#cause while i took a different route i do like what his comic design was going for so i wanna be a bit inspired by that

[edenrabbitnest]

wanted to draw my sso faves

[gamebunny-advance]

I’m Feeling Saucy...

Time to post some *really* old NSR/Desynchronized comic sketches.

I’m putting them under a readmore because they’re *especially* bad and weren’t posted for a reason, but I feel like the only way I ever look at my old sketches is if I post them. So hopefully doing this will motivate me to actually finish one of these.

Contains Potential Spoilers For: 1010 Desynchronized

“Mug”

From a comic about Kerinting breaking one of Kliff’s mugs by mistake. I never got the layouts down for this one (that’s gonna be a running theme for most of these). I don’t think I ever finished the script for this one because I think it’s way too sappy, but I’m scrapping it anyway because I don’t want to write White as being physically abusive anymore.

Captions:

Kliff: I mean, yeah. I liked that mug, and now I have a mess to clean up.

Kliff: But I’m not going to hit you over it. It was a mistake.

Kerinting: I made a mistake... but I’m not being punished?

Kliff: Hey, this isn’t an inviation to break all my mugs. Just be careful next time.

------

“Untitled”

This is from one of the earlier rewrites of Desynchronized B Plot. Since I’m scrapping that version, I can talk about it a bit more.

Since I scrapped the original kidnapping plot for being in bad taste, the new idea was that during an unauthorized getaway into the city, Kerinting got separated from the main group and wound up in the trash (in most versions of that script, they accidentally got caught up in a fight, but since 1010s can’t retaliate against humans while in civilian mode, Kerinting became the distraction to let the others escape, but he didn’t make it out).

Coincidentally, on the same night, Kliff was coming home from a night of drunken karaoke and had noticed him in the trash. Joey (his neighbor) had forced him to go out since Kliff had gotten extremely depressed after the events of the game and had just been moping around his apartment for the past month or so.

Thinking it was just a bootleg that was tossed and against his better judgement, Kliff takes Kerinting home with the intention of gutting him for parts. The following day, Kerinting was able to reactivate himself, shocking Kliff who had no idea that Kerinting was a genuine 1010.

There are two different routes that I wrote for this version of the incident:

One was that Kliff just tells Kerinting to leave, but Kerinting refuses to since he was out past curfew: any 1010 not back home by a certain time will be destroyed, no questions asked.

The other was that Kliff physically takes Kerinting back to Barraca mansion, but gets into an argument with NJ about it, causing them both to flee back to Kliff’s place.

In either scenario, Kerinting is essentially abandoned by the others and is taken in by Kliff out of pity/spite. In most versions, this backstory was revealed through a conversation with Joey. Joey was actually a lot more prominent in earlier versions since he more or less served as the “voice of reason” to the other two’s nonsense. He might still be, but I haven’t thought of many other scenarios where he’s really “needed”.

Captions:

Joey: So... this thing...

Joey: Just lives with you now?

Kliff: Yep.

Joey: And you’re okay with that?

Kliff: It wasn’t my choice to make.

----------

“Routine”

I really liked the idea of a comic comparing and contrasting what the daily routines of the Green 1010s were now that Kerinting is living with Kliff.

Despite how bad they are, I do feel like the scribbles speak for themselves about what’s going on. But I did want to make an aside about how they sleep: In earlier drafts Kerinting just slept next to a cabinet in the living room because it’s visible and doesn’t take up much space (Kerinting used to stay in Kliff’s closet, but he kept getting scared by him). In more recent stories he sleeps in a suitcase next to the cabinet. The other 1010s sleep in what I call a “standing bed”. It’s a dock that they hook into so they can charge and upload their memories for the day. In earlier drafters this had to be done physically instead of being remotely uploaded.

----------

“Memories”

One of my “dream pieces” is to draw “Kliff’s Photo Album” where he keeps all of the pictures from his younger days. Top left would have been him and young!NJ. Bottom left is NJ recieving letters/gifts from his classmates before he gets shipped out. Top mid-right is a young!Tatiana. Below that was supposed to be Kul Fyra. Far right was a strip of one of those photobooth things with all 3 of them.

I had an idea for a comic where he takes one of those with Mayday & Zuke in one of the Sayu Photobooths as a celebration of him helping them take down one of NSR’s artists. When he came home, he would have put that one with the ones he took with Tatiana and NJ all those years ago. I might still do that one day because I still think it’s a cute idea, I just don’t think I can execute it that well XP.

----------

“Pet”

I think I’ve posted the script for this one already, though I’m not sure which one would have been the most recent iteration.

Anyway, this comic is mostly about Kliff comparing the ways that Kerinting behaves more like an animal than a full-fledged human. The 1010 AI is fairly advanced, but it’s still very predictable.

Captions:

Voiceover Kliff: It likes getting treats.

Kliff: Here, I found another mixtape for you.

Kerinting: Yay! Thank you!

Voiceover Kliff: It needs constant affection or it gets lonely.

Kliff: You did good today! *pat pat*

Kerinting: Really? I did good today?

Voiceover Kliff: It’s good at learning new tricks.

Kerinting: I cooked it just like you taught me!

Kliff: Yep. Looks good.

Voiceover Kliff: And no matter what it does, I can’t stay mad at it because it’ll hit me with those [puppy dog eyes].

Kerinting: I’m sorry. I broke it again.

----------

“Daddy”

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, but it’s a personal joke that 1010 calls anyone who even vaguely has some authority over them “Dad”, including each other. NJ is a dad for obvious reasons. DJSS is a dad because he’s dating NJ. Kliff is a dad because he helped design the MKI OS. And I don’t think I had considered it at the time of writing this one, but they call Tatiana “Dad” too because she’s NJ’s boss.

Captions:

Kliff: How many “dads” do you things even have?

White: There’s the Captain, you, DJ Subatomic Supernova, and me.

Kliff: What do you mean “me”?

White: I’m a first gen 1010, so that makes me their dad.

(White is an upgraded MKI. Red & Blue are upgraded MKIIs. Yellow & Green were born as MKIIIs.)

[remywrites5]

           Remus looked at himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. He really needed to get more sleep, the bags under his eyes had taken up permanent residence there, and his roots were starting to come in. He spat into the sink and then rinsed his toothbrush off. When he glanced back up at himself, there was the same harrowing reflection staring back. He needed to at least re-dye his hair pink or else pick a different colour.

           He’d dyed it pink on a whim after his last breakup. He thought maybe going from his usual tawny curls to something else would make him more exciting, more cheerful, more something. “Why are you never smiling?” Benjy had asked Remus all the time. As if Remus should just constantly be smiling like some kind of insane person.

           Remus walked over to his desk and flopped into his rolling chair. He sat with one leg bent up towards his chest and hunched over his tablet. The thing was so old it was practically a dinosaur. The program he used to draw on was always crashing – causing Remus to do almost constant saving. Drawing web comics wasn’t exactly the most lucrative use of his art degree, but it paid the bills.

           There was some sort of ungodly sound outside and then the distinct clatter of something breaking. Remus jumped to his feet in surprise, wondering if someone had climbed up to his flat to murder him. Two shadows appeared at his door and then one of them knocked. Well, if they were murderers, they were of the polite variety.

           Remus walked over tentatively, his pen for his tablet still in his hand as his only means of defense. He figured at the least maybe he could poke a few eyes.

           “I don’t think anyone is home.”

           “He has to be home. I haven’t seen him leave the house in days.”

           “Hmm, paying close attention, are we?”

           “Shut up, Jamie.”

           “Ow!”

           Confused, Remus opened the door to find two guys standing on the other side. The dark-skinned one with glasses immediately smiled, while the pale one with long dark hair kept his face neutral.

           “Hiya! I’m James and this is Sirius,” James said, moving what was in his hand so that he could wave. “We run the bakery downstairs. We just came to introduce ourselves and bring you these!”

           Remus took the container when James offered it, still a little bit stunned by the whole thing, and opened it up. Inside was an assortment of baked goods. “Oh. Thank you,” Remus said, a little bit at a loss for words. “This is really nice.”

           Remus was suddenly struck by the fact that two very attractive men were on his doorstep and Remus was wearing the same hoodie he’d worn for three days. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d put on deodorant. Embarrassed beyond belief, Remus felt his cheeks flush.

           “Aren’t you going to say anything?” James prompted his friend, shoving at Sirius’ shoulder.

           “Hi,” Sirius said, running his fingers through his shoulder-length hair.

           Remus swallowed thickly and quickly put the container of goodies down. He didn’t trust his shaking hands not to drop them. “Nice to meet you.”

           “Whoa, are you an artist?” James asked, noticing the pen in Remus’ hand. “Do you think you could design something for us?”

           “James, don’t impose,” Sirius said, crossing his arms over his chest.

           “I’m not imposing!” James insisted, turning and shooting Sirius a look. “We’ll pay for the work. It’s just right now our menus are so bland! They don’t really say ‘Padfoot and Prongs’ Patisserie.”

           “That’s a fancy name,” Remus said, tucking the pen behind his ear so that he could shove his hands in his pockets. Suddenly they’d gotten all sweaty.

           “Yeah well, this wanker is half French, so he wouldn’t let me call it a pastry shop,” James said teasingly. “By the way, you haven’t told us your name.”

           “Oh,” Remus said, realizing that James was right. He shuffled his feet slightly and kind of wished James and Sirius would leave. He hadn’t had such a long social interaction in months. This was getting to be a bit much, and James’ enthusiasm was draining. “Remus. Remus Lupin.”

           “So do you think you can design something for our menus?” James asked excitedly, his hazel eyes big behind his glasses.

           “Um, sure, I’ll take a stab at it,” Remus offered, even though he kind of didn’t want to. He had deadlines to meet and he was already a little behind. But then James and Sirius had brought him baked goods without having even met Remus before. Besides, how hard could designing a menu be?

           “Great!” James said, slapping Sirius on the back. “Isn’t that great, Padfoot?”

           Sirius sighed. “Sure is.”

           Remus pulled out his wallet and handed James one of his business cards. It had been Benjy’s idea that Remus get them. This was only the second Remus had even given out. The first one had been given the Benjy. What a waste of money.

           “My email is at the bottom,” Remus explained, pointing to it on the card. “Just send me the details of what you want and I’ll work something up.”

           Sirius tilted his head to the side. “What are your rates?”

           “Um…” Fuck, Remus hadn’t exactly thought about it. He knew what he charged per page on his web comic but this was completely different. “How about you just, um, let me get a free baked good from time to time and we’ll call it even?”

           “Of course!” James said, nodding emphatically.

           “Hold on,” Sirius interjected, putting his hand up to stop James. “For the rest of time you want free shit from us? Just for a doodle?”

           “Sirius –“ James cut in, his face slightly aghast at his friend’s harsh tone.

           “I – I won’t abuse it or anything,” Remus said, feeling his face heat. Christ, the way Sirius was looking at him made him nervous. “It won’t be every day or anything like that.”

           Sirius huffed and turned his face away. “Fine. But I reserve the right to cut you off.”

           “Okay.”

           “Perfect,” James said, tugging on Sirius’ arm. “We should get back downstairs. We’ve still got a lot to do before we open. I’ll email you later, Remus!”

           “Sounds good,” Remus said, waving after them as they started down the fire escape. The moment he closed the door, he felt like he could breathe a little easier. He didn’t know what Sirius’ problem was, but the fewer interactions Remus had with him the better.

                                                           ***

           Remus finished up the latest update for his comic and sat back with a groan. It was already 10:30 at night and Remus hadn’t had any dinner. For once he had been in a good flow and hadn’t wanted to stop. Now his stomach was so empty it hurt. He couldn’t remember eating breakfast either.

           He walked over to where he had left the baked good James had dropped off and carried the container into bed. He sat munching on them as he scrolled through his phone. He had eaten about half of them when he remembered James was supposed to contact him. He pulled up his email and sure enough there was a message from James Potter.

           Apparently they wanted something kind of classy involving a buck and a black dog. Remus was intrigued, and popped a custard crème into his mouth. Their stuff really was mouth-wateringly good. Remus was glad he had asked for pastries instead of cash. While he could use the money, he tended to live on instant noodles and bacon sandwiches. Having something from the bakery from time to time would be a real treat.

                                                           ***

           Remus’ flat was on the top floor of the building and it meant he had almost exclusive rooftop access. He hadn’t done much with it except put out a table and two chairs. He really only went out there to smoke anyway. He stood by the side of the roof with his elbows on the ledge, watching the street below, his cigarette resting between his lips.

           Sirius exited the bakery and walked down the side alley of the building. He seemed to be having a heated discussion with someone on the phone. Remus felt himself tracking Sirius with his eyes, even though he didn’t mean to.

           “Damn it, Reg, I already told you –“ Sirius seemed to be cut off by the other person on the phone. “I don’t care if they cut me off. I’m not going on a blind date that my mum set up with a woman! I haven’t lived in that house for five years and she still thinks she can control me. Now she’s even roping you into it.”

           Remus felt a bit bad for eavesdropping, but the street was relatively quiet at that time of day, so it was difficult not to hear. Remus wondered why Sirius had said woman like that, as if he were offended by being set up with someone female. Remus didn’t want to get his hopes up that Sirius might also be gay. Thinking that was a dangerous route to go down. He tried to finish up his cigarette and go back inside before he was spotted, but it seemed Sirius was done with his conversation. He dropped his phone by his side and looked up at the sky. His eyes seemed to immediately land on Remus and Remus felt his cheeks heat up in response. He took a slow drag of his ciggy and let it out, letting his eyes drift away as if he hadn’t just been staring.

           He wasn’t wholly surprised when he heard footsteps making their way up the fire escape. He finished his cigarette and lit another one. He usually didn’t chain smoke like this, considering all the nicotine often made him dizzy, due to how little he ate most days. He turned when Sirius made it onto the roof and somehow managed to meet Sirius’ accusing stare.

           “How much of that did you hear?” Sirius asked, slipping his phone into his pocket.

           Remus scratched his cheek with his free hand. “Uh, the whole thing?”

           Sirius sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Can I bum one of those?”

           Remus opened the pack and shook one out towards Sirius. Sirius slid it between his lips and leaned in when Remus flicked the lighter to light it. Remus hadn’t noticed it the first time they met, but Sirius had grey eyes. Remus had never seen someone with eyes like that before.

           Remus had no idea what to say, so he just continued smoking, watching Sirius out of his peripheral vision. It was a little awkward, but not unbearably so, and it seemed Sirius was happy to smoke in silence. Sirius’ apron was covered in flour, and what Remus hoped was jam of some kind. not something more nefarious based on its red colour. The last thing he needed was a Sweeney Todd situation in his building.

           Remus and Sirius finished their cigarettes at the same time and both killed them in the ashtray. They were standing so close, should to shoulder, and Remus had no idea why that made his heart race. He turned towards Sirius in order to say his goodbyes, and suddenly Sirius was even closer.

           “Well, I should –“

           Remus didn’t finish that sentence as Sirius was leaning in. He was moving with intent and his lips just barely brushed against Remus’. Remus gasped, the sound getting swallowed up as Sirius’ lips pressed more firmly against Remus’. Remus let himself enjoy it for a moment, Christ, it had been so long since he’d kissed someone, before he brought himself back to his sense.

           “What are you doing?” he demanded, pushing Sirius away.

           Sirius’ eyes searched Remus’ for a moment and then he took another step back. “Fuck, I – I’m sorry. I don’t even have an excuse.”

           Remus grinned as he watched Sirius flounder for a moment. He decided to let Sirius off the hook. It was just a little kiss after all. “Hey, I’m almost done with the menu design. Do you want to see it?”

           The tension in Sirius’ shoulders ebbed at Remus’ offer. “Yeah, sure.”

           Remus told Sirius to sit down at the little table while Remus went inside to get his tablet. He brought it out and sat down across from Sirius. He opened up the menu design and placed it in front of Sirus. He was actually a little nervous as Sirius looked it over. It was a buck and a dog running through a forest surrounded by berry bushes. James had explained in the email that their homemade jam was a huge selling point for them and they wanted the menu to emphasize that.

           “It’s not too dark, is it?” Remus asked, chewing his bottom lip.

           “No, I think it’s perfect.” Sirius glanced up, and for the first time Remus had seen, Sirius smiled. “We’re doing a soft opening in two days. You should come.”

           “Will I have to pay?” Remus teased, resting his chin in his hand and looking at Sirius.

           Sirius laughed. “Fine, you don’t have to pay. What kind of pastry do you like best? I’ll make it for you.”

           Remus considered it for a moment. “Jammy dodgers.”

           Sirius’ grin widened. “You got it.”

                                                             ***

           Remus went to the soft opening, even though he hadn’t been around that many people in a while, and it put his social anxiety through the roof. He met James’ wife, Lily, and their son, Harry. He also met quite a few of James and Sirius’ closest friends. Even though everyone was very nice, Remus couldn’t help feeling a bit like an outsider.

           However, Remus didn’t miss the way that his jammy dodgers seemed to be the only ones with little hearts in the middle. That knowledge alone was enough to make him stick around.

                                                           ***

           Remus was in trouble. His web comic was about a werewolf and a vampire that fell in love with each other. The werewolf character struck a striking resemblance to Remus, although the character had Remus’ original hair colour. The idea had come to him based on his name. The vampire character, however, had short dark hair and red eyes. Yet, whenever Remus found himself drawing him, his hair seemed to be getting progressively longer for no discernable reason and his eyes seemed to be grey.

           It didn’t help that Remus saw Sirius pretty much every day. During his lunch break, Sirius would bring up something from the bakery, and they would sit together at the little table and eat and smoke. Remus had gotten to know Sirius, little by little, cracking away at Sirius’ shell to the gooey center underneath. Despite his first impression of Sirius, and his original cold exterior, Remus found the man himself was mushy and romantic and sweet.

           Remus told Sirius about the fact that he’d always meant to make a little rooftop garden, but as of yet hadn’t really gotten around to buying any plants. Sirius showed up the next day with a little tree.

           “It’s called Dogwood,” he’d said with a knowing grin. He had continued to buy Remus several flowers and plants since then. He’d even brought some herbs for cooking, even though Remus insisted he didn’t really cook. Every time Sirius and Remus found a place for the new plant, Sirius would get that same smile. A smile that had started to cause butterflies in Remus’ stomach.

           There was no talk about the conversation Remus had overheard or of the kiss they’d shared. Remus figured both topics were off limits.

           Maybe that’s why he couldn’t get Sirius out of his head.

                                                           ***

           Remus dropped his head back and groaned. “I told you if you didn’t stop me I would eat all six éclairs.”

           “An impressive feat,” Sirius said, grinning behind his wine glass as he took a sip.

           “I hate you,” Remus said, scrubbing his hand over his face. He was starting to sweat a bit from overeating. “I’m going to put on so much weight.”

           “You could use some more meat on your bones,” Sirius responded with a shrug. “You barely eat as it is.”

           “I was right, this is a Sweeney Todd situation, you’re fattening me up to put me in a pie,” Remus bemoaned, clutching his stomach. That last éclair had really done him in.

           “We don’t even serve meat pies at the bakery,” Sirius said in amusement. “I think you’re safe.”

           “I’m not buying it,” Remus said, staring at Sirius accusingly. “Why else would you bring me all these sweets?”

           Sirius glanced away, twirling his wine glass between his fingers. “For an excuse to come see you.”

           “Oh,” Remus said, a blush rising to his cheeks. “Really?”

           Sirius stood up and walked over to Remus, placing his hand on the back of Remus’ chair, and leaning into him. “So, I made a mess of our first kiss. Think you might let me try again?”

           “Um.” Remus stared up at Sirius and let out a shaky breath. “Yes. W-we can do that.”

           Sirius slid his fingers through Remus’ curls until his hand came to rest at the back of Remus’ head. Then he guided their lips together into a soft kiss. Remus opened his mouth first, and Sirius was quick to follow suit, their tongues meeting in a mixture of chocolate, wine and cigarettes. Remus eagerly chased the taste from Sirius’ mouth.

           Sirius pulled back after a few life-altering moments. Remus felt his eyes flutter open to find that Sirius was smiling at him. God, Remus loved it when Sirius smiled. “I could eat you up, I really could,” Sirius sang softly.

           Remus busted out laughing. “Do not sing Sweeney Todd at me when you’re trying to be romantic.”

           Sirius chuckled and pulled Remus up into a hug. “Noted. Should I just tell you I love you then?”

           Remus hugged Sirius back, burying his face in Sirius’ neck, ignoring the deep blush currently on his face. “I-I think that would work.”

           “Well?” Sirius asked expectantly, turning his face and pressing a kiss to Remus’ forehead.

           Remus hugged Sirius tighter. “I love you too.”

           Remus stood there, in a moment so like a fairy tale that he didn’t want it to end, wishing he could freeze time. He stood in the moonlight, embracing the man he had come to adore, surrounded by all the plants Sirius had bought just for him. It felt like more than Remus deserved, but he wasn’t about to let it go. He could only hope the next moment would be just as sweet.  

[kidofthekat]

The art club and a certain reporter save the day.

               Contrary to popular belief, Marinette, was not, in fact, constantly positive. Sometimes it all got a bit too much and this was one of those days. Her class had grown used to her ‘off days’, having learnt a long time ago not to talk to her during them and just give her some space, which ways easy as these days were few and far between. Or at least they used to be.

               The class were absolutely baffled when Marinette came in for the second time that week, and fifth that month, with her body language screaming ‘leave me alone’ which in itself was unusual as she would normally emanate ‘don’t speak to me’ vibes not those of a frightened animal.

               So when their class president, hunched over and slightly shaking, sat, not in her seat, but right at the back, her eyes glancing around with the air of a paranoid creature, they were more than a little worried. Her behaviour reflected that of a girl on the run, they just had no idea who she was running from.

               “Um, M,” Alya ventured, attempting the hide her hurt from Marinette choosing not to sit together. “Why are you sitting way back there?”

               Jumping slightly when she realised she was being addressed, she avoided eye contact but still answered her friend’s question, “Lila thought it would be good if we switched seats for a bit.” Marinette gave a small and feeble smile before turning her attention to the door, and eyeing it with fierce hope, that faded quickly as Lila sauntered in.

