#anyways this is what I do instead of writing the actual story

[cripplecharacters]

Thank you for the response! What would be some specific ways you'd like writers to include characters with profound mental disabilities? I don't want to include them as just a "hey look at this" prop, nor downplay how much their condition affects how they interact, and I don't really know how to get the balance right.

Hello!

That's very much a fair question - I'll try to go over as much as I can think of since this is probably my first and last opportunity to give advice on writing characters like this, so apologies if I include some things that weren't really mentioned in this ask.

Suggestions on how to logistically include a character with profound intellectual disability:

A profoundly ID person will spend the majority of their time either at home or in some sort of care facility since they will require 24/7 help. The easiest role to put them in is probably a family member of another character. I've mentioned on this blog before that the "ID characters always end up as the annoying younger sibling" thing is overdone, but none of these necessarily have to be true for this suggestion to work (especially not the "annoying" part). A non-ID character could have an intellectually disabled older sibling, twin, cousin, uncle/aunt, the sibling of a grandparent, etc. Seriously, a severely disabled person can be an adult, or even an elder. Just not as a parent since a profoundly disabled person can't consent (a lot of ID people very much can, but this is the one disability where your level of functioning is baked into the exact diagnosis - profound ID comes with the inability to consent/understand the consequences enough to consent). "They're a family member" is basically the easiest "excuse" to include a profoundly intellectually disabled in a story (and as a bonus you don't have to figure out how the other character would react to meeting them for the first time, since they probably knew each other for a long time already). If your story isn't about the profoundly disabled character and instead just features them as a character, it would be much easier to not make the other character their primary caregiver. It's simply a ton of work and the character wouldn't have time for fighting dragons and whatnot - it'd be easier to have the abled character spend time with the disabled character at home (or care facility, you can very much visit someone in one) hanging out rather than actually doing the caregiving part.

Another way is having the disabled character in some sort of high position - in real life there were quite a few cases of profoundly and severely intellectually disabled royalty. Depending on the place and time there might have been pressure to not let the public see them, but this wasn't always the case.

In fiction you can do whatever you want anyway, especially if you aren't including other kinds of ableism - and even if you are, there are still different kinds of ableism you can portray that aren't the "literally killing-the-disabled-baby/hiding them in some dungeon level of eugenics" kind. Maybe a rich family who cares about their image would actually be unable to shut up about their kid to show how "saint-like" they are for caring for the disabled - it is unfortunately realistic, and can be a potential way to have the character exist in public, not ignore ableism, and also not go the aforementioned literally-just-murder route that writers usually do to show an ableist family.

Now for including them as an actual character and not a piece of cardboard:

Warning; the bar here is somewhere in the Earth's inner core. If your character has a single characteristic beyond aggressive/loud/unmanageable*, they're automatically at the top of most complex fictional representation of severely/profoundly ID characters. Congrats. * - Some people are those things but, unsurprisingly, they're other things too. A lot of profoundly ID people can actually be completely quiet, BTW - you notice people who are loud because they're loud.

As with literally every character, you need to figure out what they like and not like. This can be quite literally anything, but try to think of the basic stuff. Do they have something they really enjoy eating (and conversely - something they refuse to eat)? Do they have some sort of comfort toy or object they don't want anyone touching (and maybe showing them playing with it with a different character could be a way to show how much they trust them)? In more modern settings, do they have a favorite show they always bug everyone to put on? Are they really clingy or do they hate physical contact (again, maybe they only enjoy it from a specific character)?

Keep in mind, you have to show this all in non-verbal manner. A profoundly ID person is probably not using any sort of AAC device (the most robust one I remember seeing right now was a low-tech one with "yes" and "no", but there are probably ones who operate on a larger amount of singular words). This is basically another opportunity for characterization - what do they do when they're happy - laugh, flap their arms, make sounds? - and when they're upset - scream, hit themselves, make different sounds? Obviously, you'd have to take other disabilities into account (e.g. many profoundly ID people won't move much, some might not be able to make much audible sound, etc.) but almost anything helps.

An important thing (concept?) I'll throw here is "total communication" which can mean different things in different contexts, but here I'll use it to mean "using everything you can to communicate with someone who cannot do so in a traditional way".

So for example, eye pointing can be used to figure out what the character wants. A change in breathing can be used to tell that a character got stressed. Throwing an object can be used as a hint that the character wants to play. Maybe them reaching towards person A means they want to eat, but reaching towards person B means they want them to sing a song for them. Maybe them making a particular face means they just had a seizure and need to be comforted. Whatever their "tells" like this might be, other characters who know them would probably be able to tell more-or-less what's going on - you don't have to go really in-depth, especially if it's a minor character, but figuring out the ways your character communicates with others will make it less prop-like.

Another characterization could be comfort objects. A lot of profoundly ID people are autistic (which I'll touch on later) and will have an object that they bring everywhere the same way that non-ID autistic people might. There's nothing really specific here, just another layer of "this character is a Person". Maybe they have a blanket they really enjoy chewing because the texture feels good or some sort of plushie they like to throw around because it makes a sound they find funny. Lots of options.

If you read some of these and go "that's a thing that a child would do" then you're not necessarily wrong. A profoundly ID adult might enjoy activities that primarily kids partake in. This is, I can't stress this enough, not the same as "mentally being a child". Otherwise, a whole bunch of adults on this very website would be "mental middle schoolers" based on the shows that they watch - but they're obviously not. A profoundly ID adult doesn't have the "mind of a baby" if their favorite game is throwing a toy, they have the mind of a profoundly intellectually disabled adult. Sometimes people assume that since ID people aren't mentally [incorrect age], they always "act their [actual] age" and essentially end up downplaying how much some people's ID affects them, when the point is that no matter what you do, you are your age. An ID character who is 26 years, incontinent, constantly puts their hand in their mouth, can't speak, whatever, is mentally 26 years old the same way that they would be if they had a wife and a mortgage.

