#but her old theme was still incorporated into the game and i'd say that's bc she was still dealing with the guilt of her past actions

[akimojo]

is it too niche if i say i can't stop thinking about how hope is a pretty major character in lightning returns and yet he doesn't have his own official lr theme? and how i'm 100% interpreting that as a nod to how his grasp on himself/reality was so muddled up as a result of the torture bhunivelze put him through that trying to define his lr character with a theme would've been fruitless bc of the blank slate he had been turned into?

[directdogman]

Did you take inspiration for Karen's last from the FNaF trilogy? I was reading The Twisted Ones and there's a guy named Officer Dunn

Nah, not consciously, though I have read FNaF:TSE and remember the character. I'd honestly believe it was the case though if I didn't happen to remember the exact process that caused me to end up with the surname. It'd be out of character for me to base a DT character name off a fictional character (real world names are fair game/referenced in many names in DT!)

I kinda wanted to give a main character a surname that's also a colour to reference the fact that the main datables have consistent palettes and a nod to the fact that DT uses colour theory all over the game (with grouped colour themes/vibrant weird palettes on different screen bgs.) Hell, it's basically a trope in fiction to give characters surnames based on colours that correspond to (or suit) them somehow, take Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, say, a show that goes p ham with its colour theory (namely consistently incorporating it into names/costume design.) Anyway, i briefly considered 'Cyan' as Randy's surname (bc cyan is the base colour for teal, which is the colour of Randy's head, and cygnus means swan, which contains several of the same letters) but, the word 'cyan' is fairly commonly mispronounced by people who've never heard it said aloud (and when people do say the word right, they still sometimes tend to switch which syllable is stressed, at least in my experience hearing people say it) and I figured Randy deserved a surname that everyone can read the same way first time. The poor guy has enough confusion going on in his life without people misreading his name!

So, I brainstormed a colour based surname for Karen (already having most of the others decided at this point afaik), with the aim of maybe using an autumnal colour to match her palette (orange, beige, cream, brown) and then decided to look up 'surnames that mean colours' and voila, 'Dunn' came up on a long list, derived from 'donn', irish gaelic for brown. Also, sounds like 'done'. Like "so, so done." Relates to a colour in her palette (her printer head is brown) and there's a separate pun built in that suits her dilemma (working a job she HATES.) It was a no-brainer for sure.

Y'know, funnily enough, this isn't even the first time I've seen people assume I lifted a DT character name from FNaF. Hell, I've seen folks theorize that I lifted Marla's (Callum Crown's deceased + (formerly) long-suffering wife) name from the identically named character in that very same FNaF novel series, when I actually picked it bc the name is a variant of Marlene, which is in turn derived from Mary Magdalene from biblical canon.

There's biblical symbolism in DT's canon surrounding Crown and his inner circle (y'know, with the whole failed messiah schtick + him helping the disabled walk again with his prosthetics) and Marla's name is an extension of it. Magdalene is notable in biblical canon for being the one woman Jesus consistently traveled with (y'know, like Marla, the one woman in Crown's (quite typically) male-dominated cabinet) and also the fact that Magdalene was allegedly the first to witness Jesus' empty tomb post-resurrection... Marla wound up with sole custody of Crown's husk right after his accident. Both ended up with first dibs on the (now vacant) space their old messiah/former companion once filled. Brutal.

[lexydakitten]

ok game cvrashed and im mad about having to go on airplane tomorrow so im gonna use that as an excuse to ramble abt what im gonna 50/50 possibly do. is rift stuff. mostly just stuff im considering over rn with it. i may be a bit too tired to make sense but thats ok i dont need to👍the middle of the night is a good time to talk about creative thoughts i can articulate, myself,,.

what i KNOW im gonna do is redesign whisk . i dont think i've posted any art of him yet but his ref is the most outdated - all of them get refreshed about once a year, but his ref is from the beginning of 2022. my style has changed a lot since then and i've had some thoughts. mostly how does this man get around bc he doesn't fly, i am almost certain him being a deity probably also gives him the ability to use rift magic to his advantage in going hella fast but like. he still has places to be . he has to keep engaging in perpetual fighting for a would be eternity. well he probably has to swim, i think he could do that pretty easily, but i want to incorporate stuff that makes him able to do that . im giving him fins now they're not ahuge change. and also his split double tail is somewhat resemblant of rna strands because im in honors bio and im going to use that for artistic purposes rather than critical thinking . it fits anyway because that's what the deity of. i refer to him as life and death but death isn't even his domain, it's xeilrens (and xeilren's domain is more time itself than afterlife) hes just done so much slaughter too that i think it's honorary. via plague and famine

