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sanstropfremir · 3 years ago

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would love to hear ur thoughts re. these street woman fighter's performances and who you would personally vote as the "better dance crew" in how they interpreted each other choreos and the song.

this was for their first elimination round (ep4) and it was interesting to hear from the judges + why they gave the points they did. (i'm not entirely sure if you're watching the show's episodes. they are roughly 2 hours long. so if you would like more context, pls let me know! i wrote brief comments underneath each one as well as the winners [spoilers ahead!]. assuming you are not: for this mission, each crew is paired with another crew and they have to choreograph one of the soloist songs. songs were "split" into two parts: part one [would be one song] and part two [another song]; one crew would choreograph one part and follow the other's crew choreograph for the other part.)

1. boa - eat you up (want choreo) + better (ygx choreo). dance crews: ygx vs want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfK_qWAhM0&ab_channel=MnetTV

winner: ygx. boa gave 151 pts to ygx and 49 pts to want (the biggest gap in points between crews), sharing that although want choreographed eat you up, ygx was more cohesive (pointing to how want wore hats and it was messy). additionally, ygx had better stage presence and was able to capture the camera more. also, because ygx is the only crew to have a b-girl and use it in their routine, the judges applauded want for doing the best they can.

2. cl - doctor pepper (wayb) + hello bitches (prowdmon). dance crews: prowdmon vs wayb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEEpZ9SrvaE&ab_channel=MnetTV

winner: prowdmon. judges shared that doctor pepper's routine is a trademark of wayb and that they should have been the standout. however, they felt like prowdmon did it better.

3. hyuna - crazy (4minute) (coca n butter) + i'm not cool (hook) + lip and hip (hook). dance crews: hook vs coca n butter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ikpPKEA30&ab_channel=MnetTV

winner: hook. the two dance crews are VERY different in terms of style. coca n butter is described to be more hip-hop while hook is definitely more reflective of the current/newer trends. (when hook was first introduced in the show, they were known as the crew who was famous only for tiktok dances.) the judges shared that hook was more fun and interesting, given their stylistic choice of wearing the pink wigs. whereas it seemed for coca n butter, they felt like something was lacking (they showed something but it didn't feel they did.)

4. jessi - what type of xx (lachica) + nununa (holybang) + gucci (holybang). dance crews: holybang vs lachica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtZzI11oyqc&ab_channel=MnetTV

winner: lachica. (this was the only battle where both crews came in v close pts. whereas for the other crews, there were huge point-gaps.) judges had a hard time choosing, sharing that for lachica they were more detail-oriented while holybang had better teamwork.

imo, i agree with the judges' choices. though i would have to say i think wayb did their routine (doctor pepper) better than prowdmon. they stood out to me then, but when it came to the second part (hello bitches), prowdmon was better. i loved lachica's performance - it was v clean + reminded me of something a kpop group would do (which like, the crew largely works with kpop acts like chungha, boa's better, etc. so it makes sense).

this was LONG. thank u if u do read it and post! i miss the kingdom "era" when u would post weekly reviews. the two are v different but this new mnet competition show is the only one i'm invested in. i'm not sure if it's big internationally? i know it is v popular in korea right now. while i've only seen i-fans talk about the show as it relates to chaeyeon (want) because she's an idol. - swf (streetwomanfighter) anon :]

omg this is so long and well organized, forget me writing reviews anon you should do it!! i'm not currently watching the full episodes but i've been catching the few clips that pop up in my youtube recommended occasionally, so i definitely don't have all the context but i'll take a crack at it!

ok so my assumption/from what i can tell, they have a bit of leeway to alter the competing group's choreo as needed to better suit numbers and formations. i also went and found the individual versions of these because why did they make them so small on the split screen, don't they know i'm old and wear glasses. also: MNET FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY STOP MOVING THE FUCKING CAMERA. WE DO NOT NEED SCROLLING VERTICAL BOOM SHOTS OF THIS. just keep the same lens at eye level it's really not that hard. this is like, one of the worst possible ways to shoot dance it is SO annoying. ok i'm done bitching about that let's go.

1. boa - ygx vs want i agree with the big point gap on this one, and i think want made a couple of choices that were not cohesive enough, and obviously they also got set up to fail by ygx. actually i think both groups made choices that were not particularly good, but ygx had more of the skills to back up what they were doing than want did. breaking is very difficult and requires a lot of upper body strength and a higher centre of gravity, which are two physical traits that are less common in women. personally i wouldn't have tried to break to better because although boa songs do have more of a beat than other idol music, it's still not at all the right type of music for breaking. it's gotta be fast, breakers rely on speed, because it's all about momentum; they're literally throwing themselves around the stage. here's the final from battle pro 2019 for example. the music is basically beats only; heavily lyric based music, like idol music, is bad for battling in general because there isn't a lot of consistency. i have more to say about this but i'm getting off track. basically by choosing to handicap the other team (because they don't have a bgirl at all) they shot their own bgirl in the foot because the song is too slow to properly show off her skills. i applaud want for making bold choices, like the hatwork and attempting the breaking, but ultimately when combined with their styling the performance looks disjointed. also they have some formation cohesion issues that make it look a bit like they'e struggling to keep up, even with their own choreo.

2. cl - prowdmon vs wayb i agree with the judges, i think prowdmon bodied the wayb choreo. i actually thought that was their choreo at first. they have the best presence that i've seen of all the groups and the performative "hard bitch" attitude fit in with their genre setting. wayb had several mistakes and synchronization issues that in my opinion made them look sloppy in comparision to prowdmon, who were sharper and had two more people to put into formations. 3. hyuna - hook vs coca n butter ok personally i don't like either of these choreos, but i'm agreeing with the judges here, i think hook's was the mildly more engaging. i can tell that they're very young and do mostly short form tiktok content because i see a lot of eye catching moves, but i don't see a lot of strong connective tissue between those moves. they have good ideas but they also really struggle with putting people into formation and balancing it out well. it doesn't help that they're a seven member crew going up against a four member one, so they have three extra people to figure out what to do with. there's a lot of empty space where there are members waiting in position for a group formation. it also doesn't help at all that they (mnet) appear to just be rawdogging the songs together without any kind of mixing, which is a huge detriment to groups that have to choreograph for two in their section. i'm not cool and lip and hip have two totally different feels and kudos to hook for at least trying to get them to at least visually be cohesive when mnet is go girl giving us nothing sonically. coca n butter has much more of an old school hip hop style, so putting these two up against each other was (probably a random lot draw) an interesting choice. personally i would have been more interested to see hook against want with the boa tracks and ygx against coca n butter with the hyuna tracks. however, i think the reason why coca n butter's stage felt like it was lacking is because they tried to emulate hyuna, without having the stage presence or the weirdness of hyuna. it feels like they're trying too hard and there isn't really any personal character in the piece, versus with hook, who embodied hyuna's weirdness a little more authentically and took a completely different direction. 4. jessi - lachica vs holybang lachica took this one easily, although their formations were a bit wonky for nununana, they covered it fairly well and i think they managed the best transition between songs (between nununana and gucci). they were sharper with good stage pictures and had a good gimmick with the double fringe on the gloves and hats. holy bang had some issues fitting their extra person into the what type of x choreo, but they did well with their own choreo. however, like with coca n butter and hook, because lachica took a new visual spin, this felt too derivative of jessi, so it wasn't that interesting for me to watch. i do think they are one of the groups on the stronger end of skills and presence. --- as far as visually what performances i liked the best, since would this even be a writeup by me if i didn't talk about design, here's a quick breakdown:

prowdmon - got some rudimentary setpieces, got a theme, got some fun variations on a uniform look; excellent for what i assume was limited budget capacity and also it's a dance crew show.

lachica - great continuity of effect in costuming with the fringe, and using the gloves as a mouth/lip effect was one of the most interesting choices of these routines.

hook - the pink wigs and the black latex on the checkered floor was a nice gimmick that was a bit of a nod to hyuna's weird without being too derivative. i'm not expecting a whole lot because these are dance crews but i think this was a decent amount of styling effort.

want - they made a bold choice with the hats and even though it didn't quite pay off for them i still respect it.

coca n butter/ygx/holybang/wayb - ygx and wayb did basic hip hop type styling and while it's absolutely fine, it's just boring. holybang went for a directly inspired jessi look, and although yes bodysuits, overall it wasn't that interesting either. coca n butter get props for doing a costume change and actually incorporating that into the choreo but it feels too much like it's trying to be hyuna weird with the caution tape strapped over their tits and asses.

---

as a final note/question to you, my lovely invested swf anon, what's the format of the show? are there stages like this every episode to review? if these were from the fourth one only, is there anything worth me reviewing in the first three? i'm not particularly interested in the aggressive competitive nature of the show and editing so i don't particularly want to watch the full two hour episodes, but if you think it's worthwhile for me to review stuff then i will. otherwise if there's a set structure (like with kingdom) i can seek out the stages specifically and review them if i know what i'm looking for.

#street woman fighter #swf #swf reviews #i dont really know what the international reception is. the very few people ive seen talking about it on twt #have been insane kpoppies disrespecting boa. so not the best ifan showing so far #am i back in my review era already???? we shall see #(while i still have like EIGHT different asks left. if you wonder why im taking so long to get to some of them. that is why)#(OH plus the first half of the stylings post. and the fabled fave choreos post. so many things in my drafts rn)#(but also please dont stop sending me questions it makes me very happy. the gerbil in my brain is just slow)#dear anon who just asked me about red lights and kink. mwah you are welcome to slide into my dms anytime you like #wait by putting kink in the tags did i just invite a bunch of pornbots onto this #whatever lmao #might need to start a new organizational tag for this because it's only kpop adjacent. thoughts for later #text #answers #ngl these group names are gonna drive me insane. why are all dance crew names so fucking weird

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sonicringbond · 4 years ago

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Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey: Scene 35

Welcome to the second half of the series’ first 2-parter. A shame I don’t really have anything very witty to open with for this one. Perhaps it’s because I find it a pretty light scene🤔 Regardless, I’ll let you decide for yourself after you read...

Draw was a talented child all things considered. Though a child far from adulthood, he lived his life as a golem hunter and was generally successful. With the speed granted to him by Mote, it was likely he could best any number of golems and easily live a life dedicated to his occupation. However, his reliance on bow and arrow meant he was limited in how much damage he could do to a large number of golems in a short amount of time. If he were by himself this would be far from a problem as he was quite adept at making his own arrows, and they were frequently reusable. The only problem was retrieving them. A simple task with Sonic like speed, but it meant in this case leaving Rosy’s side.

“Get away from her you stone dummies!”

Trying his best to shoo away any golems that floated up over the ravine with his bow, Draw was pushed to his limits trying to collect his arrows. Challenging his efforts was an army of golems that covered the ruins and mountainside. The most troublesome however were the ones that drifted through the air, stone eyes that could fire beams of light at Draw more easily than he could return fire.

“Why did you have to get sick now of all times, you weirdo girl!” Draw cried out in anguish as he gave up trying to do too much at once. Picking Rosy up as best as he could, he ran for all he was worth. “You’re way to heavy!”

Had Rosy heard the complaint, she might have had a choice comment or two for the struggling koala, but her mind was far from her surroundings. The fevered sleep that held her fast from consciousness assured she would remain oblivious. Though it perhaps heightened other senses as her fever dreams provided her a unique opportunity, she was not quite sure how to handle.

~I’ve dabbled in so many different types of fortune telling because of how fun it is, but reading dreams is always kind of tricky. When people tell me about their dreams there’s always something missing to complete the picture. It’s not their fault of course, it’s hard to remember your dreams. It’s why reading my own are so hard too. Bu~t, hee-hee! Well, I’ve never had a dream like the one on these mountains.~

“Hello?” Rosy asked the rolling fog before her in hopes that someone might have hid within. It did not answer her naturally, but a soft blue glow within caught her attention and she walked towards it.

The fog swirled around Rosy as she walked, the blue glow seeming to stay just beyond her reach. “Maybe it’s moving away from me?”

Lifting her head from where she had tilted it so that her finger pressed into her cheek, Rosy upped her pace. As she still failed to catch up, she puffed her cheeks up in frustration and pushed herself even harder. Still the glow eluded her, and she closed her eyes for a moment to touch on that golden glow within her. That semi-tangible representation of her Ring Bond with Sonic.

Her intentions were to touch the source of her speed and bolt forward as fast as she possibly could, but as she opened her eyes, she instead had to dodge an attack.

“Wah~!”

The entity that attacked her was no larger than Sonic, but it had massive arch forming arms and a trail of light for a body. Had the blue glowing entity possessed a green gem where its arms met Rosy would have presumed it a golem. It had the same shape as one, bar a lack of legs making it resemble an anchor more than a biped.

“What’s your problem!” Rosy asked it as she jumped back from another attack. A crackling of electricity behind her warned her of another attack from behind and she dove out of the way.

“I didn’t do anything! No reason to be so mean!”

Her frustrations served to redouble her efforts, and after rising to a three-point runner’s stance, Rosy shot forward for all she was worth. Her rapid acceleration created a vacuum in her wake and the fog was pulled into the space behind her.

“Woah! It’s beautiful!”

There was little time to marvel as more of the glowing anchor golems moved to intercept her, but with the fog behind her Rosy could plan a path forward. The shadowy mountain landscape seemed unreachable though, save the aroura-like road of light marked by columns of unending lightning. Covered in golems it was far from an idea choice, but Rosy could at least see herself making progress as she sped along the road.

Higher and higher she climbed, and Rosy soon realized the mountains were beneath her. “This is weird. Am I dreaming?”

A bolt of lightning tore through the heavens in the moment of her question and Rosy froze in place as she felt her life was clearly in danger.

“Maybe this isn’t a dream… But I was with Sonic, Draw, and Mote. They’re not here, so this has to be–”

“Come on big guy! Is that all you’ve got!”

Sonic’s voice cut Rosy off and she turned to call out to him from wherever it was he was running.

“Sonic!”

Her voice was cheerful, but Rosy’s smile soon fell as she could not see Sonic anywhere.

“Sonic?” Rosy questioned her surroundings and studied the darkness for any signs of Sonic. “Where are you!”

Starting to run again, Rosy tried to wipe away the shadows and reach out to Sonic. As she feared though, the darkness was impenetrable, by herself at least.

“Yeek!”

A bolt of lightning descended from the shimmering blue aurora above her and for a moment she saw Sonic and the ruins he traversed. The motes of golden light that marked where Rings had been, and Sonic’s own transparency marked his signature Light Speed Dash, and she knew she missed actually seeing him. Before she could determine where he went however, the darkness flooded back in.

“Hey! Don’t come back now! Sonic!”

Turning to and fro, Rosy sought out any signs of him in the darkness but none could be found. “Come on! I just want to see Sonic!”

Turning pleading eyes to the aurora above, Rosy’s silent prayer allowed her to see the shimmering figure of blue light that towered over the mountains. Instinctually she raised her hands to protect herself. She was not the skeletal giant’s target however and the next bolt of lightning it cast down from the aurora again illuminated Sonic.

As it turned out, Sonic was not faster than light and he was tossed through the air by the impact of the lightning bolt. He was left unharmed for the most part however as the Rings he carried scattered about having absorbed the damage meant for Sonic.

“Sonic!” Rosy yelled out and covered her mouth. But the darkness took him from view again and he was nowhere to be seen. Upon the aurora road it was only her, the golems that still floated up in pursuit of her, and the towering skeletal figure of light. As that was who summoned the lightning…

“Hey! Leave Sonic alone!”

With courage she always had to protect her friends, Rosy wasted no more time and sprinted full speed towards the towering entity. “You better not hurt him! I won’t forgive you if you do!”

“The medium?” the entity asked and surprised Rosy as it turned to look down at her with eyes so much bluer and brighter than its body of light. Intense as they were, they did not obscure the wonder of the crystal rose held within the gyroscopic, clockwork device in its chest. “So weak a medium, yet you would manage to see me from your slumber, and with no catalyst.”

“I don’t care about any of that!” Rosy yelled at the entity. “Just leave Sonic alone! You better to! I really won’t forgive you if you hurt him!”

Rosy’s shouting and arm flailing seemed to not reach the attention of the entity. Instead, it held a hand to the device in its chest and turned its gaze towards the heavens higher than it.

“Or perhaps this is your doing, Yoluku.”

“Yo-loo-coo?” Rosy tried to pronounce the odd name and came to a stop, her eyes tracing up the entity and towards the highest heavens. There, as though hung like a jewel from the perpetual red bolt of lightning that arced from horizon to horizon, the little planet that always watched her hung in the sky fixated on her.

~Even in my dreams I can’t escape that dreadful little planet. It’s why I haven’t been sleeping. I just can’t with it always watching me. It’s so creepy! I wouldn’t even want Sonic looking at me like that. Tee-hee~♥ Though I wouldn’t mind if Sonic looked at me all the time! Though I probably couldn’t sleep then either.

