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deepestuniversallove · 6 years ago

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Selfship Positivity Day

So I heard that today is a day for some selfship positivity! I want to also thank a few people for tagging me in their posts!

I have joined the self-ship community on tumblr in early 2018. I have really started self-shipping when I was around 7 years old and fell in love with Bonkers D Bobcat, who was my first crush, but I promptly gave up on him when I saw that he had a crush on Fawn Deer in canon (as a kid I thought that canon was what was real, so....). I had a few minor crushes on a few other characters as well (like Johnny from S.O.S. Croco), but never actively self-shipped with them, I just found them really cool.

Then at 11 years old, I went to see the First Pokemon Movie and fell in love with Mewtwo at first sight. After Bonkers, he was the first character I actively started to self ship with, and he has been a great inspiration and help for me; I was raised in an emotionally abusive household, emotionally neglected, starved for affection that I never got. Plus my mother has narcissistic personality disorder and only sees me as a living plaything and extension of her - which this is no fun way to grow up. Add to this that I was pretty much the social outcast at school, and you would probably understand why I always had suicidal ideations, depression and eventually developed avoidant personality disorder. So yeah, seeing Mewtwo, neglected by the scientists who refused him warmth and him going against Giovanni... I wanted to be like Mewtwo, just as strong as him. Daydreaming of him in the evening was what kept me sane and gave me the feeling that at least someone loved me, even if he was fictional. Plus, through him, I learned about genetics and science and decided I wanna go into science (which led me to being a Biology PhD student today) - which led me into choosing Biology, Chemistry and English as my majors in our german school system.

I have always drawn the occasional self ship picture or sketch with Mewtwo, but back then, I mostly focused on shipping other pairings from other franchises. I came to the internet for the first time in 2005, when I joined Deviantart through other self shippers who had their sights on various Sonic characters and shipped their own OCs with them. In fact, I have made my own OC named Jamai Dark to ship her with Shadow the hedgehog.

The first picture with Mewtwo was one that I tried to trace from “Mewtwo Returns”. Though I still focused more on shipping other pairings and on the Sonic franchise. In any case, the Mewtwo artists back then were a huge inspiration for me.

My first fanchild with Mewtwo, Kunai, was posted online before I ever posted any of my selfship pictures, and even then, I avoided outright saying that she was supposed to be the daughter of me and Mewtwo because of the backlash I feared. I simply enjoyed watching the more daring artists who outright were able to profess their love for Mewtwo, which I didn’t have the courage for at first. My first other self shipper that I found was @desert-fairy-vixen, who had remained a loyal friend ever since I started out on Deviantart.

At 16, I became involved with a boy around my age and entered a relationship with him. He forbid me Mewtwo, stating that he wasn’t necessary any more, so I tearfully bid Mewtwo goodbye, writing him a poem as well as drawing one goodbye picture.

However, my relationship with my boyfriend was not that good, and without Mewtwo, I simply felt lost. My frist boyfriend belonged to a religious cult and was homeschooled; he was also heavily brainwashed that religion trumps over all, so I tried for years to reconcile his religion with my science, only finding that it was impossible. I have still stayed with this guy for 6 years, when he had started to control me even more with his abusive grip. I ended it with him then, and was heartbroken, feeling that I didn’t deserve Mewtwo after having left him to be with my boyfriend. So I couldn’t jump back into self shipping. Instead, I shipped certain pairings from the YuGiOh series, as well as Digimon, in the meantime. It was actually when I hit the Digimon stage that I started to self ship with Arukenimon. I also had a crush on Eridan Ampora.

In 2013, I had a dream in which Mewtwo fought and protected me from zombies. That was the point at which I decided that I want to be with Mewtwo again. Why deny myself this? Why hide? And so I drew my first comic in which I tried to remember my past with Mewtwo, and this is how I met my first self shippers on Deviantart who also self shipped with Mewtwo. In fact, @sweetwhitechoco was one of the first I openly talked with when it came to Mewtwo. I have watched Lullaby-of-the-Lost and Kokoro-Tokoro from afar and didn’t dare to talk to them because they were out of my league, but seeing other people post self ship Mewtwo art made me want to do the same.

I only found out about the self shipping community on tumblr in 2017, after having had haters who told me that my self ship is vile and bestiality. Finding an entire community of self shippers was a blessing after having gone through such shit. I think I am still not over the fact that I have tried to give up Mewtwo when I came together with my abusive ex-boyfriend for the first time. Sometimes I wonder if Mewtwo would really want to be back together with me, or I feel unworthy of him. I can only hope that I may overcome this one day. Or it’s just a symptom of my AvPD, because I tend to push away those I love to not taint them with my imperfections.

In any case, onwards to the shippers I met on here!

@star-platinums-wife was one of the first self shippers, and through her and her followers, I got to know more self shippers. Though the concept of having a self shipping blog is what I have seen from @gamzeeismyboyfriend for the first time, and this was actually when I decided to post my selfship art on my blog too.

@asa-de-ouro is one of the best friends I could have hoped to find, and she is the mom friend for sure!

I also got to know @husband-of-lucoa, who is also a great friend and really loved by both Lucoa and Palutena! They both told me so!

@lightningsconsort Your love and devotion to your queen Lightning is such an inspiration, I wish you both many happy years together for the future!

@slyvivi has such a cute self ship with Necrozma, it is always a delight to see someone who also self ships with a Pokemon! You and Necrozma are so cute together, and I am sure that he sees you as the Light of his life. And @come-along-here-and-spin-with-me, you and Oracion are also such cuties together!

@lildreamysoul, you are an absolute Queen, and I kind of count you in as “above my league”; I love the ideas you have for self shipping! Making your own self ship mugs? A book with collected artworks? Acrylic charms? Like dang, you make me want to try this out as well!

@mrs-rock-light You reminded of the time when I found Zero so cool! :D I am glad that he found someone to be happy with in you! God knows after all his fights, he certainly deserves some happiness for a change!

@charles-self-inserts I am so honored that you wanted my self ship to be included with yours in a comission! ;__; thank you so so much for that!

@only-mewtwo Highfives! You and Mewtwo are so cute together!

@malt-tango :D I love all the discussions about details for fanfics that I can have with you, and I love your idea for my fanfics. It is thanks to you that I am now even attempting to write my self-insert more true to myself which I didn’t have the courage for before.

@plucky-belmondo AHH, you and Richter are so cute, and I love all the awesome designs that you made for your self-insert for Smash Bros! Amazing!!!

@goldenworldsabound :D You, Spock, me and Mewtwo need to go out on a date together. :D

@rulersofthekoopakingdom You and Bowser are so cute! *_* <3 <3

I hope all of you had a great self ship positivity day! :D If I haven’t mentioned you in here, I am still probably watching you from afar and being too shy to say anything. ^^;; whoops.

#self ship #self shipping #self shipping community #self ship positivity

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oddeyesarcpendulumdragon · 7 years ago

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Arc V Anniversary Discussion Day 21: Self-Insert/OC Day

So this got long, and i’ll divide it into some categories lol. First, shipping babies! Because I can never have enough of those!!

all under the cut cause it’s so long fuck

Pendulumshipping

Sakaki Keahi: the oldest and one of the two Sakaki children who follow into professional dueling. Reiji and Yuya both help her find ways of navigating an action field to accommodate her paralyzed legs, both with Reiji’s technology and adaptive devices he designs for her, and Yuya teaching her how to trust her monsters to help move her across the stage if she needs a hand. Keahi is very much a big sister, always mothering her little sisters and nagging at even her friends. Most of her friends affectionately call her ‘mom.’

Sakaki Kouki: is very much more technologically focused, and she likes to tinker with Solid Vision and stuff. She’s a shy girl who has trouble socializing. She’s also gender questioning, currently iding as a trans girl.

Sakaki Ray: Kouki’s twin sister. Ray is determined to follow in both her sister’s, father’s, and namesake’s footsteps in order to become the world’s best entertainment duelist. She’s super emotional and tends to be really hard on herself when she messes things up, but she’s also very determined. She’s Way into Riding Duels and actually feels more comfortable with those than with Entertainment Duels in the end because there’s less to live up to

Sakaki Sakura: Sakura is the youngest, a precocious seven year old who wants to be a princess astronaut. Her favorite things to do are watch her sisters duel and play dress up, especially with papa’s big scarf as a cape.

