#designing ponies was harder than i thought so. never again.

[eskititgay]

oh i dont think i ever posted the rest of the ponies i did so here !!

[staygold-ponyboycurtis]

The Funeral

The Curtis parents’ funeral, from Darry’s perspective. Enjoy :)

- 

Frozen. That’s the word. That’s how I’ve felt for the past eight days, five hours, and fourteen minutes. 

In some ways, I don’t think my brain can access the place where it keeps sadness and grief. Growing up like I did, you just don’t let your mind go there. You have to be brave. No crying. No weakness. I have to be strong for my brothers. I can’t let them know I’m suffering and want to fall apart every second of every day since this nightmare began. I have to let them know we’ll be okay. Even if I don’t quite believe it myself.

We got the phone call less than forty-eight hours after we learned mom and dad were gone. As if things couldn’t get harder for us. An apathetic voice on the other end explained to me that they’d be sending over a representative from the state of Oklahoma to assess our familial situation now that there were two minors living parentless in the home. We had less than a week to gather our bearings, then our fate would be decided by an asshole who knew nothing about us.

Before I could even process that my mom and dad were gone, I had the weight of the world dropped on my shoulders. A bitter realization that life as we knew it was about to change forever. Sodapop and Ponyboy couldn’t even mention the subject without anxiety burning through my body. 

It seemed they had a million questions that I couldn’t answer. What would happen to them? What would I do to handle the situation? Could the courts really take them out of our home? They knew there was a chance that they’d be sent off to a boys’ home for orphaned kids and we’d never see each other again. I told them that was impossible. That there was no way in Hell I’d let that happen. I couldn’t lose my entire family in the span of a few weeks. I just didn’t know how I could stop it. 

“They can’t just take us, can they, Darry?” Sodapop had asked. “Don’t we have any say?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “They’re going to do what they think is best for you two.”

“Bullshit. They don’t know what’s best for us.”

But today isn’t about that. Like everything else, I’ve trained my brain to ignore the pressing issues before us. Store them in a place where the truth can’t hurt me too badly. Today is about saying goodbye to mom and dad. 

I stare at the two dark oak caskets sitting at the front of the altar. They’re closed. The harm caused by the accident was unfathomable. I had to identify their bodies at the city morgue. It was a task that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. When I saw the damage that was inflicted to my poor parents, I got sick all over the linoleum floors. That was the first and last time I’ve broken into tears this week. 

I forbade my brothers from seeing our parents in their final state. They begged, but I couldn’t let their last memories of our mom and dad be such a gruesome sight. One that has haunted me every second of every single day since. I want Sodapop and Ponyboy’s memories of our parents to be warm, loving, and happy. Something to mend the heartbreak.

At the funeral home, my brothers asked if they could leave a few things with our parents before burying them. Ponyboy wrote two long letters, both a few pages long. He mulled over what to write for hours, sitting at the desk in his room crumpling up papers and getting frustrated with himself when he couldn’t get his thoughts out. He folded them up tightly and handed them to a man named John, who was in charge of everything. He give him strict instructions on who to give each letter to, seeming resistant to trust a stranger with what I imagined were intimate, emotional messages to our mom and dad. Sodapop handed over a photo of the three of us on Christmas last year, arms slung over each other’s shoulders and smiling, giddy with holiday spirit. He wanted mom to have it. It was her favorite picture. 

I’m torn out of my daydream when Sodapop starts walking to the front of the church. The turnout is small, with just a few of my parents’ friends peppered throughout the pews. We’ve never had a big family, which is all too apparent at a time like this. Mom was an only child, and dad only had a younger brother who died in the Korean War over a decade ago. All we had was each other. Two-Bit, Johnny, and Steve sit together a few rows behind the three of us. Dallas sits by himself in the last row in the corner of the small church, his head down low. I nod at him when I catch his eye, letting him know how grateful my mother would be knowing that he came to say his final goodbyes. 

I see Sodapop’s hands shaking as he situates himself in front of the podium. Neither mom nor dad had any funeral plans designated for us to follow, so we had to choose how to honor them. Two whole lifetimes summed up a few hours. Mom was always religious and enjoyed going to church, so I decided that she would want a formal service. Sodapop insisted that he wanted to speak. I decided I would, too. Ponyboy said that he wouldn’t be able to. He didn’t think he’d be strong enough. Though I told him that mom and dad would have liked him to share a few words in their honor, he implored me to not bring it up again.

“I don’t even know what I’d say, Dar,” Ponyboy had said quietly. “And I don’t think I could get through it without blubbering like a baby.”

I knew that Ponyboy, like me, would grieve our parents silently. These past few days, he hadn’t mentioned them at all. I saw him lose it when he saw dad’s old flannel draped over the couch the other day and again when he opened the fridge a few days ago and found a chocolate cake that mom had baked the day she died. I acted like I hadn’t noticed him rush into his room and close the door quickly, but pressed my ear to the door to make sure he was alright. I could hear him crying heavily in his room, trying to catch his breath in between sobs. But I knew that this was natural and necessary, and that I’d be less than comforting if I barged in on him. 

“Hi, everyone,” Soda says in a small, defeated voice that is so unlike his usually charismatic demeanor. His voice quivers and I can see his eyes well up with tears before he’s even begun. I want to run up there and pull him into a tight hug, but I know that he needs to do this. He wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his dress shirt. “I’m sorry, I swore up and down that I wouldn’t cry.” 

He looks at me and Pony for reassurance and continues, pausing to gain composure. 

“My mom and dad were the best parents a kid could have. There’s nothing that my ma wouldn’t do for anyone. She always said that being our mom was her favorite thing to be. Well, being her son was my favorite thing to be. Mom and I were one and the same. It was like we had the same exact personality. We were the goofballs… the crazy ones in the crowd. She loved a good time and loved music, just like me. 

She was funny, but not in the way most moms are. She could joke with the best of us, even our friends. And she always knew how to make you feel like you were the most important person in the world. Because when you were with her, you were. She knew how to make everyone feel special and cared about. Gosh, am I going to miss that about her… She was the best. There will never be another person like my ma."

I look over at Ponyboy, whose eyes are inquisitive and burning holes in the side of my head as we listen to Soda speak. His face is swollen from crying so much, the tip of his nose red. He gives me a look that says, Why aren’t you upset? Don’t you care? But I’m petrified. Frozen. There’s that word again. My face is stoic but my heart is cracking with pain and each memory Soda recalls is deepening the weak spots. I want to be a pillar of strength for my brothers. I don’t want to fall apart in front of them.

"When I think of my dad, I think of someone who wanted the best for us. The day of the accident, he was celebrating a promotion at work, which he worked hard to get. But he loved to goof off like mom, too. He loved to play football in the front yard with all of us. Nobody could hike a football like him, no matter that he was twice our age. And he loved sweets, like me. I would always sneak into the kitchen at midnight to grab a piece of whatever mom had baked that day, and dad would have already beaten me there. And, usually, had a plate out for me already. I used to love talking with him in the middle of the night, just dad and me. 

Nobody worked harder than dad, either. He worked his whole life to make sure we never wanted for anything. He never wanted us to go without. I know now that that’s what makes a good man. I wish he could’ve lived to see it all pay off. And I wish I had gotten the chance to tell him that. I don’t know how we’re going to survive without them. I love them both. So much. And I hope they rest in peace. Thank you.”

He wipes his eyes again and makes his way back to our pew. When he sits, I squeeze his shoulder and wrap my arm around him. I feel his body tremble with tears and rub his back until he calms down. 

The priest ushers me to come up and speak, and I hesitantly stand, adjusting my suit jacket. Making my way up to the podium, I look out to the forlorn faces in the crowd. I look at Sodapop and Ponyboy, whose faces are contorted with sadness. I swallow the dry lump in my throat.

“Thank you all for coming,” I say bleakly. “My mother and father would appreciate you all being here to support us and remember them today.” 

I reach into my pocket and pull out a worn piece of paper that I’ve been hanging onto the past few days. I’ve been scribbling notes here and there about what I wanted to speak about. No matter what I would write, it never seemed sufficient to describe the enormity of what my parents meant to the three of us. I didn’t know where to begin. 

“As you all know, we lost my parents over a week ago unexpectedly. There was no time for my brothers and I to say goodbye or tell them how much we loved them. We never got the chance to thank them for everything they’ve ever done for us or tell them how hard it would be to live the rest of our lives without them…” I trail off, feeling the sadness creep in. 

I want to keep it formal. Just say the typical things everyone says when someone dies and get back to my seat as soon as possible. But I want Ponyboy and Sodapop to know that I’m hurting, too. And I want to honor my parents the best I can. So I continue.

“My mom always used to say to us, ‘If we always have each other, we having nothing to lose’… I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately,” I say. “Because now we’re separated. We’ve lost the two people we love most in the world. And I don’t really know how we’re going to go on. But then I’m reminded of so many things about our mom and dad and what they taught us. How to love each other and to stick together, no matter what. How to make a lot out of a little and to be grateful for what you do have rather than focus on what you don’t. And even if they’re gone now, I believe they’re looking down on us, right by our side like they’ve always been. So, really, we’re still all together. It just may look a little different now.” I look at my brothers again, who have small smiles on their faces.

“My mom was the nicest woman you would ever meet. She loved anybody who walked through our front door, no exceptions. She’s the reason why we have friends who became family,” I say, nodding to the gang in the pews. “And dad was the perfect example of a role model. He raised us to be strong, humble, and hard-working. He pushed us hard but loved us well. I’ll miss them both incredibly. We all will.”

I look at the two caskets below me and acknowledge that my parents are in them. A few feet away from me, but it feels like thousands of miles. I’m overcome with grief and I can’t stand it. I almost lose my composure when I feel the tears fill my eyes.

“That’s all I have...” I say. “Thank you all for coming.” I rush off the stage as the tears start coming. Ponyboy and Sodapop stand up from the pew and rush over to me as I make my way back to the pew, joining together for a hug. They push their faces into my chest and I put my face on the top of their heads, letting the tears fall. 

I wish more than anything that we weren’t here right now. That life had some other plan for us. But, then, I don’t want to be anywhere else.

Everyone shuffles out of their pews and out of the church at the announcement of the priest, congregating by the front door. I don’t know how long we stand there hugging, weeping quietly on each other. 

We pull away and look at each other, then chuckle a bit at how distraught we all look. 

“I love you guys,” I say to them, sniffling. “We’ll be okay.... we’ll be okay.”

-

I love you all and your support of my writing lifts me up so much, you couldn’t even imagine. Thank you for enjoying my writing the way you do 🥺

[district2001]

The Ring that bounds us together

PAIRING: SVT (Mainly Wonwoo) x 14th Member (female)

GENRE: Domestic SVT?

WORDS: 1.5k

Summary: Wonwoo lost his SVT ring and Y/N decides to be a useful maknae, for once

A/N: Took me a while but I’m back. Thought lockdon was the best time to start writing again. But this time about SVT, cos i have become a massive carat since i left. Please also lemme know if u hv any requests. Xx

Ok. So one thing Y/N hated was a mess. Sure she could handle a spill here and there, some clothes on the designated chair, and even could tolerate 2 day old food still on the kitchen bench. But what she couldn’t stand was not seeing the floor of her living room.

The culprit. The one and only Jeon Wonwoo. The only person who chooses to sleep in the living room so that their dorm could have a gaming café set up in his room. Questionable? Very. But Coups and him made it work, so no one ever complained about having a bed in the middle of their shared living space.

Until today, where Y/N had come from her daily coffee run to find Wonwoo, shirtless with a towel around his waist, flinging clothes out of his cupboard, throwing his somewhat folded clothes into a sea of mess.

“Wonwoo-Oppa?”

“What?” Wonwoo didn’t even bother giving Y/N any eye contact as he continued emptying his closet like his life depended on it.

“What are you doing?”

Wonwoo didn’t even bother replying this time, instead moving over to the neighbouring cupboard to ransack it instead.

Grabbing the hair tie from her left arm, Y/N quickly placed her hair in a high pony-tail. “Mingyu Oppa won’t be very happy to come back and see this mess. Remember last time with Seokmin Oppa didn’t pack up the pillows after making that fort?”

Nothing. No Response.

Y/N shook her head, something was indeed troubling her friend. So much so, that he wasn’t giving the maknae the time of day.

If Wonwoo wasn’t going to reply to her and show her respect, she would do the same thing back. Passively of course. She wasn’t evil.

“Wonwoo-ya, do you want some help, doing whatever you’re doing?” Y/N would be OFFENDED if she didn’t get a response, but she knew better than to constantly try to get attention when it clearly wouldn’t be given. Although she was very curious to figure out the cause of this weird cleaning phase.

Luckily for her, not showing respect to her elders always guaranteed in her being called out for it. And today was no different.

“Firstly, it’s Oppa. I’m older than you. Here in SK we show respect to our elders. So add that suffix to my name.”

Y/N dramatically rolled her eyes, something which was clearly Jeonghan’s influence. Nevertheless, she sighed, signalling with her hands for Wonwoo to answer her question.

“I went to have a shower, then realised I didn’t have my ring on,” looking at Y/N from the corner of his eyes, through his glasses.

Y/N clearly didn’t see the issue. “Just tell our designers you lost the ring. Problem solved.”

Clicking her heels together, she started walking towards her room. Shouting “Clean up the mess before Mingyu sees. He’ll be more mad then our team.”

She chuckled before adding, “and he’s cooking us dinner so don’t make him mad. I’m looking forward to taco Tuesday.”

“I lost our team ring.” Wonwoo aggressively whispered.

Y/N stopped right before entering her room.

Lost the SVT ring. The one just given a couple months ago. Had she expected this from the members, not really. Had she expected it from Wonwoo, definitely not. Mingyu and Jun, possibly. Maybe. She still didn’t know how they had managed to keep there’s this entire time.

Y/n quickly walked back towards the mountain of clothes, just narrowly avoiding stepping on a leather jacket with metal spikes.

“What do you mean you lost it?”

“I don’t know. I went to go shower, and I realised it wasn’t there.”

“When’s the last time you realised it was on your finger? Did you hear a clanging sound anytime during the day? Did you post a picture today? Could it have been on your finger when you did?”

Y/N started bombarding Wonwoo with questions, something she had learned from watching far too many episodes of Criminal Minds.

Although the case this time didn’t have to do with a murder, but instead a very valuable ring.

“Umm no idea. Am I meant to? Uhhh… what was the last one?”

Y/N rolled her eyes.

“Have you asked the others?,” Y/N asked, despite knowing the answer.

“NO!” No member would admit to losing the ring, or years of jokes would be brought upon them.

She was sure that Wonwoo wouldn’t have told her, if he wasn’t in such a frazzled state.

Plus, she too had misplaced her ring for a day, opting to wear gloves so that none of her band-mates would catch her. Luckily, she found it between her bedsheets.

“Ok. Ok. Hmmmm. I’ll recheck the lounge, you go to the bathroom or wherever you’ve been in this apartment.”

Wonwoo trudged off, silently obeying the younger one.

The duo spent a good 2 hrs ransacking their dorm, trying to find the missing ring.

“Bro this is harder than finding a needle in a haystack… bro we should make a new saying,” Y/N groaned, falling back onto Wonwoo’s bed.

Wonwoo flopped beside her.

“You’re gonna get absolutely roasted by everyone. And I make no promises that I won’t join in”

“They won’t find out I lost it.”

“And how’s that? I might be an annoying maknae and tell them” Y/N smiled smugly.

“Well, for starters I could tell them that you’ve secretly been eating chips despite being diet buddies with Jeonghan”

“Pshhh. That’s nothing. Jihoon Oppa legit joined me last night. We ate his secret stash of snakes”

“Fine. I’ll tell them that you lost your ring aswell.”

“No I didn’t”

“Yes you did.”

“When did I? Have you noticed me not wear the ring? Don’t li-?”

“Firstly, you rattle on when you’re nervous.’ Y/N shut her mouth, before she could make her mistake more obvious, allowing Wonwoo to keep talking.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you wearing gloves to practise. And ONLY on your left hand.”

“W-Wh-What?” Y/N Stuttered. Not sure if admitting her mistake or continuing to lie would be her best option.

She chose the former. “I’ll keep quiet about you, and you keep quiet about me.”

Wonwoo grabbed his gloves from the mountain of clothes, and quickly slipped them on his hands.

“Look’s like we got ourselves a deal.”

The mood quickly sombered up when Wonwoo did a deep sigh and asked.

“What actually happens if I’ve lost my ring?”

“You get a new one?”

“No. But like…”

He trailed off to collect this thoughts.

“Would I get in trouble?”

“I mean Pledis might be a bit pissed off cos they need to spend money on another ring. But I’m sure they’ll do it without a doubt. It’s our brand.”

“No not pledis. I don’t give a flying shit about them. I meant the others.”

“Who the members.” Wonwoo nods his head in confirmation.

Y/N leans her head against the crook of his neck, “You’ll get bagged for it. But they won’t take it too seriously.”

“But the rings a symbol of our friendship and trust.” Trust Wonwoo to go all literature on her.

“Exactly. A symbol.”

Wonwoo looked at Y/N, clearly not understanding the connection.

Y/N smiled, finally outsmarting the group’s so-called genius.

“It’s a symbol. Not the real thing. Think of the Jjapaguri in ‘Parasite.’ It’s a mix of aspects of poor and rich, but even if it wasn’t included, the characters would be struggling to act rich.” Y/n finished proudly.

“If you’re going to talk nonsense, at least talk to someone who believes you. Like Chan. He believes the chicken comes before the egg. Idiot.”

Y/N jumped up. “Well, if I’m such an idiot, you can deal with this ring situation all by yourself.”

“Wait no.” Wonwoo quickly sat up on his bed. “You’re a genius. Brilliant. Smartest member.”

He tilted his head, “Happy?”

“Very” Y/N replied.

“Can you make some ramen when I chuck my clothes back in the drawers?”

“Fine. We can fill their stomachs up so they don’t ask too many questions?” Y/N held out her hand and dragged Wonwoo up.

20 minutes later, a living room where the floor was visible and 10 portions of msg-filled ramen was placed on the table, to greet their 5 other roommates.

Soon the door banged open, and numerous sweaty man-childs came tumbling in.

“Wonwoo you absolute idiot. We’re never gonna forget this” Seokmin said happily.

“What?”

Hoshi stepped out behind him, proudly holding up his pinky.

“Soonyoung, don’t you have your own dorm to-”

Wonwoo squinted. On the Performance leaders left pinky were 2 silver rings.

Wonwoo would only sheepishly smile, while pointing behind him.

“Hey, I cleaned the living room.”

[animentality]

Thoughts on Hazbin Hotel

The good: 

- The overall look is bright, very nice reds and pinks. I like the aesthetic too, I think all of the demons are uniquely designed and contribute to the very colorful world. 

- the characters are all uniquely funky. I like Charlie, I like her girlfriend, I like Alastor a lot, particularly his old time radio voice, and I like the general chaos of their demon world. 

- the animation is fluid. it’s very exaggerated as well, which isn’t my taste, but I can appreciate it anyway. 

- as for the plot, I think the idea that demons can be rehabilitated definitely has room for development that could be entertaining. It seems fairly crass, humorous, bombastic, and also has room for some heart too. This was a decent pilot. 

The bad:

- I find Angel Dust’s character to be the worst. I  mean, listen, flamboyantly gay isn’t like...I mean, being a gay stereotype is bad, ok? but you can write a flamboyant homosexual character without it being suuuuuper cliche and gross...but that’s not how you do it. Granted, it’s still the pilot, so maybe he’ll improve or at least get some depth, but Angel Dust is really, really annoying. His sex jokes aren’t even clever, they’re literally the same tired old slutty predatory gay guy sex worker jokes. “Harder, Daddy,” yikes. I know cringe culture isn’t supposed to be a thing, but...god, I cringed at some of his lines. Like that one where he was like, “I’ll suck your dick!” with his stereotypical New Yorker accent... barf. I get that he’s a “sinner” and all that, but...just yikes. 

- this is a personal pet peeve, but I don’t particularly like some of the flamboyance of the cast in general. it kind of reminds me of the humor style of my little pony, but with like seventy swear words thrown in there. I get that it’s a cartoon, and an adult cartoon at that, but I’m not a fan of characters who’re super...well. Cartoony. But that’s just me, and it’s only a pilot. They may develop some, as the kids call it, depth. 

So yeah.

That’s not a whole lot of  bad. 

I think my biggest “bad” is definitely Angel Dust at the moment. 

I don’t mind the cartoony aspect so much, because it IS a cartoon, and that’s fun in a lot of ways, and more good than bad, but Angel Dust.

God, Angel Dust.

Normally I glom onto gay characters, but this one feels like he was written by a 13 year old straight girl who’s never met a gay  man in her life.

Again, I know nothing about the creator, and maybe they’re LGBT themselves, but...yeah, so far, I can say that Angel Dust’s humor is embarrassingly old school stereotype and I’m not a fan.

But it’s mostly interesting, so I’ll keep updated on Hazbin Hotel. 

[chibimyumi]

Hi Chibimyumi! Can you please give examples of Yuta's thoughts about social struggles ( mental health, gengered bias etc.) ^-^ And what do you think about FuruTod's dress?

Hello Anon ^ω^

I would gladly!

Mental Health

Furukawa does not actually talk about mental health outside his own scope at all; he keeps everything on a personal level only.

He is fairly strict to himself; Furukawa seems to value problem-tackling way more than self-therapy. I have never seen him comfort himself with mental hacks or softness; whenever there is a problem he would call everything for what it is without any sugar coating. Examples include him referring to his actions using the words ‘cowardice’, ‘weakness’, ‘arrogance’, ‘naivety’, etc. Furukawa would not linger on these derogatory terms however. He accepts these as simply descriptors rather than ultimate identifiers. Having weaknesses does not make one weak, and sugar coating problems is counterproductive to combating them, after all.

An example of this is actually as recent as today (June 19th, 2019), where on the TV programme ZIP, Furukawa openly talked about himself running away from rehearsal, using the unapologetic word 逃げ出す (nigedasu・run/bolt away).

Furukawa also grew a lot in the recent years. In the past, rather than facing his obstacles head on, he would shamelessly ask others to solve the problem for him. He learned the consequences of this passive attitude the hard way, alas, but he did learn. And he is determined to let the lesson count. Likewise, he has also learned that a challenge is just a task that he might have to work harder for to take on, rather than be upset with himself that we was not ‘born to be able to do it’. In one interview where he was asked how he felt about being promoted to ‘Ogosho’ (Prince), now being ranked the same as other legendary performers, Furukawa answered as follows:

“I don’t have talents. Unlike Inoue-senpai (Inoue Yoshio), I can’t just open my mouth and hit notes so beautiful it moves people’s hearts. I am not like Iku-senpai (Yamazaki Ikusaburo) who can just stand there and suck people into the play with sheer charisma. But I believe that my weaknesses are my biggest weapon. These weaknesses keep me motivated to work harder than anyone, and I believe that my ardent hard-work is the soul of my performance. I hope that rather than ‘one show’, my performances can be a journey of growth that I share with my audience.” (*Starts sobbing* Furukawa, you are a beacon of inspiring energy T^T)

Furukawa is not some mental-health guru who gives advice, but in my opinion, he is incredibly effective because he leads by example. By always being open and casual about addressing weaknesses and problems, he reminds his spectators that it is not shameful to talk about these, and that the shame is only as big as one makes it to be. Likewise, he reminds people that there is no such thing as one rigid standard set in stone. “Rather than setting a goal according to one’s ideals, I think it is more important to strive for flexibility in preparation for these ideals” [Link].