~But this dream was maybe more special than I realized at first. It wasn’t just weird, it actually had a name for that little planet. It’s kind of hard to say though, so I’ll just call it Yolk for now! Maybe I’ll practice saying it properly, but… Hee-hee! It still creeps me out. But with a name, I’m sure once Sonic and I catch up with Tails or Zooey that we’ll be able to look it up and learn all about it! Even then, just knowing it has a name means I can tell it to let me sleep!~

Scene 35 · CLEARED Sonic & Rosy, to be continued

-----

And there we go, Rosy has learned the name of the planet in the sky and has decided to just call it Yolk XD. She’s so mature XD. Perhaps this scene was a little more than light, but I guess action scenes are kind of like that. I just hope it was enjoyable and that everyone will look forward to next time! Thank you!

-----

Special Thanks to Cutegirlmayra Story by @JoshTarwater/SonicFanJ Inspiring Song – One Last Kiss – Hikaru Utada – From Neon Genesis Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

Fair Use Disclaimer

Sonic the Hedgehog and all affiliated characters and logos are the express property and Copyright© of SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS used without permission under Title 17 U.S.C Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 in which allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. “Fair use” is use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be considered copyright infringement. The Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey alternate universe (AU) consumer written work of fiction is a non-profit transformative work primarily for personal use and can and will be taken down without warning or prior notice at the request of the copyright holder(s) should it not be recognized under “fair use”.

*Sonic Ring Bond logo created by DEE Art – twitter.com/daryliscute.

Sonic Ring Bond AU and Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey are the creation of Joshua David Tarwater/ynymbus/sonicfanj/@Joshtarwater and is to be, including all contents herein considered for all legal purposes the property of the Sonic the Hedgehog intellectual property (IP) and copyright owners, SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS. All story contributors via prompt, suggestion, written scene, art, and all and every other contribution acknowledge that all contributed material is forfeit for legal purposes to SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS upon official request from SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic fan fiction #sonic au #sonic au series #sonic ring bond #the journey #classic amy #amy rose #rosy the rascal #au amy #amy redesign #sonic oc #patch #draw the koala

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xxairo-dev · 4 years ago

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Next Log

So I started making a 2D pixel art game. Welcome to my new Dev blog!

No official name, but the unofficial name is Bowfish.

(TLDR and Dev log with pretty gifs at bottom)

Hello internet, friends, and 2020 -- those of you that have been following me all this time know that I’ve been doing art for a loooong time. Even before I got into digital art in 2010, I’ve been drawing with paper and pencil for as long as I can remember and probably started playing video games right at the same time. For reference, my earliest memories of video games consist of Lemmings 3D on PS1, followed shortly by Rayman and Spyro the Dragon.

I’m still a big Spyro fan, also pretty sure this is how I became obsessed with dragons in general.

Science based dragon MMO girl, wherever you are -- I feel you, I am you.

Basically, I’ve been playing video games all my life (to the detriment of my parents) and I owe it to gaming for igniting my early artistic ambitions. In fact, I remember learning how to draw by copying the character art of Neopets and Sonic Advance before one day stumbling upon one of my dad’s Game Informer magazines and being blown away by the art that I saw in there (particularly the WoW art). I’m pretty sure that was when I was first introduced to Big Boy™ game art and instantly thought, “Whoa, I want to be able to draw like that”.

Later, when I got my first drawing tablet and started making digital art, it became “I want to draw for a video game”.

Even later, when I learned that being a video game artist was not a very realistic career path and opted to pursue a bachelors degree in biology instead of art, it became “I want to draw for a video game... on the side”.

Even later-er, when I got my degree in 2017 and started working full-time and realized that work saps you of all energy and motivation to work on projects at home, it became “I want to draw for a video game... some day”.

Well, today here we are in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, I got furloughed from my biology job due to the quarantine. I spent four months passing time, thinking that I’d go back to work soon. But by the end of July, I was at wit’s end of what to do with myself after getting burnt out on a number of hobbies, games, shows, books, etc. without spiraling into some very expensive hobbies (hello aquariums) with the money I wasn’t making. I badly needed to find something productive to do that I thought would also benefit me in the long run i.e. post-quarantine, and unfortunately I couldn’t work on wet lab techniques at home.

“Learn to code” is what my parents have said to me about a thousand times for the past 5 years. “Learn to code” is what I did try for about two weeks with Code Academy a few years ago before realizing that none of what I was learning was going to stick because I wasn’t programming in any part of my daily life. As a biologist, in evolution we like to call this “if you don’t use it, you lose it”.

I know all too well about how coding is one of the best skills you can learn. However, I also know myself all too well to know that learning code for the sake of learning code wasn’t going to work for me. I wanted to wait to learn when the right situation presented itself, ideally when I would have an opportunity to use it almost every day at like a job or something.

Well, one of my good fellow artist (and biology) friends had recently taken the plunge into creating his first video game Meganura earlier in the year. I was (and still am) seriously -- and I cannot emphasize this enough -- impressed by his progress, dedication, and ability to learn coding for this game. Or more frankly, I was seriously impressed by his dedication and progress in to learning how to code for this game.

Meganura in all it’s crispy pixel-y goodness. Man, my friends are talented.

I dwelled on this for a while.

I always considered making a game to be out-of-reach because I absolutely could not muster up the motivation to learn a single drop of code without being paid to do so after 1) being beaten over the head by “learn how to code” for so long and 2) having already tried and given up in the past.

But as it got harder to sleep well, eat well, and feel happy during the quarantine, I feel like I hit a rock bottom where I felt like if I didn’t make a big effort to find a new purpose, then I was probably going to become depressed. To preface this, I have experienced depression before, and ever since I got out it has been my goal in life to never experience it again.

The only way I was going to survive this quarantine was to give myself a new “job”.

I already had a creative mind and the skills to create art and animations for a game. I already had a lifetime of game playing experience that had formed a detailed list of specific mechanics and visual details that I knew I wanted or didn’t want in a game. I already had an analytical and detail-oriented mind (thanks biology... or thanks videogames?) that liked to plan and build things.

All it would take is just a little bit of code...

If you’ve read this far, thanks for listening and I hope some of you hear yourselves in my story.

TLDR;

I am just a daytime biologist and hobby digital artist with zero coding experience.

I’m extremely proud to say that since 07/29/20, I have been successfully developing and coding my own 2D pixel art video game in Unity and am in full swing!

This is the start of my dev blog, where I’ll be logging my progress and thoughts throughout this journey for like-minded and aspiring individuals.

My Goals:

- To create everything from scratch -- art, scripts, etc.

- To create a game about bow hunting with intuitive drag/release controls

- To create a game that has cooking and campfires

- To create a game with pretty water graphics

- To create a game that has sushi and cats

- To have a playable demo by mid 2021 (my guess for the end of quarantine)

How I’ve been learning C#:

I have been following along with YouTube tutorials to create a base script and then looking up things in Unity’s scripting documentation to expand and modify my code to achieve exactly what I want. I’ve been learning C# and how to read documentation through almost entirely pattern recognition (e.g. mimicking and experimenting with code I’ve copied from tutorials and recognizing keywords in documentation) and turning to Google or my Tech Career Peers™ for help when I get stuck or to clarify things.

The key thing is that even after copying some code, I read the documentation and figure out how every line of code in my script works before moving on.

This is because after spending a few days of looking up YouTube tutorials, I realized there were no tutorials for the exact bow controls that I wanted. Instead, I ended up watching multiple tutorials and learned how all of their scripts worked before combining and modifying pieces together. Then, I started relying entirely on documentation to write lines of code.

I don’t know how many original lines of code I’ve written so far, but there are so many now and I am so proud of all of them.

So anyway, here’s what’s happened over the past 2-3 weeks.

Dev Log:

7/29/20

- Came up with an idea for a game

7/30/20

- Installed Unity and started watching Unity tutorial videos

7/31/20

- Created water shader via shader graph (no coding required!)

- Created a basic background, player sprite, bow sprite, and arrow sprite in Photoshop

08/03/20

- First time coding in C#

- Struggle to code in Notepad++, switched to Visual Studio Code

08/06/20

- Created physics based slingshot controls for the bow and arrow with a line renderer bowstring

- Colliders!

08/09/20

- Unable to find a way to pull arrow back horizontally (-X) regardless of mouse Y movement (OnMouseDown)

- Decided that slingshot controls are for slingshots, not bows and arrows

- Scrapped physics based slingshot controls due to overcomplication (rip)

08/10/20

- Created new projectile based controls that still include drag/shoot physics

08/11/20

- Limited rotation of the bow while aiming to max 45° and min -45°

- Developed distaste for vector algebra

- Made it so that if you don’t drag far enough, you won’t release an arrow

08/12/20

- Created a trajectory line coming off the bow

- Made arrows fade away after colliding

- Created git repository to keep all project files backed up on github (Don’t wait to do this! Should’ve been done on day 1)

08/14/20

- Added physics and collider to player

- Allow you to face and move left/right with the A and D keys + updated bow controls to match

- Created left/right movement while aiming + updated bow controls to match

- Created mouse drag line for development use

- Created waterline

- Made it so the bow resets to it’s default position if you haven’t used the bow for over 2 seconds

08/15/20

- Updated Player sprite in Photoshop

- Obtained Asesprite

- Created walk animation

08/16/20

- Created bow walk, bow equip, and bow unequip animations

Next Log

#game design #game dev blog #game dev #game dev update #indie game #pixel art #pixel animation #bowfish #meganura

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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 5 years ago

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What are your headcannons for the kids from the four main All the Wrong Questions series?

oh geez there are so many

Lemony Snicket

Listen every character in the Snicketverse is autistic but Lemony? HIGH.KEY. This boy cannot stand sensory overload and also stims with verbal recitation.

After several months in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, the Associates got used to him just showing up and taking food. He eventually stopped asking, and then eventually stopped using the door. Moxie has, more than once, come downstairs to find him sitting on her counter eating cereal.

Beatrice snuck into town once to see how he was doing, saw him and Moxie trying to jump off the roof of the diner with a tablecloth parachute and Jake dragging them back and screaming, and she just turned right the fuck around and reported to their friends, “yeah he’s fine.”

Kit made him promise not to tell Jacques that she was almost in jail.

MODERN AU: Gets into twitter and tumblr fights with obvious trolls. Tried to call CPS on Theodora just to see what would happen. Can recite any “Unraveled” YouTube video on command. Has an extensive knowledge of Pokemon.

Moxie Mallahan

listen this girl is a lesbian in denial and she wrote Ellington Feint a note that said “get out of my town” because she didn’t know what else to do

She always kinda knew that her Mother was never coming back for her, but she didn’t admit it aloud until after Lemony left.

Moxie: I can eat ten marshmallows at once. Kellar: You are a hazard to yourself. Lemony: And a coward. Do twenty

Moxie knows how to pick every kind of lock, and how to break into every window. She takes her journalism very seriously and will get the truth even if she has to flip the world off as she does it.

MODERN AU: Blogger. Once spent a week straight putting together a project and then passed out for forty-eight hours. Still carries a typewriter with her everywhere. Had to physically stop Lemony from eating a tide pod.

Ellington Feint

Had literally no idea Lemony had a crush on her because she’s just that gay.

Actually popped up around town inbetween books constantly, mainly to chill with Cleo, Jake, the Bellerophons, and even Ornette. They just all neglected to mention this to Lemony.

She doesn’t remember anything about her mother. All she knows is what her father told her; that her mother used to make music boxes, loved coffee, and died in a fire.

Goes through a huge rebel/outlaw phase after escaping with Kit, because she’s completely lost and has no idea what to do or who to trust; her own father never gave a shit about her, as she now knows, so how could anyone care? Eventually she made her way back to Stain’d-by-the-Sea, where Moxie found her crying in the attic of Black Cat Coffee and awkwardly invited her to live in the lighthouse.

MODERN AU: Has been on the run from CPS for so fucking long. Quotes Gilmore Girls almost daily and will argue your ear off about why Rory/Paris should’ve been endgame. Once ate a tide pod. Cries while watching the Addams Family.

Kellar Haines

Even after the Train Incident, he basically lives with Moxie. He just can’t trust his Mom anymore, and while he claims otherwise, they didn’t really have a good relationship before then, either. Lizzie stays with him.

His special interest is in codemaking. He would’ve been really valuable to VFD if he’d gotten recruited. As is, Moxie kicks the ass of anyone who tries to kidnap him, so he’s fine.

He’s also super good at crafting, and can make really cool art projects whenever he has the time. Lizzie used to give him art supplies whenever she could, and still hangs his drawings on the lighthouse fridge.

He just gets so tired of his friends’ shit. He’d be a Mom Friend if he made any effort to stop them but as is he just kinda watches crap go down.

MODERN AU: Constantly goes to the movie theater just to chill. Addicted to YouTube. Is the only one of the squad not freaked out by the Watership Down movie. Asks existential questions at random to scare the squad and then immediately says “yeet” in a deadpan voice and throws Squeak across the room.

Pip and Squeak Bellerophon

They took over the taxi for their Dad when he fell ill. He died a few months later, and they kept claiming he was alive, in fear that they would get separated by whoever was in charge of their case. The only person they told is Jake, because he eventually followed them home to ask their Dad why the fuck he didn’t feed them and found that they were living alone, and Cleo, because Jake can’t keep secrets from her.

Pip and Squeak used to fight a lot, though they never intended any real harm. They slowly stopped after they started living alone, and Pip started kinda taking charge of keeping him and Squeak safe.

They used to be very tight with Qwerty, because they were constantly at the library. He suspected their situation, but never confirmed it and was alright just making sure the kids were okay. Squeak would sometimes climb on the bookshelves and knock them over, but thankfully Qwerty thought this was funny.

Squeak likes to “adopt” stray animals he finds in the backyard. Whenever he walks in going “gUESS WHO OUR NEW SIBLING IS,” Pip has to guess whether he’s going to bring in an injured baby bunny he can nurse back to health, or a squirrrel he just caught who is still struggling and about to destroy half the house.

MODERN AU: Pip has a Nintendo Switch that Squeak can only play Animal Crossing on. Squeak keeps posting photos on Instagram of him and Pip driving illegally but everyone thinks they’re edits. Squeak once very seriously told Pip that he would have to marry Jake so they could keep getting free food from him (before they found out he was dating Cleo). Have slept in library closets before and will again.

Cleo Knight

Identifies as Demi-bi. She and Jake met as preteens, when she wandered off and got lost, and went into the diner to use the phone and call Zada and Zora. Afterwards, she kept sneaking out to visit him.

Was much closer to Zada and Zora than her parents. She used to hang out in the kitchen with them, laying on the counter and practicing calculations or studying advanced chemistry while they cooked.

Also very very autistic. Can only eat certain things, because she has huge texture problems. Only Zada, Zora and Jake have ever gone out of their way to accommodate her without complaint.

Is incredibly reckless and never thinks anything through. While everyone knows she can take care of herself, it’s still nerve-wracking to see her run out the window, leaving only a note saying she’ll be back in three hours after trying to find a chemical, and coming back covered in blood that’s not her own.

MODERN AU: Was a Guardians of Ga’Hoole kid. Would exist on a diet of cheetos, cereal and sprite if not for her boyfriend. Once, Ornette helped her break out of the house to go to the movie theater to watch Lego Batman. Super into Stranger Things.

Jake Hix

Literally is the only reason the Associates are still alive. He gives them food and makes sure they don’t kill themselves doing some stupid reckless stuff.

Surprisingly, though, Cleo has had to physically stop him from fistfighting S Theodora Markson, who keeps forgetting to feed her fucking apprentice

Jake: As soon as I hit 18 I’m adopting you. Pip and Squeak, not even glancing over: Lit.

Has been in love with Cleo since they met. Since their relationship is technically “secret”, Hungry pretends not to notice, despite how increasingly obvious it gets. She knows she should technically discourage this, but he’s just. so in love. When he’s not working, he spends his time in him and Cleo’s garden.

MODERN AU: Has threatened to put parental locks on Lemony and Moxie’s phones multiple times. Keeps quoting The Princess Bride at Cleo, to the annoyance of the other Associates around them. Actually super into Doctor Who. Also keeps beating everyone’s ass in Mario Kart.

Ornette Lost

Has never once understood what was going on, but honestly she just rolls with it. “Guess we’re doing this now? Okay.”

Keeps bringing stray cats into her Uncles’ house and adopting them. She has twelve now. There is no stopping her.

Super close with Cleo and Jake. Mainly because she doesn’t mind third-wheeling, and will just fold origami when she gets bored, but also because she’s pretty good at dropping life advice and also is shockingly hilarious.

Lemony: Ornette. Why did the toaster blow up. Ornette: Hm?Lemony: Toaster. Blew up. Ornette: Oh. Yeah I blew it up Lemony: why Ornette: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

MODERN AU: Very into anime, especially Fullmetal Alchemist. Lives on ice cream. Has OPINIONS on the Disney Reboots. She got expelled from school because she graffitied GAY RIGHTS on the side of the building, and then a couple of middle fingers.

Lizzie Haines

INCREDIBLY protective of Kellar. She had more part in raising him than their mother; she was reluctant to leave him for her apprenticeship, but he convinced her he’d be fine.

