in the series, and her often suggestive nature and behavior is pretty integral to her identity. So, she's an adult... Who has been Knuckles's shiptease ever since Sonic Adventure 2, and continued to be so in official material, canon or not. Although it's not explored often, it's still thrown in here and there. Not a subscriber myself, but the fact that the official content is so willing to have this going on shows that they're at least even in terms of maturity. Otherwise, this would be weird! Really, really weird! And I do not wanna live in a world where my favorite gender-envy-inducing bat lady is going after minors.

So, his interactions with Rouge already ensure that, unless Sega is promoting really creepy behavior, Knuckles is most certainly an adult who can consent and could absolutely be in a relationship with another adult. On top of that- even if his age of 16 from his Heroes manual was true at the time of that game happening, there's something the series almost never touches on that would instantly invalidate it-- completely ignoring the fact the ship had already been teased before Heroes, in SA2, which would, again, make it really weird--, which is that believe it or not, despite these being funny anthro cartoon animals with magic powers or whatever, time does still pass in the Sonic universe. Sonic Generations shows the cast celebrating Sonic's in-universe birthday, and Sonic Forces has a 6-month timeskip in the middle of the game. Add on top of that the fact that a metric fuckton of games have come out since Heroes and likely didn't just happen within the same week, there's absolutely no way that Knuckles could still be 16, assuming he even was 16 in the first place when Heroes came out, which he most likely was not.

Yes, it's a series with cartoon animals that often adheres to cartoon logic, but if it was completely batshit insane and had no sense of time whatsoever or any ability to take its timeline and worldbuilding seriously, there wouldn't be an entire lorekeeping team at Sega now, would there? Yes, that's a thing. As of somewhat recently, matter of fact! But, that's a side tangent.

So, with all that, let's answer the question;

Can you fuck Knuckles The Echidna?

I mean... Yeah? Obviously?

He's literally being soft-shipped with the sluttiest character in the series by a long shot in official content, he's been around the longest out of anyone in the cast, already being incredibly familiar with the island he inhabits and skilled in his debut game, and overall has no traits that could point at him being that young. Again, he's probably about on average with Rouge on that end. So, yes-

You can, in fact, fuck Knuckles The Echidna.

I know some of y'all are going to be very happy about this one. Buncha furries. Again, hey, I'm not judging. You go have fun.

[oddygaul]

The Algebraist

After I read my first Culture book a few years back, I was so enthralled that I then proceeded to immediately devour the rest in a three-month span. I absolutely loved the books, the setting and worldbuilding, the casually-tossed about Grand Space Ideas, Banks’ extra-as-fuck prose, the obtuse plot structures... and so was genuinely upset when I found out one of my new favorite authors had recently died at 59. I decided that after finishing the remaining Culture books, I’d take a break and leave the rest of Banks' work for later, so as to space it out a bit and create the illusion of having new releases. Well, it’s been a couple years, and I’ve already re-read Look to Windward, so I went ahead and dug into The Algebraist.

When I got to the space warlord who'd had his greatest enemy’s decapitated head put on life support and installed upside down on his ceiling to use as a punching bag, I started to get the feeling I was slipping into an old pair of comfortable shoes. When our protagonist first goes to visit his uncle, who has turned himself into a walrus for reasons that are never expounded on using a technology that’s never explained, I knew I’d truly made it home.

An excerpt; Slovius, the protagonist’s uncle, is trying and failing to raise his walrus body to a sitting position in his space jacuzzi, and has refused help from his butler Guime:

'Slovius turned his head round as he said this, trying to look at Guime, but only succeeded in causing himself to slip further back into the liquid, so that he was even more horizontal than he had been before he started. He slapped at the pool surface, splashing. “There! See what you’ve done?” He sighed mightily and lay back in the wallowing waves, apparently exhausted, staring straight ahead. “You may adjust me, Guime, as you wish,” he said dully, sounding resigned.'

The mental image of a walrus with a thousand yard stare of resignation being picked up and adjusted like a misbehaving cat… I live for this.

Ahh, I missed Banks’ style. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi to the way he worldbuilds. His ideas are so grand, and every tidbit feels as though it could be explored in a full story; and yet, you never know how much he’s actually going to dole out to you. Sometimes, a detail is mentioned only in passing, leaving the reader to wonder; sometimes, an idea is brought up by the characters and only later turns out to be a central concept of the story; and sometimes, Banks will just up and go off on a two page long tangent, and give you a history lesson on the rise and fall of some imagined stellar civilization that’ll never come up in the story again. You can tell Banks was the kind of writer that kept a notepad around to jot down all his cool ideas, and occasionally it feels like he just went “Ah, shit, this isn’t really relevant to the story, but I don’t know what other story it could fit into. Better just throw it in here anyway to be safe”. I can easily see how these asides could be huge turn-offs for a lot of readers, but they’re my absolute favorite. If unabashed exposition and paragraph long sentences are wrong, I don’t want to be right.

On the note of making sure a cool idea gets its due somewhere - maybe it’s because I had read Look to Windward again relatively recently, but the whole idea of the Dwellers, Seers and delves instantly jumped out at me as Banks wanting to revisit the (very ancillary to the actual plot) airsphere segments from that book. As I made it through the story, the differences continued piling up (if anything, the Dwellers are more like what would happen if the Affront from Excession had Culture-level tech), but I think the base similarity remains: a scholar, specially augmented to be able to survive in the gaseous, entirely airborne environs of a much older race, spending time living amongst and communicating with them to tap the knowledge of a civilization that measures time on a scale of billions of years. Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that I see it this way; I always felt that the Uagen Zlepe subplot in Look was sort of a missed opportunity, given how interesting the premise was.

Although I guess when you think about it, an entire seven-chapter subplot ultimately leading to nothing more than sick worldbuilding and a cosmic sense of insignificance is the ultimate Banks Lore Tangent, isn't it?