To me, it is especially extraordinary because he is a man, and therefore socialised to reject and spit on weakness, and be shamed for having such ““unmanly traits””.

Gendered Bias

Japan is an incredibly and infuriatingly gendered society (personal story; I myself wear incredibly girly clothes, but my “opinions” are probably not “girly” enough. Once I was just talking to someone, and they advised me to “not speak so scarily, instead I should speak cuter”, because it does not fit my femininity.)

Born and raised in the middle of nowhere in a very traditional household where his father was the absolute and only authority, Furukawa too grew up with rigid gender standards. As a result, Furukawa is not entirely without bias either of course, but he is always keeping his eyes open to check what bias there might be. He is a critical thinker, and unpacks the psyche behind a person’s behaviour to the bottom. This allows him to gain a more objective view on cause and effect in human behaviour. (The Sebastianess is real). This ‘unpacking’ is probably what helped him see through the artificialness of gendered conventions, and helps him check for bias. Perhaps it is this talent that made him so good at his job of producing amazing interpretations for his roles, perhaps it is his job which nurtured this talent. Or it’s both.

This is just me surmising, but it is likewise possible that he is so feminist because he does not feel sexual attraction for women (or anyone else); this probably helped him rationalise and shielded him from falling for the sexualisation of women which reduces them into a piece of meat to be owned.

In the after-talk show of ‘Marie Antoinette’ at the Imperial Theatre, Furukawa was asked what role other than Axel von Fersen he would have liked to play.

Furukawa: “M.A.” (the initials of the lead roles Marie Antoinette and Margrid Arnaud).

Host: “Which one?”

Furukawa: “Both. These women are amazing, but I cannot play them. This world is made by men for men like me, and yet, we all still manage to fail despite everything being customised by ourselves (laughs). What does success of a man even mean then? I admire women who have succeeded despite all the odds. If I were ever reborn as a woman, I want to play heroines like these people.”

(And the fans unanimously agreed that we don’t want him to reincarnate, we just want him to play these roles the way he is XD)

Without trying to point the finger to Japanese gendered society (too hard, with fully manicured nails and a new set or diamond rings), I am astonished by how emancipated Furukawa turned out despite his background.

Scary and Being Scared

Furukawa is hyper aware of the fearsomeness of toxic masculinity. He once admitted that he actually has trouble interacting with women, because he grows too self-conscious of being scary, and fears he might not be able to catch his own bad behaviour on time. He said that he is so tall he towers over even most men (in Japan) on top of having a villainous face. (???? Ô.ó) In addition, he said that his speaking voice is low to begin with, but when he is scared it becomes even lower, and he sometimes accidentally raises his voice. All in all, he said there is no reason for women NOT to be scared by him. So, he rather keep himself at bay.

In this post about Furukawa’s respect for women, we see how mindful he is in approaching women. Though this story is inspiring, it is possible this respect comes from a place of fear. Regardless, it is still rare to see a man so graciously acknowledging toxic masculinity AND admitting fear (fear for anything, really! And that��s why I love him).

In one of the old shows ‘Heat Up Eve’, Furukawa was talking about how hitting on girls is a very scary thing to do. He wondered how girls even deal with this. In the phoning-corner-event, Furukawa asked the calling fan how she would handle the situation, and his team-mates suggested him doing a live simulation with the fan. Furukawa agreed to put on his scary-face, and produced the following gem:

Der Tod’s Costume

I really, honestly like his standard costume a lot. In normal light I am not entirely sure, but in stage-light (as it is meant to be) it is a magnificent piece of art.

It is rather patriotic since TOHO already declared a “New Era of the Japanese ‘Elisabeth’ with their new Ogosho“, but I really like the details on his lapel that may have been based on a Sodenashi Haori.

His other costume for ‘The Last Dance’ is something I have not really made my mind up about, though I am happy to see him with a cape again. This vaguely Victorian-Napoleonic era uniform also has some Japanese factors in it, but I am not sure I like the breaks of the knots that don’t reach its buttons...

Though, I really like how his hair is tied back into a pony tail with a ribbon. Der Tod’s original visual design had shorter hair, but they aborted that idea. This pony-tail look with long bangs makes it look like the huge banners are not false advertisement XD.

Regardless, I am happy they finally made Furukawa his own costumes and dropped the previous costume that was Shirota Yuu’s (whose built is MUCH larger). It looked like YunTod was wearing his father’s clothes...

Inoue-senpai (left) also expressed how he was a bit jealous of Furukawa’s costumes, and joked:

“Furu-kun’s clothes are so elegant and refreshing, I think it reflects what kind of Der Tod he plays. Here I am carrying a dead fish tail; what does that say about me? (laughs)” [Source]

[kiangreyback]

❝ He tore the beauty from his face, and called it terror. ❞

AVAN JOGIA? No, that’s actually KIAN GREYBACK. A SEVENTH YEAR student, this RAVENCLAW student is sided with THE DEATH EATERS. HE identifies as CISMAN and is a UNKNOWN ( WEREWOLF ) who is known to be CUNNING, TEMPERAMENTAL, and BRUTAL but also RELIABLE, ADROIT, and ADAPTABLE.

links: pinterest

triggers: child abuse, child abandonment, kidnapping, drugs, alcohol

CHILDHOOD.

!! CHILD ABUSE TW, CHILD ABANDONMENT, KIDNAPPING TW !! The most that Kian can remember about his childhood is abandonment. Perhaps the cruelest thing to him was his parents deciding to carry him for nine months, bring him into this world and leave him for it to devour. –And devour it did.  The story is that his parents just didn’t care– they had lives and he wasn’t a part of them. The most they’d done for him is stuff his pockets with a couple galleons and leave him behind in Knockturn Alley ( because who would go around asking ‘who’s kid is this’ there. )

However, he didn’t have to suffer abandonment for very long. Fenrir Greyback had an eye for those who ‘needed’ a pack and knelt down with a hand offered. It came with a price but what wouldn’t Kian give for a home– a family. Perhaps if he could go back he would have refused that offer…only perhaps.

Fenrir was a cruel man..and that was putting it mildly– but Kian wonders if he’d take his own parents over a monster of a man because at least he’d given him a home. ( Not that home meant comfort but it did, eventually, mean FAMILY. )

His ‘father’ was hard on him. He was pushed to his breaking point again and again. He was taught how to endure cruelty, how to get his vengeance, to bleed but not be weakened by it. The lessons were vicious – but in Kian’s eyes necessary. He adapted well, fought until he couldn’t catch his breath and held up his siblings when it was their turn. Even though he was scared, Kian would approach everything in control– because that’s what he was taught. His ability to look Fenrir in the eyes and say NO earned him the most hated and most favoured spot in ragtag group of his siblings. ( standing up to his father only had a punishment at the end– though it seemed as if Kian had made his own mark with his stubbornness. ) Get knocked down, you get back up and you swing.  !! End TW !!

SCHOOL DAYS.

Kian was sorted into Ravenclaw. A strange house for someone who’d seem more fit for Gryffindor or Slytherin. But it came down to his cleverness and craftmanship that stuck him in with the eagles. He was smart– or rather a smartass – found unconventional solutions to problems and had a cunning way of adapting to even the worst of conditions.

He isn’t very popular with the others in his house or year– a little bit of an outcast because who doesn’t know that GREYBACK is synonym for WEREWOLF. HE tended to be a target for the upperclass peers to dig into when they were feeling bored. Though it ended with someone hexed or cursed or sporting a split lip or broken nose. But such was his life and he wasn’t too bothered by it. –As he grew older and stronger and word got back to those scaredy-cat pureblood parents that it was a Greyback throwing said spell/fist– things quickly quietened down for fear of retaliation from Fenrir. ( Not that the bastard actually cared but it’s the… thought that counts.)

HE doesn’t really spend time in clubs or extracurricular as he feels it’s a waste of time. Besides he has one band of dumbasses he doesn’t need to join any others. However, he did pick up quidditch from an early age and was quite a talented flier. His postion is naturally a beater– though he’s not fond of being led by a weasley.

His grades are above average and had once been considered for the position of prefect because of them but ultimately wasn’t offered it because of the fights he’d been involved with. smart but not friendly nor helpful enough.

OTHER STUFF.

Uhm, he doesn’t believe in all this ‘purebloods are superior’ shit. He’s just mostly here for the fight– at least that’s what he believes his ‘father’ is in it for because Merlin knows they aren’t fucking purebloods no matter how you spin it. There’s no money. No real parents. No hoity-toity clothes. No nose so far up his own ass. – IN fact i think he believes the Purebloods are a disgrace and can’t hold their own and that’s why people like him have to fight their battles. ( He doesn’t really voice this but he definitely thinks it even if it isn’t particularly true— just he’s real dumb? arrogant? idk? about this mess of a war )

He’s actually quite calm??? ( I KNOW?? WHAT?? ) He doesn’t mess with others unless he’s messed with and he tends to keep to himself. Kian isn’t out there being a social butterfly because he really doesn’t fucking care what you do or say or whatever. Life is dumb as hell, in his opinion, and he thinks dealing with his own is enough without someone elses involved. HOWEVER, if he is messed with this boy is gonna throw down. LIke he’s gonna go for the throat because that’s how he was raised. It’s either you or them there is no BOTH.

with that ^ said— he does have friends ( hallo plots ). he can be quite charming if he puts in the effort and perhaps his ‘life sucks, do what u want’ attitude tends to draw in people who may need stress relief from the war or you know normal things like last nights essay.

!! DRUGS TW, ALCOHOL TW !! Kian does smoke. Cigarettes and pot– never been one for anything harder than that. If he really wants to let go he’s out here for a couple rounds of firewhiskey. This is probably to the best way to see his true personality.   !! END TW !!

Loyalty is important to him ( though he isn’t past using it as a toss-around word for the DEs because he just really doesnt give a single fuck about them ). His lays with his siblings– though not biological he is very protective of his sisters but not enough to stand in the way of danger for them ( unless lethal. he will definitely step in ) After all they should know how to survive by now ANYWAYS. ( okay he does step in more often than that ;) a pack is a pack. )

There is some light at the end of the tunnel with him. He is quite funny when he wants to be– he can have a laugh and smile ( no, i mean an actual smile ) but it seems to be reserved for those he can trust and let down that massive guard he has up.

MORE RANDOM THINGS.

Probably would love baseball in the muggle world.

The name Kian was given to him due to that being the first word he spoke to Greyback. ( OR at least that’s what Fenrir believes he said ). Kian would be the name his father had and somehow it had stuck in his mind. ‘Why are you out here all alone?’ ‘Kian.’ SOOOOOOO he has no idea that’s his real father’s name….but yeno I guess you do get some things from your parents ha.

He doesn’t really remember anything about his birth parents. He only remembers Greyback. Greyback is gross and likes to hold things over your head so -- his parents leaving him is something that is usually brought up in order to take kian down a notch-- though it doesnt work how Greyback anticipates.

Doesn’t really have an opinion on being a werewolf other than it’s time consuming and therefor irritating to deal with. Pain is pain. Its an inconvience he wishes he could cure but not one that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to cure it, if u get me.

His favorite food is probably something dumb like mashed potatoes with gravy or roasted chicken with cous cous. – Favorite drink would be something equally simple like apple juice. Basically the palate of a two year old. Meaning he’s also here for things like lollies and popcicles, general summer time sweet treats. Not much for hot drinks like coffee or tea tho..go figure.

He has SEVERAL tattoos…..and  none of them really mean anything? They are mostly just  a series of lines/designs/patterns that he doodles on his parchments and, you know, since Papa Greyback don’t care about anything except himself this boy’s been getting them since summer before sixth year.

Tends to favour clothes that are flowy or breezy. Oranges and reds…blacks and whites mostly when outside of uniform. Doesn’t mind tighter jeans but the shirts gotta be flowy.

He cuts his hair every so often. Like real short then lets it grow out…currently like mid-length and usually pulled up out of his face either in a pony or half-up-half-down.

PRetty damn good at wizard’s chess ( eat your heart out ron weasley! ) and most anything that requires quick-strategy. He’s pretty good at figuring out the other’s intention which leads to a win.

He does draw– not anything too complicated but enough to know he has a mediocre talent in it? ( ie. his tattoos/doodles. )

His favorite classes are probably transfig, charms and probably astronomy. Most hated is herbology, comc, divinations and History or studies of anything.

UMM VERY UNSURE of what he’s gonna do when he graduates?? He doesn’t really have a certain goal for right now but….hopefully he can figure it out before the end of the semester tbh.

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

Best Friends. I SAID IT!!! i know i mentioned lone wolf but listen-- he needs a bestie or two  to fuck things up with or at least someone to treat him like he isn’t just, yeno, a wolf.

‘Bullies’.  This tech could be any blood status but i think, particularly, purebloods would be fun for this. basically when they were younger they picked at him for assorted reasons and eventually told to leave him alone by his parents because of Fenrir Greyback. Probably holds resentment to him because of that. also probably still takes abs at him. --kian being on the edge of chilling and ready to throw a curse at you, some could be fun enemies and/or frenemies at this point.

Hookups. basically fun hookups, angsty hookups, any genders. there isn’t a particular reason just that he likes to hookup -- this is probably something that is just physical. he’s not emotionally available and most likely doesn’t know how to be.

That ONE Person. you know that quote? ‘When is a monster not a monster? oh when you love it.’ I think it’d be nice to have someone that treats him softly-- on equal grounds. Like not scared of him or not here to make fun of him but to be gentle towards him. LIKE YOU KNOW the ones taht are saying ‘well your feelings are important. you are important. you aren’t trash’ ( even tho he is trash sometimes lmao )

Qudditch Buddies. Kian is usually abrassive but when it comes to this sport he is probably the only one in the school with good sportsmanship. he doesn’t care if they win or lose ( he still plays well though he’s not lazyyyy ) he’s just there to have a good time!! I think that’d make him quite likable on the pitch-- probably, as funny as this sounds, a breath of fresh air.

[thegeneralsnotebook]

Special: On LL, Print & Play, and My Future With The Game

By now, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to the news coming out about Set 11, you’ll likely have heard the big announcement that is accompanying it. That is, that Friends Forever (Set 10) was the last set that will be officially printed and distributed by Enterplay. From this point on, sets will be designed, tested, released and managed exclusively by Commentary is Magic, in addition to their existing responsibilities with regard to managing organized play and all official rule documents. It goes without saying that this is major news for the game, and in accordance, I felt that it would be a good idea to offer my own commentary on what this means, both for the game now, as well as for the foreseeable future.

It bears pointing out first that while in the past I have worked with Commentary is Magic as a commentator for their broadcasts of tournament events, and will continue to do so, neither I nor any of the groups that I work with are affiliated with them in any way. The opinions that shall be expressed within this article are entirely my own, and come from a few days of honest contemplation, coupled with CiM’s extensive explanation for their actions this past Sunday, in their most recent stream.

To begin with, I should point out that regardless of anything else, this sucks. The end of the printed era and the beginning of the Print & Play era means that this game will never again be what it was before. None of us can say how well it will turn out, and while we hope it goes well, it goes without saying that things would have been better with Enterplay still involved. While there has always been a measure of disagreement over Enterplay’s handling of the game in the past, the fact remains that over the course of the game’s existence they have continued to produce an exciting, novel, and fun experience. I have no doubts that the designers responsible for the MLPCCG would have carried on doing so had the prospect made financial sense for their company. Unfortunately, it would seem that it did not. Whatever I have said in the past, I want to thank them right now, for the skill and devotion they provided in taking the game to its current state, and wish them all the best of luck wherever life takes them next.

That being said, the fact that Enterplay will not be continuing on with the license presents the community with a sobering choice. Ordinarily, the lack of a commercial rights-holder to make the game officially would mean the end of things. It would be, unless the community were to decide to continue on without them. This is not without precedent, and is perhaps most notably exemplified by the more than a decade long run of the Star Wars TCG under a fan development body, after Wizards of the Coast suspended development of that game in 2005. Though the Star Wars story does bring with it another important thing to understand: while CiM has made the initial choice to attempt to carry on with the game, they will not be able to do it alone. Unless there is a community willing and ready to continue supporting the game just as they are, this experiment in fan-run MLPCCG will be a short-lived one indeed.

Make no mistake, while playing the game from Set 11 on will no longer require as much of a monetary investment, it will absolutely require an investment of a different sort. Namely, the effort necessary to obtain the master copies of the cards, and to print them, however you decide to do it. This could be as simple as printing on regular paper and affixing the art to other cards to serve as a backing, right up to crafting acceptable playing cards yourself using an artisan print service. The options present a range of difficulty and investment required, but all of them are going to involve more time and effort than throwing some money at Enterplay and having the new cards show up at your doorstep several days later.

This will be a different game than it was before. People can make all kinds of arguments about whether it’s easier or harder to get into now, about the impact this change will have on the secondary market or the value of past collections. These debates are valid, but beneath them I think is a more important point. The game has fundamentally changed, and it will now no longer appeal to some people that it appealed to before. No one should be held in contempt if they decide that the game is no longer for them, and they don’t wish to participate anymore. Inevitably, the community will suffer some attrition from this change. Likewise, none should be held in disdain for choosing to continue on, as I shall be doing.

The gentlemen that make up CiM are good friends of mine, and I know that they have been the subject of a variety of suspicions and ill-will over the course of the existence of their organization. Arguably, it may have started even before then. Yet the evidence that I can see points to them being dedicated servants to the ideal that this community deserves a fun game to play, and that this game deserves as wide a community as it can get.

CiM is betting that enough people will stick around to make their gamble worth it. They are risking a significant amount of time and resources, never mind potential legal liability, to see this thing through. And make no mistake, this gamble that they are making only pays off if the game stays fun and enjoyable for all of the diverse and disparate elements of the community that plays it, rather than only for an elitist cabal. I have the great personal honour of knowing the members of CiM as friends, and I can say that none of these guys are stupid. They understand, and have always understood, the great authority and responsibility that they have as community leaders. This was true even before they claimed any official responsibility for the workings of the game. It perhaps bears repeating that CiM itself was borne out of a desire to grow the game beyond its extant community and present its best face to the wider world. I have never got the impression that their goals as an organization have changed.

Throughout all of their tenure as community leaders, they have gone to great lengths to dispel any suspicions that may have been cast their way. When they assumed control over the official rules and banlist, they began publishing their decklists in advance of official tournaments, denying themselves the opportunity to sweep the field with whatever tricks or combos they had privately discovered. Through events like CoCo and their sponsorship of increased and well-supported organized play, they have given everyone else the chance and support to grow their own local metas, which gives the entire community more opportunities to build better decks and compete at the major events. While it is true that designing the game while competing in it is a strange arrangement, the members of CiM have voluntarily imposed major disadvantages upon themselves in the hope of assuaging these concerns. And after all, every responsibility they have taken on has been done because they enjoy the game and want to be able to keep playing it competitively. To then not be able to keep playing it would obviously be an unworkable arrangement.

Having said all of that, it should perhaps be obvious that my personal take on this matter is a vote of confidence in the new designers. I could ask you, if this game were to continue being made, how else could it be done? Enterplay has made it known that commercially, the proposition does not make sense. Thus further design and production needs to be performed by the community if it is to happen at all. Again then, who else could do it? CiM has been around since nearly the beginning of the game, they have a network of similarly experienced testers, and even more important than that they have the passion and integrity to ensure that this process is carried out correctly. If what we desire is a future where further development on this game still happens, what reasonable alternative do we have to this one?

This is to make no mention of the fact that all of the members of CiM are functional adult human beings with lives outside of pony cards. As someone who has spent some time doing amateur card and set design, I can tell you that it is no easy process. It takes long hours of volunteer time to see a work of the magnitude of an entire set through to completion. Add to that as well all of their work producing content and organizing tournaments across the continent. I can say with no exaggeration that I’ve found their dedication inspiring beyond measure.

Which brings us to the final point. If you are anything like me, your first thought upon hearing of the move to Print & Play was to go to CiM’s Patreon page and either increase your current donation or start a new one. After all, I was willing to pay Enterplay to keep the game going, why wouldn’t I pay its new wardens to equally show my appreciation for their efforts?

Alas, this cannot happen. CiM thought through the matter extensively prior to taking up this responsibility, and as they’ve mentioned elsewhere, turning their efforts into any kind of commercial enterprise presents an enormous risk given that they have no license from Hasbro for the use of MLP show assets. Even doing this as a non-commercial enterprise presents risk on its own. So they have wisely decided to eschew all compensation for their organized play efforts. The next time that you get the chance to meet them in person, I’d recommend a thank-you. It’s honestly the least that they deserve.

So what does that mean for me? Well, from everything I’ve seen so far, Leaders & Legends looks great. Obviously it’s far too soon to say anything about the meta that will shape up after its release, but the cards at least look fun to experiment with. And, given that we have a fresh set of designers for Set 11, I see a new opportunity for some statistical analysis. Once Set 11 has been fully revealed, I’ll be performing an analysis of how the design of the set works out when compared to the Enterplay-designed ones. Hopefully, this will determine if CiM is bringing any fresh philosophy to the table, and maybe offer some hints of what directions they will be pursuing as they move into Set 12 and beyond.

Set 11 marks a brave new beginning for the MLPCCG. I see no reason to stop playing it, thinking about it, or writing about it, so I’ll keep on. I sincerely hope that everyone else who reads this will join me.

Note that this article will not replace my usual October Feature. That one, containing card ratings for the Friends Forever Core meta up to the Old Money/Portal bans, will be around at the usual time near to Hallowe’en.

[mlpdestinyverse]

“A Helping Hand”

In the face of uncertainty, Eventide Twister finds the courage to aid another kid in need.