Sharon was a huge perfectionist in regards to Lizzie’s talents and studies, so Lizzie always felt very distant from her. When she left for her apprenticeship, she ended up bonding with Sally Murphy, to the point where Lizzie saw her as more of a parent figure.

Lizzie noticed suspicious activity going on around town, and started investigating, even though Sally didn’t think anything was wrong. Lizzie had a conspiracy board and everything. She was kidnapped just as she was piecing everything together.

It took her quite a few months to break out, but once she did, she immediately went hardcore and figured out how best to knock people out and keep them away from her. She had a lot of trauma that emerged after the Train Incident, but Kellar got very good at figuring out how to calm her down.

MODERN AU: Hangs Christmas lights around her room and glowing stars on her ceiling. Knows more about Sonic the Hedgehog lore than the other Associates could ever understand. Huge Marvel/Star Wars fan. She has memorized all of Chicago, Hairspray, Black Panther, The Empire Strikes Back and Mamma Mia.

#all the wrong questions #atwq #lemony snicket #moxie mallahan #ellington feint #kellar haines #pip bellerophon #squeak bellerophon #cleo knight #jake hix #ornette lost #lizzie haines #stain'd associates #mine #ask #anonymous

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doomedandstoned · 5 years ago

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Devilish Acid Doomers LáGoon Reveal The “Father of Death”

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Review by Billy Goate, with Stephanie Savenkoff

Some days you just need a good swift kick in the pants to get the week going. Portland acid doomers LAGOON got you covered with 'Father of Death' (2020). It's the band's second album so far this year, marking an especially prolific period for the Portland band. Hell, we just got through reviewing and debuting 'Maa Kali Trip' (2020) back in March. Indeed, the band reminds us, "There aren’t rules to this shit, despite what anyone may tell you. We figure, release the music as you make it. Two full lengths in 3 months, why not?" You won't hear any objections coming from this end, fellas.

The new spin also witnesses LáGoon’s core transformation from duo to trio, something which has obvious ramifications for their sound. Featured on this effort is bassest Ignacio De Tommaso of Luciferica, and Argentinian band we heaved profuse praise upon during a recent episode of The Doomed & Stoned Show. "Same skate rat doom sound," LaGoon assures fans, "just in louder form."

The bass is the first thing that hits us with a wallop straight away in the title track. When I learned that Doomed & Stoned's tireless Portland photographer Stephanie Savenkoff was likewise immersing herself in the new LáGoon album, I asked if I could share her notes. "Great fuzzy beginning," she observes. "Repetitive and trancey." The song appears to be about a godlike figure who holds the power of death in his long, boney hands. Singer Anthony Gaglia personifies him with appropriate dramatics. "Love that sneer!" Stephanie adds "Reminds me of Billy Corgan."

"Resuscitation" by contrast is "stripped down" with a "peaceful opening. Simple but moving." Were I to match the music with a narrative, it would be of someone awakening from a near-death experience -- or simply from blacking out, as I once did in a local grocery store (took down a whole shelf of Gatorade with me, too). Waking up from that otherwise peaceful step out of consciousness was a blurry, surreal ordeal. Soon, the unreality of it all came flooding back and I struggled to make sense of the events leading up to it. I imagine this is doubly so in the case of an NDE. Thus, we move from the serene to the stormy as the patient is resuscitated. Stephanie notes its "surfy center, energizing," and hints at Spanish rhythms with one final word: "Bandito!"

A "simple, mellow riff" begins "Bloodied Mouth," then "builds and intensifies," Stephanie suggests, offering us a "cool spark at the end." I can't help loving that Brady Maurer rhythm. His drumming makes this fundamental rock 'n' roll, the kind you wanna really twist to -- LaGoon's trademark menacing twist, that is.

Speaking of all things sinister, "Broken Oath," is "creepy and funereal" Stephanie says, an atmosphere conjured in no small part by guest keyboardist Adam Scott of Thunderbird Divine, who makes effective use of the Mellotron. We also hear, I believe, two sets of vocals, which I'm fairly certain is Ignacio De Tommaso's or one of his compadres.

"Soft, sweet, gentle, intense, beautiful, dark." Those were the words that converged with Stephanie's stream of consciousness for "Stab & Cut." Lyrically, it feels full of alienation and the need to protect oneself from the many enemies of happiness, some of which are more insistent than others in taking away our roadmap. Thankfully, there's still that trusty van to get us over the winds and dips of the road ahead.

As we might expect from an album conceived in quarantine, parts were recorded separately by various members of the band during lockdown, then mixed and mastered by Anthony himself. I'd say he did a damn fine job of it, with the usual low-fi ethic in play.

And now, Doomed & Stoned is pleased to bring you the title track from Father of Death, which emerges June 19th and can be pre-ordered here.

Give ear...

An Interview with LáGoon Frontman Anthony Gaglia

By Billy Goate

LáGoon is now, what, four, five years old?

Just approaching 4 years!

Hellll yeah.

It’s been a good run!

What was the last show you played before the Great Lockdown of 2020?

Took me a second to remember it’s been so long! Our last gig was March 6th alongside fellow PNWers Grim Earth, Sorcia, and Ravine!

Right on. I think Stephanie Savenkoff may have been there to snap some pics that night.

She was, indeed; always great to see her at our shows!

You've got some big things happening this month, right?

We do! Our last album, MAA KALI TRIP, has finally made its way out of the record plant (pusher back due to Covid) so this Friday it will be available for purchase, and then the Friday after that we’ll be releasing our new album Father of Death!

Listening to that opening track on ‘Father of Death’ (2020) you can tell something is different. The bass just jumps out at you with bold ferocity! You’ve got a new member? Please introduce us.

Hell yeah! The man behind that thunderous tone on the record is Ignacio De Tommaso of the band Luciferica. Ignacio and I have been collaborating on some music for the past few months, so when it came time to lay down bass on the record he was the perfect man for the job!

What was it like to jam with a third person after being a duo for so long?

Refreshing! At first being in a two piece was great because I had just left a 5 piece band, and that was a headache. But after being the two of us for a while, it feels great to have someone else on board so I can play some solos and overall broaden what I can get away with playing!

Do you feel any urgency to expand your number in real life when the bars and concert halls open up again along the West Coast?

Definitely. I want to start playing these new songs in their entirety as soon as things open up. I really feel like this album is the new sound of LáGoon, and I’d hate to step backwards for live shows.

How would you describe LaGoon’s core sound and approach to heavy music?

It’s hard for me to describe, but I think the most important piece of LáGoon’s sound is that we’re really not concerned with fitting under one particular label. We all listen to a variety of music, and I think that comes through in the music. Our biggest concern is keeping things fun and fresh for us, and we’ve just been blessed that some people seem to really dig it!

What styles of music would you say you draw the most inspiration from?

Those are constantly changing, but going into this album I was listening to a lot of 90s bands like Sonic Youth, The Pixies, The Melvins, and The Butthole Surfers. Which are bands I come back to time and time again. There’s something about the music that was made in the late '80s to early '90s that has a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ rawness to it. Anything that sounds like it was labored over isn’t the vibe for me.

Is it just me or do I feel a kind of chill surfer vibe thing going on, too? It's probably just me.

You’re not wrong! I think that comes from the type of people we are, or the amount of weed I consume haha. It’s pretty hard to get any of us upset, and so I think that there’s definitely elements of that in our music.

Right on. How have the last 3-4 months of shutdown and lockdown affected you and the people around you?

It was pretty hectic at first. I haven’t been working since the shutdown, so financially it’s definitely been a struggle. My mom and sister are both nurses as well so it’s been pretty scary to hear about all the madness in their hospitals. Overall, I’m happy to be living in the city and state I’m living in. Everyone I know has taken it seriously and that’s refreshing!

That's awesome to hear. Well, on a positive note, maybe take a few moments to tell us about the new album and walk us through all five tracks?

Would love to! This album largely came about because of all the free time I’ve had over the quarantine. As we mentioned before this is our first album as a three piece. I made that decision going into the album, so most of the tracks feature guitar solos and other elements we couldn’t pull off as a two piece.

FATHER OF DEATH

"Father of Death" is the first track on the record and the title track for the album. It sets the pace for the album with a driving tempo and the introduction of the bass as part of our sound. The song is about the grim reaper, a character that regularly surfaced in LáGoon songs.

RESUSCITATION

"Resuscitation" is the song that is just that for this band. It’s the first song of ours that couldn’t be played without the bass, and brings a new life and sound to the band. It’s also one of our longest songs and has multiple tempo changes.

BROKEN OATH

"Broken Oath" features another friend and label mate of ours Adam Scott of the band Thunderbird Divine on keys and melotron. This is one of the heavier songs on the album, and tells the story of a man cheating on his wife with a prostitute.

BLOODIED MOUTH

"Bloodied Mouth" is the most danceable of the album. This song was written at the beginning of the COVID crisis when everything first shut down. I felt a little beat down, and this song is what came out.

STAB & CUT

"Stab & Cut" is probably the furthest from any of the other songs we’ve written. I wrote it as an acoustic guitar song years ago and had forgotten about it. For some reason I played it on my electric guitar one day while I was recording other songs for the album and it brought new life to it.

That’s all of 'em!

Cool, thanks for sharing that! What instruments and gear are you working with these days?

I’ve had the same Orange CR120 head and Marshall 4x12 since the formation of the band! For a short period I was playing split through that and a bass amp, but now that we’re a three piece I’m back down to the Orange through the 4x12 and I have one distortion pedal that I more or less just use as boost. We’re lucky enough to have a deal with Baxter guitars so that’s all I play and we’re hoping to get a Baxter bass on stage soon!

First Coronavirus, then Lockdown, Recession, and Social Unrest. Any predictions on what the second half of 2020 holds in store?

I have no idea, but what I hope for is serious social reform at the federal level, a new fuckin’ president, and the return of live music. I may be asking for too much though. (laughs)

Sounds like you're just itching to get back on stage again and belt out these new tunes for a real live audience!

Absolutely! My wife is getting sick of hearing me play by myself! (laughs)

Right on, man. Well we hope to see you soon, so we'll keep our fingers crossed for a bright close to the year. Thanks so much for chatting with Doomed & Stoned!

Hell yeah, man! We appreciate your continued support. See ya out there. Stay healthy, and stay heavy!

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#D&S Debuts #LaGoon #Portland #Oregon #Doom #Punk #Metal #Doom Metal #Anthony Gaglia #D&S Interviews #D&S Reviews #Interstellar Smoke Records #Forbidden Place Records #HeavyBest2020 #Doomed & Stoned

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mobius-prime · 5 years ago

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166. Sonic the Hedgehog #98

Sonic Adventure 2

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante Colors: Patrick Spaziante and Nelson Ribeiro

Welcome to Sonic Adventure 2, everyone! Now, you would be excused for thinking that the comic would want to handle such a highly anticipated and ultimately successful game in the same manner as it did the first one, but you would be wrong! I'm going to spoil it for you right now - we only get part of the story in the comics. This one issue used to cover the entirety of the game, and as we'll see this presents some serious problems. But let's dive in, I'll save my rants for after we go over everything.

So our story doesn't actually begin where the previous issue left off. Instead, it begins three months ago, right on the tail end of the previous Sonic Adventure, in fact. The comics never really did address exactly what happened to Eggman in between being chased out of Station Square by Silver Sonic, and returning to Robotropolis. Well, as it turns out, he ended up being chased, somehow, all the way to one Prison Island, where Silver Sonic cornered him and blasted the ground out from under him, causing him to fall down a dark hole. Satisfied that it had killed him, Silver Sonic returned to Station Square to resume its defensive protocol there, but in actuality he had fallen into a secret lab with something very interesting hidden inside…

Now fast forward to a mere week ago. In the dead of night within Station Square, a mysterious figure broke into a top-security vault to steal the city's last remaining Chaos Emerald. Silver Sonic tried to prevent the theft, but…

News of the theft soon reached the desk of the city's president, who mistook the figure as the hero who had defended Station Square from Chaos mere months ago, because apparently in every Sonic canon, no one can ever tell Sonic and Shadow apart, not even Sonic's best goddamn friends. Seriously, at least in the anime it's explained as being a deliberate set-up by GUN to cover their own asses regarding the Project Shadow disaster years ago. I know I've joked before about Sonic being an extremely average-looking Mobian hedgehog which is why he's so easily mistaken for other people, but seriously, Shadow and Sonic's profiles and quill style don't even look alike, let alone their fur color.

That is a very bizarre-looking Rouge. For whatever reason, they decided to draw her a lot in this era with like… claw hands, and I don't even understand where they got that from. In the game itself one of her upgrades is called "Pick Nails" and I guess you could extrapolate that to mean razor-sharp nails under her gloves that don't show up on her low-poly 3D model or something, but all her 2D art depicts her with normal-looking rounded fingertips, so I don't even know. Anyway, the comic goes on about how the president put together an elite task force to track Sonic down and arrest him for his supposed crimes, and now they've finally found him just outside Knothole. Man, if some randos from Station Square could find where Knothole was, how the hell has Eggman not figured it out yet? They pull out actual, deadly rifles and start firing wildly at him, and he dances around cheekily, stealing their guns and taunting them. This ends when they shoot an electrified net onto him, and soon he's handcuffed in the back of their helicopter, being taken to the hidden city. Of course, we know how this goes from here - he breaks free inside the 'copter and bursts out its side, peeling off a strip of metal to use as his makeshift skateboard, because even though this isn't the 90s anymore, it's still the 90s.

We're then treated to a short montage of Spaz's interpretation of City Escape - landing on the streets, surfing down sloped roads, soaping on walkway rails and leaping over any obstacles in his way. Honestly, the action is a bit hard to follow - Spaz is certainly a talented artist in many respects, but I think his decision here to move on from his somewhat simpler designs from before hurts rather than helps, as the action and lines become so chaotic that you have to really concentrate to follow what's going on. There's just a bit too much happening, so that your eyes are drawn all over the place without really focusing on a specific focal point of each image. But anyway, we all know how City Escape ends - with the iconic GUN truck chase!

And that's… it! No, seriously, that's all we get for the actual story of SA2. The final text box invites us to play the game itself to see how it all ends, but there's a number of problems with that, the foremost being that the game takes place in an entirely different canon. We've got completely different circumstances that led up to these events. We've got characters missing - Tails still hasn't been returned to Knothole yet, Knuckles is off somewhere else struggling with his newfound powers, and humans aren't even the dominant species on the planet like they are in the game. This would leave any comic fan with a bitter taste in their mouth, as there's no actual resolution provided and no explanation for how the story will play out with so many of the original players out of commission. Many issues from now, Ian Flynn actually addressed this exact problem and gave a condensed version of events to explain exactly what we're missing, so at least we have that to look forward to in the future. There is one more story after this, and I have additional problems with that one, but let's cover the rest of the issue before I give my final opinions.

As the Shadow Awakes!

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Ron Lim Colors: Frank Gagliardo

So this story actually jumps us back fifty years to see Shadow's beginnings. Professor Gerald, Eggman's grandfather on his mother's side, has been working for a long time on his latest project, which he hopes will see the end of disease and untimely death and even be able to cure his granddaughter Maria's unspecified terminal illness. This project is, of course, Shadow the Hedgehog, who, as an excited and astonished Gerald watches, begins to move inside his pod. The inexplicably-brunette Maria suddenly calls him at his lab, telling him that she can see a military spaceship flying toward the ARK, their space station, and Gerald, in a panic, orders her to come to him. He knows that the military is here to take possession of his project, and believing them to be too simple-minded to understand his intentions for the project, wants to evacuate immediately. He's immediately proven right, as the military men who board the station scoff at the idea that an "old scientist and his crippled granddaughter" could pose any trouble to them as they intend to take the professor's project by force. Gerald sends Maria and Shadow, the latter now out of his pod, to evacuate in an escape pod, but of course, we know how this ends…

I think this is the only Sonic media I can think of that actually directly shows Maria dying. In both the game and the anime, the shot happens offscreen, and Shadow is ejected before Maria actually takes her last breath. I do have a problem with how the scene is portrayed here, however, as a big conflict that Shadow goes through during SA2 is his vast misinterpretation of her last request to him, whereas here she seems to just die immediately without saying another word. The military takes Gerald into custody, and shortly thereafter recovers Shadow from the escape pod, taking them both to Prison Island where they force Gerald to continue his work under their supervision. Gerald, however, is devastated at Maria's death, and thus plans out his revenge in secret under the guise of continuing his work as demanded.

The military eventually caught on to his nefarious plans, and had Gerald executed and Shadow sealed away in suspended animation on Prison Island, where it remained undisturbed and forgotten for the next fifty years. Of course, this is what Eggman found on the island, and now he's poised to use his grandfather's own work to conquer the world. My biggest problem with this story, ultimately, is that it essentially acts as one huge spoiler for the game. Everyone now, almost twenty years on, probably knows the general gist of the story, but this comic was published when it was still very new, and this entire story basically spoils the biggest twist in the game right off the bat. Furthermore, in this story, Shadow literally wakes up, goes straight to the pod, watches Maria - who he knows nothing about - die, and then gets sealed away in his stasis pod for fifty years. There's literally no time for him to even develop a personality, let alone a relationship with Maria, which is the single most important thing in his backstory. I believe this was later retconned, but this is still a huge thing to overlook in an adaption of this game.