All four girls have the ability to see and hear duel monsters.

Darkrebelshipping

Kurosaki Fukuro: the older twin.

Kurosaki Yugao: the younger twin. (Yugo tries to be upset that Yugao’s name is so close to his, and Yuto starts to accidentally call the two of them each other’s names, but he loves his “niece and nephew” so he can’t be too mad lol.)

Fukuro and Yugao are both generally quiet, though Yugao is definitely the more assertive of the two. They like to sit at home and draw, mostly, but they are also rabid fans of various tv shows and if you want them to be loud, get the two of them in a shipping argument. They usually have different tastes in ships and they will fight each other to the death over them lol. In general these two are a couple of fucking anime weebs. They’re also fucking hot topic nerds (what do you expect when they have shun and yuto as dads)

Appleshipping

Sho Sakaki-Atlas: takes after them in loving mechanical stuff and fixing things. Sho adores machines and they are always getting messy working on them or getting in trouble because they completely don’t pay attention to anything except whatever project they’re hyperfocusing on.

Yumi Sakaki-Atlas: Yumi is the younger of the two, and she’s less interested in building motorcycles as she is in riding them. She’s very much a daredevil like her father and likes to go on joyrides a lot.

Rin and Yugo argued for hours about what surname to end up taking, Yoko’s or Jack’s, because Yoko basically adopted them but Jack also did kinda unofficially adopt them too and was willing to let them use his name. They dueled for it and it ended in a tie.

Stealthshipping

Shiunin Hotaru: a very cheerful, exuberant girl who is excited about everything. Everything is an adventure to her and she has very little sense of trouble, often sticking her nose into things she shoulded. The younger twin.

Shiunin Amaya: a lot more cautious than Hotaru after her time with the Fuma Clan. She can be haughty and full of herself, but she’s also very much recovering from what she went through at the hands of the Fumas, which makes her try to act a lot stronger and more confident than she actually often is.

Both girls are actually Tsuki’s sister’s kids, but after her husband died in an accident and she herself contracted terminal cancer, she begged Tsuki to take them so that the Fumas couldn’t claim them. Hotaru they managed to get, but Amaya was taken away by the Fuma Clan for several years before they could retrieve her.

Those were the only kiddos i had the time/energy to doodle, but here’s a few others that I have!

Speaking of Tsuki’s sister, here’s a few more OCs that I came up with to fill out characters’ families/backstories:

Chizaki (Fuma) Kanon: Tsukikage and Hikage’s older sister. She fled the Fuma clan when they were kids to avoid being executed for getting pregnant with someone outside the family, promising to come back for her brothers one day. She ultimately was never able to get back to them until she saw Tsukikage listed as one of the Lancers. She died of cancer a few years after finally reconnecting with her brothers.

Hojo Gekko: Reiji’s cousin from his mother’s side; the Hojo family is incredibly rich and tied to the Fuma family since feudal Japan. He’s a scarily powerful young man even though he’s the younger brother, and Tsukikage was supposed to be sworn to serve him when he turned 18 before Reiji snapped up both brothers himself. He’s a scary and possessive person.

Hojo Nikko: Reiji’s cousin and Gekko’s older brother. He doesn’t give a shit about the Fuma clan anymore and would prefer to leave their archaic connection in the past. He’s the current owner and CEO of the Hojo Corporation.

Kurosaki Chae-won: Shun and Ruri’s mother, an exuberant and excitable woman who is excessively supportive.

Kurosaki Airi: Shun and Ruri’s other mother, slightly more lowkey than Chae-won, but not by much. Loves her kids to death and embarrasses them daily.

Kunori Mao: Yuto’s mother, a quiet and kind young woman who has raised Yuto by herself. Becomes close friends with the Kurosaki moms.

And here’s some of Yoko’s gang members which I came up with for a fic that i will write eventually, whom y’all probably saw already if you saw my art submission for the “gang” prompt earlier this month.

Maeda Maiko: Yoko’s first gf, a rough and tumble kinda girl, but also very fun-loving.

Kobayashi Hikaru: easygoing, tends the bar and helps the girls sort out their problems; can’t usually be bothered to do any of the actual fighting, but when there’s someone in trouble, you don’t want to be on her bad side.

Watanabe Honoka: formerly a rival who was won over by Yoko, she’s a bit of a wild card and is more interested in picking fights than winning them

Katou Satomi: a matronly woman who’s sweet nature belies her dangerous skills. Often smiling.

Fujioka Tomiko: a small and ferocious girl who loves joy-riding.

Oshiro Kiku: a nervous girl from a rich family who was once trapped in a relationship with another gang leader before Yoko destroyed the gang, she hangs out with the Shooting Stars to feel safer and helps run their finances.

And finally.....I gotta shout out my self-insert, cause of course I have one of those:

Hale Reiser: an American college student on a study abroad in Japan, she’s dazzled out of her low emotional period by Yuya’s duel against Strong Ishijima, and decides to take up dueling to emulate him. When the truth of the dimensional war comes out, she joins a program to train at-home Lancers in case of a home invasion. At some point she meets Grace Tyler and all of my self-indulgent fantasies of dating Grace come to fruition.

#arcvanniversary #pendulumshipping #darkrebelshipping #appleshipping #stealthshipping #yugioh arc v #original characters #shipping children #digital

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theamazingsallyhogan · 7 years ago

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In the months since I’ve started watching it, My Hero Academia has quickly become my favorite battle shonen series. It’s not particularly mold-breaking; it uses the same genre tropes as most other series of its ilk. Its main strength is that it brings the genre’s strengths to the forefront, with a supremely likable ensemble cast and exciting battles, while leaving behind many of the genre’s typical weaknesses. One of battle shonen’s greatest struggles has long been how to incorporate its female characters, and My Hero Academia handles the situation with rare grace and aplomb. However, no work of art is free of biases, and while My Hero Academia avoids many issues associated with the genre, there are still many sexist biases deeply encoded in the series.

“Battle shonen” refers to the subgenre of action-driven manga aimed at boys that focus on battles between characters, as the name implies, and are structured around arcs with the series’ overarching goal being only vaguely defined, if at all. They’re dominated by a number of conventions the audience have come to expect, such as a young male protagonist with a core group of friends, a rival, tournament and training arcs, and a series of increasingly powerful villains. Popular battle shonen like Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and Fairy Tale can run for decades. My Hero Academia is a relatively new entry to the genre, drawing much of its inspiration from Western superhero narratives and synthesizing that with the typical ideas of the genre.

These series have long tended to struggle with what to do with their female characters. They are often introduced early in the series, when the protagonist has yet to set themselves apart from the pack, and become part of the core cast. However, as the male protagonist gets more and more powerful, the girls on their team often lag behind them in ways that the boys don’t. They become relegated to healers or support duties, but rarely get the spotlight in battle. They get designated female enemies to fight against, before they are neatly removed from the conflict. They become damsels for the boys to rescue. On the rare occasions that women are powerful fighters or mentors, they are often sexualized to the point of disrespect.

My Hero Academia neatly sidesteps most of these issues by treating its female characters as interesting, integral members of the ensemble cast. They have varied, likable personalities and appearances, with useful quirks that make them valuable contributors to the team both in and out of battle. No one embodies this more than Ochaco Uraraka, Izuku’s cheerful friend with the ability to make things float. She’s a clear choice for the love interest – a friendly girl-next-door type who meets Izuku by using her quirk to prevent him from tripping and falling on the day of the entrance exam – and he does indeed develop a crush on her. Despite his feelings, friendship defines their relationship, rather than attraction, and they thus far remain close but platonic. His crush on her is so secondary to their camaraderie that it’s easy to forget that it even exists. Such relationships between male and female characters are rare in any genre, but I honestly can’t remember last time I saw it in a battle shonen series; they tend to be mentor-student or focused mainly on romantic feelings. Rather than treating her as a means to an end or an object of Izuku’s affection, mangaka Horikoshi writes Ochaco as a person first, with same amount of interiority and individuality as any of the male characters.