Despite being written by Banks and taking place in a sci-fi setting, The Algebraist is explicitly set outside of the Culture universe. Knowing that, it was interesting to see what Banks chose to keep and what to leave out, what themes are still touched on and what ideas are different. Even though the Mercatoria doesn’t have god-level AIs or infinite resources, average citizens here still have access to some pretty out-there tech - being able to fully alter the makeup of one’s body to another species at a whim, for example, isn’t something you see commonly in other sci-fi. Still, the existence of scarcity (both economic and resource), a power structure that the characters must abide by, and, hell, an extant sense of mortality all have big effects on how the characters are written. In particular, I think these differences make Fassin Taak Banks’ most sufferable protagonist yet.

Look, I get why the protagonists in the Culture series are the way they are - given the way the Culture works as a society, it genuinely tracks that most of its citizens would be, at some level, kind of entitled, petulant, and capricious. Banks knows this, and is writing those characters with intentionality; I’d say investigating the idea of morally grey or unlikable protagonists is one of the throughlines of the Culture series, really. Still, I always think it’s interesting that often the most relatable characters in a given Culture novel are drones.

Fassin, meanwhile, feels a lot more grounded and approachable. He’s still a pretty privileged guy, having come from a Seer family and thus placed on a fast track to a cushy job in affluent society, but my man has a past, he’s been through some shit, he has interiority. I think the moment that made me realize how differently I saw Fassin was when we find out he’s actually a double agent, working to aid the cause of the Beyonders against what he feels is tyranny against AI. Hell, even the fact that he’s in a ceremonial arranged engagement for his family’s benefit, going along with it as a smokescreen for his real goals - it’s nothing earth-shattering in a vacuum, but it really puts into sharp relief how differently Culture characters are written, and how much of a challenge it must be to write a character conflict when the setting essentially demands it be purely internal.

I don’t think one approach is better than the other - they’re serving different purposes entirely. It was just pretty cool to see such a new side of Banks, since all my previous experience with him was within one series, and realize I have a lot more in store for me than I even thought. Knowing that he has multiple different modes / voices that are so distinct makes me excited to keep going with his other work, especially (eventually) the more grounded, non-M stuff.

[thesugarhole]

and i didnt really grasp what it meant at first because i didnt remember any of the lore heavy nonsense especially if it was added after i half lost interest and checked in sporadically but theres like, theres four elements going on in the background of the worldbuilding that are order, chaos, good and evil(?). and predictably, he wants to associate good with order and bad with chaos because thats how things go.

theres also two additional elements timeline wise that divide these concepts slightly; the technological/past world that culminated in the spooky scary AI gains Too Much Sentience and kills people (pointing out this event out the culminating many specifically because its relevant onwards). and the magical (grounded on the technological advancements of he past, like theres always a scientific excuse kinda deal)/current world that its where the apocalypse is currently happening -the character captain operates zeers "powers" (system wizard) on both goodness and order, and the rewrite introduces a character that operates by chaos. not necessarily evil (as the character herself puts it and i like to agree not on story context just in general), just chaos.

but the thing is, more than once the "goodness", rather than being like, good morals and ethics, is actually annet's company rules, ironically called the good directorate (gdir for short) and well. they arent very nice rules. extreme post capitalism rules. and idk call me radicalized or whatever but its highly agravating to see captain and other characters constantly shiding snippy for being an outlaw/badboy/unruly/chaotic?!/etc for like. scavenging for supplies. newsflash none of you people need to eat but he does. like come on man its so frustrating

and its actually kinda sad (extremely sad) that the rest of the world thats still alive and not human (not just machinery, aliens and captain too) are abiding by ridiculous rules like no jaywalking no loitering no stealing pay your debts go to your job etc when its all destroyed. one of the various reasons snippy has infinite debt is because he stopped showing up to work BUT ITS ALL DESTROYED!!!! WHATS he gonna do there whos gonna pay him!! hows he gonna track that hes being paid and pay for the food and guns he """"steals""""" if its ALL DESTROYED

thats a slight tangent to try and justify my point but gdir rules are evil (and dont try to "thats the point" me because youd THINK the characters would have realized it by now) and did more harm than good and abiding by them can be order sure. but calling it goodness is wrong for a good couple reasons. intrinsically captain IS a good person. zee is not evil or out to getcha or anything zee is still trying to accomplish the thing gdir created zee for, which is save humanity. but with everything gone and looking at how much harm it brought to the world and especially zees bElOvEd ChArLeS idk maybe reevaluate your morals when you tell a starved human to not take destroyed canned beans off the destroyed shelf in the destroyed walmart off for petty thefts

its incredibly aggravating when captain and infi (chaos character) are having their stupid cringe conversations/confrontations and theyre like oooh youre such a goody two shoes always being the good guy trying to do the right thing etc ok so far so good. by following g-dirs laws. bad actually

it makes sense only at the surface level. i need to read karlx max to explain why following gdirs concept of goodness is inherently bad and magic based on it should not work in the first place

im glad tina said what she said because 'the concept of good works to eliminate people who deviate from the norm' is exactly whats happening here (especially to snippy) but the author himself doesnt realize it and then goes on and on how you have to BE GOOD in order to BE A WIZARD and by BEING GOOD you have to follow GDIR DIRECTIONS

i also might be trying to work something out without having all the info as is usually the case but im definitely growing tired of the yandev approach of "introduce something new, 3 years of bug fixes" to the lore. i keep comparing this to yansim because its so... easy? the lack of foresight into planning your plot ahead into something coherent*, rather let the fans and friends and "contributors" write it for you in details and headcanons and then its a hot fucking mess

⁽*ʸᵃⁿˢᶦᵐ ʰᵃˢ ᵃ ˡᵒᵗ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ᶦˢˢᵘᵉˢ ᵗʰᵃⁿ ˡᵃᶜᵏ ᵒᶠ ᵖˡᵒᵗ ᵖˡᵃⁿⁿᶦⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᶦˢⁿᵗ ᵖˡᵃᵍᵘᵉᵈ ᵇʸ ᶜᵘᵐᵇʳᵃᶦⁿᶦⁿᵍ ᶦᵗ ᵇᵗʷ. ᶦᵐ ᵂᴱᴸᴸ ᵃʷᵃʳᵉ)

[coldmail750]

Okay I feel like the complaint about Zaguan's denouement time might feel a bit weird or overemphasized to anyone who wasn't experiencing the finale of the manga as it happened so let me try and explain how absolutely surreal the way Beastars ended was (spoilers, obviously):

Beastars has five arcs. The Adler and Meteor Festival arcs are season 1 of the anime, the resolving-Tem's-murder arc is season 2, and since season 3 is supposed to be the final season it'll presumably be both the chill-vibes-and-worldbuilding arc and the Melon arc.

