#anyway I finished the main story

[woundedheartwithin]

Crispin Freeman voicing Helios in GOWR Valhalla is probably the best evidence ever that good direction makes a huge fucking difference no matter how good a voice actor actually is. He’s terrible as Kaito in the English dub of je/lj, but he is fucking fantastic as Helios in GOWR. I can’t even believe it’s the same guy tbfh like it’s that huge of a difference

[saewokhrisz]

ambrosia

[littlestkoi-n]

the rage I feel when reading Blood of Olympus chapters 45-56 is almost equivalent in magnitude to the absolute joy I experience when reading The Last Olympian chapters 1-23.

remember when percabeth was good? when they meant the world to each other but had other people they cared about (nico, for one. both of them. so much), other worries and other storylines aside from their romantic plot? and when nico's completed arc wasn't repeated for no reason other than to dump more trauma on the youngest character in the series? when background characters were included in the story not for all the unnecessary last minute romantic subplots but because they were fun and fascinating to learn more about? and were actually friends with main characters? remember when grover was percy and annabeth's best friend forever? and antagonists were actually interesting and intimidating and had compelling goals? and the story revolved around friendship and family and loyalty? and death was definite and loss was palpable and battles were thrilling?

yeah. good times.

[psychomusic]

presenting to you: vegoia laran!

vegoia is the daughter of suri and tar'x laran, so, she's half-mirialan and half-zabrak. she lived on the mountains of mirial with her family until she began her jedi training at around 10 years, then she became a jedi seer.

more of her childhood under the cut! the rest of her story will be on other posts, I'll link them at the end when I'll post them

thank you @furious-blueberry0 for letting me use your padawan braid idea and jedi seer headcanon!! i really really love these ideas <3

since her birth, she seemed special at the eyes of her people, due to an old local myth: the founding witch.

(the myth is: a powerful witch, haunted by complex visions of the future, was exiled to the desert planet of mirial. after years spent traveling she had one clear vision on top of a mount, in which she saw the potential beauty of the valley, full of different lifeforms flourishing. with her magical powers, she turned that possible future into a reality, and everything changed: the 4 peoples who lived there started turning into trees and animals, what once was sterile rock became fertile ground, and craters were filled with water. but despite her good work, the incomprehensible visions kept returning. tired of the universe's infinite lessons, she decided to crystalize all of her visions and knowledge into the sacred crystal, and prophetized, before dying, that one day someone attuned to it would come to claim the crystal and understand the lessons she couldn't understand)

because of her albinism (that made her white like the crystal) and of her horns (the crystal has an horned shape), people thought she was the prophetized one. when she began to talk - rather late, and asked people to resolve the riddles that "a bearded man told her in her dreams" - what was just a rumor solidified into a belief.

her mother and grandfather, both in the high priesthood, taught her everything they could. they taught her to study, to reflect, and they explained to her their religion and folklore. also, her mother often tried to help her in her quest of finding answers. from her, vegoia learned how to study, and the right mindset to be able, later, to explore the jedi's philosophy and beliefs.

but it was her father that, despite his absence, taught her how to compromise with her visions, how to be patient, how to handle the state of ignorance, and how to enjoy it anyway. he was somehow better at understanding her, and making her understand things, than everyone else in the town. maybe, it was because he not only had met different force users, but also had experience with a force sensitive kid (his little brother, whom vegoia shared a lot of similar traits). despite her mother being a healer & priestess, and believing in the value in helping people, it was her father who really grounded that belief in her. in particular, he did it in a moment that. also shaped her experience of the force. a simple moment, though: she had asked him to kill a scary bug that was laying flat on its back, but he refused and instead asked her to help it. he believed that helping is what gives life sense - even more than the bonds we make, because it can't be undone. when vegoia picked up the bug and helped it get back on its feet, she could feel the bug's relief, and maybe even gratitude, through the force. this was the imprint of her experience of the force: connection (even more than her visions, that just "happened" to her, and couldn't actively call upon her).