               “Oh Marinette, I’m so glad you agreed to my little idea,” her sickly sweet voice holding an unidentifiable edge, “I hope you don’t mind Alya.”

               Alya wanted to say she did, she wanted to sit next her best friend, she really did, but she only had to glance behind her to see Marinette furiously shaking her head, her eyes pleading with her, for her to agree, determined to get the story later.

               She didn’t. She had posted various friends at each exit for the school, but she still missed the girl at both lunch and after class. Marinette, who had somehow managed to get in and out of school through a route no-one knew, was nowhere to be seen.

               Wondering aimlessly around the school, Alya drooped slightly.

Why had Marinette gone as far as to switch seats with her mortal enemy just to avoid me? Am I the reason she is so terrified?

She slumped against the wall, her head resting on the cool brick. Everything had gone wrong so quickly, and only now was she realising that something was off. More than off. She scrunched her eyes tight, attempting to fight the burning tears, eventually succumbing, and letting them fall, praying to whatever God was listening that Hawkmoth was busy.

Having just been let out, the art club chatted loudly on their way out of the school building, almost missing the saddened reporter.

“Yo, Als, are you okay?” Alya rubbed at her eyes, only succeeding in making them redder, and let out a resigned affirmation.

“Are you sure?” Rose lowered herself to the brunette’s level and gave her a tight hug, refusing to let go.

“I’m just worried about Marinette, you know?” Nathaniel and Marc pulled her to her feat, and Alix led the bewildered girl back to the art room.

“Sit here.” Rose pointed to a stool, and in silence the other’s pulled out stool’s in front of hers so that all four were facing her.

She shivered, remembering Marinette’s cult-like description of the art club, but decided against running. They stayed silent until Alya had taken a seat.

“Marinette missed art club today.” Alix stated observing Alya for a reaction, “She never does that, not even on ‘off days’.”

“Oh.”

“Something is wrong.” Rose narrowed her eyes.

“She is scared.” Nathaniel added.

“Of everything.” Marc’s tone was ominous to say the least.

“We are worried too.” Alix finished.

Ignoring their icy gazes and terrifying synchronisation, Alya nodded in agreement, “What do you think happened.”

Once more Alya found herself deliberately writing off the art-club’s weird actions as they simultaneously lost their creepiness and became their normal selves, not cult members.

They all got up and sat around one of the tables, Alix unrolled a large sheet of paper and gave each of them a marker, writing ‘what happened to Marinette?’ in a big circle and a line off it.

“It has something to do with Lila,” everyone agreed, though Alya was a little begrudging to, as she scribbled ‘Lila’ at the end of her line, “Discuss”.

“She openly hated Lila at first, but then she just stopped,” Nathaniel offered, mainly for Marc’s benefit as he was in a different class than him.

“I thought it was just jealousy and her stopping so suddenly strengthened that for me.” Alya admitted.

Rose nodded, “That does follow her previous actions, it’s logical to think so.”

“Thanks Rose, I mean, she and Kagami are pretty hood friends now and I know the other day Lila came out of the bakery.”

“Really?” Alix added a couple things to the ever increasing spider diagram and looked around for more suggestions.

“Um guys, what if we ask her?” Marc backed down slightly from their collective gaze, but quickly cleared his throat and prepared to say more, “I mean, we are cousins, she might talk to me cause of the whole family thing.”

Relived by their smiling faces and agreement, Marc quickly phoned his cousin, putting it on loudspeaker when asked but adding he will turn it off if she says something private.

“Marc?”

“Hey Marinette, uh, you weren’t in art club today, are you okay?”

“Heh, I’m, I’m fine.”

“So, uh, Marc, what’s up with you?”

“The usual.”

“Oh, so doing something with Nathaniel.”

Marc and Nathaniel blushed as Marinette giggled.

“Why are you calling me Marc? You normally just text.”

Sighing, Marc stood up and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Marinette, please tell me the truth, are you okay?” The silence before she chose to reply lasted too long for either of them.

“No, Marc I’m not. Everything is slipping through my fingers, all of it, both lives, it’s all going to hell and I can’t stop it!”

Marc quickly turned his phone off of speaker. Marinette had accidently revealed her second identity when he had asked to use her as Ladybug’s dual identity for his comic and he wasn’t about to let anyone else know. He gave Marinette a few soothing words and promised to be at the bakery in a couple minutes before hanging up and leaving his confused friends behind.

“Both lives?” Alya questioned, still dazed by Marc’s rushed departure.

Alix shook her head in an attempt to clear it, “I have no idea, but evidently Marc knows something, and we aren’t getting anywhere with this now, let’s meet back up here tomorrow lunch.”

They all agreed, leaving in various states of deep thought and bewilderment.

*

Alya stumbled into the classroom seconds before the bell, surprised to see Marinette still at the back. Actually, she was surprised to see her at all. Once again, Marinette had managed to get into the building unnoticed by her, or any of the art club if the looks on their faces as they too reached the classroom late were of any indication.

Unable to question each other or Marinette due to Mme Bustier arriving, they all took their seats, Alya slightly cringing at the sight of Lila in the seat next to hers.

When class finally finished, Alya tailed her best friend through the halls to the locker room, counting herself lucky that she had managed to hide each time Marinette looked behind her.

“Marinette.” Alya hid behind one of the lockers, instantly recognising Lila’s voice.

“Where have you been,” Lila stared Marinette down as she hunched against her locker.

Alya had never heard Marinette so scared as when she answered, “Please Lila, I just want to get my stuff.”

Alya heard a slap. Followed by a punching sound, though there was no scream of shout or cry, just more hitting. She pulled out her phone and rounded the corner.

Recoding the scene in front of her, Alya was close to tears and ready to intervene.

“Please Lila, please.” Marinette begged.

“I’ll stop if you hit me back.”

“I, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Alya stopped in her tracks shocked, Lila simply sneered, “You? Hurt me?” She laughed tauntingly and kneed the designer in her side, “You’re weak, just like the sheeple you call friends.”

They both saw the moment Marinette snapped, her eye’s narrowing and Alya would always swear that her irises became impossibly bluer. She pulled back her fist and punched Lila dead in the nose. Sweeping her legs around while Lila recovered from her surprise, effectively knocking her down.

From her place on the ground Lila held her bleeding nose, and with a nasally voice, threatened to go to the teacher as she now had evidence. Alya saw one shudder travel through her friend and stepped in, unable to take it anymore.

“I filmed it all, I have proof what Marinette did was in self-defence. You hold nothing over her.” Lila scowled and picked herself off the floor. Growling in Marinette’s direction, she stormed off, not before giving the pair one last dirty look.

Marinette glanced at her best friend and collapsed onto her knees in tears.

“Marinette! Why are you crying?”

“She’ll go after you now, you have to apologise to her, please Alya, please!” Marinette begged, clutching at the bottom of Alya’s shirt and sobbing loudly.

Prying Marinette’s hands off her shirt, Alya knelt beside her and pulled her into a hug, whispering assertions to calm the girl down.

“I’m not scared of that liar, Marinette, we can defeat her together.”

Masterpost.

[salthaven]

Make a Change P15 (an Explanation and Summary)

Part Fifteen (An Explanation and Summary)

So, as I recently posted, I don’t plan to continue this story any longer. As much as I loved writing it, I also...fell out of love, I suppose. I just don’t have the time, passion, or motivation to try forcing myself to write it anymore, and it’s unfair to you guys to have to accept a sloppy second, something thrown onto a document for the sake of a word count and an update. I want to write stuff I’m proud of, and that just wasn’t happening with this story.

That said, one reader asked for a summary, so that they could get some closure. Luckily, I have some notes that I took as I planned the story and started writing it, and I thought you’d like to see some of them. This includes three things: 1. The schedules for most of the main characters 2. The heroes I was planning on bringing in and 3. All of the ideas I had for “Who on Earth will Marinette end up with?” (This was a doozy.) Along with this, I want to talk about other pairings I had in mind. 

With that all said, let’s hop right in!

The Schedules:

I really planned out their schedules, just so I could start figuring out who the Quantic Kids would be. I had a general idea in mind: Each student at Collège des Arts would have to take their four core classes (History, Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science), a language, and then their last period would be a two hour block that focused on their artistic talent. I set it up this way so that I could integrate the Quantic Kids into Marinette’s life. (Along with this, I made it so the whole school had lunch after fourth hour, so that the morning had four hours of classes, and the afternoon had three. I note this, because some schools separate lunches based on fourth hour, so that there is an A, B, and C lunch. I...did not feel like dealing with that, and I wasn’t sure how French schools do it but I doubt it’s like that.) 

Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s schedule: 

1. History (right next to Félix, later on stuck between him and Adrien) The original plan never had Adrien’s arrival, it was supposed to be a moment of comic relief where Marinette and Félix were just kind of half awake and barely conscious at any given time during first hour. This is why their history teacher, Mr. Marcel, was either wide awake or dead asleep. I thought it’d be a cute moment to show off the dynamics of their exhaustion or energy, depending on the day. I didn’t show this off nearly as much as planned, however, because I shifted my focus soon after.

2. Language Arts (with Allegra). A nice, calmer class seemed perfect for Marinette, who’d probably still be waking up. Allegra is calm and classy, so it only made sense to pair the two up for the second hour.

3. Science (Claude’s here!) Loud and exciting, just like their class seems to be, it was a perfect pairing. 

4. Math (with Allegra and Claude) I wanted to show off Allegra and Claude’s...chaotic dynamic. 

5. English (with Allan) Marinette wants to be a fashion designer, and she had to take a language, so she thought “hey, fashion is pretty big in America, let’s learn English”. (It was also the only class I could think of that she and Allan would take...more on that later.)

6. Fashion Design. Pretty self-explanatory.

Allegra: 

1. German. Allegra likes opera music, and wanted to mimic the sound of some German singers accurately. 

2. Language Arts (with Marinette, as mentioned above)

3. Science (a different teacher than Marinette and Claude, though. What a pity) (Also I apparently called it ‘physics’ in my notes and I just noticed.) 

4. Math (With Marinette and Claude)

5. History

6. Choir (She’s a singer.)

Claude Mercury:

1. English (It was for the theatre, but also for Shakespeare, but more accurately….for Shakespeare’s more inappropriate humor.) (and memes)

2. History

3. Science (with Marinette) (Lots of explosions and fires were planned)

4. Math (With Allegra and Marinette) 

5. Language Arts

6. Drama. He was just a simple thespian lad who wanted to have fun and make friends, what can I say?

Allan:

1. Math

2. Science

3. Language Arts

4. History

5. English (with Marinette) He likes hip hop and rap, and wanted to learn English rap, too. He, like Claude, also loves their memes, and I planned to have a few moments where he explained some to Marinette. 

6. Dance. Mainly hip hop, although the boy can break dance a little bit

Félix Agreste: 

1. History (with Marinette) He’s tired in the morning, but good at reciting dates. Again, had a lot more planned for this.

2. Math

3. Spanish. (“Come on, guys, it’s logical. It’s one of the most spoken languages in the world.” -Félix, probably.) I also planned for Félix to already know English. I wanted a cute chapter where he tutored Marinette, only for Claude to start dramatically monologuing because ‘why do you help her but never help me? The betrayal, Fe, the betrayal!’ 

4. Language Arts

5. Science

6. Music (he’s a piano boy in my heart) (maybe also good at violin) (a classy young man) 

Adrien Agreste:

1. History (with Marinette)

2. Language Arts (with Marinette)

3. Science (with Marinette)

4. Math (with Marinette)

5. Chinese (with Marin- oh, wait, we’re done with that!) This class, along with his next, is another reason Adrien relaxed so quickly at the school. By taking Chinese at school, he was able to convince his father to stop the at-home lessons, clearing up some of his schedule.

6. Music. Same as above, playing piano at school meant he didn’t have to do it at home so much.

The Heroes:

“But salthaven, you already introduced the heroes! Envision and Viperion, remember?” Haha, as if those were the only guys I had planned?

Yeah, I had more. Four more.

I wanted the Quantic Kids to be heroes. I had three of them for sure chosen, names and Miraculi assigned to them. (Allegra was my only problem child, but I’ll explain that below.)

The first was supposed to be Allegra. I was going to make her the Fox, with the name Mélodie. I’m pretty sure that was her original hero name, back during the PV stage of this show, and I wanted to pay an homage to her inspiration. But then Félix got it, because I didn’t end up giving him the Cat (yeah, I was really salty when I started this, and I was planning to go the same route that I do in my ao3 fic, Of Patience and Pettiness, and take away the Cat from Adrien to give to Félix.), as Adrien learned from his mistakes. So Allegra waits, and Envision springs to life with Viperion.

Next would be Allan. Miraculous: Bee. Name: Mellifury, based on Mellifura (aka the Africanized Killer Bee) + Fury. He was supposed to be an unexpected storm. A dancer, he uses rhythm in a way that throws off opponents. Uses the spinning top like it's another limb, throws the game way off when first introduced. 

Then we’d have Allegra. After a while, I decided that the Rabbit would be best suited for her. Messing with timelines is a tricky business, but Allegra has a knack for details and organization that would leave her cruising through her tasks with some practice. While it’s nothing musical, it would be fun to see. Name: Cottontail. 

Finally, after an interesting fight that would cause Nathalie to lose the Peacock...Claude would step in. Bold and flashy, the thespian knows how to strut his stuff. But again, he’s a thespian, and theatre kids know when it’s time to hide in the shadows and stay unseen and unheard. With dark blues that can hide in the name and stand out in the daylight, Claude would become Le Paon, turning the tide and becoming a major help for the team. [At first, he dealt with some sickness, but after a talk with Ladybug, who in turn talked to Fu, the Miraculous was fixed and Le Paon could fight as easily as the rest.] He’d use sentimentals wisely, although he’d have a bad habit of monologuing as he created them. 

The Ships:

The moment we’ve all been waiting for. Our first question: Who the hell was Marinette going to end up with? Well, that answer changed throughout the story.

The first choice: Félix. I wanted Marinette to move on from Agreste...and fall in love with Agreste. It humored me, and I was in love with a bunch of Felinette one shots at the time. (And, again, very salty towards Adrien at the moment.) 

But then I redeemed Adrien. No problem, I thought. Marinette could choose between one of the boys...and the other would date Luka! (I mean, did you see the Instagram picture of Luka and Adrien. Luka with either Agreste would be cute, just imagine the musical moments they could have together)

But then I Akumatized Juleka, and Luka was right there...and I made Marinette fall for all three guys. So I decided “Hey, she can just date all three!” And so that’s the final choice, because I’m apparently a sucker for poly ships. 

But I mentioned other ships, didn’t I? So let’s talk about those!

First: Luka with an OC. Yep, I was going to bring in a new girl. It was actually going to be one of my friends, due to a conversation we had that went as follows:

S.H. (Salthaven): So I’m thinking that I’m going to pair up Félix and Marinette. Thoughts?

F. (Friend): Okay, but what about Luka?

S.H.:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

F.: Well then pair me up with him!

So I did. Or I was going to...but then poly ship idea happened. 

As mentioned above, I also considered Luka with either of the Agreste boys. Whoever Marinette didn’t date. Again, couldn’t happen because I went for that sweet poly route. 

Finally: Claude and Allegra. What can I say, they act like an old married couple in my mind!

And that’s everything! Once all the heroes were chosen, and romantic confessions set aside, the Miraculous Team was going to gear up and take down Hawkmoth once and for all. Fun times, the end, we all get a happy ending.

So I hope that makes up for my rather abrupt end to this story. Thank you all for the time you put in, reading my writings, and I hope you enjoy the other works I plan to create! Until next time. <3

[savannahsdrabbles]

Encounters - Part One

rating: G summary:  How April met the ROTTMNT turtles. notes: 6k fluffy turtle tot fic with just a touch of angst.  Part two can be found here, and Ao3 link here

“Okay, my sons.  It is time,”

           Despite his hushed tone, Splinter’s voice swelled with importance as he turned to face his charges. The maroon hoodie he had scrounged up fanned around him almost comically as he moved, speaking to the fact that it was clearly designed with someone much taller than he in mind. Even so, there was still an air of confidence and gravitas to his manner – this was not the first time that he had stood before an audience, nor, if he had anything to say about it, would it be his last. “As you know, this is an important mission. I am aware that you have been through this before, but it still remains pertinent that you remember the rules. Recite them for me, please.”

           Three of the four hooded figures before him immediately straightened to attention, their voices also hushed but still quivering with excitement.

           “Pay attention!”

           “Stay close!”

           “No talking!”

           …

The last response, rather than being delivered with confidence, was replaced with silence punctuated by the steady drip drip drip of a leaky pipe above them and the droning rumble of cars in the distance. Tiny rivulets of water streamed from a crack in the metal tube directly over their heads, running together and condensing into a single droplet that swelled and drooped under its own weight before silently dropping into a puddle of its brethren at their feet.

The pause dragged on for a few more seconds, and Splinter couldn’t help but roll his eyes upwards in a silent plea for patience as he sighed. “Michelangelo?”

“Oh!” The last and smallest figure in line immediately stood up straight, his focus snapping away from the growing puddle and turning towards his father. “Stick to the shadows!” The young turtle scrunched up his snout and leapt forward, landing on one foot and raising his arms into the air as an attempt at an action pose. “Like ninjas – HA!”

The gesture might have been threatening, were it not coming from an eight year old in an orange hoodie. However, it definitely sufficed to distract those around him. The three other turtles giggled, their concentration broken as they immediately began hopping around and striking their own grand poses. “Yeah – ninjas! Like Lou Jitsu!”

Splinter blinked slowly, a small smile teasing at his lips despite himself. “Right… like ninjas. If ninjas were loud and unfocused.”

That caught their attention. All four turtles immediately fumbled to a stop and forced serious expressions onto their round faces. “Sorry, Dad.”

“Hm.” The rat hummed, his gaze moving over the boys one last time before nodding. “Alright, let us go.”

***

Even with his years of training, Splinter still couldn’t help but be impressed by the relative ease with which he was able to lift manhole covers. Perhaps there were a few advantages to this new form - however, now was not the time for him to crow over his abilities.

Tonight was a gathering night.

Still holding the cover a few inches above him, Splinter peered around the alleyway. His ears rotated atop his head, listening for any sign of danger before he finally pushed himself up and out of the pipe. Once he was on solid ground, the rat sniffed the air and nodded slowly. This would be a good spot for the night.

Green dumpsters lined the gap between Eastman’s Donuts and Laird Apartments, each giving off a variety of odors that ranged in levels of pleasantness.  The alleyway he’d chosen tonight was one they frequented due to its abundance of cover and wide variety of resources. He always made sure to schedule their gathering nights shortly after garbage day, so that any food placed in the bins would still be relatively fresh and untouched by whatever else was dumped in with it. Years of gatherings told him that the dumpsters on the opposite side of either building tended to be less fruitful, but both alleyways held Salvation Army drop boxes that sometimes held clothing or other small items that could be repurposed for their needs.

“You may come out, boys. Silently.”

To their credit, his sons were decent at following commands when needed. One at a time, the four boys peeped their heads out of the drain and then scrambled over the edge.

Raphael led the way, his shell bumping against either side of the pipe as he pulled himself through. Even at eight years old, his biggest son stood slightly taller than his father and was showing signs of growing every day. Splinter was already dreading the day that they would have to change gathering routes in order to find manholes covers more accommodating of his size – that, or he would have to risk leaving his tenderhearted son alone at the lair during missions. The latter idea already hurt to think of.

Donatello and Leonardo were next, somehow managing to hold a silent shoving match as they ascended the ladder and attempted to pull themselves out of the ground. His purple son eventually emerged victorious, scrambling to his feet a few seconds ahead of his brother and immediately ducking behind Raph to smile smugly. Leo stuck his tongue out in protest and opened his mouth as if to say something, only to catch a warning glance from his father and snap it shut once more.

Michelangelo was the last one out of the sewer, clambering up the ladder with ease and bouncing excitedly next to his brothers as Splinter pushed the grate back into place. When he turned back around, the rat nodded in approval at the way the other boys had closed rank around their brother, making an unspoken shield. Despite the fact that the turtles were all the same age – or at least, had mutated on the same day – Mikey remained the smallest of the turtles and therefore held the honorary title of baby brother. While he hoped the boy wouldn’t one day grow to be resentful of the fact, Splinter was grateful to have three extra sets of eyes trained on the actions of his most distractible son.

Speaking of eyes – Splinter turned towards the mouth of the alley and took several steps forward. The four boys stumbled after him, small hands brushing his tail and the edge of his hoodie as a guide. His vision nowadays was not what it used to be – a trait he could only assume was a result of his transformation – so he had come to rely heavily on scent and color when moving about.  Nevertheless, his ability to navigate in the dark remained the strongest of the small band of creatures he now called family.

Once he was completely satisfied that they would not be seen, Splinter reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small bundle of meshy fabric. After a moment of unwinding, he distributed a small reusable bag to each of his sons and jerked his head at the bins. “Red, I will need you to hold a bag for me while I look in the larger bins.” Raphael swelled with pride, and Splinter then turned to his three smaller sons. “You three, go ahead and start gathering. Remember to not eat anything you find until I have had a chance to look it over.”

The boys all nodded obediently as they set about their tasks.

***

“Check this out!” Leo whispered excitedly, drawing his brothers’ attention from their searching. Their scavenging through the cardboard boxes at the edge of the alley hadn’t been particularly fruitful so far – only a few unopened fortune cookies from someone’s takeout and a half-crushed box of crackers. Mikey could feel his stomach grumbling in protest as he rocked backwards on his knees and squinted in the direction of Leo’s voice.

“What’s’it? Something good?”            “Yeah – a remote! See?” The blue-clad turtle shuffled closer on his knees and held out a small rectangular object in his hand. “And it still has batteries in it – I think I can use the recharger we found last time to juice them back up!”

“Oh, cool!” Donnie leaned forward until his head almost bumped into Mikey’s, causing the box turtle to scooch back to allow him a better vantage. “I needed some batteries for my flashlight!”