i've been spending some time thinking about rift magic in general recently. taken to thinking of the deities as conduits. i think something i already established awhile back was that rift magic follows the rules of cannot be created or destroyed like real world matter but also that it all channels through sg , and her antlers are a great reservoir of it, there was more depth to that but that distributed it so that it was heavy in the background of the entire world. she also directly distributes it to each deity, they get their vast quantities of magic from her, but i think they would also on a smaller scale are conduits like i just described too and some of it channels through them as well. primarily whatever magic is most adjacent to their own. i do remember i had a document awhile back where i went into depth on the kinds of rift magic, i should dig that back up because i actually was cooking with that and because thats one thing that never committed to memory. i'd rather not rethink it from scratch considering i probably have notes abt it somewhere

i was also thinking about genetic variants / morphs / whatever they're called, in rift species. there's probably plenty unique to the rift, especially due to the nature of rift magic. there's unintentionally a pattern with rift magic making things have buglike characteristics and i ended up deciding some time ago that that's actually intentional now, though i havent had a lot of time to think about why that might be advantageous. i can say that it does also contribute to really high genetic variation in areas where the magic is most concentrated, there was a particular (more boreal) biome on some of the crappy old maps where this was extremely prevalent and a major definer of it but i want to flesh that out more so it makes sense too. regardless, im thinking particularly about in animals actually with this. i had already established (designed even, for a few species) stuff kind of like morphs that were named as blessings of the respective deities, and they weren't really colors and more actual traits following a theme but i've been considering playing around with that concept more. atp im too tired to phrase that in a way that make sense but if you get me you get me trust

but like. for example you can get a creature with traits of what is currently named as terchu's blessing (not an actual blessing , it's for the traits. i named it in context that it probably would be culturally seen as one though all of these terms need to be renamed) and they get traits themed around storms. but in my mind i could take that and say there's more variation in that based on region, make it more of an actual genetics thing that a lot of species exhibit in their own way. like, they're all caused in a similar way, but in one region it might be significantly more common that if you do see it it's themed around snowstorms specifically, and in another it's more themed around droughts. OR how lakuta's version would be traits themed around light, but because light levels in the rift are weird (they're based on lakuta distributing it ! while the planet of the rift orbits a star [...itcouldbecoolerifitdidntbutnowisnotthetimeforthat] and it does get light from it, because i said so some areas dont get bright anyway. some areas will be blinding like its afternoon in the middle of summer, maybe brighter than that, even during the day, just because lakuta put a buncha light ther for a stupid long amt of time. bc it gradually fades out over time. and then another area is in perpetual dawn light levels even at the brightest point of day. in a normal rift where lakuta behaves himself the light levels are distributed evenly but in the actual rift where hes constantly getting into skirmishes it's brightest wherever he fought at last.) because those light levels are weird you could get in a region that's had high light levels for awhile, more common to see that trait as being very bright and colorful, whereas in a darker area you may get a creature that's very darkly colored but their internals are bioluminescent and glow brightly. etc. i dont think i've explained this well but it's a fairly recent idea i want to build on and draw out at some point, and it is 9 pm i am FIGHTING to articulate anything i'm typing. good for you if you've understood any of this, if i ever look back on this i probably wont lmao

its funny bc this took me like 30 minutes to type and the game still has not finished crashing. peace and love there's a problem i'm too tired to deal with it

[atiny-piratequeen]

Thank you for tagging me @cosmicmingi ! I'll tag @san--shine, @wonderlandsobsession and @fantastic-bby and whoever of my writing followers/mutuals wants to fill this out 👀👀 tag me if you do!

1)Okay so Against The Tide was such a hassle for me because I couldn't settle on one name and I resulted in a twt poll and asking my server of kpop friends for their opinions. Alternative titles were Quantum Immortality (from a theory and a Crywolf song), Through the Sea of Time (a pokemon mystery dungeon song, one of my faves), and Through the Eighth Sea (suggested to me by Alma. Bc the "Eighth Sea" is the sea of time. Get it? 8 ateez members, 1 sea to represent them all? Yeaaaaa-)

2) Okay so its so funny because it came before Wonderland even came out, but All Eyes On Me came as soon as I thought of the concept of an ot8 fic centered around Yeosang bc of him being shy and such. That's why there's a lot of cameras and depictions of Yeosang being especially excited at being watched, so I felt it fit perfectly 

3) so I made that AtT playlist (didn't realize the mofo was 6 hours long, jfc that might be why nobody's commented on the songs yet), and I'll just say I listen to a lot of Babymetal and Crywolf when I write. Not just AtT, but in general. Babymetal obviously for the "fie's on her anime fight scene bullshit" and Crywolf for my emotionally challenging (aka fucking HEARTBREAKING) scenes or scenes in general that have a more muted, down to earth feel to them.