BUT I DIGRESSED way too much on her childhood. the most important event in her childhood was the day she was taken by the jedi, even if she didn't know what truly happened that day.

the SIS had been tracking her father's movements for a while and had found out about his trips to mirial. worried that the empire was planning something, they sent a squad of operatives to investigate. since his father had often worked for the dark council, the SIS requested a jedi to come with them. when they arrived, suri went to talk to them. they threatened her into talking and she told them of their secret family. the SIS decided to take them prisoners, capture him when he got back, and make him talk using his family as leverage. the jedi disagreed with such methods but the operation was under the SIS's jurisdiction. suri then tried to convince them to leave the town and her daughter, and to instead blackmail him with her. the SIS refused, fearing that the sith might kill him before he could even know about the blackmailing. the jedi, feeling vegoia's strong presence in the force decided to make a deal: vegoia would've come with him to the temple to become a jedi. she'd still have a life, while suri would stay under their custody for the SIS trap. this would also show the agent the difference between the republic and the empire, and hopefully that would help him talk. she accepted at one condition: that they took her away before her father came back, so that she wouldn't have to live through it. vegoia didn't know of her father's real job, like everyone else in the town (everyone thought he had traded his services to the hutts to have the sacred horned crystal back).

they agreed, but, while suri was busy packing thing for vegoia, the SIS decided to put another condition. vegoia musn't be told anything about that day until her father had been taken into republic's custody, as a precaution. the jedi agreed, thinking it wouldn't be long before her father would come home and be arrested. little did he know this momentary omission would grow into a years-old lie.

[holocene-sims]

💪💙🎵

[riant-draws]

had a rough day but inking is like getting free therapy

don't look too hard at the arm haha yeah it's way too long, that's what I get for not sketching first lol

anyway this was way more fun to make than I anticipated even if it turned out kinda janky :D the crosshatching on the bottom of his robe and the details in his head are probably my fav parts

[whumpzone]

Linden & Colton - 29

(masterlist)

CW: pet whump, dehumanisation, vague allusions to past noncon, self hatred

-

Colton woke. His palm was sweaty and hot. A headache was slowly draining from his skull. There was no morning light, and no… bedroom. Instead, there was the dark living room. He felt as if he had slept for years. 

Shifting slightly, he realised two things: he was sweaty all over, his palm particularly so because his Master was holding it loosely. 

Col’s eyes followed Master’s arm up from his hand, and he saw that he was unmoving, breathing evenly with his eyes closed. 

Safe for now, he lay back down. He was absolutely exhausted, although he had no right to be. All he’d done was cry and slept- slept- on the furniture. 

He gasped, then pressed the knuckles of his free hand to his mouth to shut himself up. He felt so dizzy and disoriented. What time was it? Why was it dark? What on earth had he been thinking, getting up on Master’s sofa like some stray?

He suddenly realised he was squeezing Master’s hand, and Master, in his dream-state, was squeezing back. It shouldn’t have, but it made Col calm down. 

He had made an absolute spectacle of himself. Crying, howling, begging Master not to leave him. 

And Master had kept his promise. He was still here. Col felt a surge of gratitude, different to how it usually felt. The familiar gratitude that ran through him when he was allowed food, or sleep, was utterly eclipsed by this. Master had no need to stay. Col knew that his old Master would have kicked him in the stomach until he shut up, or just gagged him and locked the basement door.

Here, Col had been held, comforted, and now Master was still with him, like he was protecting him from something. 

His old Master’s friends. He winced as he remembered exactly what had set him off in the first place. No, no. I don’t want to remember. 

It was just what bad dogs got, but Master had seemed so genuinely disgusted- with Col? Disgusted that his pet was even more used up than he’d thought?