But anyway, yeah, that's it. That's all we get for the time being. A few brief glimpses of Shadow, and one whole cameo from Rouge. It will be a while yet before Shadow gets to make his reappearance, since like in the game, at the end of their adventure he falls from space and is subsequently believed to be dead. Honestly, the entire thing kind of gives off the impression that they felt like they had to make some kind of comic tie-in to the game, but didn't feel like interrupting what they already had going with the whole "Sonic goes to high school" thing, which is clearly far more interesting of a story. So they basically went "yeah, something like this happened, but now let's just get back to the real story." It's honestly very weird, so weird that, again, they needed a later fix-it issue to explain everything, but for now, we'll just have to move on.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 98 #writer: karl bollers #writer: ken penders #pencils: pat spaziante #pencils: ron lim #colors: pat spaziante #colors: nelson ribeiro #colors: frank gagliardo

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patchdotexe · 6 years ago

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Tell us more about shadowy

cracks knuckles. anon you have just opened the pandora’s box of leos infodumping

so, to set the stage here: he’s part of a setting called Shattered Worlds, in a totally different continuity from Chaosverse (where Checkpoint / askchaosverse takes place). there’s totally different rules and worldbuilding and all that, and while it TECHNICALLY takes place in the same multiverse (and has some characters in common, if EXTREMELY AU) it’s… also basically shoved in the twilight cage and locked off from everything else. it’s also a setting from 2007 that lasted until 2014, so it’s about to get wild

(it’s also gonna be under a cut bc this is gonna get VERY long. tl;dr: he’s a universe-destroying asshole that stumbled across an artifact of immense power, lost control of it, blew himself up, and is behind the entire plot of Shattered Worlds, both directly and because of consequences of him exploding. also he’s kind of an AU shadow/mephiles? i guess???)

Shadowy is something called an Outsider, which are… well they never got defined very well, but they’re a species that’s mobian-passing (and apparently is all hedgehogs, seeing as the 3 established Outsiders are hedgehogs?) and have the ability to jump from universe to universe at will, among other individual powers like Chrome’s telekinesis. they mostly use this to kinda hang out on various versions of Mobius, blending in as being an average mobian and either solving problems or causing them. Shadowy’s of the latter kind. they can be identified as an Outsider by their weird eyes, although that can get a bit blurry sometimes because theres some other SW characters that get them under specific circumstances which… usually involve an Outsider doing something.

anyway the point is Shadowy’s kind of a dick. the downside of being an outside force to the multiverse as we know it is… he doesnt really have any attachment to it? he’s not really a god but he’s near-invulnerable, can just bounce out of a universe as soon as he starts facing any consequences, and kind of sees everything as a game where he can just knock a few pieces over, see what happens, and then leave to do the same somewhere else but with a different method. he’s bored. the full effect of what he does doesnt really matter to him, he just entertains himself by making a mess of things. he’s also, like, a teenager with phenomenal cosmic power, which always goes well

so Shadowy’s running around from universe to universe, just kinda fucking with people to see how much he can get away with, when one of his worldhops kinda… fails. and instead of going through a portal directly from one universe to another, he falls into the void between worlds: Nullspace.

(”wait isn’t that a thing in sonic forces though” i came up with nullspace in like 2010 and can dig up old posts from my first blog talking about it, and there’s only gonna be more similarities to forces as this goes on, its COMPLETELY baffling and i swear to god it is a total coincidence that im still not over)

anyway so Shadowy accidentally dumps himself into the void, gets lost, but finds something that had gotten sealed there ages ago, potentially by another Outsider: something called the Phoenix Orb. im bolding it because its very important. this is like, THE plot macguffin. it’s also basically the Phantom Ruby, because as soon as Shadowy gets his hands on it he goes from “asshole” to “asshole with total control over reality”. and he REALLY wants to see what this shiny rock can do, so he goes back to his deal of universe-hopping and picks a world he thinks will be very interesting to fuck with.

meet Robo (left) and Recky (right)! Robo wants to be a hero. Recky becomes a supervillain to spite him. Robo assembles a team of random furries and they all go on a bunch of adventures, including meeting clones of themselves, having an EX Gear race, getting lost in the desert, and various other shenanigans, usually involving fighting Recky and his cronies O-Mel and Blade.

then Shadowy shows up.

Recky’d gotten himself in a tight spot, so he wasn’t exactly going to turn down help when a random hedgehog showed up and allied himself with him. …sort of. Shadowy was just kind of a pest to Team Ultimate Robo (or TUR for short), and sometimes would even intervene on their side if things went south. it was kind of hard for anybody to tell what side Shadowy was really on.

finally, though, Shadowy had all his pieces in the right place and set his plan in motion. he approached Robo and took advantage of the metal sonic’s insecurities and tragic backstory, and convinced him to ditch his team in favour of destroying Mobius with him. Recky found out and alerted the rest of TUR, and they teamed up to race Shadowy&Robo to the Eclipse Cannon before Robo used it to wipe out everything.

while Recky was up in space, O-Mel and Blade decided to stick to Recky’s original plan and kidnapped the members of TUR that had stayed behind on Mobius to.. i dunno, do something. mind control them into working for Recky, probably? back at the ARK, Shadowy got his face kicked in by Robo after he was snapped back to his senses, and fled back to Nullspace to recover and plan his next move. Robo had just made things personal… and Shadowy hadn’t taken full advantage of his new powers yet.

Robo freed the captured TUR gang and made a big distraction for them to escape, and in the confusion Shadowy appeared and kidnapped a specific hedgehog to use as bait. it worked, and Robo gave chase to try and rescue her. using the Phoenix Orb, Shadowy took control of SK and gave her enough power to near-totally destroy Robo, then sent her off to do the same to the rest of TUR. she basically got turned into Infinite, complete with having a realitywarping gemstone shoved in her chest.

it was a pretty solid plan, except it quickly fell apart when SK started fighting back for control and tried using the Orb’s power to attack Shadowy instead. he was losing control of the situation, and the two of them ended up in a struggle with Shadowy desperately trying to get the Orb back before she figured out how to use it. in a last-ditch desperate effort, Shadowy used the Orb’s power he could still draw on to forcibly fuse himself with SK in hopes that, if he couldn’t get it away from her, he could at least take control of the fusion and go from there…

…and things very quickly went from bad to worse.

turns out taping together an Outsider, a hedgehog with a shitton of Chaos powers and potential, and an artifact with total complete control over reality, is not good for the universe. or any universe. enter the Shadowy Phoenix, who kinda goes full Solaris except with like… realitywarping instead of time control. the creation of the Phoenix was literally shattering the world around them, and neither SK or Shadowy were in control– it was basically just the Orb itself running rampant and at threat of not only destroying TUR’s Mobius, but the entire multiverse if it wasn’t stopped.

so it got stopped. and exploded. the sudden death-explosion of a superdimensional being tore reality apart and flung everybody across the multiverse, with both Shadowy and SK gone… until SK suddenly showed back up 3 years later with no memory and with a shard of the Orb still stuck inside her. this is when the main Shattered Worlds plot kicks off!

as for Shadowy, it’s… not really clear what happened to him.

#leo chirps #leos reply #leodoodles #leos ocs #oc: shadowy #oc: sk roe #shattered worlds #Anonymous #ask #fixit leo

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raywritesthings · 6 years ago

Text

Rebirth

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Thea Queen, Ra’s al Ghul, John Diggle, Felicity Smoak, Malcolm Merlyn, Maseo Tamashiro Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen (implied) Summary: When Ra's al Ghul's attack falls on another of Oliver's loved ones, it has unintended consequences. *Can also be read on my AO3 account*

Laurel went to the loft as soon as she heard the news. It seemed impossible for Roy to be gone so suddenly — that hadn’t been the plan at all — and she knew Thea would be taking it hardest of all.

Her younger friend’s eyes were red-rimmed but dry when she opened the door, and Laurel immediately came through and put her arms around her.

“I just got word. I’m so sorry, Thea.”

“This just keeps happening,” Thea murmured. “I mean not even a couple months ago, Ollie was gone. But Roy’s not coming back.”

Laurel rubbed at Thea’s back and remained there until her friend pulled away. She followed her over to the high table where a wine glass sat by a half-empty decanter.

“Sorry.” Thea put the lid on the decanter, eyes downcast. “I’m not really good company right now.”

“That’s okay.” She set her purse down on a chair as Thea walked around her to put the wine glass away. “I’m here for whatever you need. If you don’t want to talk, we don’t have to talk.”

“Yeah, that’s probably—” Thea dropped the glass with a gasp as she looked past Laurel, and Laurel spun around to see what had caused the reaction.

She’d only seen him briefly before as they had ran from the police helicopters, but Laurel would know him anywhere. Ra’s al Ghul stood in the sitting room of Thea and Oliver’s loft.

“Do you know who I am?”

Thea swallowed once. “You’re the Demon.”

“I am the Demon’s Head. As those were before me, and very soon, your brother.”

Laurel shook her head. “Oliver will never take your place.”

“He will. Once I’ve given him sufficient motivation.” His gaze never wavered from Thea. Laurel moved to place herself in front of her friend.

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not happening.” She’d already lost one sister to the power play of the League of Assassins, and she’d be damned if she lost another.

Thea darted to the side where Laurel had a feeling she’d stashed a weapon, but Ra’s moved swiftly to block her way. He grabbed her wrist when she tried to strike, but Laurel caught his own arm when he went for Thea’s undefended side. After that, it was a flurry of fists, jabs, and kicks, faster than could be kept up with. She and Thea were running purely on instinct and adrenaline, while Ra’s seemed to have the next several steps in this deadly dance already mapped out. He wasn’t even breathing harshly, and his face was a mask of calm.

She had thought Nyssa the best out of anyone, and yet her mentor’s father was in a class of his own, easily blocking both their hits and striking back. He knocked Laurel back into one of the brick support beams, and the wind rushed out of her, defenseless. But Ra’s instead turned towards Thea, his focus still on her. His intent was clear, and there was little either of them could do to stop him on their own.

They needed an edge.

Her eyes landed on her purse sitting on the chair. The device Cisco had made her was still in its casing inside. Laurel pushed up onto her feet, running and pulling it out. There was a crash as she fastened it around her neck, and Laurel wheeled around to see Thea falling through the shattered coffee table. Ra’s moved forward, unsheathing his sword, and Laurel prayed this would work.

She let out a scream, more glass exploding all around them as Ra’s reeled back, his hands over his ears. He glared in her direction, a fleeting break in his unaffected visage.

Laurel walked forward, standing between him and Thea once again.

“You’ve made some improvements to the Canary’s weaponry,” he stated. “It won’t save you.”

“Maybe not.” She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. This was the man who had nearly killed Oliver. She’d be a fool to think she’d fare any better. “It just has to save her.”

Thea was rising back up gingerly. “Laurel...no.”

“Get out of here, Thea.” Her friend stood there, and Laurel hardened her voice. “Go!”

Ra’s lunged before she could be sure Thea had listened, and Laurel was immediately on the defensive. It was clear the game was over now, and Ra’s was no longer toying.

Laurel risked precious seconds to turn the choker back on, and only barely blocked another attack. She opened her mouth to activate the sonic device a second time and the cry resounded, but Ra’s arm twisted upwards with a flash of steel.

“No!”

It felt like nothing. She was aware of the cut, of the blood that spurted from her throat, of the breath that was suddenly a struggle to draw. But it felt like nothing.

Laurel staggered forward a step and was caught by the Demon.

“Your sacrifice was honorable. May your friend feel the same.” He murmured something, words Laurel couldn’t understand, as he bent to lay her on the floor.

Her friend. Ollie. Her heart sped up, though it hurt. Maybe she hadn’t had the training, but she’d protected his sister. He wouldn’t be joining the League.

In her blurring vision, she saw a smaller figure — Thea — lunge at Ra’s. He batted her away easily with one hand. Then he turned and walked away. Thea appeared again before her, but Laurel blinked and it was darker, harder to see.

Her body was limp and growing numb. All she could register were two arms around her and a voice crying her name. She wondered if Sara had known that last comfort, too.

—-

Oliver had just reached the lobby of his and Thea’s building when his phone began buzzing. It was his sister, and Oliver sighed. He felt guilty she hadn’t been there to see Roy off, but at the least he could assure her that his now former partner had not died in prison as the team were leading everyone to believe.

“Hey, Thea—”

“Ollie?!”

Thea’s voice was utterly shaken and echoey as though he were on speaker. Oliver frowned and changed course from waiting for the elevator.

“Thea, where are you? What’s going on?”

“I’m- we’re in the loft. But Ra’s — Oh God, Ollie, there’s so much — there’s so much blood. I don’t know what to do. Laurel!”

The wailed name pierced him like a shard of ice through the heart. He threw back the fire door and raced up the stairs.

Oliver burst through the door to the loft and found a wreck. Shattered glass littered the floor, and by the fireplace were Thea and Laurel. His little sister had removed her shirt and bunched it up to press to Laurel’s neck, and it was already deep red with blood.

“Please, Laurel, stay with me!” Thea was sobbing. “Don’t go, too! Not you too!”

He was frozen in the doorway for a moment, unable to accept what was happening in front of him. Laurel couldn’t be — she couldn’t.

The time was ticking on. Oliver forced himself into moving, dropping down to the rug beside Thea and taking Laurel’s hand. It was still warm. He dug around in his pocket for his phone.

“We need to get her help. We need…”

But his thumb hovered over the 9. Calling an ambulance meant Captain Lance finding out. And this would kill him.

Oliver went into his contacts instead, pressing the phone to his ear and gritting his teeth as he waited for it to be picked up.

“Oliver?”

“John, bring the medical kit to the loft. Now!”

Thea was shaking with her sobs, and he gently placed his hands over hers to take over holding the shirt to Laurel’s wound.

“Are you okay?”

His sister managed a nod.

“Where’s Ra’s?”

“He left. He- he just left me here. He only came here to kill me, and now Laurel — it’s my fault, God, it’s my fault!”

“No. No, Thea, it’s mine.” If he had just accepted Ra’s offer from the start, the Demon Head would not have continued to escalate things so far. The people killed by the imposter Arrows would be alive, Roy would still be here, and Laurel wouldn’t be hovering on the brink of death.

God, how could he have let this happen? His eyes were stinging as he looked at her. This whole year they had been at odds, all over his efforts to try and protect her. Yet she had been the one to place herself between his sister and certain death. Just as a hero would.

“Just a little longer, Laurel,” he said, his voice wavering badly. “Please.”

It couldn’t end this way. She was stronger than this; he knew she was.

“Laurel.”

Oliver turned his head at the sound of John’s voice. Their friend had come through the open door and now hurried to join them.

“What happened?”

“Ra’s.”

John worked quickly, carefully peeling back the cloth just slightly to get and look and retrieving the right set of tools for the patch job they had to pray would save her life. “Okay, on my count, you move, and I start stitching.”

Oliver nodded.

John was still watching him. “You’re going to have to let go, Oliver.”

“I know.” He was hardly able to choke out.

“One, two, three.”

He pulled the shirt and his hands away despite the panic at the thought of just letting Laurel’s life slip away, and John was immediately blocking his view as he started closing up the wound at her neck. He wasn’t sure if seeing or not was better, if it made the panic less.

Thea had her arms wrapped around herself, shaking still as she cried. Oliver reached toward her but stopped as he took in both of their appearances.

He stared down at his hands, red with Laurel’s blood. Thea had it on her hands, her arms, her clothes were stained with it. There was too much blood.

He couldn’t do anything for Laurel while John was working; that was in his hands. But he could take care of his sister. He could try.

Oliver got to his feet and pulled her up, half-leading and half-carrying her to the bathroom. He started the shower while Thea methodically stripped down and stepped inside, her sobs still occasionally breaking out. Oliver scrubbed at his hands in the sink. The skin felt raw by the time he finished, and he tossed the soap bar in the trash. He couldn’t look at the rusty color it had taken on.

He went back out to the main room. There was both calm and panic within him now. The world was either over or it wasn’t. Only John could answer as to which.

His friend was sitting back on his heels, his shoulders hunched and the gloves stripped off. He looked up at Oliver’s approach.

“Help me move her to the couch. She should be comfortable.”

The tone wasn’t promising. Oliver swallowed down a lump and moved to slide his arms as gently as possible under Laurel. He cradled her close as he and John walked the short distance and laid her back down. Without thinking, he reached to brush some of her hair out of her face.

“Had to take this off her first to put the bandages on.” John held out a black choker Oliver had never seen her wear before. It had something on the front, with a tiny light still glowing. His fingers traced over it for a brief moment. “You recognize it?”

“No.” He took it from his friend and placed it beside her. Then he drew in a breath. “Will she be okay?”

“She’s lost a lot of blood, Oliver. She could have swallowed some. We don’t even know if there’s been damage to her windpipe. There’s no telling if she wakes up from this.” John shook his head. “A hospital would put her on life support. From there, it’d be a question of how long to delay the inevitable.”