For the last thing for this section I'll circle back to the assumption that all severely/profoundly ID people are loud, aggressive, etc. - as I said, some of them are (just like abled people). The thing is, this is not always an unreasonable response to being unable to communicate with the people who are caring for you. If you had a pressure sore but couldn't explain it to anyone you'd be pissed off and screaming too. That's an extreme example, but still applies. If someone is severely stressed out (for an abled person, this might be inheriting a ton of debt, for a profoundly ID person it can be a change in daily routine), they can lash out. It's an unpleasant but very much human reaction to have, even if what's behind the ID person's behavior is significantly different from what an average abled person might consider "a good reason". So I guess my advice is, try to show some empathy to the character, even if they genuinely are loud and/or aggressive. Intellectually disabled people - including the profoundly disabled ones - aren't some alien species that is just mean and hates their caregivers for no reason, some just can't process their feelings the way an abled person might because of their disability. That's not to say that caregivers aren't allowed to feel frustrated - because they are - but that very severely disabled people aren't purposefully evil. As mentioned in the communication part, all behavior has a cause, just like for literally everyone. So if the character is being "unmanageable": maybe they aren't some cursed burden, maybe they're just stressed out of their mind and now someone they don't know that well is trying to do *something* to them, which they can't figure out because of their disability affecting their receptive language skills.

Section about resources when researching profound ID since some can be potentially misleading;

Even if you specifically look for causes of the profound severity of intellectual disability, you will get results for mild ID. That's mainly because people with mild ID make up >85% of intellectually disabled people and those with profound ID make like 1%, so they're a minority in a minority.

Basically:

Down syndrome is a very unlikely cause. It's always listed as the main genetic cause of ID but that's only true for mild and moderate severities. If you choose any of the common causes of ID make sure it actually has the symptoms you're looking for.

Most profoundly ID people will have either severe brain damage early in life (and thus can come with cerebral palsy), cephalic disorders (e.g. microcephaly), genetic conditions that you've never heard of (e.g. Pallister-Killian or Emanuel syndromes, 3p deletion), genetic conditions that you've never heard of because they don't have an actual name (e.g. X-linked intellectual disability-limb spasticity-retinal dystrophy-arginine vasopressin deficiency...), or just have it without a known cause. The last one happens much more often than people tend to assume.

For a reason I'll probably discover at some point, most disorders and syndromes that come with ID are said to have "autistic-like features" rather than being "comorbid with autism". In practice it's the same thing. Your character is probably autistic.

In the same way, a lot of practical resources will assume that ID = moderate ID (since most mildly affected need no or minimal support, and severely/profoundly disabled ones are a small minority) so pay attention if you're looking at the right things. If it's talking about having a job then you got clickbait'd.

One good resource I can recommend is SBSK (which I shared before), to my knowledge this is the only place that interviews severely and profoundly ID people (+their families) and the interviewer is great at actually interacting with many of them. Most resources on the practical things only ever talk about caregivers (who are very important) but completely ignore the actual person being cared for which IMO kinda defeats the point.

I hope this helps!

mod Sasza

[taylor-titmouse]

2024 Book Retrospective

i did this last year for all the books i released in 2023, and i've been looking forward to doing it again for this year because it was Such a wonky ride. i released 3 new novellas, collected 3 old ones in a new illustrated release, put out a new freebie, and dipped my toes into artbooks for the first time. that's not even including the multiple extra things i wrote this year but will release next year. it felt to me like i barely got anything out in 2024, but looking back i really did plenty.

anyway let's get into it! these will probably contain spoilers for the books because i want to talk about them openly. if you haven't read them yet... they're on sale for 40% off until the new year!

The Masson Circle Collection (1-3), released in January

so! we started out the year with this updated version of some of my earlier works. daffodils, carnations, and laurels were among my first forays into publishing novellas, and were the last of my romances before i transitioned more deliberately into erotica. the distinction is practically arbitrary since i do still write about people in love, but it's not the focus so much as the sexual titillation.

but anyway. because these were romances and not Porn (despite having explicit sex in them), and because they came out before i'd really hit my stride as an erotic author/illustrator in 2021/2022, they never got the attention i'd have liked for them! they were the last before i made the switch to properly illustrating my books; they had sketchbook sections at the back instead. i started the roger crenshaw series shortly afterward, which is when my work really took off. so it's like these stories just missed their window.

but i wanted people to read them! these stories and characters are dear to my heart and i felt like they deserved a fair shake, so i spent a month or so at the end of 2023 revising the text to be closer to my standards (though they were pretty good to start with!) and made 30 new illustrations for it. i kept myself Busy getting this ready. it would be a huge release to kick off the new year!

.... and then it didn't do very well anyway. lmao. maybe i priced it too high, maybe i didn't hype it enough, maybe it's because as much as i love all the characters, they're hard to draw and not as exciting as a monster of the day. who knows! but i'm glad i did it, if only for myself. as i've said, these stories were important to me and my growth as an author. if you like historical queer romance with a crime thriller edge, something like kj charles (because she was my biggest inspiration at the time) you should check these out! i promise they're really good despite being on the older side.

The Long Road, released in May

boy that's a big gap between january and may. so what happened there is i actually wrote the night guest first in january-february, and then the long road in march-april. but IMPORTANTLY, i learned my editor @petitemortality was going to become available for work again in april. it'd been probably a year since i'd had his hands on my work and i was Gasping for it. i've compared it to receiving the sponge treatment--just being put through the wringer and coming out So much better for it after a year of bad habits and complacency building up. so basically i put all publishing on hold until he could Fix Me.

and then i ended up rewriting both of those books practically from scratch based on his advice and godddd they really Were so much better for it. it's AGONY in the moment, but the work is worth it. anyway let's talk about the actual work huh.

the genesis of these characters is So funny, because i don't think a single one of them was created for the purpose of this story, rather they all existed as various mobs/nobodies to draw. the goblins and bandits beside vanesse were just designs i used a few times when i wanted to draw characters getting gangbanged. vanesse and angre were created Just for a patreon suggestion of "trans femme bandit queen fucking a trans masc knight". and tourmaline only exists because i wanted to draw a princess getting gangbanged and eveline didn't feel "right" for it anymore. and i ended up with this perfect mishmash of characters that slotted together into a story so naturally that i remember waking up in the middle of the night and banging out the outline in the notes app before falling back asleep and starting to write it the next day.

and it was received pretty well! it had a ton of buildup from me drawing the characters constantly for the duration of the writing and doing a ton of public worldbuilding for dwarves. god i love the worldbuilding for the dwarves. i'm desperate to get deeper into it, i just need to find the story for it. and the goblins. everybody loves the goblins and so do i. and vanesse. ahhhhh.... i'm just so fond of everybody in this book lol. just a big confluence of Toys.

oh yeah and since last year i picked favorite scenes, i think my favorite is angre's internal monologue at the start of his chapter. we get a lot of the worldbuilding there (so of course i like it) but also the Point of the book comes together. i'd struggled a lot with that whole bit in the first draft, but the final draft really just *chefs kiss* it works, for me.