The aniblogger sphere has heaped praise on the episode “Bakugo vs. Uraraka” for its approach to pitting Ochaco against Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku’s longtime rival, and for good reason. Bakugo, whose quirk allows him to combust his sweat made of nitroglycerin, is one of the most powerful and dangerous competitors in their school’s sports festival tournament. Izuku tries to help Ochaco by coming up with a strategy for her to fight him, worried that she’ll be immediately and thoroughly beaten by the volatile Bakugo. She enters the ring with a quavering smile that fails to cover up her nervousness. Once the fight gets going, it becomes clear that she never needed Izuku’s help; she develops her own strategy based around getting Bakugo to blow up the ground and making the rubble float above his head, crashing down at a key moment. She’s a bright girl who has been using her quirk for close to a decade; she is perfectly capable of coming up with her own strategy.

It seems possible that Horikoshi scripted this fight specifically to call out the sexism endemic to the genre. As the fight continues and Ochaco takes explosion after explosion, the onlookers jeer at Bakugo, angry at him for “picking on” her and imploring her to send her out of bounds. Ochaco is cute and harmless-looking, causing them to perceive her as less capable. Their teacher Aizawa jumps onto the mic, calling them out: “Was that a pro saying he’s playing around? How many years have you been a pro? If you’re saying that with a straight face, there’s no point in you watching anymore, so go home! Go home, and look into changing careers! Bakugo is being careful because he’s acknowledged the strength of an opponent who has made it this far. It’s because he’s doing everything he can to win that he can’t go easy on her or let his guard down.” Ochaco may be cute and lacking in raw physical power, but she has made it this far on her own strength; the audience asking him to knock her out because they’re uncomfortable seeing her fighting all-out against a clearly powerful male opponent is selfish and disrespectful, on top of making assumptions and not taking her seriously. Aizawa points out their implicit biases, that they assume she is not a worthy opponent because she is female, and this particular bias rears its ugly head over and over in battle shonen as the female characters are relegated to the sidelines. Even after the fight, their classmates tease Bakugo for looking like a villain beating up on a frail girl – it’s still an uphill battle for female fighters to be taken as seriously as male ones.

It’s not hard to see why the characters would assume girls are weaker; there’s plenty of in-universe evidence to uphold that. Thus far, we’ve only met four female professional heroes: the elderly healer Recovery Girl, Mount Lady, Uwabami, and Midnight, compared to about a dozen male professionals. In the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, not a single villain is female. Even in Class 1-A, under ⅓ of the students are female. In early planning stages, it was only four; two of them, Tohru and Tsuyu, were originally planned to be male. He changed them to make the gender balance more even, but that did not come close to fixing the problem. The rest of the school appears to suffer from the same imbalance. It’s an oft-quoted statistic that men perceive groups as majority-female once more than ⅓ are women, and My Hero Academia perpetuates that issue.

My Hero Academia has a relatively low level of fan service for the genre, especially compared to series like One Piece and Fairy Tail, which delight in regularly displaying the mostly-naked bodies of their female cast. The aforementioned Mount Lady and Midnight are both highly fetishized; Mount Lady, a literal giantess, introduces herself with a coy, “Nice to make your ass-quaintance!” and Midnight bases her whole aesthetic around sadomasochism, with the epithet “The R-Rated Hero” and a flog whip as a weapon. Uwabami makes her much of her living as a TV celebrity and hires her female interns on the basis of their looks. While the students of Hero Academy are quite realistically proportioned, those two are very busty with costumes that highlight their curves. Class A’s Mineta is particularly an affront, so much so that hating him has become a meme on social media. He routinely attempts touch or peep on his classmates without their consent. While the girls may retaliate, especially Tsuyu, these moments are played off as jokes. When he tricks the girls into dressing in cheerleader uniforms, they become angry, but they continue to wear them anyway, to the delight of the boys in the class.

A look through the series’ supplementary material reveals more of Horikoshi’s biases. Each character receives ratings in five different areas, including power, speed, technique, intelligence, and cooperation. Across the board, the girls of Class 1-A have low ratings in power, with an average of only 1.83 out of five, and high ratings in cooperation. While the female cast is truly a delight and I enjoy how they’ve worked together in risky situations, I’d love to see a female character as ornery and temperamental as Bakugo. Instead, this continues to prop up the stereotype that women are naturally better at working together than men, and that they must be sweet and gregarious. In a universe where the majority of people have supernatural powers, there is no reason for a lack of physical strength among the female cast as well. Many of the male characters’ quirks are so powerful we never see them throw a punch, including Todoroki, one of Izuku’s chief rivals. Even if you buy into the idea that women simply lack the physical strength of men, it would be simple for a girl to have a power that strong in combat.

These criticisms are not meant as an indictment of Horikoshi or My Hero Academia; everyone has biases they subconsciously insert into their work. “Bakugo vs. Uraraka” demonstrates a level of awareness that most battle shonen lack in addition to an effort to improve how girls are portrayed in these kinds of stories. Coexisting with the issues discussed above doesn’t make Horikoshi a hypocrite, nor should it necessarily reduce anyone’s enjoyment and excitement all the show’s myriad strengths.

My Hero Academia is a delightful series, and it has merited much of the praise it has received. However, that does not mean it’s immune to criticism or doesn’t have its own unconscious biases encoded in it. Weekly Shonen Jump’s readership is almost at parity; while it may be aimed primarily at boys, its writers and editors should still be aware of the female readers and takes steps toward inclusiveness. My Hero Academia is so close, but we should not simply ignore or excuse its shortcomings.

As someone that hasn’t gotten terribly far into this series (running since 2014), I’m curious what people that have gotten further think.

So far, I’m less forgiving than the author of this piece. Horikoshi created a world where the majority of the overall population have superpowers, but the superhero population is almost entirely male. It’s Deku’s story so obviously he gets the spotlight, but there’s a huge gulf between the male and female supporting cast. When All-Might needed a rescue (against an all-male group of assassins), it was the boy students that rushed to his side. Fukigkage dispatched of Momo (supposedly the top-scoring female student) and Mina with casual ease. There’s regular speeches about things like the “fiery passion of youth” and “fated rivalries” directed just toward the boys. I mean, I’ve seen “battle shounen” treat girls worse, but something so basic shouldn’t get graded on a curve. Does it get better?

#boku no hero academia #My Hero Academia #BNHA #Long Post #Representation

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personas-against-antis · 7 years ago

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My experience with anti-ism and back

Inspired by @huntypastellance's interviews with ex-antis, I decided to post my own story of how I became an anti and how I got out.

My inbox and messages are open in case anyone has any questions or wants to say anything.

Apologies for any typos, my typing is not the greatest.

Names have been changed to protect my friends’ privacy and to prevent certain antis mentioned from coming after me again.

Where It All Started

So back in middle school I fell in love with an anime called Hetalia, about the interactions between anthropomorphized versions of various countries. I had been in fandom for a while (my first big fandom was Sonic, but that was before antis went mainstream), and I was a pretty big follower of "don't like, don't read/look". When I joined, I immediately latched on to the ship AmeCan, or America/Canada.

They were cute and it was my OTP for a long time. The only problem with AmeCan is that, by a large majority of the fandom, America and Canada were considered brothers. I personally didn't see them that way, I saw them as adopted brothers at most, and I was always pretty squicked out by shippy fanfics that depicted them as biological brothers. The ship itself was still pretty big in that fandom, so I ignored the haters and immersed myself in fanart and fanfic.

I met a girl at my school (let's call her Duchess) who also liked Hetalia and we quickly hit it off. We soon asked what each other's OTPs were.

Me: Oh, I ship AmeCan.

Duchess: ...

Me: What is it?

Duchess: You realize they're brothers, right?

Me: Oh, I don't see them that way because [insert reasoning that I don't want to have to explain to non-Hetalians, just know that I explained that I didn't see them as brothers.]

Duchess: But it's canon. They canonly see each other as brothers.

Me: Oh...

In hindsight, I probably should have asked what she meant by “it’s canon”. Either way, I began to drift away from AmeCan due to lack of interest, and towards other ships (Romerica and AmeBela), and then to other fandoms. She still remained one of my closest friends.

Down The Rabbit Hole

I began to get really into kawaii culture and browsed the tags pretty regularly. Over time, I came across CG/L content. It squicked me out at first, but due to some sort of bile fascination, I began browsing CG/L blogs and began learning about that subculture. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, but I knew that it would be inappropriate for someone my age (around 13-14 years old) to participate in kink, so I kept my distance and admired it from afar.

Soon, Duchess brought it up at lunch.

Duchess: I really hate seeing DDGL stuff everywhere.

Me: Haha, yeah...