The last of these, the Melon arc, is also the longest, something like a third of the whole manga. It's also very uneven in terms of quality, swinging between inspired character moments and thematic commentary on the one hand and utterly inexplicable worldbuilding details and weird plot tangents that go nowhere on the other.

Its climactic final fight takes up the manga from chapter 174 to chapter 192, and very much matches the rest of the Melon arc in terms of quality, but, for our purposes here, what matters is that, around the time chapter 192 drops, Beastars fans get confirmation that this is indeed the final arc, and the manga's final chapter will be chapter 196.

Okay. So Paru Itagaki has given herself four chapters to tie together all the loose threads that emerge from having a manga with a near-ensemble cast and just shy of 200 chapters. Bold move, Cotton, let's see how it plays out.

So the fans wait a week, and chapter 193 comes out, and...

The chapter consists of Zaguan preparing to move back to the ocean, a brief tangent where the whale that stopped !WW2 (I'm not kidding about the utterly inexplicable worldbuilding) proposes to Yahya that the carnivores just eat fish (something that apparently nobody's considered up to this point????), and then Zaguan changes his mind about moving back to the ocean.

This is one of the final chapters of the manga, Paru still needs to wrap up Legoshi's story, Louis's story, Haru's story, Juno's story, everything with Jack, everything with Gouhin, everything with Pina, everything with Bill, everything with the Shishigumi, plus anything with Sebun, Gosha, Yahya, Riz, the rest of the Cherryton drama club, the rest of the 701 boys, and...

...we spend a full chapter on... Zaguan changing his mind?

Oookay, well, um, let's wait for next week and see what Paru does with chapter 194?

And then chapter 194 drops, and it is Louis's character progression being taken out back and shot like Old Yeller (a subject I have already talked about at far too much length), plus a single background panel of denouement for the Shishigumi.

Now, suddenly, the vibe is not just "wow Paru is gonna have to tie up a lot of loose character threads in a very small number of chapters", it's "wow Paru is gonna have to tie up a lot of loose character threads AND maybe hopefully fix taking Louis's arc out behind the woodshed in an EVEN SMALLER number of chapters".

So, chapter 195 and 196, whaddaya got?

Two chapters worth of Legoshi and Haru playing will-they-won't-they one more time for auld lang syne, with a gratuitous cliffhanger in between the two chapters, ultimately culminating in an ending that's perfectly fine for them, plus one page each denouement for Jack & the 701 boys, Gouhin, and the drama club.

Hrm.

So all these characters who we've spent the entire duration of the manga following and getting invested in, the one who we've been with since the beginning or at least the first half of the manga, the ones with all the really fun and interesting characterization and thematic commentary that made Beastars so engaging - the main characters get endings that are at best "fine" and the supporting characters get at most a page for their farewells?

But the comic relief seal whose recurring bit is being naked gets a whole chapter where nothing happens?

?????????

The fucking Zaguan denouement chapter™ is yet another absolutely baffling detail about Beastars's ending and I have no clue why on earth it exists other than "Paru Itagaki or someone at Weekly Shonen Champion REALLY liked the Jar-Jar Binks seal".

This isn't something where I have enough material to write an essay, but it's something where I nonetheless want to make it clear that this is one of the many Beastars-related hills I will gladly die on:

Zaguan is Beastars's Jar-Jar Binks.

He's a character from an underwater world whose primary purpose is to be wacky comic relief due to his strange underwater world customs and his lack of understanding of surface world customs, and it's obvious that somebody in the production chain really fuckin' likes him because suddenly he keeps showing up way more often than he has any right or need to (why is Jar-Jar now the senator from Naboo and the author of Palpatine's Enabling Act? why does Zaguan get a full chapter of denouement where nothing happens PLUS a Beast Complex chapter when much more established characters like Jack & the 701 boys, Gouhin, the Cherryton drama club, and the Shishigumi barely even get a page each?).

I'm sorry, but these are the same character, and they serve about the same level of narrative utility.

[black-water-lagoon]

I've gotta say, out of all the MXTX novels, MDZS definitely feels the most "different" to me. Is it a bad thing? Not really. Is it just because of my own biased perception (MDZS was the novel I read last)? Maybe. But as I've thought about it more, I've realized the main thing for me that really separates MDZS from the other two novels isn't its more surface level differences (different flavor of ML, more political drama-y, arguably good sex, etc etc) but rather one simple thing: the scale.

TGCF and SVSSS are stories that have larger scales by necessity of the plot. SVSSS not only has its main setting introduced as a book summary, but is also meant to be a parody of an existing genre, so it stands to reason there'd be the odd worldbuilding monologue where Shen Qingqiu curses out Airplane for his bad writing and whatnot. Worldbuilding is the primary tool through which the reality of Proud Immortal Demon Way as a setting (that being that it's a shoddily written but still fully system-expanded porn novel) is communicated to the audience.

TGCF is about a wandering banished god and a ghost king, so of course there's going to be lore about different kingdoms they've gone through and their histories with each other. Of course there's going to be a general picture painted of all three realms of this world and what each is like. Of course some defining points of our leads' character journeys are when one couldn't prevent a whole kingdom from collapsing and the other was rebirthed in a volcano as an unimaginably powerful super being. It's a fantasy novel. It only makes sense.

In contrast, though, MDZS feels incredibly zoomed in. All of the conflicts are between individual people or clans of maybe 50-100. There aren't any threats to the world at large (aside from maybe the criticized aspects of society like mob mentality and whatnot, depending on how you view it) and, hell, we don't even know what the kingdom it takes place in is called! The "world" of MDZS (if it can even be called that, as small as it is) is its own individual entity that isn't really connected to the greater universe around it. There's barely any worldbuilding at all--aside from the clan-sect thing, it's a bog standard cultivation setting, and there's no "wider impact" of any of the events of the story* outside the people the story chooses to focus on, because, simply put, there doesn't need to be.