He reached for the remote expectantly, only for Leo to hurriedly stuff the item into his tote bag and shuffle away. “No way – finder’s keeper’s!”

The soft shelled turtle scowled and reached out again. “Dad said finder’s keeper’s is only for toys and stuff – we have to share tools!”

“Well, then this is my toy.”

“A remote isn’t a – “

“Guyssss I’m hungryyyy. Let’s just go back to looking!”

“Boys!”

The three turtles’ mouths snapped shut, eyes flickering towards the area where Splinter and Raph were and then back towards each other. They waited for a moment, half-expecting to be berated for being too loud, and then heaved identical sighs when no lecturing came.

“Really guys, I’m hungry,” Mikey whispered as he dramatically dropped his head onto Leo’s shoulder. “My tumbus wants food.”

The red-eared slider patted his youngest brother’s head sympathetically, and then gently pushed him off. “Me too. Let’s keep looking. Maybe we can find something good, like… like pizza!”

Mikey could feel liquid immediately rushing to his mouth at the thought of pizza. “Mmm, yeah! A whole entire pizza!”

“As if someone would throw out a whole pizza,” Donnie scoffed as he turned back towards his pile and started searching again. “It’s too expensive.”

           Leo rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah? And what do you know about money?”

“More than you.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yuh-huh.”

           And with that they were off again, attention set on each other as they continued to whisper-argue. Mikey sighed. Sometimes he swore those two were twins, what with how much they bickered with each other. Dad had said it was impossible due to their difference in species, but that didn’t stop Mikey from imagining his middle two brothers holding a shoving match even from within whatever egg they had hatched from.            Mmm… Eggs.            The small turtle shook his head as his stomach growled once more. Nope, can’t be thinking about food right now. Gotta keep searching. Gotta not think about yummy scrambled eggs or hot, tasty pizza with cheese that stretched off the crust whenever he bit into it. Can’t think about the intoxicating aroma of tomatoes and spices and mushrooms that was so good  she could almost taste it -

Wait.

Mikey sniffed the air.

That smell wasn’t just in his imagination – he was actually smelling pizza!

Scrambling to his feet, Mikey closed his eyes in concentration and focused on the scent. He slowly turned on his heels, inhaling deeply and trying to zero in on the source of the wonderful aroma until he faced the direction it seemed to be coming from. When he finally opened his eyes, the turtle felt his heart drop.

The mouth of the alley loomed before him like a sideways set of open jaws, warning him not to step out onto the sidewalk lest they chomp down and never let him go. Dad had warned them never to venture past the alley’s boundaries, where they were cradled in shadows and safe from any wandering eyes that happened to turn in their direction. And yet the smell of pizza and other good things drifted from just around the corner like a siren’s song, calling him out into the open.

Surely it couldn’t hurt to just lean out and grab the food, then duck back to his family? Mikey could already imagine the proud look on his father’s face as he returned with a whole box of hot food – a rare delicacy in their family. Certainly he would forgive his son for going just a tinnyyyyy bit further than he was supposed to if it meant being able to feed everyone for the night, right?

Glancing back at his family to ensure that their attentions were elsewhere, Mikey stepped closer to the edge of the shadows and listened. He could hear young humans’ voices chattering and laughing in the distance, and the ground vibrated slightly as an occasional car rumbled down the next street over. Taking a deep breath, Mikey poked his head out of the alley and allowed the tip of his nose to be lit up by the towering street lights. The boy hesitated, half expecting to hear Donnie or one of his other family members hissing for him to come back, and then looked to his left.

A row of hedges lined the front of the apartment building they were next to, and served as one of the few natural sources of green on the heavily brown and red bricked street. Mikey could almost imagine the scent trails winding through the leaves of the bushes and down the alley on the opposite side of the building. Maybe he could just sneak through those bushes and around the corner without even stepping onto the sidewalk- so technically he would still be staying in the shadows. Like a ninja.

Before he had a chance to change his mind, Mikey darted around the corner and cleared the small gap between the edge of the building and the first of the bushes in a single leap. The leaves closed around him like a protective cocoon as he ducked into the foliage, shielding him from the street lamps’ lights and serving as the perfect tunnel to crawl through on hands and knees towards the smell. He hesitated for a moment when he reached a slab of concrete that created a gap in the foliage – the front porch that served as the building’s entrance. This opening as a bit more nerve-wracking than the initial dive into the bushes had been, because there he had at least had the option of turning back.

Mikey glanced over his shoulder and back through the bushes, listening. Splinter had still made no sign of noticing that his youngest was missing. He guessed it was now or never.

The young turtle scrambled forward, fighting the urge to yelp as the front porch light fully illuminated his body, and then threw himself the remaining few feet back into the cover of the bushes. His arms trembled with nerves as he collapsed onto his still aching stomach, and he lay motionless for a moment until he could catch his breath again. Ok, ok. Still safe. His knee stung a bit from where he’d apparently scraped it on the concrete, but other than that he was in one piece.

Better yet, the smell of pizza was almost overwhelming at this point.

Swallowing the drool that threatened to escape his mouth, Mikey pulled himself back onto his hands and knees and closed the distance between himself and where the edge of the bushes met the mouth of the next alleyway. He heaved a small sigh of relief as he could finally emerge from the bushes and dive into the dark alley – safety.

The small turtle’s legs shook like jelly beneath him as he plastered himself against a shadow drenched wall and tried to calm his frantically beating heart. It was odd to think that his family was just on the other side of this building, maybe three or four dozen yards away, and yet it felt as if he had just crawled a mile and was now utterly alone.  Mikey shivered at the thought. Okay, so maybe this hadn’t been as great of an idea as he had initially thought. But it was all going to be over in just a second – all he needed to do was grab the pizza and then crawl back through the bushes. Problem solved!

Lifting his nose again, Mikey crept towards one of the closest bins – a large green dumpster with the lid propped up against the wall of the apartment. The smell of hot pizza was nearly overwhelming, and Mikey felt another shiver run through his body as he imagined biting into the cheesy goodness. Who in the world would throw away such an amazing thing?

But… how to get to it?

Raph and Master Splinter usually had to work together to get the rat high enough that he could lean over the edge of the bin and toss things out. And while Mikey was a good climber, he already knew he wouldn’t be able to scramble up the vertical metal wall without help.

Glancing around, Mikey’s eyes zeroed in on several cardboard boxes like the ones he and his brothers had been looking through in the other alley. Maybe if he stacked those together… yes, perfect!

With a smile of determination, the small turtle set to work creating a staircase along the side of the massive trashcan and then scrambled up to the top. It wasn’t the perfect height, but if he stood on his tiptoes from here he could peer over the edge of the bin.

“Whoa,” he whispered as he pulled himself up to the lip, “This thing is enormous!”

Sure enough, the trash can was about six feet long – nearly triple his height – and almost as tall. A few trash bags lined the bottom of the bin, the plastic on some drawn so tight that they threatened to burst and spill their contents into the rest of the garbage. Several brown glass bottles littered the top of the bags, clearly thrown in by a drunken passerby rather than bagged up safely. But in the center of it all, perched atop a particularly large bag of trash, was the pizza box.

Mikey couldn’t help but let out an excited giggle. Based on the smell and where it sat, someone had to have just thrown the box in a few minutes ago – how in the world had he gotten so lucky? Now he just had to reach it.

Using his arms, the turtle pulled himself up on to the edge of the trash can and balanced on his plastron as he leaned forward to reach. His right arm stretched out into the air above the bin, grasping for his prize while his legs kicking legs served as a counterbalance.

“Almost…. Come on…” Pursing his lips, Mikey waved his stubby arm in the direction of the box. Nope. Not working. He rocked sideways to switch arms and then extended the left one in a second attempt. His fingers brushed the tip of the cardboard, and Mikey felt a grin stretch across his face.  “Almost… almost…”

Then, as if suddenly taunting him, the box slipped and slid out of his reach. Mikey yelped in frustration and lunged forward, fingers outstretched –

-only to find himself falling head over heels.

The child squawked in surprise as he tumbled forward, arms pinwheeling as he attempted to grab the edge of the can and keep himself from falling into the veritable abyss, but gravity was not on his side. The turtle fell heavily, arms barely coming up to shield his face as he dropped like a stone and faceplanted into several swollen black trash bags.

Immediately he went into panic mode, his arms flailing for purchase on the shifting floor. Mikey struggled to push himself up onto his elbows and looked around his new surroundings in fear. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no,”

His heart pounded against his ribs as the turtle rolled onto his back and attempted to clamber to his feet, only to succeed in slipping and sliding on the slick plastic until something sharp bit into the bottom of his foot.

All goals of remaining quiet were forgotten as Mikey yelped and leapt backwards from the broken glass, his shell hitting the back of the bin and causing a loud, warping echo to rattle through the metal. Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, the lid wobbled on its hinges and slammed down, plunging the turtle into perfect darkness.

[invertedfate]

Random Ask Dump - Anniversary Edition (50+ REALLY OLD ASKS!)

Going through OLD AND CRUSTY ASKS to try and chip away at the inbox. HERE WE GOOOO...

That’s an interesting idea, and I could run it by Cake, but I think it would honestly be a LOT to track from a programming perspective. Especially ‘cause killing Sans is gonna result in a “bad ending,” so to speak.

An attempt was made by Undyne to have all three hang out at the same time. Papyrus was SUPER EAGER. ...but one thing led to another and there were many messy explosions of chemicals and lots of smoke. Alphys had to step in before things got out of hand. It was all very daunting for her. Pap and Undyne are VERY LOUD, VERY AMBITIOUS PEOPLE.

I actually have some ideas of some side comics I may do at some point! :o It’s just that right now there’s a lot going on.

I need to poke Carni about that at some point. He’s just been very busy with other projects!

Clearly he’s standing on the “out to lunch” sign.

I wanna say that it’s very possible in theory. :o It probably affects them differently since monsters’ emotional state affects their magic and their physical state.

I do like little easter eggs like that, though I’m not sure where I’d fit it in atm just ‘cause I already showed Pap’s room, haha.

I made the chase theme for Mad Dummy as well as Mad Mew Mew’s battle theme. @pinewsun​ made the battle theme for Mad Dummy, and @thomasthepencil​ made the Season Dude battle theme and MD’s overworld theme. :o

That’s a really fascinating conundrum! You’re absolutely right- if IF was a standalone game, then from a writing standpoint, having more subtle implications would make sense! The reason I chose a different approach for IF is because it’s set after Flowey’s already known to be evil and I like to give different POVs rather than stick to just Frisk’s.

That’s an interesting thing, actually- both fights lean heavily on the fourth wall. Both are treated as climaxes for their given routes. It’s funny because Asriel’s fight is a lot more straightforward and less meta by comparison.

I agree! The thing with Papyrus is that he’s extremely powerful- he just doesn’t want to kill. But it’s a deliberate choice not to kill- he’s able to force his attacks to do next to no damage. He’s also pretty darn crafty, as he made the Gauntlet himself. It really is just a case of Undyne’s personal biases and concern for him.

That was a deliberate choice. :O Papyrus is very influential toward Frisk. He is best skeleboi.

Papybot loves you, anon! He just wants to feed you WHOLESOME SPAGHETTI!!!

It is possible to whistle through teeth. ...alternatively, magic. As for the music, Undertale implies that the music is heard! Maybe it’s just... a thing that exists in this world. Or it’s just meant to be a silly meta joke. I try to keep it somewhat ambiguous other than occasional nods to it. Chara’s pants are lighter because I just... felt like it, I guess? Haha. I wanted their feet and pants to stand out more from each other, so they have khaki pants. As for the Undyne fight being animated, well, this ask is old by now, but Sparks was the one who was down for it.

Well, the teaser’s been out for a long time now, but that’s the idea! It’s also why this has been in production for so long. The Determinator has some really over the top attacks (that weren’t even shown in the teaser), and Sparks animated in Photoshop. That’s how hardcore he is.

Shhhhh. Don’t give me ideas. I’m already slacking on Tem Village. :P

Sometimes I do have slumps and burnouts (see Antipode’s lengthy hiatus), but breaks lead to me being refreshed and coming back with even more enthusiasm than before!

Oh, there are a lot of these throughout the comic. For instance...

Flowey appears in a few background shots in the Ruins!

When Sans says “or maybe...” he looks at the empty flower pot. This was one of the earliest bits of foreshadowing about who created Flowey, and nobody noticed it at the time!

The MTT vending machines initially look like this but have helpful items.

And then they look like this, with an angry face and pose- Mad Dummy has possessed them!

As of Part 38, it’s been revealed that he did first meet Asgore as “Santa.” As for whether or not he knows the truth, time will tell. :o

Oh, these are excellent suggestions for calls! I’ll try to keep these in mind.

So, I believe Glyde uses the Mysterious Door motif. Jerry uses the motif in its battle theme- I believe it’s a mix of original motif and Wrong Number song?

Sans is a master of power napping. He probably gets a decent amount of sleep, though.

There are a lot of ways to interpret Pap’s lack of sleep! In IF, he can get by without it, but he also has a lot of reasons to avoid sleeping. Some reasons include productivity but also due to a looooot of heavy baggage. More on that later.

I think sleep can definitely make monsters healthier. Rest = better mental health as well as physical health, and with how important mental and emotional help is for monsters, that’s very important!

They just really like socks. Socks are warm. Socks are slinky. And googly eyes are the best. So they took on the form of a really eccentric sock puppet and sock collector. Scandalous.

It also has Alphys’ motif, as the two are the leaders of the royal guard!

I would say the lack of Asgore as an influence has left Undyne slightly less grounded? Like, she had Toriel and Gerson in her life, but her relationship with Toriel is... definitely not quite as close? Like, Toriel by that point kept people at an arm’s length due to losing multiple children (including one from old age). So, while they were on friendly terms until the aftermath of the DT experiments and the tapes’ release, it was more like mutual respect and a sorta professional relationship with Undyne admiring Toriel and wanting to spare her from more heartache.

That is a really interesting idea. While that didn’t happen, I do need to maybe revisit the grumpy dog at some point or another. He’s still a lil’ salty.

I think in terms of layout it won’t change much, but there will be new/different content for sure. :O

Mad Dummy’s base design is mostly original, but she has a wig + headband from DIO from Jojo Part 3! Fun fact: While MTT has Kamina shades, Papyrus’ goggles are loosely based on Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in terms of color. :O

So basically, when Asriel defeated Frisk, he had the power over the timeline to reset it as he pleased- in theory. However, that power was overwhelming for him, and due his lack of understanding OF said power and one last ditch attempt at resisting from Chara, things went wrong.

There is a track that takes some inspiration from Rage Awakened. It’s not released, and it’s not exact, but it won’t be released for a WHILE. Like until the part comes out.

I think it’s just the fact that tacos are so random. Like, my biggest beef in that regard was that OG Underswap had a lot of arbitrary replacements for things in UT and not all of them made sense. Like, if Sans was to make a foreign food, ramen would’ve made more sense due to Alphys being weeb trash, haha.

Okay, so the rough timeline iiiis... Falling: - Cyan - Green - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow Dying: - Cyan - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow - Green

You know, it’s funny because this ask is super old, but that’s basically sorta what happened. :O It became a beach-themed resort.

Never forget MTT fangirl Temmie’s pool escapades.

I think Forgespring for me because I had to make the tileset myself (it took a few months, I think?), but Aquarius was definitely in the works for a while. But once I had the tileset from Fours, the rooms were very easy to design!

That woulda been pretty rad! Maybe I can find another spot for it one day, haha.

I think for Dohj, I’d have to check with Fours, but I’m certainly not opposed at some point? Right now, the following chars can take questions: - Frisk - Papyrus - Sans - Undyne - Alphys - Napstablook - Mettaton - Asgore - Chara - Flowey

Cyan appears in Part 45! :O No answer about orange for now, tho.

I do have vague ideas for Tem village. I just haven’t had time to go back and do it.

Stay tuned and you may find out! :O

Hmmmm... I had a lot of fun with MTT SPIRAL and the Determinator, tbh. They were both very time consuming, but I love how they came out! Also, buff Jerry.

Turnabout Storm. :)

It’s a really awesome fan crossover that works way better than it should. :P

None taken! We know that with headcanons, everyone is gonna have their own interpretations. These are just the voices we liked for Fireglobe Production, but everyone has their right to their favored interpretations!

Yeah, Knight Knight is one of the coolest CORE mercs in the original game. It was fun to repurpose them for Inverted Fate as royal guards. :o It made room for unique encounters in the CORE in the form of them robots- as Undyne would rather use machines than other monsters to do her work.

Personally, I see it as an Asriel motif, but I also acknowledge that at one point it WAS gonna be an Asgore motif. Toby has a habit of just using whatever music works for a scene (see sans. at the snail farm.)

I do have a few ideas, though I won’t say for what yet. :o

He’s likely made blueprints for that train. :P

It probably would just have different flavor text/progression!

So basically, I treat the starting motif for BAaTH/Power of NEO is just a “true hero” motif.

MTT is definitely major in IF! As for whether or not he’ll have a hangout, time will tell. There’s definitely more to resolve with him, though.

I’m gonna remake at least a few of the older tracks, including Regret. My goal is just to bring the OST to a similar standard of quality.

So, animated parts coming up: Part 47, Part 49, Part 50. There may be some other parts, but we’re gonna wanna scale things back for a little bit for the sake of all our sanities.

I go with both. ;)

Honestly, probably fairly similar to the bully fight in the Ruins- which is why I ultimately decided not to do one. Both fill similar archetypes, though I think if I did do a battle, I woulda still had Flowey interrupt at the end and scare them off.

It’s a very emotional scene. Far more tragic than her geno death, IMO.

Well, the main goal in that regard is the remasters (Part 9 is in progress). Otherwise, I do think these hiatuses are good for working ahead. I’ve still gotta do more work, though, because my buffer this time around is a lot smaller from the trial-hiatus buffer. Alas!

Honestly, the website is the best thing to happen to IF. It’s allowed us to do so much with the comic’s presentation that would be impossible with imgur. NORIX IS THE BEST...

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of DC: Week of February 26th, 2020

Best of this Week: Batman: Curse of the White Knight Book Seven - Sean Murphy, Matt Hollingsworth and AndWorld Design

Batman is Dead.

The last issue of Curse of the White Knight gave us the last in the story of Edmond Wayne and revealed that the man that Bruce thought was his ancestor, turned out to have been the family to Jean-Paul Valley instead. Bakkar of the Order of St. Dumas killed Edmond after betraying and stealing Gotham from under him, thus assuming the name of Wayne and forming the city to his vision. With this newfound information, Batman has found himself a man with a lineage of thievery, especially after finding out that Gotham’s Elite have been funding their crime through Wayne Enterprises.

This issue begins with a somber flashback to a moment before the funeral of the Waynes. Bruce cries and blames himself for their deaths because he wanted to see The Mask of Zorro. He had always wanted to use the rapiers that his father kept on display and figured if he learned to use them from the movie, then he would be able to impress his father enough. Alfred, always so caring, tells him that if he’s able to go to the funeral, then he can hold a rapier. He then vows to teach young Bruce how to use it for the next danger he may face.

Matt Hollingsworth colors this flashback in a cool blue hue, emphasizing both the sadness and the hopefulness of the moment. Murphy portrays Alfred as being caring and shows that even with the tears, Bruce shows his ability to rise up and become the hero that people need. Though the rapier is far too large for his kid body, Bruce holds it firm in hopes of protecting Gotham in the future.

As we cut back to the modern day, Bruce faith in himself and his dreams of becoming Gotham’s knight are shaken. He was never a Wayne by blood and he sees himself as part of Gotham’s cuse. Many would be right to see him as such given Gotham’s crime initially started off as petty stuff and eventually escalated into battles with The Joker, Two-Face and others with Gotham being caught in the crossfire every time. He didn’t even know that his company was being used by criminals because of his singular focus on fighting crime.

Murphy draws Batman as being tired and ashamed of himself for only just now understanding Jack Napier’s vision and why Batman is just as bad for Gotham as The Joker was. His expressions are melancholic, Murphy makes excellent use of shadow to try to hide some of his shame and body language to make him look like an old man that’s been sitting on a lawn chair for eighty hard years. Harleen Quinzel acts as his voice of reason during his pity party and actually shows concern for him.

Harleen has been a central character in this world since the very first issue of the original White Knight and that doesn’t change here though her own personal arc is over. The last issue saw her do her best to bring Jack Napier out of Joker’s mind for one last time for information and to save her children. In the end, she had to shoot Joker in the head to let Jack rest and rid herself of the monster that had been plaguing her for years. She still finds herself at Batman’s side as one of his most trusted friends.

Bruce still has one thing that he can do to make sure that Jean-Paul doesn’t get away with his crimes and Harley convinces him that Gotham will forgive his transgressions like they did for the former Joker in Napier. At the same time, Azrael is still out there and Murphy and Hollingsworth give readers an AMAZING shot of the villain in his updated Knightfall costume. He grabs onto the nds of his cape as he soars backwards into his hideout. The lights of the city contrast with his blacks, yellows and blues to just give us a pretty damn good shot of how powerful he feels in the suit.

This is contrasted by the next few set of panels where he’s puking out of his mask after escaping from the GTO (Gotham Task Oppression Unit). This version of Azrael has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and as such needs medicine to live and suppress the symptoms. With little dialogue and some telling panels, we see that Azrael has empty bottle after empty bottle of pills in his cabinet. He’s starting to look a bit more gaunt than the first time we saw him. He’s withering away slowly and only has one more pill to spare for his coming battle with Batman.

I love the details that Murphy and Hollingworth add here. There’s blood in his vomit and it maintains after he pukes on his leg. His ribs are starting to show and we’ve seen just how jacked he was in the issues prior. His hair doesn’t appear as long as it did, even pulled into a bun/ponytail and there’s just something so final about the “shit” he gives after finding out that he only has one more pill left. In that singular moment, his mistakes come back to haunt him after killing his, admittedly, treacherous employer.