The Night Guest, released in July

as i mentioned before i actually wrote this one much earlier into the year! and immediately had known it wasn't ready, and so backburnered it for months until my editor could essentially fix it. and he fixed the hell out of it. it was a directionless mess in the first draft because i hadn't figured out the characters' voices, what they actually wanted, why they behaved how they did, none of it. it was his idea to structure it more deliberately like an old folktale of a woman outwitting a best, and it snapped into place. of course it was a nearly total rewrite that added like 7000 words (and to this day i'm still not sure how) but it was completely worth it. i feel like i've said that multiple times in this post but it's always true. i cannot stress enough how much i was gasping for a good editing. it's like a cleanse.

this is another story that just sort of Happened out of nowhere. mrs. arakawa was a side character in the dragon double feature 2, and people liked her, and asked about her getting her own monster boyfriend, and so toru was born. partially to get practice drawing that bodytype, partially because i think onis are hot, and then the general shape of a story came to me and i started writing it. without a perfectly clear vision of what it would be. and that's how we got to where we were at the start of this. oops.

i have two favorite parts, the first being this illustration:

when toru is describing the oni woman he was supposed to marry. his entire narrative arc and personal struggle was constructed for the purpose of this joke. i agonized for DAYS, maybe weeks, trying to make his motivation of "i didn't want to get married" work with mrs. arakawa's own feelings about marriage and him having to leave at the end and come back and all of that. it was killing me. but it worked out in the end and i'm so happy it did because i still think the joke that he didn't want to marry a shoujo nadeshiko archetype because he thinks she's ugly is fucking hilarious.

my actual favorite scene is him and mrs. arakawa telling each other stories about themselves. i had a lot of fun trying to ape the rhythms of kabuki performance and rakugo with it.

Spring with the Unicorns, released in June

technically this ought to go before the night guest because it came out first but considering i wrote the first draft of the night guest in january *waves hands* it's all loosey goosey anyway

so this came about because i had the idea to do a book called Season's Breedings (so many of my books happen because i thought of a title and worked backwards from there) and it was literally just going to be the breeding habits of fantasy fuckworld creatures arranged by season. i wrote this one first because it seemed the easiest and then it was less than 4k words, and every other story i had in mind was going to be Much More than that and also didn't come together as easily. so on a very last minute whim i illustrated this and threw it out for free on the last day of pride.

it's me at my loftiest because i was going for a sort of third person omniscient fable type beat, because that's what unicorns deserve. i like it, and it's a good little treat to give out for free. especially because everybody loves the unicorns and loves asking me the same four lore questions and i can just say 'go read the free story' lmao.

it's too short to really have a favorite Scene but barberry is my favorite unicorn. just love everything about that guy. angry little bastard.

Poker Night with the Arizona Dogs, released September

it's not prose but it counts! this is the first artbook i've ever released, though technically not the first i ever made. the unicorn stockades series came before it but will be released sometime next year. it's a bit more spring-seasony. but anyway.

these are a lot of fun to make! i am, at my heart, a comic artist (my day job is graphic novels, buy my graphic novel it comes out in february) so telling a single story in multiple illustrations is kind of my bread and butter. and free use/gangbang stuff is like. perfect for it. everybody has to get a turn! and on top of that it lets me play in a space in a way prose doesn't. prose feels so much more official, more canon (which is how i think of the difference between my drawings and my books--books are canon, drawings are not). but with something like this it's easier to say it was just for fun. because it was! it was a lot of fun.

my favorite illustrations were the jackie-ralph licking ones (because i think i did a good job with the mouths and the folds and all) and the one with johnny with his hand over roger's face and hiding his own. jackie-ralph is probably my favorite of the dogs to draw because he's easiest but johnny is certainly my favorite of the Boys.

Objects of Affection, released in December

boy, this one huh! there is so much to say about this one. this one has like three separate catalysts that blasted together at the end of the summer and it just Happened all at once. there was a person requesting variations on "a mechanic taking advantage of an android they're repairing" for a few months on patreon that i kept meaning to do because it kept winning second place. there was another story i wrote that was too short to publish alone that i was like "okay what if i make a sci-fi anthology and one of the stories is robots..." and then i started rereading chobits for inspiration and it Pissed Me Off So Much how little it wants to engage with its own ideas.

and then the sci-fi anthology idea became only about the robots and i never published the original little short (which will come out next year as a freebie). and then my editor's computer Exploded for two months and he wasn't able to edit it ; ; the wait was Agony because this was one i really, Really did not want to release without proper feedback. something fucking Possessed me with this book and what it says about women and consent and masculinity and all the shit. like those are themes i've already touched in my other works, but in this one it was like turning the knob on a pressure cooker.

it's tough to think of what to say about it that i didn't say in the days after it was released. i've always been frustrated with robot stories that preoccupy themselves with the Theory of rights for artificial life and not the reality of rights for the people we already have. i'd watched astro boy 2003 and pluto shortly before starting (so i guess that's actually 4 things that came together) so Robot Rights!! stories were fresh in my mind and i'd found astro boy particularly frustrating with its insistence on pacifism from the oppressed robots as the government and populace kept abusing them. it is very hard to watch something that says "violence is never the answer! don't fight back, choose peace!" while your own country is aiding and abetting a genocide and obsessing over retribution for a single attack born of decades of settler violence as if they are in any way equivalent.

breathes out

so anyway that's why i chose to write about robots who undeniably do not have sapience, humanity, or rights. because we haven't come even close to solving the issue of rights for ourselves, particularly women (an admittedly easier topic to approach in an erotic work than the horrors of racially motivated war). and between chobits, which suggests a world obsessed with androids but doesn't deeply explore the social ramifications of a female-shaped servant class, and my research into real dolls, the closest thing we already have to fuckable brainless androids, there is a lot of material to draw inspiration from. how a person treats an unperson, particularly one shaped like a woman, will reflect upon how they treat a real person, a real woman.