Feat: Eventide Twister,  Monochrome

Story and Description Under The Cut

-Playing with some stray grass blades in her lap, Eventide awkwardly glances between her best friend, Heather Tart, and two unrecognizable fillies from another class as they sit together in a circle during recess. She quietly listens in as they heartily chat away about different things, from class to hobbies to the latest trends. As much as she wants to add in her own input, a wave of nervousness swallows her words when she notices how deep in conversation the three already are. She finds herself feeling self-conscious, far too aware of the two strangers she had never spoken to before. Eventide had noticed that her friend had been befriending the fillies for the past two weeks. She only wished Heather could have warned her before having them meet up with them during their half-hour break outside.- Filly 1: -raises eyebrow and smiles- You’re really quiet, Eventide. Eventide Twister: -perks up a bit at the sudden acknowledgement. But before she can respond, she hears Heather laugh beside her before giving the top of Eventide’s head a light pat Heather Tart: Pft, she’s always like that. Filly 2: (?) -glances at Eventide- Well, what about you? What kind of music do you like? Eventide: (!) -finds herself smiling excitedly at the subject- Oh! Ireallylikesongswithpiano! Or really nice guitar! My mom knows how to play guitar and she’s been trying to teach me but now she might schedule piano lessons for- Heather: -quickly interjects, wincing as she quietly hisses- Slow down, Eve. Eventide: -halts completely, glancing at Heather to find her friend eyeing her with a frown. She can’t help but stare, bewildered and taken aback. Never before had Heather ever corrected her. Turning back to the other two fillies, she realizes they’re glancing at each other before looking back at her without a word. Feeling a pang of guilt, Eve looks away- Sorry… Filly 1: It’s okay- ooh! -both she and the other filly notice another group of kids - presumably their friends - on the other side of the playground. One of the colts waves them over- Sorry, we gotta go guys! Filly 2: -stands up with the other filly, and waves at them as they move away- See ya Heather! Bye Eventide! Heather: -grins and waves enthusiastically- Bye guys!! Eventide: -smiles shyly and waves as well. Admittedly, she feels relieved that they’re alone once more. She looks up at Heather as the filly giggles happily and stands. When Heather holds out her hand, Eve happily gratefully takes it, pulling herself up- Heather: -blissfully swings her and Eventide’s hands together- SEE, I told you! Aren’t they the coolest?? They’re, like, the smartest girls in our grade and- -Heather yelps as she turns and ends up tripping over a stray root. Eventide tries to pull her back by her hand and is ready to steady her, but Heather manages to balance herself- Eventide: Areyouokay?? Heather: Uuugh, I’m fine…-continues to tug Eventide along by her hand- I didn’t see it, that’s all… Eventide: -frowns, moving to match her friend’s pace- Shouldn't you wear your glasses? Why’d you take them off? Heather: -pouts- They make me look lamer than I already am… Eventide: (!) Hey! You’renotlame! Heather: -scoffs, eyelids drooping- Maybe. But being a part of a family of hicks is. -groans and slaps a hand over her eyes, sliding it down- I’m telling you, Eve, I can’t WAIT until the day I can live it up in Canterlot and get away from this stupid farm life. It’s so embarrassing… -As Heather frowns, looking rather distant as they walk (forcing Eve to keep an extra eye on the ground), Eventide finds herself...worrying about her friend. Time and time again, the lavender filly has vented about how she felt about her family; what it was like to feel like a nobody in such a large, expansive family tree like her own, unable to stand out amongst her many cousins. How she desperately wanted to be more than just a farm hand like her parents and most of her family. Not enjoying the sight of her friend in one of her negative moods, Eve can’t help but try to offer positivity- Eventide: You can be an Apple AND be cool! Look at Applebloom and Applejack! One day you’ll be real big like them, and- Heather: Hmph...Applejack’s really annoying and just forces me to do farm work when I don’t want to...it doesn’t matter if she’s friends with the princess, she’s like, the lamest out of all of Princess Twilight’s friends. And Applebloom might be kind of popular, but she’s still just some farmer with her weird accent and dirty clothes and whatever. I doubt anyone takes her as seriously as her other friends. Eventide: -looks at the ground nervously. She doesn’t agree with those statements, recalling how kind both mares were towards her, but doesn’t want to accidentally worsen her friend’s fragile mood- Oh… Heather: -sighs dreamily, cupping her freckled face with her free hand- But it’ll be different for me! No one will ever see me as just another Apple! -holds out her hand in front of her, as if she could already see the future- One day, everyone will be seeing Heather Tart walking with Canterlot’s greatest socialites and nobles!! I’ll be going to fancy parties and talking to all of the famous ponies, and even the princesses! Eventide: -smiles, squeezing the filly’s hand. This is the side of her best friend that she admires and loves seeing; the one that cherishes her dreams- You’ll totally get there! You’re really good at blending in and talking to ponies! Heather: -grins, clearly priding in that comment- It IS my talent~ -gestures with her head towards the group of kids in the distance that were no doubt a blob of color in her eyes- Which is AWESOME, cause I read that knowing how to make social connections is important if you want to make it to the top~!  -meeting Eventide’s eyes, her own magenta orbs glitter with ambition- And if I’m going to get to Canterlot’s high society one day, I need to start early. Eventide: -smiles sheepishly- That’ssocool...I wish I had a big dream like you. I like doing a lot of things, but I still don’t really know what I want to do… -Eventide glances down at her cutie mark displayed on her shoulder; a colorful twister with out-of-place music notes dotting the design. How that aspect connects to her talent is beyond her. No matter what she did, looking at it still felt weird. To think flying fast enough to catch Ms. Pinkie Pie's stray, flying cake at her own birthday party the previous year was all it took for her to gain her mark (it was a shame that the pretty dress her mother had bought her for the occasion managed to get torn on twigs in the process) . Flying fast was nice, but what was she supposed to do with that talent? Everypony kept recommending the Wonderbolts, but the thought just...didn’t click with her.- Heather: -chuckles and shrugs- Well, whatever you end up doing, learning to stop being so socially awkward could help. Eventide: -winces, feeling a bit of discomfort in the comment. The strange smile Heather flashes her only worsens the feeling, as if the filly found some amusement in her own remark- Idotry... Heather: Psh, well try a little harder! Eventide: -lowers her gaze, uncertain how to respond and still feeling discomfort- Heather: -hums obliviously, swinging their hands again as they follow the back wall of Friendship Elementary and head towards the side of the building where the entrances to the outdoor bathrooms were- Anyway! You’ll go inside the bathroom with me, right?? It’s all creepy and quiet in this corner- -Heather quiets when the two of them hear some voices from around the corner of the building. While at first Eventide assumes some other kids were either leaving or entering the bathrooms themselves, the two fillies slow to a halt when they begin to make out voices- ???: Please give it back! ???2: Whoops! Missed it again! ???: Stop throwing it like that! ???3: HAH, come on, this way! Eventide: -exchanges wary glances with Heather before the two of them quickly tiptoe to the corner together, peering around it-

-She immediately sees an older filly and an older colt throwing a blue notebook to one another. Between them, a shorter pegasus with dark hair and light streaks turns from one kid to the other, their rounded, stressed green gaze following the notebook- ‘Bullies...even Princess Twilight’s school has them.’’ Heather: -cringes, whispering- Yikes...nevermind, let’s go. Eventide: (!) -whispers- Shouldn’twehelpthem? Heather: -pulls her head back in disbelief, whispering harshly- Wha- no! They’ll just go after us like that kid! -tugs at her hand- Come on! Eventide: -brows narrowing back, Eve can’t bring herself to budge from her spot. Hearing the kid’s pleas, watching how increasingly upset they’re becoming, Eventide feels a great deal of worry, as well as anger, as she watches the scene- ‘What would mom do…’ …-biting her lip, she soon finds her body moving from their hiding place, ignoring Heather hissing her name. With clenched fists at her sides, she manages to find her voice- Hey! -All three kids turn their heads towards the voice, only to find Eventide standing there, wide-eyed and shaking like a leaf- Colt: Psh… -raises an eyebrow and rests his hands, one still holding the notebook, onto his hips- What? What do you wa- ???: -realizing the colt is distracted, they dart for the notebook and attempt to grab it back- Colt: (!) Ha, no way-! -yanks the notebook back. However, the harsh movement and tugging causes the notebook to tear, leaving a cover and numerous ripped and crumpled pages in his hand- ???: -gasps, staring in horror and distress at the mess- Filly: Well geez, way to overreact kid. Colt: -laughs- Whoops! Hey, you’re the one who pulled first-! Heather: I'M TELLING PRINCIPLE TWILIGHT!! -the three ponies, including Eventide, turn towards the direction of the loud voice, only to find no one there. The sound of quick retreating footsteps around the corner can be heard, causing the two older kids to exchange worried glances- Filly: W-wait, we were just playing! Colt: -throws the papers in his hand to the ground and begins running, completely ignoring Eventide as he passes her and quickly rounds the corner with his friend in tow- Yeah stop, it was an accident!! Eventide: -while she feels some worry for her friend, she hears soft rustling and turns, seeing the remaining pegasus on their knees to pick up the scattered ripped papers. Taking in their disheartened expression, Eve moves to pick up the closest paper to her and moves to kneel by the kid. Holding out the paper, she smiles sadly- Here. ???: (!) -surprise flashes across their face. Another second passes before they carefully take the paper from her, their voice soft- Thank you… Eventide: They were real jerks…areyouokay? -notices how the kid’s mouth presses into a tight line, their green gaze downcast and only deepening her worry. Yet they nod- W-whathappened? How come you were over here alone with em...? ???: -sighs, gathering the papers into their lap- ...I saw this dragonfly and...really wanted to draw it. It flew over here so I followed it. But I ran into them instead... Eventide: -puzzled- Draw-? -Eve cuts herself off as she picks up a ripped paper she noticed laying behind the kid, her expression full of wonder as she gives it a good look.  A half-finished drawing of a pegasus with bug-like - dragonfly-like- wings stares back at her. Eventide: Holymoly...thisissopretty! ???: -peers at the drawing in her hand. But their expression quickly twists into dismay- No… Eventide: -looks up- W-what’swrong? ???: -balls up their fists in their lap, miserably staring at the ripped paper- I drew that for my friend...h-he said he liked dragonflies the last time I saw him, and he’s been really sad lately so I just- -bites down on their lip and lowers their gaze, tears pricking at the corner of their eyes, their voice coming out hoarser- Now it’s ruined. Eventide: -ears flatten, watching the kid wipe at their eyes with a fist. Newfound determination bubbles up within her and she shoves a hand into one of her vest pockets- Holdon! ???: (?) -glances up at her in confusion- Eventide: -whips out a small roll of clear tape- Therewego! ???: -blinks- ...you...carry tape with you? Eventide: My dad says you can never go wrong with tape. -places a hand on their shoulder, smiling gently- It’llbeokay! Watch! -lays the drawing down and lines up the ripped edges before carefully fixing the rip with tape on both sides. Feels the kid quietly watching- Aaand there! Itstilllooksamazing! And even if you don’t give this one to your friend, maybe it can help you if you want to redraw it? ???: …-slowly exhales- Yeah, that’s...that’s a good idea. -takes their drawing back. Meeting Eventide’s blue gaze, they finally offer her a soft, sincere smile- Thank you… Eventide: -grins cheerily- Mhm! Hey um, what’syourname? ???: Oh...my name’s Monochrome. But it’s kind of long, so um...you can call me Mo, or Momo- Eventide: (!!) -claps her hands together, eyes sparkling- ‘Momo’issocute! Okay! Um, my name’s Eventide Twister! YoucancallmeEve! It’s nice to meet you! Monochrome: -blushes- That's a really pretty name. Um.... -nervously shuffles the papers in their lap- Nice to meet you too... Eventide: How come I’ve never seen you before?? Monochrome: Oh. Well, I’m in 5th grade. Eventide: (!) Whoa, you’re two years older! Monochrome: Yeah. And I usually draw during recess. -shifts their eyes away- I’m...not really good at talking to ponies. Eventide: Aw, that’s okay…-glances down and sheepishly rubs the back of her hand- I’mthesame… Monochrome: -stares at her curiously- Really…? Eventide: Mhm. I get real nervous talking to anyone I don’t know. But it kinda helps to have a friend with me- -both Eventide and Mo glance up upon hearing the ringing of the school bell. Standing up, Eve offers Monochrome a hand, one they stare at for a moment before gently taking, pulling themself up- Monochrome: Well...thanks again, Eventide. -smiles softly- Bye then... -begins walking away, the remnants of their drawings and notebook clutched against their chest- Eventide: (!) I’llseeyouaround! -when Mo turns to give her a puzzled look, as if surprised by those words, she continues with a bright beam- I wanna see more of your drawings next time! Maybe we can doodle together! -Something about that lights up Monochrome’s eyes, and they eagerly nod and smile back. As they begin to rush off and round the corner, Eventide notices them suddenly jerk back, as if almost running into something. Ducking their head, Mo murmurs a quick apology before walking around whatever is around the corner. To Eventide’s relief and delight, Heather walks into view, though she eyes Monochrome with a strange look as they retreat.- Eventide: Heather!! -runs towards her- Heather (!): -opens her arms and catches Eventide as she throws her own arms around her. She snickers- Well geez, missed me much? Eventide: -pulls back to clasp Heather's hands between her own- I’msogladyou’reokay. Did those bullies catch up with you? Heather: PFT, catch up? I hid behind the first door I saw! -smirks and pulls her hands back to cross her arms in satisfaction- They were dumb enough to go running around for somepony they never even saw! Eventide: Huh…? You...didn’t tell a teacher? Heather: -scoffs- No way...! I’m no snitch, Eve! I already told you they’d start picking on us if we messed with them! If that kid wants to report it, they can speak up for themself. Eventide: -face twists in confusion, her ears flattening- A-areyousure...? Heather: 'Course I am. Speaking of, I saw you were making friends with the loner?? Eventide: ‘Loner’…? Heather: Yeah, that kid. The one who just sits in a corner all quiet and writes stuff in their notebook. Eventide: Oh! Theirname’sMonochrome, andtheyactuallydraw! They’re really good! Heather: Eeeh sure… Eventide: And they’re really nice! You should meet them! Heather: -laughs uncomfortably, glancing off to the side while rubbing her arm- Yeah, not really the kind of friend I should make, Eve. -raises an eyebrow, that strange amused smile on her muzzle again- But I guess you being friends with them kind of makes sense? Eventide: (...??) -hesitantly smiles back, not quite understanding- Huh? Heather: (!) -takes Eventide’s hand and begins leading her again- C’mon! We’re gonna be late! Don’t want to miss choir, right~? Eventide: -manages to perk up again at the mention of one of her favorite classes- Ah, right! -following a step behind her friend to their lined up class, she worries about Monochrome, just catching a glimpse of their dark tail as they disappear into the school with their class. New prickles of guilt hits her when she spots the two bullies following the older classes into the building.- ‘Is it...really okay to just say nothing?’

Presenting the day Eventide and Monochrome met as kids, kill me softly. I just want to give a fair warning to the people who will inevitably ship ChromeTwister that I too am fond of this relationship and if different ships can be canon in different AUs, this one is absolutely a thing in some AU of Destinyverse. But in this main canon timeline, it isn't the end-game relationship in mind for either of them. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy their ship of course!! Have fun with different pairings in Destinyverse! Just keep it in mind and um, don't have ship wars? That's all I ask. <xD

If you want a reminder of what their general friendship was like, check out Mo's little speech in "Admirer".

[thewadapan]

It's Friday night.

You've locked yourself out.

The streets are empty.

> RETRACE STEPS

(I finished an MS Paint fan adventure.)

Creator’s Commentary

Normally, when I post stories on this blog, I throw the whole thing beneath the spoiler break - but that’s not really possible this time around. Click the link above if you haven’t read it yet - it only takes about ten minutes - then come back here if you want.

All done? Still with me? Okay, cool, because we’re going to be heading into spoiler territory here pretty quickly.

                               “RETRACE STEPS”

OPEN ON BLACK:

INT. – LATE AFTERNOON

A door opens on the right, spilling light into the threshold. The ceiling light automatically flickers on. Alice enters frame and heads to her door.

She tries the handle, but the door doesn’t budge. As her hand depresses the handle, the title briefly becomes visible.

We return to the original angle. Alice reaches into her left pocket, and finds nothing. She turns to lean against the door, facing the camera, and checks her right pocket, then the pockets of her hoodie. She tries the handle again, but the door is definitely locked. She leans, for a second, motionless.

           ALICE    Fuck.

She stalks out of the threshold, and the door closes behind her.

I. Making friends is harder than I thought.

When you’re a kid, people sorta make friends for you. Maybe your parents’ friends have kids, so suddenly those kids are your friends. Maybe you go to nursery or school, and then your classmates are kinda your friends too. At least some of those people will probably never stop being your friends. As you move through the education system, that cohort diffuses through the local schools - but chances are a few of your friends will stick with you all the way.

When you arrive at university, chances are you’re completely alone.

You’re thrown through the gauntlet of fresher’s week, forced to put yourself out there as you identify new friends and foes. One of the main attractions of university-managed accommodation - particularly catered accommodation - is that it places you with a huge amount of new people. Heck, part of the idea behind having a roommate is that they’re your “designated friend”.

(I didn’t have a roommate, and ended up going to university with two of my school friends, so these are less experiences and more observations - but that’s not to say I didn’t go out of my way to make new friends in those first weeks.)

After a month or so of the dreaded “three questions” (”What’s your name? Where are you from? What are you studying?”), the cliques have mostly solidified. The college relationships have crumbled, after one or both parties realised they were mostly in it for the sex. The cool people have long since stopped showing up to lectures. You haven’t gone back to any of the sports clubs and societies you signed up for. Maybe, just maybe, you’re occasionally glancing at your phone and wondering if you should finally give your parents a call to let them know you haven’t died.

If you’re lucky, you’ve met your new best friends. If you’re unlucky, then you’re very, very alone.

But of course, it’s not all down to luck.

She stalks out of the threshold, and the door closes behind her. Outside the threshold, there is a shot from the banister above of Alice walking down the stairs, facing away from the camera and typing on her phone.

Outside, Alice sits on the wall and stares at her phone. There is a brief montage of her slowly pacing up and down the path, leaning out into the road to check if anyone’s coming, checking her phone, peering into the downstairs window, kicking loose stones back into the gravel, and back to her sitting on the wall. After a few seconds, she puts her phone away and trudges out of frame across the stones.

II. Coming up with stories is harder than I thought.

I can’t exactly remember what I put my name down for during freshers’ week, but one way or another I ended up dragging a new friend to a writing workshop for my university’s filmmaking society. A bunch of strangers from all years were crammed around some tables that had been pushed together in our Student Union’s bar.

This guy, the head of the- president of the society? Sure, the President, let’s go with that. The President stands up and sorta fumbles his way through an introduction, before telling us to turn to the person next to us. I turn to my friend, because I don’t like talking to strangers. Then the President tells us (I might be misremembering here) that we’ve got one minute to come up with a story.

There’s a moment of awkward silence, because nobody wants to be the first person to start talking about the first dumb idea that’s popped into their head at those words.

Then the conversations start.

I went into that first minute expecting to come up with absolutely nothing. To be honest, I’m pretty sure we came up with nothing. I think there might’ve been some implication that they’d go around the table once time was up asking for quick summaries - this terrified me not just at the prospect of having to bluff my way through a pitch, but at the prospect of having to listen to everyone else do the same. Honestly, the moment that’s stuck in my mind most since was when I talked to the guy sitting on the other side of me, and he started trying to tell me about Lord of the Rings, which... okay, I don’t like Lord of the Rings, sue me, whatever. Someone else talked about the Batman movies at one point, and - actually, that might’ve been the same guy. Y’know what, I’ve gotten off track.

The point is that at some point during that meeting, Retrace Steps was born. I don’t remember when exactly, or how I came up with it - I suspect I’d locked myself out of accommodation at some point, or knew a friend who had, and thought it’d be funny to do a story where someone does that and can’t for the life of them get back in. In order to add complications, I decided that their roommate wouldn’t answer their texts, and that the residence office would be out of hours - and that was when the idea that everyone had disappeared came into my head.

INT. MAIN BUILDING – LATE AFTERNOON

Over-the-shoulder shot of Alice entering a corridor in the main building. The camera focuses on the sign saying ‘ON DUTY’, then pans across to the door to the general office. It focuses on another sign saying ‘The office is now closed...’, then across to another sign by the door with a phone number on it.

Foreground with Alice comes back into focus. She takes out her phone and dials.

           ALICE    Hello? I’ve locked myself out, do you have a spare...

She trails off, and puts the phone away. Clearly, someone’s answered but has hung up. Cut across for a close-up of her face, trying to figure out her next move.

SERIES OF BRIEF SHOTS:

Alice looks for her keys in:

A) a computer lab B) a library C) a laundry room D) a games room E) a bathroom

There are no keys, and no people. Alice goes to the kitchen and gets a mini-doughnut out from a box in a cupboard. She eats it thoughtfully. Once she’s finished, she reaches out to grab another, hesitates, and decides against it.

III. Making movies is harder than I thought.

A lot of the ideas being thrown around the table were for some pretty high-concept stuff, and I remember thinking - hang on, aren’t you supposed to actually be filming that? I’d approached the challenge from the angle of “what do I have, and what can I make with it”, not “what do I want to make, and how can I make it”. In an unfortunate twist of fate, my film - of all those that were conceived that day - would end up being far and away the worst. But I’ll get to that.

For a student film, the "everybody disappears and you’re locked out” concept made perfect sense - you could film it at your accommodation, you’d only need a single actor, and it’s a story that your audience will probably (if not immediately, then at least after another month or two) be able to relate to.

(Side note: I obviously hadn’t come up with this concept whole-cloth. Michael Grant’s Gone series of YA novels - which I’d finished reading midway through secondary school - is a superhero story about a bunch of kids on an island where all the adults have suddenly disappeared. More pertinently, Starscribe’s The Last Pony on Earth is the diary of someone who wakes up completely alone in their city, only in the body of a cartoon horse. Yes, Retrace Steps has its roots in My Little Pony fanfiction, and I’m very sorry about that.)

My friend wasn’t interested in sticking with the society - he mostly did it to back me up - but I guess I was. Knowing that most people would be angling for directorial roles, I signed up as a writer and threw together a script. An email came back the following day; apparently from el Presidente himself:

Thank you for sending the script Retrace Steps. As you have said in your original email, the script is quite short. But I do think it is a very intriguing concept nonetheless, one that is probably helped more so than hampered by its brevity. After all, the nature of your script would to a degree require an empty street, as well as a quiet hall, both of which are rare commodities indeed, especially during the weekends.

Anyways, since the script is well formatted, I will just offer a suggestion, one which I hope may help your final edit before the deadline, should you wish to do so.

Your script portrays excellently Sam's anxiety over the course of the narrative, from his inability to find his keys, then his inability to find anyone at all. I do however believe that you could make the final scene perhaps have more impact. How this is done depends on the overarching theme of the story you are telling, as what you would emphasize at the films' conclusion would depend on it.

Is it an allegory to the anxieties of the average student (Sam), who finds himself socially isolated by a sense of exile or ignorance of the larger community? Or is it perhaps more of an absurdist comedy, or even horror? Though I could wrong, I was under the impression that it was more likely to be the former than the latter. If so, could the story end with it emphasizing Sam's exclusion from society, such as a close up shot to the door and keyhole?

As with all feedback, you are under no obligation to take them to heart, and the things I pointed out are but small things to consider on an otherwise great piece of work. Thank you for making this piece available to the rest of the society.

It seemed that I’d successfully communicated the theme of isolation - less so the theme of entitlement. Bringing that theme to the fore would be my biggest challenge throughout subsequent drafts of the script (where I failed miserably) and the development of the fanventure (on which the jury’s still out).

(Those subsequent drafts would also see the characters “Sam” and “Chris” - those being the names of two friends I’d pegged as backup actors for the roles - get renamed as a more generic “Alice” and “Bob”.)

The Retrace Steps team consisted of a director, a producer, a cameraman/editor, and me. I met with the director only a couple of times - she seemed pretty competent, but decided that she couldn’t commit the time to the project and stepped down. Our producer was all too happy to take over the role.

Auditions started shortly after the teams were assigned - although I’d used male pronouns in the script, I’d anticipated that there’d be a greater demand for male actors (because most of the writers/directors would be male and most of the actors would be female) and planned to go into the auditions with no preference one way or another.

In truth, however, I think the gender of the story’s lead does have a noticeable impact on how it comes across - at least in film, where there’s no good means of narration. Speaking very broadly, when dealing with themes of isolation, I think the key question that comes to an audience’s mind is “why is this person isolated?” - and if the character is male, I feel like they’re more likely to assume the answer is a personal failure of some sort; there must surely be something wrong with him. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re in pretty deep on the internet, where I think these issues of perception are less pronounced - so if your instinct is to buck against those assumptions, well, I’m glad.

(The fanventure would end up using second-person narration, they/them pronouns and androgynous character designs to sidestep these issues entirely, while drawing the reader directly into the conflict.)