4) As far as Ateez goes, I always have an abundance of fun writing Seonghwa and Yunho, tbh. Night Shift has me spoiled and now I'm in love with writing Seonghwa as a sarcastic, slightly passive aggressive being who's honestly just a big softie for those he loves and Yunho...Yunho has a heart of gold and I adore him uwu

5) Jongho is probably the hardest to write for me because I don't want to typecast him as this nonchalant, emotionless smartass, yknow? I wanna give him depth other than "big strong maknae boi" but I feel I might have to do a bit better to write him truer to his actual personality 

6) In All Eyes On Me, San and Yeosang's little cat and mouse game wasn't supposed to take over but I-and a lot of other people-enjoyed the dynamic of Yeosang building his confidence, all while San was getting exceedingly more hungry/sneaky. So definitely San so far.

Though Yunho is creeping up in AtT and yall will see more of that in the near future 👀

7) Reoccurring themes...at risk of sounding like a nut, the stories I put the most time and love into are ones like Against the Tide or for those who have read some of my BTS works, Still Standing. Fics that have intricate stories and characters feel real emotional, mental, and physical trials, but eventually they overcome. I do write these with supernatural, fantasy, and/or sci-fi twists bc i love those genres so much, but I just enjoy writing fics that make me and my readers go through the emotional motions.

8) I've honestly stayed away from hybrid fics for so long bc of how a lot of them sre linked to ABO fics that are written in very...high key problematic and exploitative manners, but thanks to Skunk San, I'm definitely gonna get back into writing hybrid fics. Or at least a oneshot. Idk man I'm giving him a tail. Bitches love tails. It's me, I'm bitches. 

9) I want to get better at making people laugh with scenes without making it seem forced. I've gotten lucky enough to have some people tell me they've laughed from my works and some scenes, so I'm hoping to throw some more giggles in for everyone without forcing it and ruining a scene. Plus we need something to counter all this damn angst.

10) Imagery. Again, back on my anime bullshit, but I've had a lot of people, both close friends and readers, tell me through the years that they can visibly see some of the scenes so visually. From the fighting, to the love making, a lot of people have complimented me on my visuals and descriptive imagery so I'm kinda confident in it c:

11) I know its early, but I'd love to see Against the Tide illustrated. My dream has always been to have something I've written, whether a scene or just my characters, drawn out. Its a little easier since the boys (almost) all have their halloween stages for their demon forms and such. I wish I were a better artist tbh. I'd love to draw some scenes from future chapters I have in my head.

12) I'm gonna pull from my BTS side for this and say Still Standing. Its already based off of a show (sense8) and it would be so neat to see sense8 but with a superpower twist to it~

13) I'd probably cameo in any given fic as that one person in the bg that disses some antagonist to the main charas in passing just bc they're assholes and they aint shit.

14) Hmm...i had an old wrestling fic eons ago that was a hybrid fic. I'd love to revamp it and clean up the wild storyline and make it a kpop fic tbh. It had potential and it incorporated a lot of mythology and I used it as a way to show people about some mythos they may not have been familiar with but I got too ambitious and it went all over the place. I'd like to make it over now that I'm more focused and mature in following my plot.

15) I honestly don't have one off the top :o I never thought about remixing someone else's fic or anything like that.

16) I don't often write about things I'm not comfortable writing with, but I'll probably say my casually unnamed wrestling fic comes close since I was in a very bad headspace at the time and poured a lot of my trauma into the story. It's… graphic. And I probably won't feel comfortable writing that type of content so vividly anymore. So hooray growth? 

17) I've never written an incubus fic to to completion, but @fantastic-bby makes me wanna try 👀

18) Honestly I adore the concept of sensates so much (from the show Sense8, and my BTS fic, Still Standing) and I'd love to revisit it but I'm not quite sure how to do it without making it too similar 😔

19) Both of them are BTS fics, but I've reread @haylokitteh We Need You and @readbeneaththelines Professor's Pet 🥵🥵

20) Hm..that's a hard one because I like to branch out to a lot of genres so it depends on what I'm trying to describe. But since I have to choose, I'll say Against the Tide, since I'm pouring a lot of love and care into this and I intend on showing you all full spectrum of what I can do with it.