His mind whirred until he felt his brain would overheat. Master was horrified about what happened, part of him said, the part that was softer and further away, that was so naive it made Col cringe. He pictured himself - his most pure, real self, his sanity - curled up in his mind, shielding his face with his arms, his legs pulled up to protect his stomach. Things didn’t hurt as badly as they could when he was like that. If he started to believe all of the kind words that Master said, and the thoughts he sometimes had in his weaker moments, it would be like letting his inner self relax, just a bit. Taking away some of the tension in his legs, maybe even lowering his arms to look out at the world. Once he did that, it would hurt so much more the next time. Col wouldn’t let that happen. 

He frowned deeply and tried to regain some composure. Master had fallen asleep out of tiredness, not because he had granted Col’s plea to not be left. It was Col who had engineered this, who’d taken advantage of his Master’s kindness and spent the entire night curled up beside him, holding his hand like a loved one when he was, in fact, nothing. Master would wake and be so sickened that he would finally kick Col out. 

And Col was weak. He was cowardly and scared. He just couldn’t handle it, not yet. Not yet, he repeated. Soon he’d come up with a plan. He’d figure out what his next steps would be once Master made him leave. 

He once again became aware of the feeling of his hand in his owner’s. Master’s grip was light with sleep, purposeful enough to be holding him, but not pressing into his injuries or pulling or hurting. That could, would, change when Master woke up. How could he ever think he was safe? How deluded and complacent had he become? 

You’re not a lap dog, he reminded himself, although it was his old owner’s voice he heard. You’ll never be one. You’ll never be loved, or treasured. Do you understand that, Pet?

Yes, Master, Col had replied when he was first told this. The words hadn’t stung. It was important that he knew. 

Good boy. You know your place. 

His training was starting to stumble, now that he was in Master’s house. He so wanted to believe all of Master’s kind words, to slip into them like a quilt and bury himself in their warm folds, sinking deeper, deeper, believing that he hadn’t deserved what happened at those parties. 

You hadn’t, the other voice said again, and Col screwed his eyes up, because it hurt to have to fight it off. But what choice did he have? 

Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Col slid his hand free of his Master’s. The only sound was his own heart, pounding at the sudden tension. How could he have woken up and ever felt calm about this? Why had he lay there, thinking, deciding what to do next as if he ever had a choice? His own hatred for himself was growing in density. He hated the darkness, and the silence. He had endured enough of both to last him forever. Things were so much more simple when it was daytime, when the sunlight spread over the house like a balm, and his Master was happy and calm and talking to him.

God, but it was night and he was alone in the truest sense of the word, and he just couldn’t stop fucking thinking.

He unfolded his stiff legs (they used to always be stiff, from kneeling or being bound for hours on end, but now Master let him walk and stretch them, and he was taking that for granted too) and carefully lowered his hands and knees to the floor, praying that nothing would creak. Nothing did. He tried to breathe at a normal pace again. 

His eyes had adjusted to the pitch blackness by now. There was a dip in the sofa where Col had been lying, but there was nothing he could do about that. Besides, he wasn’t trying to conceal what he’d done. He was just trying to mitigate it, because he was a good boy. 

A dog, he corrected himself. A slave. God, why did you do that? You know how ugly you are when you cry. You’ve seen yourself in the mirror, it’s horrifying, it’s like a monster. You looked like that for a good half an hour last night, and Master saw, he saw everything and he’ll never forget. 

And your body looks so bad. He’ll have looked away from your face and seen your body instead. Oh my god, why would you put him through that? 

You swore you’d keep it together in this new house, you’d be good and make it work, but you fuck everything up. Everything you touch gets ruined sooner or later. How can you even go upstairs to the room he lets you stay in? 

Col stared at the floor. If Master had a basement, he’d go there. But then again, if Master had a basement he would never have needed to give up his spare room. Col could prove that he shouldn’t have gone to the trouble. 

There was a neat little space in the corner of the living room, between the wooden TV stand and the wall, where Col would fit nicely. He crawled over and nudged himself into place. There he knelt, watching as Master slept. He would probably be angry that he’d spent all night on the sofa, but Col didn’t dare wake him up. 