Soon after, Bruce makes amends to Barbara Gordon after inadvertently causing the accident that almost saw her completely lose use of her legs and effectively getting her dad killed. Barbara has always been resilient and we all feared that that issue #5 would be yet another Killing Joke, but here she is, using crutches to try walking again. The scene takes place during the bright Gotham day and this signals a brighter future for their relationship.

Bruce had always gone to Jim Gordon for advice on what route he should take, but without him, Bruce is missing one of his moral compasses. Barbara is the next best person because she has always been smarter than her father and Bruce has a ton of guilt to get off of his chest and Barbara handles everything like the mature adult that she is. She doesn’t blame Bruce for what happened, even though she said horrid things in anger, but can anyone blame her? She cries at the mention of her father and embraces Bruce, encouraging whatever his decision may be.

Of course, with this being the penultimate issue in this particular storyline, it only makes sense that we see a grand revelation come out of it. Murphy and Hollingsworth set the stage with Hollingsworth coloring the afternoon skies of Gotham with an orange-red kind of hue. We see various shots of different places in Gotham from public libraries to the streets themselves as Batman appears on the giant monitor of Gotham Square. Everything feels hot and sort of uncomfortable.

Bruce gives his appreciation and thanks to the people of Gotham for allowing him to serve as their protector and we continue to get these various shots of people. There’s auto mechanics watching the broadcast in their shop, people in a bar and kids watching on a cell phone with their dog. Murphy uses this to illustrate that Gotham is far larger than we think it is and that there are many people that Batman has saved from every corner of his beloved city, but he hasn’t done enough yet. So what’s the final step?

Batman reveals himself to be Bruce Wayne and dismantles WayneCorp.

Bruce finally becomes the knight that Gotham needs by giving back to the people. By destroying his company, he gives back to the people of Gotham by giving all of his money to nonprofits, schools, homeless shelters etc. It’s everything that Batman detractors have been saying Bruce should have done for ages. In doing so, he offers Gotham a better future than he could have as Batman, but he only asks them to stay off the streets of Gotham for one night while he takes care of the Azrael business. Murphy shows Bruce holding his cowl one last time, standing tall by his heroic decision.

Back at the GCPD, he gets lambasted by Commissioner Montoya for going off and doing his own thing again, but counters by saying that he trusts in the people of Gotham and they all formulate their battle plans. It’ll be his last time taking the reigns before he turns himself in as well, so he might as well make sure that everything goes according to plan.

As Montoya tells Batman that Azrael destroyed most of the other Batmobiles in his assault on bruce in Book Four (I think), she reveals that one survived and I see that Sean Murphy is a Batfan after my own heart. The Batmobile that survives is the badass one from the Animated Series, what this book is supposed to be the “sequel” to. It's sleek and well designed thanks to Murphy’s own love of cars. From the presentation, readers can tell that this is one of the pages he took serious time with as the Batmobile is given so much respect.

After a short conversation with Dick about what Bruce is going to do when he catches Azrael, Batman drives away, leaving his sidekicks concerned about his state of mind and we get one last splash page of Batman standing in the middle of Gotham Square without his cowl and the sky is a blood red. The Batmobile looks sexy in the background and this was all just so amazing.

Sean Murphy is a comic book treasure. His art and his writing truly made this an experience and a Batman story worth standing the test of time. It had the action, the drama, the stylish sequences and several twists and turns that make a story great. He’s made Batman his own in a grungy style much like how Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have in a heavy metal manner. Murphy’s Gotham is a masterpiece in crustpunk with social problems that Batman’s always had in the periphery of his character and every issue has been better than the last.

Matt Hollingsworth brings it to life with his perfect colors; Whether they’re making use of the blues of Gotham’s clear skies or the light purples of the night sky, Hollingworth makes Gotham look distinct no matter the time of day. Scenes are given hues to match the tone of the pages whether they’re full of intense anger or incredible sadness, Matt Hollingsworth sets the mood no matter what

I really enjoyed this series, but I can’t wait for the next and final issue of it just to see that confrontation between Batman and Azrael. It’s been a long time coming and the fallout from Bruce’s decision as well… it’ll be too much, but yeah High recommend!

Also, support me on Patreon:

patreon.com/TyTalksComics

[mischiefandspirits]

Who is Iron Man?

After a three month imprisonment by terrorists, child genius Tony Stark was rescued by an unknown entity. Who is this Iron Man? The world wants to know.

SI Founder Found Dead

By Kate Mallory - December 17, 2009

Today we mourn the loss of a technological superstar.

Last night, a car accident took the life of Stark Industries founder and CEO Howard Stark (age 87) as well as his wife Maria (age 79) and daughter Amanda (age 34). The family was reportedly on their way to the airport for a vacation in the Bahamas when, according to police representatives, one of their car’s tires blew out causing the vehicle to crash into a tree on the side of the road. Howard and Maria were pronounced dead on arrival while Amanda died en route to the hospital.

As Amanda was an only child and never married, the family is survived solely by her son, child genius and media rascal Anthony “Tony” Stark (age 8). A sudden illness had sprung up that morning, causing him to need to stay home with a family friend and saving him from the deadly crash.

Questions have begun to rise up over the future of both Stark Industries and the young Stark, but SI has only given a quick statement before closing all lines of communications for the time being. The statement, in short, revealed that Stark Industries COO Obadiah Stane would be taking over as CEO temporarily until Stark’s will can be seen to. Likewise, young Tony is set to remain with the mentioned unnamed family friend until such time.

Read on for a full obituary and discussion on what this could mean for the future of Stark Industries >>

BREAKING NEWS: A Stark Disappearance

By Tech-miss - January 26, 2011

A late-night posting, I know, but I’ve got big news, readers! A leak from within Stark Industries has just revealed that the company’s prized heir is currently MIA on the other side of the planet.

Two days ago, Tony Stark had been in Afghanistan for a demonstration of the Jericho Missile -- a revolutionary missile system utilizing SI’s repulsor tech -- when the military convoy escorting him fell under attack. When backup arrived, many of the soldiers were either dead or injured while Stark was nowhere to be found. A team has already been formed for search and rescue, headed by Colonel James Rhodes: USAF officer, military liaison to SI, and friend of Stark’s.

That was all the leak was willing to say, but requests have already been flooding in for further comments from the airforce, SI, and Stark’s legal guardian Obadiah Stane so I’ll be sure to update you all the moment I get more information!

Comment down below with your thoughts and theories my fellow techies!!!

The Child of Death Back From the Dead

By Ryan Prince - May 2, 2011

The business and technology worlds are in a stir today and unsurprisingly it’s all due to Tony Stark.

The nine-year-old returned to the states today after having been rescued less than a week earlier from his three-month imprisonment at the hands of the Ten Rings terrorist organization. True to form, he immediately made a scene.

Mere moments after Stark was reportedly supposed to have stepped off his plane, his minder and personal assistant Virginia “Pepper” Potts reached out to the Stark Industries public relations department to call together a press conference for Stark. Bolts&Blogs was on the list and I was lucky enough to be free to represent the site even with the short notice.

Stark opened the conference without the usual flare that has become his signature over the past year, though he did start it by sitting down in front of the podium with a cheeseburger and asking everyone to join him on the floor. He explained it away as an attempt to make everything less formal, but the boy was (justifiably) visibly exhausted by recent events.

Little information has been revealed about Stark’s imprisonment, but it’s hard not to imagine what he might have gone through and his appearance only makes it worse. He was thin with malnourishment and the rush makeup job he had gotten hadn’t managed to completely cover the bruises across his face or his sunburned flush. One of his arms was tucked into a sling and his artfully styled hair was now long and limp. There was also a seriousness about him that looked alien on the formerly excitable and mischievous boy.

Once everyone but those operating cameras had sat, Stark then proceeded to greet his legal guardian, Stark Industries CEO Obadiah Stane (Why Stane hadn’t been at the airport to greet his ward sooner is unknown at this time), before setting into a monologue about his grandfather, the late founder of Stark Industries Howard Stark (More information here). He wondered over what Howard had thought about the company, if he had doubts or was as confident in everything he did as the news painted him.

He then mentioned the soldiers from his escort that had died due to, as reports have hinted, Stark Industries made weaponry, stating that the company had “grown from arming the knights into arming the dragons.”

When questioned about what had happened in Afghanistan, Stark answered as such:

“I had my eyes opened. I came to realize that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up. I know I have no power to change the company until I’m legally declared an adult and can claim my inheritance, so that is why, effective immediately, I am leaving the weapons manufacturing division of Stark Industries until such a time as I am capable of deciding what the future of this company will be, what direction it should take and is consistent with the highest good…”

Whatever more he had to say was lost as Stane escorted him off the stage into Potts’ waiting grasp. The man, despite his ever-present smile, had clearly been caught off guard by his ward’s statement and quickly concluded the conference.

As anyone who knows anything about technology could tell you, nothing worth talking about comes out of Stark Industries without the tiny fingerprints of the company’s resident genius on it, which begs the question of what this means for their weapons department? Will they still be able to stay ten steps ahead of their competitors without Stark’s designs? Where will Stark’s focus go now as Stark Industries has always been first and foremost a weapons manufacturer? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

[Subscribe] to Bolts&Blogs for the most up to date information from the world of technology and feel free to join the discussion down below!

Hidden Hero

By Tech-miss - June 27, 2011

New information has come out regarding Tony Stark’s rescue, readers, and it’s a doozy.

For starters, it wasn’t the USAF that did the rescuing.

According to the report published early this morning, an “unknown entity” (Let’s call him Uno) launched an attack on a Ten Rings base which the air force later realized was being used to hold Stark as well as a second unnamed prisoner (aka Doc) who had been brought in to treat the injuries he’d gained during his kidnapping. Uno then staged a rescue, freeing Stark and Doc before destroying the base. Afterwards, they watched over the two until a USAF chopper began to close in, at which time they took off and disappeared.

As far as anyone can tell from the report, the USAF doesn’t appear to have any idea who the rescuer is. Stark apparently didn’t have a clue and if Doc did, we’ll never know as he, unfortunately, fell unconscious shortly after being picked up due to wounds he received protecting Stark and died not long after while in surgery.

Of course that means theories abound. Everything from a secret SI black ops team to the stereotypical ALIENS!!!! have flooded the forums. I’m particularly interested in one such theory that posits Captain America was the one to save them, if only because all the OP said to justify it was “Cap could do it!!!!!” and I find that hilarious.

Hopefully, we’ll get some more information soon. Here’s hoping Zombie Cap didn’t save Stark for his brains.

Comment down below with your thoughts and theories my fellow techies!!!

Who is Iron Man?

By CamicsComics - October 27, 2011

Hey there CamComs! Today’s post is going to be different from my usual stuff, but that’s because we’ve got confirmation that a real-life superhero is flying around!

Some background that you might be missing if you live under a comic book-lined rock like I do: Five months ago child celebrity and genius Tony Stark was rescued by an unknown person after he’d been kidnapped in Afghanistan. If you’re wondering who would think sending a nine-year-old into an active war zone is a fine idea like I was, then I’ve got two words for you: attempted murderer. But we’ll get to that.

Theories have flown about regarding who might have saved him, and today the world got its answer.

Well, at least we got his alias.

See, while the kid was in Afghanistan he found out his company’s weapons had ended up in the hands of the very guys who were keeping him prisoner. Since most of the weapons were his own designs, the kid understandably decided to leave the weapons business. Honestly, the kid shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but again, his legal guardian was super sketch.

Said guardian was Obadiah Stane. He’d been a partner to Stark’s grandfather Howard Stark and took over as CEO after the man’s death. He’d allegedly been a pseudo uncle to Stark’s mother so people said it made sense the man was given guardianship. Apparently those people never considered the millions of stories about evil uncles killing off their nephews to become king.

Honestly, from what I’ve read, I’m surprised Colonel James Rhodes wasn’t given custody. The guy was friends with Stark’s mother, had a rapport with his grandparents, and is still close with Stark.

Stane had never even met Stark until he was given custody!

I’m getting off track though.

Today during a press conference, Stark revealed that he’s been looking into the dirty weapons. A few days ago, his assistant Pepper Potts found evidence on Stane’s computer that not only has Stane been dealing under the table, but he had put a hit out on Stark. When Stane realized he’d been found out, he decided to finish the job. He attacked Stark and nearly killed him before using an experimental piece of SI technology to try to kill Potts and the agents (they didn’t say who the agents were with, just that they were agents) that had accompanied her to arrest Stane.

Which brings us to the reason for this post.

Apparently the person who had rescued Stark from Afghanistan had been looking into the weapons too and arrived at the mansion Stane and Stark shared just in time to save Stark. Using information the boy gave him, he then flew over to SI to take down Stane.

And yes, I did mean flew. Because this mysterious person the media had dubbed Iron Man is exactly what you’d expect from a name like that. He’s got a high tech suit of armor that can fly and shoot lasers!!! Like I said real-life superhero! Not only that, but he’s got a team of robots to back him up.

Don’t believe me? Look it up! Stark leaked pictures online of said Iron Man taking down Stane to prove he’s not just some kid telling stories, which was quickly followed up by a bunch of different people posting their own pics all over social media to back him up.

When questioned on Iron Man’s identity, Stark refused to comment. However, he did admit that the rumors about Iron Man being his bodyguard were false.

“Although IM came to Afghanistan for me, it was because he’s was a good friend and not because he was being paid as some rumors have suggested. Also, any and all rumors that I created the suit or bots are not only untrue, but also super insulting. The suit is a work of art straight from IM's genius mind and he deserves all the praise for it.”

Of course, people picked up on the “good friend” comment when it comes to trying to figure out the man behind the suit. A theory that Col. Rhodes was Iron Man seemed the most likely as he is close to Stark, headed the search and rescue unit, and graduated MIT with degrees in engineering and physics. However, as some have pointed out, there are photos and videos showing Rhodes with Stark and Potts during the fight between Stane and Iron Man.

That’s it for the past, but what about the future?

For Iron Man’s future, it seems like he’s going to be working with the US military to track down all the dirty SI weapons. For little Stark, things are still up in the air.

Since his legal guardian is out of the picture and he has no living relatives, there is some debate on where he’ll go. Both Rhodes and Potts are trying to get custody. I’ve covered the good on Rhodes, though I should point out his position as SI’s military liaison does put him in an awkward place. Potts is in a similar position as she’s currently Stark’s employee. That said, there’s no denying Potts knows how to take care of him as she basically became his nanny after Stane took control and shifted her from her former position (the PA to the CEO) to being Stark’s PA and minder, which basically means she took care of the paperwork aspect of his job, made sure he was on time for appointments, got him to eat and go to bed, kept him out of trouble, and other such things his legal guardian should have been doing instead of plotting to kill a nine-year-old.

She’s also clearly fond of the kid. There are pictures all over of her and the kid together and even at her most scolding she never really seems to be angry with him (such as in these pictures from a gala where Stark apparently decided to set off a CONTROLLED EXPLOSION!?!?! “For some entertainment”! And apparently this is typical behavior? No one’s ever been hurt, but seriously kid?). In fact, she’s often caught indulging in his more playful mischief (such as these pics that show the two of them dancing at the recent Firefighter's Family Fund benefit where Stark apparently gate-crashed his own party).

We also know she has no fear telling off her boss no matter what considering we’ve got multiple sources to prove that the reason the woman got her job in the first place was because she -- and I’m not kidding here -- forced her way into Howard Stark’s office back when she was just a financial jocky to make him correct an error he’d made on some paperwork. She’d earned a face-full of pepper spray, a job, and a nickname for her bravery, the last courtesy of Tony Stark himself.

Well, sweet CamComs, as much as I’d love to keep talking about this, unfortunately, that’s all I got for now. I’ll be keeping a close eye on Iron Man and Stark (because there’s zero chance that kid won’t get caught up in something again. Heck, maybe he’ll even build his own suit and become the hero’s sidekick. Seems right up the kid’s alley) and keep you updated, but unless something else happens, I’ll be back to my usual content on Tuesday.

Subscribe, like, and share, CamComs! Until next time, be the hero you want to see in the world!

Iron Tweet

By Ryan Prince - November 12, 2011

Does the mysterious superhero Iron Man have a Twitter? It would seem so!

Two days ago, @1r0n_M4n opened with the name 0111 01 1011. At first glance, one might think it was just a fan account, but the accounts first Tweet -- “Is this how I do it @ Tony?” -- was not only liked by Tony Stark, Virginia “Pepper” Potts, and Col. James Rhodes, but Stark also replied to it with “Yeah, but you actually have to use my thing, @1r0n_M4n”. Rhodes followed suit with “Was Iron Man spelled out normally seriously taken already?” and Potts responded with “Yes, but @1r0n_M4n wanted it spelled like that to begin with.” By that point, many had taken notice of the account and it only increased when the account became verified late last night.

While the account has since been flooded with questions about the hero and suit, none have been answered. However, when someone jokingly asked for help with a math homework problem, Iron Man responded with a picture of the problem worked out. This began a slew of people asking for Iron Man’s help with their varying homework problems until Potts spoke up with “@1r0n_M4n you can’t just do people’s homework for them. They need to learn how to do it themselves.” Iron Man immediately apologized and afterward only responded to such tweets with links to varying sites that proved to have useful information for whatever the problem might be. While most gave up afterward, some --usually college-age -- continued to request assistance with grateful thanks afterward.

The account currently has 500k+ followers and growing, but only follows six accounts. Stark, Potts, and Rhodes are obvious, but people have become curious over the other three: @GirlFriday, @Uuuuuuuuuu, and @DUM_E.

@GirlFriday (named F.R.I.D.A.Y.) appears to be a graphic artist. The account boasts no personal tweets, but many designs have been posted, some of which are said to have been sold to different companies. A few Stark Industries logos have even been found on the site, including the current one.

@Uuuuuuuuuu’s (named U) account consists entirely of retweeted music videos with genres ranging from classical to rap with the only comments being a sad or happy emoji for each to apparently give the account owner’s approval or disapproval.

@DUM_E (named Butterfingers) is a more wildcard account. It mostly consists of retweeted recipes and cooking videos, but there are also links to recipes on what appears to be @DUM_E’s own personal cookbook website as well as original cooking videos featuring far less appetizing mixtures (such as the one which features what appears to be motor oil being blended with strawberries, a banana, and almond milk). This seems to be the most curious account though as it is the only one with personal comments, though they are all coded in an odd mix of binary and morse code. Most of the comments either review recipes they’ve tried out or complain of annoying brothers and sisters without giving any names, but that’s not the curious part.

You see, those that put in the effort to decode @DUM_E’s comments realized that the same code was used for @1r0n_M4n’s name. Translated it reads Jay. Although that’s not much to go on, it is more than we had before. That’s not all though, because people have compared pictures from Stark’s workshop to screenshots from @DUM_E’s videos and website to show that the videos were filmed at the kitchenette in the lab. This has led some to believe the account might be a “shitpost” account of Stark’s, though others have argued that the comments about siblings wouldn’t make sense for him. When questioned, @DUM_E responded with a pair of tweets that, when translated, read, “Tony could not make good food like me.” and “If I didn’t make him food and bring it to him, he’d never eat.”

Before anyone else could respond, @1r0n_M4n added, “The recipes in @DUM_E’s videos are his more experimental ones and @TStark rarely partakes in them. @DUM_E usually feeds him the recipes from his site.”

Stark’s Twitter was immediately bombarded with questions of which of the video recipes fell into the “rarely” column, which Stark refused to reply to. Rhodes, however, posted a none too subtle tweet a short time later about how Tony and he agreed motor oil tasted better with bananas than chocolate.

Who could these mystery accounts belong to and how are they connected to Stark and Iron Man? How are Iron Man and Stark connected in the first place? Could these mystery accounts be the key? How many times has Stark eaten motor oil? Time will tell.

[Subscribe] to Bolts&Blogs for the most up to date information from the world of technology and feel free to join the discussion down below!

[storytimefromthecreed]

Kenways’ Happy Ending

(Part 2)

Connor dropped his stuff by the door and silently made his way into the kitchen. She peeked around the blade she was working on long enough to see his frown, and then set down her things to join him. “The night was that bad, huh?”

“I do not wish to talk about it.” Connor growled and drank water. He set down the cup firmly, clenching it within his grip. “How was your day?”

“Better than yours, apparently.” Her tease didn’t make him laugh like she wanted, and her fingers undid his from the cup. She took his newly freed hand, and Connor’s frown deepened. Just her touch affected him, and he felt tears in his eyes. He clenched them shut, and felt her take him in her arms. It was comical the way her arms wouldn’t reach completely around him and how he had to hunch to hug her, but he felt safe here. “What happened, love?”

He always melted when she used his term of endearment, and he knew she knew it. Connor rested his head on hers and wound his arms around her. His forehead pressed to hers, and his eyes were still shut. Just feeling her calmed him enough to speak. “I saw him today. Haytham. He was the one that called for me.”

“How did that go?”

Connor opened his eyes and stared at her. She was calm, waiting, and he pulled back. “You are not surprised.” Her eyes widened and she looked down at their hands. That was her tell. “(Y/N). What are you not telling me?”

“It’s not anything bad.”

Connor pouted and held her hands. She wasn’t denying it. Lying to one another was never what they did, however, adjusting the truth for the sake of the other seemed to be their go to.

“What?”

“Are you not going to tell me?” Connor pressed and she gave him an innocent expression. Connor laughed and melted under it. He pulled her into his arms and they swayed in the kitchen. “That will not work on me this time. Speak your mind.”

“Don’t be mad, but I think you need to talk to your father.” Connor tensed and his frown returned. Whatever happiness he felt in that moment disappeared like the sun behind a cloud, taking the light and warmth and replacing it with coldness.

“You’re upset by your meeting with your father.” She continued, “What happened?”

“He is not my father.” Connor untangled himself from her and moved into the main room. “This is not what we are talking about! How did you know I was meeting with him? Did he put you up to this? Was he here?!”

Connor had never yelled at her before, and she was taken aback. Most people froze when Connor was angry, he was big and scary afterall, but not her. She found the pain in his words and his expression, and walked to him. She gave him a hug. “I am so sorry for raising my voice at you. I do not know what came over me. I...I..”