In that way, it definitely makes sense that MDZS has the biggest impact on a lot of people. A smaller scale and more personal stakes might make the story feel more grounded and easy to connect with than, say, a giant statue kaiju mecha battle. (Absolutely no disrespect to the giant statue kaiju mecha battle from me, though. That shit was great)

Also, slight tangent, but this might be part of the reason there are more "serious" crossover fics (i.e. ones with more developed plots then "hey wouldn't it be fun if these characters interacted") between TGCF and MDZS than anything involving SVSSS. MDZS's lack of real connection to everything outside its story bubble makes it very easy to just drop in as a random thing going on in the background of TGCF, so it's not a big stretch to imagine. Hypothetically, this would also work with dropping MDZS into the world of SVSSS, but the tones of the stories are so wildly different that they feel a bit harder to reconcile.

In the end, though, it is still nice to see that even though MXTX has written three cultivation danmeis by now, there's still noticeable variety in not just the stories themselves, but the lenses through which they're told. It makes me very excited for whenever her fourth novel comes out, because because who knows what she'd do with a whole new setting...

[thankskenpenders]

I honestly liked the fantasy world Archie built up. I hope they end up revisiting that idea (in greater detail than things like the various monstrous gods and magic jewelers I mean) either in the games or in IDW at some point

I love the Archieverse for being a weird hodgepodge of ideas that later contributors managed to wring some good stories out of, but I do feel like a lot of fans comparing the "lore" and "worldbuilding" in the two series confuse quantity for quality. (The following tangent is less related to this particular ask and more just a response to a common talking point in the fandom.)

I mean it's also just a matter of taste, and I adore stuff like Adventure Time and Discworld myself, so I get the appeal of having this expansive fantasy world with loose rules where it feels like anything could happen. But like, prior to Ian it was mostly just the various older writers throwing in all sorts of different genre pastiches and pop culture parodies and broad cultural stereotypes without really being concerned about whether or not it made sense for Sonic. You've got retellings of Robin Hood and Journey to the West next to Verti-Cal and Horizont-Al. You've got high fantasy royal family politics next to "haha, Australians are funny!" And that absurdity is half the fun of reading the Archie comics, yeah, but so much of it on its own is completely vapid. It's easy to look back at how big the Archieverse toy box was and get nostalgic, especially because of what Ian and co. did with it, but so many of the old stories that explored the margins of that world just made me go "oh my fucking god can we please get back to the characters I actually care about"

I do think it would be fun to seem them flesh out the IDW world some more in the future (Sonic's world does seem very culturally homogenous at the moment), but I also think that the new series being very character-driven with a tighter focus on its core cast has paid off so far

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Honestly I think that R07 just isn’t as great a writer as people give him credit for. I think he’s great at adding character depth through inner thought monologues and describing how someone is feeling, but he’s not great at showing rather than telling, and that’s really put on display in a visual medium like anime

I mean, sure. When I went back to read the original Higurashi VN for the first time last year, I did end up finding plenty of flaws. The interminable club games, the rambling random tangents, the lack of consistent worldbuilding for the magical aspects...

The original Umineko is the same way, arguably - incredibly ambitious, but not without its flaws. I'm glad the manga and fan analysis exist, or I sure wouldn't have been able to see it with love!

However, I'm not sure if I'd say "telling rather than showing" is the major issue though? Of course a VN (or manga) has far more room to explore a character's thoughts than an anime, but overreliance on inner monologue wasn't an aspect that stood out to me as especially a problem in the VNs. If anything, I thought they had more of the opposite problem! Repetitively going over the same point though multiple means - inner thoughts, dialogue, actions - when only one is needed.

So yeah, I really don't know. Maybe all of us who love these stories are just projecting onto them, creating depth and brilliance where there is none.

Indeed, that's more or less what it means to see something with love in Umineko. Seeing a wonderful blue sea when the cold, cynical truth is drab and gray. I wouldn't fault anyone for doing that and creating a precious experience out of these stories. But neither would I fault anyone for walking away in search of something better.

[slimy-vore-bog]

Experiment of Cat and Mouse (first draft kinda... still fun to read though)

Had to wait on a response from a friend for the request thing so I wrote this while waiting. I was considering putting something sensitive in the other story so I had to wait to check if she was alright with it (and I still haven’t decided)

It’s not important what it is. You’ll find out if I put a trigger warning on the story.

So this is some concept stuff for the story. Or not concept... Just. Well, it’s just a first draft of sorts. I recommend reading my AU detail posts for context.

(original ask) (has original plot idea written: can be skipped through until single paragraph reading; Well, other than that tangent...) (one) (worldbuilding: technically irrelevant to story) (two) (worldbuilding: relevant, but needs context of one for some parts. Can be skipped until drawing for most relevant info)

Disclaimer: All my content is non-sexual NSFW interaction is not appreciated

Word count: 1.9k

Ao3

warnings/contains: shapeshifting pred and prey, cat pred, mouse prey, mentions of hard vore, mentions of fatal vore, unwilling prey (not to the extent of some of my other works) unwilling pred, mentions of animal death, non-graphic vomiting

(all mentions of are non-graphic)

Side notes: Luz is bruxing when she’s grinding her teeth together. It’s a thing rats and mice do when feeling calm/comfortable/happy (depends on other body language; it can be negative too, like purring in cats and tail wagging in dogs) This story is not 100% serious or has had 100% of my effort put into it, it was just a quick thing I wrote in 2 days.

This is the characters animal forms in a slightly realistic style:

(referenced used, but no person to credit, since one was stock and the other was from an article with a picture owned by a library) ***

Amity stared at the little mouse, feeling her inner cat lick its muzzle at the sight of her girlfriend. She scolded it quickly.

Stop it, cat, Luz isn't food.

She hoped the next few hours locked in the room would go by quickly, but she felt her cat's ears prick at the thought 'hours'.

Shoot, she thought to herself, not liking how the cat started making her check how hungry she was.

Luz tilted her head at her, before she sprinted off to chew on a toilet paper tube the researchers had put in the room. Mostly to keep Luz entertained. Amity didn't get anything like that, since they wanted her to focus as much of her attention on the little prey animal.