to be less of a bummer and talk about the Stories, ratna's was the first i wrote, and went through the most revisions between drafts as i tried to figure out her whole deal. she was always going to be a stone butch dyke mechanic, so how would that sort of person feel in her line of work? would she be a stereotype of man-hating lesbian, and sympathetic to the android girls she has to send home with them? or would she be an unrepentant sleeze, just as bad as everyone she works for? i think i ended up somewhere in the middle. she doesn't like men, but doesn't think of herself as better for not being one. she thinks she's better because she isn't better, but at least acknowledges it. and figuring that out was important to figuring out the character. and also going in way harder on the beauty of the mechanism. that was mainly for You Guys, but it was crucial to her character working.

touma and shima's story came to me like a lightning bolt as i was leaving for a vacation. it was going to be, if you can believe it, Even More toxic yaoi. touma ws going to jerk shima off from behind as he fucked mari-ko, it was going to be way more explicit that he was mainly attracted to shima. but ultimately none of that served the actual purpose of the book, about treating people as objects and tools, so i dialed it back. but don't get it twisted touma is still insane and obsessed with shima and wants to touch his cock. but the story as it exists is a more realistic place for him to be at.

and samart and marinette's story was pretty much unchanged from first to final draft. the concept waffled a bit before i started writing, where my first idea had been that he makes her participate in taboo fantasies (calling him big brother, telling him no etc) and the narrative basically asking the question--is this wrong? is it better because she's not real, because he's doing it with her and not a real woman? does her 'no' matter if it's a 'no' she was ordered to say? is it worse because she can't meaningfully consent to the play either way? does any of it matter beyond the effect it has on him?

but as much as i'm interested in unpacking those concepts, i decided they would be too difficult for the audience and potentially open me up to scrutiny and abuse, because you can't even breathe the word "incest" without having your doors beaten down. the book as a whole is difficult, and i want it to be difficult, but i didn't want it to become about That. so instead i went with exploring the sort of loneliness and misanthropy of a person who lives the way he does, and i'm satisfied with it. i think it's the sharpest of the three stories.

wow i had nearly twice as much to say about that one than the rest. lol.

but that's it! that's everything i released! as i hinted throughout there were several other things i wrote this year that will see release next year. i have a free short, a $3 short, a novella awaiting editing, and at least two more artbooks to release. there'll be plenty for me to write about in next year's retrospective.

my writing goal for 2025 is to finish a novel. i did actually reach a finished draft with starbuster, the novel i've been pecking at for the past two years, but having done so and mapped out all the work it needs to be submission-ready, i've put it down semi-permanently. it simply needs too much and it's a bit too niche for traditional publishing, and it's in a genre (contemporary) i don't really want to write more of. so the best use of my time is on something else. it's a shame, but it's for the best! hopefully something will crack me upside the head with inspiration and it'll just Happen like all my best work seems to, lmao.

but if you've read all of this, or just read some of it, thank you!! thank you for supporting me for another year, or the first year if you just got here. if you haven't read everything i put out in 2024, it's on sale until jan 1st! go pick it up for cheap!!

[tkwrites]

Split & Healed - A snapshot in two parts - Quinn Hughes x ofc

gif from @kawhh

Title: Split & Healed - a Snapshot in two parts - Part 1 

Part 2

Author: Tory / @tkwrites

Relationship: Pre-established: Quinn x Sarah

Warnings: talks of Quinns lip injury; hurt/comfort

Summary: Sarah's reaction when Quinn's lip was split.

Word count: 1,800

Anonymous asked: The commentators mentioned Quinn is still struggling to speak with that monster of a split lip. How was Sarah's reaction? Was she there? Does he catch her just staring at him with pity throughout the day because like same ��

Comments: Nonnie, you sent this in and I had an immediate vision of Sarah putting ointment on Quinns mouth, so I had to write it out. And the actual wounding. 

If you enjoyed this, please let me know by commenting, reblogging or sending in an ask. Your encouragement and comments truly inspire me to keep writing. 

Split & Healed - a Snapshot in two parts - Part 1 

A Quinn & Sarah Snapshot

She was there. It happened, and she was immediately up, pacing back and forth in the family and friends box, clinging to her phone as she waited to hear from him. 

When five minutes went by without any word, she sent him a message, hoping to break the tension as well as get an update: If he broke your nose, I swear to God, I’m going to kill him. 

Quinn snorted before responding, my nose is fine. My lip is another story. 

What happened? 

His stick caught me just right and busted through my lip and some of my gums. Have to get stitches. 

Through? 

A gruesome selfie popped up on her screen and she yelped as her phone flew out of her hand.

“What’s wrong?” Bella asked, running to her side. 

Sarah grimaced, “Quinn just sent me a picture of his lip.”

“Really,” Bella reached to pick it up.

“You don’t want to see, I promise.” 

Bella turned the device over anyway, and turned a delicate shade of green. “Oh, gross.” 

“I did try to warn you,” Sarah said as she took the phone back and clicked out of the image so she could respond.

Oh my god, warn a girl!

Quinn chuckled and was immediately reprimanded by the doctor currently stitching his lip. He went still and tried not to think too much about what was happening on the ice without him. 

Even seeing his picture of the gash – which she was pretty certain she could have seen his teeth through if the blood was mopped up and he moved just right – didn’t prepare her for seeing him that night when he got home after the game.

He slumped into the apartment, holding a towel wrapped ice pack to his mouth. 

“Hey,” she said tentatively, setting her book aside and standing to greet him.  

“Hey,” he echoed morosely. 

“Can I see?” she asked, reaching up to take his wrist. 

Quinn felt a pained expression flash over his face. Not because it was hurting. They’d numbed his whole lip so they could put the stitches in without any pain and so he could keep playing, but it looked awful. Even though he’d washed the blood off in his post game shower, the wound looked almost worse now that some swelling had set in. 

“It’s okay,” she promised, nudging his hand down.

Quinn watched her face as he lowered the ice pack. 

“Oh, Quinn.” 