Duchess: I mean, It's practically pedophilia!

Me: Mhm...

That's what I had thought at first too, before researching it. But she kept talking about it.

Duchess: They're sexualizing children, and children's toys! It's so gross! I actually made a blog against it.

Me: Whoa, really?

Duchess showed me her anti-CGL blog and I quickly followed it because she was my friend, and slowly began to follow other anti-DDLG blogs as well, even making my own: rise-against-ddlg. I took it down due to lack of interest, but antis had already grown on tumblr, and I was torn between my "don't like, don't look" policy, and wanting to "help" survivors. So outwardly, I became an anti, while guiltily reading "problematic" fic and playing "problematic" games in secret.

One such problematic game was Yandere Simulator, and I began to browse those tags too, when I discovered another anti blog, this time against Yandere Simulator and Alex Mahan, a.k.a. Yandere Dev. I learned he was fairly homophobic, sexist, and transphobic, especially in his own private chatroom, and began to idolize that anti blog. Suddenly, they released an invitation to a Skype group chat. Eager to meet my heroes, I quickly applied and was approved.

The Group Chat Incident

I loved that chat. It started with 15 people, but slowly trickled down to nine, including myself. I found myself isolating myself away from my real life friends and family, too focused on the group chat, as they made dropping out of high school and staying online all day sound cool. I kissed up to them, desperate to be seen as a good person. But, soon, I began to question myself and the group. The mods were very against "problematic" content, like Killing Stalking, and NSFW depictions of minors, but were also quick to draw NSFW of minors (specifically Budo and Senpai from YS). I introduced them tot he game Boyfriend To Death, and one of them quickly latched on to the character of Rire, who brutally rapes the protagonist in game, despite them being against rape. The main mod even introduced the group to a game called Artificial Academy 2, in which you can rape others and be raped.

...There was a lot of rape and NSFW in that chat.

But, there was also a hierachy. At the top were the two main mods of that YS blog, Mod H and Mod J. Joining them at the top was a very cool person and a good artist who acted very much like an older sibling to all of us, Member M. Then, there were three more people who tended to kiss Mod H, Mod J, and Member M's asses, and at the bottom was me, my friend Foam, and Member C. Mod H was the ruler of that chat. Anything they said, went, and if you disagreed, they'd suddenly play victim, manipulating and gaslighting you into apologizing. They loved Dragon Age, and now that game has been forever tainted for me, considering how much they shoved it down my throat. They would also tease me and my interest in Persona 5 (saying that the protagonist looked like The Onceler, subsequently calling me a "Onceler Fucker" for finding him attractive, along with making fun of when my tongue slipped and pronounced "Goro" as "Gort"), only stopping when I had Foam address the group to tell them to stop. There was a livestream that I was really excited for, talking about it since it was announced and they seemed hyped for me as well. Only when I placed a rabb.it link in the chat so we could all watch, only Member C showed up. When I returned to that chat, they were watching Yuri On Ice, and they wouldn't even let me talk about my livestream.

During that time period, I created a group chat for me, Foam, and another internet friend I will call Emilia. I though Foam and Emilia would get along really well, so i formed a Skype chat with them, and allowed them to talk. Slowly though, me and Foam began to use that chat to bitch about the group chat behind their backs, because we were terrified of the backlash if we tried to criticize them to their faces, due to Mod H's tactics of avoiding conflict. We soon added Member C to the chat as well, after they were constantly getting dogpiled by the rest of the chat.

That December, the Bode meme was in full swing and Foam mentioned in the group chat that he didn't get it. The group chat immediately began to make fun of him and I, sick of letting them control our lives, stood up for him. The group chat just continued to dogpile and we continued to try and fight until Mod H eventually left the chat, in one of their methods to get us to apologize to them. I was feeling overwhelmed and also left, and Foam tried to surrender and tell the chat to stop, but they wouldn't let up and he left too. Member C was the only member we remained on good terms with who was still in the group chat.

I made a post on my blog saying that i didn't want to interact with those people anymore and they got mad and began to try and message me. I eventually messaged an official statement, citing their abuse of me and Foam, and blocked all of them across social media.

They created a fake blog to get around the block, and I was dumb enough to fall for it.

Member C even turned on us, revealing me and Foam's messages with her and claiming we were abusing and bullying them. Suffice to say, I cut off all contact with Member C and changed my main blog's URL.

I was harassed and stalked and I carried that fear of them looking at my blog for a long time. I still worry about it sometimes.

The worst part, in my opinion, was that I changed my own name that I had chosen for myself because it had become a trigger for me hearing them say it so many times. And I really, really loved that name.

There was so much hypocrisy, so much fear in that chat. Now, looking back, I wished I had never joined, but in those months after I left...I felt empty inside. Aimless.

Out of curiosity, I looked up cult behaviors, and that chat hit nearly every single one. It's scary looking back on it. Even writing this, over a year after I left, my heart hurts.

But even leaving a cultish group chat didn't knock me out of anti-ism.

Villain Ships and Past Revelations

Remember how I mentioned that I love Persona 5? Well, I ship a ship called ShuAke, which a very loud subset of people claim is abusive.

Spoilers for Persona 5 up ahead.

ShuAke is a ship between the protagonist (shujinko in Japanese, which is where the "shu" comes from) and Goro Akechi. I shipped ShuAke since before Goro's name was announced, when all we knew was his design. Goro turned out to be a detective hunting the Phantom Thieves, the protagonist's group. The cat and mouse aesthetic really suited my fancy, with the protagonist's thief alter ego, Joker, seducing the naive Detective Prince. Swoon.

Of course, the ship shattered when the game was released in Japan and it turns out Goro tried to kill the protagonist, was working for the bad guy, and betrayed the whole group.

I was shocked and essentially went through the five stages of grief. I was torn between abandoning the "abusive" ship and evil character...or ignoring the haters and shipping it anyway. After way too much debate, I chose the latter and stuck with it.

The anti-ism died down quickly due to a lot of the fandom hibernating until the English release, and I happily shipped ShuAke and supported Goro Akechi with little objection. Even when the game was released in English, I stood my ground and even argued in support of Goro with anons.

And yet, I still considered myself an anti.

Late May of last year, some repressed memories came to light. I had been sexually abused by a close family member and a few girls at camp when I was younger, with other fragmented and questionable memories in my brain. It put my past into light, as I had also had a self destructive habit of attempting to seduce older men online, due to low self esteem. That was not a fun week for me, and I found myself diving into dark fic, particularly rape fic, in order to make sense of it all. I even wrote some in an effort to just get it out of my brain.

And it worked. It was really therapeutic for me.

And yet...

I still considered myself an anti. Every word I read or wrote was mixed with guilt over what I was doing, even though it worked. While I'm still a sexual abuse survivor, as I always will be, I'm much more well-adjusted by participating in those dark activities, rather than wallowing in self pity and slipping into a depression, like my old group chat would have expected me to do.

I dropped anti-ism later, with the help of one blog.

Back to "DL,DR"

The blog @anti-anti-survivor was recommended to me, and anti!me, looking for a laugh, clicked on it...and soon found that pretty much everything they said made sense to me. I saw Mod h in the people they argued with, Member C in the people they called out...and I realized that I had never been an anti, just hiding behind that label.

I sent an anonymous message to them (though I guess it isn't so anonymous anymore, ha), thanking them for opening my mind to it, and created my own anti-anti blog. I realize I'm not very active on here, but, well, I'm lazy and I'm more of a reader than anything else.

And of course, there was another problem.

Antis are fucking everywhere.

I'm terrified of posting pro-shipping stuff on my main, and I'm terrified of admitting I like problematic ships. I'm in a Discord server that keeps spouting anti-kink and anti-ship stuff, and I have to keep my mouth shut or risk being banned, just because most of the time they're really nice. Duchess even messaged me one day, absolutely shocked that I admitted to shipping Shidge.

I'm happy now that I don't have to feel that guilt but, reading what antis do and then finding out that people I hang out with are antis...it's horrifying. I'm not a confrontational person. I never have been. But I'm sick of rolling over and accepting what everyone else deems is problematic fiction.

I'm mentally ill, a sexual abuse survivor, and dark fic and dark shipping helps me cope.

Deal with it.