“I forgive you.” She pulled away and led him to a seat. She pulled him down beside her. “You’re hurt, confused, and I understand you must be in pain. How about this. I will tell you what I know and you’ll tell me of your meeting with Haytham. We’ll compare notes.” Connor nodded, and she began. “Haytham’s girlfriend stopped by here yesterday when you were gone for your meeting. She and I talked, but the most interesting part was a book that she had brought with her. She allowed me to read a few parts of it, the parts that concerned you, and I understood then why she had come.” (Y/N) adjusted herself and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I believe that Haytham really cares about you, but he doesn’t know how to show it.”

“(Y/N).” Connor warned.

“Please, I read his journal and he acccounts for every time he met you. He knew from the first moment you crossed paths who you were, and he actually goes on to save you.”

“You have never been a fan of his.” Connor hissed, growing stiff again. “Why are you on his side now? Because a Templar tricked you?”

“Remember that day you were almost hung?”

“The day the Assassins saved me.”

“That’s the thing. I rememeber the Assassin’s blade missing your noose.”

“No.”

“And then another blade, not ours my design, came flying through the air and-”

“I can not listen to this.” Connor stood and walked away. Always stubborn, (Y/N) followed after him. His strides lead him back out the door, and she had to run to keep up with him. “Leave me be. Please. I need to clear my head.”

“Before you do that, just consider this.” She huffed, and Connor stopped so she could catch up. She almost ran into him, and she took a step back to keep from colliding with him. “I read the book, love. He’s a Templar, sure, but what more do you know about him? I think he really does want to be in your life, and I think he’s just as confused by this as you are.”

“I am not confused.”

“Then why didn’t you kill him on your missions? Huh? You have more than enough time and you were more than angry, but you didn’t. Even now, he called for you and you hurried to him. I think you’re not mad that he wants to be a father, I think you’re mad because you want to be his son. Connor, this doesn’t make you any less of an Assassin or a man. Just,” she took a step back and began returning to the house. “Think on that while you clear your head.”

She was gone, and Connor had a lot of his mind. The first day had ended, and he had a sense that tomorrow Haytham would be at the Silver Pony.

....

The following night, the Silver Pony bustled with excitement. Men drank and told tales of their work, save for Haytham who leaned back in his chair and enjoyed eavesdropping on the meager lives of the patrons around him. Charles was deep into his fourth drink. If he was to die tonight, then Haytham would like him comfortable.

Connor stood out in a place like this, Haytham thought as he watched the Assassins walk into the bar. Connor was followed by his girlfriend, and Haytham looked to the bar to find his own there. The girl by his side gave his hand a squeeze before tailing off to the bar. Haytham’s eyes widened with surprise as the women hugged and then headed out the door. His love looked his way and sent him a kiss before disappearing into the night.

His confusion must have been on his face because Connor chuckled, a harsh, forced sound, when he came near. “Trust me. You do not want to know.”

“Have a seat, please. Would you like anything to drink?”

“I do not drink.” Connor took a seat by flipping the chair around and settling in. He looked at Charles, but Lee hadn’t noticed his arrival yet.

“Good to know. Have you thought about what I said?” Haytham kept his voice tight, but the quiver of nervous emotion reflecting in his sentence betrayed him. Connor was silent. “You don’t have to kill him, you know, but I will not stop you if you feel you have to.”

“Why did you not come back for her? My mother?” Connor’s eyes held his with such force that Haytham found himself feeling very small and young.

Honesty was never his friend, but Haytham chose that route. “My father was murdered in front of my when I was a boy.” He confessed, his words cold and practical. “When the man I had been hunting for was found, I left everything here to finish the mission I set out to do since childhood.”

“Did you kill him? The man who killed your father?”

“I did.” Connor’s eyes flashed to Lee, and his fists clenched. “But it didn’t help.” Connor looked back at Haytham.

“How do you mean? You avenged your family. Was it not worth it?”

“True, I killed the man who had ordered the attack that destroyed my family. They slew my father before my very eyes, caused my mother to fall into a deep depression and kill herself, and they took my sister; but, killing him did not bring them back. If anything, I lost more chasing this idea of revenge than I gained in satisfaction.”

“How do you mean?” Connor leaned in. His stony expression was replaced by genuine interest, and Haytham leaned in too.

“I traveled all over the world, yet I never got to admire it. Everything was always stained red with my anger. My father gifted me a sword that I fought with in every battle, I lost that. It was the last piece I had of him. Of my old life. I lost friends, my relationship to my sister was broken beyond all repair, I lost the love of my life, and any chance of a normal life with you and your mother. How different my life would’ve been if instead of following this man to the end of the earth, I just let him go? My friends would still be alive, my sister would be safe, and I could’ve been happy.

“But there is no point dwelling in what could have been. I chose to throw away a normal, good life because I was young and there was fire in my blood that would not be quenched. Look at all I’ve lost becuase of it.”

“The man who killed you father and harmed you sister was evil. He needed to die.”

“We all die eventually, Connor. Just because I needed satisfaction did not mean I had to put lives in danger to do so. But yes, he was an evil man. However, if I didn’t kill him, I knew someone else would. Now, tell me, does Charles need to die? Or do you think you could work around him until someone else does the deed for you?”

A look of uncertainty crossed his face before Connor nodded to himself and softened his expression. “What was your father like?”

“Great was the word everyone used to describe him.” Haytham began, “He loved his family, was a hard worker, and he was a great father. He told me stories that I now knew were from his time as a pirate.”

“My grandfather was a pirate? I do not believe you.” Connor leaned closer in, trying to gather as much information as he could.

Haytham smiled, “The most unbelievable part was that he was also an Assassin.”

[comicteaparty]

July 15th-July 21st, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from July 15th, 2019 to July 21st, 2019.  The chat focused on Radioactive Underground by Ezra Rose.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Radioactive Underground by Ezra Rose~! (https://tapas.io/series/Radioactive-Underground)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PDT), so keep checking back for more! You have until July 21st to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite scene in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. What do you think caused Robbie’s scar that is briefly seen? Further, why is Robbie taking medicine? What might all this have to do with Griffin’s particular concern for how Robbie is doing?

ezzy

Wow what a wonderful comic surely who ever made this comic is very smart and also handsome

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 4. Which aspect of the world has caught your eye the most so far? Why does it interest you? Also, how do you think it will play a role in how the story unfolds?

RebelVampire

1) my favorite scene is probably the first scene we see robbie at maki's. i liked the little flirty dialogue and then the ultimate payoff with it at the end. like i really felt like i was in robbie's shoes during it cause i wasnt sure if there was chemistry and then the "robbie with an i e " thing really sold it for me. just a great banter setup i can really appreciate. 2) Given the opening scene, I gotta imagine Robbie was fighting monsters or w/e he fights in the underground and took on a challenge he wasnt ready for. And that probably nearly killed him and thus why the scar and medicine. Cause the medicine is probably keeping his heart going or something like that. As for Griffin's concern, Griffin gives off a kind of motherly feel to me despite the aggressive attitude. And it seems she and robbie have a sort of mother-son bond (at least a little bit). and ya know, mom's worry when their sons almost die.

3) my favorite character atm is probably robbie. While this could change as the characters become more familiar, I really just like Robbie's design. It feels edgy and relateable at the same time without being overboard. I also think it super suits his personality. 4) I'm really interested in the underground aspect of the comic. Cause it really doesn't feel like their underground, yet it's clearly a thing. And given robbie's crush isnt from the underground originally, itll be interesting to see how the cultures differ. Since there already seems to be some inequality going on. In terms of the story, I definitely think the underground's probably...status in society is probably a breeding ground for crime. hence robbie's entire life situation.

ezzy

>:3c

RebelVampire

QUESTION 5. What has been your favorite illustration in the comic so far? What specifically about it do you like?

QUESTION 6. Why do you think Yui was supposedly kicked out of the family business, and how do you think she got involved with Griffin? What theories do you have about the rest of Griffin’s crew? Alternatively, who do you most want to learn more about?

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. Which characters do you enjoy seeing interact the most? What about their dynamic interests you?

QUESTION 8. What do you think the ultimate goal is for Griffin’s group as for why they steal? Is it just for money, or is there some larger picture? Further, what do you think Robbie’s personal investment is in the whole thing?

RebelVampire

5) My fave illustration...s is probably the ones of Griffin on this page. https://tapas.io/episode/1357536 Griffin looks so cool, and something about this up-close shot choices really made me appreciate her really cool, badass design. Instantly won my heart over as a top-contending chara for favorites. 6) Yui sort of strikes me as the type who rebels just to rebel. Like the teen who never got out of the rebellious phase because she's 2kool4skool. And from what we've seen with her relationship with her family, rebelliousness is not well-received. And I can see from her families perspective how it kind of just looks like Yui lazes around and then throws attitude. I don't really have theories about the rest of the crew, although I definitely do want to get to know the completely non-human world. They'd be a great insight into the rest of the non-humans that are in this world.

7) I probably enjoy seeing Robbie and crush chick the most. They've got really cute chemistry that just makes me squee on the inside. And I also hope he continues to be called Robbie with an i e for a while. 8) I think the answer to this question depends on perspective. Most of the crew, like Robbie and Yui, are probably just in it for the money. While I think Griffin is in it for the money, I also think she has a bigger picture idea. Like eventually aiming for the grand jewel and making people super pissed. Or more I should say, she's waiting till they can make the heist of a lifetime and retire on a beach in Hawaii. As for Robbie's personal investment, besides money, he kind of maybe just has nothing better to do? So far my impression of him is hes the type to think hes not good at a lot of stuff besides running and fighting. Thus morals be damned, lets steal things? XD Plus if he needs medicine, hes gotta pay for it somehow. So to summarize, his investment is needs money + belief in lack of job opportunities. I think if something better came along hed be heavily tempted.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. What sorts of art or story details have you noticed in the way the comic is crafted that you think deserves attention?

QUESTION 10. Who exactly do you think Griffin is? In other words, what’s Griffin’s backstory and why is Griffin invested in stealing? Further, why do you think Griffin keeps the group at arm’s length and has them drop her off at random locations?

RebelVampire

9) One deal I appreciate is the balance of Griffin's design. Like there's this right blend of human and non-human traits that you could even guess she was a half-breed before anybody even said anything. And being able to get that across immediately visually is really A+ work there. 10) I think Griffin was probably someone a lot like Robbie. Just in the underground, nothing to do, no opportunities, and so she took the easy route of theft. However, I think she was at least once part of a bigger organization (given the connections she has) and that she kind of betrayed them and ditched them. Like I said earlier, I think she's both in it for the money but kind of has some bigger idea picture about retiring in style or something like that. As for keeping the group at arm's length, I actually think it's to protect them. Cause she clearly seems to know dangerous folks who know her and have a bone to pick. So by not letting the others become too notorious, she keeps the heat on her.

ShaRose49

I started this one awhile ago and I thought it was very well-drawn(edited)

ezzy

Thank you i try very hard

RebelVampire

QUESTION 11. What do you think are this particular comic’s strengths? What do you think makes this comic unique? Please elaborate.

QUESTION 12. Why do you think the new girl working at Maki’s has come to the underground? What might it have to do with her relationship with her parents? Further, what role do you think she’ll play in the larger story?

spacerocketbunny

1. Favourite scene is probably the one where everyone is in the diner after the heist! The banter is fun and I like how the characters interact. Yui and Robbie are great, they act like siblings who can't stand each other but of course cover each other's asses if they get in trouble. Also the moment when Robbie meets Sky, she asks his name so she can label his food but then he asks for her name and she pauses like "why are you asking the server's name lol" 3. Ummmm Griffin because she's a mysterious babe?? Love me a stoic lady with questionable motives ;)) also Sky is so sweet, I love that she's an artist! 4. Love the demons and other folks that are integrated into the world, it's a lot of fun! I hope there'll be more interesting people to see :)

5. The latest pages with Griffin on the phone look great, great colours, nice backgrounds, I like how the colours are starting to become more dynamic! 6. Mmmm my guess is that she's a bit messy and callous and probably messed something up in the family business. Too early to make any hard speculation but if anything I think it was Yui's fault probably... I want to see more of what these heists are for, and how their group operates. I'd like to see more on Griffin and her origin since it was pointed out that she was a %100 human (I'm assuming the other half is demon?) 7. Right now Yui and Robbie because of the bickering they do, but now that I've seen Sky blush after interacting with Griffin I'm

9. I like the style of the comic, it's angular and sharp and I like the character designs! I feel like the comic's aesthetic and mood is still being realized but it's progressing with each page and I can't wait to see how it develops further! 11. Like previously mentioned I think the style is definitely a strength, it's fun and offbeat and I like that it's one that I'm not seeing in the comic scene right now. The character interaction is great too, even as early as it is I'm already invested in these characters and I want to know more about them, they're a fun lot and they all play off each other in a great way. I'm interested to see where this comic goes and how it'll develop, I'll definitely be checking back for updates

RebelVampire

QUESTION 13. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

QUESTION 14. Who do you think Solomon Reiki is, and what does they want with Griffin? What does this have to do with the guard who Griffin fought during the heist? What could this mean for Robbie and the rest of the crew?

RebelVampire

11) I think the comic's strength are definitely the character designs. There's a lot of personality packed into them. Not just the main characters we've seen so far but even the side characters as well. It makes for a really dynamic setting and cast that immediately catches your eye. Somehoe all the designs also really suit the tone of the story as well. 12) I feel there definitely has to have been a falling out with her parents. And she fled to the one place where she thought they would never look for her or something. Given she seems somehow hardcore herself, I could totally see her joining the crew and going on thieving adventures. Or at the very least being an informant of some sort. 13) I'm looking forward to learning more about the rest of the crew and seeing how they all play off each other. Cause that will definitely have a big impact in terms of how the heists go. 14) Given my previous theories, I think Solomon Reiki was Griffin's old boss who is super pissed at Griffin's betrayal of leaving. But until recently they havent been able to find Griffin so hence the guard. Heard some rumors and sent the guard to confirm whether its the traitor or not. Of course, this probably gonna put the rest of the crew square in sights and get them unwanted attention from bigger criminals or something like that.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Radioactive Underground this week! Please also give a special thank you to Ezra Rose for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Radioactive Underground, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://tapas.io/series/Radioactive-Underground

Ezra’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ezrarose

Ezra’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/ezzymourao

Ezra’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSonicSoda_

[boarix]

Wraith in the Ruins: A Fallout 4 Story Part XI

Gathering Lemons

Trigger warnings: canon language/violence/gun, drug and alcohol use. Suggestive/mature content.

Bloody mess warning!

Game spoilers!

Please enjoy

 “Data unavailable.”

“Wait… does that mean you don’t know or that you can’t tell me?”

“The age of agent designated ‘Deacon’ is not on file.”

“Dang…”

“Query. Why is this data relevant?”

Wraith spun around on the bar stool she had dragged into P.A.M.’s office, “I just wanna know is all. He won’t tell me cause he knows it frustrates me that he knows everything about me and I know… possibly jack, about him. Thinks it’s a big tickle.”

“Query. What is the definition of ‘big tickle’?”

“He finds it humorous.”

Walking to her office, Desdemona heard Wraith’s voice and stuck her head in to frown at her, “Deacon is not here General. He won’t be back for a few days…”

“Yes, thank you. I’m dropping some holotapes off for Hancock…”

“He still has you running errands for him, huh?” Desdemona’s face held a superior look as she walked away.  

“Rude… ass…”

“Query. Why are you interactions with agent designated ‘Desdemona’ increasingly confrontational?”

Wraith spun around a few more times, considering, “I suppose she’s pissed that I quit and yet I’m still hanging around. She’s probably worried about exposure and it’s manifesting as bitchiness.”

“Query. Why did you quit? Your mission success rate was near one hundred percent. Higher even than agent designated ‘Glory’ and agent designated ‘Deacon’.”

“P.A.M, you can just say Glory and Deacon.” Wraith had winced at Glory’s name and stopped spinning to blink tears away while looking at the floor. “I quit so I could focus on Minutemen operations.”

“That phraseology is not accurate.” P.A.M walked over to stand next to Wraith. Bending slightly at the waist, the modified assaultron seemed to be trying to make eye-contact, “Query. Do you blame yourself for agent designated ‘Glory’s’ termination?”

It was a strange question, considering the source and Wraith was momentarily speechless. “I… I’m very sad that she died. I… I might have fallen for her, had things been different. Oddly enough, no; I don’t blame myself. For once. Her death I blame on Maxson. She has been avenged but I’m still going to miss her.” She stood up and watched P.A.M closely. She was acting strangely. “That was a rather emotionally orientated query, missy. Where did that come from?”

“Since my assistance in its repair, the unit designated KL-E-O has frequently entered my office and engaged me in conversation. Some of the topics would be beyond your capabilities of understanding. Some have been filed under personal developmental data. The topic of a recent discussion was loss and personal accountability.”

“Personal… P.A.M, do you like KL-E-O?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Also, pretty sure KL-E-O is a ‘she’ and not an ‘it’.”

“Logic error. Unit designated KL-E-O has no biological data and does not possess gender-related chromosomes.”

“I’ll let her explain it to you. Do you look forward to your conversations?”

“Temporarily unable to process verbal input. Still processing.”

 Once topside, Wraith waved MacCready over to her and the two headed toward the Minutemen offices. Despite all the positive experiences with synths, he still found himself uncomfortable at Railroad HQ. As such, the former merc had been amusing himself by reading comics while Wraith had run her errand. As they crossed the street he gave her a recap on Grognak’s latest adventure, hoping to elicit a conversation. It didn’t take long for him to realize that she wasn’t paying attention and that she was lost in her head.

“So right about then I slapped Danse across the face and told him ‘No! Bad can! Very bad tin can!”

“Mmhmm. Is that right?”

Sighing loudly, the young man picked up his pace; positioning himself directly in her path so she stopped. Locking eyes with hers, he was clearly annoyed, “I’ve been standing around in the cold waiting for you and now you’re ignoring me. You off somewhere else, or what?”

“I told you to wait in my office, Mac. You chose to stand down here instead.” His pout, as adorable as it was, needled her, “Don’t be a baby. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Oh, yeah? Like, what’s so important?”

“Northern expansion… and asexual synth love.”

“Ugh. Gross.”

“Don’t be like that. You like plenty of synths and robots!” Wraith side-stepped around him and set her hand on the doorknob, “You get along well with Codsworth and Sturges. You and Val have played dart and Horseshoe tournaments as partners! You have always been sweet to Curie.” Wraith, in a bad mood, turned the screw, “And Mags; I’ve head you and her have gotten along really well…”

“Magnolia is..?” MacCready stopped in his tracks, his face turning tato-red.

“And I thought you said synth love was gross. Oh, well I guess lust is something different, huh?”

That hurt him. She could see it. Clenching his fists, he turned and walked away from her.

Oh. Over did it. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

 Wraith tortured herself reviewing their conversation for the rest of the day. Unfocused and irritated she muddled her way through various meetings, embarrassing herself and wishing like crazy the dim, winter sun would hurry to bed. She flip-flopped between being angry with MacCready and his prejudice, to being angry with herself for her lack of patience.

Hancock had been busy with meetings himself and she really didn’t want to run to him with this. Complaining about one boyfriend to another, who also happens to be his boyfriend… It all seemed so grade school.

Shuffling papers around in an angry huff, she willed herself to stay seated when someone knocked on her door, “Enter, please.”

MacCready crossed the room to her desk. Arms folded, he had a determined and grumpy look, “I went to talk to Mags…”

“Didn’t believe me, huh? Like I would make shit up…”

“Let me finish!” Unfolding his arms he whipped his hat off angrily and ran a hand through his sandy brown hair, “Please stop thinking the worst of me! Over and over I’ve watched you be kind, not just to me but to people that I would never even look twice at. Because you took a chance on me, ME of all people, I have looked twice.” He stopped with his hands out toward her, “I’m not saying this right���”

“It’s okay Mac. Take your time. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

Sitting on the edge of her desk, he reached for her hand. Pulling her to her feet, he led her around to stand between his knees. “I went to talk to Mags because I really like her. We were… are friends. I bought her a drink and asked her about… being a synth, I guess. The time we… spent together, wasn’t just mindless… I needed… I’m trying to see if…” Faltering again, he stopped and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be a good guy, so don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m sorry too. I got shitty with you and it was uncalled for.” She wrapped her arms around his head, bringing it to her chest, “You are a good guy, Mac. I love you.”

There was another knock on her door and Wraith could tell by the cadence that it was Hancock. “Come on in, Mr. Mayor.”

Looking uncharacteristically exhausted, Hancock smiled at his lovers and their embrace, “Can I get in on that? I really need some friendly human contact right ‘bout now.”

“Rough day at the office, man?”

Hancock sighed contentedly as they settled into a group hug atop Wraith’s desk, “Ever have a day that seems to have it out for ya?”

The desk collapsed, sending all three into a pile on the floor.

“No dear. Please tell us all about it.”

 Two days later found Wraith and MacCready in Diamond City. Hancock had been expecting to join them but found his responsibilities to his city too pressing to leave.

“I’ll do my best to tag along with Bossy’s next run. Course, that being weather dependent…”

The cold had been intense, especially at night. So much so that many provisioner caravans, depending on their routes, had been delayed or temporarily cancelled.

Wraith made plans for dinner with Piper before heading over to the agency to check on her favorite detective. Valentine was sitting and shuffling papers in a frustrated way that was very familiar. He seemed to be searching for something and pushed his chair back to look under his desk while tsking and muttering to himself. Wraith giggled when he crawled head-first underneath. Her chortle made him jump and bang his head, causing several items to fall to the floor.

“OUCH!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Val!”

Rubbing his head, his cheeks burned scarlet, “Oof! That smarts.” He smiled at her abashedly, holding his arms out for a hug.

“Can I help you find something? Where’s Ellie?”

“Believe it or not, I’m not completely helpless without her… not completely. John and MacCready with you?”

“No Hancock but Mac’s along. He’s up with Shaun. We were supposed to leave tomorrow but Mac says he smells snow so I might be in town for a couple of days. Is there anything that you’re working on that I can help with?”