His heart was lead, sinking deep within him. Laurel’s smile, the pitch of her voice as she railed against an injustice, the warmth in her hugs, those had all been ripped from the world as she herself slowly slipped away from them all.

Oliver couldn’t remember the last thing he’d said to her. She had gotten him out of police custody. Had he thanked her? He’d been so worried about Roy…

John placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Oliver.”

Something dripped onto the floor in front of him. Then again. Belatedly, Oliver realized it was tears, and his own.

She didn’t deserve this, dying for his family. Even as much as she cared for Thea in her own right. But he could just picture the stubborn set to her shoulders, the fire in her eyes as she faced down Ra’s al Ghul himself. It was absolutely her, and Oliver had always known that.

And he’d dreaded this sort of end all the time.

He turned away from John and Laurel on the couch, his hands pressed over his mouth to hold in some sound. Losing Roy, even as he lived, had been bittersweet. Losing Sara, again, had been sudden and wrenching as always. But Laurel...it was too much. She had been with him too long. When he thought of Starling City, she was first in his mind. Because of him, they were all losing her.

As he stared out the high windows trying to wrest back control over his emotions, something caught his eye. Purple smoke was rising in the distance. Maseo.

John had followed his fixed gaze and was frowning at the smoke as he came up to his side. “What is that? The League?”

“He’s won,” said Oliver. Whatever the next stage of Ra’s plan was, Oliver knew it was over for him. He had already lost too much in trying to resist. He couldn’t withstand any more. One way or another, as Slade had said at their last meeting, there would be no more Oliver Queen.

“What do you mean?” John asked him.

But Oliver didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and left the loft. He had an assassin to meet.

—-

As soon as Oliver left the bathroom, Thea shut the cold water off completely. Steam rose all around her as her skin was scalded, but she didn’t care. It at least let her feel something. The water pooled at her feet was red, and then brown, and then clear as it disappeared down the drain, and part of her wanted to pretend that meant everything was fine. That there had been no fight, and no blood, and Laurel wasn’t- wasn’t—

Thea stood there until the water ran cold, and then stood there some more. She was shivering as she staggered out and wrapped herself in a towel. Then she wandered out to the sitting room again, only to stop as she took in the new circumstances.

Oliver was nowhere to be found, but Felicity had joined them. She stood by Diggle, speaking softly, though the two fell silent and looked around at her.

“Is Laurel…”

Diggle nodded to the couch where her friend was laid out. She looked far too pale, even as her mouth still hung slightly open like she’d just nodded off. Not been cut down right in front of Thea just like her mother.

She screwed her face up, trying to hold in an anguished scream. With the others here, she couldn’t break down. Instead, Thea tried to focus on something else, and caught sight of the choker sitting beside Laurel on the cushion. She wasn’t really sure what it was, but she knew that it — and Laurel’s intervention — had likely saved her own life.

Carefully, Thea took it and refastened it around the woman’s neck. She deserved to have it.

“Where’s Oliver?” She asked the room at large, her voice wavering but calm.

“He saw some signal from the League. Went to talk to them,” Diggle answered.

“Why?”

“We don’t know.”

“We need to find out,” Felicity insisted. “He can’t just leave us, John. We can’t let that happen.”

Thea didn’t know what to think. Oliver wouldn’t join the League after what Ra’s had done. He couldn’t. There had to be something else at work here.

She took the stairs up to her room, pulling on the first clothes she came across in her closet. Then she sat on her bed. It didn’t feel real. It was like time had stopped the moment that blade had connected with Laurel’s skin. She couldn’t be dying. What would they do?

Thea couldn’t say for how long she sat there staring at a wall and willing herself not to think anything. But abruptly, she registered raised voices, and one of them was her brother’s.

“The Pit’s real. I’ve seen it. It can save Laurel.”

“Right. But only if you become the new Ra's.”

“Okay. Well, even if a magic hot tub were not crazy talk, we're not going to let you go and join the League of psychotic murderers, even if it is to save Laurel.”

Her heart jumped and she hurried from her room to the top of the steps. They could bring Laurel back?

Oliver had a small travel bag and was wrapping a blanket over Laurel with the clear intent to transport her. Diggle stood a couple feet away, arms crossed, while Felicity was right at her brother’s side and trying to catch his eye.

“Oliver, if you accept the League’s deal, we’ll lose you. I’ll lose you.”

“If Lance finds out about this, Oliver’s through either way,” Diggle grudgingly pointed out.

Oliver straightened and turned to face the other two. “Felicity, John, I don’t care about what happens to me. A deal with Ra’s is the only option that is going to save Laurel, and it is the only option I am going to take.”

“Well, what- what about Thea?” Felicity asked, and Thea felt both her eyebrows raise. “You said you’d do anything to keep her safe, and you’re just going to leave her behind while you become an assassin?”

Oliver hesitated, and that was when Thea went for the stairs.

“Do I get a say in this?” They all turned to look at her as she cleared the last step and kept going until she was right in front of Oliver. “The League can save Laurel?”

He nodded. “I have to agree to be the heir if they do.”

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. This was the furthest thing from an easy decision. Oliver was her brother, her only family — the only family she felt all that willing to acknowledge lately, anyway. The last thing she wanted was to lose him.

But Laurel...Thea opened her eyes and met his. “She’s always been there for us.”

“I know,” he agreed softly. His decision was made. And even if Thea’s word could stay him, she couldn’t give it. If she could take the punishment in either his or Laurel’s place — but the world didn’t work that way.

“Then let’s go.” For however long she could be, Thea was going to be right there with him.

Despite her clear objections, Felicity got them access to Ray Palmer’s private jet, and within hours they were cleared for takeoff. She stuck by her brother’s side as they crossed the tarmac to the plane.

Before they could board, a familiar voice called out. “Oliver.”

Thea turned with apprehension to watch as her father approached them.

“I would not do this if I were you.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” Thea’s fists were clenched at her sides. She wasn’t even surprised he already knew the whole story. “You don’t care if other people die for you.”

“I care about you, Thea,” he insisted. “And your happiness. If Oliver goes to Nanda Parbat tonight, you will lose your brother forever.”

Oliver shifted to stand slightly in front of her, a barrier between her and her father. “Spare me the act, Malcolm. If you cared at all for your daughter, you wouldn’t have forced her to kill her own friend. You wouldn’t have set the League in motion to tear her life apart.” There was tension in every line of him, like he was only barely holding himself back. “Laurel was right about you. You brought this on me, on Thea, on Roy, on Sara, and on her. You are a poison,” he spat. “And I am through protecting you.”

Oliver turned and resumed his stride towards the steps of the plane.

“I’m going with you if you’re taking my daughter to Nanda Parbat.”

“Like hell you are,” Thea said, and it was a relief and a rush to watch his eyes widen in surprise. “You really think after everything, just because we’re related that makes us family? I’m going to Nanda Parbat to get my real family back, and you’re not welcome. You’re not welcome in my life ever again.”

The relief was only greater as she left him standing there. Whatever ties Malcolm might have been trying to build between the two of them, he had severed them all on his own, and it was past time for her to make that clear.

“She won’t be the woman you knew and cared for, Oliver,” he called after them. “The Pit changes people in their soul.”

Oliver’s frown deepened, but otherwise, he acted as though nothing had been said. Thea followed his example and entered the plane.

—-

The ride was mostly quiet. Thea sat beside him, a constant presence and comfort. In the next aisle were Felicity and John. Felicity in particular looked troubled, but there was nothing he could say to change that. He had to go forward with this. If he didn’t, he couldn’t live with himself.

Sometime during the flight, Thea nodded off on his shoulder, and Oliver nearly thought he had too when he just barely picked up Felicity’s voice. “Would Laurel even want this?”

“Hm?” He sat up straighter.

She was looking right at him. “You joining the League. She fought Ra’s to keep him from getting at Thea, who he was obviously planning to use to pressure you. Isn’t doing this, I don’t know, disrespecting her wishes?”

He frowned. “I’d rather have Laurel alive and angry with me than dead. She can yell at me all she wants after the Pit heals her.”

“But for how long, Oliver?” John asked. “You’re gonna be with the League.”

That was true, and, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t putting much thought into what being with the League would be like. He just knew he could endure it if she was safe along with the others. He’d survived hell for five years with that thought in mind; he could survive this.

When they landed, he woke Thea and then went to collect Laurel. She was totally limp in his hold, and a part of him had to wonder what would happen if the stories weren’t true and the Pit didn’t work. Oliver pushed those thoughts from his mind as quickly as they came.

They were greeted outside the fortress by countless members of the League and Ra’s al Ghul himself, and Laurel was taken from him by Maseo.

They next time they were all gathered was before the pit. Laurel had been placed in a white gown and was laid out on a board attached to four ropes. He was given one, John another, with Maseo and a fourth League member taking the remaining two as Thea and Felicity both looked on.

A priestess came forward to start a chant in Arabic that was then picked up by the rest of the League while they slowly lowered Laurel in. His heart was in his throat as she disappeared below the surface.

The chanting abruptly ceased, and it was totally still. Even the waters of the Pit.

Oliver held his breath, waiting. In his head ran a mantra of Come on, Laurel, come on. It had to work.

The waters began to bubble and roil again, and the ropes were suddenly ripped from their hands. Oliver stepped forward, peering into the waters trying to make out anything at all.

And then he was knocked flat onto his back as she leapt straight out of the waters and several feet in the air, landing in a crouch at the edge of the Pit with her hair hanging in her face.

He almost didn’t have the breath to ask, “...Laurel?” He was echoed by Thea.

Laurel looked up, but there was nothing but pure, animal rage in her eyes. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl, and her head snapped in one direction and the other before fixing on the Demon Head. She opened her mouth and let out a scream.

It was like nothing Oliver had ever heard or seen. Because it could be seen.

Waves of air, energy, something, left her mouth and hit Ra’s squarely. He flew back, slamming against the far wall and slumping to the ground. Several assassins rushed to his sides. Others ran to grab at Laurel.

She struggled, growling and kicking out. Oliver pushed back onto his feet and hurried to reach her.

“Laurel, Laurel! Don’t hurt her!”

The priestess snuck in under someone’s arm and injected Laurel with something. Her eyes rolled back and she slumped into his arms. Oliver held her close, unnerved and terrified to let any of the League members near her.

Especially when Maseo pronounced for all to hear, “Ra’s al Ghul is dead.”

Oliver turned to see the Demon Head lying in a crumpled heap, blood trickling from his ears. The scream that had come from Laurel had killed him. Oliver looked down at her, asleep in his arms. What had he done?”

Thea hurried to his side, and the others were not far behind her. “Ollie, what happens now?”

He had no answer. But Maseo did.

His former friend left Ra’s and walked to him. “Now the chosen heir becomes the next Ra’s al Ghul.” He knelt in front of Oliver, and the rest of the League followed suit.

This wasn’t at all what he had expected or wanted. He had hoped that in agreeing to become the heir, he could buy some time to think of a new strategy to end the League’s control over his and his loved ones’ lives. But without that window in between, where did that leave him?

His first priority was making sure that Laurel was actually alright. He lifted her fully into his arms again, heedless of the water that dampened his own clothes. “Where can she rest?”

Maseo stood back up and led them all to a bedchamber. As they walked, John came to his side.

“Oliver, what are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know yet. We figure out what’s happened to Laurel first.”

“Or if she’s even Laurel?”

He didn’t reply.

—-

This had been a terrible idea. She’d known it from the start. But had Oliver listened? Scratch that, did Oliver ever listen was the better question.

The men all stood outside as Felicity helped Thea to dry Laurel off and change her into some clothes Thea had packed for the trip. They were a little small on Laurel, but none of them had wanted to risk stopping by her apartment or otherwise running the risk of encountering Captain Lance. Though imagining what he would have to say now, Felicity wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for him to stop this whole thing from happening.

Laurel hadn’t come out of the Pit, that much was clear. She wasn’t sure what had, or how it had managed to kill Ra’s with a scream, but it had. So now some unknown entity was possessing their friend’s body and Oliver was the de facto Ra’s. Truly a brilliant plan.

They got not-Laurel into bed and let Oliver and John back in the room. Oliver went straight to Laurel’s bedside, his brow creased with worry. Watching him was causing a sinking sort of sensation in her gut, so Felicity went and sat on an ottoman, John coming to stand against the wall beside her.

No one seemed ready to really talk, and the silence stretched on for an uncomfortable while.

With a gasp and terrified cry — not accompanied by eardrum-shattering waves this time — not-Laurel sat up with no warning. Felicity jumped in her seat.

Oliver reached out to touch their panicked friend’s shoulder. “Laurel? Laurel, you’re okay. It’s okay.”

Her gasps for breath slowed as she took in the sight of him. “Ollie?”

Okay, so that did sound like Laurel’s voice, and she did clearly recognize Oliver. Maybe it wasn’t a full possession, then.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.” A full smile broke out on Oliver’s face. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing Laurel. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. Where are we?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Thea, standing on the other side of the bed. “We’re just so glad you’re okay.”

But Laurel shrank back towards Oliver. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

Thea froze, and everyone else in the room seemed to collectively hold their breath. “Laurel, it’s- it’s me. Thea.”

“Thea?” Laurel shook her head slowly. “That can’t be right. Thea’s only twelve.”

Felicity felt her eyes widen, and she looked down as Thea backed away seeming totally lost.

“Ollie, where’s my dad?”

“He, um, he had to work. So did your mom.”

“And Sara?”

There was another terrible pause at the innocent question. It was almost too much to stand.

“She’s not here right now, Laurel. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.” It was clear by her tone that Laurel merely thought her sister was out somewhere else and not dead. “Did you cut your hair?”

“Uh—” Oliver sent a brief, panicked glance back at the rest of them. Felicity just sighed. This was his choice, his mess.

“I like it.” Laurel was smiling; warm, open, even a little flirty.

And Oliver’s voice sounded entirely too soft as he replied, “Thank you.” The sinking feeling in Felicity’s stomach was getting worse.

“What’s the matter?” A slight pout formed on Laurel’s lips. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Oliver lied. “You’re fine. Why don’t you try and get some more rest?” He helped her to settle back against the pillows and pulled the blanket up over her chest. But Laurel pushed back up again slightly as he made to step away.

“Ollie? You won’t leave, will you?”

There was something absolutely shattered in his gaze. And Felicity knew without question, it was his heart. Her eyes fell shut.

She could still hear his response. “No. Never.”

And he really never would. Not fully. For some part of Oliver, Laurel was always going to be the dream. That goal he single-mindedly strove towards. Why else would he have used Felicity, and not Laurel, as the bait for Slade? Why else had it been Laurel who had gotten through to him last year when he’d been intent on committing suicide? Even whenever he said he gave up on her, that was never really the case. And it never would be.

She had wondered for some time if his hesitance to begin a relationship with her had only been because of the dangers of being a vigilante. It had felt like such a ridiculous excuse to use when only hours ago he had been ready to start a relationship while being a vigilante and when she had been in danger plenty of times before. Perhaps, on some level, he was aware that he wasn’t fully committed, not when he still harbored feelings for Laurel. No matter who Oliver was with, Laurel was always going to be the woman he loved. Even if he claimed to love Felicity, too.

Why should she have to settle for that? Why would she want to?

Ray had been willing to say he loved her. Full stop. And she’d been too conflicted at the time to know her answer, but she could say for certain now that that was what she wanted. Someone whose past was in the past and who could commit himself fully to her.

If she wanted to be happy, history showed that long-term that didn’t seem to be something Oliver was capable of. Especially with his new role as Ra’s al Ghul looming over them all. Felicity could only be glad she’d wised up to that now rather than later. She wished she could be glad they had Laurel back now, too, but how much good was it if she’d lost a sizeable chunk of her own memory in the process?

The first thing she was doing if and when they got home was calling Ray. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage things.

—-

Disoriented didn’t cover her experience waking up. Laurel groaned, one hand going to her head and the other reaching blindly for her bedside table — which wasn’t there. She sat up, pillows flopping off the sides of a bed she didn’t recognize, in a room with stone walls and medieval-style decoration. Where in the world was she? She’d been at Oliver and Thea’s loft—

The loft. Ra’s.

Her hand left her head and instead felt around her neck, but there was nothing. No wound. The skin was completely smooth. But she had been cut.

Then was this…?

Before she could become too panicked over metaphysics, a large and heavy looking door swung open, with Oliver coming through it wearing some sort of robes.

“Hey, I’m here.”

“Okay.” She blinked, but he was still in the robes. That wasn’t necessarily a good sign that any of this was real. “Where’s here? And where’s Thea?”

He paused. Laurel felt faint.

“Is she okay?” Had she failed to protect her? How could she be alive if Thea was dead?

“She’s- she’s fine. I just don’t know if you — do you remember waking up earlier?”

Laurel shook her head slowly. “The last thing I remember is fighting Ra’s...I thought I died.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. You sort of did,” Oliver stated. “In a manner of speaking.”