Amity sighed, turning her paw over to look at it. It wasn't dirty, but she didn't have anything better to do than groom herself. She chewed at the fur between her paw pads, trying not to pay attention to the energetic rodent that was making herself look more fun to eat by the second.

She licked the other side of her paw briefly, before Luz caught her eye again. Now she was trying to roll the tubes make a tunnel for herself.

Amity smiled in her mind, purring as she watched Luz roll them all up against each other, before she ran through them.

But her cat once again shifted her focus to her empty stomach, and now how Luz's scent made her feel even more huntable. She sent mad thoughts back at the cat.

We aren't eating Luz.

Immediately the cat sent a memory to her of an old promise. She snapped at the cat.

NOT this mouse! I didn't think Luz would think the next mouse I saw!

The cat gave a judgmental stare, but she shoved the feeling away.

Whatever, I'm not eating her.

She didn't get why the cat didn't understand that she was her girlfriend and not food. She could feel the cat make a show out of ignoring her at that thought

Luz poked her head in and out of the tubes, giving tiny jumps when she ran out. She looked incredibly happy to play, before she looked at Amity, freezing up.

Amity stared at her, hoping she hadn't scared her.

Luz's ears shifted a bit, shaking her head, before she ran up to her.

Amity stood up in surprise, backing away quickly. Her cat's ears perked up again, as it focused on Luz being right next to her paws. It wanted to take control. But Amity wasn't going to let it.

Shoo, she told it. Just because you can't get me to listen doesn't mean you can take over. It still prickled in her paw with its attempts to use it. Give up, she commanded it, shaking her paw, but it wasn't listening.

Luz's teeth made a small grinding noise, as she lay down next to Amity.

She almost felt like hissing at her, as her fur fluffed up. Are you trying to get eaten? she thought at her, holding back an annoyed growl. She turned her head involuntarily.

Before she could scold the cat, it got angry at her.

What? No! You can't eat Luz just because I'm using your body!

But the cat only hissed at her; it wanted a chance to steer.

You can later! Just don't eat my girlfriend!

But it still wouldn't listen and she lost the last bit of control she could keep.

Her paws grabbed Luz, but she could only watch as she squeaked out in surprise. Protection spell, Luz, please be quick about it! But as her paws pressed down into the mouse without a snap of bone, it was clear she had used them sometime earlier.

Her mind sent out a wave of confusion, as she sniffed the mouse. It smelled and moved like a mouse, why didn't it die like one? It was her cat thinking again.

Because she's not a regular mouse! Amity tried to take control again, but the cat refused. Just give up the researchers will come help out in a bit.

There was a spark of panic in the cat's mind, but it still wouldn't let Amity steer.

Luz wriggled under her paws, as the cat tried to figure out what to do with the invincible mouse. It launched forward and bit her, but it only hurt their teeth, when the skin wouldn't break and the skull wouldn't crack.

The cat sent a frustrated feeling through her, as Amity sensed her own hunger again. The cat thought as Amity tried to figure out how to take back control.

She tested different points in the body, but the cat was adament on keeping her out. The only thing she could briefly manage was half a wink. Though she froze when she sensed another thought go through the cat's mind.

Don't you dare!

But her disapproval only encouraged the cat more.

Her mouth opened up again, but much wider and she could see Luz freeze up in panic. Cat, stop it! She can't be broken down!

The cat got a little surprised, but more from not understanding than wanting to stop.

If you eat her, she won't be food, Amity attempted to explain. It's going to be like... like eating a rock.

The cat gave her a skeptical feeling, before it chomped down on Luz's tiny body.

No! Spit her out! She attempted to take control specifically of the mouth, but the cat was guarding that part with the same vigor that Amity was trying to use to take over.

But since it was the cat's body, meaning it could much more easily shut her out.

Luz wriggled on their tongue, the cat enjoying it, while Amity would much rather spit her back out. There was a startled shout from the next room over making both it and Amity turn their head toward the noise. The cat hurried up before Amity could even worry about whether or not she should think about the soon arriving help.

Luz squeaked in discomfort, as she was forced down into their throat. The cat was sending feelings of pride through to her, as Amity got more annoyed with it. It was absolutely mocking her.

Please just spit her out!

But that only cheered the cat up more.

Why are you being such a jerk?

It growled, echoing the thought back, with an emphasis on you.

Luz was already in to her hindlegs, as her feet and tail stuck out from their mouth. She could see her feet kicking in attempt to get back out. She wished she could stop it, as the cat swallowed again.

Both Amity and her cat spun around, when the door slammed into the wall. Yes! Help! she thought excitedly, as she gained a bit of control. But it quickly disappeared as she tried to gag.

Come on! Just let her out! But she felt their tongue move up in a swallow and the only part still outside their throat was her tail.

A third thinking voice was added to her mind, as someone picked them up and ran out of the room. It sent out strong feelings panic, visions of dying from poison and needing to vomit. But the cat still swallowed Luz the rest of the way down, before it hissed at them, clawing into the person's arm.

Amity felt impatient with the cat, as Luz wriggled around in her stomach, squeaking loudly in fear. Especially as a nausea spread through her, despite her not even having a body she could control. Wait, are they aiming for the cat at all? She felt if the cat was getting any of her nausea, but it seemed like it was getting the majority of it and some happened to be hitting her.

They put them in a box, holding them down, as they waited for them to vomit Luz back out.

Eventually it couldn't keep both shutting Amity and the new voice out, and it began throwing up.

Amity felt just as uncomfortable as the cat, as Luz was forced back out of their body.

When the mouse reached the back of their mouth, Amity took the opportunity to take control again. She rushed the progress of spitting Luz back up a little more and a bit later she fell out of her mouth in a puddle of saliva and acid.

Immediately, Amity was hoisted out of the box, but she didn't resist. She was just thankful that she could shift back to her own body soon. When the researchers put her back down, that was. Which they first did after leaving her outside the room.

She shut out the cat's protests and voice, as she turned back to her own form. The cat's voice dampered to a small whisper at the loudest hisses, and she let out a sigh of a relief. She looked at the door handle, considering waiting outside, but she was getting a little worried about how they were treating Luz.