Valentine shrugged evasively and turned back to his desk, “Nothing too heavy right now, kiddo.”

“Oh nonsense, no job’s too small, right?”

Valentine pursed his lips and folded his arms, “Eustace Hawthorne is a missing cat… statue.”

“Cat… like a figurine?”

“Just like.”

“Oh… Val…”

Despite a reduction in height, Valentine’s appearance and body language were still reminiscent of his gen 2  form and as such were uniquely his own. The Railroad had even managed to tint his eyes amber. Tilting his head to the side he offered her a trademark, self-mocking smirk, “What was that about ‘no job too small’?”

“Well, I mean it’s not exactly grand larceny or a kidnapping…”

“It’s nothing less then what I should expect. After all that has happened, I’m lucky the good people of Diamond City haven’t burned me at the stake.”

Her frustration boiling over, Wraith dropped the bright-side pretense, “What the hell?! I thought that we had moved past this. I came and worked that burglary case with you this fall! I… we… Piper…”

“It’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’ve been here before. Things are slow right now but they’ll pick back up. I can blame some of it on the weather. Apparently it’s too cold to get into trouble.” Removing his hat, he ran a hand through his jet-black hair and smiled at her. “Hey, since I have you here there’s something I’ve been wanting to run past you.” Holding his hat in both hands, Valentine looked at the floor, “I want to ask Ellie to marry me. Would you stand with me? Do you think John would too?”

Wraith burst into tears.

“Oh! Don’t you start cause I’ll get going and Ellie will come in to a flood!”

Wraith looped a finger through the fine chain she wore around her neck. Valentine knew that Preston had given it to her after rescuing his group at the Museum of Freedom. Reaching forward she gently grabbed the detective’s hand and brought it up to chest height. When she dropped the necklace onto his palm, Valentine could see that it held two simple gold rings.

Wraith and Nate’s wedding rings.

He tried to pull away as if she had handed him a live grenade, “No! I couldn’t possibly…”

“Please, Val. Nothing could make me happier. Think of them as my wedding gift.”

The detective relented and the two embraced. When Ellie returned she found them both puffy faced but smiling.

“Uh oh. Now what have you two gotten into?”

 Wraith could tell there was something wrong with Piper. All through dinner she had been distracted and quiet. As the children, MacCready and Ellie settled in to play Euchre, Valentine and Wraith joined her in her small kitchen. Valentine rolled up his sleeves to wash the dishes and Wraith grabbed a hand-towel.  

“What’s up Pipes? I can see something is eating at you.”

“Oh Blue, I didn’t want to bother you with it but it’s a disaster!” Piper threw her hands in the air and began pacing back and forth. “The long caravan to Megaton is missing! I had the Radio Freedom operator contact Murkwater and they said that they passed a week ago. A week!”

“This is perfect!”

Piper shared an alarmed look with the detective, “Jeez Blue, that’s not very sensitive…”

Wraith waved her hands at the misunderstanding, “No, no! I don’t mean I’m glad the caravan is MIA. Valentine don’t you think this calls for a master detective and his faithful sidekick?”

“Where are we going to find one of those, kiddo?” Valentine smiled at her, “I guess in a pinch, we’ll have to do. What about weatherman MacCready? Slogging through snow has lost some of its appeal since I’m now subject to cold and damp.”

MacCready sensed that he might be being left out and came into the kitchen. “What’s this about snow-slogging?”

“It hasn’t actually started to snow…”

“Wraith has voluntold us to go looking for a missing caravan, last seen ‘round Murkwater way.”

MacCready’s face was the picture of disgust, “In the swamp?!”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want, Mac. I wouldn’t force you.”

“What I’m I supposed to do? Sit around here with my thumb up my as… butt? You didn’t even bring a rifle with you!”

Knowing full well she could simply pick up a rifle from the Minutemen armory, Wraith gave him a sappy smile, “You’re my rifle, Mac.”

Managing to look both dejected and proud, MacCready sighed, “Oh goody.”

 “It’s snowing!” MacCready’s voice was muffled as he grouched at Wraith through his scarf. “I told you…”

“It’s just a flurry; don’t be dramatic.”

“It can go from a dusting to a full blown Nor’easter at the drop of a hat, sweetheart. We can’t be caught without shelter if the weather turns on us.”

After checking in with the settlers in Jamaica Plain, the trio had elected a rout that circumvented most of the swamp that surrounded the Murkwater settlement. Even so the going was cold, slippery, slow and damp; something which MacCready felt the need to mention as frequently as possible.

“Wraith, I am cold. I can’t feel my toes…”

“I’m sorry it’s miserable out fellas but we’ll be there soon and we’ll be inside and they’ll have a warm fire and it’ll be great. So hang tough.”

“Oh, thank GOD YOU ARE HERE!” The village head, Margaret, looked completely done in, “We lost power this morning! My engineer is missing, we are all freezing and all the food in the walk-in is going to spoil!”

MacCready started sputtering and making incoherent noises. Wraith was almost certain she heard a few things that sounded like profanity.

Valentine kept a level head, “Can’t you just open the freezer doors? It’s cold enough to freeze the Dead Sea out here.”

“No, Val that’s a bad idea. There are probably a lot of animals that will smell the provisions and likely come to investigate.” Wraith cocked her head to the side, “Hey, do yao guai hibernate?”

“They do and mirlurks are dormant this time of year too. Deathclaws however…”

“Yeah, but aren’t they cold…”

“The hell YOU GUYS!” MacCready’s patience had worn through, “I’M ABOUT TWO SECONDS FROM SETTING THE NEAREST BUILDING ON FUCKING FIRE! THAT’S RIGHT, YOU HEARD ME, FUCKING FIRE!”

Wraith set about organizing the settlers into teams: one group to cut ice as a temporary solution for the walk-in, another to build fires from emergency logs and a final, smaller group to help her work on the generators. Valentine moved from group to group, helping where he could and asking about the missing caravan as well as the missing Murkwater engineer.    

Working as quickly as possible, Wraith and her team had the generators back up before dark. In thanks, Margaret put together a large celebratory dinner in the common house. Sitting slightly apart from the rest of the settlers, Valentine broke the news to Wraith and MacCready.

“Behemoth.”

MacCready spat his food, “You have got to be kidding me!”

“What’s the big deal Mac? Should be easy to spot and then…” Wraith pantomimed taking a shot, “Easy.”

“This is just like with the deathclaw…” MacCready held out his rifle, “This caliber will not penetrate through the armor, hide and bone of a behemoth.” When Wraith opened her mouth to protest, he held up a finger, “What I mean is, not like what you want. It’ll be small wounds that will take time to bring it down. The best I could do is blind the thing and we all know how well that works.”

“We have a Fat Man.” Margaret had been walking by and overheard, despite their hushed tones, “Only have one mini but ones enough, right?”

“Oooo. MacCready like big boom!”

“Easy, killer.” Wraith smiled at the village head, “That’s kind of you to offer but I left that here just in case another mirelurk queen decides to drop by. We’ll find another way.” She could feel MacCready’s eyes boring into her head, “Something to add, Mac?”

“MacCready like… grrrr… ruiner.”

“And another thing, the locals seem to think that there might be a chance their engineer is still kicking. Would be bad form to blow the thing to kingdom come, if it has a captive.” Valentine steepled his fingers, “Locating it will be a trial; despite its size we’ll have to track it through the thick of the swamp. That’s no mean feat.”

“…keeps getting better and better…”

“There’s a between zero and none chance this will be resolved without a clear, concise plan.”

“I wish Hancock were with us; he’s a better strategist than I am. All my plans go straight to shit.”

“…and better…”

 It took the better part of a week to locate the behemoth. The Minutemen had encountered the humanoid earlier in the year when they dispelled a super mutant group. Wraith recalled the report that Preston had shared with her: it had been the only survivor and had fled south. The decision to stop pursuit was mostly an act of the soldiers own self-preservation, as changing the creatures instinct from “flight” to “fight” seemed unwise. After the Murkwater engineer went missing, a long patrol had been organized but to no avail. There wasn’t a correlation drawn between the super mutants and the current dilemma so when they found several empty mirelurk carapaces and a large game trail, they chalked it up to a “very large animal”.

The massive super mutant had been foraging north almost to the Suffolk school, to far south of the settlement in a fairly straight line, in its quest for dormant mirelurks. Once the trio found the well-stomped path, they followed it to small shack where the humanoid kept its stash. There they found the remains of the missing caravan.

“Well, that’s really too bad.” Valentine wasn’t naive enough to believe they could find the provisioners alive but he was hoping their end could have been quicker, less gruesome.

“I don’t see any of Henrietta’s gear here… she might be in its basket still.” Wraith was getting teary-eyed, “Poor kid.”

“There is a rise with a tree over there.” MacCready pointed west, “It should give me a good angle. I don’t like the light this early… I want to see… to make sure before we use the frag mines.”

Valentine gave MacCready a knowing smile, “Well, well. I see hanging out with a do-gooder has done you some good.”

MacCready blushed and rubbed his nose, “Yeah, I’m a real philanthropist now. Gave all my caps to charity ‘n everything.”

Set-up was rather simple as was their plan: a blind in MacCready’s selected tree would give him the opportunity to verify if the engineer had somehow survived her abduction. It was highly likely that she had not and to that end, the trio would use a combination of grenades and mines to eliminate the threat.

Once MacCready was safe in his perch, Wraith and the detective hunkered down separately and waited.

And waited.

“Damn. Should have brought walkies. Stupid, stupid… Boy, I hope Mac remembered his night-scope.”

He had. And as the sun dipped below the horizon, the former merc swapped out his equipment. He had been having a hard time keeping his hands warm and so found it to be a challenge despite his expertise. “None of this is fun. This flippin’ sucks! I’m a good guy. I’m a great guy! Wraith needs a good guy. Whelp, I’m that guy. Goody, great guy.”

Wraith felt their enemy even before it showed up on her Pip-Boy. The sound of a behemoth as it makes its way through the world is unmistakable: as if they were the resulting offspring of a union between a great forge-bellows and an elephant. As the creature moved toward its shack, Valentine and Wraith tensed and got themselves into fleeing/attack position. In the event that any of the three of them were sensed or seen, Wraith would engage until the other two were clear and then disappear. Both of her companions had been very vocal about her trying to bring the monster down herself.

“Here we go…” MacCready raised his rifle and took a deep steadying breath.

“Someone, please! PLEASE HELP ME! OH GOD, PLEASE!”

Henrietta was still alive. She was crying.

Wraith fought hard to stay in cover. Her berserker instinct told her she needed to run at the behemoth and tear it apart. With her teeth if she had to.

Calm. Stay calm. Breath. Gotta fall back, gotta regroup… No we can’t. We have to do something now!

Leaping to her feet, Wraith ran at the humanoid while yelling at the top of her voice, “MAC, WE HAVE TO BRING IT DOWN WITHOUT HURTING HER! IF I CAN GET IT TO THROW SHIT AT ME, THE ARMOR IS WEAK AT THE NECK AND UNDER THE ARMS!” She ducked and dodged as her surprised foe attempted to flatten her.

“I’M ALSO BEING A FOOL AND RUNNING AROUND SCREAMING!” Valentine had a borrowed shotgun and would occasionally shoot at the monster’s feet. This was more to drive it to a greater fury than to cause damage. After all, he didn’t want to accidentally kill the person they were trying to rescue.

It was a rather ridiculous scene: two grown adults running around a giant monster in the dark, shouting nonsense and firing their guns at the ground.

As predicted, the beast began to find things to throw at its tormentors. MacCready kept his focus despite the shenanigans, waiting for the right angle. Unable to predict the flight path of such a chaotic development, the trio had a collective “oh no” moment when a rather large rock narrowly missed MacCready’s blind and crashed into the tree’s trunk.

Things were rapidly heading toward shit.    

The tree groaned ominously and the sniper knew his precarious perch would not hold him for much longer, “Common ya big dummy, pick up a BIG rock. Show me what you’re made of!”

As if the behemoth had heard him, it stooped low and using both hands ripped an enormous bolder from the swampy earth. Raising it far above its head, it turned to zero-in on a target; presenting MacCready with a perfect view of its armpit.

“Oh, why thank you.”

The humanoid was so startled by the bullet’s impact that it dropped the bolder squarely on its own head. There was a terrible squishing sound and an enormous gout of blood. It stood that way for several seconds before pitching forward and crashing heavily to the ground. The impact caused MacCready’s tree to fall as well but the young man was able to avoid serious injury by bailing out at the last moment and rolling to safety.

Henrietta was in pretty bad shape. In addition to being malnourished and dehydrated, her left foot had been crushed between the behemoth’s back-cage and the various detritus it contained. Despite the competency of the medics, her foot was amputated.

“It’s going to be fine General.” The engineer tried to reassure an obviously guilt-ridden Wraith, “I will still be able to do my job and it’s amazing that I survived at all!”

Doing her best to school her features into a poker face, Wraith congratulated the young women and told her how proud she was to have someone of her caliber in the Minutemen.

The kid’s trying to make me feel better and she was just kidnapped by a literal monster, held captive for almost two weeks in the freezing cold and then had to have her foot cut off! Jeez!

“What in the Sam Hill possessed you to wander around in the swamp by yourself?”

The young woman blushed at Valentine’s question and mumbled at the floor, “Patrols had been seeing carapaces out there and I wanted some. I wanted to see if I could use them for something and I was too embarrassed to ask if they would bring some back to me.”

 Piper was grateful despite the unfortunate fate of her caravan. “You and Valentine… oh and MacCready… I guess… really came through for Diamond City. I’ll make sure everyone knows it too.”

“I don’t know Pipes; the caravan was lost because I never went out after that behemoth. Preston had even made a point to show me that particular report.” Wraith leaned back in the chair in Piper’s office while running her hand vigorously through her short-cropped hair, “I didn’t follow-up and so people and brahmin died.”

Piper smiled sadly at her friend, “Your hair is getting long. Are you growing it out because of the cold or do you want me to trim it for you?”

Bemused by the change in subject, Wraith nodded stupidly.

“Well, which is it Blue?”

“Umm, trim… please.”

The two women moved to the mayor’s washroom and Piper busied herself washing and trimming Wraith’s hair. The radio was softly playing and Wraith found herself relaxing as Pipers fingers massaged her scalp.

“Blue, do you remember what I said to you when you told me to run for mayor?”

“Mmm, hmm.” Wraith sat up and smiled as Piper leaned against the sink, “You said ‘you’re nuts! I can hardly keep a teenager in line, let alone an entire city!’.”

“And that’s when you said, ‘you care enough about the welfare of the citizens of Diamond City, that you were willing to risk your life!’. You went on to say how my dogged pursuit of the truth wasn’t just to get some scoop. It wasn’t just for notoriety but the most noble of quests; for justice!”

“I don’t know if those were my exact words…” Wraith knew what Piper was driving at, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do but it’s not the same thing. I dropped the ball.”

“You can’t hold yourself accountable for every bad thing that happens, Blue.”

“Watch me.” Wraith stood up while stretching. There was a slight twinge in her left arm and she rubbed it absentmindedly as she stooped to kiss Piper on the top of her head. “I’m not quite ready to make lemonade yet but thanks for the pep-talk.” She smiled disarmingly as she changed the subject, “Did I hear Val right, that he wants to cook dinner?”

Piper adopted her best Nick Valentine impression, “I want to be the sort of man who can cook for his girl! After all, she works hard all day too.” Laughing, she waved her hand dismissively, “Don’t worry. I’m going to help him make sure it’s edible.”

“You want some help?”

“Why don’t you go rest? No offence but you look pretty tired, Blue.”

“I am fine! I guess I’ll go bug Mac and Shaun for a bit…”

  “…the difference between the caliber. Got it?”

“Yes, Mr. MacCready. Hi grandma!”

Wraith walked into Home Plate and offered a wave to her boys, “Don’t let me interrupt. Is there something I can help with?”

MacCready shrugged, “Davidson said we could load clips and magazines; thought that might be good practice. You can help if you want or you could go rest… for once.”

“I’m fine, Mac.” Wraith reached to grab bullets from a shelf slightly above her head. As she took a step back with her hands full, she felt lightning flash through her left arm. Her hand spasmed and opened, sending the box to the floor and bullets everywhere. “Ow, crap!”

“Are you okay?” Shaun came running to help clean up.

“Yeah, kiddo. I’m okey dokey.” Embarrassed, Wraith crouched to grab some of the wayward ordnance out from under a table. Misjudging when she was clear, she clunked her head as she stood. “Ow! Fu…heck!”

MacCready, exasperated, had his face in his hands and proceeded to drag them down his cheeks to expose the pink of his lower eyelids.

“Gross, Mac.”

“No, what is gross is that despite all,” He swept his hands out as if reveling the room, “this; I know you can still whoop me.” He laughed a little even as he started to help. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. My left arm is being… I’ll talk to Curie when we get back. No worries.”

They both looked very worried.

“Why can’t I come with you, grandma?”

Wraith slung her right arm around Shaun and pulled him to her, “It’s still too dangerous, weather wise.”

“Yeahbut, you guys are going…”

MacCready sat in a chair and leaned back with his arms behind his head, “Hancock should be in Sanctuary by now and we said we’d meet him there. I miss Dogmeat too. I want to go home and hug my ghoul and my dog.”

“Oh, I see how it is! I’m not enough for you, huh.” Wraith walked over and gave her lover a kiss that he returned with gusto.

“Ugh, you guys are both gross!”

 “Wraith… SEE… right in front… NOSE! WE HAVE... STOP!”

The shrieking wind tore MacCready’s words from him and flung them around to mingle with the snow. Wraith could make out enough to understand and agreed that they needed to find cover. However, the blizzard made it almost impossible for her to see her Pip-Boy and without the map she was completely lost.

We could be wandering in circles for all I know!

Frustrated and tired, she stubbornly plowed ahead and ran face first into the side of a building. “OW! FUCK ME!”

MacCready’s lips were at her ear, “Can you at least wait until we’re inside?”

Wraith felt a shudder of need pass through her as she found the door. Relieved to see a partially obscured Minutemen insignia, she undid the padlock and let them in. “I don’t know Mac; it’s pretty cold in here. You think you’re up for it?”

He caught her arm and pulled her to him, “Wraith, I could be on fire and get it up for you.”

“Clothes off… I’ll get the fire going.”

“That… wasn’t…”

 Breathing hard, Wraith collapsed on MacCready’s chest. Her head swimming in the high of release, she listened to his heartbeat as it slowed back to a normal rhythm. When she tensed to stand up he wrapped his arms around her to keep her atop him.

She smiled as she laid her head against him. He would often hold her like this after making love. It seemed as though he was reluctant to end the feeling of “oneness”. When his grip relaxed she propped herself up to watch his face. That moment when he opened his beautiful eyes and smiled at her; she could live and die for that moment.

“I’m so lucky.”

“Funny… I was thinking the same thing.”

Thank you so much for reading! Like what you read? Looking for more? Please see my master link post under my bio. Any questions/comments/concerns, my ask is open. =^..^=

[onlyawfulrpgideas]

Railroading: Express Train Adventures or Leaves on the Plot Line?

“In gaming, the act of forcing a player to "choose to" do something they don't really want to in order to advance the plot according to the wishes or designs of the GM.”

-       UrbanDictionary.com (other, unrelated definitions are available, but you have been warned)

Railroading your players is bad, right? It takes away agency, free choice and immersion in a game of unlimited imagination.

The term “railroading” is so often used in complaint – a negative descriptor applied to a more controlled style of game-mastering, often associated with pre-written modules. In published adventures, this feeling of being driven along down a pre-laid train track is – to a certain extent – necessary to make the game work. If the players are allowed unchecked freedom, it is almost certain that, at some point, their choices will cause events to diverge from the pre-determined story later on.

           Coming to a game where you’ll be running a published module or adventurers league or whatever, expecting to have sandbox levels of freedom is rather unrealistic. Expecting the GM to accommodate your every maverick whim in this situation is, in my opinion, a little bit selfish. There will be inexperienced players who bring these expectations to the table from time to time, but the joy of our social-based game is that it thrives on patience, understanding and learning. In pre-written adventure scenarios, one cannot really hold the GM responsible for “railroading” because the book is railroading them!

           So what does constitute the evil sin of “railroading”? That rather depends where we draw the lines between maintaining a cohesive plot, “railroading” and just being a narrator of your own story. Somewhere on this scale we also encounter the fabled curse of “being a dick”. For now, let’s leave pre-written adventures behind and focus on homebrew campaigns.

           Giving your players the ability to make choices that genuinely influence the world around their characters is a key component of what makes D&D so special. There’s nothing wrong with video game PRGs, but there is only a certain amount of things you can do: parameters that you can’t venture beyond, because the programming isn’t infinite. We all know the three pillars of adventure are one third Exploration, one third Role-playing, one third Combat and one extra quarter of Sheer Craziness. It’s in the moments of zany plans and “you can certainly try’s” that push the limits of game mechanics, where some of our most memorable stories originate.

Letting these events play out and dealing with the consequences is the mark of a good GM: allowing your players creative freedom with their characters. Automatically shooting down unlikely attempts, without even allowing someone to make a roll for it, is a big source of “railroading” complaints. Especially when a GM overrules the description a player gave for their character’s actions, in order to force a desired outcome – whether positive or negative. It robs the player of their satisfaction.

When a player wants their character to do something that is fundamentally impossible and a roll would be pointless, consider allowing a roll to be made anyway. The outcome, of course, is unsuccessful; but it creates an illusion of choice and possibility. Through your description, place emphasis on the characters’ determined attempts to the best of their ability, even in the face of “almost” certain failure. This can do wonders for the players’ perception of the game and we’ll look at this in more depth later.

For now, an example:

When I first started GM-ing at college, I ran a sandbox-y story set on an island separated into a north and south area by an impassable stone wall with an ancient, giant-made portcullis gate in the centre. The logic behind this was that I had two groups whose stories took place on opposite sides of the wall. They could communicate and pass small items to each other through the gate, but not get directly involved in events on the other side (since they played at separate times).