Our producer/director wasn’t able to make the callbacks (which felt like another red flag), so it was down to me to relay back to her what I thought of everyone. It was kind of a challenging process, because - as I’ve said - I don’t like talking to strangers and I certainly don’t like telling them what to do. Still, I was able to more-or-less settle into it, and eventually the director and I settled on a girl who seemed to know what she was doing. I feel a little bad for effectively putting her through the project, but the joke’s on us: within a year she’d been elected el Presidente of the entire students’ association. I can only assume that none of her opponents knew about the movie; it might’ve made for a pretty good smear campaign. Or not, nobody really cares about student politics anyway.

(The director couldn’t make it to the meeting where the society allocated the actors either. Basically, the President went through the actors one by one, and the teams would negotiate for each of them in turn. I’m fairly sure only one or two of the other teams were after the same actress as we were - I basically just said “we only need one cast member and we thought she’d do best,” and that was all it took; once that was settled I simply left and pretty much didn’t interact with any other members of the society in person until the screening. The other roles she could’ve got were minor anyway - although, in retrospect, she might’ve been better off.)

I think I’m not going to bother explaining exactly why the Retrace Steps short film turned out to be such a disaster. I’m pretty willing to pin the blame at the director’s feet - she’d arrange shoots at strange times with little notice, only to show up half an hour late herself. When she and I disagreed on part of the story, our cinematographer generally sided with her; she had the strongest personality of any of us, while I didn’t want to cause trouble. Our other team members - the actress and a lights guy who the society’d lumped with us (the lights ended up being a collaborative effort) - stayed out of it.

As the end of the semester approached, we were missing crucial swathes of footage. Our director pulled an ending out of her ass - a brief confrontation between myself-as-Bob and the actress, that... somehow involved custard creams? The script called for doughnuts, but we weren’t organised enough to have bought those in advance, and the biscuits were all we had at hand. I can’t actually remember exactly how it went, because it didn’t make any sense, but I remember enough to know that it actually ended up indirectly inspiring the execution of the revised ending present in the fanventure.

The end of the semester arrived. The society had hired out the small hall in the students’ union to screen all the movies. The screening started, and there was no sign of our director or cinematographer - they’d apparently been editing all afternoon. Eventually they arrived and sat down near myself and our actress.

I’m not gonna lie. What followed wasn’t the most embarrassing experience of my life. It probably wasn’t even in the top ten. But it was pretty embarrassing. All the movies were pretty awful in their own ways, but ours was uniquely terrible. To our director’s credit, she’d managed to cut the footage together into something we could maybe pass off as an absurdist comedy (which, to my own credit, had been kinda what I’d pictured in the first place - I’d just pictured something with a little more in the way of actual narrative). Even so, despite the awkward laughs - or perhaps because of them - it was atrocious.

I’ve only seen the movie once, at that screening, and I cringed the whole way through. Some time later, the director messaged me asking if I had a copy - apparently it hadn’t occurred to her to save one for herself, and our ex-cinematographer had gone AWOL - but I didn’t. Stupidly, I’d decided not to chase after one either, because in the moment I couldn’t imagine wanting to put myself through the experience of seeing it again. Almost half a year later, when I was almost done with the fanventure, I got back in touch with both the director and the society: I wanted to have the movie on hand so I could write about it in this commentary, but I didn’t say that, because I didn’t want to let on that I’d remade it as a frikkin’ webcomic. The person from the society said she knew someone who had a copy, and that she’d ask, but she never got back to me and by the time I remembered to chase her up it felt like it was too late to actually do so. It’s likely that the movie will never resurface - which I guess is good in a way, in that there’s no way in hell I’m gonna show it to any of you.

I was bitter. I wanted nothing to do with student societies. I wanted nothing to do with filmmaking, and haven’t made a film since - not unless you count Are You Happy, which I pretty much only made because I could do so entirely on my own. I’m much more leery about the prospect of collaborating with strangers, although I suspect that if an opportunity came my way I’d probably take it.

(Side note: last October, in an interaction which wound up being pretty excruciating in its own right, I contributed a satirical listicle to another society. This was a nightmare for a variety of reasons, but - suffice to say - it’s not particularly pleasant to discover that somebody’s made a bunch of edits to your work without telling you, especially if the changes are for the worse. I wish I had more positive things to say about collaboration, really, I do. Actually, I will say that my experiences working with others in the Transformers fandom have been pretty darn good - you can find details of that stuff over on the list of things I made.)

For a good while, I suspected that Retrace Steps would never see the light of day. I entertained the idea of rounding up a few of my friends and bashing the thing out myself over the course of a few weekends, but I ended up being pretty busy with other stuff. Besides, the society had the nice lights and cameras, and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of borrowing from them. Most of all, there was the tiny voice telling me that my script probably hadn’t ever been much good in the first place, and that I should switch back to pure prose - a medium with a much faster turnaround.

(That voice was right, as I’m sure you’re seeing for yourself. Look, it was a student film, there’s probably no such thing as a good student film - I’m just banking on fanventure-adaptation-of-a-bad-student-film still being fair game.)

EXT. STREET

Wide shot of Alice walking through the street, shouting. It is raining.

      ALICE   Hello? Is anybody there?

Overhead shot as she looks up and squints at the sky, then reaches back and lifts her hood.

Everything slows down. Cut to a side-on shot of Alice lifting her hood. A muted sound slowly turns into the jangle of keys as things speed up again. Cut across to medium shot face-on, as Alice looks confused. She reaches up with her other hand into her raised hood, and pulls out the keys. She holds them between two fingers, and the camera focuses on them.

      ALICE    Oh, for fuck’s sake.

IV. Talking about Retrace Steps without talking a little bit about Homestuck is harder than I thought.

Homestuck was this big multimedia webcomic that ran from 2009 to 2016. Homestuck was very good, and its unique “MS Paint Adventures” format inspired thousands of “MS Paint Fan Adventures” - some of which take Homestuck’s premise, but many of which are otherwise entirely original stories.

The oldest writing on this blog, in fact - presuming I haven’t hidden it out of mortification - is a rudimentary (and really god-awful) fanventure called You’ve Just Been FiRED. Don’t read it, it’s very, very bad, and I abandoned it after about thirty pages - some of which remain unpublished as of writing.

My second attempt at a fanventure, which - no joke - I wrote in the pages of my school planner during one exam season, is called SP00KY M4N0R; unlike traditional fanventures, which use the aesthetic of interactive fiction but none of the non-linear storytelling, this one was a fully-fledged choose-your-own-adventure story. In the following year’s planner, I started writing a spiritual successor called W1LT1NG (the setting of this one is slightly less self-evident: it took place inside an Egyptian pyramid). Neither of these stories have seen the light of day outside of a couple of my friends (and teachers) - but they might, so I’ll discuss them no further.

At some point in high school, I tried adapting SP00KY M4N0R for the web - first in MS Paint, then later in Photoshop CS2 - but put the project on the back burner and never really picked it back up again.

It wasn’t until after I joined the Homestuck Discord server that my interest in fanventures was rekindled. I became its 9615th member on the 6th of January, 2018 - in other words, a good while after we’d wrapped on Retrace Steps - but very quickly realised that its rate of activity was far to high for me to keep up with anything, duly muted it, and pretty much just forgot about it entirely.

Months later, something - presumably in either the Worth the Candle server or the Worm server - drew me back, and I found myself lurking there infrequently. On the 2nd of November, I briefly waded in - to ask some questions about Cordyceps - and after that, I think I lurked on-and-off for pretty much a whole month while I finished the remaining works on Makin’s List of Shills (if you’re wondering what all of these names in italics are, you might want to click that link). After that, I was pretty much there to stay.

A small but notable number of the server’s regulars ran fanventures of their own, and so I found myself becoming much more aware of the format than I ever had been while working on SP00KY M4N0R. Eventually, I decided I wanted to make something of my own - this was shortly after I’d finished working on Another Son, which had ended up being something of a mixed bag in a lot of ways - and hit upon the idea of adapting Retrace Steps as a fanventure.

You see, the thing about fanventures is that many of them begin with the same premise - “you are mysteriously alone”, and then things escalate as you learn more about the world the second-person protagonist has found themselves in. Retrace Steps has that same premise, with a very simple twist - the reason you are mysteriously alone is simply that nobody likes you.

SERIES OF SHOTS:

A) Alice re-enters the building B) She heads up the stairs, C) reaches the door to the threshold D) (a brief return to the original angle from the very beginning of the film) and enters the threshold. E) Extreme close-up of the key entering the lock. F) Over-the-shoulder shot as the door is unlocked and starts to open. G) (180-degree cut) She stares, dumbfounded at what she finds within. F) (Her POV) Her room is full of people, all holding red plastic cups and staring at her.

V. Drawing is harder than I thought.

Before I get into the meat of the work, I should probably give a broad overview of the process I used for creating the images - which, for the most part, was identical to the process I’d used for SP00KY M4N0R. The panels in Homestuck are 650px by 450px; in order to create a rougher (read: more forgiving) look, I halved these dimensions to 325px by 225px. I’d originally planned to scale the images back up to full size during publication, but ended up deciding that the negative space around the smaller frames helped create an atmosphere of isolation. Besides, I wasn’t sure if it’d be possible to scale the images back up without any anti-aliasing.

If you don’t know what anti-aliasing is, I’ll briefly explain - it’s when pixels at the edge of shapes in digital images get changed to a slightly different colour, to create smoother outlines. This works well at high resolutions, but at lower resolutions muddies detail and makes the image appear somewhat blurred - the effect is particularly pronounced if the images are entirely black and white. Homestuck avoids anti-aliasing pretty consistently, and doing so is a hallmark of the MSPA style.

Thankfully, Photoshop CS2 allows you to turn off antialiasing on pretty much every individual tool. I drew all the graphics using a 4px brush, but thanks to a beat-up old variable-pressure graphics tablet I could reduce this to 2px as needed. The 2px brush size was employed pretty heavily for detail in some of the busier environments, and at times I found myself using the selection tool to nudge stuff around at a pixel-by-pixel level.

Although Retrace Steps is adapted from a script, I’m pretty sure none of the dialogue from that script ended up making the jump into the second-person narration of the story. In fact, very few of the script’s locations remain either. The words and the artwork developed in tandem - I was rarely more than a few panels ahead in the script, and would generally let the physical on-panel action inform what was being written.

I occasionally looked up bits of reference - most notably to get some architectural details for the Tesco store - but otherwise winged it. Occasionally, in the more complicated images, I’d start out by drawing some perspective lines. For a couple of the images in the credits (specifically the cup and the Poké Ball) I went so far as to use autoshapes as guides, because I was struggling to draw passable circles freehand.

(No, those shapes on the right aren’t my attempts at circles, they’re the guide I used while drawing the doughnut.)

I’ll give more specific thoughts later, but broadly speaking I think my drawings suited the story I was trying to tell about as well as they could. I’m not an artist, and in the future I’m going to stray away from visual projects like this; the part I value most is the writing process, and I’d say that only a tiny fraction of the time I devoted to this project was actually spent writing. The flip side of that, of course, is that people generally much prefer stories with a visual aspect - it’s hard to convince them to read a webcomic, much less a prose story.

           ALICE    What the actual fuck are you all doing in my room?            BOB (somewhat passively)    Uhhh… didn’t you get my email?            ALICE    What email? Everyone in the room stares at her. Then, as one, they move to push her out of the room and shut the door. She protests, until-

           ALICE    This is my room!

           BOB (poking his head back into shot with mucho sass)    Yeah, but it’s not though, is it? He slams the door the rest of the way shut, and the lock clicks back into place.

Back to very first angle.

           ALICE (quietly, to herself)    What the actual fuck.

She knocks on the door loudly.

           ALICE (shouting, her face inches from the door)    This is my room!

Silence. She tilts her head forward, hitting the door with a sad thud. Then she turns and sits down, back to the door, and the camera cuts to join her at this new level.

She sits for a few seconds, thinking, then gets up again and leaves frame.

VI. Writing this commentary is harder than I thought.

Anyway, I figure the best way to get down into the details is to just start at the beginning and work my way through.

The first twenty panels take place in something of a liminal space - the corridor on which the reader’s room lies. I made sure never to show any of the other doors in the corridor; so far as the reader is concerned, they may as well not exist. The door is numbered “41″ - this being a truncation of “413″, the most ubiquitous of Homestuck’s so-called “meme numbers”. I kinda envisioned the room as being the first on the fourth floor of the building.

(If I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll say that the other doors are the ones up in the site’s navigation bar - they literally exist outside the scope of the panels.)

I probably didn’t spend as much time as I should’ve perfecting this environment - the door’s very wobbly. My first attempt placed it at the end of the corridor, but I didn’t like the way that looked at all.

Just in terms of the site itself, there’s a couple of things to take note of. The first is the solo cup sitting at the top of page, next to the advertisement, which is also the story’s icon on the site - and its only splash of colour (well, except in the ads, which I don’t have any control over). The second is that the link to the next panel is “->” - a slight variation on the command used by Homestuck, which was “==>”. The significance of this should be obvious to Homestuck readers, but I’ll comment no further on either of these details until later.

(Fun fact: I didn’t find out that those big red American plastic party cups had an actual proper name, and that that name was frikkin’ solo cup, until well into the fanventure’s development, if not after I’d finished it entirely. One of my friends used the term in passing conversation - I can’t remember what about, because I was too busy freaking out internally. It’s like pottery; it rhymes.)

On panel 3 - once they’ve walked into the corridor - the lights have turned on, and the entire colour scheme for the comic flips. The idea of having automatic lights was present in the original script, but it wasn’t until pretty late in the fanventure’s development that I decided to make them plot-relevant!

Out of all the images, it’s the close-up of the door on panels 5-7 that comes closest to matching a shot description in the script. The original idea was that the door being locked was the inciting incident that would lead the protagonist to go look for their keys - so the title/command “RETRACE STEPS” would literally appear as they pressed the handle. In the first draft of that panel, this was in fact the case - but my prereaders didn’t think it looked that great, and I was inclined to agree; besides, the title also appeared prominently on the title page and during the credits.

It’s not until panel 7 that we get any words at all - a simple “huh”. In the original script, I made relatively heavy use of profanity in Alice’s dialogue - this was supposed to signify hostility. I wasn’t happy with how this came across, and completely backpedalled in the fanventure - the second-person narration is entirely devoid of swears. I wanted to portray your inability to curse to as a deficiency: you’re unable to fully express yourself. Like most aspects of your character, this isn’t something you’re supposed to consciously notice or understand until after the story’s twist is revealed.

Panel 8 includes a command: “Try door again.” Generally speaking, the commands used in Retrace Steps are much more perfunctory than those in Homestuck - they’re almost entirely devoid of snark, with many being only a single word.

This entire sequence has a lot of legwork to do in terms of laying out the situation in a believable manner without giving too much away. On panel 14, the narration lists your inventory: a phone, a packet of tissues, and a wallet. The phone and the wallet both play direct roles in the narrative, but I consciously chose to include the tissues because I think the word itself has connotations with illness, sadness, and loneliness.

It’s worth noting that these items are those that I personally carry about in real life. Other than the abstract geography of the corridor, this is perhaps the clearest example of me drawing directly from my own day-to-day experiences. The word “self-insert” is kind of a dirty word in a lot of ways, but the truth is that I wanted the protagonist of Retrace Steps to serve as both a self-insert and an audience surrogate. This is why I felt like the MSPA format would serve the story well.

(None of that is to say that you should draw conclusions about me as a person based on the behaviour of the character in the story. Superficially, they share a lot of my tics, but their actual thought processes and motivations are different in many ways.)

Panels 17-19 are just repeated images of the empty corridor; the lights turn off on panel 20, and the site’s colours briefly flip again. Heading into this project, I had the rough idea that I wanted to tell the story in a “nice” number of pages - maybe a hundred, maybe less, maybe more. I decided that, if I repeated the door image, I’d have a buffer to use to shorten or lengthen the final page count as needed - but that turned out not to be necessary. This little span establishes that the lights in the corridor are on a timer, a fact which turns out to be relevant down the line.

The first scene change occurs on panel 21, which shows a stairwell. My original version of this sequence confused basically everyone who saw it - I’d envisioned the camera as being at the bottom, looking up, but everyone presumed I’d done it from the top down. The current approach makes much more sense, as all of the lines of action in the image point towards its centre.

As you descend the stairs and thinks about your roommate, the narration rambles much more. In this story, I decided that use of the internet would be a signifier for loneliness in some way - the roommate has an old-fashioned phone and communicates only by text. I wanted to give the impression that they’re bad at checking their messages; preferring instead just to talk to people face-to-face. That’s not the whole story, though - to a certain extent, they actively ghost you.

Once more, I’m drawing pretty heavily from my own life experiences for this sequence. For a long time in high school, I used to have a terrible flip phone - my parents didn’t want me to have anything better. I eventually upgraded to a terrible smartphone, which I mostly used to play Hill Climb Racing and Glow Hockey. Late in high school, I wound up using a bulky Kindle Fire as a portable computer, with my brother’s old terrible smartphone in case I needed to call anyone; the phone was pretty much always out of battery. It was only within the last six months - halfway through my second year of university - that I got an actual honest-to-god good smartphone. This stuff becomes relevant again later, during the Pokémon GO sequences.

(As I said earlier, I didn’t have a roommate, but my neighbour did - his roommate kept strange hours, and I’m pretty sure most nights he didn’t come back to accommodation to sleep. They got along, but there was an arrangement in place there.)

The image of seeing someone at meals but never speaking to them struck me as a fairly strong one - in student accommodation, you’re forced to interact with people because you use the same amenities, but the extent to which you actually communicate with those people is a matter of personal choice. The narration uses the word “sit”, which I think implies a lack of understanding of that element of choice - you don’t sit together, therefore you cannot speak. The idea that you totally could sit together just doesn’t occur to you.

Anyway, panels 25-33 take place immediately outside the building. With public buildings like this, people who smoke are unlikely to stray far from the door - and the smell lingers for a while after they’re finished. Public smoking has always been one of my pet hates - I’m asthmatic - but I consider the extent to which it bothers me to be something of a character flaw. The protagonist of Retrace Steps is kinda built of flaws like this: things which sound reasonable but are rooted in their lack of empathy.

The narration uses the word “ramble” to describe the text sent to your roommate - later on, we learn that the word “rant” might’ve been more accurate.

This is the point where the story itself notes that it’s a Friday night - a fact which was previously stated in the very first line of its description. The idea of not doing anything on a Friday night is a pretty common symbol for loneliness; it’s the night when most people go out with friends, at the conclusion of the workweek. Tropes are tools - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The other symbol for loneliness in this sequence is slightly less obvious, I think - it’s when the reader kicks a single stone out onto the path. The narration notes that they “don’t know” why they did that; this was intended to mirror the story’s central mystery. In the original version, they kicked the stone from the path back in amongst the rest - the idea being that they’d kinda fallen by the wayside, and wanted not to be alone. I kinda go back and forth on which version I prefer, but they get the same thing across.

Panels 34-35 are each “unique” images, in that they only recur in the credits. It felt like a waste to spend a long time drawing complicated images like this without reusing them in any capacity, but I’m glad I did.

The first of these unique images was supposed to convey the city’s emptiness in a clear way. It’s probably one of my favourites, even if it’s pretty rough in places. The forced perspective is more strongly felt in this image than in any other in the fanventure, and it led me to mess up the scale of the protagonist - this was something that I only fixed after the comic was otherwise pretty much done.

I was on the fence as to whether or not to include the billboard. A lot of the imagery in the fanventure is very on-the-nose, but the billboard is easily the most blatant in this respect - the protagonist completely ignores the concept of self-improvement so they can play Pokémon GO. I ended up showing the panel to an uncredited friend, and they convinced me it was a good idea to keep it in.

The Pokémon GO stuff is pretty much when the fanventure jumps the shark, to be honest. You can tell, because the command - “Pokemon GO on your phone” - is a reference to a dumb thing Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 American presidential election.

See, the thing is, the vast majority of the game’s mechanics are designed to encourage going outside and interacting with others - you can ignore or circumvent this, but it’ll cost you one way or another. Which is fascinating to me! The game is easiest if you go out of your way to make friends with other people who play the game. This is a common theme throughout much of Nintendo’s output - and it somehow usually feels less cynical than the kinds of forced interaction you find in many other mobile games.

The bit that’s really fascinating, however, is the lengths people go to avoid these inconveniences. They’ll buy both versions of each new Pokémon game, rather than trading with someone who has the version they didn’t buy! They’ll buy a second Nintendo DS, just so they can get the Pokémon from one game to another! I can’t begrudge them, because I’ve certainly done similar things myself in the past, but I think you can certainly frame it in a way where it looks like all these gamers treat social interaction as an obstacle to overcome. Who’d’ve thought?

The narration on panel 37 ended up going through several revisions, thanks to feedback from Gitaxian. Back when I was new to the Homestuck Discord, Gitaxian was one of the people who made me feel welcome - we both really like this one obscure essay about the live-action Transformers movies (and totally recommend that you should read it). He responded pretty positively to Everything Is Red Now, a Spider-Man comic I made over a year ago, and was my first choice for a prereader on Retrace Steps.

Gitaxian found the sequence in its original form to be a little over-detailed, and suggested that I change its tone from “explaining the game” to “complaining about the game”. He also noted that making it “rantier” would be a way of concretely validating the roommate’s perspective. I followed his advice, and I’m much happier with where the story ended up as a result.

Knowing I’d be revisiting these panels later in the story, I ended up taking the time to polish them up a little: I added details of a fence and path in the background, and tweaked the hand in the foreground. By this point, I was starting to get pretty tired of drawing; of the project in general. I��d put aside other things I was working on, and had academic assignments to deal with as well.

Panel 40 is one of a couple of panels that I feel would benefit from similar polishing. The idea was that it’d be a top-down view of the street, with two streetlamps providing light. The round shadows would give the impression of a pair of eyes or binoculars, with the lampposts themselves being pupils - tying into the paranoia described in the narration.

I thought that, by zooming out and letting the darkness creep into frame, I’d be able to force something of a tonal shift - and I think I was reasonably successful in this regard, particularly as the colours of the site itself flip once more. The prose also shifts slightly in tone, as the tail-end of the rant leads into the realisation that something’s wrong.

In its original form, people were confused by the image - the shading wasn’t nearly heavy enough, and the composition was unusual. This is where the art style works against me; I only have two colours to work with, and it can be hard to distinguish between detail and shadow at such a low resolution.

(There’s an animated music video for SIAMÉS’ “The Wolf” which uses a similar monochrome-plus-red palette to Retrace Steps - I saw it long before development on the story started and forgot about it until just now, so I don’t think it was an influence on the fanventure, but it’s definitely worth a watch!)

In the very first draft of the script, the protagonist found the key to their room in their hood. Seriously. Like, it’d start raining, they’d put their hood up and there’d be the key. I couldn’t think of a good ending, so I just came up with something daft and called it a day. The “doughnut offering” aspect of the story didn’t appear until I redrafted the script, a little ways into the film’s development (probably before we shot anything), but I can’t remember exactly how it came about. Originally, the script simply ended with the door getting slammed shut - the last line being a “what the actual fuck” from Sam/Alice.

(At the time when I was writing the story, I didn’t make a habit of buying mini doughnuts. I still don’t, except for on some occasions when I’m eating at a friend’s house and want to bring something low-commitment - even then, it’s usually cookies or muffins or full-sized doughnuts. Presumably, it was Retrace Steps which influenced that particular habit.)