#pro shipping #anti anti testimony

108 notes · View notes

raitrolling · 8 years ago

Text

i fucked up and answered the wrong symbol but fuckit im still doing this

☾ - What was the first idea that inspired the creation of each of your trolls, and do they still embody that idea now?

listed in order of creation, and some of these answers are gonna get really fuckin long so prepare yourself for masses of textwalls

charon: ive gone over his history in this ask here, so tl;dr version: i wanted to make a light greenblood who was creepy and loved blood and fighting. thats it. why people like this guy even though his origin is literally being Edgy(tm) is beyond me. while blood and fighting are still his main interests, his creepiness is no longer being creepy for the sake of being ‘ooh hes so evil and InSaNe xD xD xD’ to actually having motivations and becoming a legitimate threat to others.

skathi: I DONT THINK IVE EVER ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT OLD!SKATHI BEFORE SO ONLY FORMER MSPAF MEMBERS REMEMBER THAT DUMPSTER FIRE LMAO. but basically skathi’s original concept was vaguely inspired by The Importance of Being Earnest since i was studying that play at the time, but rather than being a british gentleman who invents an alternate identity as an excuse to fuck off to the country or invents a sick relative as an excuse to avoid boring social events, she was a lowblood posing as a highblood because people she fucked over burned down her hive. however that idea didnt work at all because she was complete shit at hiding her blood so that got scrapped, and shes been completely remade twice. now the only concepts that have stayed through the revamps is that she’s an axe-wielding Flarper who uses poisons and got her hive burned down.

cvetka: cvetka’s another character who’s been completely revamped and reset, but her concept hasnt really changed as much. originally she had chlorokinesis that went awry all the fuckin time because whatever man im 16 i can write whatever bullshit i want (aka no reason at all). also she was inspired by the Victorian Era + the language of flowers because i was studying that at the time (you will see this becomes a common thing). then i cant remember if it got confirmed in the comic or if it just because a commonly accepted headcanon on mspaf that highbloods didnt have psiionics at all (whats a vriska) so that got scrapped. then in her revamp she became a complete recluse because pacifism is a no-go on alternia, and while i find that shes become a much better written / well-thought out character as a result, my chances to rp her have become severely limited.

katrin: was my self-insert. originally she was painfully shy and couldnt really talk to anyone without get super embarrassed, and also she was an artist instead of a writer. then everything changed when the fire nation attacked she got a boyfriend. its kinda funny tho because she had no interest in working or getting rich until she met gerrel, yet she ended up on the complete opposite path to him by becoming a thief and running scams with her moirail at the time. then a shitload of events occurred (most of them retconned out of her backstory but their effects on her character still remain. also we dont talk about 90% of those events because i was a Bad Writer at the time and im embarrassed by everything and nearly anxiety-vomit whenever people go ‘hey remember this’ BYE) and we got the piece of shit raccoon thief we all know and love. also ive mentioned this heaps of times before but at one point she had robolimbs cuz both her arms got shot off but i retconned that to having the bullets graze her because i hated drawing her cybernetics lmao. the only things that’ve really stayed with her is that she’s still really awkward and a little shy, as well as still retaining a lot of my negative traits from her self-insert days.

viltau: ive also talked about vil’s history in another ask, but tl;dr wanted a Gatsby troll cuz i was studying the book at the time, ended up making an Edgelord. he’s still pretty gatsby-esque, being a rich guy who worked his way up to the top (tho nowhere near as drastically since he’s already a highblood) and throws a lot of parties, but since he’s a huge literature nerd now he’s a lot more self-aware and aims to purposely embody tropes from his favourite novels. i still like the idea of yellowblood!viltau (and his old sprites are adorable i mean look at him), but i have a lot more fun writing him as he is now. he’s almost a parody of himself, yet simultaneously played completely straight.

somerl: he was originally inspired from me going through my photo albums from times ive been to Hamilton Island on holiday, and in particular the one night i went on a cruise on The Banjo Paterson. i liked the idea of a cute sailor troll, and that was all he got characterwise. then, like katrin, he developed as a result of a bunch of events occurring to him and that’s how he gained a personality. he’s still a cute sailor troll, but now he’s a paranoid insomniac sailor troll with an obsession for superstitions and hatred for seadwellers and women. seadweller women are his worst nightmare.

dismas: his origin is actually kinda funny cuz i was watching this amv, and around about the time that Birthday Massacre song starts playing there’s this white-haired kid who appears and i thought he was the coolest thing ever. to this day i still have no clue who he is or what anime he’s from. also because it’s still 2011 and I Was A Teenage Edgelord i had an embarrassing obsession with Izaya from Durarara so of course dismas had to be an informant who fucks with everyone. originally he was yellow!viltau’s assistant who carried out all the shady jobs and was my go-to troll for killing off ocs i got bored of but they had history with other people’s trolls so i couldnt just get rid of them. then his original concept got combined with vil when i retconned vil into being an indigoblood. when i brought him back i kept the informant stuff and the Edgyness, but now he’s edgy to make fun of the fact he was a legitimate edgelord played 100% straight back in the day. also his roboarm switched sides because i forgot which arm he lost lmao.

aegiel: did a complete 180 in terms of character concept, and went through a bunch a revamps before i even started rping her. originally she was inspired by Hollywood Undead (particularly the song city), and was actually a super hemorebel who managed to escape capture and culling by having probability manipulating psiionics that ensured luck was always on her side. then i scrapped that entirely because at the time i was studying the Chinese revolution and the topic of the cultural revolution came up. so then her concept switched to being based on the Chinese Red Guards, as well as partially the Russian Cheka since i studied the Russian revolution the semester prior. I thought the concept of a super hemoloyal lowblood with a fanatical dedication to the Empire would be interesting, since most hemoloyalists tended to be highbloods. the only things thatve stayed from her original concept are her name and symbol, as well as her laughing quirk being a remnant of how her lusus was originally a cheshire cat.

aiolos: i dont really remember where his original concept came from, apart from i remember seeing a fanart of a 1920s style Scout from TF2 and liking the idea of a courier troll. i know i drew his original design in history class while watching Doctor Zhivago but i dont remember anything about that movie to know if that had any bearing on his character lmao. originally he was pretty rude and kinda sleazy, which ended up morphing into the sass you see today. he hasnt really changed much from his original concept, but its more that his character has grown over time.

kalpan: ok i have a confession to make. the reason why i made kal was because there were a shitload of anonbloods on mspaf that were either A. really bad at hiding their anonblood status, or B. were all almost always tyrianbloods in disguise who would pull rank every time someone gave them shit for being anon. and me, being the egotistical piece of shit i am, decided that i wanted to make a good anonblood. so kal’s blood was kept secret and she stayed out of trouble so that itd never get revealed, and her reasoning for being anonymous was just that she didnt really care my dude. she hasnt really strayed too far from her original concept, but rather expanded on the reason why shes so casually apathetic and gave her more of a backstory.

leithe: leithe’s original concept was something i dreamed up, no joke. from what i remember from the dream, i went to like a superhero school or something, and there was this one kid whose power was to cancel out other people’s powers so he’d be the one to save other kids when they lost control of their powers. his power also looked like a bubble that’d envelop himself and the other person whose powers he was cancelling out, so when i made him a fantroll that turned into an invisible field in which his psiionics were constantly active. and instead of being a hero, leithe was just an average dude who’d take up odd jobs here and there so he could have the skills to get a good job in the fleet. conceptwise he hasnt changed much, although hes become less tolerate of other lowbloods over time and he grew 500% more eyebrow.

pratap: was the first new troll i made after starting this blog. his first idea was a cute little seadweller who didnt really understand why other trolls were suspicious of him and his innocent offers to take them to his cafe for coffee. then shortly after making him, I studied Great Expectations in my uni literature class, and loved the idea of pratap getting a mentor who turns him from an innocent little kid to a typical shithead member of high society. that plot was going pretty well but fell through because of Reasons (read: i no longer associate with the other rper), so now he’s stuck in limbo characterwise but id love to pick it up again sometime.

errett: i say this every time i bring up errett’s history but haha remember when this guy was supposed to be cute. so errett was supposed to be in a group of trolls inspired by the four main elements from the game OFF., but pwo and i never got anyone to fill the spots for the elements of metal and plastic so it was just errett and his troll karnvr. and yeah, errett was supposed to be cute and his rudeness was meant to just be cutesy ‘ill puff up my cheeks and get angry and everyones gonna think im adorable’ but that got thrown out the window the moment i started rping him and he became a complete cunt. then we started thinking up a backstory for him and he became even more of a Bitter Angry Baby, so now the only elements that’ve really retained are his design and references to the game OFF..