           Eventually the south team decided to try what had been implied to be impossible and bypass the gate. Despite being enchanted and over a foot in diameter, they weren’t going to let them metal bars keep them out. Against the advice of almost every NPC, they requisitioned as many cutting implements as their money could buy and set to work sawing, filing and axe-swinging away at the portcullis.

           Being largely inexperienced, I thought to myself “this is stupid, they know it’s not going to work”. I declined to even narrate the attempt, streamlining the action into a simple statement of “you can’t do it: it’s impossible”. To my surprise, the group were rather quite disappointed, and after the session I had time to ponder why. They knew full well that their attempt was futile, why make the gesture?

           Perhaps the two player groups spoke to each other, I don’t honestly know, but sure enough during the next session, the group on the North side of the gate attempted to do the same. This time, I tried things a little differently.

           Their monk’s player was, frankly, a complete nutcase and this showed through in his monk-turned-pirate character with an extreme stubborn streak. He made his way down to the wall with every saw blade the island could muster and began to cut at the 12-inch-thick metal bars. I decided to let him roll a general strength check, just for the hell of it. Of course, he rolls a natural 20. Now, this was supposed to be an impossible task…

           Without giving an outcome, I asked him how long he would like to spend making the attempt to cut through. He replied “until I drop”. So I had him roll Constitution checks to represent each hour passing, until he had failed three and collapsed from exhaustion. By this point, the table was lost in gales of laughter and cheering him on in the obviously fruitless endeavour. The following morning, the monk awoke where he had passed out, aching all over, surrounded by a heap of blunt saws, to inspect the small, shallow scratch he had made.

           Both outcomes were the same: the gate was impassable and no mundane means could truly penetrate it. But one group left the table feeling cheated, “railroaded”, and the other tells the tale of the scene to this day. While the rolls were being made, they held onto the comically absurd notion that somehow, against all the mounting odds, success was possible and the effort was worthwhile, if foolish. Above all they enjoyed being given the chance to try and lamenting/ridiculing the outcome, even if that chance was only an illusion.

             In more long-term perspectives, “railroading” is used to describe the instances where no matter what the players do, eventually the story catches up with them just the same as if they had done nothing and the party’s efforts are rendered pointless. This can leave a very firm sense of disappointment and dissolution, where the players wonder why they bother to interact with your world at all, if ultimately, you have already pre-destined what is going to happen. There’s nothing wrong with wider events moving on around the characters if they do not have any direct influence, but be wary of nullifying their actions.

           A storytelling technique I’ve learnt and try (as best I can) to incorporate into my GM prep is the “Yeah but, No but” pattern. Having alternate outcomes in mind enables you to give the players scope for influencing your story, while keeping them firmly on the rails of your longer plot.

           Perhaps the PC’s cleverly thwart the villain’s evil scheme too early through some logic you overlooked… YEAH, they succeeded, BUT... the villain is able to escape, or the plan is delayed and not stopped altogether. Our heroes have their victory: they saved the day for now. But they go forward knowing that the danger is far from over.

           Alternatively, they valiantly attempt to stop the villainous plot and fail… NO, they didn’t succeed, BUT… they discover some kind of clue or blessing that will help them be more prepared next time. Even in defeat, the players can take some measure of victory and look forward to the inevitable rematch.

           Either way, the long-term story remains unchanged. The journey to it, however, just got a lot more interesting and gave opportunity for character development – whether that be through revelling in victory, or a hardening of resolve in defeat.

           Almost reminds me of… a railroad.

You have your Main Line: the express route. Full steam ahead down the easiest track from A to B. Everything unfolds just as you planned; the characters behave like archetypal heroes with one goal in mind and the campaign unfolds like a slick action movie. Nothing wrong with that, it’s perfectly fun and rewarding. This is often how some of the more heavily time-depended modules are written.

When time is less of a pressure, you might take your players to a junction or the “points” as we call them here. An opportunity presents itself to switch to another narrative track, taking a different direction to the main plot and exploring something new. No matter how many places you visit on that journey, the route you took still links back up to the main line: the over-arching plot.

Maybe your players take it upon themselves to go in a direction you hadn’t anticipated and explore a branch line. You weren’t as prepared for this, so the track might be a little bit wandering and there might not be quite so many significant things down there, but it’s a nice way to explore the fictional world you have created none the less. Not every bit of the adventure needs to be full pace towards a climatic confrontation.

Some sessions might feel more like a shunting yard. You’ve laced the story with plot hooks that seem obvious to you, but it’s taking the players a while to figure out what it is you want them to do – if indeed you have any specific plans at all. They might deliberate backwards and forwards for a while, exploring smaller avenues of adventure in the hopes that something will fall into place and open up the main line that’s laid ready for them.

Dead ends are a thing. Literally. And I don’t mean making characters just die because you don’t like them.

          “Railroading” your players into failure can make them feel like you are just mean-spirited or don’t want them to have freedom to try. Equally, don’t try too hard to save them from themselves. If they know the stakes and take risks that might prove fatal for their characters, LET THEM. It’s their story as much as yours and if they are willing to put their characters’ lives on the line for their own reasons, LET THEM. Should they put all their effort into hurtling down the tracks towards a set of buffers, try to minimize damage without some contrived deus ex machina that saves them all at the last minute. Unless it makes sense for that to happen and even then, don’t do this more than once. They can always roll a new character if one of them dies or if the whole party is killed… Then that’s an awesome story!

           You and your friends created a world in which to play, characters who brought it to life and who, in the end, chose to risk everything for something bigger than themselves. That’s Epic. The lovingly-detailed world they never got to see doesn’t disappear: it’s still yours and always will be, waiting for the next generation of adventurers to unlock its secrets and plots.

           I think it’s time we gave the “railroad” analogy a new lease of life and a better definition. A length of straight track isn’t a proper railroad – it doesn’t have branches or diversions, tunnels or junctions, sidings or stations.

           As GM’s we are ALWAYS railroading the players. No matter where it is that their adventures take them, whatever choices they make. There should always be options for different routes that connect back to a familiar narrative – however that takes its shape.

[frederator-studios]

Meet Gabe Janisz, creator of “Tyler & Co.”

Nostalgia time: I met Gabe in my second week at Frederator. I knew a Gabe was coming in to pitch, and when I went out to see if he’d arrived, I encountered a guy in pajama pants in our lobby. Now, animation is a lax industry in terms of work attire, but the notion of pitching a TV show in one’s PJs was beyond the reaches of my conception; I am too uncool. So my immediate thought was that he was a random dude who’d wandered in off the street - not that he was the guy pitching, let alone already a creator with us, of the GO! Cartoon “Tyler & Co.” No doubt he heard the question mark in my greeting of “Gaaabe?,” but he didn’t let on, because as I’ve mentioned, Gabe is cooler than me. He wears PJs to job interviews and then gets the job. He’s cooler than all of us. “Tyler & Co.” well demonstrates this, but here’s an interview with him for further proof. 

Walk us down memory lane. How did you decide to make cartoons?

I guess… I don’t know if I ever decided. I headed down this road because I used to make games a lot as a kid, because that’s what my older brother and dad do.

Whaaat what’d they work on?

My dad worked on the RoboCop 2 game. My brother still works in games; he was on “Where’s My Water,” that mobile game that blew up a couple years back. The thing with me making games was, I’d spend so long on the intro cinematics and character animations, that I’d run out of steam by the time I had to think about the actual mechanics and programming. So I finally decided to focus on the stuff I actually liked, and that interests me, and that’s story and character.

Where did that interest lead you?

Well, I grew up in Buttcrack, Colorado. There weren’t any real art programs or teachers who could show me the ropes, so I had to go it alone for a long time - not the best route. But I did draw a lot of comics. It wasn’t until I started visiting colleges that someone recommended life drawing, so I took a class on it at a local community college at the end of high school. That’s when my art started improving.

What’d you do after high school?

I went to SCAD for comics and animation. At first, I was in all of these kinda useless foundation classes. So I actually went to the chair, showed him my portfolio and he was like “Well, if you think you can handle it…” and exempted me from them. The next semester was one of the hardest, maybe the hardest, of my life. I was in classes that I wasn’t prepared for, especially this one storyboarding course. Maybe the foundation classes would have prepared me, maybe not - point is, I was totally unprepared to perform at the level expected, and felt unable to make the kind of stuff I was expected to make. I was up until 8am every night. I got really close to quitting animation altogether.

Wow, that’s hectic. What changed?

After that I was in a paper animation class that dragged me out of the pit. I made some good friends who helped me improve. And my paper animation professor liked me and actually wanted me to succeed. I got more confident in my abilities. I’d always seen things in my head that I couldn’t translate onto paper, and I finally could. And I did some cool things like studying abroad in France for a semester. That was amazing because comics there are considered one of the ‘Great Arts’—they seriously respect them. Instead of flimsy paper copies, everything was hardbound and gorgeous. They have a huge range of art styles, but they all feel so unashamed, whereas stuff made in the US feels like it’s constantly apologizing to you for being a comic. I’d been applying to CalArts every year since senior year of high school - it took 3 years, 3 applications before I got in. But I was really glad to have spent time at SCAD majoring in comics, because as much as I love animation, I get so pumped about comics. It was great to do both.

Then you entered the fabled gates of CalArts - and what’d you discover?

A lot of great friends. Who also happened to be great artists I could collaborate with on projects. I was in Character Animation, and because CalArts is so picky, you’re surrounded by people you can learn from, with all different tastes and ways of doing things.

Do you seek a studio gig - or how bout - what do you most want to do with your life?

Once online a stranger told me "your art is like an awkward hug" and I've kind of tried to run with that. If I can make at least one person feel a little less lonely, then I feel like I'm doing a good thing. I’d work at a studio if it were the right project, but mostly I want to be an independent comic maker and cartoonist. As long as I’ve got stuff in the pipeline, I’ll be happy. I was hospitalized a lot as a kid (and adult) and it kinda... broke me in a lotta ways, so it’s nice that me and Frederator found each other.

How did you come to pitch to the GO! Cartoons series?

Eric (Homan, our VP Development) came to CalArts to speak and my professor introduced us. He invited me to come by Frederator and check out the place. And then when I came by he was like, “You don’t have anything to pitch?” And I was like, “No, you said I was just checking out the place.” But I plugged in my flashdrive and just looked for the first thing that was around 5 minutes I could find and showed it to him. It was my first year CalArts film about a bunch of kids making bombs. And he liked it, so we started developing it, and it actually got all the way to the stage of pitching to Sony Animation. But the Sony people definitely couldn’t get behind the bombs stuff, but they liked me I guess. So they greenlit me but not the bombs. So Eric had me go back and make something new. I’d been doing stuff with Tyler for years so I pulled him out and figured out a new idea.

Where did the idea for Tyler come from?

Well in high school, I had Crohn’s disease, so I had the right to leave class whenever. I’d just up and go wander, hang out with the janitors. And one of them loved the Muppets a lot. He hung little pictures of them all over the school and I actually never noticed them until he mentioned it. But they were everywhere. So I started watching Sesame Street and got into that aesthetic, and admired the puppeteers. I’d also had a falling out with my high school friends, which was part of why I was wandering around so much. I started devoting more time to close friends in Canada that I’d met online.

Did you meet them through gaming?

Yeah, gaming and game message boards. It was a found family. I don’t have a large family, I don’t really have that foundation to fall back on. So finding kinship online was huge for me in a time of isolation. And watching a lot of the Muppets.

Did the Muppets inspire those puppet versions of Tyler and Lil G from the title cards?

Yeah - Tyler and Lil G are actual puppets.

(At this point Gabe pulls puppet Tyler and puppet Lil G from a mysterious red duffel bag that’s been on the floor. I didn’t know what it held, but I didn’t expect puppets. Ecstatic, I try Tyler on)

Puppets are in a lot of what I do, but not everything. I’ve made YouTube videos with them too - my roommate is really good at performing with them. So the characters were designed to look like puppets.

If Tyler & co. got a full series, would the puppets be in it?

Yeah, there'd be puppet cutaways. There’s an old Super Mario Bros show - it’s a really bad show, but funny - and they had intros and outros with live action actors playing Mario and Luigi on like a trash covered set. They’d do skits. So that makes me want to cap off Tyler episodes with puppet skits.

So Tyler came first, then how did the other characters come about - like Lil G?

Lil G is a younger, innocent guy that Tyler sees a lot of himself in. He feels like he has this chance to sculpt this younger dude, and kind of save him. He doesn’t want Lil G to screw up his life like he did.

How did Tyler screw up his life?

So Tyler used to be a child star in a show like Sesame Street. But his camera operators, the crew were super abusive to him, in order to get him to perform for the camera how they wanted. Pushed him into traffic, manipulated him, did really messed up stuff. They once strapped cursed swords onto his hands while he slept, and he involuntarily butchered a bunch of people while trying to find help. He got acquitted in trial and got a restraining order against them. But now he’s just trying to pick up the pieces, and his roommates are a huge part of that. The logline has been, “Tyler, why can’t you see that if you’ve got friends like these, you’ll be fine?”

Whose house is it that they’re living in? And what’s the dynamic among these roommates?

Rex’s - he inherited it from his grandma when she passed. Rex and Moe have a shared interest in ghost hunting. There’s another roommate, Rocko, who’s a retired boxing robot. There’s Marky Mouse, he hangs out, doesn’t hurt nobody. Lil G is a nuisance to them—he’s enamored with Tyler because Tyler’s the first person he’s met from out of state. So he associates Tyler with his dream of getting out of the town.

Where does this take place?

It’s set in the River Rouge area, by Detroit, Michigan. It’s where my dad grew up and he’s told me horror stories. Once in school, the river’s surface actually caught on fire. So they could see from the school windows that the river was in flames, burning oil on water. School wasn’t even cancelled. It’s a super heavily polluted river.

Have you ever visited there?

No, thank God.

So why does Tyler WANT to be Mayor of Cerealtown? Why is that of value?

Because they’re kinda losers, and that’s the kind of thing that’s important to them. These guys don’t really have jobs. The house was bequeathed to them. Moe does some tech repair, and he and Rex do freelance ghost hunting. Tyler’s big project is repairing a car, which’ll be his and Lil G’s way to get out of town. That’d be a big thrust of the show’s plot if it got a series.

Where do they want to go?

Anywhere else.

Let’s talk about the music in this, cause it’s great. How’d it come about?

All the music was done by Bo-en, and yeah, he did an awesome job. He composes music for games a lot, which is how I found him. He has this unique, glitchy style. I emailed him out of the blue, not even expecting a response. But he got back to me and immediately sent over a test composition. That was good because he was actually excited about the project. Overall, I went with everything that he chose.

Which cartoons inspire you most?

I’m more of an anime fan, usually. I’m a big Soul Eater fan - it’s stupid in the most creative ways, like I love the moon and sun up there gnashing their teeth and laughing when there’s a heavy emotional scene happening below them. FLCL and Gurren Lagann. Masaaki Yuasa is a big guy for a lot of people right now: his shows Kemonozume, Kaiba, and Tatami Galaxy inspire me, even if they all turn into trainwrecks by the end. That happens to a lot of stuff I like. My favorite scene in animation is from Kaiba; it has a lot of quick worldbuilding and weighty animation that i really like and tried to replicate in “Tyler” a bit. But I get a lot of inspiration from outside of animation too. Games, music.

Let’s hear about those influences, from games, comics, music, everything else?

One game is “Cave Story”, it’s incredible: it was made by a Japanese dude -- all by himself! I think that the more you can do on your own, the more your original soul and vision shine through. The character designs in the “Professor Layton” games are also pretty incredible, like retro anime with a european flair. Those two games are very different, but they both tell impactful stories! 

I was all about Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics for a long time; they ended recently. I probably steal a lot of how I draw slouchy characters from him. Hellboy is probably my favorite character design ever, for a lot of reasons: the asymmetry, his big arm, the sanded down horns... just looking at him tells a story, and it's crazy rare to see a character design get that thoughtful. I like Soul Eater for a lot of the same reasons. Just about my favorite written comic is King City by Brandon Graham, which is all over the place but manages to stay very human at its core. Osamu Tezuka, Naoki Urusawa, Katsuhiro Otomo, Inio Asano, Enrique Fernandez.... I get too pumped talking about comics!!

(Moonkiller, a dope comic and to-be short film)

My favorite bands are probably Gorillaz and Passion Pit, and i think a lot about telling stories that feel like their music feels. I guess it’s mostly about hanging onto the feeling that the music gives you and drawing with that, like translating a language? I do my best work when I can already *see* a show in my head before i draw it. When I made Bombadiers, my old Frederator pitch, i was thinking of this song Beck made for a videogame. They don't like, sync up perfect, but they still ~feel~ the same to me. Beck's composing work in films like Scott Pilgrim and Nacho Libre is really great! I’ve also been into The Postal Service recently because a lot of their music sounds... backwards, almost, and it’s interesting to me. Baths is another cool guy who I almost worked with on Tyler; his music can sound very otherworldly.

On a whole other note: why did they put snakes in the attic?

They put them up there to clear out another infestation. It might have been rats, might have been gorillas… I don’t remember. But they didn’t expect the snakes to breed so fast. They put the rats or gorillas up there too. So it’s really been a series of bad decisions.

Why snakes thoo?

Well once, I caught a baby rattlesnake with a plastic bottle in the Lodge. It wasn’t until I let it go that we realized it was a rattler - and the baby ones are actually the most lethal, because they can’t control how much venom they release when they bite.

What’s the Lodge?

Oh, so at CalArts, you’re assigned a cubicle. And there are two buildings with cubicles, the Palace and the Lodge. The Palace is a lot nicer, but the Lodge is more fun, fewer restrictions. My friend Justin and I - he was the board artist on “Tyler”, and a character designer on Rick and Morty - we built a shanty town out of cardboard boxes in the Lodge. It was our cardboard fortress. And there was one student who was in charge of keeping the other students in line, and he ordered us to take it down. And as we felt that was a violation of our liberties, we started a bulletin called the Lodge Gazette, which we posted around campus to air our grievances and report important Lodge news. I still write for it, when I can.

Tell us about your friendship with Jonni Phillips, which may be Frederator’s #1 most adorable friendship story?

I met Jonni through “Rachel” and offered to carpool with her to Frederator, and we became friends. We have a lot in common! We both share a sort of fatigue over mainstream animation in the west and east, and it was helpful for us to vent about these toxic animation communities, like, realizing that we're not going crazy, haha. I make these comics about us in hell together.

She also convinced me to pitch Grandpa 2.0 to Nickelodeon, which was it’s own whole can of worms. 

(Pls click that link for the Grandpa 2.0 experience, you will not regret it)

Okay, gonna need the whole Grandpa 2.0 story please, stat. 

So Jonni DOUBLE dares me to submit it to Nick’s shorts program because "They'll make anything!!" so I pretty much have to do it. I just submit the website along with the description, "I based this pitch off my own life in which i replaced my grandpa with a robot” and turned it in. First thing in the morning I get a response from them: "When can you come in and pitch the boards???" Boards!!! There were no boards!!! So Justin and I spent the weekend cranking out these rushed but actually pretty funny storyboards for an episode of Grandpa 2.0. But I was suuuper unhealthy at the time, literally bleeding to death (42% of the blood an adult male should've had) and I straight up blacked out and missed my pitch date. We rescheduled, which is cool, but now I’ve gotta fight the 'unreliable' reputation that the first meeting got me. So I start by rifling through flash drives for 10 minutes. The files are actually in the folder "Grandpa 2.0". The last place I'd ever look!! While I'm pitching I get to a segment Justin drew at such low opacity that it’s straight up invisible on the projector screen. And I just have to describe to them whats going on. "IMAGINE if you will, a high tech display screen..." and this other part where grandpa has a guitar solo, Justin copy pasted the animation, like, an obscene amount of times, so even if I held down on the keyboard it still took minutes to chew through them. He wanted me to make the guitar noises. After the pitch was over they were like, "What’s the emotional connection between the boys and grandpa?" and im just like "I dunno.. fear??" And then way later i got an email saying that they were "blown away by how professional the pitch was..." (and I'm like um were you guys in the same room??) "...but the content just wasn't right for Nickelodeon”. That part almost makes me think they actually noticed all the 9/11 jokes and stuff... So that’s how the pitch went, and for now Grandpa 2.0 sleeps, unless I can convince Eric to swing it by Netflix or something, hahaha.

What are you working on now?

I’ve always got a lot of projects going. An animated feature idea, Token Town. And Moonkiller, a comic I’ve been working on that I want to turn into a short. Paper Desperado is a game I’m making - my friend is coding it. We’re fans of the old Paper Mario games, so we’re trying to draw from those - not copying, more like figuring out how they made everything and trying to build off of those techniques. I’m also working on a radio play called Spookwood, about a drug that turns you into a ghost. It’s tough because I’m so used to describing stuff visually, and now I have to get everything across with just words.

When it turns you into a ghost, do you stay a ghost or turn back?

No, you stay a ghost.

So the drug kills you?

Yeah, it kills you, and then you’re a ghost.

Thus concludes our interview with Gabe Janisz! Thanks for taking the time Gabe, it’s always good talking with you. Sure we’ll be working together again in no time!

- Cooper

[honeywithblueberries]

I’m Nick, By the Way

a/n- The following takes place within The Perks universe. It’s Nick’s thought process leading up to his crash with Judy in the park.

Happy belated (very belated) Valentine’s Day, everyone. More Perks to follow! ……………….. “Hi!” The young todd had a hopeful smile on his muzzle as he swallowed his nerves and continued speaking what he had rehearsed. “I’ve seen you around, well, you know……Running around…. and you, umm…..Look pretty fast!”

His ears splayed as the meaning of his words hit him.

“I mean, uh! Not that you you look……slutty…or anything…….”

His grin started to fade as he watched the grey rabbit doe jog in place at a crosswalk. Her ear buds kept her from hearing his poorly executed speech, which was just as well. It obviously need some work. As the ‘walk’ sign illuminated, the doe started to run again at her usual quick pace. The todd watched her vanish wistfully and gave a small sigh.

“I’m Nick, by the way,” he whispered, kicking himself for missing another opportunity. …………………..