On at least a literal level, the story’s message is “buy people doughnuts if you want them to be friends with you”. But naturally the actual message - and, I think, the reality - is that it’s not so transactional; really it’s just about assuming the best of people and being nice to them. Of course, there’s plenty of pitfalls in that approach - I’d be tempted to write a whole ‘nother story about them, if I didn’t think it’d end up being a little too dark and deconstructive. Be nice! That’s all I’m saying.

At least when I was writing the script, I’d actually planned for the protagonist to buy doughnuts from the local Sainsbury’s store. We have a Tesco store as well, plus a bunch of bigger supermarkets, but the Sainsbury’s is usually the quietest - it’s expensive and poorly-stocked. Plus, I just felt like it’d look better on-camera.

(If you’re not from the UK, all you need to know is that Tesco and Sainsbury’s are the two biggest supermarket chains. Well, apparently Asda overtook Sainsbury’s last month, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I’d say they’re generally pretty-much-indistinguishable, but at least in my mind I associate Sainsbury’s more closely with the middle classes - Tesco, meanwhile, is ubiquitous.)

When it came to adapting the script, I realised I could use any supermarket I wanted, and I picked Tesco. Specifically an “Express” store, which is a smaller shop found in town centres and the like. It fitted the story better - and besides, I’ve always liked the colloquialism “Tescos”. As in “aight mum I’m poppin off Tescos, our Jack says they’ve got a bogof on Lucozade, works out a quid for two litres so I’m buzzin, you after anythin or nah”.

(As part of let’s-call-it-research for the story, I found an eight-page thread on Mumsnet where a mum asks “am I being unreasonable to get really annoyed with people who call Tesco ‘Tescos’?” - this was immensely funny to me, and pretty much cemented my decision to use a real supermarket in the story as opposed to a made-up one.)

So yeah, panels 41-44 take place outside this Tescos. It was my brother - credited as “patipon” - who noted that I needed to use more solid black in the image. Most of what we discussed about the story took place in voice calls, which is a shame; historically, it’s been uncommon for me to solicit him for feedback on projects like this one. I consulted him on several of this story’s panels - he devotes much more time to graphics and artwork than I do - and his suggestions were always useful.

The prose on panel 43 is probably one of the bits I’m most proud of. It’s an awkward mix of metaphors coming from a character who isn’t used to being able to think when they’re at this particular place. I like the phrase “fumbled passes in the aisles” a lot.

(Gospar, one of my IRL friends and another prereader on Retrace Steps, occasionally graces us with the saying “ah, another day, another butchered social interaction”. Meanwhile, I went through a short-but-embarassing phase of butchering the trivial social interaction of “how are you?” by replying “I’m here” - something which I can’t excuse, but which I sure can immortalise in a webcomic.)

(All of this talk of Tescos reminds me of a draft I’ve had sitting around on my hard drive forever - the beginning of a first chapter which I wrote early in secondary school. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic snow-covered Britain where people travel around in sailboats on skis, and opens with some guy going into a buried Tescos for supplies. There, he runs into some orphan, who persuades the guy to let him hitch a ride on the snow-boat - snoat? Sure, whatever, snoat. The twist was going to be that the guy was planning to nuke some settlement, for reasons which I never wrote down and have since forgotten, and the kid would work this out and have to kill the guy to stop him. I note this simply to say that, while my stories may have gotten slightly less dumb and bad since I started writing, it seems that Tescos will be an enduring feature.)

(Wintry post-apocalyptic settings will also be an enduring feature, come to think of it: around the time I was writing Retrace Steps, I was also running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for some friends which was basically standard fantasy - only it was set on an infinite-in-every-direction ski slope. I’m not a very good Dungeon Master, so I let the campaign die after a handful of sessions over the course of the year - which is a shame, because I’d planned a KILLER TWIST for that story too. Anyway, enough nonsense - back to Pokémon GO.)

I suppose at this point I should note that the two Pokémon you run into are Dugtrio and Magneton. These two are the evolved forms of Diglett and Magnemite, and are kinda-unique in that they’re literally just three of their previous stage grouped together. Hopefully, the symbolism of someone trying to obtain these Pokémon - and only succeeding after offering them a berry - should be clear enough.

(Note that the narration on panel 46 says you’re “not sure why this thing wants the berry” - at this point in the story, the protagonist doesn’t understand the significance of gestures like this.)

(I’ve yet to obtain either of these Pokémon in-game myself; Diglett and Magnemite are surprisingly hard to come by.)

The second half of the fanventure - from panel 51 all the way to panel 100 - takes place back inside the corridor. There’s a lot in the way of repeated panels with very little narration here - I was going for a more introspective tone, and this seemed like a good way to achieve that.

On panel 52, the narration notes that you plan to message your internet friends, then call your parents. It’s a little beat, but I felt like there was something kinda sad about the idea of having a closer connection with people you’ve never met than with your own parents. This is a pretty irrational way of looking at it - in my experience, most people on the internet who talk about their parents have pretty frayed relationships with them. Besides, there are plenty of cases where random peers will be better-equipped to help with specific problems - it’s just a case of balancing that against the fact that your own parents will probably care about you far more than any of those people.

I wanted to convey the image of someone who has the vast majority of their social interactions online. This theme is crucial to Homestuck itself, but while Homestuck demonstrates it by communicating its story pretty much entirely in chatlogs, in Retrace Steps I try to communicate it by showing everything except the chatlogs. Homestuck kills off everyone except a bunch of internet friends and their guardians; Retrace Steps just quietly omits everyone except a bunch of strangers standing in a room ha ha ha whoops spoilers.

Anyway, on panel 53, we start to see an environmental change caused by these strangers. For the first time, it seems like you’re not completely alone in this world.

The light's motion-activated - it turns on when you open the door, and then turns off again after around ten minutes. You've been gone much longer than that... meaning somebody else must have triggered it since then.

While working on this commentary, I decided that the original text of panel 55 - present in the story since its original release on 04/04/2019 and preserved in the above quote - was kinda overwrought and clumsy. Usually I’m pretty loathe to make edits to a story after it’s out on the internet, but this one felt acceptable - “Why was the light on when you arrived?” is much more succinct way of communicating what’s going on.

This panel’s artwork is also pretty clumsy - in case you’re having trouble parsing it, that’s supposed to be your head at the bottom. I tried to put a bit of light shading on it, but I’m not really happy with the result. Like I say, at this point I was getting pretty tired of drawing. Nah, I’m not changing it.

On panel 58, there’s a rare bit of onomatopoeia as you finally think to knock on the door. The negative space encroaches in from the right... but what does it hide?

Oh hey, it’s your roommate!

I think to a certain extent, this is another confusing image - Gitaxian observed that it didn’t really make much sense spatially. It’s kinda supposed to be a side-on cutaway, but that doesn’t really come across - I briefly tried adding a wood grain, to communicate that it’s the open door, but that didn’t make much sense at this scale and only confused matters further. In the end, I tweaked the boundary between the door and the corridor to give the impression of a couple of hinges and called it a day.

Panel 61 is, I guess, the big twist. You wanted to know where everyone is? Surprise! They’re in your room! Having a party! And you weren’t invited!

I wanted the reader to have a second to contemplate this, so the next couple of panels swap back-and-forth between you and the doorway. To underscore the silliness of the twist, one of the people in the back takes a big long sluuuurp from their solo cup - this breaks the spell, and you point for them all to leave.

It’s panel 67 that breaks the narration for the first time in the story. I wanted to present the roommate’s dialogue as a sharp contrast to the inner voice of the protagonist - it’s full of abbreviations, completely devoid of punctuation, and written entirely in solo-cup-red. The roommate simply sighs that you “never change”, and slams the door on you (with yet another cheeky bit of onomatopoeia appearing on-panel).

The idea that being around other people somehow supplants your inner thoughts is a very deliberate one - the commands cease entirely, the narration goes away. In these moments, we see you how everyone else sees you - as someone who’s pretty much entirely silent. On panels 69-70 there’s simply some ellipses, which kinda lengthen into a brief return of narration as you’re left on your own once more.

The reason this party’s taking place in “YOUR room” - as noted in the narration on panel 71 - is simply to show a feeling of entitlement. On the surface, you’re mad that you can’t get into your room - but you're also just feeling like people should invite you to parties.

Hopefully, the questions on panel 72 and panel 74 should be answering themselves by this point. You don’t know it at the time, but these will prove to be the last pieces of narration in the story.

After you’ve had some time to sit in the corridor and feel sorry for yourself, your roommate starts feeling bad and comes out to offer a sincere-but-backhanded apology. We’re into the last quarter of the comic now - starting with panel 76, there’s no text outside of what is spoken by your roommate.

The command used to advance to the next page has changed from “->” to “-->”. The story isn’t about just one person any more.

(This device is lifted directly from Homestuck, which switched from the command “==>” - used when the comic had four main characters - to “======>” when it swapped to a cast of twelve. Many fanventures - such as Oceanfalls - riff on this concept further, and mine is no exception.)

Out of all the text in the story, I’m probably happiest with the monologue on panel 79 and panel 80. I think it speaks for itself.

(As I always find myself saying, these commentaries kinda show that I don’t trust my stories to speak for themselves. I did hold off on writing this one for a couple of months, but there was lots of behind-the-scenes stuff I wanted to get on the record and I ultimately couldn’t help myself. The truth is that pretty much nobody reads these things - the commentaries, or the stories they’re for - and so the whole thing’s pretty much for my own benefit. I get to declare what I was going for, you get to decide whether or not I got it.)

Panels 81-95 are pretty much a frame-by-frame animation of you offering your roommate the doughnuts, and them leading you into the party. It’s basically two actions, but I try my best to draw them out as long as possible - by this point, the story’s said pretty much everything it needs to, and now it’s all just... emotional payoff? I feel like I’ve never been much good with character arcs, but I’m proud of how this turned out.

As promised, panels 96-99 are a straight repeat of panels 17-19 - the automatic lights turn off and the site’s colours flip for the last time, neatly mirroring the story’s first two panels in its last two.

Back in the kitchen, she opens the cupboard again and grabs the box of mini doughnuts.

She returns to her door and knocks again.

           ALICE    I bought doughnuts?

There is a long pause. The door suddenly opens and Bob pokes his head around, reaches out to grab like three doughnuts from the box, and then darts back inside. The door slams shut again.

           ALICE    Hey!

VII. Animation is harder than I thought.

This story is titled Retrace Steps because, in its original script form, it mostly focused on somebody retracing their steps in the hopes that they’d find their keys. The fanventure, however, drops this aspect of the plot entirely - leaving it with something of an artifact title. Maybe I should’ve come up with an alternate title, but I didn’t. On some level, it now simply refers to the trip to Tescos - on another, I think it implies that something’s been lost. I think it was the nagging feeling that the title no longer held enough significance that led me to create the story’s final flash.

If you haven’t read Homestuck, all you need to know is that pages with commands that are prefixed with an “[S]” are usually longer animations set to music, used for particularly important moments in the plot (or, just as often, for random chicanery). Having a flash of this sort is a point of prestige for fanventures - especially if it approaches any real length of complexity. I’d vaguely liked the idea of letting music play a fairly prominent role in the short film, and it felt right to return to those roots.

There wasn’t really any question as to which song I’d pick, either. See, back in college, I ran this terrible meme page called Summer Meme Sundae. It was absolute garbage. Please don’t click that link. Basically, its deal was that - for the latter half of its run - I tried to introduce something of a plot across the “memes”, wherein the page’s mascot got castaway and wound up in Australia. It was very silly and absolutely incomprehensible. Like I say, don’t look at it. This isn’t reverse psychology, it’s legitimately unfunny and bad. Anyway, the last post I made was something of a rudimentary flash in its own right - set to “Pizza for Breakfast” from The Meme Friends’ Last Week’s Pizza EP. I know basically nothing about The Meme Friends, but I thiiink they were some randos on 4chan’s /mu/ board.

It’s fair to say that the aesthetic of Last Week’s Pizza, which includes such tracks as “Cold Pizza”, “Everyone I Ever Loved is Now Dead”, and “Executive Pizza Party (Business)”, kinda appeals to me. If you’re reading Retrace Steps, the chances that you’ve heard the track before are next to nil - it comes with zero baggage. Moreover, it’s from a freely-distributed independent project created by a collective that hasn’t put out anything in years - it’s extremely unlikely that anybody’s going to come and tell me off for using it.

I specifically picked “No Forks, No Knives, It’s Pizza Time” because I felt like its tone was closest to that of the story, and because it has a relatively short runtime of just over two minutes - which still ended up being a little too long, but I don’t think it turned out too bad.

The flash opens on the image of the door in the corridor from the previous panel, which is gradually cut into smaller and smaller pieces by black lines until it disappears altogether. Cue title. One of the reasons I like the flash format - aside from the lack of antialiasing - is that you really have no way of telling how long the video’s going to be or what happens except by watching it. There’s none of YouTube’s functionality for skipping around - you’re forced to sit and watch the entire thing start-to-finish without stopping.

(I think Retrace Steps is definitely best read in a single sitting, and the final flash is a big part of that. My fourth prereader, Multivac of the Homestuck Discord server, was unable to watch the flash at first - I forget why - and found the story unclear. After watching the flash, he seemed to backpedal on this sentiment. Time will tell whether his initial assessment was correct; I picked Multivac because he’d previously responded positively to Everything Is Red Now, and because I’d usually consider his reaction to something to be a pretty decent rough baseline for the general reaction of the Homestuck Discord server.)

When stuff starts happening, it starts happening fast - you see the protagonist’s descent down the stairs again, but this time you see all three panels at once, as if there’s more than one person on the stairs. The minute you get outside, you start seeing entirely new people - many with red accents of some kind. Someone smoking, someone who’s been shopping, someone with a rucksack...

The people outside Tescos had a little more in the way of thought put into them. On the left, there’s a homeless person, and someone walking by with headphones on. Over on the far right, there’s someone holding their phone out in front of them - they’re wearing a hat famously worn by Ash Ketchum in the Pokémon anime, just in case there’s any doubt as to what game they’re playing. Someone sorta tired-looking crosses away from the rest. Everyone in the frame’s kinda collectively ignoring the two people holding hands.

(Textually, Retrace Steps is a story about... platonic fulfillment? If that’s a phrase that makes sense? My personal take is that the protagonist of this story struggles to create and maintain friendships. However, I tried to leave room for interpretation - particularly in terms of this section of the flash - and I think a reading definitely exists that brings in more romantic subtext.)

(Actually, I already kinda explored this last year - much less effectively - in Another Son. Like in that story, I wanted the audience to understand why the characters are lonely - but I used a much more sympathetic approach this time around, which crucially makes you actually want the story’s protagonist to stop being lonely. Something which bothers me about certain stories - and this is a really common failing of music videos, which lack the introspection of prose - is when the narrative takes its protagonist and frames things in a way which says “you should feel sorry for this person” while they proceed to do really unsympathetic things. If you’re going to give them a victory, the audience should feel like they actually deserve it!)

After a brief segment where you finally catch that Dugtrio, the flash cycles back through the various locations until we arrive back in the corridor. This sequence was added mostly to pad for time, but also serves to bring things full circle for the flash’s final shots. On the final beats of each bar - which fall on a higher note - the colours flip; this was purely an aesthetic choice.

The next section of the flash is just credits, which I kinda wanted to use to lull the audience into a false sense of security. See, the original plan was for the final image of the comic to just be you, standing completely alone, holding a solo cup - an ending which I think is much more ambiguous.

I still think this original ending provokes a much stronger emotional reaction - and indeed, it did at the time. As Gospar said, “also you sure you wanna keep the sad end / I think the fade out on others and the static / sort of implied they hadn’t changed?” Gitaxian agreed - “I think having the crowd fade to just the two of them, and then ending there, would be the best ending”. I’d already considered doing that, but had decided against it for reasons I’ve forgotten.

See, by this point in the story, you’ve made this connection with your roommate - but everyone else remains a stranger. I like this ending for its optimism: instead of saying “you're still alone”, it says “this is a good start”.

Oh, and remember the solo cup that’s been sitting up next to the ad? Yeah, that’s gone now.

She protests and knocks on the door again. Just before she kicks it, it suddenly opens again. Bob has like three doughnuts in his mouth.

           BOB    These are pretty good actually.

He grabs the whole box and opens the door fully, lightly beckoning for Alice to enter. She does so. The door closes.

We cut to inside the room. Everyone is standing in cramped, uncomfortable silence. Somebody hands Alice a red plastic cup.

CUT TO BLACK.

THE END

VIII. Knowing when to shut up is harder than I thought.

I just went to Tescos and bought a box of mini doughnuts.

(I didn’t set out to do that, but they were selling a single box for next to nothing and I felt like it was too serendipitous to ignore.)

It’s the end of the year. Classes finished over a month ago. I always end up staying for a good while after, because doing so gives me more time to work on projects like this, but most of my friends end up leaving before me - in other words, I don’t have anyone to share the doughnuts with.

(They have strawberry-flavoured icing and multicoloured sprinkles, and they taste frikkin’ great, so I can’t say I’m too beat up about that.)

I’ve played very little Pokémon GO since I started working on this fanventure. I... think I kinda ruined it for myself?

When I finished Retrace Steps, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to do the fanventure format for a while. That lasted all of about four days, after which I started Huskyquest. It seems silly to give away this new fanventure’s plot here, so all I’ll say is this: it’s got dogs in it, it’s got more than three colours, and you should definitely drop it a like because I’ll hopefully be picking it back up again pretty soon.

In the meantime, feel free to peruse all the other things I made on this blog! There should be another project coming out here very soon, so if you wanna be informed when that happens, drop me a follow either here or on twitter. And of course, if you have any questions, my ask box is always open. Thanks for reading!

...You’re still here?

It’s over.

Pokémon GO home.

> Go.

[fightevilandthengetblownup]

My Design V

---

“INSIDE THE MIND OF A HUNTER-KILLER: A profile of the unprofilable. By Freddie Lounds

I met her at a coffee shop in a small town in Missouri. There were normal, every day people all around us going about their business. Ordering coffee. Wiping their children’s hands. Typing a novel that will never come to pass. All without knowing they were within killing distance of the most enigmatic murderess in the United States of America.

Her name is Joanna Beth Harvelle. She is a blonde, 5″4 and 117lbs. She grew up in a small town in Nebraska as an only child, her father passing away when she was a child and her mother both caring and over-protective. On paper, her last known location was at the University of Nebraska where she flunked out of her arts course within six months.

On very special paper, deep within the confines of the criminal behavioural profiling unit at the FBI, her last known location - at least according to her - was in Massachusetts where she left three bodies decapitated and the heads subsequently burnt. Such description is in her own words, and said with a smile…”

Will did not get the chance to continue the article as a meaty hand slammed the top of his laptop down. Following the arm up, he was unsurprised to find the enraged face of Jack Crawford staring back at him.

“How is it that Freddie Lounds can get a face to face with that monster, and you, my prize profiler, can’t even tell me where to start looking for her?” Jack practically growled the words out, snarl upon his lips more animal than human.

Will rolled back in his chair away from the desk, hands dropping to between his knees as he dropped his gaze. It was hard to be impassive when he had been interrupted from reading about her, reading someone else’s take on the woman that followed him everywhere in the last year. He had been able to distract Jack for months with other cases, other profiles, other murderers. He had been able to pretend that her words didn’t haunt his mind the same as Garrett Hobbs when walking through a scene beside the other man. He had been able to hide her from the other - all the bits of her that followed him around, that twisted him about, and seduced his very senses from him. He had even been able to conceal her from Jack’s spy in Hannibal. Of that, Will was exceptionally proud.

“Freddie Lounds is an easier person for someone to reach out to.” He found his voice falling into a soft contemplation, as if mulling the words over in his mind rather than having rehearsed them the moment he saw the interview go live. It was true though, Freddie Lounds would have been the easiest person for her to contact if she simply wanted to speak with someone. Easier than having made her way into Will’s home, easier than having followed Will to crime scenes, than having convinced him to appear and speak with her. Easier by far than infiltrating Quantico and entering his classroom. “And you know Freddie, she would have been gnawing at the bit to publicise something like this.”

“Ah yes, Freddie and her love for a good story.” Will barely batted an eye at the tone from the other man, as Jack seemed to talk himself out of the fury towards Will himself and redirected towards the writer of the article. It barely bothered Will as he stood to leave, headed for the lab for the most recent case, that he was able to manipulate the other man as efficiently as he did. “Any leads on the new case?”

“Not just yet.” His reply was left behind with the other man as Will left the room.

—

“ ‘She orders another round of drinks for us both, and leaves a 25% tip for the waitress who brings them over. “I used to work in hospitality,” She says, the affectionate smile on her face that of someone who knows the hatred of customer service, “I know how much that work sucks.” I find myself nodding in agreement at that idea. “ Brian recited across the labratory as the trio worked over the most recent body. “Sounds like a woman after my own heart…”

“A woman who will rip your heart out of your chest cavity, you mean.” Beverly responded, hand currently working to clean off a cut across the throat of their current case body. “Definitely someone you should try to meet, Brian.”

“She has a boyfriend, or a husband perhaps by now. Regardless, she wouldn’t be interested in you Brian.” The words announced his entrance into the workspace, Will barely surpressing the desire to turn around and leave at the three sets of eyes turning to look at him. Before Beverly could open her mouth to ask, he held up a hand and moved towards the group. “She’s not that hard to read into, and if you’ve ever seen her crime scene photos theres always some sentimental jewellery on. Joanna Harvelle isn’t on the market.”

“You sound a bit dejected there, Will. You been profiling her and got beat to the punch?” Jimmy’s quip cut through the slightly awkward silence that Will’s observations had brought up, and got a laugh from the other two investigators as he moved to sit down on the edge of one of the metal desks. “Freddie Lounds really is cold hearted to take that interview, and expose others to that psychopath.”

“Pretty sure she’s not counted as a psychopath, Jimmy, that bit about family clearly meaning that there is human connections in her life.” Beverly corrected, eyes focussed on determining the depth of the wound on their current victim.

The three men fell into a contemplative silence as two of them refocussed upon their tasks and the third thought over the other man’s words. It didn’t need much thinking though, Will knew that he was dejected at the idea his bloody angel wasn’t something he could attain. That she was only for looking, but not for touching. She reminded him of Alana in that way, however the restriction was much harder to follow through with as he thought over when he would next be free to dive into Freddie Lounds’ website.

As he removed debris from the fingertips, Jimmy broke the silence. “ “I wouldn’t call them murders,” the woman said, a hand rubbing at the back of her neck, “I would call it a civic duty. Perplexing as that may sound. I mean, I love Batman but he’s wrong - if you kill murderers, the number of killers does change with enough gone”. The fact a lot of those victims of hers are unidentifiable… Makes you wonder who they are, doesn’t it?”

“Makes you wonder that a murderer is quoting a comic book like it validates her actions.” Beverly shot back, brow raised before asking, “Is there any perp tissue under those nails?”

“Nah, this is just dirt-gunk from the look of it.” The other replied, wiping the contents into a tube before starting on the next nail. “Batman is an interesting choice to pick though - a murderer quoting the hero who refuses to kill.”