sigrun: was inspired by those gifs of penguins falling over and the fact that i fucking love penguins and cry whenever i see cute penguin-related things. apart from being a bit more aggressive in their first draft, they havent changed much at all (probably because i never use them ever oops).

kisert: i have another confession to make. the reason why i made kisert was because i thought the whole ‘creepy little kid who talks to ghosts’ troll was overdone to hell and back so i wanted to make a parody of it by making a troll who pretends to be creepy and talks to ghosts to con people. he’s always been a massive childish brat, but his brattiness and childishness has gotten even more apparent over the years. tho at the same time, because those tendencies have been played up, he’s become a lot more emotionally stunted and stuck in the past as a result, which i think is more interesting than his original concept.

raesul: also hasn’t really changed from her original concept. i had the Danger Days album on repeat and really liked the idea of a hemorebel radio host, and so rae was born. she’s also partially inspired by Motorcity which i was watching at the time (and never finished oops), hence her radio station being called radio BRNR, after the Burners group. while rae was always supposed to be completely different from her miss summertime identity, the differences have become a lot more pronounced now that rae is super awkward and insecure while miss summertime is loud, proud, and always in control. also miss summertime’s wardrobe went from being super girly to more punk and rock-and-rock inspired, originally i wanted to avoid that because i thought itd be too cliche but then somewhere along the line i decided ‘lol fuck it’.

shirei: is based off the pokemon pangoro, cuz one of it’s pokedex entries states how its tough and aggressive but doesnt tolerate bullies, so i thought the idea of a tough but almost motherly gang leader would be neat. i was also watching Kill La Kill and Revolutionary Girl Utena at the time, so she gained some tomboyish but also princely/fairytale-esque qualities as a result. she hasnt changed much in terms of concept and ideas, but she kinda retroactively got inspired by quite a few of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure protagonists (particularly Jolyne and Giorno, but also a bit of Josuke) because they were kind of similar in concept.

redeti: was made as being a part of a group for trolls based on santa’s reindeer that i was doing with pwo. red is a combination of the ideas i had for Dasher and Vixen, and when i first designed him we joked that he looked like a lovechild between viltau and kitaer, so his interests became snowcones and murder to reference that. while he’s still a part of the Northern Lights crew with all the other reindeer inspired trolls we made, he’s become more detached from everyone else as a result of making friends with people outside the community. but in terms of original concept and ideas, he hasn’t really changed apart from probably becoming a lot more naive and dense over time.

fannar: is another troll from the Northern Lights crew, although they were made about a month after. they were kind of based off my idea for Donner, but also a mix between one of my older trolls i got rid of and my old Hetalia oc Antarctica. since they werent going to be a reindeer troll, i wanted them to be an outsider to the group, hence their polar bear lusus and their sickly constitution making it difficult for them to live in their current environment. originally they legitimately hated redeti’s guts and wanted him dead, but over time it’s become more of just a simple blackcrush that’s made them very protective of him.

nancor: ive mentioned this before, but his original concept came about because of this video and me deciding i really liked xatu. i had also seen The Book Thief recently, and loved the character of Death (i havent read the book yet tho dont judge me), so that’s where nan’s whole ‘pleasant but morbid angel of death’ came from. he’s also somewhat based on a couple characters from Hamatora (which is an alright series but the 2nd season is a complete dumpster fire and you should only watch if you want to watch a show fly so far off the rails it becomes hilarious), such as Ratio’s power requiring him to cover up his eye, and Moral’s design (as well as Izuru Kamukura from Danga Ronpa being another design insp). he’s always been kind of a silly character with his dumb puns and the fact that he walks around wearing a blindfold and fights with semaphore flags, but the more serious aspects of his personality didnt come in until much later.

eichio: another troll that started out as a huge fuckin joke, i saw this vine and wanted to make a troll who used noisemakers as their strife weapon. his mimicry and talent with musical instruments was just random brainstorming, and his whole ‘mimicking other trolls so he can learn how to act properly and pick up their behaviours to become likeable’ became a thing because i didnt know what personality or interests to give him. then i really started to explore the concept of a troll who has been raised to be nothing but the perfect people pleaser and even more perfect servant, and the effects that would have on someone’s mentality. he also developed an anxiety disorder cuz i got diagnosed with GAD and realised how much of myself id unintentionally put in him. its kinda amusing how a character who was originally supposed to just be a blank slate ended up so complex, but i really like how much hes grown as a concept.

davitt: dav was made for that meme that went around where you and a friend had to come up w. 2 ocs in secret and not reveal them until they were both done, and then you had to figure out how to ship them together, so i came up with him while pwo made walker. i was watching How To Get Away With Murder at the time, so i really liked the idea of a corrupt lawyer who used loopholes to get all his clients out of being found guilty, and was only in the job field for money and the fact it was really easy for a tealblood to become a Legislacerator. but, since im incapable of making trolls that arent also huge fuckin dorks, he was also a huge lazy piece of shit cat who hoarded random garbage and came up with dumb ways to be efficiently lazy. over time his corrupt and greedy ways have fallen to the wayside in favour of the more comically serious side to his personality, though they’re still slightly there since he is primarily a defense lawyer and we all know those types of lawyers are the devil.

ananta: ana is based off the game OneShot, which i played and fell in love with instantly. a lot of their concept stems from the game, ranging from superficial stuff such as their appearance resembling Niko and how their strife weapon is a lightbulb, but also the technical aspects of the game such as their unforgiving personality being a reference to how you only get one shot at the game, and their hobby as a hacker referencing how the game does shit to your computer as part of a puzzle. the resemblance was apparently so close that the creator of the game reblogged my concept art for ana, which im both still flattered and embarrassed about. like a lot of my recent characters, their core concept hasnt really changed, but rather ive focused a lot more on aspects of their personality like their extreme bitterness to hide their vulnerablity, and their loneliness as a result of the events in their life and the facade they put up.

soroll: is a literal meme. hes based off the ‘scream at own ass’ opossum meme, and is part of a group of meme animal trolls owned by pwo, who is also a huge memer. again his concept hasnt really changed since hes always been kinda dumb but with a huge heart, but over time hes become more of a mother hen type since he ended up unintentionally gravitating towards trolls who never took care of themselves so hed fuss over them. also i have no clue what happened to his quirk over time or even what accent its meant to resemble now lmao.

benrii: is based off Sanetoshi Watase from one of my favourite anime of all time, Mawaru Penguindrum. like ana, he’s not so much a direct rip of the character (apart from appearance) but more of an amalgamation of references to the series, so you have things like his obsession with fate mirroring the theme of the show, his apple bombs referencing the symbolism of apples that appears constantly, and the fact that he’s 9.5 sweeps refers to the 95 arc number in the show. also at one point i fell into a huge rabbit hole and ended up reading up about cults and biblical shit so that’s where his god complex came from. the whole ‘being addicted to praise and acting out for attention’ aspect of his personality didnt come about until much later, and thats now the dominant part of his character as a whole.

rosato: is another troll based on memes and joke posts on tumblr rifp, but this time its those posts on modern vampires and people not recognising they’re actually vampires and seeing things like their sudden aversion to the sun and garlic to just be weird coincidences. so then i came up with the idea of a forgetful rainbowdrinker who refused to believe theyre actually dead because they forgot how they got killed and assumes all the associated Weird Vampire Shit are just coincidences. he’s also got a shitload of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure references in him because this was around about the time i got into the series. after errett failed, rosato was my second attempt at making a shy and cute but kinda mean troll, but once again he ended up becoming a full-blown rude asshole.

zotick: i was reading Vento Aureo and thought ‘you know Gold Experience is a fuckin cool power, what if I tried to make it less OP and turn it into a fantroll’. thus, zot was born. like rosato, his design and personality are a bunch of references to Giorno, and his love of bugs/scorpions/lizards/etc came from the fact that whenever Gold Experience turned something into an animal, its always something gross and dangerous. like eichio, i couldnt decide on any interests so i took the cheater’s way out and made it that he got bored easily so he doesnt stick to any main hobbies apart from bugs and pranks. Over time, he became more obnoxious and annoying, which was mostly because every single bug-related post on this site i could find was a fuckin meme.