He hoped he looked like a good slave, on his knees and ready to serve. It must have been the dead of night, because he didn’t make it to morning. He fell into sleep with his head resting against the wall, and although kneeling was second nature, it wasn’t the position he would have chosen if he had let himself have that freedom. He would have chosen to curl up on the floor, with his legs to his chest, and his arms around his face.

-

taglist part 1:

@newbornwhumperfly @whumpadump1939 @firewheeesky @whump-me-all-night-long @captain-seconds @grizzlie70 @unicornscotty @lave-whump @princessofonwardsworld @cupcakes-and-pain @bumbumbea @whumpfigure @yet-another-heathen @secretwhumplair @whumps-up @as-a-matter-of-whump @getyourwhumphere @itzagoodthing @whumpymirages @soapparentlyilikewhumpnow @the-monarch-whumperfly @penny-for-your-whump @legallylibra @angel-stars @loyds-of-registry @tears-and-lilies @badluck990 @rosesareviolentlyread @vickytokio @neuro-whump @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @whumpsy-daisies @control-whump @theydy-cringeworthy @starnight-whump @cursedandtired @jo-doe-seeking-inspo @justabitofwhump @glamrockgregory @rippedjeansandfadeddreams @genesissane @justbreakonme @addyez @httyd-chocolate @littlespacecastle @haro-whumps @extrabitterbrain @neverthelass @downrivergirl914

[benevolenterrancy]

*glances at svsss' vol 4 worth of extras, aka 'the whump and smut pile'* you haven't seen anything yet

You guys are seriously taking an axe to my self-control;;; I'm trying to make this series last longer than a single month!! I'm trying to savour things!!! I'm trying to read something else and give the series a bit of breathing room before I pick up the last book but I want the "whump and smut pile" I want that so much I feel like a dog that's getting a treat waved in front of its face .·´¯`(；´д｀)´¯`·.

[sunshineneedsaplacetokeephernsfw]

Attire mission: Purchase premium attire to get an extended romantic story!

Me: *on Liam's route* Romantic my ass! This is a tragedy

[gingermintpepper]

How’s Fields of Mistria? You mentioning it was the second time I heard of it, the first time being in passing, so I’m not too knowledgeable about the game.

AWWW THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING!!

Fields of Mistria is SUPER fun, since there's not much to do in it after you've completed the first year right now, I've dedicated myself to breeding and collecting all the seasonal variants of horses so I can name them after the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!

I also named all my barns after metamorphised lovers in greek myth because I have exactly one thought running through my head at any given point in time (Currently there's Crocus Coop where I keep my (gorgeous wonderful lovely adorable ouugh I LOVE THEMMM!!) blue chickens

Cypress Barn where I keep my wonderful cows (who have been with me the longest and whom I cherish immensely! I'm not sure if Autumn cows are possible but I'm definitely aiming for a barn of all red and autumnal cows for obvious reasons)

Minthe Barn where I keep all of my other large animals like sheep, alpacas and my very first beloved Chiron (black and white) and Iris (brown with spots) (the foal is Rigel) 🥺

And Hyacinthus Barn where I have a collection of small animals like rabbits, capybaras and my PRIZED DUCKS LEDA (the pretty blue and green duckie) AND CYCNUS (the pure white duck meant to mimic a swan!!) Even though it's technically a coop, I mistakenly labelled it a barn when I was inputting the name and I never changed it LOL

My farm is also named after THE metamorphosized lover, Daphne herself, so it's called Laurel Farm

And I'm planning for my Seasonal Horse barn to be named after the poplar since I quite like Leuke's story and I think she's fitting of housing the horses that will be the steeds of War, Pestilence, Conquest and Famine :)

Bonus: My house is still small and eclectically decorated, but keeping in theme with my farm, I do hope to go for a flower/garden theme

<33

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

I'm sorry I can't take your call right now, I'm becoming unhinged about Transformers again,,,

[corviiids]

For the director's cut fanfic thing: ⭐⭐⭐ (these are THREE stars valid for whatever. I'm giving you blank checks)

thank you again <3

blank check 2/3 goes back to as you like it again! but this time i want to talk about my shadow designs for the akechi bossfights we've encountered in the preceding chapters >:3 there are five - the Puppet, the Singer, the Bard, the Dancer, and the Magician.

but this got really ABSURDLY long this time so ill stick to mostly the Puppet, and just do a brief ("brief") overview of the others for now.......