Laurel stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“Ra’s mortally injured you in your fight. He sent Maseo to tell me that if I agreed to be his heir, he would use the Lazarus Pit here in Nanda Parbat to restore you to life.”

As crazy as that sounded, some of the details in their surroundings and the clothes he was dressed in were starting to make a horrible amount of sense. “Oliver, tell me you didn’t.”

“I had to.”

His tone wasn’t angry. He hadn’t even raised his voice. And yet, in this moment more than any other, she could tell just by the look in his eyes that there would be no room for argument.

There were running footsteps outside, and they both looked as Thea appeared in the doorway. She hung there a moment, something uncertain in her gaze.

“It’s okay,” Oliver told his sister. “She remembers.”

“Oh, thank God.” Thea ran up to her bedside and leaned over to hug her. “We were so worried about you!”

Laurel returned the embrace, grateful to see her unharmed, but looked over to Oliver for some sort of explanation as to Thea’s momentary hesitance.

“You woke up once and had some memory issues,” he said. “You’ve been asleep almost a whole day since then.”

A whole day. Thea released her and Laurel took a moment to rub at her temples with both hands while she processed just some of what she’d been told. Then it hit her.

“Nobody called off work for me, did they?”

Thea gave her an incredulous look which Oliver mirrored before letting out a short laugh.

“No. No, we forgot. Sorry.”

There was a light knock, and she looked to see John and Felicity in the open doorway. They walked further into the room, with John remarking, “Looks like you’re doing better.”

“You guys came, too?”

“Of course we did,” Felicity answered.

“We’re a team,” John agreed. “And the team needs to make some decisions right about now.”

Right, the League. Oliver.

“How long do you have before you officially become the heir?”

Most of the others exchanged a look, but Felicity spoke up. “Oh, no, they’re skipping over all of that entirely. He’s Ra’s al Ghul now.”

Laurel blinked. “Wait, what?”

Oliver’s eyes were more on the blankets than on her as he said, “When you came out of the Pit, you weren’t exactly yourself. And something happened. We’re not sure what.”

“Hopefully it doesn’t happen again,” John added.

“What do you guys mean?”

“Ra’s died,” Thea stated, and Laurel felt her mouth drop open. “Because, um, you attacked him. Not- not physically, just — it was like what you used in the loft, only more.”

What she’d used in the loft? The sonic choker Cisco had built her. She felt around her neck once more, but it wasn’t there. Yet they were saying Ra’s was dead. She had killed him.

She wondered dimly if this was how Thea had felt when she’d learned the truth about Sara. Try as she might, the memory just would not come. Why had she done it? And how?

“Thea, what are you talking about?” Oliver asked, breaking Laurel from her thoughts. “You’ve seen it before?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t think of it till just now. When we were fighting Ra’s, Laurel got out that choker and it could make this really loud noise.”

“It had one of Sara’s sonic devices attached to it,” she explained. “I asked Barry’s friend Cisco to rework them for me when he was in town a couple days ago. I hadn’t had the chance to use it in the field yet.”

“You weren’t wearing it when you went into the Pit,” John said. “And it wasn’t just noise that came out of your mouth. I mean, you could see it.”

“Sonic waves, visible to the eye,” Felicity stated. “At the close range you hit Ra’s with them, it was enough to kill him. Not that — no one’s blaming you for it, Laurel. I mean, we’re not even mourning him, really.”

“It just means that I’ve ascended the ranks of the League a little faster than I was expecting to,” Oliver said.

“Well, we can’t just leave you here to run the League,” she insisted.

Felicity nodded. “Yeah, that’s not happening. Worst case scenario, we find somebody for you to train up really fast to be the next heir.”

Oliver frowned. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen over a long weekend, guys.”

“Do we know if there’s other options for a Ra’s to step down?” John asked. “What if you abdicate?”

“To who?”

“I don’t know, you’re on pretty good terms with that Maseo guy,” Thea remarked. “Does it really matter?”

“Yes, it does,” Oliver replied. “If the last few years have been any indication, the League can have a serious impact on all our lives. To leave it in the wrong hands is only going to hurt us in the long run.”

That much was true. They were all quiet for some time.

“Nyssa,” Laurel blurted. “She’s trained for this role her entire life, and she’s a good person.”

Oliver thought that over. “It’s probably the best we can hope for. I’ll have to check if Maseo thinks the League will accept that. And Nyssa will have to come back to Nanda Parbat.”

“Let’s hope she wasn’t too attached to her dad,” John remarked, and Laurel felt her insides squirm unpleasantly. There was little excuse for it, but she kept forgetting that Ra’s was dead, and by her hand. It just sounded impossible. But he was dead, and there were consequences to deal with as a result.

One of those consequences might be losing yet another person in her life. Nyssa was her friend, and, horrible as he’d been, Laurel had killed her father. Would Nyssa even want to see her, let alone help them once she learned this?

“So, hypothetically, you could take the plane back with us to Starling since you would be on a mission to relocate Nyssa,” Thea said with a grin.

“I could probably swing that.” Oliver grew a little more serious as he addressed the whole group. “We need to be ready to move once I announce my decision to the League. I don’t want any complications. I’ll meet you four at the plane.” He paused and turned to her. “If you’re okay to move.”

“I think I am,” she answered. “I really don’t remember the Pit or- or anything you all have told me. But I feel fine.”

“Okay.” He helped her out of the bed, and as she left the warm blankets Laurel realized she must have been placed in one of Thea’s sweaters. A fair bit of her midriff was showing, and she couldn’t help wrapping her arms around herself as she stood in the cooler air of the room.

“Are you cold?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Oliver looked to John. “My jacket should be in the room with the rest of our stuff.”

John nodded. “Right.”

Laurel rolled her eyes. “I can make it to the plane.”

“Laurel, we didn’t know if you were going to live a day ago,” Oliver reminded her. “And considering we’re still not sure what exactly the Pit did, I don’t want to take any risks. Please?”

“Okay,” she agreed quietly. It was sweet of Oliver to be so concerned, though she’d have to be on guard for what qualified as risks. She wasn’t just giving up on being a part of the team, no matter how dangerous it was. What would be the point of getting her life back if she didn’t live it?

She followed Thea, John, and Felicity out of her room and down a corridor to the room they must have set up in to wait, where she was given back her shoes and handed Oliver’s jacket. It was a good deal warmer, and it provided a level of comfort hard to define. Mostly because she didn’t want to define it.

“If this all works out, we have gotten so lucky,” Felicity commented as she hefted a bag onto one shoulder. “I mean, again, I’m not saying I wanted you to have to kill Ra’s, but if he’d still been here to order Oliver around, I was going to have to do something drastic.”

“I just can’t believe he agreed to this at all.” Becoming Ra’s went against everything Oliver had been trying to accomplish since he’d left killing behind as the Arrow.

“Well, he didn’t feel he had any other choice.” Felicity had stopped moving around, and Laurel stopped as well. Her friend had an almost solemn look to her as she continued, “He really cares about you, you know?”

It took Laurel a moment to reply. “I know. He cares about everyone.”

Felicity smiled, but it wasn’t her usual bright one. “Yeah.”

“Everybody ready?” John asked from where he stood in the door. “Don’t want to get left behind in this labyrinth.”

“Definitely not,” Thea agreed. She reached out for Laurel’s hand, and Laurel took it while reaching back for Felicity as well, glad to see a reassured smile on her friend’s face at the touch.

John led the way out, and as they emerged she found herself blinking in unexpected sunlight. She hadn’t even known what time it was, and truthfully wasn’t entirely clear on what day it was, either. It was a rocky path down to the plane that they had to take, which Thea and Felicity seemed to feel she needed help navigating. As much as she could understand their worrying, Laurel knew it would only be a matter of time before she started to feel smothered.

They all stood around outside the plane, none of them wanting to board without Oliver, and after a while they spotted him jogging down the path back in his usual clothes. He looked far less weighed down in them than the League robes, she noted to herself.

“I’ve left Maseo in charge until Nyssa’s return. If she agrees,” he added. “I think she will.”

“We better hope she does, cause we don’t know too many other assassins.”

“Just Malcolm,” Laurel couldn’t help remarking with obvious distaste.

Oliver glanced down. “Actually, Malcolm’s not likely to be in the business of doing me any favors at the moment.”

Laurel crossed her arms. “No?”

“Ollie kind of let him have it before we left,” Thea revealed with smirk. “You should’ve seen it.”

She didn’t really know what to say. It had been such a blow when she’d realized he was willing to keep Malcolm around in spite of what they knew about his part in Sara’s death. Laurel hadn’t wanted to believe it of him; she’d felt as if her heart had broken with betrayal all over again.

Yet as he peeked up at her with his head still slightly ducked, she could see him again. The boy she’d once thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. The man she still, impossibly, loved.

“So...going home now?” Felicity asked, and it was hard not to jump a little as she came back to herself.

“Right,” Oliver agreed. “Let’s go.”

They all started to board. Laurel took one last look up the path towards Nanda Parbat, a place she had never really been to but defined such a huge portion of her life. And had consumed her sister’s.

“Oliver.” Laurel caught his sleeve, keeping her voice low as she said, “If this Lazarus Pit can bring people back from the dead…”

She didn’t even have to finish her thought. Oliver sighed. “I’m not sure using it again is a good idea until we know what the full effects of it on you are.”

The brief flare of hope she’d had for a moment cooled, but Laurel couldn’t necessarily argue with that. Emerging from the Pit had caused her to kill a man, and she wouldn’t want to subject Sara to something irreversible until they knew more. Yet still, in the event that there weren’t anymore side effects moving forward, there was possibly a way to fix things. To get her sister actual justice by undoing the injustice in the first place. That was enough to keep just the tiniest spark of hope alive for now.

She let Oliver show her up the steps and headed with him down an aisle. Laurel took the window seat and was only a little surprised when he placed himself next to her. As the plane started up and took off, she could spot him watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“Do I seem like a different person?”

He leaned back slightly. “You’re asking me?”

“You know me,” she replied.

Oliver sighed. “I don’t think so. When you first woke up, I thought maybe. But that seems to have cleared up since. We’ll just have to see.”

“What happened then?” Had she thought she was someone else? Had she still been violent like they said she was when she’d first come out of the Pit?

He shrugged. “You just thought it was about seven or eight years ago or something. Didn’t recognize Thea because you could only remember her from when she was younger.”

“Oh.” She tried to imagine what that would have been like, or what she would have been like, rather. “I didn’t say anything embarrassing, did I?”

Oliver gave a slow shake of the head. “Nothing comes to mind. Uh, but you did say you liked my hair.”

Laurel winced. “Did I?”

“Yeah.” They cleared some of the clouds, and Oliver allowed himself a smile. Across the aisle, she caught Thea watching them from her seat, a fond look on her face. Laurel turned her face towards the window instead.

“Laurel.” Oliver’s hand landed over hers on the armrest, and there was a slight hitch in her breath.

She kept her gaze on the clouds. “Yeah, Ollie?”

“I don’t know how to tell you how glad I am you’re still with us. And even if I had had to become the Heir, it was more than worth it.”

She glanced back at him. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do,” he insisted. His hand still rested over hers, and his fingers curled around it ever so slightly. “You are always worth it.”

Laurel felt a smile spread over her lips she had very little control over. “Well, so are you.”

Whatever else happened in their lives, that wasn’t going to change. She settled comfortably into her seat, happy to have just a few more quiet hours to spend with him and the others before seeing what awaited them next back home.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #thea queen #ra's al ghul #john diggle #felicity smoak #malcolm merlyn #maseo tamashiro #green arrow #black canary #my writing

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simonsoys · 6 years ago

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Feel like talking about where I’m at right now.

For the last few months I’ve been deeply unsatisfied with... everything.

I feel like most areas of my life aren’t as good as they should be, and it’s time to really do something about it. So, even though I’ve been stressed and unhappy for awhile now, I’m trying to set myself up to be in a position where I can make things better.

I like my new job, but it highlights my weaknesses in a way that no previous job has. As a result I’ve been lowkey angry all the time and constantly down on myself, when for the last few years I’ve managed to keep a pretty positive attitude. It’s painfully clear to me that I don’t love this field as much as my coworkers, even if I do like it and want to keep learning. Negative impressions of me by my supervisors has made it’s way to my ears, and that really tanked my morale. I work hard to meet deadlines, I stay late and come in on weekends. But I still feel like I’m struggling to keep up. I don’t totally know what to do about it except to hope that I’ll get the hang of it eventually.

In the meantime, I’ve had a harder and harder time getting any artwork done. I’m deeply motivated to do work, especially by the new monster game project I’ve got going on. But I hate most of the things I’ve been drawing. And it’s not that the work is bad, but it’s not coming out even close to what’s in my mind. I feel a total loss of control over what I’m making.

Regardless, I need to do some real hard work to improve my style. It’s been stagnant and safe for so long, something’s got to change. I’ll go draw under a waterfall for a few months and hopefully come back with some boss pieces to show everyone. I still want to draw lots of Sonic and Undertale. My interests haven’t changed, I just can’t make the things I want to right now.

I’ve been focused a lot on cleaning and cooking and getting into better daily habits. That made me realize I’m happier not being on the computer so much. The less time I spend on Tumblr and social media, the more awake I feel.

My real-world social life has been slowly crumbling, and I’ve realized that it’s mostly due to my own poor habits of isolating myself and never reaching out to other people. So, I’ve started looking for clubs and classes to join. I’ve applied to a gardening course + volunteer program, and I think it’ll do me a lot of good.

I made the realization the other day that I... don’t really think of myself as a person? That the only thing I value about myself is my output. What artwork or software do I make? What things can I buy others? Did I say something smart or new? Did I do someone a favor? It’s a really difficult idea for me that someone might like my company, and not just how quantifiably useful I am.

I think it’s the root reason why I have such a hard time initiating conversations, even with people I think seem cool and that I’d like to be friends with. But now that I’ve realized that about myself, I’ll work hard on changing it.

(BTW, I realized this as a result of trying to write two indulgent self-insert fanfics and having both franchises’ characters tell my proxy that this is not a normal or healthy way to view yourself. Never let anyone guilt you out of writing self-inserts, folks. lol)

By chance a few months ago, I happened to read some things about ADHD in women that resonated hard. So I started doing some research and reading books about it. I won’t self-diagnose just from reading a book, but it’s at least gotten me to realize that some of the things I’ve thought were normal for everybody or, at worst, personal character flaws for the last 20 years, might be bigger and need addressing.

So I’ve bought my own car! I spent a lot of time this past summer saving up money and shopping for cars. But this way I’ll be able to get myself to things that will help me. I want to go to that gardening course, and start exercising again. My next step is going to be finding a therapist to talk to, just to figure out how I need to change things and what help is available to me.

So. That’s why I’ve been quiet, and it’s why I’ll probably continue to be quiet for awhile. I just... needed to express this weird “frustrated and deeply unhappy but trying to fight it” emotion I’ve had for months now. It’s probably an incoherent mess lol. But whatever.

Really hope that by the time next year rolls around, I’ll be in a much, much better headspace.

#simon says a lot of things #long post #kind of negative #kind of not #i don't know #is 'i'm a mcfucking mess but it's within my power to fix it' an emotion

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underachievers-please-try-harder · 7 years ago

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Interview // Julien Baker

I interviewed Julien Baker for 7digital.

We finally saw you perform live this year, at Primavera Porto. Do you remember that show?

Oh my gosh yes! With the giant rainbow flag and the Antifa symbol behind me? That was amazing. I was really excited that so many people were there. I shared a set time with Bon Iver, which was heartbreaking because I love Bon Iver, obviously, who doesn’t? But I was like, “Oh man, if I were me I would not see Julien Baker, I’d go see Bon Iver.” And then there were actually people there and I was pretty stoked about it.

What was the story behind the stage set?

So they asked us about an hour before my set time, “What do you want for the LED screen?” And we were like, “The LED screen? What are you talking about.” And I said jokingly, “What if we put the Antifa logo and a giant rainbow flag?” It was kinda this stand off, like, are we serious? And then I walked back out from the dressing room and there was a two-storey rainbow flag with the anti-fascist symbol and I thought, “This is the only thing I would use my artist power for.” (Laughs) The pictures look a little crazy because it’s just me, so it kinda looks like I’m giving a propaganda speech about the queer, super-left. But it was pretty awesome.

Your debut album, Sprained Ankle, blew up seemingly out of nowhere. What were your expectations for the album, versus the subsequent reality?

Oh, so it could not be more night and day. I made it as a fun project with a friend from the music programme in school, and I put it on my Facebook with a link to Bandcamp, and I said, “This is $3, thanks pals.” And then Sean – who works at 6131 Records – got in touch with me and we re-released it, and I thought, “Ok, we’ll re-release it and then I’ll go back to doing my band, Forrester.” And he was like, “Well, we’re gonna hire a publicist.” And then the publicist called me and was like, “Oh, the song’s gonna be on NPR,” and I was like, “What are you talking about?! NPR?!” I remember the moment she told me that on the phone, and I was running up and down the aisles of the grocery store I was at doing errands, freaking out.