Indi and Kaiman: im putting these two together because i came up with their concepts at the same time. firstly, i wanted to make trolls who were interested in the paranormal and aliens and shit, and secondly, i wanted them to be not quite siblings but grew up so closely they could basically be considered the Alternian equivalent of brothers. They were supposed to look similar in appearance and clothing too, but when i drew my first concept of indi i really liked what i came up with but it didnt suit how i envisioned kai so they ended up becoming completely different. i also wanted indi to be the quiet one and kai to be the loud one, but then i liked the idea of them being completely conflicting in terms of first impressions and ‘real’ personality. while their concepts never strayed away from their original idea, they definitely became a lot more developed and evolved once i started talking about them to ez, who was designing mauban at the time. from their interactions with mau, indi became a lot more extroverted but also trusting and optimistic, whereas kai became more judgmental and standoffish than i had initially intended, which i thought was a neat contrast.

mikiel: he’s Ghiaccio from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. that’s it. character analysis over. ok i lied, but a lot of his character concept came from the fact that i really loved Ghiaccio’s design, personality, and powers, and really wanted to make a troll like that. funnily enough his gang affiliation is not a reference to Passione / La Squadra, but rather because i wanted to add more characters to the red scarves. the whole mutant thing is because i really wanted him to have psiionics but also wanted him to be a blueblood, and the fact that his powers are nigh uncontrollable is me reusing original!cve’s chlorokinesis idea, this time the reason being because his body cant handle an ability that supposed to be only seen in lowbloods rather than just Because Shut Up. he was actually supposed to be aggressive and Angry(tm) all the fuckin time, but after a while i considered that his life is actually really fuckin depressing so he gained ‘depression’ as his second emotion. now i try to focus more on his defeatist nature as opposed to anything else because otherwise he feels just kinda one-note.

aislin: is based on Alphys from Undertale, because i really like making characters based on my fav indie rpgs apparently. i got to that part in the game when you realise that alphys has been watching you from the very beginning, and thought a troll with surveillance-based psiionics would be a really neat concept over making Yet Another Geeky Scientist (although ais is interested in science to reference alphys, she just doesnt practice it). in terms of personality, she’s katrin 2.0, because as much as i love kat how she is right now, i really missed her adorably yet painfully shy personality that she used to have. i am also v. protective of ais and the types of trolls she interacts with because i refuse to have another Incident. so its more of a return to original concepts that earlier characters once embodied.

lanthi: came about because A. I was watching Owarimonogatari and i fuckin love Ougi and B. it was finally time for me to make a subjug. her chucklevoodoos are a play on the fact that Ougi is scarily good at prompting people into figuring out the exact answers they’re looking for, and especially in the Sodachi arcs how she was able to make Araragi remember everything about his past that he’d blocked out of his mind just by asking the right questions and the right time. for lanthi, i interpreted that as fabricating memories through suggestion, so her targets become more receptive to listening to her since they suddenly recall her as a familiar face they can trust. i havent really done much with her so i dont rly have anything to say, other than i still have no clue what the fuck she is.

velour: oh boy, velour. i had so many concepts for this fucker that it was hard for me to settle on one. along with being a celebrity fashion designer and vlogger who happens to be a lowkey con artist, other concepts i had in mind were a matchmaker, and a borderline yandere who uses his celebrity status to lure in targets to fall in love with him. i scrapped the latter two ideas (tho now the yandere thing gets referenced by the fact he gets fans paying him to act out their own weird celebrity stalker fantasies LMAO), and somehow managed to mash together all my concepts into an actual troll. he took the longest for me to figure out, and it wasnt until after i made liiore and gave him a past with him + mikiel where everything started to click, but now everything works and im super happy w. him.

liiore: was somewhat of an offshoot of my many velour concepts, since along with the celebrity idea i was also thinking of an ex-celebrity concept as well. also one night i was reading the PokeSpe page on Bulbapedia and it mentioned one of the main characters being an ex-celebrity who became a shut-in after he got too overwhelmed by the lifestyle, and i really liked that concept. so then liiore was born. he was also my 3rd attempt at making a cute shy boy character, except this time i nixed the ‘but also grumpy in a cute way’ so i wouldnt end up with Yet Another Errett or Rosato. now hes a huge dopey ball of adorable shyness.

daimon: so when i first played Awakening i made a Fire Emblem-inspired troll who didnt really click with me so i scrapped them almost immediately. then Fates came around and I fell in love with every single archer but especially Niles and Takumi, so i was like ‘yknow what lets try round 2 for an FE troll’. so dai is a mishmash of all the Fates archers (but Niles remained the main inspiration so that’s why his appearance and personality is closest to him), as well as kinda more Arthur than Setsuna simply because i thought a troll with impossibly bad lukc would be hilarious. and also hilariously tragic, hence his backstory. since i havent really rped him that much he hasnt really changed in concept, but he also became inspired by Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine after i started watching that and now i cannot unsee dai in jake help me.

callan: is based on a combination of ‘The Phantom Thief’ trope, Bungou Stray Dogs (particularly Dazai and Chuuya in terms of design), and the fact i was talking about my faceblindness issues with my parents and thought ‘hey a character who no one can remember what they look like would make a great thief’. and i was thinking about rosato’s backstory and really wanted to make an npc to fill in the gaps re: how he died but whoops i got attached to the concept and now ive got a legit troll on my hands. i was also thinking about how i have way too many pretty + well-dressed + cultured male trolls so i kinda made callan a different spin on my own predicability by making him look smart and cultured but really not giving a shit about anything of the sort. he loves the theatre but only if theyre musicals with a lot of comedy, he steals art and knows his art history but only so that he can definitely steal something of worth that isnt going to end up a forgery, he’s sharp dressed because it attracts attention given his caste, and he drinks beer because he looks like a guy who’d prefer wine.

#headcanon #EVERYONE #jesus christ its finally done #im going to bed now its 5am and my parents are already awake RIFP

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aurelliocheek · 4 years ago

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A Year of Rain: Writing Strategies

How to build a new world for an RTS Game.

So, you wanna write this? A question I’ve been waiting for. When Nick, the captain of our daring endeavor, approached me, A Year Of Rain was supposed to become a Fantasy RTS based on a well-known IP; and to be honest, I was more than fine with that. See, I like that IP, I am very familiar with it and just from a cerebral logistics standpoint, I’ve always been comfortable settling in an established system and give it my own spin. All I’d have to do was looking for one of the more obscure places and events of that world, work with that foundation, and tell an interesting tale.

Which I did. Vigorously.

Then we had to discard that approach. The world for our game would not be an established one. We needed to build it from scratch, every nook and cranny. And here’s how we did that, or rather, my first-time experiences with RTS narrative design and maybe some survival tips on how to navigate that minefield.

Super rough worldbuilding draft.

A new IP. Well… We took that turn of events in stride. After all, even if existing worldbuilding provides you with nomenclature, systems, a fan base and many more convenient tools in your box, it’s all double-edged: you can’t slip on lore, the systems restrain you, while gameplay and game design boundaries are sneaking up from behind. You also owe the fans maximum accuracy anyway to avoid alienation. Put like this, building your own world from scratch sounds a lot more appealing, doesn’t it? It’s a gorgeous blooming field of nearly endless possibilities and free of any veto you wouldn’t give yourself.

Right…?

The whole world in your hands I��ve done this for plenty tabletops and homebrew Pen & Paper systems. It’s important to have an interesting world for an interesting tale you want to tell. Doing this for a very specifically tagged game is a different beast altogether. To keep the field analogy going, when first thinking about a world for a Fantasy RTS game, I felt like I arrived a week after the harvest.

Staring into the abyss of fantasy intertextuality made me uncomfortable right from the start, when I was asking myself: ‘What kind of world is this going to be?’

Creating a new, compelling world for an RTS game is a challenge.

Standard globe, massive Midlandia continent where all the people hang out and fight each other or whatever? It’s been done – ad nauseam and to death.

A shattered world, with drifting pieces and… Shit, this has been done. Pocket dimension? Done. Flat, you could say, a disc-like world? Yeah, good luck.

Okay, but what if it has layers like an onion… Septerra Core? Who even remembers that?! I do, it was a very charming game, actually. Anyway, a world needs people. People are easy! Species, races, cultures, there are so many cool fantasy folks… which… have all been utilized to exhaustion.