(for context: this is my palace au and akechi's keywords are akechi goro, the world, theatre.)

the Puppet (photos of giant puppets below if that freaks you out!)

the first Wing the thieves encounter is the puppet show, and the boss shadow is a giant marionette:

For one thing, it’s huge—maybe three or four times the size of a human being. It’s also gleaming, carefully polished and buffed, reflecting light more viciously in the areas where it seems the wood might be chipped or worn. The polish throws the lines of joints and pieces into sharp relief, giving the puppet the general impression of something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails. Behind it, mostly concealed by its limp bulk, is a door. As they might have gleaned from the chatter of the audience, the show does not yet seem to have begun. As such, the puppet on stage is limp on its strings. Most disturbingly, it’s draped backward, not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks. They can just make out the side of the thing’s eyes from where they’re standing. Gravity has not been kind to them: the puppet’s eyelids are dropped open, bulging eyes left wide and staring up as far back as the build will let them. They haven’t rolled all the way into the wooden skull, presumably because they can’t. Instead, the unseeing yellow eyes remain fixed on the back corner of the stage. The puppet is entirely still. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Makoto says faintly.

i think the Puppet is my favourite of the five because he's so disturbing. i imagine he looks a bit like the giant marionettes by the french street theatre show royal de luxe:

but i really love these guys, so i think it's uncharitable to say akechi's shadow looks exactly like them. i know giant puppets are always a little freaky but i genuinely love the royal de luxe puppets and i think the workmanship on these does genuinely do a ton of work to dispel that uncanny vibe.

puppet akechi on the other hand is absolutely drenched in uncanny valley, so i guess imagine these puppets but much scarier. the main thing is those places where different pieces of wood are joined, in the joints / on the limbs / etc, because that's very key to puppet akechi's look in my mind, hence "something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails". the Puppet is a marionette, but the way he's been constructed and set up on stage almost calls to mind the imagery of a corpse that's been reconstructed to perform. the way he moves is really unnatural:

Ren is beginning to think they might be able to get past and slip through that door without a fight when the whole creature rears up, back strings going taut, and lashes wildly out at him with a horrible clack of its arms—he leaps back and crashes directly into Haru, who catches and dips him like a princess before twirling him frantically into Ryuji and the puppet gouges a deep gash in the stage floor.    As they watch it screeches, howls an unnatural shriek, eyes suddenly wide and bulging larger. They ‘blink’ a few times, eyelids flipping, then the puppet Akechi goes limp on its strings again, though decidedly more upright than before, like whoever’s pulling the strings is now on guard. Its eyes stay open this time, bright gold and piercing.

very much not like something exercising its own agency, but like a body on strings being operated by someone who did not care to practice in the artistry of operating a puppet to make it look like a live thing - the puppet is literally just a tool to be flailed about.

this also shows in the way the puppet sits when it's at rest. guys do you know how god damn hard it is to find normal pictures of puppets? when you google marionette it just comes up with a bunch of fnaf shit. anyway check this guy out

at rest, they usually just kind of dangle innocently, or might slouch forward if given too much slack, right? it was important to me that puppet akechi look very wrong at rest, as if he's not "at rest" so much as he's just been left to hang. hence: "it’s draped backward, not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks." i'm basically imagining meat hooks, like, in a slaughterhouse or something you know? like he's just dangling from those.