He’d expected her to wince, and instead she was looking at him with all this deep pity in her eyes. He couldn’t decide which was worse. 

“Is it still numb?” she asked, stopping her hand in midair as it instinctively reached up to touch it. 

He nodded. “Doc said –” he broke off, wincing at his voice. It was like getting out of the dentist in the worst way. Not only was his lip numb, it was swollen, and wouldn’t do anything he wanted it to, making talking normally impossible. 

“Doc said,” she prompted, ignoring the lisp. If she were in his shoes, she’d hate people reacting to it. 

“Said I should ice it,” he said, gesturing with the pack, “help the swelling.” 

“Makes sense.” 

He sighed heavily. 

“Can I get you anything?” she asked as he brought the ice pack up to his mouth again. 

He shrugged, that morose look back on his face..

“What would make you feel better?” she tried again. 

When he shrugged again, she figured she needed to take matters into her own hands. “Do you want to cuddle? I’ll play with your hair.”

Relief crashed through him like a wave. He didn’t have enough energy to make decisions. He was tired - so, so tired - and now he had this stupid busted lip because Hagel couldn’t keep control of his stick. Even though he knew it probably wasn’t intentional, he still wanted to blame him. It was just the perfectly imperfect set of circumstances. Wrong place, wrong time, hit with just the right portion of the stick to do maximum damage. At least they’d gotten the 4 minute power play. 

“Come on,” Sarah said quietly, taking his free hand, “do you want to go to the couch, or bed?” 

“Bed.” 

She led him up the stairs, and after asking if he wanted to change, pulled out pajamas for them. Once they settled into the sheets and she turned on a baking show for them to watch, he rested his ear on her chest, calmed instantly by the steady, familiar beat of her heart. 

Her fingers found their way into his hair, and his eyes fluttered closed.  It was still terrible, this busted lip, but at least she was here, and still loved him enough to hold him and play with his hair. 

Several days later, as they were snuggled up on the lucky couch reading, he snuffed out a frustrated noise as he tried to get more comfortable.

“What’s up?” she asked as her fingers stilled in their journey down his back. 

“Just hurts,” he mumbled, adjusting again so his head was fully in her lap, and he could look up into her face. 

Glancing down at him, Sarah felt an ache swell in her chest. Not only was he in pain, his perfect, lovely mouth was marred with stitches and swelling. He was still handsome, of course — sort of roguish looking now — but it would take some getting used to. She wondered how badly it would scar. 

“And my lips are dry.” 

They looked dry. He’d been licking them, absentmindedly fiddling the stitches with his tongue.

“Here,” she adjusted slightly.

He huffed, not wanting to move. 

“I’m just going to get you something,” she said, “I’ll be right back.”

Reluctantly, he sat up and she stood. 

She was holding a white tube when she came back a few minutes later. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. 

“Aquaphor?” he read. 

“It’s basically fancy vaseline, but it’s really nice at keeping moisture in. I use it on my lips at night in the winter.”

That was good enough for him. 

“Will you do it?” He felt a little silly requesting it of her, but he knew from experience how much lighter her touch could be compared to his own. And quite frankly, he just wanted her to touch him. She’d been incredibly reluctant to kiss him since it happened, and though he was glad she wasn’t running headlong into anything, he wanted to feel her. He finally had time at home and he couldn’t even kiss her because of this fucking lip. It wasn’t even that they spent all their time kissing. They both had busy lives and things they needed to get done, but the fact that he couldn't do it only made the desire stronger.

He should send Hagel a bunch of hyper-realistic fake donuts, or some shit like that — just so he could experience the disappointment of having something delicious dangled in front of him, only to find he couldn’t actually eat it. 

Feeling her touch him wouldn’t be the same, but at least it was something. 

“Sure.” Sarah took the tube back. As she settled next to him, the little lights from the Christmas tree reflected in her eyes making them look starry and magical.

The lid clicked open with a quiet snick. He watched her squeeze some of the thick ointment onto the pad of her index finger. 

“You’ll tell me if I hurt you?” 

When she looked back into his face, she found Quinn watching her intensely. That intensity never failed to awake something within her. She pushed aside the desire that growled to life in her belly and heat that sparked between her legs.

He nodded.

“Ready?” she asked, as she reached out to rest her pinky on the side of his chin for grounding. 

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to do the bottom or the top first?” 

Eyes darting to hers, he asked, “what?” 

She gave him a mischievous little smile, but her tone was serious. “Should I start with the top lip to get it over with, or ease into it?” 

Disappointment and relief swept through him in equal measure. “Get it over with.” It was always best to get the hard part done first. 

Even though she tried to keep her touch as gentle as possible when she spread the salve onto his lip, he still flinched. 

“It’s okay,” he assured, reaching up to keep her from pulling her hand away, “just a reflex.” 

He intentionally bit back a wince as he lisped over the words, worried she would think it was a response to something she was doing. Trying to figure out how to talk when half of his lip was unnaturally stiff was no cake walk. He hated the way it changed his speech. 

She started again, and he held himself still. 

Watching her do this, let alone feeling it, soothed him and also awoke something primal in Quinn. Letting his eyes wander down to her mouth, he couldn’t stop thinking about the pleasured noises he could pull from it when he went down on her. Another thing he likely wouldn’t be able to do until the damn thing had healed more. 

He wished his mind would stop conjuring up images of everything he wanted to do, but couldn’t because of this stupid injury. 

“Better?” she asked, pulling her hand away. 

He nodded. “Still want to kiss you,” he mumbled. 

“I know, Quinny. I can’t stop thinking about kissing you, either.” 

A frustrated noise huffed out of his nose. “You’re not helping.” 

She smiled, “maybe we can try…” Leaning in, she pressed a gentle kiss to his bottom lip, doing her best to avoid causing any pain. 

He still let out a hissed kind of whine.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked, pulling back abruptly. 

“It’s just tender,” he sighed, a dark edge of defeat in his voice. “This fucking sucks. I wanna kiss you so bad.”

“I know the feeling,” she said, eyes straying down to the dark stitches again. 

Quinn took a measure of comfort in the fact that she, at least, was feeling the same longing he was as he lay down again, settling his head back into her lap. 

Her fingers ran into his hair again and he sighed. At least there was this. 