Even as I am writing this, a game cropped up that is so eerily similar to the core ideas I eventually developed for my world and story that it snaps the credibility of parallel evolution and makes me reconsider my general stance on psychic spies. I came to terms with the notion long before that announcement, but it confirmed my take on worldbuilding I had to adapt if I wanted to keep my sanity: There are many, many worlds out there and chances are high you won’t reinvent the wheel. Take solace in the fact that you can craft a very efficient, aesthetically pleasing wheel!

For here comes the twist: Intertextuality is a good thing. Since I’m throwing that word around like I think I know what it means, here’s what it is… “The relationship between texts, especially literary ones.”

It’s the reason why references work. For example, why Pride & Prejudice & Zombies exists, and you still get what that title implies. It’s why Banner Saga doesn’t need to explain the language, cultural setting, or apparel of the world they created because we have read about or seen media featuring Vikings. Darkest Dungeon draws a lot of its appeal from weird fiction, gothic and cosmic horror and you understand that connection. It’s why many people love it when fictional characters or worlds reference the real world, or pop culture or even quote from other movies and works of literature. Because we get what that means. Because it’s a nod to what we, and probably the creator of that fiction, love (the latter being strictly speaking an allusion, but it fits under the same umbrella, bear with me here). In broad strokes, it means that people understand connections and baselines without your explanation, because someone, at some point, did a very similar thing and established a widely known convention with it.

Yes, we’ve made a papercraft map.

It seems like the bane of innovation You may feel like everything has been done already, or even get conflicted because a line you wrote is similar or identical to something that already exists. However, just like tropes, archetypes, and cliché, it’s a boon for your world’s foundation if you swing it with precision. Best case, whatever you decide: On a very basic level, your audience will have a fond connotation to many of the things you do. There’s a catch, of course. You’ll need a lot of lipstick for your intertextual pig. The real work for me started after laying the foundation when I decided what type of world I wanted and who populated it. Both choices, at a glance, weren’t too special, admittedly.

What I hoped made them special was thoroughly fleshing out every race, species, and culture, applying some twists here and there… I tried generating credible systems and all the bones and beams that not only support the worldbuilding but also telegraph and highlight what made this world compelling, comfortably familiar, yet also refreshing.

You can do a lot if you stick to some fantasy guns and bolster them with nuances. In A Year Of Rain, for example, dwarves are the most competent spellcasters and considering how this world is designed, it even makes sense, though it’s not something you see very often. And it escalated pretty easily from there: What are the consequences for other species? What is their strategy? And how would that other adjacent fantasy race act or evolve and so on? I did that for, I think, 16 species concepts and there was a point when there were more connections and ideas than I actually wanted.

After fleshing out all the cultural dynamics, historical angles, rules of magic, justifying dwarven rune-powered railguns, establishing how many terabytes of memories a sentient fungus could store compared to divine lichen and what kind of weed lizardfolk prefer to smoke, I was finally ready to apply all this to the game itself.

Or not.

Strategic Writing Turns out, an RTS has comparatively limited narrative space. I would go as far as to call it claustrophobic. Design and format of an RTS tend to isolate the parts of the world you build. You have one single map at a time to establish whatever you want to transport narratively. And you only get one shot, because there usually is, by design, no backtracking.

It’s fair to assume that’s one reason why this genre often struggles with thorough worldbuilding and story in its campaign and multiplayer. Everything you can show, tell and narrate has to fit in roughly 15-30 minutes of tiny people murdering each other in real time. Then, you move on to the next area where, you guessed it, you train tiny people and have them murder each other for 15-30 minutes.

There is little room to breathe, or significantly manipulate the game flow, or show the inhabitants of your world doing anything other than fighting and killing to do more fighting and killing. That’s where the majority of anything you’ll write will be focused on. The units you command have no narrative agenda, almost no space to reflect on what they’re doing or want to do; they fight and die and obey the great cursor.

“But Blizzard!” you say?

Campaign is a different horse. It’s easier there. You can, to a certain degree, pace what happens, insert cutscenes and design a fantasy, a goal, and establish what drives this narrative… And at least your characters get to talk and express opinions, motivation, broader personality and all that, so: Yes, Blizzard cracked the code in most of their campaigns and will probably remain on that throne till the flippin’ sun burns out. But looking at virtually all other RTS games, there’s a trend to keep the world simple, the greater worldbuilding or story potential unexplored (Warlords RTS, Grey Goo) or exaggerate other aspects enough that they tilt from ludicrous to awesome and thus make for a satisfying campy story (looking at you, Command & Conquer). There’s a reason why even master craftsmen like the folks at Blizzard preach the mantra: Gameplay first in RTS.

All that doesn’t mean you can’t tell a compelling story, it doesn’t mean you can’t build a fantastic world, but it means that it may feel awkward at first. It’s a much greater challenge than in an RPG, an adventure or something similar where you can weave both things easier into a nice colorful tapestry. For our game, there is no after-mission hub to talk to characters, no codex to look up things like history and lore, no audio logs, books or scrolls, no close-up first- or third-person perspective to do advanced intrinsic storytelling. RTS has a fast, relentless pace. Your opponent, be it a human or AI, won’t wait for you to absorb subjects declared second priority like a narrative or worldbuilding details. So, whatever you tell is ideally right there when you play.

Some rules and tools you know still apply accordingly. For example, each of our units has 17 standard response lines. You better believe I tried to cram as much character as I could in there, tried my best to give them personality you can relate to in a few clicks and with allusions to the world around them.

Daedalic’s development team is building the A Year Of Rain world.

Then there are our phenomenal art, design, sound and SFX people Worldbuilding is, of course, not only writing. How characters look, what gear they carry, how their magic or tools of trade manifest and interact, their body language, animation, and voice work… all that blasts open a welcome breach into the walls you run into with an RTS, just like with any other game. Though the world is delivered in chunks in this genre, you can still do plenty of environmental storytelling, be it through biomes, architecture, weather, or ambient sounds and how the whole palette interconnects through the game. The tools are there; they just need lots of attention. The more you have prepared, the better. Whatever you came up with, whatever your vision is, don’t use a crowbar. Listen to the other departments and let them work their magic, even, or especially when that means letting go of your brainchild because they came up with a cooler solution. I’m a writer. What the hell do I know about shapes and the right visual impact, or the finer points of ability synergies and level design? Try to trust people as they trust you.

This is a good time to point out that 50% of all my conceptual resources won’t make it directly into the game. Some things are just too intricate/niche and have no business being there considering the very tight space that’s rightfully conceded to the gameplay. Adjust that percentage further north, actually, since some visual ideas don’t make good silhouettes for in-game models, because they’d be too small, too noisy or just a pain to animate you could never justify. It’s fine, though. Compare it to an actor who’s told to come up with a backstory for a bunch of tiny props on their costume. They’ll never get any big reference in the movie, but they help the actor getting into the role.

As I’ve mentioned, the characters’ role is basically to fight and die, above all else. It creates a dissonance, intuitively. Telling war stories is no hard sell, but it adds a new layer to the worldbuilding itself. Is this a new conflict? Where will you locate it? Is it a flashpoint or a global affair, and how much sense does that make? How do you plan for the future, i.e., at the end of your campaign, is your world fixed or broken, and where does it go from there? Or is it even beyond fixing and stays in a constant, vicious cycle of warfare?

The one luxury I had here was that I got to have my cake and eat it too: I made a world that’s broken, and I elected to focus on one conflict on a very specific piece of land. It leaves enough breathing room to tease a much bigger playground around the elaborate nice sandbox we’ll ship with this game.

Narrative Design for an RTS is a wild ride. And despite the pinch of salt in the lines above I definitely enjoy the chance I’ve been given with this. This article is honestly a slapdash work of professional opinion, advise, and direct dirty development experience. It’s a rough field guide for those treading these grounds for the first time, informative entertainment, or a good foundation for discussion.

See you in that world we’ve built, if you’re so inclined!

Ben Kuhn

Ben Kuhn is a writer and narrative designer at Daedalic Entertainment. Seven years sailing for Daedalic, mostly as a translator, dialogue writer, and voice director, packing a Master of Arts in English literature and creative writing acquired at the University of Bremen and Maynooth. Signed up due to his love of the medium and good stories and continues to be happy about that choice.

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