“She doesn’t quote him because they are different, she quotes him because they are the same. She sees herself ridding her world, or rather her country, of those that intend to hurt it.” Will finds himself speaking aloud as much as speaking to himself. His eyes glaze as the pendulumn wipes for him, unaware of the pause of the other three in their work. He rarely empathised in front of others, and the trio had not seen him ever perform the task in front of them or about something other than crime scenes. “Jo is a fighter, she’s a vigilante driven to save those both knowing and unknowing of her work to do so. Like Batman. And like him, she has a secret identity, a secret life, a normal life…”

His voice trailed off, eyes raised to look across the labratory as he saw her approaching him this time - her coming to him, rather than him always chasing her - bare feet padding across the cold concrete of the floor. Her hair was mussed, pulled back into a pony tail but tendrils draping around her face which smiled warmly at him. She was dressed to sleep, he knew that, somehow, from the white man’s shirt that swallowed her frame and the bare legs that showed beneath it. His bloody angel left a trail of bloody footprints behind her as she moved her way to him.

She was in the midst of another of her killing sprees - on a hunt - and met Lounds just that morning. She had spoken with the redhead at length, laughed at the right times and made the right jokes to come off as approachable, and shared her psyche for the world in a way she would refuse to with anyone of a psychiatric profession. His lure shone brightly under the other woman’s light, and she had read the early edition of the story that night before she planned to sleep. She knew it would reach the person it was intended for, she knew he would see her. That through Freddie Lounds, she would be able to reach out and touch him after going silent from his waking life for three months.

The thought reached him as she did, hand outstretched to his cheek, and as Will leant into it the vision disappeared - the trio of investigators staring at him from over the body of their current case - he wished that it had been real.

---

The clock read 2:37 in the dark room when he woke with a start. There was the sweat that his nightmares always brought, but it was cold on his skin as the breeze blew through the room.

His family were still at rest, not disturbed by the disturbance that had woke him, and he could see them laying sleeping, dozing or relaxing before the fireplace. They were not what had woken him.

As he turned to the other side, the disturbance became clear - hair glowing white in the pale illumination of the room from his laptop, doe eyes staring back at him. The screen lighting her face still showed the article that had summarised her in all ways but the truth. He had poured over it all day, and fell alseep to the warm glow of it - before the truth he had been searching for it in had woken him to the reality again.

“Hi again.” Her voice cut through the quiet night noises, one hand tucked under her head as she looked back at him. It had been her arrival, her presence in his bed, that had woken him from slumber but it was her voice that woke him from his dreams. “How did you like my interview?”

“Freddie Lounds is a hack.” Will thought his voice sounded rough to his ear, crackled from sleep but harsh in intent as well. “She wrote you all wrong. Too sweet, too friendly, too normal.”

“Am I not sweet, or friendly, or normal, Will?” It was the question for the ages, and he rotated to lie facing her. Seeing her like this was almost like a dream, like he would wake up drenched in real sweat this time, longing for it to have been real. 

He shook his head at her question, mimicking her position as he whispered back, “You are, but not like she protrayed you. Her words were fake, making it out that you are not how you are. She didn’t want you to be dangerous, so she removed the danger from you.” His fingers twitched to reach out for her, fearing the moment they touched that she would disappear in smoke or blood like his nightmares. “Freddie Lounds was afraid of the real you, so pretended that it wasn’t there.”

“And are you afraid of me? I’ve told you who I am, what I do, why I do it...” Jo’s eyes blazed back at him, dark as the dark night around them, as she raised a pale brow back at him. “You’ve seen me as I am. But are you afraid?”

“You are not a monster...”

His words got one of those bourbon rich laughs from her, the scent of vanilla, metal and chocolate wafting over him as she rolled onto her back laughing. The smell clogged his senses, reminding him of the first time he found her in his home, on the very same bed. And that had been real. His dreams never quite managed to include the essential scent of her, and he found himself moving towards it, drowning in the intoxicating safety and danger that rolled off of her. 

“But you are mean...” Will found the words coming to his head as he caught sight of the laptop screen, her words written in pixels staring back at him, over the top of her profile. “That article was mean. You did it to poke Jack and the bureau - that you could speak to them but they couldn’t reach you.”

“I must be pickin’ up some bad habits from some friends of mine then.” Jo’s voice softened, the humor still evident as she glanced to him out of the corner of her eye. “But really I was meanin’ it for you. To remind you of what we discussed.”

“Those friends of yours who aren’t real - aren’t human - and those that you claim aren’t people at all that you kill.” He raised himself up on one elbow, eyes flickering between her face half in darkness and half in light - so like her being - and the screen. ‘ “People are afraid of what they don’t know. Of what they can’t explain. I live without that fear cause I know what’s really out ther” ‘ is in bold on the screen, highlighted by his mouse as he had drifted off.

The woman rolled to her side again to face him, those eyes beaming up at him as if they were staring straight into his soul and trying to split him apart. “You still don’t believe me, do you?” He wishes she had never said the words, squeezing his eyes shut at the hurt tone and the ache it stabbed into his chest. She believed him about Hannibal, and Abigail, and everything, but he couldn’t believe her about her world. His mind was cruel to dream this up tonight of all nights.

As he felt the bed dip slightly, as if she was moving to stand up, he found himself reaching out. Grasping. Tugging and pinning. His palms pressing her shoulders back into the bed as he hovered above her. Blonde hair spread across the spare pillow, spilling about her as she blinked up at him - the fear and uncertainty in other’s eyes when they looked at him missing. He could feel the cold breeze on his back again, where his shirt stuck to his skin, like icy knives but that melted as Will leant down to press against her and her lips.

There was a gasp, whether his or hers he couldn’t say, and then hands pushing to move him back, confusion on her face to match his that she was solid and didn’t disappear. That the smell of chocolate and vanilla and danger was still flooding his senses. “Will, what-”

He cut her off again, tugging at her, probing at her lips with his tongue and a hand sliding into the golden tendrils around her. She wasn’t disappearing like the figment in the lab. She wasn’t taunting him with bloody hands like the nightmares he would wake screaming from. She wasn’t even pulling away from him like Alanna had. She was pliable and warm and leaning back up into him like a vine into sunlight. 

“Shh, let me keep dreaming. Don’t let me wake up...”

He couldn’t let her ask her questions, break the foggy dream he was finding himself in with the reality that this wasn’t allowed. That he wouldn’t trust her like she trusted him, that he couldn’t do this, that she couldn’t be this for him. That they couldn’t be anything outside his dreams. He couldn’t wake up from the dream and have nothing to grasp onto again. 

All he could do was sink into her lips, her arms, her scent and pray that he wouldn’t wake up this time.

---

The alarm clock was screeching when he rolled over, the sounds of grunting and yips from his family at the disruption making him roll over to turn it off. The clock said 6:25.

Will blinked his eyes open blearily, sleep crust caught and rubbing at his eyes as he slumped back against his pillow thinking of the dream from the night before.

Normally his dreams were not so grounded - there had been no oninous stag-man outside the window, no twisted lighting, no blood seeping from behind her hands - yet so far out of the realm of reality for him. He was always driven to the line of insanity by the plague of dreams he had, but that one had thrown him far over the cliff and into the oblivion of madness chasing after her. 

Like he would if she was really in his grasp again, he thought. Will rubbed a hand across his face, before he rolled onto his otherside towards where she had laid in his dreams. Towards the laptop screen still angled straight at him.

His hand drifted across to where she had been, before pulling back like an electric shock at the warmth still on the side of the bed. Frowning, Will shifted over before being assualted by the scent of danger and safety, chocolate, vanilla and metal rust, as he sat upright swallowing down the lump in his throat at the reminder.

Will leant down to the pillow, finding several long, blonde hairs upon the pillow case before his eyes drew up to the computer screen.

Highlighted by the mouse, disjointed across the article but all able to be seen in order, were the words - “don’t” “Trust” “me” “we” “Can’t” “do this”.

[vengeancect]

you like making rpg maker games right? are there any reoccurring characters or themes that show up in them? who or what do you take inspiration from?

it’s a very weird surprise that anyone cares or knows enough about me to even ask this, like you’re genuinely that interested. i don’t think i can answer your questions, at least allow myself to answer them, but i can explain to you what the two games ARE, hopefully in the driest most neutral way that won’t make the audience in my head cringe    oh wow this didn’t go very well FUCK

i made the first one (skull island) i think starting on august 31st 2016. i stopped making it somewhere around late november. i made it purely because someone had kindly gifted me the program, and i felt like i’d be ungrateful if i didn’t make something with it. my initial idea was to just throw some awful 15 minute long thing together, use some “random” humor, show it to some people, they’ll laugh and forget about it and i’ll be free from this. but as it went on i felt compelled to put more things in it. my internet was going out often back then so i’d just be left alone working on it for hours on end. i made a starter area and then a hub area and then the 3 main areas and their respective secret events. as it went on, i had ideas and understood i wouldn’t be able to fully realize them due to my nonexisting talent. it was this very strange exhausting tightrope between shame and irony. i went from making areas to trying to draw my own assets, an extremely infuriating experience. i made a school, a city area leading into a park leading into a lab, and a night-time highway leading into a tunnel leading into my patience running out and me getting sick of this and just ending the game. everything about it is completely unbalanced. i went through the trouble of designing enemies even though i could never figure out how to make most of them attack during battles. i incorporated real chat logs and things i’d heard about in the past into their own “levels” and events. the “main character” was still just a stock rpgmaker sprite even though i had gone through the trouble of editing other sprites for characters to make them semi-original. very uncomfortable dialogue was written. you could get a whip as a weapon, from an NPC who tells you “you look good with it”. or something. the bgm for that area was text to speech voices saying “you were always sick, i was always sick”. it stopped being a joke, but it wasn’t serious, it instead became nonsense. there are no themes. there’s no inspiration. nothing could justify this.

when making it i remembered this text file i had from back in 2014, where i detailed areas and the plot of a game i wished i could make but never even tried to. it was about the world disappearing, the protagonist being the only human left alive. his name was mori. he’d find other characters eventually including a little boy who liked watching stars. i put no thought into how it would work, i guess i just unconsciously knew it couldn’t realistically be made without a lot of knowledge, hard work and talent. i thought it would be funny if i tried bringing those characters and areas into life ayway, into this stupid half-joke clusterfuck of a game. the stargazing kid does nothing but despair about how his existence is tainted, how he wants to “go back”, ie. go back to being an idea of something good. parts of that old text file flash by the screen constantly in the background. i made roleplay scenarios from when i was 13 into “””gameplay”””. like “follow this red line in a void, you are then led to a house (that is just a blue rectangle), go up the stairs and meet this naked faceless boy with a suicide note written into his body, who then blows up in a shower of blood and gore.” a random battle happens just before the final stretch of the game. it appears to be a mound of scrap metal and junk with an old TV sticking out the top. this is a reference to another character that appeared in the old concept. a “cool” bad boy character with a TV for a head. i guess that’s how you can tell it was written in 2014. the final boss is Mori, who talks about “leaving this world” through death. in a horrendously drawn replica of my bedroom, you find the original synopsis for the 2014 game, in the end it asks “what happened?” over and over again. the final bit of gameplay in the game is a calm scene with a character talking to you about how all of this was meaningless and you shouldn’t worry about it. you walk by a bunch of graves. the final screen is 3 graves, one for Mori and one for the stargazer, and one open grave for you. you jump in it and the game ends. a quick joke that could have gotten a laugh out of someone turned into a 3 month long self-indulgent masochistic shameful project of fetishized inability, then recorded and put on youtube to satisfy my digital hoarder compulsions.

OKAY NOW FOR THE OTHER ONE in 2017 i tried my hand at making some assets and characters for a game, another fucked up grand concept like the 2014 one and just as impossible to implement. shame got the better of me this time and i gave up. near the end of march 2018 a person i know had made a joke game on Unity just to get acclaimed to the engine. this one was actually successful, short, and made me laugh. i thought it would be funny to one-up said person and make a game myself. and then i tried. and then i learned i couldn’t do it and immediately lost interest. but for some reason i didn’t stop

instead i made safe room, which i developed for all of april and released late may this year. so i made it in less time than skull island, even though both games are just about an hour long, and with this one i had used almost entirely original assets. huh. i repurposed the characters and areas i drew in 2017 and made up a new “””story””” involving them, though some of the usual self depricating “hahaha wasted ideas asshole” humor came through in this one aswell, nowhere as much though. a young boy is stuck in the basement of some mysterious man who had presumably kidnapped him from somewhere. his condition is a mystery and so are the motives of his kidnapper. there is this smart-mouthed, incessant, gameplay interrupting voice constantly coming in and deriding him for everything, but at the same time almost empathizing with him. the voice is confused about it’s own existence. you have nothing to do but watch time go by mercilessly, dreaming to try escaping from your situation. there are no battles in this one. there are two puzzles except they don’t work. i couldn’t figure out how to make them work. i also didn’t care. i stole a lot of music, because in skull island i was terrified that someone would copyright me and hastily cobbled together a bunch of ear-splitting bullshit. at this point i was begging to just stop. stop doing this kind of shit. it’s not funny. it’s not cool how i made this despite not wanting to, despite having years of free time and infinite resources and tutorials on how do anything at my fingertips. this is just shameful. this time there’s 4 “levels” except one of them is like 5 minutes long. i wanted to go a little further with this barely-a-concept i made up. laziness had something else in mind, however. again the “inspiration” is taken from the strange internet interactions i had in the past. fake stories from other people. one trick pony. you go from a forest, to a small house in the “woods”, to a snowy, corrupted mountain taken from a stupid dream i had years ago, to a creepy museum. it’s more…polished than the last one? i guess? it has an unique text box. the main character’s sprite is edited. there’s a place where you have to jump to platforms. sometimes there’s “animated” sprites. i suppose it’s an improvement. the best, nicest looking thing in this game wasn’t made by me. you could play this with your eyes closed, though that’s absolutely not to the game’s detriment.

“You are locked in a room. Some time has passed, enough for you to start doubting everything. You have to escape, you guess, but it’s hard. It gets harder to do anything the more time goes by. You’re forced to depend on him, the person who brought you here in the first place. Most days, there’s nothing you can do. In the middle of all this, I came to exist. Let’s figure this out together, okay?“ this is it’s official description

oh god i hate this. oh man. oh wow what a fucking idiot i am. i can’t even tell if this is ignorant or just narcissistic. i’m just gonna leave this here and go away

[asklovelylaughter]

Dear Blog,

Seriously? Seriously. Not one single pony wants to know about… him? Are you all out of your minds?!

I mean, what the fuck? Here I am, trying so hard not to talk about it, trying to lead you on and give you tiny hints so you’ll be compelled to ask but… that’s all you want, isn’t it? Just tiny mentions in passing, no detail whatsoever! I know what your deal is. You don’t give a flying feather why I moved to Ponyville, why I lost all my friends and still pine after some guy. Some guy who, obviously, nopony cares about but me!! YOU DON’T CARE! It’s like I’m doing this whole blog thing for no reason! What’s the point of working through something via a blog when nopony who reads the blog cares about the thing I want to work through?!

Two questions. TWO! And neither of them are about Sparky! So you know what? Fine! I just WON’T talk about him EVER! You had your chance! I thought you might want to hear about, oh I don’t know, the only pony who I’ve ever loved. The pony who I STILL love with all of my heart. But no! I can’t believe this!

Whatever, okay? What. Ever. I might as well answer the questions about the shit that you all care about significantly more than some stupid Canterlot love story. But… UGH! I’m too mad to even LOOK at them right now! Fuck y-

...

Tears streamed down my hot cheeks. My head already throbbed with the sinus pressure. I stopped typing and slammed my laptop shut angrily… then angrily peeked at the screen to make sure I hadn’t shattered it. Nope, all clear. I closed it - gently this time - and shoved it to the side of my fluffy cloud cave.

Nopony cares. That’s all I could think. I threw my blanket over my head and kicked it under my hooves, wrapping myself up tightly like a burrito. I shut my eyes. No. Pony. Cares. I shoved a wad of blanket in my mouth and screamed. Stupid blog! Stupid ponies! Stupid, stupid Lovely! I scrunched up my face. Stupid stupid stupid stupid…

Why had I done this to myself? Why had I bothered to open my past to a bunch of “online” strangers! Even more… Why had I expected them to care? I’m just some random pony in a flood of more interesting ponies, and here I was expecting them to pay attention to me after a couple posts. I’m acting like such a pretentious bitch, I thought, trying to force them into asking questions like that. And now look at me! I’m throwing a stupid fucking hissy fit because they care about something else.

The air trapped around my face quickly grew too warm. I huffed and kicked the blanket off my body in a whirl of tangled glory. Then I shoved myself to my hooves and squeezed out of the cloud cave’s maw.

I flapped my wings and hovered in the air for a second. The cloud was shaped like a saucer, mostly flat with a bulge in the middle. Honestly, it wasn’t designed to be a home. I’d fashioned it myself out of stray clouds and set it juuuust outside of Ponyville’s jurisdiction so they couldn’t move it unchecked (and so I wouldn’t have to pay taxes.) I could get away with it for a few months, just enough time to save up for an actual, Cloudsdale-certified cloud home with solar powered insulation and properly solidified floors. But if it wasn’t reclaimed or registered by the weather team, it would drop all my belongings and fall victim to the self-moving magic of the Everfree Forest. Of course, I could keep moving it around myself and delay the inevitable, or keep fashioning new ones, but it was also inevitable that I would eventually be discovered squatting by Ponyville’s government. There was a lot of freedom in Equestria, but you couldn’t just steal clouds unchecked and live wherever you pleased. It was irresponsible and dangerous. Imagine hundreds of cloud homes accidentally sucked up into a rainstorm, or suddenly becoming self-moving and dropping occupants and their things unannounced into the woods. Not to mention, they weren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. I might be an artist, but sculpting clouds was some pretty advanced weather magic. I fluttered to the edge of the cloud facing Ponyville, folded my wings, and sat with my hind hooves dangling in the air.

As mentioned before, the night was really cold. But after five minutes of suffocating in that blanket, it was briefly refreshing. I sighed and gazed over Ponyville, watching the few lamps that were still lit. A pony or two quietly wandered the streets, their silhouettes barely distinguishable. They looked like black ants wandering across a navy blue sheet. (In the dark. Because… you know… night.) Even from here, I could pick up on their calmness, though I couldn’t tell how that calmness was affecting them. I guessed they might be feeling similar to how I was; dusted in silence.

“Why do you want to talk about me?”

His voice echoed in my head. I could still hear the way it fluctuated, the way his vocal chords gripped every word. I could practically feel his hoof wrapping around my shoulder again. I imagined, for whatever reason, that he might be sitting next to me. I spoke aloud.

“Because I love you, obviously,” I said.

I imagined him frowning. “Why in Equestria do you still love me? I told you to move on, didn’t I? I told you to find somepony else and get on with your life, didn’t I?”

I blushed and looked at my hooves. “I want to wait for you, though. M-maybe when you come back, you’ll realize how much you missed me and-”

“And what?” he interrupted. “I’ll probably have a new girlfriend by then.”

The words hurt, but they reflected my own painful thoughts, and I knew that. What if he found somepony else and realized exactly how shitty I’d been? What if he fell in love with her, and I never got a chance to reclaim what’s mine? I furrowed my eyebrows. “I… I really hope you don’t?” I reached for the space where he sat, and my hooves met empty cloud.

“Scarlet,” he said. His voice echoed. I looked up. Sparky towered over Ponyville like a giant. His hooves narrowly missed crushing multiple hay roofs. I could see every detail of his fur, how it curved over his cheeks and flowed down his slender neck. I remembered every blemish, every spot from his forelocks to his fetlocks. All the details that would soon fade into the past, I held them close to me. His sky blue eyes shone like moons beneath his milk chocolate hair. “I’m not going to wait for you,” he said. “Maybe when I come back, we’ll still be friends, but things are never going to be the way they were.”

“They can be, though! If I just try harder-” I protested.

He frowned at me. My heart panged with his expression of disapproval. “You ran out of chances.”

He was right. For a moment I remembered his breath on my ear, his hissing questions. I remembered the way his tail swung as he walked away. Oh, the things I wish I’d said…

“Sparky, wait!” I called into the night. The giant stallion of my imagination watched me carefully. Things I wish I’d said were things I’d already said a hundred times. As if it could make any difference. “I’m sorry… I’ll fix it, I promise.” He reacted the same way he always had: He shook his head. For a while, a long while, it’d been followed with something like, “I know you will.” But in the last few days of our relationship, he hadn’t said anything. He’d just shaken his head.

He faded. I stared at the space where I’d imagined his hooves, tucked between buildings. Somepony blew out a candle somewhere in their bedroom, and another window went black. I’ll fix it, I thought. Give me just one more chance.

I remembered talking to Sharpie a few weeks after the breakup. He’d been sitting in his favorite spot in his favorite bar in Canterlot. I’d approached him not-so-subtly and sat down next to him, ordering a water from the barpony. Ponyville disappeared below me as I relived the conversation.

“Hey Sharpie,” I greeted cheerfully. He glared back at me, a bit buzzed but not quite drunk yet. I’d caught him early. “How’s it going?”

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“Juuust wondering how Sparky’s doing. If you’ve heard from him or anything.”

With a scoff, he downed his drink and slammed the glass on the counter, then shoved a lime slice into his mouth. The barpony, unfazed, shook up another mix of whatever it was and poured it over the still fresh ice. He then slid a plate of fresh lime slices towards him, not bothering to add any fancy garnishes. After a gruesomely long moment, Sharpie spat out the pulpy rind and glared at me.

“Listen here, Scarlet,” he snapped, “I don’t know what the hell went on between you two, but you need to stop. He broke up with you, he moved away. That asshole doesn’t even talk to me anymore, and I’m perfectly happy with that. You know why?” He poked my chest with a sharp hoof. “Because I don’t want to think about him. And if all you care about is obsessing over him, then I don’t want to talk to you, either.” He turned back to his drink and downed the rest of it. A shudder ran through his back, and he quickly bit another slice of lime.

After that, I’d left, my water glass still full.

Maybe my readers felt the same, I pondered. Maybe obsessing over him really was a turn-off. But obsession wrapped around my brain like plunder plants, digging thorns in and spreading until there was no surface left uncovered. Would it be possible to write a blog about myself without talking about him?

I sighed and flew back into the cloud. The cold was starting to get uncomfortable again. I wrapped myself in the blanket and opened my laptop.

A third question had appeared.

~Lovely Laughter

Editing by Piquo Pie and @star-killer89

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff ~ Stray Thoughts: School Raze {MLP}

*sigh* Well, it’s the end of season 8 *loading gun shells* had some bad episodes here and there but it wasn’t that bad. But now, it’ll be a bit sad that I gotta say goodbye for now... *cocks shotgun* Roll it.

That’s Close enough

PART 1 (Tartarus’ Door)

Derpy! Aww, it’s a wonderful thing that you’re the first pony we get to see. Man I can’t see this going wrong in any-- *sees Cozy Glow*....I think I’m gonna hurl.

Ooh, I like the new rainbow haired background pony. Having some muted colors for her mane with a nice pink for the body. Easy, yet unique pony design I’ve seen in a bit

“Friendship Assistant“ Short for “Pastor’s kiss ass”

Silver Stream likes crosswords? That... doesn’t feel out of place for her

Wait, how do you keep saddle bags on as a pegasus? Wouldn’t they be blocking their... ability to fly?