Part 2

Want more Quinn & Sarah? Check out the Snapshots Masterlist 

To read all my fics, check out the Fanfiction Masterlist

[kawa-goat]

General Thoughts on Buried Secrets (Hello Neighbor)

Not sure if I'd classify this as a rant post or not. Spoilers ahead, obviously.

If some of my points don't make sense, we can discuss it in the comments. It's 1AM by the time I'm writing this post, so forgive me if the text feels all slammered and not cohesive.

Took me a decade to finish it, but the secrets were unburied (like Jay would say).

And holy crap, I have pretty strong feelings about this book.

Okay, it's not that bad, but comparing to the previous two... it felt flat. I don't know how the explain it in more cohesive terms, but it didn't hit the same way the previous two did.

First, I like the ending. Though it ended on a pretty sad note, this is exactly what the Nicky trilogy (it feels surreal to actually type that) was leading up to.

The very prologue of Missing Pieces is a warning for Nicky to stop wandering, else he'd not make home some day. Nicky's character in general is centered around that: wandering.

"Oh, but what happened after he got kidnapped? What about Nicky's friends? How did he escape?"

Questions like this come from a misunderstanding. The books aren't meant to be your introduction to the lore. They're meant to be an additional piece of information, for those that were curious about the world of Hello Neighbor and wanted to know more about the past.

The true story is told in the games. Make no mistake—Hello Neighbor is a gaming franchise. The story originates from the games.

The ending of Buried Secrets is one-to-one with Act 1 for a reason. You're meant to read these books with the knowledge from the games. So that when you read the trilogy, you went: "Oh, so that's how it happened."

At least, this should be in theory. The sad reality is that games just fucking suck in storytelling and gameplay, to the point where the actual plot is shoved aside for other matters. That's why, in most cases for fans, the books act as an introduction to the story of the games, instead of how it should be in the other way around.

This is why Buried Secrets ends in this cliffhanger way. It's a prequel of the games, but it isn't meant to be an introduction. It's meant to be an additional explanation. You can blame the games' lack of quality for this.

Anyway, I liked the ending because it tied up Nicky's wandering arc in a pretty neat way.

... And that's it. That's literally the only thing that I like about this book. Everything else feels forced just to reach this specific ending.

I'm not sure if Carly was forced to make this a trilogy, but either way this definitely harmed the pacing and plot. Every character is written in a specific way that feels a little unrealistic based on the previous books.

See, Nicky is supposed to break into Peterson's house alone, without the help of his friends. Their method of justifying this is by having literally everyone in town suspecting that Nicky was the one behind the weird activities. No matter how illogical that seems.

My biggest complaint is Maritza.

Like, I won't lie that she isn't reasonable at first glance. Maritza is tired of fighting. She wants to move on. She thinks Nicky is changing for worse because of his obsession with the case. This is all understandable.

The problem is, instead of trying to convince him to move on, she would rather believe he did all of this to frame Peterson specifically? Despite knowing what Theodore's capable of, she'd rather believe that her closest friend would lie to everyone just to convince them of something they were already certain (that Theodore is fucking dangerous)?

I get they tried to apologize to Nicky by the end of the book, but it's too little and too late. Yeah, Peterson framed Nicky in an ill-timing, but would Nicky's only friends believe he'd actually do all of this ALONE?

It just doesn't feel natural.

The beginning and middle part of the book is literally Nicky getting kicked around like an abused puppy and being lonely again. The latter chapters, as well as Jay and Lu, kinda hard carries the entire book. Earthpro is not as interesting as it was in Waking Nightmare. And Buried Secrets tries really hard to get you to hate Trinity and Maritza with the "we are changing clubs" thing.

Overall, I wouldn't say It's a bad book, but definitely the weakest and most surreal among the three.

[lsunstreakerl]

hi! i must say i really love your fics and i’m currently re-reading the first chapters of Search History (because i can’t get enough) and i came across this bit:

   "I am so afraid of losing people I love, Max. That is why I did not approach you sooner, because I thought if I got close, if I loved you, something bad would happen to you too." He sniffs, and suddenly he really does have the waterworks going, worse than Max has ever seen from him before.

   "But then Silverstone happened and you got hurt anyways. And I realized it does not matter if I love you from close or afar, and if I am going to love you then I want to do it right. "

and i know SH deals a lot with the consequences of Silverstone ‘21 on Max’s health but i was wondering if you have any insight on Charles’ immediate or short term reaction to the event, specially given that they were not together at the time.

again, love your work! it scratched an itch i didn’t know i had regarding RB garage dynamics

The way I literally disappeared off the face of the earth sorry guys 😭 it's been a rough winter and I've been working lots of unexpected hours but I should have some stuff uploaded soon!

Silverstone '21 is kind of the tipping point for Charles in Search History. I don't write a whole lot of Charles' viewpoint or dive too deep into his character a whole lot, because I don't write him very well (thanks, anon) and I'd rather keep him somewhat as a side character than completely butcher his development. There's a bit more of him in the next chapter of Famiglia, but as far as Search History you probably still won't see a whole lot for the fic itself, but I might try to expand a bit in the rest of the series.

Charles and Max have known each other their whole lives, and Charles has been paying attention to Max for several years at this point, but kind of what I'm alluding to in the chunk you've pointed out is that Charles feels like he's cursed or bad luck to the people he loves. He's seen so much death in the sport, and in his family, and it's always people he loves, people he really cares about, so obviously he's the problem, instead of just having terrible luck, because that totally makes sense, good job Charles.

So Charles is realizing that he cares about Max, really cares, and that scares the hell out of him, so he's trying not to get too close, or get too attached, because then bad things will happen.

And then Max gets his shit rocked at Silverstone, and Charles realizes that he was doing all of this, putting in all this effort to stay away, and Max got hurt anyways, which actually helps break a little bit of that toxic thought pattern for him.

He doesn't immediately do anything dramatic or declare undying love of any of that lol, he just starts letting himself get closer. When Max wants to talk to him after a race, Charles yaps back to his hearts content. They start texting more. Charles seeks out Max to debrief sometimes, instead of Max always coming to him. They meet up in Monaco for lunch, they go on runs together, they spend more time with each other.