that imagery was inspired by persona 5 dancing, actually - akechi's finishing pose in his dance is this:

this is just such an unnatural pose. when i saw it for the first time, i just couldn't get the image out of my head of a string puppet who'd been hung up and left to dangle without any regard for how it might look or feel (lol). not to mention that blank look in his eyes. i think a lot of the Puppet was born from this dance because the dance itself is so dynamic and silly but then the lead-up to the end suddenly gets very jerky and puppet-like. i really like his dance!

the Puppet's battle mechanic is that the applause will continue as long as the Puppet is either acting or getting hurt (kind of like the mettaton fight in undertale actually?). if the applause stops, then the Puppet will be inflicted with Despair - in p5 the Despair effect means you lose SP for each turn and then instantly die on the third turn. makoto ends up healing the Puppet and yusuke mercy-kills it before it can commit suicide:

Fox silently raises his gun. The Thieves collectively flinch as the Puppet dissipates. The applause starts back up. “If we’d left things silent,” Yusuke says, “it would have only happened again.”

because this is the first shadow bossfight the thieves encounter in the Theatre, i needed it to have some broader implications (vs some of the later shadows who have more specific interactions). so obviously the analogue for akechi is that the performance needs to continue and he needs to continue receiving acknowledgement from the public / from shido / etc because if he's not useful and entertaining and noticeable and such, then he's nothing - his life doesn't mean anything. obviously, if he doesnt perform for shido (perform in the sense of working, but also in the sense of showmanship) he'll probably be killed. but also, akechi really externalises his sense of self to an insane degree. the conceit of the palace is essentially that his entire internal world is the show, it's just this shallow performance, the backstage is empty. if he stops existing in the cognition of the masses, he essentially "stops existing".

i think a lot about third semester akechi in royal and how completely he's faded from public awareness. he doesn't care because he's a dead man walking and has locked into nihilism at that point. but if you look at what akechi says in the engine room:

his voice when he says this says a lot to me. akechi's envisioning the world as it will look when he has to return and face the consequences of the world discovering what's behind the curtain and realising his credibility was all a show. to be honest, i think this also plays a role in his decision to sacrifice himself in this scene. i don't think he wanted to die, but i think he did realise that the post-thieves, post-truth world wasn't a place that held anything for him anymore, and his desire to return to that reality was dramatically weakened, so it was an easier decision for him to choose to make that sacrifice than it otherwise might have been.

um, i had a point. okay, so, i was saying that once the applause stops, the Puppet begins to despair. the Puppet also is the most direct representation of akechi as someone who is being used. all the shadow bosses correlate to some aspect of akechi's need to perform and to the varying reasons why they all have that sense of desperation:

“Kinda feels like they’re just defendin’ themselves, you know,” [Ryuji] says. “Or somethin’. Look too much like him. It’s weird they can’t talk, cos it’s like fighting a dumb animal. Don’t they all seem real scared to you?” None of Akechi’s Shadows have delivered grand speeches about conquering the world. Even Futaba’s Shadow had given them a fairly strong indication of what was going on with her, that overwhelming guilt which had given birth to a resolve to lock herself up in her mind and die. Akechi’s Shadows have lashed out, tried to destroy them, sure. But it feels different in a way that’s growing more and more impossible to ignore. Desperate to fend them off, more than anything, like each one is the final bastion standing for a world that could crumble at any moment.

that's why once you figure out how to stop each shadow's "show" from going on, they instantly die:

ripping the Singer's mask off causes him to cease to exist (see below)

silencing the Bard, who relies on the power of his words to manipulate others, removes his power and reveals that he's pretty easy to take down

the Dancer's feet are always bleeding because he can't stop moving. he's hard to catch, but the moment he stops dancing, he's revealed to have extremely low defence and can be taken out very easily

but the Puppet is literally being manipulated by a puppetmaster. because he no longer has any use when the applause stops, he no longer has a reason to exist. i also just thought this would be a fun effect to start on because it's so drastic as an introduction to akc's psyche and really gives the thieves a sense of what they're working with by throwing them directly into the deep end.

ok let's leave the puppet behind for now. im gonna be more brief with the others i promise (maybe)

the Singer

LET'S TALK about. beneath the mask. a song about ren. but it's also a song about goro.