“So, I see you like the Otterton’s flower shop!” Nick said brightly. “I love the Ottertons! Katie Otterton makes the BEST candied crickets, they’re really addicting!”

He watched as the bunny, today dressed in jeans and a plaid button down, left the flower shop. A purple tulip was slowly dissected, each petal placed on the enticing, little pink tongue before it was consumed. The small smile she gave as it was chewed made the fox’s heart skip a beat, a small sigh being released as she turned and started walking away from her unknown admirer.

“I mean, I don’t know if bunnies eat crickets…..but their flowers are the best in Zootopia! Speaking of the best, have you ever been on the gondolas? They give you the BEST view of the city. It’s definitely one of my favorite parts about living here…..”

He trailed off again as she vanished into the crowd.

“I’m Nick, by the way………..”

“Ten bucks says he never talks to her,” whispered a wolf to a fennec fox seated on the hood of a van.

The fennec grinned and held out his paw to shake on it. Both watched their friend’s ears and tail drop as he turned away and walked back to them. Pawpsicles in paw, bought off a street vendor not far from the Otterton’s shop, the red todd smiled awkwardly at his friends.

“Long line,” he lied as he passed the pawpsicles to the waiting fox and wolf.

The fennec thoughtfully sucked on his, eyeing his blushing friend.

“Hey, Dave?” The grey wolf perked his ears towards him. “Wasn’t that bunny hot?”

“Really hot, Finnick,” Dave agreed. Nick turned his attention to his treat and tried to block out their conversation. “I bet she’s single, too. Maybe you should asked her out.”

Finnick nodded thoughtfully as his bit off a piece of his pawpsicle. Both noticed the red fox tense at Dave’s words.

“Maybe I should,” he responded. “I bet she would be down for anything. You know how bunnies are.” Finnick grinned and wagged his eyebrows at the wolf.

Before he could stop himself, Nick’s ears splayed and he growled lowly at Finn, baring his teeth as he did. Finnick and Dave raised their eyebrows, unimpressed at the display. The taller todd straightened, a look of mortification washing over his face. Melting into a smirk, Finnick hopped down from the van, his pawpsicle stick clamped between his teeth as he scooped his backpack from the side walk.

“Or you could stop being a chicken and actually talk to her,” he said, the stick tossed into a recycle bin nearby. “Let’s get out of here. There’s a billboard down the street for that new club in Tundratown. It’s begging to be re-designed.”

A small paw shook the backpack, the jingling of metal cans heard from inside it. The trio started to make their way down the street. Nick paused and looked back to where the bunny had vanished to.

Someday, he thought, you’re going to notice me. Someday. ………………………..

The bunny wore black running leggings and a hot pink tank top this time. She was running a different route then what she normally took, this one causing her to run in front of the courthouse, where a certain todd was skateboarding with his friends.

Trying to grind down the stairway railing before security came after them, Nick threw his fists up in triumph as he landed in one piece at the bottom. He didn’t fall, didn’t wobble, his balance was perfect, and his ankles weren’t over taxed. Happy to be in one piece, he pumped away from the building, knowing the others would follow.

But the familiar tail twitching in front of him threw him off. If it hadn’t had been there, he would have noticed the uneven sidewalk. And he would have taken precautions to not go flying off his board, and avoid rolling his ankle in the process. The earbuds she wore drowned out the sharp cry of pain he let out as he landed on the hard cement.

His skateboard rolling towards the street, pain filled green eyes narrowed after the cute little tail as the bunny attached to it continued her jog. A paw going to his hurt ankle, Nick imagined for a moment that she happened to glance at him.

The concern those beautiful purple eyes would hold made his heart skip a beat. Maybe her mouth would form a perfect little ‘o’ shape as her brow furrowed. It’s entirely possible she would lean in, her own small paws reaching out to his injury.

“Are you alright?” She would ask.

And he would simply smirk and stand up, brushing his khakis off before winking at her. That would make her blush.

“Nothing treating you to ice cream wouldn’t help,” he would say.

She would giggle, of course, and accept. Perhaps take his paw in hers as she gazed up adoringly at the strong todd accompanying her. He would get her name and some interesting trivia about her. He would then smile down at her before saying….

“I’m Nick, by the way……”

Nick found himself yanked up by the scruff of his neck, his board shoved into his paws.

“C’mon, grace,” said Dave as he smirked down at the smaller predator. “Shake it off. I really need a Bugga Burger.”

The red todd looked up at his friend before casting a glance back at the disappearing bunny. He nodded and followed after them, limping slightly from his fall. …………….

Half pure coincidence, half sly, stalker fox, Nick found himself yards away from the pretty grey bunny nearly every weekend he was out. He didn’t know her name, didn’t know what school she went to, or what part of the city she was from. But he did know he wanted to know.

He never felt much of anything for the females who went to his school. The vixens whom he had classes with and talked to in the halls were pretty, but they grated on his nerves after a while. The prey he went to school with were terrified of him, or ignored him completely, while the predators tried a little to hard to flirt. Or ignored him completely.

It was a paper he had to finish for history class that gave him his first glimpse of her. Standing in front of the Savanna Public Library, with a list of books he needed to check out, he looked up to see her paused just outside it’s doors. Her slight, trim figure got his attention, with those strong legs and nice hips, but her eyes peaked his curiosity.

Purple eyes that gave a quick glance to her surroundings before they fell to her phone. The cord to her ear buds draped around her neck, dressed in blue running shorts and a yellow tank top, she was scrolling through her phone as she made her way down the steps. An older swift fox, his paws filled with books and folders, found his path blocked by the bunny.

Nick had seen this scene several times around the city. Most of the time, it was a just a simple glance and nod of acknowledgment, no smile or words exchanged. Were the predator a fox, weasel, coyote, or ferret, an insult or barb would be normally be thrown out. As pretty as he thought the bunny was, Nick had scowled at her, expecting her reaction to no different.

Instead, she glanced up at the rumpled fox in surprise, gifting him with a kind smile as she stepped out of his way. She even followed him up to open the door, least he drop his things trying to do so. Nick felt his eyes widen as she bounced back down the steps, earbuds in place, and jogged away.

There was a whirl wind of things he was feeling after that moment. Confusion was the biggest, leading him to trying to flirt with Franchesca Bush, a ruby red vixen in his math class. Just to prove he wasn’t attracted to a bunny. He felt he could get over her shrill voice and maybe ignore how gossipy she was, until her tail brushed over his feet. That caused him to jump back in surprise and glare at her.

Other attempts to talk with females, both vixen and other preds, were met with the same results. An odd reaction, or lack thereof, especially considering each one was physically compared to a total stranger. One he was unlikely to ever see again.

That weekend had him sitting with Dave and Finnick in Savanna Central Park, boards strewn next to them in the grass as they tried figured out what to do. Then she came running past.

Eyes focused on the path in front of her, strong legs carried her small form across the park, away from the todd who tensed at the sight of her. He would bet anything she smelled as lovely as she looked. Even in unattractive, black sweatpants and white baggy shirt.

That night, Nick started to practice his speech. It always started in the bathroom before he showered in the evening, the sound of the water running drowning out his voice. He didn’t need his mother and older brother to hear him and start their teasing.

“So, do your feet get tired from you running around my mind all day?…….

“That’s lame,” he muttered to his reflection. “How about…….

“I got the latest issue of Hereafter! Have you ever read it? It’s awesome!

“But, what if she doesn’t like comics,” he asked himself, dunking his head under the shower head. “I could try……

“I aways wanted to know what an angel looked like,” the towel he was using to dry the fur on his head was pulled off, his most charming grin aimed back at his reflection revealed. He gave himself a quick look over, eyes half lidded, picturing her in front of him. “It was worth the wait.” Followed by a wink.

“Ugg, no!” He pulled pajama pants on, tightening the drawstring as he thought. “There’s always………

“Did you know the Natural History Museum does a star night? Once a month, they bring a projector in and highlight the constellations. Maybe you would want to go with me sometime?

“I’m Nick, by the way…….” he sighed out as he fell back onto his pillow.

With a smile he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, his dreams filled with skateboarding trophies and an adoring bunny girlfriend with purple eyes. ……………..

“That’s it?” Nick looked at the tall railing in disbelief, before looking back at Finnick and Dave. “Grind this and then move on?”

Dave to a worn bar of wax and ran it down the beaten metal pole. Perfect hight for medium mammals, straight, even, no large gashes for their boards to get caught in. The wolf grinned and turned back to the two foxes.

“Yup!” He looked down at Finnick, who would definitely have the most problems grinding it. Maybe he could try for a lower rung. “You got this, short stack?”

He walked towards the fennec, who rolled his eyes and slammed his board into his stomach as he passed by. The wolf groaned and laughed as the smaller fox tossed it down and hopped on. A few pumps to gain speed and he ollied, gaining impressive hight.

The front truck made contact with lowest rung, giving him a short, but complete grind. Not enough to satisfy the small fox, but both his friends whooped in encouragement. Dave set himself up next. He managed to hit the top of the rail, drawing out a low whistle from Nick and Finn.

“Not bad, pup,” smirked the red fox as he backed up and stretched out his back. “But, and I don’t know if you know this, red foxes are the epitome of grace and fluid motion. Poems have been written to describe the beauty of which we-“

“Just fucking go!” His friends shouted, causing the young todd to smirk and shrug.

“Just prepare yourselves for the most awesome moves you have ever seen in your life..” he narrowed his gave at the rail, giving himself a running start, before throwing his board down and hopping on.

As he approached, Nick prepared himself for the ollie. And knew right away, he wasn’t ready for it. It was timed poorly, his feet feeling insecure in their placement, and he knew the truck wasn’t going to fall where it needed to. All he could do is focus on falling properly, to minimize the damage to himself. A plan that would have worked………

………had he not noticed her right in front of him. The sudden shock at see his crush in such close proximity threw his balance off even more, the truck sliding against the rail, the wheel catching on it and sending the todd flying towards the unsuspecting bunny.

“LOOK OUT!” He managed to shout before he collided with her, his board flying in the opposite direction.

In a jumble of arms and legs, pain filled yelps, and a spinning world of grass and sky, Nick landed hard on his hands and knees. What was left of his breath left him when something made firm contact with his lower abdomen. Dropping his head into the grass, he gave a hiss of pain before inhaling deeply.

Even if he never got another good look at her, he would remember exactly how she smelled for the rest of his life. He had expected some artificial, floral smell, maybe from her shampoo or body spray. Instead, she smelled like…….

Sunshine, right after a rainstorm. Like cool spring air, fresh with blossoming honeysuckle and daisies. It was sweetness and enthusiasm, it was laughter and mischief. It was a scent that would make any healthy, adolescent male weak in the knees and eager to do anything for another chance to near her again.

As he pulled back from the grass to look down at her, only one thought fluttered through his mind.

Don’t say anything stupid to piss her off, Wilde…… …………………………

a/n- And yes, the Hereafter mentioned in this story is a shout out to my dear friend, ScaraMedn. Hereafter is amazing and if you haven’t read it, please do so! Though, I’m fairly certain all of you are amazing, so don’t take my word for it :)

[maiji]

While looking up Genji Monogatari papers and translations, I kept running into these reverse otome games (basically dating sims with genderbent versions of Genji’s lovers) and getting super amused. And then @atorier sent me more lol

As a comic artist and writer, I love seeing the different takes of these characters! It's really neat to consider how the character designers might have approached interpreting/translating their personalities and stories, the creative license they took with the historical clothing, and even which characters the team picked in order to create what they felt would be a well-rounded cast for the game experience within their budget.

My thoughts comparing the designs below. Bear in mind I've read Genji but haven't actually played any of these games - I'm commenting mainly on character origins and character design, and aesthetic appeal of the art for me personally.

The games are (this is also the order in which the comparison images appear)

Reverse Genji Romance by Genius, Inc., 2016 - this one’s available in English. I’ll refer to this as “Romance” for laziness/ease of typing.

Reversed Tale of Genji by Ciagram, 2017 - I’ll call this Ciagram

Genji Koi Emaki by Quinrose, 2015 - Koi Emaki

The Tale of Genji Reverse Love Song~ Love Messages by éterire, 2015 - Love Song

Thank you atorier for help with links and translations lol

Murasaki no Ue

Originally: Genji's true love. He basically raised her to be his perfect woman, but she still has a mind of her own (at least privately) when it comes to his bad woman-chasing habits. Heavily associated with the colour purple because of her name, which comes from Genji comparing her to a purple flower (her resemblance to Fujitsubo, who is associated with wisteria).

What I think: If it’s a Tale of Genji game, must be there in some fashion. Positioned as main or most prominent love interest and gets the big picture on the box. Design-wise, possibly the most approachably attractive of the love interest options. Heian period version of the super handsome boy next door, maybe childhood friend. Purple every freaking where.

Actual designs from Romance, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: Surprisingly the Ciagram game doesn't include Murasaki, but it does seem to actually focus more on the early parts of the story when Murasaki would technically be too young to be an actual love interest (if we care about accuracy), but most of my other boxes seem to be checked. I think with a character as well-known as this, you need to take an expected and safe approach. Love Song is the most “out there” interpretation, and the clothing gets a bit generically frilly (which fits the aesthetic of the other characters in the rest of this game, it seems, just not to my taste). Koi Emaki, aside from having “anime hair under cap” syndrome (which tends to give me cognitive dissonance, but I appreciate that it’s way easier to make characters look different than historically accurate hairstyles), has the closest to historical accuracy design. Romance’s take is the most interesting to me though, even if the giant beads are a bit much. It’s like a barrier. Like how are you supposed to get close to him without smacking into them?

Rokujo no Miyasukadori

Originally: High ranking and very elegant and refined older woman. She's the respected widow of a Crown Prince and one of Genji's first affairs. His disrespect of her reveals her dark aspect: her festering hatred and resentment cause her living spirit to subconsciously attack, harm and even kill some of Genji's other lovers.

What I think: Must include because this character has huge potential - can do drama and cool supernatural stuff in the story. Long haired older man. Elegant, sophisticated, regal, serious, but maybe has an unexpected side if you piss him off. Outfit should be faux imperial or something.

Actual designs from Romance, Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: So interesting! Long silver/white hair is pretty typical older handsome dude + sexy and dangerous fare, so it's easy to see why Genius went with that. The fur treatment on the robes is also kind of cool, and I would honestly probably never have thought of doing a light colour palette for this character. Overall I find this design unexpected and rather inspired. The Ciagram version, in contrast, is much more sombre (the entire game has a much darker tone in the art) and somewhat sad - I do like it, and it might be more true to the original character, but I don’t know that I would've gone this route with this context because there are so many other characters that could take a similar treatment. Genji Koi Emaki and Reverse Love Song, again, start to bleed down the path of getting too frilly and fanciful for me. Koi Emaki’s gives an almost overly reserved or priestly effect with the elaborate braided hair and the plain white kariginu when surrounded by much more colourful characters. Also, I would’ve shied away from purple hair, because purple is such a prominent loaded colour association for so many other key characters. Aoi no Ue

Originally: Genji's first wife. The marriage was arranged - he was much younger than her, and everyone thought she'd go to the Heir Apparent (Suzaku Emperor) instead. She's very cold to him, but bears him a son, and he only realizes his love for her and his regret when she dies soon after.

What I think: Third character who should be included in a Tale of Genji game. Aoi rounds out a basic pool nicely with Murasaki and Rokujo in terms of offering a player relationship options with different dynamics. This design should convey Cool, arrogant, standoffish tsunderish maybe big brother like guy. That’s all I got.

Actual designs from Romance, Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: I don't care much for the tsundere type of character, and Aoi isn’t that top of mind for me in the original story either, but I find the Romance design very striking. It's one of my favourites of all the character designs discussed here. I like the implementation of the colour palette a lot, I like the take on the kariginu, and the tassley things are cool. I can’t see much of the Ciagram design, but the hairstyle is a neat alternative take that doesn’t feel too out there/modern. I don’t have particular feelings about the Koi Emaki one, but the beauty mark under his eye (which you can’t see at this size) is a nice touch, I always forget about the option of incorporating things like that. The Love Song one I find a bit odd. The hair and the eyes actually convey the impression of a character that seems very gentle and soft. Doesn’t really seem to match the general associations one would have with this character. Yugao

Originally: A frail, pretty woman who was loved by Genji's friend/rival To no Chujo, she went into hiding when harassed by his wife. Genji notices her after she catches his attention by sending him a poem. They fall deeply in love without knowing each others’ actual identities, and they probably would have had a long relationship together, but she dies suddenly when Rokujo's spirit possesses her.

What I think: Mysterious dude. Looks quiet and gentle, unassuming. If we want a physically weak character, or a route needs to end with a tragic death, I’d make it his. Design needs to incorporate floral motif because of the significance of the flower to her symbolism.

Actual designs from Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: Hmm. This is very interesting as we seem to have quite a departure in the designs, though they all have a relatively non-aggressive vibe, and they all incorporate a floral motif in a fairly subtle way, which is nice. I hands-down like the Ciagram version the most, though it’s mainly for reasons beyond how well the design actually works lol (it’s just the type of character I gravitate towards visually, not specific to the character in question hahaha. Also more tassley earring things! I wanna do designs with them now). Koi Emaki takes a shota character approach, not my thing but I understand why it would make sense with this character. The approach is more lighthearted/cheerful than I’d associate with a character this tragic. Love Song is... I dunno, I find it odd again. Characters with light hair tend to convey a kind of energy with their design because it makes them brighter and more visible, so it wouldn’t have been my immediate choice. Actually, if you showed me this design and Love Song’s Aoi design and asked me to guess who’s who, I would have guessed they were for the opposite character. While making this post I even kept doublechecking in case I had just pasted them into the wrong collage.

Akashi no Onkata

Originally: Humble, beautiful, immensely gifted lady with unconventional highly spiritual parents who live faaaar away from the imperial court. Genji meets and falls in love with her while he's in exile. She bears him a daughter who is fated to become Empress.

What I think: Modest, humble attire possibly reflecting long distance from fancy court life (both socially and travel-wise). Musical instrument is mandatory, or at the very least, great calligraphy and poetry skills.

Actual designs from Romance, Koi Emaki (I cropped it out but he’s holding a biwa/lute in the background), Love Song: 

Thoughts: OK, they all fit in various degrees, but I personally don't really care for any of them lol. Romance’s' take is too cutesy (it does offer a version of humble and shy, but you can also do that without making a character look 12... visually I'm guessing they may have had him fill the type of role Yugao does in Genji Koi Emaki, the cuter shota-ish characters). Genji Koi Emaki's approach is visually interesting, but I find a bit too casual/laid back/frivolous in the tone it conveys, and makes me think more of a travelling minstrel. Reversal Love Song’s is maybe the closest to the non-image I had in my head, but the art style renders the eyes and expressions for all the characters in a manner that’s very aloof and extremely out of place for this character, and doesn't convey much distinction between characters. All that said, Akashi’s my favourite lady so more likely than not I'm probably disappointed because of my biased high expectations - aka. doesn't look like the kind of guy I would be interested in lmao (the approach of the Ciagram Yugao is what I would have hoped for)

Oborozukiyo

Originally: Would-have been consort to the Suzaku Emperor and sister of Genji’s nemesis the Kokiden Consort. Genji's drunk and messes around with her, they fall in love and continue their very risky affair. Word accidentally gets out, Genji is exiled, Oborozukiyo's standing is ruined.

What I think: Could also be mysterious, but a more forward/confident kind of mystery than Yugao. Stylish, very romantic, maybe playful. I don’t really have a clear picture for this character, but I’d start with nice wavy hair, a lunar motif and night incorporated somehow (maybe a darker colour palette).

Actual designs from Ciagram, Koi Emaki, Love Song:

Thoughts: This one’s especially intriguing to me because my mental image of this character wasn’t as strong as for many of the others, and I really had to think about it. I’m not that surprised that this is one of the most divergent designs. Since the relationship was Genji's most public scandal, it seems like some games have taken the opportunity to interpret her reversed character as coming off sexy and coy lol. Ciagram and Koi Emaki made him an older male character - I didn’t really think about that. Love Song makes him look fiery/cocky. All have dark clothing or a dark cloak. Interestingly, two games modify the name, dropping the beginning or the end so that he's just Oboro ("Misty/Hazy") or Tsukiyo ("Moon Night").

Fujitsubo no Miya

Originally: Young Consort and Empress to the Kiritsubo Emperor (Genji’s father) after Genji’s mother dies. She was Genji's first love. He has an affair with her and their child is the Reizei Emperor. She avoids his advances after that, and becomes a nun when the Kiritsubo Emperor dies. Murasaki is said to resemble her.

What I think: Whatever Murasaki looks like, like that. Only older. And a different shade of purple.

Actual designs from Romance, Ciagram, Koi Emaki:

Thoughts: Yep. Just not as purpley as I anticipated (maybe for the better). Can’t really compare the Ciagram one to anything - we do have purple, but the design doesn’t seem to have much embellishment, which is surprising considering the character’s backstory. I think Koi Emaki’s complements their Murasaki design very nicely, though feels more imposing than I would have thought for this character. Romance’s evokes their Murasaki design more subtly, which is really impressive; would have been nice to see more purple in it. Interesting that 2 of the games include him, and appears to be a non-playable character in both. 

General thoughts/other stuff: I think the Genius game has the best balance of art and design, including some of the most interesting takes on Heian court attire without veering too much into “what is going on” generical fantasy-land. I also like the approach of the character designs of the Ciagram game, which have a more realistic/mature look and are darker (palette wise) in tone, more to my taste. Genji Koi Emaki also does a good job with the outfits, though I prefer the aesthetics of the previous two games mentioned. Reversal Love Song’s designs lean way more generic fantasy than I'd prefer for something of this nature. To no Chujo (Genji's best friend/rival) usually appears to be your genderbent lady friend/competitor, but interestingly enough, Love Song doesn't genderbend him and makes him a love interest. Ciagram's game includes Koremitsu (Genji's loyal retainer), also appearing in his original gender:

He was one of my favourite characters and I like his design here too, though this take on him is more casual and “fun buddy” than I would have gone. 

Lots of ideas and good food for thought to take to my own character designs!