Charles still has a lot of anxiety surrounding Max and his eyes after he finds out, and it also creates a bit of a weird dynamic with Lewis going into them being teammates- Lewis doesn't know why Charles is sometimes nice and sometimes not, and Charles is trying to be a good friend and teammate but sometimes when he looks at Lewis all he's thinking of is Max. (This also leads into a really competitive year with Lewis and Charles. Charles is absolutely dead set on refusing Lewis his 8th, and Lewis is like "I understand competitiveness but this seems personal" and Charles is standing there lying through his teeth when he reassures Lewis it's not personal.)

Search History will have a Max and Lewis conversation about the accident. I want to make it clear that I'm not painting Lewis as a villain in this story, because sometimes shit happens, and sometimes that shit can fuck you up long term. It's exactly what it was called- an accident.

Sorry that got a bit rambling. Search History has been fighting me a bit in these last few chapters, so I keep rewriting things because I'd rather take longer and put out something I like than rush it and be unhappy about it later. I promise I'm working on it 🤍

[zaras22]

I have been thinking about Sallione of Aureos…

[slyandthefamilybook]

Once there was a boy who was a shepherd. He kept watch over a small flock of sheep in a pasture at the edge of town. He loved his sheep. He had been born to a shepherd from a family of shepherds, and had so grown up amongst his flock. He knew all of the sheep by name and would great them one-by-one each morning. "Hello Dolly," he would say. "Hello Steven and hello Betty."

Now these sheep were undoubtedly useful: the townspeople would eat their meat and weave their wool and gnaw on their bones as they worked the fields. But these sheep were also alive. They had a glittering intelligence in their black eyes, and they would commune every so often to discuss the harvest, and the shepherd boy, and the townspeople. The sheep loved the shepherd boy and they loved the town and the townspeople, and the people loved them back. They were good sheep.

Now one day the shepherd boy overheard one of the townspeople talking about his flock. The man said he thought the sheep were ugly, and that they smelled bad. This upset the shepherd boy, because he loved his sheep, and he thought the people loved his sheep as well. The shepherd boy, being no more than 12 years old at the time, wanted to remind the people of how much his sheep mattered to them. So one night as the moon hid behind the clouds the shepherd boy stood on a stone in his pasture and cried out: "Help! Help! A wolf!"

Out came a crowd of people, blinking the sleep from their eyes and carrying torches and pitchforks and shovels and ladels. They stood in the pasture and looked about, but they could see no wolf. The townspeople became angry and shook their fists at the shepherd boy. "This is a serious matter!" they cried. The shepherd boy had to admit that his ploy was juvenile, but he was still a child, and so the people forgave him. And they continued to love the shepherd boy and his sheep, and the shepherd boy and his sheep loved them back, for the townspeople had proved that night how much they cared.

Five years later, when the shepherd boy was now a teen, he stood amongst his flock in the pasture and he said "good night, Dolly. Good night, Steven and good night, Betty." But as the clouds passed over the moon the shepherd teen saw a shape in the distance, and out of fear for his flock he cried out: "Help! Help! A wolf!"

Again came the great crashing crowd with their knives and their swords and axes and bows. They stood in the pasture and looked about, but they could see no wolf. The townspeople once again became angry, and they shook their fists at the shepherd teen. "This is a serious matter!" they cried. "We love you and we love your sheep, but you must learn to not be so frightened!" With great grumbling the townspeople returned to their homes, and the shepherd teen sensed that something had changed.

Five more years passed, and the shepherd teen was now a shepherd. He still passed through his flock every morning and said, "Good morning, Dolly. Good morning, Steven and good morning, Betty." And the sheep loved the shepherd and he loved them. But in his age he had grown cautious. The shepherd had learned from the townspeople that perhaps the wolves were not so great a threat as he had thought. And so at night when he would see their red eyes prowling at the edges of his pasture, he would stay silent and wait.

One night, as the clouds began to cover the moon, a wolf appeared. The wolf approached Dolly the sheep and snarled, its lips wet. "Away!" cried the shepherd. "Away with you!" But the wolf showed its fangs and said, "I want your sheep." "Why?" cried the boy. "Why must you take my sheep? You have your food in the forest!" But the wolf laughed. "I want your sheep because I am a wolf and they are sheep. That is how it is done." And the wolf parted its terrible jaws and snatched up Dolly the sheep and dragged her into the deep woods. And the shepherd remained silent.

The next night two wolves appeared, their eyes red and their tongues hungry. The wolves approached Steven the sheep who was with his family. "Away with you!" cried the shepherd. "Why do you hate my sheep so?" The wolves cackled and said with the same voice, "we hate your sheep because it is the thing for sheep to be hated. All wolves hate sheep, and they cannot all be wrong. Even the birds and rabbits of the forest will come around." And the wolves each took a leg from Steven the sheep and hauled him into the dark woods. And still the shepherd held his tongue.

The next night as the moon was new the shepherd saw a sea of red eyes at the edge of the forest. The wolves marched toward his sheep, their heads held high. And the shepherd saw that indeed the birds and rabbits of the forest were among them, their eyes bleeding and their teeth sharp. They approached Betty the sheep who cried out in terror. The shepherd stood on a rock in his pasture and called out with a loud voice: "Help! Help! The wolves have come, and all the birds and rabbits of the forest!"

But this time no one came. You see, although the boy had cried wolf before, his fear was now justified. But the townspeople had grown tired of him. Every time the flock was threatened they felt compelled to act, and that compulsion drained them. And they no longer liked the shepherd. He had spent too much time with his sheep, and they had begun to see that same glittering black intelligence in his eyes. Sheep are frightened of everything and cannot be expected to know when they are truly in danger.

What had the shepherd done for them? He kept his sheep mostly to himself these days. Perhaps the shepherd was the one really in control, and he had used his cries of wolf to bend the townspeople to his will. Anyone whose flock was threatened that often must be doing something wrong.

And what was this about the birds and rabbits of the forest? They were peaceful! They could never be convinced to join with those who preyed upon them. Flocks of sheep are old and backwards and they are a drain on the town, the people thought. If the birds and rabbits hate the sheep they must have good reason to do so.

Again the shepherd called out, but the townspeople rolled over in their beds and stuffed their ears with sheep's wool. The shepherd's cries of wolf had made them feel guilty, and so they had found reasons for why they did not have to listen. And besides, the townspeople thought as they pulled their wolf skins over their heads and their eyes glowed red, the sheep really were delicious...