Rainbow’s loyalty is as bold as how she dresses in style

One look into Cloudsdale and I’m seeing fake news. Storm clouds can’t survive in altitudes higher than the regular clouds. We gotta drain the swamp in the Rainbow factory

Glim Glam being the rock as usual. Though it begs the question, if you’re standing on something and you don’t have wings, will you still fall?

Not scared to immediately being proven wrong. That’s the warrior’s way

And why is Yona falling to her death the scene before the intro? Not COOL, show! 

Also, it’s a wonder, right? A character’s gonna die? Turn on the happy music.

How Ocellus was able to catch the admittedly heavy yak is something else

Man, characters can get over trauma pretty easy

OH NO, magical erectile dysfunction

Nothing to worry about? One (best yak) nearly became a pancake, Twilight, you taking this pretty easily.

I agree with Glimmy’s memeface, that was uncalled for, Twily

Snap, Ms. Glimmer

Yeesh, Rarity, you did that to yourself

Tirek? My my, best villain making a return?

That was gross. Thank you, Spike.

Why do potions need magic? It’s juice mixing.

3 DAYS?!

Wait, why do the others wanna go? Why not-- nevermind, it’s safe

Friends, pack your bags. We’re going to hell!

Surviving Discord’s shit is a bar you really gotta cross to challenge anything

Cozy, go dry yourself off

I smell a sabotage, and I’m glad the student 6 pick up on the child’s bullshit

That was casually speciest, Cozy

YONAAAAA! Standing up for her fellow dragon! Though, I gotta agree with Gallus. Who protests with homework?!

Cozy, I had enough of your shit

Huh, they’re already regretting the trip to hell. Wimps

So is the school an all day school? There’s a night school, so what?

Head Mare? More like Head Ass

Wow, ponies can be a-holes

Uhhh, Darla, why’d you leave the villainy open?

That was certainly a convenient yet useless artifact

Ah good, Pinkie was gonna sacrifice herself for the greater good

Okay, I want a book cataloging these animals of Tartarus

OH NO, racist allegory pony is back!

Cerberus!! Oh, I always wanted one.

TIREK! Good seeing ya

rerorerorerorerorerorerorerorerorerorero~

Oh, you didn’t think of this, did you ponies?

Come on, I’ve seen Kiwi farms eavesdrop better

Actually, nature would’ve killed off ponies if the other animals had their way

They’re college students, racist allegory pony, what the fuck would they want with magic?

Glad you’re standing for your fellow pony, Sandbar,

We got a “What in Tarnation?” folks. Giddyup

Wait, what revenge? You literally have no part in this.

Also, Pen pals with a demon. I think there’s an anime for that.

Cozy Glow was pen pals with Tirek? Gasp.

My god, Glim Glam! Wait, would that mean she’s gonna die in that orb or absorb the magic of that orb?

What realm? Why not just absorb the magic? You’ll practically have the infinity stones’ power in your hooves

Also, I like the 3D scene they did here. That is the best scene of this show period

“Friendship is Power“ Well... I mean-- you’re not THAT wrong.

For a future Empress of Friendship, you sure picked the right tape for making that crown, you cheeky ass clod

TO BE CONTINUED (after a commercial break)

Part 2 (Infinpony Crisis)

I just love when all shit is about to go down, then HAPPY INTRO TIME

Come on, Spike, this is no time for semantics

So that was the plan? Draining the magic to give Tirek some company? There’s GOT to be more to this plan.

Good job, Rainbow, you did them proud

Twilight, I know it’s not gonna work, but I am intrigued

We need to build a wall around Equestria, and make the dragons pay for it

Well you have a point, racist allegory pony, Twilight has caught the idiot flu over this season

JESUS CHRIST, it’s the hands of the damned!

You just now remembered your other friends, Sandbar?

Nice hostage room. Oh yeah, have ya’ll tried the window?

Also, have I mentioned Yona being the best? (MANY TIMES) Well it’s true. I’m glad she has undoubted trust in her friends

Okay, you get a brownie point for that line, Mayo pony

Also, nice crowbar

Also, 3rd best moment from Yona. Though I do not ship her and Sandbar. Gross.

Honestly, racist allegory pony is the most annoying part of this story

Alright, Cozy. I’ll cut ya some slack for shutting him down like that.

Oh no, they’re gonna throw him in the hot box

I’m glad ponies are easily impressionable enough to agree to chain bondage

This little girl has a fucking skull. What?

So... let me get this straight Cozy, you cotton candy headed nut, your plan is to run the school to get more friends. More friends equaling more power over Equestria, I suppose by having influence over the public for being such a kiss ass? When there is a goddamn castle right next to the school with everything a pony might want, need, in taking over the world. In addition to dropping all magic to another realm to keep the mane six in hell with Tirek, because you can’t think of owning the magic yourself?

Holy shit, this is the most unnecessarily convoluted plan in the history of the show. I thought Starlight did worse, but no.

Gloating wouldn’t ease that L of yours, racist allegory pony

Yona, never change. You are a highlight of this episode

Also, consider yourself redeemed, racist allegory pony

Good job, Tirek. You now have prison mates.

Wow, who knew Pinkie was more of a villain than a literal demon?

Okay, that was funny. You get another point, Cozy

*shudders* Finals.

Wait, how did you get all those pony down there, Darla?

Open the door, get on the floor, pony up on the dinosaur

How would they know it was the third day?

Tell her off, Gallus! Second best character

As much as this is quite a climax, I am not liking those ghost hands

The tree of EHARMONY, back at it again with the deus ex machina!

Okay, so Yona is honesty, Silver’s laughter, Smolder’s loyalty, Gallus is generosity, Sandbar’s kindness, and Ocellus is magic? Makes a bit of sense.

And that’s why Yona is best. She’s everything Applejack isn’t

Everybody duck, it’s explosion time

By the tools of Equestria... WE HAVE THE POWERRRRRRRR!

Pretty lights

Haha, and Tirek failed

Come on, Glim Glam, nothing wrong with a Yak hug

Ah, Cozy *rubs hands* you survived.

Alright, real talk.... Cozy, you fucking clod. Not only were you never convincing, not only was your plan remarkably crazier than Starlight’s of all ponies, not only was your motive behind this the 3rd dumbest I’ve ever heard from this series, but my god, you have failed to realize that what you tried to do was never gonna work in any fashion soon as the public thought for themselves. At least Starlight had her magic and charm to fool her town before the jig was up, YOU relied on sheer ignorance to hopefully get whatever it was you wanted. *chuckles* You make Frank Underwood look like a saint, you curly headed nutcase.

And you think you were gonna make friends somewhere else after you literally threatened to wipe away all magic? Bravo, show, you made me chortle harder than I imagined.

“Oh no, my tiny wings can’t outrun the law”

Well you say that, Neighsay, but Twilight really isn’t suitable for running a school. I think the season proved that pretty well.

It’s only been one semest- fuck off, show, it should’ve been well over a semester!

Though this might mean more student 6, which means more Yona. I’m down with that!! *BANG BANG*

What does he think friendship is, a currency? Who wrote this?

Thank you, CMC, you did your part

“Oh my god, they put a child in hell?“ Well, she did try to erase magic, as well as send 7 characters to their potential deaths and trap 7 more characters in the same hell. Compared to the other villains we’ve had, she genuinely pulled worse. So really, I’m indifferent about it, especially when I don’t... like her or care about her.

But she’ll be back?! *deep groan* I guess with Yona being around, there has to be an equivalent exchange somewhat. Plus we don’t know her origins so I guess it’s reasonable. Bad way to end the season, show.

But you know what? This was all fun. Won’t deny that.

So, woof, moral of the story? Well, just because you have friends, doesn’t mean you’ll have power because of it. The same way having followers, subscribers, whatever, doesn’t mean you're a permanent influence over them. Real friends give you power, power that you can use for the good of yourself as well as others. Your real friends give you the wholeness that you might’ve never been able to discover yourself, whether it be with wisdom or with laughter. “The more the merrier” is not a wrong idea to have, but quality should come before quantity, if that make sense.

MY LITTLE PONY: Friendship is Strengthening Your Pact

~See Ya Next Season~

[veteran-shipper]

Voltron’s Anatomy

part 2 of ???

so i realize that doing all how-many-bajillion episodes of grey’s anatomy is an improbable task. i’ll probably be mixing and matching episodes because ain’t nobody got time for that, least of all me. plus, let’s be real. we were really only in it for Der and Mer’s Epic Love Story. 

alternatively titled: never air to breathe (never inbetweens).

Pidge slams her locker shut in frustration. “I have got to move out from my parents’ place,” she announces, yanking viciously at her shoelaces. 

“What’s up?” Hunk asks, his forehead creased with concern. 

“Nothing,” she says. “I’m just sick and tired of all the tension because my brother Matt has been MIA. It feels like I’ve been walking on eggshells ever since I moved back for residency. They’re being overprotective, and as much as I understand, I’m a god damn adult, and I can handle the shifts I signed on for. The fact that they also work here is literally my worst nightmare. I can’t believe I agreed to come back.” 

“Why don’t you move into my place, then?” Keith suggests, shrugging his white coat on. “I have the space.”

“I thought you were trying to sell it?” Hunk says, mildly surprised. “What changed?”

Keith shrugs. “I just never got around to it. Plus, I moved back here, didn’t I? Might as well keep it around and get some roommates. It’s practically a family heirloom at this point. What do you say? I’ll keep rent reasonable.”

“I’ll think about it,” Pidge says with a shrug. 

“Sure, just let me know whenever. I have two rooms up for grabs if you want in, too, Hunk,” Keith adds. 

“It would be nice to be in a full house again,” Hunk says wistfully. “I’ve basically been crashing on my uncle’s couch since moving here from Hawaii.” 

The three of them approach Altea for their assignments of the day. Altea’s eyes narrow. “Where’s Lance?” she asks. Keith shoves his hands in his coat pockets and shrugs. 

“Dr. Altea! Sorry to keep you waiting!” Lance skids to a stop, just barely keeping a tray of coffees from tipping over. “I brought you a coffee--mocha, soy, just the way you like it.” 

Altea looks slightly mollified as she plucks the coffee out of the tray. “Thank you, Lance, but next time, apologize by being on time,” she says dryly. “You’re on code team. Keith, take the trauma pager. Pidge, deliver the weekend lab results to their patients. Hunk, you’re on sutures.” She turns on her heels and starts to walk away. 

“Dr. Altea!” Lance says, stopping her in her tracks. “I was wondering if I could assist you in the OR today? I think I’m ready. You know, for a minor procedure or something like that.” 

“Hey! If he gets to cut, I want to cut, too!” Pidge says, elbowing Lance out of the way.

“Me too!” Keith interjects. 

Hunk gulps. “Yeah, I guess,” he adds lamely.

“Okay, stop.” Altea puts her hands on her hips, eyes blue steel. “Every intern wants a chance to perform their first surgery. But that’s not your job. Do you know what your job is? To make me happy. Do I look happy? No, because my interns aren’t doing the jobs I told them to do. Nobody gets to even touch a cadaver until I think you’re ready, understand?” 

“Yes ma’am,” the interns mumble collectively. 

“Now move!” Altea makes a shooing motion with her hands, and the interns scatter off to their various jobs. “Vrepit Sal’s Dead Baby Bike Race starts in six hours and I need my weekend labs run and my code team staffed!”

Shiro was idly tapping on his phone when he spots Keith pressing the button for the elevator. Pocketing his phone, he saunters as casually as he can until he’s within an arm’s length of Keith’s shoulder. “I didn’t know you rode a bike,” he says in Keith’s ear, trying for casual. 

“Doesn’t everyone?” Keith asks, not diverting his attention away from the ticker. 

“No, I mean, a motorbike--a motorcycle,” Shiro backtracks with an internal grimace. The elevator dings, signalling its arrival. Ah, saved by the bell, he thinks to himself. “I have one, too. Never expected Nevada to be such a good place to go for a late night ride.” 

Keith tries to suppress his smile as the elevator’s occupants file out. He and Shiro get on together and stand side by side as they wait for the doors to close. Shiro continues to ramble. “Now I have to like it here. I’m from Seattle. I’m not supposed to like how dry and deserted it is here. I have a thing for motorcycles,” he finishes lamely as the doors close and the serene elevator music starts up. 

“I’m not going out with you,” Keith says to break the monotony of the music.

“Did I ask you do go out with me?” Shiro mentally palms himself in the face. Yes you did, you idiot, he chastises himself. “Do you want to go out with me?”

“I’m not dating you,” Keith reiterates. “And I’m definitely not sleeping with you again. You’re my boss.” 

“I’m your boss’ boss,” Shiro corrects before he can help himself. Idiot! That makes nothing better, his inner monologue whacks him over the head. 

“Regardless, this is inappropriate,” Keith says firmly. “This is grounds for sexual harassment.”

 Shiro turns to face him. “I’m riding an elevator,” he says mildly. 

“Don’t come any closer,” Keith says, a flush riding high on his cheeks, clashing horribly with the orange scrubs. 

“Red’s a good closer on you,” Shiro says, and closes the gap between them, tangling one hand in Keith’s hair, dislodging the little pony tail, and wrapping the other around his waist. Keith flips their positions and pushes Shiro against the elevator wall, smashing his charts haphazardly between their chests as he fights to get closer to Shiro’s mouth. He reaches up to tug Shiro down by the back of his neck, biting gently on his bottom lip, gasping softly at the feel of the cool metal of the prosthetic sliding lower and playing with the waistband of his thin scrubs. 

Just as Shiro’s about to go for the full on ass grab, the elevator dings, and they hastily break apart, Keith’s files spilling onto the floor between the two of them. 

“Oh fuck,” Keith rasps, gathering up the files as quickly as he can and marching off to see his patients. Shiro’s gaze follows him, dazed and forlorn as nurses and other hospital staff file in, none the wiser.

Keith walks into a room filled with nurses and PAs rushing around, a hand absentmindedly on his bottom lip, mind a million floors away with Dr. Shirogane. 

“There you are!” A harried looking PA comes into his field of view. “We’ve got a rape victim. She came in with a GCS of six, BP eighty over sixty. Exam is significant for blunt head trauma, unequal breath sounds, right pupil is dilated. We think she ran right into the bike race,” he rattles off. “She’s ready for x-ray. You ready to roll?” 

Keith blankly surveys the room, taking in the blood on the body, the ruined shoes that haven’t yet been bagged, and--

“Hey!”

“Is that a penis?” Keith asks, peering into the kidney tray. It’s resting on ice, and definitely looking worse for wear. “Yeah/ Call ahead to CT. Let them know I’m coming. Load a portable monitor, and call Respiratory for a ventilator,” he orders, checking her eyes himself and her breathing tube. “I’ll do x-rays while I’m down there.”

The PA grunts in amusement. “Tough lady. Bit it right off. We found it in her mouth.”

“What a warrior,” Keith murmurs softly, checking her chart.

He takes responsibility over her and follows her from her scans into emergency surgery, where he and a couple of the less busy interns observe as Shirogane, Iverson, and Coran work to set her bones back in place and fix the internal bleeding. Shirogane lets out a low whistle as he works on setting her arm. “He really did a number on her. What is she? Five foot two, not even a hundred pounds?”

“Yeah, she’s going to spend a helluva time in recovery,” Coran says, jovial as always. “Really gave him a good walloping, though. Clearly a case of ‘You should see the other guy.’ I heard the rape kit came back negative.” 

“She bit his penis off,” Keith offers. “It was in a kidney dish when I went to go get her for scans.” 

The three attendings heads swivel to look at him, their hands never stopping their work. “What in tarnation?” Iverson says, incredulous. 

“Jesus,” Coran says. “Well, if she can fight off the infection, she can fight off anything.”

They start to close on the patient, and before Keith can slip out to round, he hears Iverson call his name. Or, more accurately, his “designated Intern number assigned by the one-and-only Coran.”

“Intern number 3!” Keith pauses. “I need you to stay with the penis until the police arrive. Chain of custody rules, and all,” he barks. 

Keith blanches. “Seriously?” he asks, looking at the small cooler they’d placed the severed body part in.

“That’s an order, intern!” Iverson says, pulling closed a stitch. Keith sighs and grabs the cooler before exiting. 

Over at the HUB, Pidge sorts through the labs while Lance toys with his pager and gloats about his assignment.

“Code team rocks,” he says with a smug grin. “One minute I get to shock a heart back to life, and the next minute I have my arms full of grateful daughters and sisters.”

Pidge stacks a lab report a little harder than necessary on top of her growing stack. “You know, I have an MD/PhD from Stanford, and I’m delivering patient labs. This is going to take me all day,” she says, annoyed.

Altea whisks by briskly. “Better get started then!” she says, sipping daintily at her mocha latte. “Lance, with me!” she says. “I need as many hands as I can find, and since you’re not doing anything, you’re going to help me wade through this disaster coming in.” Lance’s expression brightens and he hurries after her, pager beeping.

“Oh! Uh, I wasn’t complaining,” Pidge says weakly, grabbing her stack of labs and hurrying off. If she's fast enough, she decides, she might be able to put staples in someone’s wound.

Cooler in hand, Keith runs into the ER just in time to see multiple stretchers being brought in. “Keith!” Altea says. “Excellent timing! I need you to help Hunk with some suturing and debridement in beds four through 8! What is that?” she asks, pointing at the the cooler. 

“I’m babysitting a penis until the police get here,” Keith says, already moving towards bed four, where Hunk is dealing with a particularly rowdy bicyclist who didn’t seem particularly interested in staying for x-rays.

Along the way, he sees Shiro, sitting with his unconscious patient, flipping through her chart, though he chooses not to stop in favor of setting the cooler down and grabbing a suture kit. 

“Sir, I highly recommend that you stay for X-rays,” Hunk says, a firm hand on the bicyclist’s shoulder. 

“What? No! I need to get back to the race!”

“Sir, please,” Hunk says again. “You might have internal bleeding. I don’t feel comfortable taking those bike spokes out until you’ve had a thorough check up.”

His patient rolls his eyes. Then, he grits his teeth and, before Hunk and Keith can do any more than exclaim in alarm, grasps the bike spokes, pulling all four of them out with a grunt. “See?” he says, with a ta-dah wave of his hands. “No swooning, no fainting. I’m fine.”

Hunk shakes his head, holding a kidney tray for him to place the metal spikes. “Keith, this guy’s all yours. I’m going to move on to the next one.”

“Ah! Hunk!” Coran catches Hunk before he can check on the brain dead guy in bed 5. “Just the doctor I wanted to see! I’m going to be stuck in the OR all day today doing repairs, and I need someone I can rely on to check on my pre- and post-op patients. Can you do that for me?” 

“Uh, yes sir!” Hunk says.

“Oh, and one of them, Mr. Mackie, is a good friend of mine. Make sure you get him everything he needs.”

“Got it,” Hunk says, leaving Keith behind to deal with the victims of the race.

Keith sutures Impatient Biker Dude closed and is smoothing the bandage over the area when he opens his mouth to speak.

“Hey, you’ve got a really nice touch, and you are a rockin’ babe. Why don’t you let me take you out sometime?”

“Excuse me?” Keith raises an eyebrow but otherwise tries not to let his annoyance show and turns to grab his patient’s chart. “I don’t date my patients. If you insist on leaving, you’ll be doing so against the doctor’s orders, so you’ll have to sign this form saying that you understand the consequences.”

“Darling, I will do what ever you want,” he purrs, taking the form. “I have to get back to the race.”

“Look,” Keith tries again. “One CT scan. You’ll be in and out in thirty minutes.” 

“No can do, babe,” his patient says again, handing the form back. “I’ve got a race to finish.” He swings his legs over the side of the hospital bed and gets up. “There’s a party at the end, you know,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you there?” 

Keith rolls his eyes and turns away, only to feel a hand grab him by the waist and spin him around. He feels his patient’s lips meet his and pull him into a deep lip lock, and he freezes, indignation bubbling up behind his rib cage. “What the fuck?” he demands once his patient lets him go. 

“One for luck,” he says with a jaunty wave and a wink. “You’ll be seeing me again soon.”

“For your sake, I hope you don’t!”

He whirls around, and accidentally makes eye contact with Shirogane, whose eyes look filled with hurt. Shiro gets up from his station near his comatose patient and intercepts Keith before he can get to Mr. Brain Dead in bed 5. With dismay, he watches as Lance and Altea start the next round of tests on him.

“What was that?” Shiro demands. “Are you kissing patients now?”

“For the record, he kissed me, and I definitely did not want to kiss that guy.” Keith tries to move onto bed 6, but Shiro blocks his way. “Oh come on! Dr. Shirogane, are you jealous? This is highly unprofessional.”

“I am not jealous!” The faint flush across the bridge of his nose bringing out his scar says otherwise. “Go out with me,” he says instead. 

“No! You’re my boss! It’s against the rules.” Keith signs off on the chart. “We had sex once and we made out in an elevator once. That’s not going to happen again.” Keith tries again to move to bed 6, wanting the conversation to end.

Lance and Altea are debating over what they should do with Brain Dead. 

“I think we should harvest his organs,” Altea says. 

“What?” Lance exclaims. “He has a family!”

“Great!” Altea says cheerily. “Find them, and get their consent.”

“What? No! Come on, he’s got six hours.”

“Okay, fine,” Altea says decisively. “We’ll let the family make the decision.”

Lance narrows his eyes. “You just want a harvest surgery.” 

“Don’t you?” Altea asks. 

“I--” Lance throws his hands up, conflicted.

“Dr. Shirogane!” Altea motions for Shiro to come take a look. 

“Just a minute!” he says normally, before lowering his voice again. “‘It’s against the rules?’ You don’t take me as a by-the-books kind of guy,” he says to Keith.

“Look, you’re an attending. I’m your intern. Unlike you, I still have something to prove. Now, I really need to get to Ms. Ho before she bleeds out.” Keith puts a hand on Shiro’s upper arm and pushes him towards Bed 5. “Go deal with Mr. Brain Dead.”

Pidge finishes with her lab deliveries just in time to watch as a car screeches into the front of the hospital, and a man stumble out of the driver’s side covered in blood from the waist down. She catches a nurse by the arm. “Get a stretcher--he’s hurt!” she orders, and motions two other nurses to come help her get him inside and onto the waiting stretcher. They get him hooked up to a heart rate monitor and a breathing tube before cutting him out of his clothes. “Oh my God!” she yelps, looking at the bloody mess of his groin. “Somebody call security!”

She ends up getting to observe the surgery that Iverson performs on the bloody John Doe. 

“Medicine’s a funny business,” he comments as he cauterizes a blood vessel. “One minute you get to save the life of someone who fought off an attack, and the next, you’re trying to save the life of the attacker. Intern, why aren’t we trying to reattached this penis?” he barks at Pidge.

“Teeth tear, but reattachments need clean cuts. If she’d taken a knife to his penis, he might still be able to save it, but since she bit it off, plus the digestive enzymes in the mouth, there’s no way he’s ever going to get to pee like a normal person again,” she says, trying to keep the smugness out of her voice.

“Hmm, a moment of silence for this poor guy,” Iverson says, rolling his eyes unsympathetically, cauterizing the final blood vessel. Pidge can’t help but agree. Good riddance. 

As Vrepit Sal’s Dead Baby Bike Race ends, so does the endless stream of injured bikers, and the interns finally get a chance to trudge wearily back to the locker rooms to freshen up and change into a fresh set of scrubs. 

“I need a bed,” Pidge moans, lying on a bench in the locker rooms wearing just her sports bra. “Or a drink and a massage. Or a drunken massage on a bed.” She sits up with groan and starts wrestling her scrub top back over her head.