So it was all so wild. I had no expectations for [Sprained Ankle]. I’m still surprised, and I hope I always stay surprised. I never want to be entitled and I never want to be jaded; those are the two things I want to avoid most. And so with this new record, I’m amazed that people aren’t just like, “Sprained Ankle, we get it: that was good, we’ve moved on.” People still care, people come out to shows, and it’s a blessing and feels fresh and new to me every time.

When do the songs from Turn Out The Lights date back from?

So the songs were accrued and developed over a period of the last year and a half, because I’ve been touring pretty consistently. I would just make voice memos on my phone and listen to them in the car and piece together the demos, and then we recorded it all in just a week. For the first time, you had an expectant audience awaiting the new material.

How did that awareness affect Turn Out The Lights?

I think it definitely informed how I wrote. And that seems and off-limits thing to say sometimes for artists, because we want to believe that preserving artistic authenticity means denying the influence of the public on your work, because otherwise then it’s something artificial that’s created to garner success or to achieve something. But I think the difference is that I created this record knowing that there was a listenership in mind, but it less motivated me to change or censor myself, and motivated me to preserve the honesty of the first record. Because if that is what people connected with then I was so glad I shared those things that were maybe painful or questionable for me on the last record. So it convinced me that, whenever I had a line or a lyric that I was uncertain about, that it was the very thing that I had to keep in there.

As you said, on Sprained Ankle you shared some different experiences. Do you find that, in turn, fans share their stories with you?

Yeah. I like when people will give me anecdotes or sometimes people will write little letters. It’s always really neat to have a person tell me what the song means to them because they’re not wrong; there’s no world in which I can say, “The song’s not about that, it’s about this.” Jehnny Beth from Savages once was talking about this, like, once you put the song out there into the universe, the listener takes that and it means what it means to them because that’s their tool for coping. And that’s what I hope the music can be. Like, I hope my music is not this final product, where I make the art and then you consume it for what it is. I hope it’s more like a tool for other people to learn about themselves and heal.

Could you tell us about your lyrical approach for this new album?

I think I wanted to write about others in order to re-focus attention from the very idiocentric, self-contained nature of the first record, which was all about me and my thoughts and my feelings, and other people were characters in that, influencing how I felt. Touring this last record for two years, seeing audiences in all these cities across the globe and thinking, “Each of you contains this world of experience I’ll never know,” I stopped seeing myself as the central figure in a drama about me and my life, and wanted to try to make myself a character in a human drama that involves the exercise of empathy between two people, drawing in my friends as main characters and highlighting other people’s.

I want the record to be more accessible in that maybe I can act as a conduit for other people’s stories and other people’s voices, and then view my own issues... Because there are still songs that are really about me. Like, ‘Happy To Be Here’, that’s about my thoughts, but it’s within context of knowing I’m not the only person in the world. So I hope that even those songs that are about me can contribute to being in somebody else’s arsenal of coping, you know?

‘Hurt Less’ finds you moving from being self-destructive to hopeful. Can you tell us more about the song?

Usually I think that when people comment about the honesty or the brutal nature of the songs it’s often because in real life things are sad and maybe there’s not a happy ending. ‘Hurt Less’ is actually a song where there is a moment of explicit hopefulness. And sometimes I think we fall into this trap of thinking that hope or joy or a positive message is always trite because it’s not realistic. But hopefully this is an instance where it is realistic.

For a long time I was riding around in the car with my friends when I was a self-destructive, crazy teenager, and would not wear a seat belt because being reckless is what you do. But being irresponsible with yourself and your body and not caring about the repercussions five years down the line shows a lack of hopefulness for what that five years entails. So I have these memories of being with friends and just wanting to be in the car, and be comforted by each other’s presence and deriving some hope from relating to a song on the radio in the car. And I found myself being more inclined to wear a safety belt because hearing about that person’s experience reminds me I’m not the only thing in my world. And it’s worth it to protect myself and take myself seriously because I have implications on their life.

Can you tell us about ‘Sour Breath’? It’s about a dysfunctional relationship, right?

So it is about a dysfunctional relationship but not faulting the other person. I think another thing that I discovered about Sprained Ankle is there were songs that were sort-of about dysfunctional relationships or dynamics within a romantic endeavour, but as is typical with break-ups they seem to be self-pitying and faulting the other person. And I started thinking there’s no right and wrong party in the endeavour of love.

So in ‘Sour Breath’, the last part that says, “The harder I swim, the faster I sink,” is just me saying here is a thing that I’m dealing with – my anxiety or my mental health – and it seems like the harder I try to get better, the worse that I appear to do. Knowing that that impacts the other person and loving them, wanting to be able to give something to them but not being able to give when you have nothing left inside of yourself. And so to me that song is a straight-forward appraisal of what it feels like to recognise you’re struggling with mental health in a relationship and how maybe you’re the party at fault – maybe you’re not healthy for them – and how painful it can be to sever that relationship.

Arrangements are less stripped-back than on your debut. What was the goal sonically for the record?

The songs that I like most are songs that maybe have a lot of moving parts but if you stripped them back to just melody and the poetry of the lyrics they would still stand as great songs. So that’s something that I tried to preserve, writing great songs that would be fine and beautiful solely as they are, but then not being afraid to embellish them or to experiment and grow.

I think that just having a comfortable environment and recording with an engineer who I’d known since I was 13, really empowered me to say, “Let’s try organ on this song.” I had a dear, dear friend Camille play violin, and it felt like natural jamming, letting the arrangements build. I had more tools at my disposal this time and I wanted to really see what we could put in there to serve the song.

Despite more involved arrangements, you’ve preserved the intimacy of your sound.

Oh cool! Good. See, that’s what I wanted to do because I think I was a lot more meticulous about the lyrics. I would pour out all the raw material into my notebook or a draft and then I would go back and move the lines along, but I didn’t want it to come across as too purple or complex. I wanted to allow myself to grow as a lyricist without it coming off as too literary or dense, and so I hope that it still preserves the immediacy of Sprained Ankle. Because when I listen back to those songs I’m like, “These are really simple.”

What have you learned in the making of Turn Out The Lights?

Kind of going back to what I was talking about the concept of trying to achieve a removal of sorts, but the same is true with the creative process. Maybe it’s because this is how I grew up: being in the DIY scene shows are always about everyone in attendance –the performer and the audience together – so it’s never a spectacle centred around attention for one person, or glory or recognition. But I think that this record has been a lot about finding interesting ways to collaborate, finding ways to get out of the way so that other people’s voices can be heard, their talents can be highlighted. It feels hard at the beginning to let people in and let them take your idea and do something else with it, but it’s relieving to let your ego go, and to make much of others rather than make much of yourself.

#interview #interviews #julien baker #matador #turn out the lights #sprained ankle #7digital

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diegest · 5 years ago

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2010 V.S. 2019

Age 15 and almost 25

(This is long a messy but I wanted to make some kind of post about it before the year ends.)

I was making a stink face bc my then best-friend was over and said something funny before she took the picture and afterwards we busted out laughing. We were at my then step-dads parents house out in the country walking down to their creek either just getting done swimming in their pool or intending to get in it after going to the creek.

I was most likely a freshmen or sophomore at the time of this picture. (Probably right before sophomore year started...) It was definitely during Summer. I either had a flip Nokia phone or an LG Neon at the time as I upgraded from one to the other. I had my first “job.” I was a veterinary assistant after school for a few hours a day and did some work out there during Summer as well. I wasn’t paid and used my time as a volunteer to play with animals, hold them down for simple procedures, walked dogs, and it helped me gauge whether or not I wanted to actually pursue being a veterinarian. I had competed in track for 6 years in a row by this point and was probably finished with it by the time this picture was taken. (Two Elementary School leagues, all three years of Middle School, freshmen year of High School). I was crushing HARDCORE on my childhood best friend whom I’ve known since the age of 6 but neither of us could handle our feelings for the other and things would become super awkward until we had actually dated 7 years later. I was tan as hell because of track practice, walking to both pools in town, and walking to Sonic with friends during sleepovers.

I was struggling trying to find my identity as a teenager while maintaining being in the middle of my parents joint custody battle and being forced to be 100 miles away from my friends two weekends out of the month. I was a cynical older sister of two step-brothers and did not use my time with them as wisely as I wish I could have, sometimes being a real bitch to them looking back at it. I had no control over my hair color or length and remember desperately wanting to layer it to look like a scene kid despite how naturally thin it is. I had just started dabbling in eye liner (not pictured, as I preferred and still prefer my poolside activities over makeup), wore converse every day I wasn’t wearing flip flops for the season, wore baggy jeans, the same Paramore hoodie daily, and had an extreme creative drive that I miss deeply. I was bullied horribly for my teeth, nose, skin (I had terrible eczema that pool water, cortisone shots, and Summer weather in general helped tremendously with!), height, cup size, fashion, hobbies, having split parents, and then some. My metabolism was extremely high and I was in my athletic prime. I had a touch of internet fame by drawing my own personal characters on deviantArt.com as well as fan art for games and shows I was super into using my first Wacom tablet on my first laptop and to this day still have a folder of fan art created for me on my computer. I was obsessed with cats, rock music, anime, and drawing. I could drive a boat and got both a high five as well as scolded for that time I flipped myself into the water to retrieve my dads hat while we were going full speed over white-caps because I was too impatient for him to circle around and wanted to impress him and the rest of the family. I was for the most part unafraid of most things.

I was secretly extremely depressed and suicidal during the school year to the point I had missed my period for 5 months because of stress alone and I’m certain at the time this picture was taken, I was almost breathing a sigh of relief I was off from school for the summer. I had a close knit group of friends still before it had combust the following school year. I was “working” as a veterinary assistant but also had interests in pursuing being an animator, art director, cartoonist, children’s book illustrator, or graphic designer by this point and my mom encouraged me to pursue whatever I was comfortable with. I wasn’t really boy crazy like my friends were, instead having my heart set on one in particular and probably still having a soft spot for my ex whom I was with for 3 years prior. My bedroom contained my artwork, sports posters, cat posters, band posters, and trophies/medals from my days running track. My friend and I, though not legally allowed to drive, would occasionally sneak to Taco Bell using her parents car if they weren’t home and we never got caught or pulled over for it. My grades were A’s and B’s, though I could not pay attention in History to save my life because I was too preoccupied with doodling on my papers and ignoring this asshole who was two classes above me who had called me ugly but then admitted he liked me at one time because of my attitude?? He’s still an idiot from what I’ve heard only he’s an idiot who knocked up a few women post-high school, is apparently married now, and no surprise to me - is still stuck in that same small town with no goal to go anywhere outside of it.

I was scared of the outside world beyond my small town and had no idea how rough it would get for me. The family issues and my trip to family court had not happened yet. I had yet to become estranged from my family. I was small and awkward as hell. I struggled to hold conversations or make eye contact unless it was with people I felt most familiar with since people were kinda fucking mean. I could argue back but would immediately break down and cry from the interaction at the first chance I’d get. I’d use books, art, and video games for the escapism. Life felt scary and fragile and so very uncertain but at least I had a few individuals in the world whom I loved so much and who I know loved me.

I’m 24 now. I’m now in control over my own hair cut and color. I choose to keep it long as I didn’t even like the way it looked short when I finally chopped it as a teenager. It’s been red, reddish blonde, blonde on top and brown on the bottom, dark brown to blonde ombré, and now platinum blonde with my natural color as a shadow root and I quite like it. I don’t really dabble in makeup unless it’s for an occasion except for covering up my acne as my body decided that having zero acne in my teen years was just too good for me while I was battling eczema instead. I’m not nearly as tan or athletic as I’m forced to be inside at most times. I still love to swim though and I take every opportunity to go to my childhood beach during the Summer when I can in particular. I still don’t consider myself to be family-oriented despite this year really challenging that for me. I have a ton of amazing friends and people who care about me and feel like recently in particular, I’m always busy with someone doing something and making memories as we do whatever.

I have a bachelors in Psychology and a minor in Art, though I did not pursue a masters in art therapy like I had originally intended. I was heavily burnt out from school and my baby brothers worsening medical conditions and the news that he had been in a children’s hospital for quite some time with my family deliberately choosing not to tell me made me choose not to pursue one for the time being. I was working at Dairy Queen while technically sharing a lease with my ex before finding a job at a psychiatric hospital that I loved and getting my own apartment to myself and my cat, whom my ex gave to me as he saw she benefited me more than she benefited him. Though I lost that job, I can now say I have two years of field experience in Psychology and almost 6 months worth in social work and feel like I’m always learning something.

I’m not as creative anymore because the years of crippling depression, anxiety, and being forced to create for school absolutely ruined any creativity I had once had. Though occasionally I’ll have the opportunity to channel that creativity into a video game or quick doodle for a child.

I’ve moved to two cities after moving out of my high-school “home” town (not quite home but a good chunk of my upbringing!) and have every intention of doing it again within the next year after I save up some. I don’t take shit from anyone and have taken after the best parts of my moms personality in my opinion with the added benefit of my dads patience and keen eye. I’m known for making people around me comfortable and able to laugh and decompress and have been fortunate enough to use that power professionally. I would like to go back to mental and behavioral health as I miss the thrill and excitement as well as the camaraderie with fellow staff members in the pursuit of helping individuals. I’m very likely starting a new position in my company as early as next week and have been extremely excited about the pay and hour boost. I’ll be getting my dog in just over two weeks and am excited to start our life journey together. Though I had developed my moms serial-monogamist trait for a while there after my 6 year-long relationship had ended in the pursuit of finding someone to fill that gap, I feel very comfortable lately simply being pursued and wanted without the commitment. I’m addicted to sushi bowls, coffee, and chocolate. My passion is helping others. I feel comfortable in my body enough that I would love to pursue modeling of some sort and have been lucky enough to dabble in that a bit already. I also have a bit of a love for fashion now, though I rarely feel the urge to actually properly plan my outfits unless my goal is to dress to impress or for the sake of photography.

I’ve learned to allow myself to enjoy the things I enjoy without the fear of judgement from others. I still love nerd-culture and have somewhat recently taken an interest in cosplay and want to attend more conventions. I’ve learned that it’s an accomplishment for me to have gotten this far, to have my own place, and that it’s alright that I don’t have everything figured out and not everything has to be figured out right away. I don’t have the same best friend I had 10 years ago, but we’re still in contact and I love my current best friend tremendously though I don’t get to see him often. I’ve learned that my current group of friends may be temporary, but while I’m lucky enough to be around them I’m going to do what I can to make them feel as loved and cherished as possible and make plenty of memories. Ivy and I are doing well and I know we will continue doing well even with Atticus by our side. I value traveling way more and will continue to travel and see new things when I’m able to. Eventually I’ll narrow down a Masters program and go back to school when I feel ready. I might even work alongside my brother at some point as we had talked about working on a project together and I’m pretty excited. This is getting really really long oops

I also just look dope as all hell with blonde hair and have gotten the notoriety of being “that blonde girl who wears the leather jacket” and I’m beyond thrilled about this. I’ve come a long way and I’m proud of myself. It’s hard to believe that lanky, tan, dark haired, greasy-headed kid is me but I think she’s come a long long way and I’m genuinely proud of her for doing so and not ending things when she’s had the opportunity. Here’s to 10 more years of careful and concise progress and glow-ups~

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latveriansnailmail · 8 years ago

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OC meme answers

Filling out the previous post.