[sieglinde-freud]

oh im obsessed with this actually… who ever wrote this one i am kissing u on the forehead and hugging you real tight… inigo is such a loverboy im kkkhhhhhhijnsdnfng

[lord-squiggletits]

Part of why I hate this fandom's take on Autobots vs Decepticons is ppl (mainly 'con fans honestly) who can't have any nuance of the situation whatsoever and love to write plots like "oh the humans are racist and abusive towards Cybertronians so this is how Megatron is right" no actually I don't think colonialism/imperialism and racism are justified so long as you can point the finger and say "they were the aggressors first" or "their hands are no cleaner than ours bc their society sucks too" sorry. Please come up with better sociopolitical narratives in your war story.

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally finished all of one character's entire quests/optional dialogue/questions/etc.... 100,000 words... .... aughhh

[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

[steeltwigz]

Saw a post abt the Sonic movies that was like "plz filter negativity posts better" which is GOOD AND TRUE you should be doing that. Ok. But then they kept going to imply that the criticisms of the Sonic movies are all entirely Personal and Ignorable and not like. Usually abt the horrific copaganda, misogynistic writing, and Paramount's disgusting zionism.... Guys a lot of ppls problem w the Knuckles show wasn't JUST a bastardization of Knuckles' character or thinking Wade was annoying or whatever, but like was focused on the grotesque Zionist message from that one episode 😭😭😭 you can enjoy something and still recognize that it has intrinsic and huge glaring flaws and talk abt them. I think actually you Should be speaking up abt the misogyny, zionism and propaganda the SCU supports and discusses, ESPECIALLY if you like the movies! Its important to be able to recognize these things in media and admit that even media you personally enjoy can be deeply problematic, instead of hiding it away and pretending those HUGE FLAWS aren't issues actually....

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Daughter of the House of Dreams: A Fragment

Author's Note: This is the opening to a long-abandoned "Sleeping Beauty" retelling that I no longer plan to write, but I still like it as a piece of prose, and it sparked my enduring interest in second-person narration, so it feels relevant, and why should long-dead authors be the only ones who get to have their unfinished fragments published?

If you ever travel to Monetta City, be sure to visit Faraway Lane. Walk past the glittering new shops, and the shoppers in their bright silk dresses and top hats, and you'll find a cozy stone shop at the end of the street. This shop isn't grand and mighty like the other shops. It won't sniff and turn you away if your clothes aren't the latest fashion. It's a grandmotherly old shop that shakes its head at the prancing and preening of the younger shops, and invites you in instead. It holds no wares in its windows; it hardly has windows at all. But it has a warm and wide wooden door, with a shingle hanging above—Alessia Day, maker of dreams.

Don't ponder the sign's message too long—it means exactly what it says. Just slip inside, shut the door behind you, and look. Don't breathe too deeply, unless you want a week of crazy dreams, but allow yourself one gasp of astonishment. You won't be able to stop yourself. No living person has failed to feel awe toward the rows and rows of shelves, longer than streets and taller than palaces, filled to bursting with glass bottles in such bright colors that the dresses in the other shops' windows would weep in envy. Some bottles are the size of thumbnails. Most fit comfortably in the palm. Some are as large as breadboxes or steamer trunks or carriage horses, but the shelves manage to fit them all. And each bottle is filled to the brim with dreams.

If you don't understand, ask Alessia Day. You'll find her at a counter half a mile from the door, polishing bottles and humming a song you've heard but can't remember. She's an old woman now, and proud of it, but squint your eyes and start to daydream, and you'll see her as I remember her—a willow-wand girl with shining brown hair and eyes that sparkle with half-formed jokes.

Tell this girl how pretty she is (she'll laugh and call you crazy) and ask about her dreams. She'll tell you of her stock and sell you any dream you ask for—daydreams and pipe dreams, dreams of love, dreams of adventure, dreams of loved ones lost and loved ones found and people you've never met but wish you had. She'll show you dreams of lush and perfect islands, dreams where fishes fly through the air, and dreams where people swim the seas with fishes' tails. She'll pull down dreams that last a second but linger a lifetime, dreams that fill a month of stormy nights, dreams that fade on waking and dreams that drown out memories. If you let her, she'll talk of dreams until you drift off, and she'll bottle up your dream while you doze.

But if you're smart (I know you are) you'll step to the counter with a clear glass bottle, empty of everything but air, and ask for her story instead. She'd distill it in a dream for you, and be glad to do it—I once saw her whip it up in half a minute, and I'll bet she's even faster now. Buy the dream, but don't drink it right away. You won't be ready for it. Linger in the shop a while. Hear the story first from Alessia Day's lips, in that voice of hers that's sweeter than singing.

You won't believe half of it, but when you stagger from the shop and wander the empty, starlit streets, you'll ponder over passages until you stumble into bed at sunrise. And when you wake, the world will be different—you'll see tiny footprints on the windowsills, know things about the shadows on the walls, tip your hat to creatures in the corner of your eye, and realize there is another color no one else can see. You'll laugh and call it your imagination, but every second Tuesday, you'll start to wonder if the old woman was right, if the things she told you were true.

If you drink the dream she made, you'll know. I'll understand if you don't—some things are easier not to know. But if you do, and dream through her story, come to my house and ring the bell. My man will let you in—he'll know you by the wonder on your face. He'll bring you to my study, set you in my oldest, softest chair, and get us both settled with a steaming pot of tea. Then, once you've finished babbling, I'll close my eyes and tell you my part in the tale.

[mercless]

🗡 mad cowboy disease....

[dbphantom]

Hate having adhd went to go work on my fallout modpack, got distracted while going to disable the steam overlay, ended up in the points shop, went to go edit my profile, decided to change my pfp, found a buried folder I forgot existed, found some old Veneer art I forgot existed, spent 45 minutes looking at all the old photos, STILL HAVE NOT TOGGLED ONE SIMPLE OPTION THAT SHOULD'VE TAKEN 30 SECONDS AT MOST

[takamoris]

Stealing this image from twitter and bringing it over here, because holy shit, some of the clowns I have been seeing talk about the game lately.