She hesitantly tried the handle, but it wouldn't budge. Of course they locked it... She sat down against the wall, almost borrowing her cat's ears to listen to what they were doing, before she remembered they were mad at each other. But her brief call caused it to hiss. Sorry. But as mad as she was at it and hated the idea, she felt like she had to make up for their disagreement. I'll let you hunt tonight, I promise. That did seem to make it slightly less angry.

After a few minutes, the lock on the door clicked and it opened.

"Amity?"

Amity jumped up on her feet at the sound of Luz's voice. A mix joy and embarrassment swirled inside her. "I'm so sorry! The cat took over!"

Her embarrassment lessened, as she saw the wide goofy smile on Luz's face. "Don't worry! You know I know how to keep myself safe... But there was a lot of panic, because... I maybe forgot to tell the researchers before hand." She snorted in a small laugh, and Amity had to keep herself from doing the same. "I'm just happy that it wasn't you biting me like that." She rubbed the back of her head. "I mean, it didn't hurt, but I could feel how much pressure that was." She snorted again, as she began laughing. "Wow, your cat must hate me."

Amity smiled unsurely. "No, I think it was just hungry."

She pried into the cat's emotions, but it clawed at her with violent thoughts.

"I can't check. It's still really mad at me." She remembered the reason it had been so insistent on taking over. "It doesn't like that I don't let it take control more often."

Luz was about to say something, when one of the researchers joined them.

“We need you to report how the experiment went."

Luz gave him a weirded ot look. "What? Why? I thought everything went wrong."

He shook his head. "No, we just didn't get the results we expected, so we need you to report what exactly caused it."

Amity held back a sigh. "How long is it going to take?"

"At most a little under an hour, but it could take as little as ten minutes."

Amity was a little irritated that she wouldn't get more time to casually with Luz, but maybe it would be for the best to get it as fresh from their minds as possible.

***

And that’s the end of this version! Just a quick first draft thingy!

The Cat and The Mouse will use she/her pronouns in the final version along with having real names. And the story will most likely pick up earlier and possibly make use of perspective shifts.

I’ll post this to ao3 later. Does that mean today? Or tomorrow? Maybe... It might be next week? HOW EXCITING! THE SUSPENSE! O:

(GOT IT DONE TODAY WITCHES!)

But seriously I don’t know. It’ll get done.

That’s all I know.

(GOT IT DONE TODAY WITCHES!) (excuse the terrible joke)

But thanks a lot for reading! I hope you enjoyed. And very much please leave a heart/like if you did! I love seeing that people like my writing!

Either way I hope you have a great day! <3

[protagonistheavy]

I finished Midnight Gospel, it sure was a TRIP!!!!! I had a HIGH time!!!! I’m glad that I DRUGS!!!!!

Okay so, Midnight Gospel was okay but admittedly there was a lot of elements to it that were cringily “whooahh like, drugs man!” I dunno, I guess there isn’t too easy of a way to animate the experience of a big high without relying on tropes. There’s definitely some good charm in there for portraying those types of feelings in the animation, but when they rely super heavily on motion blur, or have everything get all swirly/liquidy, ugh, it really becomes an eye roller. It’s a shame because the animation definitely captures a lot of beautiful things, especially when it works well with the dialogue, but unfortunately those moments are muddled in what is pretty typical affair for, like, “flash animation cartoon that wants to be trippy.”

When the show tries to be Rick and Morty, that’s when it’s at its absolute worst. It tries to be more like the spiritual-themed version of Rick and Morty rather than physics and science at some points, and it just... I hate Rick and Morty lol so when I see animation or gags or writing that feels too much like it, again... eye roller...

But past all that I thought the show was ALRIGHT. It’s very dialogue focused and I respect it for that. The dialogue usually blends really well with the animation in order to tell the narrative that they want. Sometimes the overlap could get distracting, but usually what was on screen served the purpose of the ideas they wanted to talk about. The conversations are definitely enlightening and leave the viewer with intriguing topics to think about, though it does sorta suck that I feel like the conversations end like five or ten minutes too early, or that some information is kept cryptically defined, which to me feels more like a move to keep the show feeling “mysterious.”

There is no plot for the show, so def don’t go in expecting anything like that. As a result it’s pretty frustrating when the show lingers on the non-simulation moments because the non-simulation aspects have very little to say, at least not coherently. They introduce characters that won’t matter, they introduce worldbuilding that won’t matter... It tried to be bare bones but then also tries to get you into thinking there’s meat, I guess?

I think the finale was the best episode, obviously had the most impact in it. I think the episode in the medieval world with Trudy was like, really good RIGHT UNTIL that “fight” with, uh, Ben or whatever? The... booty guy... Yeah once it decided to go off the rails into lolsorandum territory, lost a ton of interest. In general I think all the interviews are really fun and enticing, it’s cute how they work these normal conversations about and from real people and incorporate it into whatever the show is wanting to do, and I like how flimsy they are with the narrative, so you have characters speak over each other, laugh at jokes, struggle to remember something, go on little tangents, all while the animation just continues like normal. It’s really interesting! Just a lot of downs with all the ups it has to offer.

I’d honestly kinda recommend to people who are interested in a different type of show with a more scripted podcast kind of feel. I dunno how scripted the interviews actually are, obviously some parts are scripted while others aren’t, but they’re good talks nonetheless and engaging conversations to listen in on. I just wish that if the series was going to try and do any worldbuilding, that they’d commit to it and come up with a compelling world outside the simulations, one that served a little more utility.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

we’re partners in this.

so titans 2.12 was mostly about (awkwardly) moving pieces around to get them in place for a grand finale. it was great! but also awkward. but great! let’s talk about it, if you don’t mind:

SPOILERS ahead.