I'm a shape-shifter at Poe's masquerade Hiding both face and mind All free for you to draw

the fic goes over some of my meta about this:

[Yusuke] I have done some research. [Makoto] Oh? [Yusuke] I believe when the Opera Shadow sang of “Poe’s Masquerade”, he was referring to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Masque of the Red Death”.

eternally grateful for the scene during the pyramid arc where yusuke loredumps about egyptian mythology so i have precedent to do this

yusuke summarises the story in this chapter (chapter 4), but basically: the story is about rich people abandoning the common folk to a plague, until a personification of the plague wearing a red mask enters the castle. when his mask is removed, it's revealed there is nothing underneath. everyone in the castle then succumbs to the plague.

the superficial connections to akechi are pretty obvious - red mask, plague doctor. etc. but this song is really, really telling for both ren and goro. i briefly went over this in my last dvd commentary post about the palace fic, but this relates to my meta around both of them as mask wearers. the line "all free for you to draw" is a big one - ren is "all free for you," the player, "to draw" - he becomes who you need him to be, and because you need to max out your confidants, he becomes (via you) who his friends need him to be.

goro is similar on a different scale because he moulds his personality to what the public expects him to be. he takes it one step further, because it's less utility for him and more foundational - as i said, to an extent the performance is the substance of his personality, which is the core of the distortion. so both ren and goro are wearing the mask, malleable in character, their actual personality being somewhat questionable, but that emptiness is only true for goro. ren's definitely got something underneath it, but goro feels like he doesn't.

brief cw for suicidal ideation, but i also generally take it as a given that goro doesn't really expect to live past 18 after defeating shido. not that he's actively suicidal, but i think literally or figuratively he knows after shido's downfall, his own life will pretty much be over, and that's part of what drives the emptiness. the show really only needs to go on until that point, and after that there's no need to build a real thing underneath to return to. he's very much living for that goal.

anyway: so the Singer starts out singing the Phantom of the Opera - the Shadow is very much modelled after the phantom - but swaps to beneath the mask and begins to connect with ren. the Singer wears a red mask. i really like this mask! i envision it as looking like someone pouring blood over his face and then the blood freezing in place, so it just looks very molten and liquid but fixed over half his face.

ren defeats the Singer by ripping his mask off:

[Ren] Please don’t take off my mask, revealing dark [Ann] OMG!! [Ann] THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN WE TOOK OFF HIS MASK!! [Ann] HE REVEALED DARK!!!! [Ann] HE DISAPPEARED!!!!!!!!!!

(i love the thieves because i dont have to be subtle about my symbolism i can just make them say it)

anyway, just like the figure in the Masque of the Red Death, ripping off the Singer's mask reveals "dark" underneath - he ceases to exist.

Just a cage of bones There's nothing inside

the Bard and the Dancer

when i was first plotting this fic, i was actually designing the palace not as a written environment but as though it would be a playable place. so a lot of it is informed by me picturing what this palace would be like to play through and explore, building it out as a video game environment in my mind's eye and then trying to describe it from that point. i took the same approach to the bossfights, so they're all designed around central gameplay mechanics which are largely based on status effects and how the player would strategise around them. (to that end, a lot of the design stuff in my doc never made it into the fic...)

the conceit of the bard was a shadow who can manifest abstract concepts into being by manipulating reality with his words. so the status effects he uses are brainwash and sleep, mostly. his monologues are modified versions of shakespeare's works.

part of the reason why i started writing this fic was specifically to challenge myself in aras of writing im not very confident in: so longform planning, progression of plot, environment description, and action scenes being major ones. writing all the boss fights was and continues to be a real challenge. the chapter that the bard shows up in (chapter 5) ended up taking ages and ages in part because i kept putting off writing this fight. now that it's done, though, the bard fight is actually maybe my favourite fight scene i've written lol. it always turns out that way!!! the reason i like it is because i realised the physical action wasn't the fun part of writing a fight like this. since it was focused on status effects, it meant i got to crawl into ren's headspace when he got brainwashed, which i really really enjoyed doing because i got to drag out some trauma that joker has lovingly repressed.