“I lost five patients today on the code team,” Lance moans at his reflection. 

“Lance, ninety-five percent of code patients can’t be revived. They’re seriously dead before you even get there.” 

“What?” Lance exclaims. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because,” Pidge says loftily. “I’m Pidge, and you’re Lance.”

Hunk trudges in, looking somewhat disgruntled. “Mr. Mackie won’t stop hitting on me, and I don’t know how to tell him I’m not interested. He’s Coran’s VIP, for crying out loud.” He sits down heavily next to Pidge. “At least we found a match for him.” 

“Oh yeah? Who?” Lance asks, splashing water onto his face.

“Oh, just some brain dead guy from earlier. When I told him, he cried and then tried to ask me out again.”

“Nice!” Lance gives Hunk a fist bump. “That was Allura and my’s first patient together!”

“Allura? Since when did she start letting you call her Allura?”

“Oh, she hasn’t. I just call her that in my head.”

“A patient kissed me today,” Keith announces, moodily playing with the handle of the cooler. “I wish I’d shown him the severed penis just to freak him out, but I didn’t think about that until it was too late. Plus, I don’t think it would have stopped him.”

Hunk makes a noise of sympathy. Lance, ever the incorrigible romantic, asks, “And what did Shiro think of that?” 

“He asked me out again.” 

Pidge groans. “Men,” she says. “They think they can just get away with anything.”

Lance, Hunk, and Keith all make indignant noises. 

“I got to watch Iverson cauterize the penis of a rapist today,” she continues as if they hadn’t said anything. “Simultaneously the best and the worst thing I’ve seen today, and I had to endure twenty-seven patients’ family members hug me with joy.” 

“Aw come on!” Lance interjects. “I should’ve gotten that job! I love hugs!”

“Does that mean I’m finally going to get to not babysit a penis anymore?” Keith asks, perking up at the thought. 

“Keith, it’s 2AM. They’re not sending someone over at 2AM.”

Keith drops his head into his hands and groans. “Fuck me,” he mutters.

“I mean, since you asked so nicely,” Lance starts. Pidge sticks her foot out and trips him.

“Thanks, Pidge.”

“Any time, bud.”

When Keith passes by the unconscious patient again in the morning, Shiro is still there and he looks like he hasn’t slept. He has, however, moved to the HUB, where he can simultaneously keep an eye on the patient and work on charting on the computer. Keith sets the penis cooler down on the counter. “Have you been here all night?”

“Yeah.” Shiro barely spares him a glance, and he rubs at the scar across the bridge of his nose. “You know, I grew in a family of all boys. All brothers. I can’t imagine what it’s like to not have anyone waiting for me when I wake up.”

“I can,” Keith says. Shiro looks up at him then, and stands to go make himself a cup of coffee, eyes soft.

“So,” he says, coming back with two paper cups of the hospital’s cheap free brew. “We’re kissing, but we’re not dating?”

Keith made a sound of annoyance. “I knew this would come up,” he says, accepting one of the cups.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like the kissing. More kissing, any day, I say,” Shiro says. 

Keith rolls his eyes, taking a sip of his coffee. “You sound like Coran,” he teases.

“I just want to know if this is going to happen again in the future. If it is, I’m gonna need to carry around breath mints. Maybe a,” Shiro lowers his voice, “condom in my wallet?”

“Shut up,” Keith whispers back, finishing off his coffee. Together, they stare at the patient in silence. All the monitors start beeping at once, and Keith and Shiro immediately move into action, calling for nurses and equipment.

“Prepare for an emergency craniotomy!” Shiro yells at a nearby nurse, who nods. Together, they mobilize the hospital bed into the OR, and Keith waits anxiously outside until Shiro’s done, looking more worn than ever. 

“We had to leave the top of her skull flap off,” he tells Keith. “Until the swelling in her brain goes down.”

Keith sighs. “She’s not going to make it is she?” he asks. 

“She’ll be fine,” Shiro replies, with a soft smile. “Come on. You have rounds. Don’t forget your penis.”

Keith sighs, shooting the cooler a look of distaste. “I just want the damn police to show up already,” he says in annoyance, heading back toward the HUB to catch up on some charting.

As soon as he reaches the HUB, however, a nurse motions him over. “The police have arrived to take custody of the evidence,” she tells him pointing over to where two uniformed men stand.

“Oh sweet! Thanks, Nyma,” he says, making his way over to the cops standing near the water cooler. “Hello sirs, I’m Dr. Kogane. I hear you’re here to collect my penis?”

The two cops look distinctly uncomfortable for a split second, before one of them notices the cooler in Keith’s hand. “Oh! Yeah, you just need to sign a couple of forms, and we’ll be out of your hair,” he says.

Keith gladly takes the paperwork and fills it out, handing both the forms and the cooler over to the cops. He runs into Pidge and Hunk halfway through rounds and they both give him high fives when they realize he’s no longer holding onto the penis cooler any more.

“Hey, so about those rooms,” Pidge says. “I’m in.”

“Yeah, me too,” Hunk adds. “I think I’m ready to give up my uncle’s couch.”

“Oh okay, cool,” Keith says. “I just need to get a few copies of my key made for you guys, and then you can move in whenever.” 

Pidge and Hunk cheer loudly and get shushed by Mrs. Cobb in bed 9.

[dumbledearme]

chapter twenty-seven—a childish game

read Child of Land and Sea here

Act IV — To Stop The Tide

Part II — It scared me out of my wits, a corpse falling to bits, then I opened my eyes and the nightmare was me!

The Demeter kids were sweeping out their cabin and making fresh flowers grow in their window boxes. The guys in the Hermes cabin were scrambling around in a panic, stashing dirty laundry under their beds and accusing each other of taking stuff.

Over at the Aphrodite cabin, Silena Beauregard was just coming out, checking items off the inspection scroll. She was nice, but an absolute neat freak, the worst inspector. She liked things to be pretty. Problem was, Andy didn't do pretty.

The Poseidon cabin was at the end of the row of "male god" cabins on the right side of the green. Andy dashed inside and found Tyson sweeping the floor. "Andy!" he bellowed. He dropped his broom and ran at her.

"Watch the ribs!" She asked as he crushed her with his big cyclops arms.

"You okay?" he asked. "I'm glad you're here, Andy. Now we can eat peanut butter sandwiches and ride fish ponies! We can fight monsters and see Anthony and make things go BOOM!"

"I dearly hope you don't mean all at the same time, Tyson..." Andy took a look around and sighed in relief. Tyson had cleaned pretty much everything.

"Oh, my," Silena Beauregard said, entering the cabin. "Well, I had my doubts, Andy. You kind of look like a slob. But you clean up nicely. I'll remember that." She winked and left the room.

In the afternoon, Andy had sword practice with Quintus. The guy was good! Andy was doing her best, but the guy always ended the fight with his sword at her throat.

"You're good," he told her. "But your guard is terrible."

"Have you always been a swordsman?" she asked.

"I've been many things," he answered looking over to where Tyson was playing with Mrs O'Leary, who he called the 'little doggie.'

Andy eyed the mark on his neck and realized it had a definite shape – a bird with folded wings, like a quail or something. "What is that on your neck?" It wasn't a tattoo, she noticed. It was an old burn; like he had been branded or something.

"A reminder," he said. "Now, shall we go again?" and he pressed Andy harder.

Andy was having trouble sleeping, so she sat by the window, watching the sea, until she noticed a strange light in the room. The saltwater fountain was glowing. Rainbow colors shimmered through it, and a pleasant voice was saying, "Please, deposit one drachma."

Tyson was snoring real loud. Intrigued, Andy tossed a coin through the mist. She saw the dark shore of a river and a boy squatted at the riverbank, tending a campfire. The flames burned blue. Nico was throwing pieces of paper into the fire - his old trading cards. He looked older than he actually was. His hair had grown longer; it was shaggy and down to his shoulders. His eyes bared no emotion, as if he was dead inside.

"Useless," he muttered, tossing another card into the blue flames. "I can't believe I ever liked this stuff."

"A childish game, master," another voice agreed. Andy couldn't see who had spoken.

Nico stared across the river and Andy recognized where he was: the Underworld. He was camping at the edge of the River Styx. "I've failed," he said. "There's no way to get her back." He raised his head, waiting. "Is there? Speak!"

Something shimmered. The form of a man, a shadow, a ghost. "It has never been done," it said. "But there may be a way."

"Tell me," Nico commanded.

"An exchange," the ghost said. "A soul for a soul."

"I've offered!"

"Not yours. You cannot offer your father a soul he will eventually collect anyway. Nor will he be anxious for the death of his son. I mean a soul that should have died already. Someone who has cheated death."

Nico's face darkened. "You're talking about murder."

"I'm talking about justice," the ghost argued. "Vengeance."

"Those are not the same thing."

The ghost laughed dryly. "You will learn differently as you grow older."

"Why can't I at least summon her? I want to talk to her. She would... she would tell me what to do."

"I'll tell you what to do," the ghost promised. "Have I not saved you many times? Did I not lead you through the maze and teach you to use your powers? Do you want revenge for your sister or not?"

Nico looked down. "Very well. You have a plan, I suppose."

"Oh, yes," the ghost said, sounding quite pleased. "We have many dark roads to travel. We must start-" The image shimmered. Nico vanished.

Andy stood in he middle of the cabin, listening to the ocean waves outside. Nico was alive. And he would come for her.

Next morning, Andy was having breakfast by herself, (Tyson had already finished), when Anthony and Grover sat with her. "He wants you to convince me," Grover was saying.

"What are you talking about?"

"The Labyrinth," Anthony revealed. It was hard to pay attention to what he was saying since all the other campers were stealing glances at them and whispering that the son of Athena was sitting at the Poseidon table. And Anthony was right next to her, touching her arm and everything.

"Campers aren't allowed to switch tables," Andy said softly.

"Forget that," Anthony said. "Grover is in trouble. There's only one way we can figure to help him. It's the Labyrinth. That's what Clarisse and I have been investigating."

Andy swallowed, trying not to blush. "You mean the maze where they kept the Minotaur?"

"Exactly."

"And... like everything else, it's here in America? Under some building?"

Anthony rolled his eyes. "Under some building? That's the best you can do? Please, Andy. The Labyrinth is huge! It wouldn't fit under a single city, much less a single building."

Andy thought about Nico. "Is it part of the Underworld?"

"No," Anthony frowned. "I suppose there may be passages from the Labyrinth down into the Underworld. But the Underworld is way, way down. The Labyrinth is right under the surface of the mortal world, kind of like a second skin. It's been growing from thousands of years, connecting everything together underground. You can get anywhere through the Labyrinth."

"If you don't get lost," Grover muttered. "And die a horrible death."

"Grover, there has to be a way," Anthony said. "Clarisse lived."

"Barely!" he argued. "And the other guy-"

"He was driven insane. He didn't die."

"Oh, joy." Grover's lower lip quivered. "That makes me feel so much better."

"Alright," Andy said. "What the hell is going on? What's this about Clarisse and a crazy guy?"

Anthony glanced over toward the Ares table. Clarisse was watching them. "Last year," he said, turning to Andy, "Clarisse went on a mission for Chiron."

"I remember," Andy said. "It was secret."

Anthony nodded. "It was secret, because she found Chris Rodriguez."

"The guy from the Hermes cabin?"

"Yeah," Anthony said. "Before he joined the Titan army, he and Clarisse were-" Anthony cleared his throat. "Well, last summer, he just appeared in Phoenix, near Clarisse's house. I mean, something obviously drew him there."

"I'm not sure I-"

"He was wandering around the desert, in a hundred and twenty degrees, in full Greek armor, babbling about string."

"Oh."

"He'd been driven completely insane. Clarisse hid him in her house so the mortals wouldn't institutionalize him. She tried to nurse him back to health. Chiron came out and interviewed him, but it wasn't much good. The only thing they got out of him: Luke's men have been exploring the Labyrinth."

"Why?"

"We weren't sure," Anthony said. "That's why Clarisse went on a scouting expedition. Chiron kept things hushed up because he didn't want anyone panicking. He got me involved because... well, the Labyrinth has always been one of my favorite subjects. The architecture involved-" his expression turned a little dreamy. "The builder, Daedalus, was a genius!"

"Don't geek out on me."

"Fine," he sighed. "The point is, the Labyrinth has entrances everywhere. If Luke could figure out how to navigate it, he could move his army around with incredible speed."

"But... It's a freaking maze!"

"Full of horrible traps," Grover agreed. "Dead ends. Illusions. Psychotic goat-killing monsters."

"Not if you had Ariadne's string," Anthony said with a grin. "She guided Theseus out of the maze. The string was a navigation instrument of some kind, invented by Daedalus. And Chris Rodriguez was mumbling about a string."

"So Luke wants the string?" Andy tried to keep up. "Why? What is he planning?"

Anthony shook his head. "I don't know. I thought maybe he wanted to invade camp through the maze, but that doesn't make any sense. The closest entrances Clarisse found were in Manhattan. I don't understand what Luke wants, but I do know this: the Labyrinth might be the key to Grover's problem."

Andy blinked. "You think Pan in underground?"

"It would explain why he's been impossible to find."

Grover shuddered. "Satyrs hate going underground. No searcher would ever try going in that place."

"Precisely," Anthony said. "However, it is dangerous. The Labyrinth reads your thoughts. It was designed to fool you, to trick you and kill you. Unless you can make it work for you."

"I can't do it," Grover hugged his stomach. "I'm gonna lose it all!" He stood up and ran away dramatically.

Anthony got up as well. "Come on, Seaweed Brain. Follow me."

Andy didn't ask where they were going. She just followed Anthony into the woods. As they walked, she told him about Nico.

"He's summoning the dead? That's not good."

"The ghost was giving him bad advice," Andy said. "Telling him to take revenge."

"Yeah... spirits are never good advisers. They've got their own agendas. Old grudges. And they resent the living."

"He's going to come after me," Andy mumbled. "And the spirit mentioned the maze."

He nodded. "That settles it. We have to figure out the Labyrinth."

"Maybe," Andy said uncomfortably. "But who sent the Iris-message? If Nico didn't now I was there-"

"What are you doing here?" Juniper appeared before them.

"What are you doing here?" Andy asked.

"I live here," she shrugged. "I'm a dryad."

"You live here?" Andy repeated. "In the boulders?"

"In the juniper! Duh."

"We came to see you," Anthony said quickly. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Juniper sniffled. "But Grover... He seems so distraught. All year he's been out looking for Pan. And every time he comes back, it's worse. I thought maybe, at first, he was seeing another tree."

"I'm sure he's not," Anthony assured her.

"He had a crush on a blueberry bush once," Juniper said miserably.

"Really?" Andy smiled.

"Juniper," Anthony took her hand. "Grover would never even look at another tree. He's just stressed out about his searcher's license."

"He can't go underground, Anthony!" she protested. "You can't let him!"

"It might be the only way to help him; if we just knew where to start."

"Try there then," the nymph said, pointing at a crack between two of the largest boulders.

"You want us to go in there?" Andy asked. "Why?" But Anthony simply grabbed her arm and pulled her with him. "It's too narrow!" She complained, but he ducked and started squeezing between the two boulders. Then he yelped and pulled, and Andy tumbled inside after him. Anthony hit the ground and Andy fell on top of him.

They were in complete darkness; their breathing echoing against stone. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes. You pretty much softened my fall." They got up but didn't let go of each other.

"It's a corridor," Anthony whispered. Andy started forward, but he stopped her. "Don't take another step," he warned. "We need to find the exit." He sounded extremely tense. Andy looked up and realized she couldn't see where they'd fallen in. The ceiling was solid stone. "Two steps back," Anthony advised. They moved together and he started patting the wall.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for the mark of Daedalus."

"The what?"

"Got it!" he said with relief. A tiny fissure began to glow blue. A Greek symbol appeared, the Ancient Greek Delta. The roof slid open and they saw night sky, stars blazing. Metal ladder rungs appeared, leading up.

They made their way around the rock and ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches. "Where have you two been?" Clarisse demanded. "And if you say you were making out in some corner, I'll-"

Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover.

"Andy!" Tyson said. "You're okay?"

"I'm fine. We're fine," she said. "We fell in a hole." The others looked at her skeptically, then at Anthony. "We were not making out!" she exclaimed. "Gods, people. Get a life."

"You fell into a hole?" Clarisse asked, suspiciously.

Anthony took a deep breath. "Chiron... maybe we should talk about this at the Big House."

Clarisse gasped. "You found it, didn't you?"

Anthony nodded. The campers started asking questions, but Chiron sent them to bed.

"This explains a lot," Clarisse said, watching them go. "It explains what Luke is after."

"You don't mean..." Andy shivered. "That was an entrance? An invasion route straight into the heart of the camp?"

Anthony turned toward her, his eyes dark with worry, but he didn't say anything else.

[aion-rsa]

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 8 Review: Match 3 Conclusion

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This My Hero Academia review contains spoilers.

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 8

“Raise the temperature higher. I can go higher. Burn myself! In order to become who I want to be!”

My Hero Academia season 5 has worked very hard to showcase the wide range of characters that compose Classes A and B, especially some of the more obscure or forgotten heroes. This season caters towards perpetual combat, but part of the reason that these clashes are so successful is because everyone has trained hard and improved upon their base skills, only the audience isn’t privy to how exactly these heroes have upped their games. 

My Hero Academia could have easily devoted some introductory episodes on this material, but the mystery factor has become a very exciting element to this season. Each episode from this season has featured some sort of surprise reveal about a character’s new abilities, but “Match 3 Conclusion” makes these secret hero improvements its priority in a fantastic episode that never slows down and marks the highlight of the season. 

Unsurprisingly, “Match 3 Conclusion” finishes off the third battle of the Joint Training Arc that kicked off in the previous episode. These episodes may be two halves of the same whole, but they couldn’t be more different in terms of their pacing and scope. This is a deliriously busy episode that crams in too much action, if anything. Something that “Match 3 Conclusion” underscores is that all of the Class A students in this fight are important and play a factor in the outcome, but it’s Tenya Iida and Shoto Todoroki that really get to prove their leadership abilities here. Both of these characters have been some of the dominant members of the 1-A Class in the past, but it’s literally been seasons since they’ve been integral to the main conflict at hand. 

Iida quickly rises to the occasion and debuts his new Recipro Turbo ability, which increases his speed to even higher levels of ridiculousness. Midoriya makes an offhand remark that Iida is now faster than Gran Torino, which is a pretty significant claim, if true. All of the theatrics around Iida’s new speed look stunning and the animation as well as the choreography around these sequences is perfect. The sequences gain an extra level of fluidity and the actions occasionally get ahead of the frames, as if the show itself can’t keep up with Iida’s new speed. 

Iida’s new super move allows him to intervene in Ojiro’s battle and dominate the battlefield, but he’s not the only one that’s come to play with new tricks. “Match 3 Conclusion” generates some effective suspense over the nature of everyone’s new abilities, when they’ll reveal themselves, and if there’s a deeper strategy to them beyond their surface level purpose. It’s a smart way to make the established powers of the Class A students feel as new as Class B’s Quirks, many of which are being seen for the first time.

Previous matches from the Joint Training Arc have featured a domino effect as different heroes rise to the challenge once their teammates get defeated. “Match 3 Conclusion” adopts a more thrilling structure where Iida’s fight against Kaibara happens concurrently with Todoroki’s war with Tetsutetsu, as well as Shoji’s duel with Pony Tsunotori. This approach means that there’s never really a dull moment in this episode as each of these battles intercut with each other. It’s all action and the lack of filler is a welcome alternative to the emptier first half of this battle from the previous episode. It’s also harder to predict the outcome of all of this since Class A and B’s teammates are divided and pursue different, independent strategies.

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A consistent strength of this season of My Hero Academia is how every pairing between Class A and B students has featured an especially inspired clash of complimentary or contradictory Quirks. In this case, Tetstutetsu specifically targets Todoroki because of the intense temperature-based training that he’s put himself through that ideally removes all of Todoroki’s usual advantages. This initially seems to work as Tetsutetsu pushes through Todoroki’s attacks, but is actually able to grow stronger when his steel exterior becomes burning hot after it’s heated up by Todoroki’s attacks. This turns into a twisted endurance contest, which is how battles have typically gone through these two characters in the past, even if it hasn’t been against each other. 

There are clear stakes here, but the fight between these two is just gorgeous on a visual level. All of the episodes that feature Todoroki’s Half-Cold Half-Hot Quirk are typically impressive in their execution, but “Match 3 Conclusion” is by far the most extreme example. Moments from Todoroki’s battle honestly look like they’re from a TRIGGER production as the heat rages on and an atypical color palette compliments the fiery and heightened atmosphere. The final minutes of the episode go for broke in this department as an avalanche of Quirks advances on everyone and the environment melts into a sprawling mess. 

Tetsutetsu’s dedication to grow stronger is highly admirable, but it’s hard to not get excited for Todoroki once he unleashes new temperatures to his abilities, which freaking melts Tetsutetsu’s steel into a molten mess. They both don’t hold back from each other here and it’s quite endearing that they later throw so much respect towards each other post-battle. They’re left with a stronger bond than before rather than a brewing rivalry. 

The Joint Training Arc is really putting in the work that in a season or two, every Class A hero could be out in the world and partners with someone from Class B and it’d feel like a completely natural progression of the series. My Hero Academia also doesn’t get enough credit for how substantial and satisfying Shoto’s development has been throughout the series and it’s definitely possible to view this series through the lens that the Todoroki family are actually the real main characters.

The final act of this fight is such a treat once everyone’s conflicts overlap. Pont Tsunotori becomes Class B’s breakout MVP and her encounter with Shoji is more of My Hero Academia at its smartest. Shoji literally has eyes on the back of his head that prevent a sneaky horn projectile from Pony. Once Juzo Honenuki’s Softening Quirk gets added to the mix, the perfect Quirk cocktail exists for all hell to break loose. This brilliant climax is fast, but it contains some of the best action that the series has ever done. Everyone is at their best, yet a Rube Goldberg-esque series of events simultaneously takes out nearly everyone from both teams. The chase element at the end where Iida runs for his life is so damn cool and helps Iida truly shine before the battle concludes. 

Perhaps the most surprising development in “Match 3 Conclusion” is that time is the biggest enemy. The match is deemed a tie in the end once the clock runs out and the majority of both teams are unconscious, but not in the designated jails. Characters remark that this conclusion is extremely disappointing, but it’s arguably the best and most suspenseful match of the whole season so far. It’s an excellent demonstration of the power of teamwork and how much extra momentum can be added to a fight when it features the right combination of elements. Todoroki and Tetsutetsu both prove to their classmates how much they’ve grown, but every member of these teams gets to be the hero at some point during this exercise. 

“Match 3 Conclusion” is My Hero Academia at its very best and a testament to how creativity and the right characters can still make a friendly match as exciting as any fight against a top villain. There’s little to criticize this episode on, but it’s worth noting that the season is now a third over and it’s been very focused on just the competition. 

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Other important elements like Midoriya’s connection with the previous One For All bearers, or the situation with Hawks and Dabi, have receded into the background perhaps more than people expected, but will surely become important again before the season is over. This isn’t necessarily problematic when the level of action is as challenging and thoughtful as what takes place in “Match 3 Conclusion.” Bakugo finally gets to show off what he’s been up to in the next match, which hopefully means that the most extreme battles are still yet to come.

The post My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 8 Review: Match 3 Conclusion appeared first on Den of Geek.

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