1. i apologise for going off on a tangent right off the bat, but i just had this weird bit of insight about this show’s universe and it’s kind of hilarious. so you know those clickbaity articles about titans fucking up its worldbuilding by having its characters be so blase about protecting their superhero identities? (screenrant and cbr have inundated my newsfeed. oh good lord the pain. the agony.) maybe that’s just how It’s Meant To Be. batman and robin have been around for at least a decade and a half; the big bat’s likely been around for longer. the justice league is a sophisticated organisation with connections, representation and influence on worldly affairs. no doubt there has been countless battles and alien invasions--to the point where superheroes have become so ingrained in public life that their identities are semi-public knowledge but Nobody Gives A Shit. it’s like asking folks about their local legislators--people are aware that they exist and perform a Function in society and that a minimal amount of research would reveal who they are, but most aren’t keen on/interested in doing that. as a result, keeping up a secret identity isn’t the priority it used to be. and That’s Fine! the titans universe is its own beast with its own internal mechanics and as long as it’s internally consistent, let it deviate from its comic origins as much as it wants to.

oh typical emmram, i can hear you say. scrambling for explanations to excuse careless writing and plot holes. well, dear Strawman I Just Made Up, you may be partially right--there was a time when i would’ve waved my ‘the author is dead’ flag, but (i like to think) i’ve matured since then. but also: have you considered that plot holes aren’t really plot holes if you can successfully use what’s been established about a story’s universe to explain them away and that it’s significantly more fun? 

with this background in mind, i can appreciate more than ever that titans plays out more like an intense, soapy family drama (with perhaps higher stakes than your average soap). this was never a show about a bunch of disparate heroes coming together and finding purpose in order to defeat a common enemy. this was always about a bunch of kids who grew up in a world where vigilantism and superheroing and magic and alien invasions are just an accepted part of life, and the deeply dysfunctional ways they keep coming together and pinballing away, over and over again. there’s no point where each of the characters have definitely Gotten Over Their Issues so they can all gather together to defeat the big bad; it’s why this late in the game we can have rachel looking for people to connect to and relate with that aren’t a series of adults who claim to protect her but only keep her in the dark; hank at the bottom of a self-destructive spiral; dick barely picking himself up from rock bottom, and kory falling apart at the seams. 

so anyway, that’s it on this edition of Emmram Tries To Give A Grand Unifying Theory of Titans; let’s move on to the actual episode.

2. rose’s story could’ve been so good, you guys. actually you know what, scratch that (she types, on a computer while having 20+ years’ experience in knowing how to use the backspace key), it’s a great story that got muddled in the process of the show trying to tell a number of great stories all at once. this season has been inexorably building up to dick grayson becoming nightwing, using his unreliable narration to build up suspense as we see him battle personal hangups and the fallout from literal decades of trauma to gain a sense of equilibrium and a renewal of purpose (it can be argued that even now, on the cusp of actually putting on that dang costume, he hasn’t really learned anything--but i’ll get to that later). if this is the main story that this season is trying to tell, then taking two gigantic detours for episode-long flashbacks and building up to jericho’s death as much as they did makes perfect sense. it also makes sense to set slade up as a foil to dick, in that they are both caught up in their heads and make self-absorbed decisions to protect their ‘children’ but dick comes through with the realisation that that’s a crock of bullshit. 

but that’s not the case, is it? there are so many things going on at once but they’re all orbiting around this throughline of ‘dick becoming nightwing’ and so we only get the barest glimpses of some relatively complex character motivations and development going on with the others. 

2.25. in this episode’s flashback (we’re still getting flashbacks! in literally the penultimate episode of the season! god i have never wanted to take a red pen to anything more) we come to a number of weighty realisations: the extent of rose’s powers, her feelings of otherness, her desire to connect with her father so that she doesn’t feel alone in her otherness, how desperate she is to connect with him--so much so that she’s willing to throw away her entire life and undergo physical mutilation in service of his revenge plan--and how...learning exactly how her brother died and... being with jason??? made her change her mind??? ok that last one’s a bit muddled, but i’ll try and make sense of it.

as far as i can see, there are four big turning points in rose’s story so far:

a) that moment in the car when slade invites rose to join him and reveals that he’s basically been funding her ‘normal’ middle class life till that point. i can imagine how destabilising that realisation might be to rose, and why she might think going along with slade, no matter how weird and how abrupt, is how she’s going to live a life true to who she is

b) but imagine actually being taken in by the titans, being given shelter and support and succour by a group that her father had described as ruthless and manipulative. i can imagine her still being on board with slade’s plan, but maybe the reason she didn’t do all that she could’ve possibly done while at the tower to sabotage the titans might be because she’s actually interacting with these people, and while they might be a Hot Mess, they aren’t actively cruel or vindictive. i wish the show had woven in more scenes of rose interacting with the others, of her learning intimate things about their pasts, of her bonding with the younger titans’ struggle with their own ‘freakish’ natures. rose hardly seems to have any presence at all after her intro episode, and that’s a pity.

c) dick’s confession about what actually happened with slade and jericho. it’s more complicated than she was lead to believe--her father was actually complicit in her brother’s death. it’s a very confusing moment for rose, who’s already (probably) feeling the first stirrings of guilt, unsure, really, about her devotion to the father and brother that she’s known only for a little longer than the titans themselves, and slowly coming to the sick realisation that slade used her as a pawn in his game against the titans. 

d) jason latching onto rose is understandable--he saw her as the only person making the effort to connect with him when he was feeling vulnerable and rejected by almost everybody else. jason practically bleeds a need for connection and acceptance. i don’t think rose anticipated that jason would come with her, or be as attached to her as he is--but she sees in him a sensitive and struggling soul baring his heart to her, and in herself the kind of deception and secrecy that she’d originally wanted to rebel against. so she finally comes clean with him, and thinks they should help the titans against her father.

i mean. i might be making some assumptions (actually i’m making a lot of assumptions, to be fair), but i’m just trying to work with what the show’s given us, which is... not insubstantial, but haphazard enough that it’s easy to forget that rose exists sometimes. 

3. i fell asleep right after watching this episode for the first time, and apparently at some point before actually sleeping i appear to have had some kind of Great Insight about it because in the notes app on my phone i typed in “dick bruce concept of justice” with no further explanation.

i’ve spent the better part of this evening trying to retrace my train of thought, and i think it went like this: essentially, i was curious that dick was so broken up about jericho dying that he banished himself to a five year long lonely journey to seek penance that ended with him voluntarily getting himself arrested, but didn’t seem all that cut up about zucco dying or basically ordering the deaths of the scientists at the asylum in 1.07. betraying jericho and the older titans’ trust in him is a far greater burden on him than being responsible for the death of people who have wronged him or hurt the people he loves. but this is also a man who has internalised batman’s mission and ethos for the better part of his life, so he can’t actually come out and admit that. instead the two things come together to form one conclusion: he killed jericho, and he must be punished for it. 