1. Your first OC ever? The earliest character I remember making was an armored flamethrowing bad guy named Cinder. I made him to be an antagonist for my brother's OC. Cinder is an industrial saboteur in his current incarnation. 2. Do you have a personal favourite among your OCs? I am probably most fond of Nick Chapel, Psychic Detective. 3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else? Several. A good handful of my characters were PCs in tabletop games I ran. 4. A character you rarely talk about? The less developed they are, the less I talk about them. 5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be? I have several favorites but I think the world would get the most milage out of Man Man. He always manages to be in the wrong despite his best intentions. 6. Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related? There are trends. Open shirts. Facial hair. Tattoos. Sunglasses. No capes. 7. Are your OCs part of any story or stories? I'm building fuel for several stand alone books set in a common universe. 8. Do you RP as any of your OCs? If you do, introduce one of your RP OCs here! Nick Chapel and Swingin' Johnny Go both began as Old World of Darkness characters. Nick was my Gangrel and Johnny was an Ecstatic mage. 9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else? I would give back what I have borrowed. I might lend an OC if said OC was already well established and characterized. 10. Introduce an OC with a complicated design? What, visually? Probably Upside Downe is the most complicated because he's more of a celebrity (of the modern fashion) than a superhero. As such his look varies from day to day but is always flamboyant. In his early conception I took some inspiration from Dennis Rodman. Nowadays he's closer to Red Foo. 11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”? Maybe el Constrictador. 12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot I tend to be drawn to any character who is a fanatic or a literal angel, preferably both at the same time. 13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs? Lady Angst is true to her name. 14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory I try to stay away from that trope since it's done into the ground in the superhero genre (see women in refrigerators.) That said, I suppose Maxine Force has seen some tragedy of late; her husband died suddenly and painfully, Maxine tried to transfer his consciousness into an AI, and then said AI was overwritten and appropriated by enemy agents, resulting in a twisted android mockery of a good man. 15. Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people? AD INFINITUM 16. Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)? Definitely Professor Pinnacle though Man Man is a close second. 17. Any OC OTPs? Lady Angst/Swingin' Johny Go, as well as Zapatta the Mystic/Maid Malice 18. Any OC crackships? Idano, I guess Nick and Melanie Plutarch. That's going nowhere. 19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why) I'm still working on this character but Quanta is based on a teacher I respect. 20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)? The Fat Lady is a coloratura and an amazing improvisational singer, though she tends to shatter all glass in the vicinity. Johnny is the front man of a swing band and can also use his sonic powers to manifest music but he says it's just not the same as a live performance. 21. Your most artistic OC Again, Johnny. In addition to singing and playing, he crafts string instruments semi-professionally. 22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how? I have to be very deliberate in my depiction of Solomon King. He's a guy wearing a flag so I have to be clear with his characterization and his ideals, or else people would just project their personal politics on him. 23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like? Thorn was originally just some generic beefy white dude in his 20s with plant powers. The current Doctor Thorn is 50 or older, a genius botonist, black, an amputee, and very cynical owing to the public's past reception of his race. Hell, public's not crazy about him right now. 24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why? I would meet the Stregga Sisters so I could ask what their deal is. I need to develop them. 25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?) As a younger man, that would most closely be Johnny but now I'm turning 39 and I identify more with Nick. We both prefer classic movies. 26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will? I was confronted with how 7 out of 7 of my most significant American figures were all male so I gender-swapped Maxwell Force into Maxine. S/he's more interesting now. I have plenty of female characters (close to half) and a loooot of female second bananas but the lack of female leadership is still something I'm struggling with. 27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song? Actually, the first plot scenario and its main perpetrators came to me in a dream, complete with a rap song. So in particular Edifice Wrex is the rapper of my dreams. 28. Your most dangerous OC? DEFINITELY the Chokester. Imagine the Joker crossed with Venom and classically trained in traditional European buffoonery. 29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going? Several, really. Nick, Zapatta... Lady Angst would live cast it. 30. Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animal collection? La Nina maybe. Of course life on the road would mean nowhere to keep it... 31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really) Let me point out that I myself have been involved with goth culture since about 1995. That said, Lady Angst is heavily involved with social media and reblogs all the most ridiculously stereotypical goth stuff with plenty of vaguebooking thrown in as she bemoans her personal situation and throws shade at people in the community. She has the worst kept secret identity in the whole long underwear game. 32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why? Spiderbite Emma is a pragmatic survivor. Plus she can turn people into wolves so she's got that going for her. 33. Your shyest OC? I've gathered many brazen personalities, them being superheroes and all. That said, probably Catfight. Her anthro-feline body is a constant target for unwanted attention. 34. Do you have any twin characters? Not at this time. 35. Any sibling characters? Reveal: Angst and Emma are sisters! Don't tell no one. Be cool. I'm still cooking the Force family but there's the young adult Gail Force and the tween Maxwell (found a new use for that name.) 36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else (siblings, lovers, friends etc)? Nope. 37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human Like all of them. I just got finished fleshing out a OC who's a sasquatch, Professor "Squatcho" Henderson. 38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer? For all her flaws, sucking at dancing is not among Lady Angst's failings. Zapatta is two thousand years old and lascivious so he can probably cut a rug. For that matter and for similar reasons Santacles would know every winter folk dance there is. 39. Introduce any character you want I have a fondness for the Keeper, a combo speedster/tank. She’s Britain’s most popular hero, goalkeeper themed, and seven and a half feet tall. She was born out of some RPG build experiments, the idea being that her low end cosmic awareness tells her what’s happening, her speed helps her intervene, and then her thick skin absorbs the hit. 40. Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share In my early 20s I used to hang out at night with friends of mine in the local all night diner, drinking unlimited coffee, playing games, eating the breakfast buffet, etc. We were all either just out of college or just out of high school and we were all commiserating our bleak futures. I would sketch and color a character pic every night. Most of those characters are scrapped now but a few (like Sonofagun) have made the cut. The pictures got moldy in storage, sad to say. 41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or two here (remember sources & permissions!) See above. 42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods? Many of them ARE Greek gods. My Mary Sue, Mail-man would be most genuinely interested. 43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confess See above, #6. 44. Something you like about your OCs in general They are diverse and few have anything stereotypical about them. They are all their own people. 45. A character you no longer use? NEVER ASK ME ABOUT STEVE 46. Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly? Nah. I'm so wary of fridging characters that I don't heap much abuse on them. Plus, there's a revolving door on death. 47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child? As I've said, some are on permanent loan from their player parents. 48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure Nah. Maybe Catfight. She's trying to get into Man Man's crew and it's going to be disastrous. 49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes Probably Magnum Opus. 50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want Top Rocker of Earth has a passing similarity to Lobo in that both are cosmic bikers and general nasty asskickers but in truth Top draws most from Terrax the Tamer. If you want, you can tag your ask answers with #yetanotherOCmeme so I can check them out too `v´9

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chasingthecosmos · 5 years ago

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Call Me But Love

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: T Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Twelfth Doctor/Rose Tyler (The Doctor/Clara Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswald) Chapters: 16/40 Read on AO3 here.

“‘Oh, dear. Looks like we might have picked up an extra passenger,’ the Doctor grumbled to himself. His gaze raised to Rose’s once more and she was struck by the sheer intensity of it and the way that he managed to look at once so familiar, and yet so different from what she was used to. ‘Best find something to hold on to,’ he warned her ominously.”

A Season 8 & 9 AU centering around Rose Tyler and her newly-regenerated Doctor as they both struggle to maintain their relationship in the face of some unknown force that seems to be drawing them together. Will they be able to solve the mystery of who is pulling the strings before it’s too late?

This is a direct sequel to “By Any Other Name” and might be a bit confusing if you haven’t read that first. Tags will be updated as I go.

With Rose and the Doctor both attempting to avoid their inevitable return to Coal Hill School and the many issues and questions still surrounding the mundane place, they slipped easily back into their routine of distracting themselves from the glaringly pressing matters at hand.

Still, they stayed close to Earth in an attempt to at least appear as though they weren't running from their problems, and they ended up in the middle of Bristol, where they were forced to hunt down a group of aliens from another dimension that were slowly picking people off of a council estate. The aliens' dimensional meddling also meant that the Doctor and Rose had lost the function of their time ship, and the Doctor was regrettably trapped inside of a rapidly-shrinking TARDIS.

"This is weird," Rose stated definitively as the Doctor carefully passed her his sonic screwdriver and psychic paper through the small opening that was left between them. "Wait, does this mean I'm you now?"

"No, it does not," the Doctor insisted vehemently. "So don't get any ideas!"

But it had been a while since Rose had been forced to face an alien threat alone, and with her bondmate tucked tight against her side and his thoughts humming just inside of her mind, it was difficult not to get a little into character.

You're enjoying this way too much, the Doctor reminded her pointedly as she led her new companion, Rigsy, on a search through the missing peoples' apartments.

And he is not your new companion, by the way, the Doctor continued insistently. You are not bringing him back on the TARDIS with you.

So you're going to be giving me marks, now, are you? Rose asked irritatedly. It's not the first time we've worked apart, you know. I know what I'm doing.

Just ... be careful, the Doctor replied nervously. I don't like not being able to be there with you.

Rose wordlessly reassured him that everything was going to be fine while at the same time expressing her own remorse at not being able to have the Doctor's comforting presence constantly at her side.

However, her confidence at being able to handle the situation faltered somewhat when the TARDIS's song faded into silence on a weak, defeated whimper, and she could feel the Doctor's desperation as reality began to collapse all around him. After that, it was simply a matter of Rose using their enemies' powers against them - a trick that she was proud to admit that she had learned from the Doctor over the years.

When they were finally reunited at long last, Rose could feel the dark turn to the Doctor's thoughts as he glared after the three remaining people who they had managed to save and silently counted all of the ones that they hadn't.

"You saved the whole world, Doctor," Rose reminded him quietly. "Again. It wasn't just them - it was all of us."

"I didn't do anything," the Doctor insisted begrudgingly, flashing Rose a small, humorless smile as he turned back to face her. "You did." You were brilliant, he added silently as he slowly met her gaze.

Learned from the best, Rose reminded him with a wide, satisfied smile.

No, the Doctor admonished her stubbornly. No, Rose Tyler - no one has ever had to teach you that. You've always been brilliant.

Rose could feel her heart fluttering at his words, but she rolled her eyes teasingly in his direction as she muttered wryly, Flatterer.

The Doctor responded with one of her favorite wide, boyish grins that did nothing at all to help regulate Rose's erratic pulse as he took her hand in his and led them both back into the TARDIS once more.

--------------------

When the Doctor and Rose landed again, it soon became quite clear that the TARDIS was refusing to allow them to outrun their problems any longer as a young girl in a Coal Hill uniform promptly greeted them and welcomed them into an impossibly thickly-forested Trafalgar Square.

"Are you the Doctor and Miss. Oswald? I came here looking for Miss. Oswald and her Doctor. Mr. Pink told me to," the young girl declared resolutely.

"Mr. Pink?" the Doctor repeated incredulously, his eyes immediately narrowing into a suspicious glare as he glanced from the girl, to the surrounding trees, and back again.

"Are you lost, dear?" Rose asked, bending down close to the child and attempting a slightly softer approach. "Could you tell us your name?"

"I'm Maebh," the young girl replied brightly. "You are Miss. Oswald, aren't you? I thought that Mr. Pink was looking for you, but it wasn't him. It was just in my head."

"Maebh!" They all glanced up in unison when Mr. Pink himself suddenly burst through the foliage just ahead of them, a small group of children following in his wake and staring up at the TARDIS with wide, curious eyes.

"Clara?" Danny suddenly added in quiet disbelief as he immediately seemed to forget about his lost pupil and narrowed his eyes instead on Rose and the Doctor.

"Danny!" Rose greeted him as brightly as she could, though her smile felt strained as she straightened once more to face him. "What are you doing out here?"

"I could ask the same of you! Where have you been?" Danny hissed in retaliation. Rose's smile suddenly felt even more forced as she nervously noted the group of children around them whispering scandalously and the Doctor's deep, poisonous glare that he was leveling on the two of them as Danny stepped closer to her and continued agitatedly, "What happened to you, Clara? You said you'd be right back to explain, and then you just ... disappeared for weeks! We all thought that something had happened to you!"

"Sorry, Danny - really I am. Time just ... got away from me," Rose muttered lamely, unable to directly meet his eye as she awkwardly lied to him. Even if she could properly explain where she and the Doctor had disappeared to, she wasn't about to divulge any information about the date that she had shared with her husband in private, and she was too ashamed to admit that the two of them had been avoiding Danny and Coal Hill ever since.

"When are you going to stop lying to me?" Danny demanded, rolling his eyes at her and throwing his hands in the air in frustration. "Clara, we were really, really worried! We called the police and everything, but they weren't any help."

"Danny, I'm sorry," Rose repeated earnestly, meeting his gaze evenly so that he would know that she wasn't lying this time. "That's the truth. But right now, we need to figure out what's going on here, don't you think?"

She had spent over a century with the Doctor, but all of a sudden Rose was nineteen again and having to explain to her mum why she had mysteriously disappeared for an entire year with no phone call or explanation as to where she had gotten off to. Rose had thought that when she left her remaining family behind in the parallel universe that she was done with having to constantly come up with these silly explanations and excuses, but it seemed that they simply came hand-in-hand with being a part of the Doctor's life.

Danny glanced warily over Rose's shoulder and his expression darkened as his gaze landed on the Doctor, who was still glaring at the two of them from beneath those severe brows of his with a menacing scowl twisting his features. "Don't know what you two think you can do about all of this," Danny murmured under his breath, his gaze rising to glance pointedly at the thick foliage that was currently creating a thick green canopy over their heads.

"Luckily, I've got something for that," Rose replied, grinning widely as she slowly backed up towards where the Doctor was still glowering at Danny with his arms crossed tight across his chest. "Everyone, this is the Doctor," Rose announced loudly, quickly attracting the attention of the small group of children who were hovering loosely around them, "and he's going to sort everything out. Isn't that right, Doctor? It's what he does."

The Doctor finally seemed to shake himself out of his dark mood as he warily eyed the trees growing up all around them and replied matter-of-factly, "Well, having looked at things, I think, probably, the answer to that is no."

"He always says that," Rose assured the children confidently. "He's really clever."

"Doesn't look very clever, Miss ..." one of the children muttered suspiciously as they watched the Doctor begin to dart from tree to tree and start carefully inspecting the bark and branches, sometimes even reaching out and tasting them with his tongue when his hands and eyes simply weren't good enough.

"Yes, I agree," Danny piped up pointedly. "I think we should leave all of this for the professionals to deal with. Meanwhile, we need to focus on getting all of these kids home."

"Don't worry. It's a thing he does," Rose assured them all breezily, "he pretends he's not interested, and then he has an idea. He's playing for time."

"'Time' ..." the Doctor repeated thoughtfully, turning back to Rose with a wide, unfocused gaze as his thoughts ran off ahead of him and skirted across the many dangerous possibilities that lay before them. "Interesting."

"See?" Rose insisted brightly, flashing the entire group a bright, winning smile. "Clever kicking in."

However, the realization that the Doctor quickly landed on did nothing at all to reassure any of them, and they quickly discovered that they were in for far more than they had bargained for in their fight against the trees.

--------------------

The Doctor and Rose stood high above her home planet and watched in silent awe as a giant ball of fire consumed the great, green orb below, harmlessly engulfing it for a few moments before it burned up and quickly dissipated back into nothingness once more.

I'm so sorry, Rose, the Doctor muttered bitterly as they watched the oceans and land masses on the planet below slowly begin to resurface through the green haze as the protective layer of foliage began to dissolve and fade away. How many times have I made you watch your planet burn?

Rose stepped forward and took his nearest hand firmly in both of her own, her fingers clenching his tightly as she quietly reminded him, "It's your planet too, Doctor." And as long as it needs saving, I plan to be there to help you.

She could feel the Doctor's thoughts flicker for just the barest fraction of a second back to Gallifrey, but he forcefully cut the thought off as he drew her close and buried his nose in her hair, drowning his concerns in the soft familiarity of her scent. He pressed a light kiss to the skin of her temple and silently filled her mind to overflowing with a deep sensation of love and gratitude.

"Do you think you'll ever try and go back?" Rose asked curiously as she continued to stare down at the tiny world that she had once called home. She didn't need to speak the name of Gallifrey out loud for the Doctor to immediately understand the point to her question. He had mentioned an interest in attempting to find his time-locked planet back before he had regenerated, but Rose had never been certain as to his true thoughts on the matter. Did he even want to go back? Could he go back? Would he ever be able to face all of the people and problems that he had buried and left behind there?

"Nah, there's a reason that I left, you know," the Doctor reminded her off-handedly, "it's terribly boring."

But their two minds were one through their telepathic bond, and Rose felt the Doctor's pain as her own as he thought back to the many terrifying possibilities that surrounded his home planet. Not only was he too ashamed of his own cowardice to attempt to return and face his problems head-on, but he was also reluctant to drag Rose back into that war and conflict that surrounded his home once more. In fact, he quite intent on keeping her as far away from Gallifrey as possible, and no amount of nostalgia or homesickness would ever be enough to make him change his mind about that.

Besides, the Doctor reminded her, pointedly steering their combined, steadily-darkening thoughts into a more cheerful direction, I already have all the home I'll ever need.

He squeezed her fingers to emphasize his point as they both took one last look at planet earth below and Rose leaned her head affectionately against his shoulder.

"We still have to go back down there, you know," Rose reminded him quietly. "We're not done yet."

"What do you mean?" the Doctor asked, confused. "Trees gone, solar flares over, Earth saved. Did I forget something?"

"Danny," Rose explained simply. "I think he's owed a few explanations, Doctor. I mean, we did just ditch him the last time. We can't do that again."

"No?" the Doctor grumbled petulantly.

"No," Rose insisted stubbornly. "Don't worry, you don't have to come. Not unless you want to, anyway. But I need to tell him goodbye, at least. I owe him that much."

I'll take you back and drop you off, the Doctor replied, sighing heavily in resignation as he led her back into the TARDIS and closed the doors behind him. But I am not going to try and explain myself to that pudding brain.

Ah, Doctor - just as humble and forgiving as ever, Rose muttered wryly as he finally dropped her hand and circled around the console before her. "Pudding brain" isn't any better than "ape", by the way, she added pointedly. Aren't we past these silly little nicknames?

Well, you certainly know how to pick them ... the Doctor responded moodily as he began flipping levers and pushing buttons to program their return journey to the earth below.

Well, I picked you didn't I? Rose reminded him pointedly.

"Oi!" the Doctor protested irritatedly, his gaze rising to glare at her from across the console. I picked you, he insisted silently.

"Whatever you say, dear," Rose murmured appeasingly. "Whatever you say."

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