   to set my fellows, phantoms in the wings    in deadly hate the one against the other…    This isn’t the Casino. This is somewhere else entirely. The Casino, and everything that came with it, that was months ago. How did he forget? The cottonwool that had crept so slowly into his blood dissipates in a mad rush that leaves him dizzy with disbelief. His hands, now that he can feel them again, are trembling. The knife between his fingers, trembling. The cool floor beneath him, the air in his lungs. How close had he come to never feeling that again?    Had he really just been feeling safe about that plan? Had he really felt everything was going to be okay? If anything had gone wrong—anything at all—he’d have been gone. He’d have been dead. How had they made it so he felt okay with that?    A trick? A ruse?    How blasé they’d all been, when it was his life they were gambling with like a worthless set of poker chips! And they’re here—all around him. Safe? He’s never been in more danger.    “Joker!”    Surrounded. He’s surrounded by the ones who left him for dead.

the Dancer doesn't get as much attention in text because i didn't want to slow down the pacing of the story every few minutes to do another huge scene tgat doesn't really serve a purpose, just like the exploration of the Globe Wing didn't. all that mattered was that he was shown to be adaptable, agile, and resilient - the Dancer needs to be in top condition at all times and ready to dodge any threat. the imagery that came through to me the strongest was the idea that his feet are always bleeding, so he leaves bloodstains all over the floor.

the Magician

this was another scene i adored writing. i think environment-wise, the House of Cards is my favourite Wing in the palace because it's the most unique structure. it's not a styled theatre like the others, it's more on-theme to the Magician, like he's set up his own performance environment. so it's just a huge house of cards made of crumbling playing cards which is really difficult to navigate and which joker kind of blends into.

the premise for the Magician was someone who needs to perform miracles and present impossible illusions as reality with a flair for drama. the Magician fools the Thieves over and over and over again, because they are good-hearted people who want to save him.

did you ever see that unused mementos request in royal where akechi tells the thieves about a target to save someone, and doesn't tell them that the someone in question is dodgy themself, and watches to see how quickly the Thieves immediately trust them?

i don't think i based this fight off this request because im pretty sure i had it planned out before i ever saw this, but i was really pleased to see it because it's very much the same idea. even in the engine room, akechi calls the thieves idiots for inviting him back into the team. of course, this isn't a good or healthy worldview lol and it's something he has to unlearn because he literally trusts no one and that's not an extreme anyone should be endorsing, but he also has a point in that the thieves are willing to throw their faith into things way too easily and don't look critically at people or situations. so the magician fools them, victimises them, tricks them into considering him a victim, fools them again, traumatises them, but they all continue to feel empathy for him and try to save him when he's in trouble. akc's cynicism vs the thieves' faith is a big theme of this one i think and the question is like, when to doubt vs when to trust even when you have evidence to the opposition. i think the right position is somewhere between thesis and antithesis (which iirc is not actually the wording hegel used when describing dialectics? lol... i might be wrong. i never studied hegel so my knowledge is pretty superficial. but i think this was a translation thing anyway because allegedly goro doesnt refer directly to hegel in jp? someone can confirm or deny idk)

anyway those are the bossfights we've had so far!!! just the VIP Box to go now......................... :3

[wispinwish]

My Friend got me into pjsk and... the brainrot is real guys

drew a quick doodle of akito because i like his design and hes My Friend's fav :D

[psychomusic]

oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)

she is suri sauthon. her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, tar'x, but most of her life except for the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.

despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.

note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]

originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.

this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.

BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).

later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.

years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)

[maladaptivedaydreamsx]

💚 Keith main route: romantic end spoilers ⚠️

[icewindandboringhorror]

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