(i also imagine locking himself away in prison was a result of growing up under the influence of batman--who responded to trauma by embarking on rigorous, brutal, solitary journey of penance and extreme self-discipline. batman doesn’t ask for help. batman goes to the batcave and rides it out.)

so when dick finally breaks himself out of jail, it isn’t because he’s come to a great realisation about his self-destructive behaviour (although he’s aware of it on some subconscious level); it’s because he realised the thing he was punishing himself for didn’t actually happen. he hasn’t really learnt a lesson. to be fair, he would need some pretty intensive therapy to untangle the things running through his head, so it seems quite believable that this is the way he gets back on his feet in time to be nightwing.

4. i know people think that the conversation between rachel and kory was awkward, and uh, it kinda was a little bit, but it makes sense that they can talk like that to each other. rachel wants to protect dick but feels confident enough with kory to lash out at her; kory is unafraid to be vulnerable or sad around rachel which just feeds into the trust that rachel has in kory. i don’t know, i thought that conversation was a nice way to both re-establish this dynamic and give some insight into what kory’s feeling.

5. god, mercy graves--a family woman!--tenderly wiping the blood off gar’s chin after having turned him into her own personal killing machine is just... so unsettling on so many levels.

5.5. it continues to KILL me that gar had so much faith in the titans right up to the very moment he had his fucking skull opened up and his brains messed with against his will: an undeserving loyalty to a family who took his easygoing acceptance of their shitty treatment of him at face value and essentially threw him to the wolves. how do you even start recovering from this? i feel like we’ve gone past the point where a few heart-to-hearts could help.

6. man, hank spiralling the way he did was too brutal to be anything but deeply uncomfortable. i’m sure the teenager who bought hank’s suit from him was supposed to inspire hank and remind him of his place and purpose as a titan, but it came off as kind of a cruel joke. hank has been putting his body out on the firing line over and over and over again, and his lesson is to be told that he isn’t putting himself out there enough? yikes.

7. stu and lily and their collective disdain for dick grayson’s drama are my new favourite characters on the show and deserve their own damn spin-off. MAKE IT HAPPEN DC

[mcnostril]

I have Patreonified

Hello! It is me, the thing wot makes pictures that you sometimes click on! 

I have decided to get into the whole Patreon thing ahead of Patreon eating its own foot then hobbling around blaming other people for its missing foot before slipping on its own puddle of blood and breaking its neck in macabre slapstick fashion. However, there are also other reasons for me to--

Q - WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, YOU MONSTER

...yes, I was getting to that.

So I've been doing this sort of content in my spare time forever, but unfortunately freelance animation work tends to be kind of an energy vampire with a significant amount of time spent putting out fires (Fire everywhere, all the time). I do not have the sexy fireman physique for that, which makes it very difficult for me to do other work on the side.

Lately I've had a bit of a hole in my schedule and enough leeway to just not work for a while, so I went back to old projects. Then this magical thing happened where I was having fun? And somehow things were Getting Done? So hey, I'm going to ride this wave of energy and finish this one silly book I've lugged around for a zillion years (yes, I am a zillion years old. It makes it very difficult to fill in the "age" box on websites) and hopefully continue making moar comics after that.

Q - WHAT IS IT YOU'RE ACTUALLY DOING THEN, YOU JOBLESS BUM

Currently I am in production of D and the Eternal Race.

It looks like this at the moment (still some fiddling to do for the final look, but it’s ver close):

It is a tale of accepting the inevitable by questioning it at every turn, going off on tangents and not actually accepting anything. Expect swearing, skulls, nautical knowledge and patented FooLogic®.

I am going full-time on this until it is complete (or I starve to death, but I have stockpiled so many lentils I can probably live forever, becoming a fusion of man and lentil: The fearsome Mantil) so expect regular updates, first of layout pages with no text then the final (digitally) inked pages. You could think of it as a short run webcomic, but ideally it would eventually make its way to print.

Q - WELL I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT THING, YOU HORRIBLE GOBLIN. I LIKE THINGS WITH SPEEDLINES AND DOTS AND POSSIBLY STABBINGS

I got you covered, rude little critter. Some might have noticed on my social media accounts character sheets for this stabby elf person:

This is the other story I'm working on. It contains possible speedlines, an indeterminate amount of dots and definitely some stabbings. The big hurdle at the moment is finishing up the writing, which is fairly advanced (There are arcs! There's chapter outlines! And scenes all mapped out with dialogue and other things that scripts have!) but still needs work.

However, there's already a lot of design and worldbuilding art sketched out that I'll be cleaning up while I sort out all them word bits, which you can expect to see there (and some will still be making its way to tumblr and twitters of course). Depending on your Tier, you may even see said word bits with assorted thoughts and all the inevitable problems I run into.

Then there's other comics which are less advanced in general but for which I am constantly developing stuff, like these weirdos which I'll also post about there.

Q - YOU'RE NOT A WRITER THOUGH, YOU SHAMELESS HACK. WHAT IF IT TAKES FOREVER AND SUCKS

All the writing for D and the Eternal Race is done save the title and like, one line (it's really silly, but I think I can make it silly², possibly silly³)

I also have a bunch of short comics laid out which don't require extensive writing beyond my trademark FooLogic™ that I'll be working on from time to time when other bits prove difficult, sort of like this:

And finally there's all the random art (drawings! paintings! animation!) I do for whatever reason which will show up on there with process bits. That stuff will still show up on social media as it always has, but you can see it there first! Maybe see my convoluted process! Possibly art streams where you can witness the eldritch nightmare that is my picture-making!

Q - WHAT IF I JUST WANT A THING FOR MYSELF, YOU USELESS SLUG.

I get a fair amount of people asking about this stuff, so I'll be sorting out a commissions schedule and guidelines. I'll be adding tiers for commissions at some point, mostly because I already made the badges for them and once you have made a badge, you must abadge.

Q - I JUST LIKE TO SHOUT

It's cool, I also like to shout.

Q - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH