#edit: i changed my wording a little bit at the end. the original post said “if you like them and you can because these edits are so cool”

[press-f1-to-grieve]

⏱️Charles Leclerc: Better Late Than Never⏱️

by Béla Films

it's from the same person who made that Max DNA edit (on youtube here, straight from the creator | @nico-di-genova reposted it on tumblr here if anybody wants to reblog, but please go watch them at least once on youtube (or whatever else platform they are on) and give both of these a like if you like them and you can, so that the creator knows you like their works.

[pennyblossom-meta]

L Lawliet: a deep dive into the expanded universe pt.01

EDIT (07/04/2024): Added some imgs.

Apologies for being so late to give this a follow up to @maevearcher's meta which can be found here and here. As usual, she’s made excellent points and I'll try to answer the ones which caught my eye.

Since this post ended up gaining a life of its own and becoming a bit too long, I’m splitting it in 2 or 3 parts. The core of the content for part 01 starts after under the button to Read More.

Here we talk about L's humanity.

I'll start with a disclaimer of my own: while I consider the manga as the base for the story, I'm very much open to the expanded DN universe as a complementary study of the characters and their motivations — sometimes even filling in the blanks for some of the background mysteries, such as the dynamics of Wammy's House and how L's successors view him.

To further clarify: by canon I mean the manga and any works by Tsugumi Ohba as the base material. I think @maevearcher and I are more or less in agreement on that, from what she mentioned in her own posts. As she said, the written word is indeed the baseline truth.

The expansion of the DN universe also has its own very special set of problems; for example, in many ways, L:CtW (L: Change the WorLd) commits the sin of overindulgence by throwing in considerations that, arguably, go against canon. Besides the ending where L lives for a final 23 days and Watari dies, the portrayal of Near in the movie (though in the novel he's also walking a fine line between becoming partially and very much OOC) is also a point of contention. I confess that I really wasn't fond of the way they portrayed Misa as a potential crush of L given canon insights on his opinion about Light whether in the role of Kira or as a person (pg.64 of Vol 13: How to Read, henceforth referred to as V13:HTR), but aligning L to become more humane and forgiving was at least interesting.

The same happens with the live action movies, the 2015 series, and the musical. At least the game Spiraling Trap isn't clashing with canon elements — that I could tell. The main plot is separate from the events of DN and the dating sim is a little slice of heaven into L's thoughts and emotions which I dearly love.

However, while L:CtW does indeed overindulge, the novel AN:LABB (Another Note: LA BB Murder Cases) gives us a singular glimpse into L through the eyes of Mello while keeping the events mostly accurate to the main plot, even with its slight deviations. It's certainly an optional perspective to the core of DN, but one that I always found very insightful. In V13:HTR, Obha mentions how he would’ve liked that there were more novels about L and how he solved previous cases, in a similar fashion to how Nisio Isin approaches AN:LABB. Here’s what Ohba says in pg.61 of V13:HTR:

(...) I didn’t think up much for [L’s] past. For him to be in such an influential position, he must have solved an amazing amount of cases, but I have no idea what kind of cases they were or how he solved them. But I would love for NISIOISIN, who wrote the Death Note novel, to write more stories about that (...)

This means that, to some extent, even the original author, Ohba, accepts AN:LABB as close to canon — or rather, as canon as it can get given the creative liberties allowed to a third party writer. To that point, Nisio Isin took L’s capoeira demonstration during the Yotsuba arc and made it a whole thing in the novel, with L taking inspiration from Naomi Misora’s skills. However, given the importance of that event, in the main story, L takes a while to even remember Misora so we can infer that either the stress of the case is getting to him OR learning capoeira and subsequently Misora’s role in it didn’t leave that much of an imprint on him because true canon didn’t really put that much emphasis into it. Either way, it’s an extrapolation that works. The technicalities can be overlooked given how ambiguous the scene is, as there is more than room to deduce a different past.

At the same time, I am an apologist that there are shared characteristics to L throughout the different mediums. My own interpretation of L's character has the manga as a baseline, but the expanded universe has taught me that there are sides to him that might not be so easy to perceive in dialogue bubbles or illustrations alone. Little things like L's addictive personality or the way he represses feelings are visible in the manga but caught beautifully in the novels, for example.

Going from the written word into the screen also represents a loss of the purity achievable only within the narrative in-book, where you can extrapolate and reach your own conclusions without being subject to the bias of sound and movement — though manga aggregates the visual to words and with it an altogether different dimension of meaning. That's one of the many things I enjoy about elements of fiction introduced through books; the stillness of the images and the narrative are more complex. Every time the baseline gets adapted, it loses something or that something shifts to fit into the perception of others. It ceases being pure and its essence is fundamentally shattered. Like the concept of a musical score on paper that gets played by an orchestra, there will never be an adaptation as good as the source material because it breaks the illusion.

While I can certainly extrapolate and accept the loss, I find that the written word from the novels, the tone of a VA's voice and the body movements in a live action still complement the manga well, despite narrative clashes.

About L’s humanity

Recently I've been re-watching the anime and it's incredible how Alessandro Juliani's understanding of the character resulted in such a well-rounded voice for L. I actually prefer the EN version to the JP because of the voice acting. It's superbly brilliant, even if L becomes less listless. He's certainly still aloof, but his aggressiveness is portrayed more vividly; in contrast, L in the manga feels a bit more dangerous and scary to me due to the range of expressions that the anime didn't manage to add in due to time and budget constraints. If anything L tones down how dangerous he can be. He does this on purpose so that he can trick and trip his adversary, as can be seen during his earlier interactions with Light. At times, L makes a mockery of himself, apparently placing himself in the position of a more demure individual while sharply observing the world around him and forming conclusions.

As to @maevearcher ‘s first point:

(...) An image of this lonely autistic genius, locked inside the confines of his ways, waiting for the right person to come along and save him from the banes of his solitary existence…until he meets Light and realises there’s someone out there who he can relate to, for understanding and stuff. I personally don’t buy too much into that.

The depth to which L relates to Light can be overestimated, but not without reason. Theirs is mostly an adversarial relationship with varying deviations throughout the expanded universe, but if we solely consider the manga then we get this comment from Ohba regarding whether L has any friends on pg.64 of V13: HTR:

Nope. And when he says that Light is his first friend that’s a big lie. He never considers him a friend. He probably secretly thinks really negative things about him.

During the Yotsuba arc, L is at a disadvantage. Light has turned the tables, tricked him into what Beyond Birthday could not do and thus gained a solid position into rendering L almost powerless to charge him. To elaborate on the latter point: BB wanted to create the perfect, unsolvable crime to humiliate L, making him lose, and thus “spend the rest of his life trembling in fear of B’s shadow” (pg.163, AA:LABB); L would know who the guilty party was but wouldn’t be able to prove it or bring that person to justice. As such, L would not be able to solve the mystery. At the end of the novel BB fails due to Misora’s quick thinking and that’s that. However, Light has several advantages that BB lacked, starting with his own social position, charm and the impeccable reputation of a model student and the prized son of a police chief who helps solve cases every now and then.

We can argue that, what truly happens in manga canon, is L and Light showing how much they respect each other for their detective skills, forming a sort of strange kinship within the cat and mouse game, especially when Light loses his memories of the Death Note. The game thrills them and they enjoy pushing each other’s buttons. No one else has ever challenged them like this. That being said, the first time they meet up for coffee after the tennis match, L is observing Light like a hawk, keeps testing him for a reaction and seems somewhat irritated at how much Light talks. I would venture a guess that L doesn’t actually like Light that much, even when he loses his memories. He might even find Light a nuisance when he waves the flag of morality — though this is a common problem L is confronted with when dealing with the Task Force, in particular Chief Yagami and Aizawa. This also places him at another gruesome disadvantage, as he’s surrounded by people who openly dislike and criticise his methods. The Task Force is also extremely wary of the way L pursues Light and think he’s being stubborn without proof to substantiate his reasoning. Ironically, it’s Aizawa, one of L’s most critical subordinates, who initiates Light’s downfall years later once he starts to consider L’s suspicions in light of Near and Mello’s tactics. 

Both L and Light respect the game, no matter where it takes them. I would further make an educated guess that Light even preyed on L’s vulnerabilities during the Yotsuba arc, predicting how L might fall into depression for failing at the game. Light was more than capable of understanding that L’s competitive and childish side would make him a sore loser, especially given that he had already “lost” the first round of battles just by showing his face. Even if there is a sliver of friendship between both during Light’s months of amnesia, it’s dead and buried the moment he becomes Kira again. 

My conclusion here would be that, while what happened with Light was extreme, it was also somewhat similar to Beyond Birthday’s eternal enmity towards L: the challenge, the need to humiliate and take down the greatest detective, one of the most brilliant minds to ever walk the Earth. There are some notable quotes from AA:LABB that reference what it is to be L, surrounded by future challengers and individuals who both look up to L and want to prove they’re better than him:

Pg.69

By simple arithmetic, L's ability in 2002 was the equivalent of five ordinary investigative bureaus, and seven intelligence agencies (and by the time he faced off against Kira, those numbers had leapt upward several more notches). This is easy to think of as a reason to respect and admire someone, but let me say this as clearly as possible: that much ability in one human is extremely dangerous. Modern danger management techniques rely heavily on diffusing the risk, but his very existence was the exact opposite. In other words, if someone was planning to commit a crime, they could greatly increase their chances of getting away with it by simply killing L before they began. That was why L hid his identity Not because he was shy or because he never left the house. To ensure his own safety For a detective of L's ability, self-preservation and the preservation of world peace were one and the same, and it would not be correct to describe his actions as cowardly or self-centered.

Pg. 117

L was the goal of everyone in Wammy's House. Everyone of us wanted to surpass him. To step over him. To step on him. M did, N did, and B did. M as a challenger, N as a successor. B as a criminal.

Pg. 160:

B approached Naomi Misora, calling himself Rue Ryuzaki. Rue Ryuzaki - L.L.  For anyone from Wammy's House, there could be no higher goal than identifying yourself with that letter - and Beyond Birthday seized this case as his chance.

One of the biggest problems with these quotes is that they paint a very complicated — and, ultimately, suffocating — picture of what it is like to be L. Ohba himself mentions Watari’s predisposition towards collecting geniuses from all over the world and what Wammy’s House has turned into, under the snippet for Watari’s character (pg.60 V13:HTR):

He’s a guy who cultivates detectives for fun. That’s kind of terrible, isn’t it?

Everyone profits from L. Watari becomes richer than ever. Wammy's House becomes breeding ground for geniuses who end up dreaming of a life where they enjoy constant thrill and challenge. However, in order to do so, the dream cannot be complete until the successor crushes the original; until M, N, B and A defeat L. At least one of L’s successors couldn’t handle the pressure and committed suicide. B, known as Backup, runs away from the orphanage and goes on a murder rampage. Having never met L in person, he deduces several personality quirks that the “original” demonstrates, going as far as exacerbating them in order to be creepy and repulsive. Mello, who boasts of having met L in person and being privy to stories about how he defeated several other detectives (then taking their aliases as a trophy) both fervently admires L and wants to step on him. 

Step on him. That’s quite the turn of phrase. It does sound scary, doesn’t it? To be surrounded by people who would take the opportunity to pull you down, no matter how much they admire you. They want to be you, to prove that they’re better than you. It’s game and ego. Life and death. Winner and loser. 

And that’s perhaps the most blatant summary in approved canon of what it is like to be L that we’ll ever get. We can, of course, argue that Watari cares about L. He’s not only his handler, but also the one who brought him into Wammy’s House. It’s fairly clear that he nurtured (and even enabled) some of L’s most distressing character traits, though I wouldn’t necessarily say it was with a purely utilitarian agenda. It’s perfectly acceptable to extrapolate how Watari might’ve wanted to keep L, a child of great intellectual genius, happy by allowing him to be challenged and properly educated. In fact, AN:LABB (pg. 145-46) even gives us L’s perspective on the kindness that justice can achieve, which is confirmed within the expanded universe to be similar to Watari’s teachings as L confronts Kujo in L:CtW. 

"I have nothing to do with him," L said. "To be completely accurate, I do not even know B. He is simply someone I am aware of. But none of this affects my judgment. Certainly I was interested in this case, and began to investigate it because I knew who the killer was. But that did not alter the way I investigated it, or the manner in which my investigation proceeded. Naomi Misora, I cannot overlook evil. I cannot forgive it. It does not matter if I know the person who commits evil or not. I am only interested in justice." "Only... in justice... " Misora gasped. "Then ... nothing else matters?" "I wouldn't say that, but it is not a priority." “You won't forgive any evil, no matter what the evil is?" "I wouldn't say that, but it is not a priority." "'But..." Like a thirteen-year-old victim. "There are people who justice cannot save." Like a thirteen-year-old criminal. “And there are people who evil can save." "There are. But even so," L said, his tone not changing at all. As if gently admonishing Naomi Misora. “Justice has more power than anything else." "Power? By power ... you mean strength?" "No. I mean kindness." He said it so easily. Misora almost dropped the phone. L The century's greatest detective, L. The detective of justice, L. Who solved every case, no matter how difficult... " ...I misunderstood you, L." "Did you? Well, I'm glad we cleared that up."

I would, once again, venture another educated guess that, while Watari’s primary reasons for starting a program of successors to L was noble, it ultimately backfired on an individual level. Society wise, the letters, as L calls them in L:CtW, are a force for good. They solve crimes, help law forces around the world to keep peace. Some of them even become scientists like Dr Kujo — though she becomes the main antagonist in the spin-off novel. However, the pressure this kind of lifestyle fostered creates a group of individuals who are highly competitive and manipulative. Some, like A, can’t handle it. Even L has his own troubles, being called a reclusive sociopath, possibly by the police forces who treat him as a utility rather than a person. He’s someone they admire and resent, who is tolerated given how effective he is at cracking down cases. 

This passage from L:CtW paints a grim picture of the way L suppresses his own feelings as he breaks down for not being able to prevent Maki from being kidnapped (pg. 150-51):

"Light...it hurts. My heart--" It was a hurt that L Lawliet had suppressed, that he had to suppress in order to continue his existence as the peerless Detective L. How had the world's top detective been described in regard to facets of his personality rather than his ability as a detective? He had been called a kinky detective who relished bizarre murders, a human computer capable only of measuring mass murders in terms of cold numbers, a reclusive sociopath. What L thought of such estimations of his personality only L could know. But no one could truly understand L. How L did not and could not forget the faces of thousands of victims. Who could comprehend the man who had lived his life, and had to live confronting all the lives that ended prematurely, the tears of grief-stricken survivors, the devaluing of life as a daily reality. How was it possible to measure the pain of such a man? Was it a strain so heavy that L's back curved under all its weight? Was it an agony so terribly to leave the indelible dark circles around his eyes? Was it a feeling so bitter that every bite he took needed to be coated in sugar? The chronically rounded shoulders, the inevitable dark circles, the eccentric tastes--L suppressed the pain of being a champion of justice, but the evidence of the pain was moulded into his very body.”

Even within the clear disparity from the official canon, this passage slaps. It humanises L further, making the detective become a person and not just a machine who is content with his lifestyle. I know there’s a tendency for those who prefer the manga to see L as someone who is unabashedly himself and perfectly alright with the life he lives. I would argue that the Kira case was not only the most difficult challenge L ever faced, but also a series of moments where he had to be at his best — and at his worst. He had to do everything within his power to solve the case, not only because of his pride but because of what he considers to be his sense of justice. Saying with such confidence ‘I am justice’ is a rather cheesy and childish thing to say out loud, though I read it as both what started as a child’s stubbornness and what L became, as he positioned himself as a barrier to prevent crimes. 

L suppresses himself, represses his emotions; he tries to control them, as Fu Takashi says in an interview, he is “dependent on games or battles of the mind”. Perhaps this is a consequence of the foundations of his personality. Despite L’s innate stubbornness, it could be argued that this is as much his fault as it is Watari’s, who didn’t nurture L’s social skills as he should have when he was a child. By not having an outlet outside of his hobby, L is trapped in a prison of his own making. Superficially, L is a “smart guy who hates losing”, but what about the rest? What about the things that make him human, the connections with others? In the same interview, it is mentioned how L feels lonely and needs affection. But what affection can you get when you isolate yourself from the world and keep everyone at arm’s length? He’s not a machine. Even machines become obsolete with time, and need outside help to keep functioning.

As for the latter point, if everyone around L is trying to step on him, humiliate him and surpass him, then it’s only natural that his emotional defences would be up. Aside from Watari, whose loyalty he can count on, he’s alone. L has no one else. And everyone around him will have a dangerous, significant probability to betray him.

Next in part 02: About romance, having someone close and intimate, the meaning of the Monster speech.

Tagging @rinneroraito and @sharkiethrts who might be interested in this meta.

[larkingame]

hello all! been a moment since we last discussed some things, so I'm coming online to discuss the progress of Larkin's development and make a few announcements :)

over the last ten months, larkin has gone through a lot of changes, some of which I've documented here--but most of it I've kept pretty private. I realized that over the few short years I've been developing the game, I sort of grew an unhealthy dependence on my presence within the 'interactive fiction' community that I really, really needed to take a step back from and break, all in order to ensure that I could enjoy working on what originally started out as a passion project for me.

since july of last year, I've completely reshaped and rewritten how larkin exists as a project, shifted it's genre and started collaborating with a few others to ensure it can be of the highest quality it can possibly be. uptop, i'd like to mention @tapeworrmart who's taken on the immense task of putting together most of the game art for me, @khiita and @ann1a-1 who have both taken on the roles of my editors (and also sounding boards for when I am being absolutely insane) and my production manager phillip, who without his assistance, larkin would barely exist. with that, let's do a progress report. the intended demo of larkin, or what i've taken to calling 'episode one' (yes, i said, 'episode,' more on that in a minute) has stretched to just over 200k words worth of content. it stretches all the way from the earliest versions of larkin's original prologue, to the end of the original chapter two. so far, we've completed 3 out of the intended 20 character portraits, as well as some more art that's slowly been in development.

now, on to the announcements. probably the biggest, and the one I am most ashamed of is--due to the fact that I've been slammed with graduate school work and some other external factors, Larkin as it currently exists is not the best that I think it can be. I'm deeply sorry for this, but I want to ensure that you all are getting the highest quality game you could get from me--and right now, I know it's just not that. Which is why I am unfortunately, pushing the release of the demo back until Friday, June 14th, 2024. Patrons will be granted access to the most recent edit of the demo two weeks earlier on Friday, May 31st 2024. In the meantime, I will be working day and night (quite literally) to get what I'm dropping on you up to par and something that I'm happy with.

To make up for this disappointment, I'm planning on repopulating the blog with a lot of content over the coming months, rewriting new versions of old asks, posting art and short stories.

Next on the agenda and also an equally important announcement. I'm changing the rating of Larkin to Mature or 18+ As I've been writing these past few months, working through a lot of themes and figuring out the story I want to tell, I've found that I think the change in rating is entirely necessary. While I don't think I've ever had that big of a minor fanbase--I think that this is just what I am most comfortable doing. There has consistently grown a little bit more of gore, and trauma exploration, which is the main reason for this change in rating, but, this does allow for the inclusion of something that I've been toying with since the intial release of the game. There is going to be explicit sex scenes in this new version of Larkin--all of which, you the player are able to opt out of, or completely avoid if that's something you want--but I just thought a little announcement would be warranted. This does not mean however, I am comfortable with answering thoroughly explicit asks or getting unsolicited sexual messages. The goal is to keep this game blog mainly tame.

Please respect this boundary of mine.

Third thing to be announced. I've also changed the format in which Larkin will be released. Rather than around the twenty-five chapters in one of a series of 'Books'/'Games', Larkin will be released episodically over four 'seasons' with eight-ten episodes of around 200k-250k words each (though, this is just an early estimate--they could grow longer, as I'm basing this purely off the demo/Episode One)

Finally and a little bit of a fun note: there are now twelve romance options throughout larkin, five male, three female, one non-binary and three gender-selectable. With those upcoming asks, you'll hear more about each in the coming days :)

With all that being said, I wanted to lastly thank all of you for supporting me over the years and putting faith and your interest in this project. truly, the support of all of you means the world to me and I can't wait to share more of larkin with you all.

thank you 💖

[i-only-ever-asked-questions]

Good Omens Through the Decades

UPDATED!

This is a timeline of all the events that have happened related to Good Omens, from its inception to its publication to its future plans; editions, adaptations, failed adaptations and the like.

I originally wanted to have this post ready for the anniversary in May, that didn't work, it just kept getting larger. Then I wanted to do it for the anniversary of Season 2 in July, that didn't work either, for the same reason. So I am just going to post it now, a random date and hope for the best LOL. And guess what? After a fun and fruitful chat with another fan who prefers to remain anonymous, I added a couple of events a few trivia here and there (thank you!). So, a little bit of warning: it is loooong, lots of things have happened in 34 years. At the beginning I was going to put all the references at the end of the post, but they are a lot, so I put them in a document instead.

*Yes, of course I am aware of the allegations. But this is about the history and the world of Good Omens which is so much bigger than one person, even if that person started the whole thing. It is ours now. It is Terry's and Rob's. It is David and Michael's, Douglas McKinnon's, David Arnold's and the rest of the cast and crew. It is Colleen Doran's, Dirk Maggs's, Terry Gilliam's, Vicki Larnach, Jim Hare and Jay James Moody's. It is Stephen Brigg's and Martin Jarvis's. And so many other people who have brought or will bring its many iterations to life. It is the fans'.

1985-1990 - The Book

1985, Jan - Terry and Neil met for the first time when Neil interviewed Terry for Space Voyager magazine after "The Colour of Magic" was published [1,2] *For years they both wholeheartedly believed it had been at a Chinese Restaurant during February. Some time after Terry passed away Neil found his diary for 1985 where the entry said it had been in January at an Italian Restaurant [3]

1987, summer - Neil wrote the first 5000 words of a story and sent it to a few friends, including Terry; "An exchange in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, combined with a late night viewing of The Omen and a love of Richmal Compton’s immortal Just William stories, had put a story into my head, about a demonic baby-swap that goes wrong, in which the Antichrist grows up to be a nice kid, with a dog and a gang" [1,4]

1987, Oct - Sandman began and William the Antichrist went into the back back back burner [1]

1988, spring? summer? - Terry called Neil and offered to either buy the idea or write it together; "About a year later I took it out of the drawer and did see what happened next, even if I couldn’t see how it all ended yet" [5]

1988, summer - They wrote it together (do you really need a reference? 😉)

1988-1989 - First draft took about nine weeks. After Richmal Compton's estate did not reply to the request of using William Brown and his world, William became Adam, Pepper and War became female and the book got a new title (Good Omens by Neil) and subtitle (The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry). The second draft took about four months. There were still about five more months of polishing and editing and auctioning and more editing [4,6] *Good Omens was the first Terry book that ever went to auction. It ended up going for £150,000 [7]

1989, Halloween - During the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, Terry and Neil started plotting what could become the sequel to Good Omens and called it "668 The Neighbor of the Beast" [6,8] *The real-life experience of trying to piece together the plot of a soft porn movie using little free increments from hotels' pay-per-view over time probably made it into the sequel around here [7]

1990, May 10. Book published in the UK - Hardback published in the UK by Victor Gollancz (with whom Terry had already been working) to be followed by paperback by Corgi on May 23, 1991 [8,9] *After the first UK edition was published (Gollancz), several changes were made to the text to make it easier on US readers and to polish it a bit. The new text was used by both the US publishers (Workman) and the UK publishers of the paperback (Corgi). Gollancz was unaware of this alternate text until about 2009. They started using the Workman/Corgi text starting with their next edition in 2014 [9]

1990, Sep. Book published in the US - Hardback published in the US by Workman to be followed by paperback by Berkley on March 1992 [9,10] *UK editions list Terry's name first and US editions list Neil's name first. This was done because Terry was more known in the UK and Neil was more known in the US [7]

1991-2004 - The Movies

1991, Feb - Hollywood Studio Sovereign Pictures hired Terry and Neil to write an adaptation of the book for a movie. The studio had some specific requirements such as Crowley owning a night club, Aziraphale working as a curator for the British Museum, Tadfield with an abandoned pier and a miniature town in it and Satan. They ended up rejecting the script anyway [11] *It was at this point that Terry suggested Buddy Holly's "Every Day" as the theme for Good Omens. In this script some of the angels used for the series got started like Gabriel and Sandalphon and a big sequence had them use their haloes like frisbees inside the British Museum [11,12,13]

1992, Jan. Movie Script - Terry declined to write a second script, but Neil stayed and wrote one. In October the company got taken over and all dreams of a movie died [11,14] *In this script Crowley tries to run away to Alpha Centauri

2001-2002. Terry Gilliam Movie deal - Since about 1999, when he obtained the rights, and throughout the 00's Terry Gilliam tried hard to make a movie. The closest he came to it was in 2001-2002 when he got as far as casting the parts (Johnny Depp as Crowley, Robin Williams as Aziraphale, Mme. Tracey and Hastur, and Kirsten Dunst). But he couldn't get a US studio to invest the last $15M and the movie project collapsed [13,15,16] *Terry had received, back in 1989, a copy of the book asking for a blurb. The letter got lost and he thought the book had been sent as a pitch for a movie [16,17]

2004, Jun 20th - Hill House Publishers created the "Neil Gaiman's Preferred Edition Series" with limited editions of American Gods, Anansi Boys and Neverwhere. As a bonus for the subcribers, Hill House printed the 1992 movie script under the name "A Screenplay." Only 500 numbered and 52 lettered copies were ever made [11,18]

2005-2010 - The Sequel (and the Audiobooks)

2005, Jun - Terry and Neil met at the Audie Awards in New York and plotted a little more of the sequel. This was when the South Downs bit was thought up [19,20]

2005, Dec. Crowley and Aziraphale's New Year's resolutions - The list of resolutions came out sometime between Christmas and New Year's at Harper Collins' website [7] *The well-known idea of Crowley gluing coins to the sidewalk is not in the book at all, it came from this list

2006, Feb 28. New edition - The book was reissued in the US as a hardcover in two different versions. The text is the same but one version has a white cover with Crowley and Neil's name listed first, and a second version has a black cover with Aziraphale and Terry's name listed first [7,21] *This time the explanation for the authors' name order was to make sure the book could be found both under "G" and also under "P"

2006, Jul. Briggs Audiobook - ISIS released in the UK an unabridged audiobook read by Stephen Briggs in CD, MP3CD and cassette (it won the 2008 Audiobook Download of the Year by audible.co.uk) [22,23]

2009, Nov 10. Jarvis Audiobook - HarperAudio released in the US an unabridged audiobook read by Martin Jarvis in CD [24] *Martin Jarvis is the same narrator who recorded the Just William audiobooks, a nice Easter egg related to the origins of the book

2010, Sep 23 - Terry and Neil had dinner at a sushi restaurant in Cardiff and decided that the book should be adapted as a TV series and not a movie anymore (as per Terry Gilliam's advice). And if it goes well, the rest of the story, the unwritten sequel, should be adapted too [8,13,15] *It was around here that the idea of the sushi restaurant cameo with both of them being patrons started

2011-2013 - The Stage (and a failed TV series)

2011, Feb. Terry Jones TV series - Terry and Neil agreed to a deal to adapt the book into a four-part TV series made by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott. At the end they didn't quite like the script though [13,25,26]

2012, Jun - Amy Hoff's The Cult Classic Theatre was granted permission to adapt the book to a stage play [27] *One of the conditions was that no footage would be taken/made available and the script would not be shared/sold

2012, Aug- Narrativia was established as the production company that would handle all of Terry's work adaptations. The production of the TV series and of The Watch were then transferred from Prime Focus [28,29] *Narrativia was first revealed at "The Watch Team Interview" panel during the Discworld 2012 convention on Aug, 26th [28]

2013, Mar. Stage Play - Amy Hoff's play was presented on March 20-23 and 27-30 at the Cottiers Theatre in Glasgow [30]

2013, Apr - BBC drama producer Heather Larmour pitched a radio drama adaptation to the BBC [31]

2013, sometime. The Musical - Vicki Larnarch and Jim Hare, "two hippies from Sydney", had met with Terry and Rob about six months prior. Terry's interest had gotten piqued when they showed him The Chattering Order Nuns song and he asked them to come back with a showstopper and a few more songs. They came back with "All Living Things" and they got the green light to go forward with the adaptation [32]

2013, Dec 11 - In a meeting at The Groucho Club, Terry and Neil enter into talks with the BBC to adapt GO to TV [33]

2014-2015 - The Radio Drama

2014, summer - Dirk Maggs adapted the book into a Radio Drama and gave Terry and Neil a cameo as police officers pursuing Crowley [31,34] *In July, Neil advised Dirk to get Terry's recording asap, before he couldn't do it anymore. They did it in the summer and that day ended up being the last day Neil and Terry saw each other [35]. The rest of the recording happened during autumn [13]

2014, Aug - Terry asked Neil to make the TV adaptation of Good Omens, "I know, Neil, that you are very, very busy, but no one else could ever do it with the passion that we share for the old girl. I wish I could be more involved, and I will help in any way I can" [12] Neil, of course, said yes

2014, Dec. BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation - The six episodes aired between December 22nd and December 27th, 2014 on BBC Radio 4 [36]

2015, Jan 15 - Random House UK released the BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation in CD [37]

2015-2019 - The TV series (and some luxury limited editions)

2015, Mar 12 - Terry passed away 😢

2015, Mar 25 - Terry's funeral. As soon as Neil got back home, he started writing the script for the TV series [12] *Sometimes signed copies of the third draft of the pilot (dated 25 July 2015) appear in eBay

2015 - Jay James-Moody joined the team to produce the musical [32]

2016, Aug 1 - First read-through of the series script [38] *The scripts were finalized right before SDCC 2016 which was held July 21st-24th [39]. Both Maggie Service and Tim Downie were present in this read-through [40]

2017, Sep 18 - 2018, Mar 10. Season 1 shooting - Season 1 started shooting at St. James' park (with the 11 years ago scene) and ended in Cape Town, South Africa [13,41,42] *The read-through before shooting occurred on Sept 13, 2017 [43]

2017, Nov 13 - Full development reading of the musical at the York Theatre in Chippendale, Sydney, Australia [32,44]

2019, Feb 8 - The social media campaign to promote Season 1 started with a tour of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl, an acapella choir that traveled to different cities for events and TV shows [45,46]

2019, Apr 25. The Chattering Order of St. Beryl's video - The video "That Brand New Baby Smell" was released in YouTube [47]

2019, May 3 and 4 - Workshop production of the musical at IPAC in Wollongong, Australia. About ten days before the series premiere Vicki, Jim and Jay showed Neil and Rob a recording of this show [32,44,48] *Although a full recording of the workshop exists, they are not allowed to share it until it is finished

2019, May 21. Companion Book - A companion book to the TV series with interviews and behind the scenes photographs written by Matt Whyman was published by William Morrow [49]

2019, May 21. The Script Book - Headline Publishing Group released a script book in both hardback and paperback (The US edition by William Morrow followed on Jun 11th). All editions of the script book include an "Other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" deleted scene. An exclusive edition for Waterstones included an additional deleted scene (Aziraphale in the 1800). A hardback edition limited to 1000 copies with white cover included four different deleted scenes (thugs visiting the bookshop, Leonardo DaVinci, the televangelist and Crowley clothes shopping) and a series of sketches made on set by Lorna May Wadsworth. On Jan 15th of 2020, a paperback edition with the white cover was released; it contained all five deleted scenes from the other editions and a sixth one (Aziraphale trying to sell a book); this edition does not include the sketches however. [9,50] *The script book was created so the production could pay for the death of Agnes Nutter, a scene (and a character) originally written by Terry which was too expensive to film [3]

2019, May 23. The Illustrated Edition - The Pratchett Estate and Neil agreed on a revised definitive text. It was published in five versions collectively called the Definitive Edition. Two versions were published by Gollancz which they called the Illustrated Edition; a standard hardback with black cover and a limited edition in a slipcase with white cover signed by Paul Kidby, the illustrator [51,52]

2019, May 30. "Unholy Night" - The Chattering Order of St. Beryl's released their album "Unholy Night" on Amazon Music and other digital platforms [53]

2019, May 31. TV Series - Season 1 premiered in Prime Video 😊

2019, May 31. Soundtrack - Silva Screen Records released the soundtrack in CD, vinyl and mp3/wav download [54]

2019, Jul. The Definitive Edition - The other three versions of the revised text were published by Dunmanifestin, the company established by the Pratchett Estate to handle Terry's intellectual property. All editions were limited: The Occult Edition (July 1st) with only 1655 copies in a black clamshell box, the Ineffable Edition (July 4th) with 666 copies in a deluxe box including ephemera, and the Celestial Edition, made to order with only 24 copies [52,55]

2019, Aug 2. The BBC Radio Drama Collectors Edition - A vinyl box set by Demon Records included four LPs printed in black and white in illustrated wallets, commentaries by Neil and Dirk and a set of tarot cards. An Amazon exclusive limited edition of 500 sets also included a print signed by Neil [56]

2019, Aug - Neil pitched Season 2 to Amazon [57]

2019, Oct 28. Blu-ray and DVD - Amazon released the series in DVD, Blu-ray and steelbook limited edition Blu-ray (PAL) for the UK. The US version (NSTC) followed on November 5th in both DVD and Blu-ray, there was no steelbook edition for the US market [58]

2019, Dec - John Finnemore joined as co-writer of Season 2 [57] *In this meeting, John stated that he needed to know the ending before he could write so Neil came up with the ending of Season 2 in about 5 minutes right there and then

2020-2025 - TV Series Season 2, a new Audiobook and some other adjacent projects

2020, May 1st. Lockdown Video - A short video about a phonecall between Crowley and Aziraphale was created by Narrativia and The Blank Corporation for the 30th anniversary of the book. It was released in the the official YouTube account of the Terry Pratchett Estate (@terrypratchett6025) [59]

2020, summer - Neil started writing the script for Season 2 beginning with the opening scene for episode 1 [57] *The last scene written was Gabriel organizing the books by first letter of first line. It was planned as the last scene for Episode 2 but at the end got moved to another place [60]

2020, Sep 16 - Season 2 was officially greenlit (along with Anansi Boys) [61]

2021, Mar 26 - The Hillywood Show announced the Good Omens parody project [62]

2021, Jun 29 - Amazon announced Season 2 in a press release [63]

2021, Oct 18 - 2022, Mar 1. Season 2 shooting - Season 2 started shooting in the Bathgate studio. Some scenes were shot on location in different parts of Edinburgh and other areas [64,65] *The read-through happened over October 14th and 15th, three episodes per day [66], David had to attend via zoom since he was still in isolation from Georgia's covid [67]. On the other hand, Michel McKean (Shadwell in Season 1) was present for that zoom read-through but had to be drop out also for covid reasons [68]. Peter Davison (David's-father-in law) was asked to play Job's part after shooting had started (possibly replacing Michael McKean?) and Ty Tennant (David's son) was cast too after shooting had started but through audition [69]. Maggie Service was in the very first shot of the season and also in the last day, first one in last one out as she said [70]

2021, Nov 2. Full Cast Audiobook - HarperAudio released in the US a full cast audiobook with Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley. The audiobook was later released in the UK on January 14th, 2022 [71,72] *The original cover for the audiobook was designed by Henry Sene Yee; a lavender background with drawings of Crowley and Aziraphale facing away from each other. After Season 2 was released, the cover changed to one of the promotional posters [73]

2023, Mar 15. Good Omens HQ - The Terry Pratchett Estate and Neil Gaiman created Good Omens Headquarters. The headquarters launched official accounts in several social media platforms and a website that keeps track of collector's items as they are being revealed [74]

2023, May 10. Good Omens Parody - The Hillywood Show's parody premiered in their YouTube channel (thehillywoodshow) [75] *Amazon Video partnered with Hillywood to announce the premiere date for Season 2 within their parody video. Neil, Maggie Service and Daniel Mays appeared as guests

2023, Jul 28. TV Series Season 2 - Season 2 premiered in Prime Video 😊 *As part of the promo campaign two days before the premiere, Amazon screened the first two episodes in cinemas in several cities free for Amazon Prime members

2023-2024 - The Graphic Novel

2023, Aug 1. Graphic Novel - The Kickstarter campaign to fund the graphic novel adaptation with Colleen Doran as illustrator launched [76] *At its closure, 36,867 backers had pledged £2,419,973 (notice it is pounds, not dollars)

2023, Aug 25. Season 2 Soundtrack - Silva Screen Records released the soundtrack for season 2 in CD, vinyl and mp3/wav download [54]

2023, Dec 14 - Season 3 was officially greenlit [77]

2024, Apr 18 - The Graphic Novel Pledgemanager site launches for people who missed the Kickstarter campaign or to add extras to an already existing pledge [78]

2024, Jul 13 - Vicki Larnach, Jim Hare and Jay James Moody appeared as virtual guests at Nullus Anxietas 9, the Australian Discworld Convention 2024 held in Adelaide, to talk about recent push for the musical [79]

2025 - The Future

2025, January - Season 3 is scheduled to begin filming [80]

2025, Spring - Graphic novel is scheduled to be released [76] *The original release date was in July of 2024, however in April of 2024 it was announced that it would need to be pushed to the Spring of 2025 (Update #20)

There should be a special mention of a fan created musical parody for YouTube that was in development in Russia by 62Media. This was completely fan made and not connected to the Pratchett Estate, Neil, the BBC or Amazon (which is why it is not in the list). Unfortunately it had to shut down due to COVID [81]

Fun fact: During the tour to promote the book, back in 1989-1990 the song "Shoehorn With Teeth" by They Might Be Giants became the unofficial anthem of the tour since that is what they always ended up singing when things went too crazy [82]

[jinkookspencil]

game night | jjk

it's your turn to host game night, and an exciting, undressing game awaits jungkook at home....

author's note, please read: THIS IS A REPOST OF MY ORIGINAL FIC! i made a post saying i'm done writing smut and wanted to go back and edit/delete my older smutty fics. this is the first one i'm dealing with (i still don't know what I'll do about the others, they might just get deleted entirely without a repost like this one, so read them while you can!). the "smut smut" has been edited out. i hope you guys understand.

description/tw/tags: ~3k words / one-shot / established relationship / established relationship / suggestive / i hope you guys like it! feedback is appreciated & welcome :)

Dating Jungkook was a lot of fun. So fun that well into your time together, you both doubted a “honeymoon phase” ever existed in relationships and pitied anyone who said it did - every minute of your relationship had been a prolonged “honeymoon phase" with nothing changing since you first got together. You never had to find ways to keep your time together interesting, sexy, or fun…. they just were. It’s how you both were, even before meeting each other, and, sure enough, it’s how you both fell in love. Your wacky ideas either complimented or impressed the other, and your traditions - even the most routine ones - were always treats you looked forward to. Especially…game night.

A routine tradition that never seemed so, for most game nights were different. There were the classic video game or board game nights, switching up the games, the settings, and the characters you played to keep it interesting. There were the innocent games that surprisingly not always turned not-so-innocent since you and Jungkook just loved playing them regardless… (though his genius suggestion of “hide and seek in the dark” that one time did result in one of the steamiest nights of your life). Similarly, there were bedroom nights when you and Jungkook spent more time naked in the bed than you thought was humanly possible, teasing and toying for hours…  And there was also, “serious business” - when you and Jungkook sat down with a super serious mindset - whether it was a 1000-piece puzzle, the hardest Lego sets you could find, or Mario Kart. 

Tonight, it was your turn to plan game night. That’s all Jungkook knew when he walked in from work that evening. After coming up with such a genius idea - the perfect blend of every game category you’d established, you had to keep it a secret til the last minute…. and make the little brat wait a little.

“Baby!” Jungkook calls the moment he steps through the front door of the apartment, the enthusiasm is his voice clear as day. “I’m starving. You said you made me something, didn’t you? What’s tonight’s game? What’s tonight’s game night dessert? I’m ready to eat, I’m ready to game, and I’m ready for you. Tell me.” He slams his hands excitedly on the kitchen table, wiggling his eyebrows. “Tell me - what do you have planned?”

“Patience, baby. Take a bit of this donut first,” you tell your boyfriend, feeding him one of the sugared donuts you’d baked for the night. 

“Mmm,” he moans, his brows furrowing as he licks his lips and tilts his head forward, asking for another bite. “If the game is ‘how many donuts can we eat in one sitting’, you are going down, baby.”

He smiles, taking the entire donut in his hands and eating at it until he finds the tray full of them on the coffee table, grabbing another one. “This is almost as good as the pancakes we made last week… And the syrup I ended up licking off of your tummy was the sweetest thing...” 

“Eat up, Kook,” you laugh, seeing your adorable boyfriend stuff his face with desserts, as he always did, with an angry yet complimentary expression on his face. “You’ll need the energy.”

“What will I need energy for? Not complaining, let me figure it out....” He looked around the living room, which looked exactly as it always did, save for the extra pillows you set up on top of the mattress Jungkook placed in front of the TV. “The PS5 is turned off, the Switch is turned off, no pens or paper, no board games in sight, I need energy…..” Jungkook recounts, trying to piece together the puzzle. “Is it hide and seek or 'the floor is lava' again? A new remix? In the dark?”

“Not exactly,” you say, bending to pick out the box of UNO playing cards you’d wedged between the pillows. “Let’s play.”

“UNO?” The look of disappointment on Jungkook’s face is undeniable - no matter how hard he tries to hide it, the little pout sticks out. After a full day of teasing and keeping it a mystery…. UNO, he wonders. “I- okay, baby, if that’s what you want. I have to admit I thought you’d be a little more creative. And hey, why would I need energy for UNO? Is it because I have to keep up with you and your little tantrums when you lose?”

You roll your eyes. “You wer right about something, stupid. There is a remix. UNO with a twist,” you tease your boyfriend, quickly kissing his neck before tugging on his t-shirt, your hand swiftly slipping beneath the fabric and grazing his solid abs. Nestled into his neck, you reveal the game you had planned. “Strip UNO.”

The shift in his demeanor is immediate. 

“Strip UNO? Yeah?” he asks with wide eyes and a menacing smirk, rubbing his nose against yours. “Yeah, damn. This is new. This is you. You’re all sexy suggesting stuff like this. I just know.... it'll end with angry - sorry, passionate - sex. Oh, you always bite me extra hard when you're angry. I can't wait.”

“Don’t get too confident, baby. I think I can beat your ass.”

He scoffs. “Hah, we’ll see about that.” Looking down, he sees himself disappointed at how few layers you both have on… it’s usually the other way around, with him being disappointed that you had too many layers on. Still, the gaze is the same. Tempting. Excited. Calculating.

“Let’s layer up and take this slow. I don’t want to get you naked too quickly in this cold.” You follow him into the bedroom, grabbing as many items as you can fetch before hiding away in the bathroom to layer up. Knowing how this’ll end, you’re sure to switch out your bra for the black low-cut, lacy push-up bra that Jungkook loved so much. He’d get you to that stage regardless…. might as well fluster him, you think, smiling as you put on the matching underwear,

After layering up, you walk out of the bathroom to see Jungkook bundled up in just as many layers…. even pulling out a puffer jacket and a beanie he looked adorable in. How was this supposed to be a sexy game when Jungkook looked like one giant boba ball walking around your apartment?!

“Gkaja,” he grins, a wide, proud smile on his face thinking he has an advantage over what seems to him as your fewer layers.

Plopping down on the living room mattress in more layers than you could count with the plate of donuts by your side - it was game time.

“Let’s go.”

-

“Uno!” You scream, holding up your final card in your hands while laughing at the eight in Jungkook’s. Seconds later, when he plays a card, and you put down your final card, the round is finally over.

“Hah,” you smirk. “Finally. Take your t-shirt off, Jeon.”

Rolling his eyes, Jungkook takes off his tee and discards it onto the pile of clothes on your side, leaving him in the long-sleeved t-shirt he wore underneath, his favorite grey sweatpants, and his socks.

“My puffer jacket, my beanie, my hoodie, my sweater….” he sighs, shuffling and distributing cards. “You must’ve rigged this. I thought I’d get you fully naked by now but it’s alright. I already won enough rounds to make you get rid of your sweater, your jacket, your cardigan, your socks, your extra skirt, and your crop top - genius addition by the way, ….. Now you’ve just got your pants, a t-shirt, and I’m assuming underwear underneath. Piece of cake.”

Sure enough, he wins the next round. 

“Finally, let’s see that bra, baby,” he giggles, but not as loud as you do when you take off your t-shirt to reveal the tank top you wore underneath.

“Fucking…”, Jungkook resigns, scratching his forehead. “Another hidden layer… It’s not fair. It’s not fair. I tried - guys just can’t layer as much as girls do. They don't make as many layers in as thin fabrics for us.”

“You could’ve worn your muscle tee underneath."

He looks up at you to shoot you a glare, but his expression turns into a suspecting one, catching how low the neckline of the tank top went, the lace of his favorite bra creeping out, and, more importantly, your cleavage - almost on full display. Before he could say anything, you jump up from your spot, making sure your chest bounced a little more than they usually would. 

“I’ll just grab us some water,” you say slowly, walking over to the kitchen to get two glasses of water before returning to find Jungkook frozen in his spot, the cards from the previous round still unshuffled in front of him.

“Kook? The cards?”

“Hmm?” he coos, looking up at you, then at the cards, taking them in his hands. “Oh.”

You bend down to place Jungkook’s glass by his side, making sure he got a clear view down your bra the second your chest meets his eyeline before you sit back down with your glass. It takes another moment for Jungkook to return to the cards, quietly shuffling and distributing them.

“You go first,” he says before he pinches the skin at his wrist, just as he did when he tried to sit through a movie you wanted to watch that he found boring. You could practically read his thoughts at that moment - Stay focused. Stay focused. Stay focused. He didn’t need to say anything for you to know it - his sugary fingertips digging into his skin did all the talking.

The game goes on until you yell “Uno!” to which Jungkook sighs. 

“Fuck, I just realized I have a yellow card I could’ve played,” he groans, putting down a green one with a pout, finally allowing you to end the game as the winner. 

“Distracted, baby?”, you tease, leaning all the way down and bringing your arms together, emphasizing your chest and cleavage even further. “It’s okay if you wanna give up now.”

You drink in the sight of Jungkook standing up to take off his white t-shirt, revealing his toned chest and abs underneath.

“Let’s see who gets distracted now,” he mutters, eating an entire donut in two bites before shaking his head in concentration, the furrowed expression on his face one of frustration at the game and delight in the carby dessert’s immediate sugar rush. Licking his lips, Jungkook quietly reshuffles the cards and distributes them once again, starting - and winning the round with a laser focus, as though UNO was never a game of luck but skill, one that he had been honing his entire life. 

“Hah,” he says, a wide smile finally returning to his face as he wiggles his eyebrows and leans back on his elbows. “Strip. Strip for me, slut.” Jungkook never commanded you with words like that except in the roughest of times…. but the giddy expression on his face is too cute. It was his frustration and horniness talking - and that excitement only thrilled you further…. Was it that much of a torture for him to wait to get you undressed? That sexy smirk on his face after he licked his lips seemed to prove it...

You laugh, taking in his entire form as he was, from his anticipating expression all the way down to his legs and wiggling toes, each one individually covered by his toe socks. Taking off your tank top, he sees your chest in all of its glory, held by his favorite bra.

Don’t wear it often. Surprise me with it every now and then, he had once said. You were just following his orders, every single time… And Jungkook reacted as he always did. Almost a reflex, his head tilted forward, eyes growing wider as his tongue peeked out from between his lips....

But, unlike all those times, he remembers himself when the tank top lands on his lap instead of the pile of discarded clothes.

“Fuck you,” he says with a slight laugh, scratching his head, his eyes never leaving your chest. “I knew it. I thought I recognized the lace.”

“As I said - do you want to end the game here, baby?” you ask, leaning back and away from him while tracing the trim of the lace with your fingertips. “It’s alright, you know. I can win.”

He looks up at your face. “Oh, I’ll do whatever I want as soon as I win…. “ Jungkook surveys the room, obviously trying to come up with a scheme to trick and distract you and level with you…. and when he turns to face you again, there’s something dark in his eyes. “Plus, I have my ways too, baby.”

And so the messiest, sloppiest game of UNO commences. It's hard to pinpoint what Jungkook didn't do next. It was all too desperate - desperate for you - and so, all too sexy. From pouring his glass of water over his head and torso and flexing his toned, muscled, and tattooed arms - your known weakness - to eating a donut while recreating an expression he only ever had when he'd been between your legs and at one point, rubbing at the area over his sweatpants - a submission seemingly at the tip of his tongue... The tongue you'd missed so badly...

Before you knew it, Jungkook won, and you had 18 cards in your hands… and you couldn’t tell if his groans were fake anymore.

A grunt rebelliously escaped his body when you admitted defeat and take off your leggings. With his hands by his side, he gives you a clear view of his glistening body and visible bulge as he leans back, prepared to watch you undress... Keeping your eyes on Jungkook, you slowly find the waistline of your leggings, pulling them down to reveal the underwear that came with the bra he loved so much….

“Oh, fuck,” he grunts as you plop back down on the mattress in a criss-cross position, giving him a clear view of everything he wanted to see. “I forgot the bra was part of a set.”

With your focus drowned out by the thought of one another and the growing tension in the air, you and Jungkook didn't take notice if you were playing correctly or even pulling the right amount of cards from the deck. All you knew was that, somehow, Jungkook won the round. And by that point, you both had enough. 

The second your hand finds your bra hooks at your back, Jungkook leaps across and over you, grabbing your hands before they’re able to unhook it in defeat. Pushing your body towards his face, Jungkook hungrily kisses and bites at your chest. “Fuck,. Keep it on,” he moans, biting the bow that sat right between. Everything he did after had been either heavenly or adorable, but the best part was the feeling of him smiling against your skin at the sounds of your gasps and both of your slight giggles. No matter what, Jungkook always found new ways to play with you, and he was surely having fun, his sugary lips stuck to his saliva on your skin and sprinkling over your bra.

“The donuts didn’t fill your appetite, huh, babe?” you whisper, kissing the top of his head where your fingers have been toying with his long hair. He licks the skin with a whine that nearly sends you into overdrive.

At your dual realization of the fabrics between you, Jungkook eagerly stands up and takes off his sweatpants, boxers, and socks all at once, chucking them to the other side of the room before grabbing your underwear at your hips and pulling them off of you - all in a matter of seconds.

You chuckle at Jungkook’s haste before your naked bodies meet. He starts placing soft, quick kisses on your chest, almost having had his fill of the area for the night, before he kisses down your torso, his hands roaming your soft body all the way down...

....

“So… before we go for round 2….” Jungkook begins through heavy breaths, hovering above you once more “….who won game night?”

“I did, obviously,” you laugh.

“What, you won because I fucked you so well?” Jungkook immediately snaps back with a proud grin, looking up at you. “That's a win, but I'm sorry baby, I won the last round of UNO, remember?”

You wrap your arms around his neck. “Baby, you jumped on me. You stopped the game and gave in. You got turned on first. You made a move first. You are naked. I am not. I won.”

“Technically, by wearing that slutty, beautiful little bra - you made the first move, babe. ”

“Well, that first move ensured me the win, Koo. That's the whole point, baby - who can get naked first. Didn't you realize I was giggling so much? It was a laugh of a champion.”

“I thought I was just being adorable. I thought you were having fun." 

“You always are, baby…. And it was fun as fuck. But I won,” you tease, booping his nose with a kiss.

“So what, I’m a loser for not being able to resist you? For having the most perfect girlfriend in the world? Nah, that’s not losing.” Jungkook’s lips meet yours in a kiss. “I win.”

[multifandom-onigiri]

Ok I’m going to rip off the bandage and talk about the age gap discourse surrounding DarkMilk

I’m going to preface this with a few disclaimers

1. The post is mainly going to center around Dark Choco as a character because there is (unsurprisingly) more to be said about Dark Choco Cookie from what I’ve gathered. (Edit: There was a lot more to be said.)

2. This post isn’t here to force you to change your interpretation or have your take away from this post as “I have to see Dark Choco as this age” or “DarkMilk’s age gap is [insert said range]”. Rather, it’s me presenting an interpretation with an analysis of the game. But nothing about their ages is explicitly confirmed or denied so I could be wrong. You could be wrong too. None of us are the writers.

3. Around half of this post relies on analyzing the Korean names of Dark Choco and Milk. As seen in my pinned post, I’m not Korean so I ran this post through with a mutual who is. That being said, that doesn’t mean this post is immediately 100% right so please correct this post if needed. (To the mutual in question, thank you so much for the help I really mean it.)

A while ago, I found a tweet and then a conversation under it between two users about young prince dark choco’s age based on his name is written in Korean: 어린 왕자.

It’s stated as such on the wiki for Cookie Run Ovenbreak (italicized because we’ll get to this in a bit) but here’s a screenshot in game

There’s two things to note with 어린 왕자

1) 어리다 means young but significantly so (as in the age of the person numerically is small, and thus they can be easily recognized as a child).

2) 어린 왕자 is apparently also the official Korean title for the book The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Named as such for the young boy dubbed as the little prince and also yeah I’ve never read this book… else I’d have a segment in this post in speculating why this is the case)

Out of curiosity (and also because I hate missing or getting info wrong), I checked the Cookie Run (for Ovenbreak) wiki to confirm that’s how Young Prince was written. And then I rewatched the CRK Dark Mode cutscenes.

Turns out they changed the way they refer to Young Prince Dark Choco: 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키-> 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키

Notable changes are:

1) For starters, 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키 directly translates to “Dark Choco Cookie of Youth”. Note that the word prince was added in the English localization and is not included in the original text.

2) 젊다 is a different word that also means young. Specifically, it refers to being young in thought or action. However, it’s not the same type of young (think like how you would treat a baby/toddler vs. how you’d treat an older teen. With a baby, they’ve just started living and thus know very little about how things and people work. It’s cute at times and annoying at other times. On the other hand, teenagers are still children but they’ve lived much longer than babies, so you expect them to be more mature/responsible than a 5 year old). Also unlike 어리다, 젊다 can be used to describe anyone that’s younger than you and doesn’t really suggest a certain age range because it depends on the speaker and the person they’re referring to.

The big question that can be taken away from this is:

1) Why the change from 어리다 -> 젊다 ?

Disclaimer: I’m not Devsisters so I can really only make guesses but here’s the take we ended up with.

The writers for CRK realized that using the word 어리다 ended up making Young Prince Dark Choco seem younger than he should be, and that 젊다 was a more reasonable choice to properly depict Dark Choco’s age.

Something interesting that was brought up in addition to this point while this section was being checked over is that 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키 makes Young Prince Dark Choco sound like he’s a naive little boy who doesn’t know anything about the world because he is too young while 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키 makes him sound like he’s a proper aged man who went through lots of things to obtain many achievements.

I’d also like to point out that they also haven’t changed the way they refer to Young Prince Dark Choco in CROB. It’s still 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키 (and I took the screenshot yesterday as of writing this to double check). And both CRK and CROB are treated as mainline games (but probably alternate universes) that are no more canon than the other.

If you ask me what this possibly means, I really don’t have an answer LOL

“So if they aged Young Prince Dark Choco up in CRK, how much older is he supposed to be compared to? Is it possible they aged him up to be an adult?”

The answer to these questions can be found on a specific post posted on March 25th, 2022 by @ gingerbrave_dev on instagram (and @ GingerBrave_Dev on twitter). Gingerbrave_dev is one of the official Cookie Run accounts.

It’s a collage of 4 pictures that depict Dark Choco Cookie growing up. The caption on both Instagram and Twitter is the same which reads as follows:

The important thing here is that Young Prince Dark Choco is *included* in this collage which is said by an official Cookie Run account to be a depiction of his childhood.

Meaning that it’s more likely that if there’s a possible cutoff for Young Prince Dark Choco’s age, the oldest Young Prince Dark Choco could be is 18. (The age range for adolescence, the last stage of child development, is between 13 - 18). But because they include Young Prince Dark Choco in this post, I personally think that Young Prince Dark Choco isn’t meant to be an adult overall.

(Ok quick edit: Adolescence is apparently the transitionary stage between childhood and adulthood but tbh I’m not sure if most people sit down and double check that every exact piece of info aligns with the correct word and definition when designing a character).

And that’s pretty much all I have on official statements and canon that directly (not really) talks about Young Prince Dark Choco’s age.

However, I want to shift the focus from discussing directly about what his age is to why I personally read Young Prince Dark Choco more as a teenager.

When I first saw Young Prince Dark Choco back in 2019, what stuck out to me was the stark contrast between this past version of Dark Choco and his current self. Young Prince Dark Choco is so much more hopeful and driven compared to his current self. He exudes a lot more confidence based on his lines and his main goal in CROB is to save his kingdom by gaining more power. We get the implications from how pessimistic current Dark Choco is that his own actions (obtaining the Strawberry Jam sword) leads to his kingdom’s downfall and he regrets those actions from his past.

For me, that was how I originally concluded he was a teenager. And honestly, I never really reflected about the actual reasoning until we started having this discourse 2 years later because the headcanon just seemed really natural to me.

Fast forward to January/February 2021 with the release of Cookie Run Kingdom, which ended up giving us a lot more lore on Dark Choco. There are two things that are relevant to my proposition of Dark Choco being a teenager.

1) The CRK Artbook

First released during the game’s release, it contains concept art of the world building and the characters (playable characters at the start of the game + ancients + legendaries), who get their own page or two to themselves.

I’m pulling this image off the internet because the one thing that stands out to me and that is also relevant to what we’re talking about is that the current Dark Choco presents more similarly to when he was a child (they’re both quiet and hold serious expressions on their faces).

Meaning that Young Prince Dark Choco is confirmed to not be Dark Choco’s original personality (for lack of better words. I don’t know how to word this better). And seeing Dark Choco and Dark Cacao standing next to each other, you can see how much they resemble each other. Like father, like son.

So the question is: why is Young Prince Dark Choco’s demeanor completely different from when he was younger?

Personally, I think the answer is much more simple than one might think: Young prince Dark Choco was a teenager. More specifically (and this is how I’ll segueway into the next section), Young Prince Dark Choco was an earnest teenager prince who began to question and challenge the traditions/structure of the Dark Cacao Kingdom and of his father.

2) Dark Choco, Dark Cacao, and the Generational Divide that Drives Them Apart

The release of Dark Mode would bring both a lot more long-awaited lore for Dark Choco, and also Dark Cacao Cookie, who piqued people’s interest especially since he is Dark Choco’s father.

The most significant moments happen through the magic-induced flashbacks Dark Choco is forced to relive through, where Young Prince Dark Choco interacts with multiple people. This includes his Dark Cacao, who is the only person to have two separate flashbacks.

The first flashback is a conversation between Dark Choco and Dark Cacao which will be posted below:

What Dark Choco says here stands out to me: “Our Kingdom is in need of change…! We can’t keep hiding behind our walls!

The Dark Cacao Kingdom’s walls is a major subject of Chapters 13 and 14, as one of the main conflicts in that chapter is between the people and Dark Cacao. The villagers outside the kingdom’s walls have been struggling with food shortages and attacks from wild animals. They’ve been trying to contact the king for help but Affogato intercepts and closes the door on them before they can. Meanwhile, most of the resources are being used on maintaining the kingdom’s walls, which causes a change in the portion of the food Dark Cacao’s subjects are receiving. Affogato takes advantages of this to try to cause dissent among Dark Cacao’s court, which was his original plan until the Cookies of Darkness show up.

What’s revealed about why Dark Cacao spends so much time and resources on maintaining the kingdom’s walls is that the walls serve as a safeguard against the Licorice monsters in the Licorice Sea from overtaking the land and eventually the entire world. We get to see a great example of this as Licorice Cookie summons a gigantic Licorice Monster that proceeds to break down a significant portion of the walls.

So from what we read in chapters 13 and 14, we can conclude that the walls is very necessary in protecting the Dark Cacao Kingdom and the Licorice Monsters are nothing to be laughed at. They’re formidable enemies.

It’s very likely from the way that the walls are Dark Cacao’s #1 priority rather than directly addressing whatever is happening with the villages outside the walls that Dark Cacao probably has had previous firsthand experience with the Licorice Monsters and consider them that much of a serious threat.

From the way Young Prince Dark Choco talks to Dark Cacao in the flashback, it sounds like he doesn’t share the same perspective as Dark Cacao.

This is why I think Young Prince Dark Choco being a teenager is a major factor into this difference of perspective.

The thing about teenagers is that during that stage of life, they are going through a lot or at least they think they’re going through a lot because that’s when puberty starts to kick in and the hormones start jumping over the place.

They start questioning their identity. Who they are, what they want to be, what their role is in society. They’re trying to figure out how to be their own person.

They can start questioning the rules. Why am I doing [insert here] ? Why doesn’t Mom and Dad let me do this and that? Why do I have to do this? And because of this, they can become defiant and challenge authority and even what they previously just accepted as fact.

Because of this, teenagers take risks and can make bad or stupid decisions all the time. They end up clashing more with their parents because their parents recognize that their kid will regret what they’re doing later due to the consequences their kid will have to face (and possibly even due to firsthand experience when they themselves were teenagers).

I think all of this applies to this particular flashback.

a) Questioning

Young Prince Dark Choco argues that the kingdom, and by extension, the way Dark Cacao runs it needs to change. He describes kingdom’s walls not as defense, but as a means to hide, which frames the amount of time that the people of the Dark Cacao Kingdom have been living behind as a sign of fear/cowardice. This is also in response to Dark Cacao telling him that he’s still young and has a lot to learn. The flashback seems to throw us, the reader, right into the middle of the conversation without any previous context but with Dark Choco’s response, I think the conversation they were having is overall related to Young Prince Dark Choco’s response.

b) Identity

Something to keep in mind that every person is unique and how they grow up is largely influenced by their environment (the family and friends around them, their socioeconomic status, etc).

Young Prince Dark Choco is not your average human being Cookie. He is the son of Dark Cacao, who is the one of the most powerful cookies in the entire cast outside of the legendaries and the dragons, a warrior known for his abnormal strength (the sword he uses takes 3 regular cookies to carry it) and heroic deeds (like splitting the White and Black Dragon which is treated like a legendary tale), and due to all of the previous, an esteemed king beloved by all of his subjects.

By being the son of Dark Cacao and therefore, the prince of the Dark Cacao Kingdom, Young Prince Dark Choco had a whole legacy to live up to. And although we know Young Prince Dark Choco ends up not being able to live to that legacy due to the Strawberry Jam Sword, we do know from other characters that Dark Choco at that time was doing really well.

Note that if Caramel Arrow, the First Watcher, says that Dark Choco Cookie taught her how to use the bow, then that means that he is most likely also exemplary not with just swordsmanship but also archery as well.

Also don’t forget about how Dark Choco saves the Milk Village from a pack of cream wolves, which leaves a great impression on the Milk Cookie we know.

For the most part, I think Young Prince Dark Choco cares about the people and the kingdom he lives in. He seems very earnest in wanting to help his kingdom from what can be seen in his costume lines in CROB.

But I also think there’s one more underlying possibility behind Young Prince Dark Choco’s character: Young Prince Dark Choco wants to be a hero like his own father because he wants his father’s approval.

In Chapter 14. Dark Choco and Dark Cacao have a very heated conversation right before they try to kill each other. In this conversation, Dark Choco talks about the grievances he’s held against his father over the many years since he was banished. One of the grievances that he mentions is about how he wishes his father cared about him more.

(Note: There’s been issues with the ENG dub for Ch 13 and 14 where the localization makes Dark Choco come off as harsher and more insensitive (so to speak) even if it’s not accurate to the original text.

For the first screenshot, a more accurate translation would be “Ever since I was little, you didn’t give me anything sweet and treated me harshly. We were not even close as father and son like other people.”

Second screenshot is fine.)

This is later acknowledged by Dark Cacao himself as who says after they finish their heated conversation, fight, and finish their sword fight with Dark Cacao defeating Dark Choco: “It is clear as day now… My life’s greatest regret is that I never gave you enough… love”. (And this acknowledgment and really the confrontations leading up to the acknowledgment is the key to Dark Choco finally being able to break away from the sword, but that’s an analysis for another day).

There’s also these illustrations from the art book that stand out to me in this regard (and also makes me depressed). The first illustration showcases young Dark Choco walking behind his father and in his shadow. It actually gets redrawn in a different perspective in the collage of Dark Choco’s childhood I showed earlier, where it adds the detail of young Dark Choco tugging at Dark Cacao’s cloak. In the second illustration, Dark Choco is holding onto the Strawberry Jam sword and staring down at Dark Cacao, who is seated and bent over.

The thing that stays consistent is that Dark Cacao’s back is turned towards him, and I think this represents both this distance in their relationship and Dark Choco’s inability to ever connect with Dark Cacao very well.

I think the combination of his accomplishments during this part of his life and his desire to be closer to his father and gain his approval causes Dark Choco to start both overestimating his abilities and coming to the wrong conclusions. And I don’t necessarily mean this as “Dark Choco became arrogant” because even Dark Cacao says it himself: “What a bright and responsible child he was… Kind, humble…”

But I do believe the reason Young Prince Dark Choco’s costume lines in CROB and the monologue Dark Choco gives after he decides to quit working for Dark Enchantress talks about power and how he was looking for it is because Young Prince Dark Choco wrongly assumed that the kingdom’s problems were a result of not having enough power and then concluded that he could solve those issues if he found a way to become more powerful.

And with what I talked about earlier about how Dark Cacao most likely considers the Licorice Monsters a serious threat that can’t instead just be simply dealt and done with, there’s a chance that Dark Choco not only overestimates his own abilities but also underestimates how powerful and dangerous the Licorice Monsters are because he’s likely never had any firsthand experience with them in his lifetime unlike Dark Cacao.

And my guess is that Dark Cacao noticed this and tried to advise Dark Choco against this conclusion, and that’s what at the root of the first flashback between Young Prince Dark Choco and Dark Cacao.

3) Defiance

Unfortunately, the last two sections I’ve just talked about ends up leading to what we know ends up happening to Dark Choco. He does not listen to Dark Cacao. He finds the Strawberry Jam Sword, believing that it’ll give him the power he needs to solve his problems. Instead he falls prey to what the sword whispers to him, and this results in slashing his father in the chest. This results in Dark Cacao banishing Dark Choco from entering the Dark Cacao Kingdom.

TDLR for this section: The difference in the years of experience between Dark Choco and Dark Cacao causes a major clash between them on how to tackle the Dark Cacao Kingdom’s current issues. Out of both an earnest desire to help the Kingdom he grew up in and the people he grew up with and cares about and a desire to gain his father’s approval by striving to be the type of hero his father is, Dark Choco looks for the Strawberry Sword and falls victim to its powers, which heavily damages the relationship between father and son all the way until Chapter 14 of CRK.

You’ve probably reached this part still absorbing a bunch of information and speculation I’ve thrown at you. Unfortunately, I still have to talk about Milk so yes the post somehow still isn’t over. Luckily or unluckily (depending on how you interpret it), there’s a lot less stuff I can really say about his age, and there won’t be a very extensive character analysis like there is with Dark Choco because Milk Cookie does not have nearly the amount of lore or dedicated writing as Dark Choco does.

Milk in the Dark Mode flashbacks in CRK is referred to as 우유 일족의 어린 쿠키 which translates to Young Cookie of the Milk Tribe. As you can see, the word 어리다 is used to refer to Milk, indicating that Milk Cookie was definitely a child. He’s nowhere close to being an adult.

Unlike with Dark Choco, there really aren’t any other details in his backstory that really suggest a certain age range. The most prominent characteristics about Milk Cookie is that he is strongly attached to his beliefs, and within those beliefs is the belief that Dark Choco is an infallible hero that stems from what happened in the past. The root of that belief is admiration, and admiration… isn’t an age-specific trait. You can look up to many types of people and have role models at any point of your life.

I think really the one thing that does get indicated is that Milk is undeniably younger than Dark Choco.

The first image is the concept art for Milk Cookie that was released around Milk Cookie’s release (I assume. I didn’t see this until 2-3 years later). The second image is from the background of Milk’s doctor costume’s gacha art in CROB.

I think that stands out to me the most is that after staring at it, both of these share a pretty similar height gap between them. However, the second photo makes both of them seem taller especially Milk because of Dark Choco’s legs, which are almost half of his body, gets cut off by the photo. The first image also makes Dark Choco seem a lot bigger because of how it’s sketched out (the shoulder pads and cloak end up making Dark Choco look a lot bigger than he actually is in general LOL).

If you asked me to try to gauge the age gap between these two photos, the only thing I’d tell you really is that there’s no way it’s a 10-15 year age gap; height gap is way too short for that. But I can’t tell you a definitive guess because I’m going to be honest: Cookie Run does not do a great job telling you the ages of characters and just leaves it up to the reader to interpret themselves. There’s not really a standard for what a teenager looks like in Cookie Run, and I feel like that’s the reason why people in this fandom really sort characters into either children or adults. It’s because of this that I also think that nobody in the fandom really knows how to determine that themselves, or else I wouldn’t have written a whole analysis on why I think it’s actually reasonable to see Dark Choco as a teenager in this post. (And there’s also a few other characters that have also gone through age discourse but I don’t want to even touch that right now at all LOL).

(Edit at 12:22 pm because I feel like I need to add this: It’s not the fandom’s fault for not being able to determine ages. It’s solely on Devsisters alone because if the writers aren’t clear, then it’s much harder for the fandom to agree upon anything.)

I also think that realistically you can’t really… come up with an infallible standard for how tall a person is supposed to be at a certain age because people grow up differently depending on multiple factors. People of the same age group aren’t all the same height or weight in real life.

And it’s even more difficult to tell literally anything if the writers refuse to actually confirm anything clearly and instead use vague descriptive terms.

That being said, I can’t actually point at you and say you’re wrong because of what age gap you give to Milk and Dark Choco because as I said in the beginning of this post, I don’t know anything. I also think it does go both ways though, and less people should stop acting like their interpretation has been completely canonized.

But at the end of the day, we’ll keep reading the same stories from the same franchise and interpret how we want to. I HC DarkMilk with a two year age gap. You don’t have to agree (and I bet a lot of people don’t LOL). And that’s okay.

If you ask me whether I’ll make another post talking about this topic, the answer is an absolute resounding no because I think this is the most in-depth I could possibly be about this topic to the point this is definitely my longest post ever. I don’t think there is anything else I can say.

If you liked this analysis, you don’t need to do anything. If you’re extremely tired from reading this, this is the most understandable reaction to this post, and I hope you have a good day.

[cyclesprefectpress]

[image description: 8 photos of a letterpress broadside printed from handset type and a linoleum block illustration. the poem is titled The Interview, written by a young poet for the 2024 edition of Words of Courage. the poet answers questions like what musical instrument, or animal, or color would you like to be. they would be an Afuche Cabasa, a tarantula, and the sound of a bird being eaten by a tarantula. printed from lead type, handset in Motto and Neuland; illustrated in pink, red, and blue is a tarantula playing the Afuche Cabasa. there are motion lines embossed out of the sheet for the shaking effect of the percussion. full text under the cut. end description.]

behold my abominable contribution to this year's Words of Courage publication 🎉🎉

WoC is a yearly publication of poetry broadsides written by patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and designed, printed, and bound into portfolios by local letterpress & book artists. this year’s whole edition will be scanned and posted there in a couple weeks & previous years are always there to see!

knew that i wanted this one immediately; this kid is SO cool and funny. personally i am deeply arachnophobic and have been doing some spider illustrations as exposure therapy. so far no discernible effect!! still very afraid of em. don't like to see em. research phase is a horror. but i am getting better at drawing them.

the Neuland for the sound effect was a no-brainer to me, plus i knew i would be varying the size and we have the original hand-cut stuff so each size of the face has little differences in the letter forms that you can spot. that little change in angle on the Cs, i love it so so much.

i didn't want to make the spider a cartoon. this reach for the skies pose is a real thing tarantulas do as a defensive back-off posture, so i was aiming for more of a posterized-from-photograph feel on the linocuts. reduction cut for the pink and red passes, separate block for the blue. the little bit of wobbly registration between the red and blue blocks helps the posterization feel, and some people also said it reminded them of riso, which i thought was very neat.

thought about printing the motion lines from rule as well, but it's a lot of text and i wanted it to stay very readable. so i made an embossing jig out of masking tape and hand-scored each of the lines into the edition instead. easy! well. simple anyway. 100 of em does strain the wrist so i only did a few at a time over a couple days. i finished a little ahead of schedule and this felt less…stressfully complicated than some other projects I've done so I kept looking at it and worrying that it wasn't actually finished?? when i'm not looking at it i still worry about that. but i'm, hmm, when i see it i'm really pretty sure i was correct to stop here.

The Interview    Q:        Rio, if you could be an animal, what animal would you like to be? A:        I’d be a tarantula. They make beautiful webs. Some tarantulas eat birds!   Q:        If you could be a color, what color appeals to you?

A:        I’d be red velvet like the red velvet cupcakes at Cupcake Royale. I’d also be aqua blue, the color of hospital masks.   Q:        What loud noise would you like to be if you could be one? A:        Definitely the sound of a bird screeching while being eaten by a tarantula.   Q:        Suppose you could be a musical instrument? A:        I’d love that! And I’d love to be a Latin Afuche Cabasa. It’s a stick with tiny metal spheres around it. When you rotate it in your hand it makes the sound Chichichichichichichichi.   Q:        Rio, can you imagine having wheels?  A:        I can! I’d be a buggy. I ride the hospital buggies every day when I’m here. They make me feel happy and fast! And wanting to go! Go!

[ficyorick]

"the original ending to the ch3 looked like this. before the very painstaking edit process the whole HL-on-Butchers-lap scene was WAY more... you know. more handsy. i decided to downplay it considerably bc I felt i was jumping the gun too early and im glad i did, i prefer butcher more tortured about the whole thing"

Would you ever consider posting this version on your tumblr? It seems interesting though i agree it would probably be too early

hi anon! i wish i could but unfortunately this wasn't the case of me just cutting out a bit and moving it to "deleted scenes" folder, this was a thorough re-edit, meaning i had to change multiple parts, multiple sentences or just a few words there and there... basically a lot of small changes that aren't as easy to save as a whole scene getting cut . the best i can do is post some excerpts that are from the pre-final edit version of the chapter which is after some editing already :( sorry if there's errors or even editing comments from me to me HEHE i tried to remove all of them

Butcher put out another cigarette in his old drink and patted Homelander’s knee then his own. 

"C’mere." 

"No." A whine. 

"Come sit on my lap." 

"Sssicko." 

Butcher grabbed his arm and pulled him with force. Another hand on his hip, the cheap costume rustled underneath his grip. Homelander made another undignified noise but he was so pliable, it felt like moving a big pillow on top of him. He was straddling his thighs, hands hanging loose from his sides, far away from Butcher. His eyes were closed as if he couldn’t stand to look at what was happening now.

"You’re ssso sick." Homelander protested but he could only sway back and forth.

"What did you say to her?" Butcher asked, looking up into his face. His heart was beating fast now. The main event. 

"Who…" 

"Becca."

"Oh Jesus…" Not this again, said Homelander’s tone. He took a deep breath. "Just do it…" 

"Do what." 

"I dunno, whatever it is you’re going to…." The colorful mess in his lap was slightly swaying back and forth, unable to find balance. Then all of a sudden, he tried to get away but Butcher grabbed him by his hip again, forcing him down. A little gasp: "You’re sick. Sssick." 

"Are you scared?" Butcher asked through his clenched teeth. 

Homelander shook his head but something wet clung to his lashes anyway. 

"I’m not gonna hurt ya." Butcher’s hands moved from the hips to his thighs. A strangled keen from Homelander. "I just want you to feel what she felt." 

He shifted his palms further in, moving to the inner side of the splayed, costumed thighs. Homelander tensed up, as much as he could while pumped full of booze. Only one of his eyes was open, peeking at him underneath clumped lashes. He was breathing fast. Butcher huffed out a hot breath of his own that couldn't stay in his lungs anymore. Homelander flinched as if the sound itself was enough to send him into a panic. The palms on his thighs moved up and down, going deeper, further up, with each shifting movement. Butcher absent-mindedly noted that the hands pressing into the cheap fabric didn't even feel like his anymore. The swaying man on his lap was still now, leaning back unnaturally. He was still watching him with just one eye, the other one blind to everything that was happening.

"What are you thinking about?" Butcher asked, no tone, no inclination to his voice. Just a neutral command. 

"Wish I could… choke the life out of you." Homelander confessed.

Butcher kept his hands where they were, his fingertips pressed into the spot where the thighs met the pelvis. He wasn’t sure if Homelander could even feel his touch through the foamy muscle padding, but judging by how frozen he still was, he could feel it. Every second of it. 

"Okay." Butcher canted his head. "Go ahead. Give it a try."

Homelander didn’t move but Butcher heard him inhale. 

"I mean it. Do it."

Suddenly, a pair of clammy hands was closing on his throat. A familiar Homelander snarl rang out above his head. The grasp on his neck didn’t obstruct his breathing in any way, it was struggling to even fully squeeze at him. All it did was make him laugh in a slightly strained way. HLs hands cant even fully close around his throat

"C’mon, put your back into it." He groaned out.

Homelander sunk his fingertips as deep as he could, putting on claw-like pressure. That, he could almost feel. 

"There we go, good lad." Butcher grunted and smiled at him.

"Want to kill you so bad." Homelander whined out, his breathing devolving into an open-mouthed panting. "So, so, so bad." 

"You can’t. Not anymore." Billy laughed. His hands moved from Homelander’s thighs to the wrists. He could feel zip-tie scars underneath his palms and he swiped over them with pride. 

"So bad…" Homelander’s grip was waning, there was no strength left in his drunk arms. He kept slurring words out, just one eye open, his pupil completely blown out: "Kill you so fuckin’ bad… rip your head off… then crush… it."

Butcher grinned, wild-eyed. He was untouchable and the scared little cunt in his lap couldn’t even do anything to fight back.

A hiccup interrupted them and just like that Homelander's entire body wobbled and he collapsed to the side like a felled tree, letting go of Butcher’s throat. 

"Fuck…" He complained. 

Butcher shoved the limp legs off his lap and got up from the couch. Homelander’s knees were on the floor now and he stepped away from him like he was on fire. Homelander was face down on the green fabric, looking like a doll abandoned mid-play, its limbs bent at weird angles.

"You can’t do anything anymore, cunt." Butcher fumbled for his cigarettes, basically smashing one of them into his mouth and lighting it up. He had to do something with his hands, his limbs were like a live wire now. One puff, two puffs. Fuck. 

_____

there was more stuff that i removed... there was actual groping i cut out, i think the choking scene had HL moving closer to Butcher, huffing and puffing at each other and then during the bathroom moment Butcher had more sexually charged revelations about how vulnerable and utterly his HL is and how THAT was making him even more into everything that was happening but i chose to replace all of that with Guilt.

[toastess-with-the-mostess]

Voltron: The Series

So I wanted to make a big post about all the animated Voltron's because I'm neck deep into this series and I must yell about it In total there's five (5) animated Voltron shows, technically four (4) since most focus on the lions. I tend to explain a lot so for my own sanity I'll be splitting this up into multiple posts which will all link back together Dotu/VV (here) - V3D - VF - VLD

Word vomit under the cut <3

In the 80s 1984 is when American audiences first said hello to Voltron! Originally it was an anime called Hyaku Jo Oh Goraion, or Beast King GoLion, from Toei which was mistakenly handed over to World Events Production (WEP) after they vaguely asked for the anime with the lions in it. Soon enough it was renamed Voltron: Defender of The Universe (dotu), dubbed and edited, and became immensely popular, giving us the legend we all know and love! Most iterations of Voltron after this follow the same plot, except for VLD which is a hard reboot and its own series that will be talked about later. In Dotu, the legend is of five (5) space explorers who crash-land onto planet Arus, find Voltron and use him to defeat the evils of the universe. Those five (5) being Keith in Black, Lance in Red, Pidge in Green, Sven in Blue, and Hunk in Yellow. The show is fairly episodic but as it's being adapted from an anime it has some story beats too it, like how Sven became critically injured which led to Princess Allura stepping up to take over blue lion, or the plot with her distant cousins Princess Romelle, Prince Bandor, and Prince Avok of Pollux. The show was so popular that WEP had eventually commissioned a season 2 to be animated from another company as Golion ended at only season 1. Which had some changes to color pallet, overall tones, and even relationships from season 1.

That same year Vehicle Voltron (VV) also came into existence! Also adapted from an anime called Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV or Armored Armada Dairugger XV which has no relation to the Golion anime at all! The gist of it is that a team of 15 pilots explore the edges of the universe to help find new habitable planets to curb the fast-growing population of planets part of the Galaxy Alliance. The group is split into three teams. The air team whose commanded by Jeff, the sea team whose leader is Krik, and the land them whose led by Cliff. They all report under Commander Hawkins who's leading the expedition and the explorer itself. As the anime isn't connected to Golion/Dotu, WEP found creative ways to show that relationships! The main way is that fans were introduced to Pidge's twin brother Chip, another scrappy young kid with glasses who happens to have anger issues, he mentions this connection in one of the episodes "Letters to Home" where Chip waits for Pidge's letter to get to him.

For the last little bit of this, Dotu and VV have got themselves a movie! This is a purely WEP/American creation so no ties to the animes anymore. It's called Fleet of Doom which brings the two Voltron together and explains their pilots' histories while having a side plot that is pure KA fodder. Unfortunately we haven't gotten anything big like this again but in Voltron Force specifically we did get a call back to Vehicle Voltron

[mysticsparklewings]

Three Cheers for Harmonic Revenge (+ Time Lapse!)

________ This is what happens when you're a fan of both Winx Club and My Chemical Romance, apparently! 😂 Truly a labor of love—I started on this for an MCR album anniversary on June 8th. I so missed the date, but I had to see it through!

⭐️ AND I've got a Time Lapse of the art coming together, featuring my very rough attempt at a matchup of MCR's Helena and the Winx Club Harmonix song as backing music! It's a wild ride! ⭐️ (...There's also an unlisted version with "normal" music just in case my less-than-amateur audio editing skills are too much for anyone. 😅)

Anyway, to make a very long story a little bit shorter, a few weeks ago I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to identify likely sources of inspiration for the thing to come out of Winx Club Season 5 that the fandom at large actually kind of loves: Harmonix. I went in thinking Ballet, and despite my best efforts came out with that opinion pretty much unchanged. 

Not long after, but for the entirely unrelated reason of Being An MCR Fan on The Internet, I ended up looking at some screenshots from their Helena music video. [I think this was prompted by a Reddit post asking about the dress for cosplay purposes, I'm not sure.] 

It was then I had the thought, so simple and off-handed: "I don't see how you can look at a ballet outfit like this and not think Harmonix was ballet-inspired." 

If you've ever seen a TV show or cartoon where a character says something, and then only after the words leave their mouth do they realize the implications/meaning of what they just said, that was me in that moment. 😱

On the one hand, I want to say "I can't believe I didn't see the similarities before," but on the other...Well, I can believe it, actually. Comparing Winx and MCR in almost any capacity is not a natural thing to do, even with a Ballet connection in each. The fact that I finally did notice came largely down to the serendipity of being a fan of both and just happening upon the Helena pictures not long after spending an abnormal amount of time looking for clothes that look like Harmonix. I think there are many points leading up to that moment where if just a couple of things had gone differently, I still wouldn't have noticed. 

Either way, once the connection was made in my brain it took all of about 10 seconds for "Helena as a Harmonix Fairy" to follow. 🤩

At the time, I didn't have immediate plans to act on it. It was just an idea to be filed away on the little shelf in my brain where I keep "Things that would be fun to draw eventually." [That shelf is super full and in danger of collapse, for what it's worth. 😉]

Earlier this month, that changed when I remembered June 8th is the Anniversary for Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, the album that Helena comes from, and I had yet to come up with any other plans or ideas to commemorate it this year. 

Now, clearly I ended up missing that deadline, and two others I set for myself afterward. Things have just been very chaotic around my house for last 3-ish months or so, and June has been no different. Other IRL things just had to take priority. 😔

In my defense, the art itself was finished on June 12th. This description here and the Time Lapse Video (mostly the video) were what really set me back, even aside from household chaos. But it was really important to me to get a video done for this piece, so getting that done vs. getting the art out faster was the trade I made. 

But part of the reason I bring this up to underline that originally, I thought I was on a fairly tight deadline. As a result, during the planning stage I didn't really have time to tinker with refining the base design or debating details like I normally would. So I drew from the Winx's own Harmonix designs as much as possible—picking out pieces that naturally resembled the structure of Helena's dress. 

If I'd had more time to noodle around...the structure probably would've been largely the same, but the details most likely would have changed to help it feel more original, and I may have gotten crazy enough to try and find a happy [lighter] grey medium between Harmonix's pastel palettes and Helena's stark black and red. 

As it stands though, I'm not unhappy with how that all turned out, I just think it's worth noting how the visual concept may have changed if I'd had more time to toy with it. [Especially for when Future Me ends up referring back to this description; Hi there Future Mystic 👋]

Since my process for making the art can both be seen in the Time Lapse and is something you've all seen/heard me describe before by now [I think I have finally nailed down a fairly standard "Winx Art Process" over the last few months in large part thanks to Winxsona Winter—which yes, I do still intend to eventually finish], instead of taking you through the general stuff again, I'm going to do a bullet-point list similar to one I did for Sirenix. 

The main difference is this time, it's more focused my observations for what similarities exist between Harmonix and Helena's costume, as opposed to just a list of Harmonix traits and how I handled them. [Though there will still some of that too, naturally.]

Most notably, both feature "fluffy" layered skirts. Harmonix skirts don't really look like the same fabric texture, but that could be either a stylistic/animation choice or could be chalked up to there also probably being some Wedding Dress inspiration in the designs alongside the Ballet elements.  Also, at first I didn't think the train on the Harmonix skirts was a similarity, but upon a closer look at the Helena music video...Helena's skirt is definitely longer and train-like in the back, so...Cool, I was wrong! 😄 And: As it turns out, Bloom's Harmonix skirt actually does have a small section that's ruffled a bit differently from the rest—It's just really hard to tell because on her, it's all the same pastel blue color. But as you can see, referencing that part of her skirt here to incorporate the Red underlayer that peaks through on Helena's skirt worked a treat! 😊 P.S. Wow I really hated drawing a lot of really tightly-confined ruffles like this. 😤 And trying to shade them was even worse! 🙃

Both feature form-fitting tops with minimal or no straps. I more specifically saw Helena similarities in Stella's Harmonix top [with the frills over the bust and structure lines below], and later I realized the top-most portion of Musa's has an even more similar kind of frill.  To that end, Helena's is once again definitely supposed to be something transparent like tulle, but since there really aren't any transparent fabric portions of Harmonix, I chose instead to use a slightly lighter near-black to give it a similar effect without breaking that Harmonix "rule." Also, the bodice portion is a true jet black with no shading. I tried the more typical near-black grey that could be shaded at first, but it just wasn't doing it for me. I tried this on a whim and decided it looked good enough to keep.

Most of the Harmonix designs have a kind of "belt" that connects the bodice to the skirt; Perfect match for Helena's red one!  Similarly, most of those same Harmonix designs have a "belt"/ribbon just under the bust as well. Helena does not, as far as I can tell. But I chose to add a read one here for a little extra variety and helping break up all that black.

The Harmonix shoes are almost entirely ribbons winding up the legs; Helena wears black ballet slippers with, you guessed it, black strings/ribbons that wind around her feet and ankles.  Now, maybe I could have gotten away with all-black ribbons and black for the heel portion of the shoes, but 1. The Harmonix designs all use 2 colors for the ribbons and the heel is usually in the "contrasting" color. 2. I knew from the beginning that the skirt train [a mandatory aspect of Harmonix] was going to either be black or a very dark grey, and even during the Concept phase before I had a specific pose in mind, I had a feeling the ribbon tails were going to overlap with said train. So I used a dark red. Originally, it was about as bright as her sash and belt, but then I realized Bloom and Musa's pink ribbons were darker than the pink used in the bodices, a darker red would be closer to the original black anyway, and that would yet again add just a tiny bit more visual variety.  One last note about the shoes: I did my best to match the original winding of Helena's shoe ribbon, except for the very first ribbon across where the toes connect to the rest of the foot. That strap was specifically added as a nod to how Helena's proper ballet slippers outright cover the toe. 

About the train: Similar to the bodice, I started out with the train in one color, the color you currently see for the skirt itself and the very top of the train. It was fine but I was itching for some more variety, so after reassuring myself "Layla/Aisha's train has a few different shades of green instead of being solid so it's fine," I used the different tiers [taken from Flora's train] to create a little bit of a gradient from the black to a charcoal grey. It kinda works as a hint toward Harmonix's more pastel palette. Sort of. 

Aside from Tecna, all the girls' hair is at least partially pulled back in Harmonix. This sorta works out because it appears the front "bang" sections of Helena's hair are pulled back. [In my brain I call this "Doll Hair" because I personally have seen that kind of look way more often on dolls than on real people.] It's similar to the front of Bloom's Enchantix hair.  The rest of Helena's hair appears pretty thick and a little wild, so I tried to incorporate a bit of that here, but I couldn't push it too far without "breaking" the Winx Style.  And while I'm here: I did choose to make Helena's hair a very dark brown. In the video, most of the time it does just look plain black, but there are moments where my eyes pick up on a "warmth" to the color, which makes me think maybe it really is that super-dark brown hair that just looks black. Even if it isn't, I stand by my choice as slightly more fitting for the Winx style, since Winx almost never does truly black hair anyway. 

All of the Harmonix designs feature some sort of small head accessory, usually a tiara. Helena's costume very prominently features netting over the face...And there appears to be something going on towards the back of her head, presumably whatever is holding the netting in place.  I've seen fan interpretations of whatever that is being flowers [usually black roses], and since Tecna has a few flower-ish pieces as part of her Harmonix tiara, that seemed like a fair choice here.  As for the netting...You'll see very briefly in the Time Lapse that during the concept phase, I really did want to include that, but it was too hard to ignore how out of place it felt. Winx rarely does anything with netting in the first place [though a couple of rare examples do exist], and considering certain parts of Harmonix feel like it was designed to be fairly simple [but look complex at first glance, which it does]...I just couldn't do it. So instead, I...Well, it ended up being almost a copy of Layla's Harmonix tiara, but I really truly did not realize how similar what I was doing was to hers until after the full-color version was pretty much done. 😅 I thought I was doing more of an upside-down version of Musa's, and my entire goal was to just do something that came down over the forehead like the netting did. 

Speaking of Musa, if those wings look familiar, they kinda should. Remember before that I mentioned I was originally working on a pretty tight timeline for this piece? 

One of the things that has proven to take me the longest with original Winx designs since I picked up making them semi-regularly again is undoubtedly the wings. I got to really learn that the hard way with Believix at the beginning of this year. 

Because of the very limited time I thought I had and my sluggish pace with wings, when while collecting Harmonix screenshots for reference I noticed "Hey, Musa's wings would still work pretty well if they were flipped upside down..." A little bit of a lightbulb went off. 

I don't even know why exactly that thought occurred to me before I'd even really considered the wings. The best I can figure is a little hangover in my subconscious—At one point I remember reading one of the Winx's Sirenix wings are apparently upside down at the end of her transformation sequence. That stuck out to me at the time because I don't really understand how you could tell if Sirenix wings are upside down or not because of how they're shaped. 🤨

Anyway. So I found a screenshot with a fairly clear shot of one of Musa's wings, flipped it around, and really just traced right over it. 

I did make a few small tweaks, and most notably I added some..."Lines of Tears?" like Layla and Flora's have, but at the end of the day they are still really Musa's wings. 

Normally, I wouldn't have done that and instead would've just taken heavy inspiration from Musa's wings, but again, I thought I had a lot less time than I really did. And to be fair, plenty of other Winx fans re-color or otherwise re-purpose the Canon Girls' wings for their OCs and/or Fan Transformations on a regular basis anyway, so it's not like this is a totally unheard-of idea or anything. 🤷‍♀️

Much later, I also figured in a way it fits; Musa is a fairy of Music, this artwork is largely based around a specific piece of music/the band that made it; I even opted to add music note shapes like Musa's wings produce [all the Harmonix wings produce specific shapes in that way] when they move to deepen that connection after I thought of it. 

Other things worth noting [and this is again a • bullet point list because, frankly, at the moment I'm just too lazy to make this all flow together in more story-like paragraphs]:

I did my best to match Helena's skin and eyes, but her lips and eye makeup were a little trickier. Her lips ended up a bit pinker and not as close to her skin tone in the spirit of Winx, and I had to compromise and use greyish reds shaped like the Trix's eyeshadow to get a similar effect. The eyeshadow still really isn't perfect for Helena or Winx, but I was short on other ideas so, "close enough is good enough."

The shape of the mouth isn't quite what I wanted, either. You'll see in the time-lapse that I already changed it pretty drastically from the first sketch I had. I definitely wanted something open, because while Helena's mouth is not open for the entire music video or anything, it is more open at certain points and this shot in particular is pretty iconic.  But I also didn't want anything too crazy because, y'know, Winx Club.  The bared teeth and lack of upturn for a smile was my compromise. Either the mouth itself needed some more tweaking, or the eyebrows did. The whole expression is okay, I just don't think I pushed it far enough. 🤷‍♀️

There isn't really one specific pose that represents Helena more than the others [...at least not standing up/dancing], so I picked mostly from a general feeling from the music video. I did reference some official stock arts of the Winx in Ballet attire [mostly this one of Flora], but the feet had to be changed pretty notably to fit the shoes, and overall I had to make some tweaks in the anatomy where the stock art and show style differ. [These differences seem to increase from Season 5 onward, too.] 

The background was mostly inspired by Layla's Harmonix, and it might be my favorite part of the whole piece, actually!  Upon closer studying for this project, I was surprised by how much "junk" is in some of the Harmonix backgrounds. There's tons of texture in all of them and a fair bit of color variation in most...It's pretty interesting compared to past transformations and even Harmonix itself. The backgrounds end up being a lot more intense than the solid and gentle pastel dresses. [Wouldn't surprise me if that was intentional!] I had a little more work cut out for me since I couldn't just slap bright colors all over the place. I did consider just sticking with blacks/greys/white and maybe some red, but I thought it might help my version of Helena here pop a little better if I was able to change up the palette just a bit. And, of course, the warmth of the background helps add more variety and liven the whole image up.  Much more to my delight though, I was able to create the background without having to download any new Procreate brushes! 🥳 Between a couple of default ones, the ocean-themed brushes I already had from previous projects, and a couple I just happened to pick up along the way [mostly as monthly freebies from brush makers who normally charge for their work], I had all the brushes I needed already right there, it just took a little experimenting. 

I will reiterate that while it still took time, making the art itself really wasn't so bad or difficult. And it helps that this ridiculous crossover idea was something I really wanted to make—Because if I didn't, who else would, right? 🤪

It's not perfect, sure. But it's here and it still came out pretty good overall, I think. So I'm happy. 😊

Now I would also like to take a moment to explain part of why putting the Time Lapse together for this piece ended up taking longer than it probably should have, because I really didn't have room to talk about it in the video itself...though it does sorta get a mention right at the beginning: The audio. 

To once again make a very long story short(er):

I, in my infinite wisdom, decided instead of the usual royalty-free music stock, to try and create a mash-up of Helena and the Harmonix song for this video. That was more or less the visual premise for the art, so why not go all-out with the theming?

For once, I cannot take you through the full nitty-gritty because, at least to my inexperienced brain, audio editing is a pretty nebulous process. But I can tell you that aside from inexperience, the other thing that probably held me back was my choice of program to handle the task. 

I did not have the patience nor motivation to try and teach myself how to use an audio program for this one silly project, and I semi-accidentally learned at the beginning of last year that DaVinci Resolve has an entire section dedicated to just editing the audio for videos. Since I was able to fumble my way around in there for the light audio editing I wanted to do at that time, I figured that was a slightly safer bet here. It may not have saved me a ton of time, but it was at least vaguely familiar, and for me, familiarity goes a long way in making me comfortable with a program even if I still don't really know what the heck I'm doing. 

This isn't really what DaVinci is supposed to be for—as far as I can tell it doesn't even have an "audio only" export option, which did complicate things a bit—and even if it was, I'm sure any true audiophile will still probably cringe a lot at what I managed to create.😅 I did my best to make it "tolerable" for a listen or two, but I know my ears are inherently biased since I know and enjoy both songs quite a bit already. But I did manage to get feedback from two persons that know notably more about audio than I do, and they weren't horrifically appalled, so I don't feel like I'm committing a crime against music by putting it out there, at least. 

Aside from that, the video did also have to wait on me to finish this description [to a certain extent, anyway]. For smaller projects, I can usually write the on-screen notes for the video first and worry about the description later, but most of the time for a big project like this, I need the bulk of this written description done first so I have a baseline of all the things I want to mention and can pare down from there. 

I can do a fair bit of the video editing up until the point I need those notes, but once I hit that wall there's really no way around it. And in this case, I did actually use all that other video editing as a form of procrastinating on the description. 😅

Most likely because I knew there was going to be a lot to cover, I really put off like 70% of this description as long as possible. 🫣 The other 30% I actually did relatively soon after the art was ready. The plan was to go ahead and get most of it out of the way, but clearly I lost my writing mojo partway through and had to come back to it later...and I was still a little lazy with certain aspects. 

But hey, the description isn't the art, it's just meant to describe the art, so whatever works, yeah?

In any case, I think that's everything I wanted to mention about this particular process. It's been quite a ride, and I'm glad it's over. Mostly so I can go back to working on some other projects I already had cooking before this one came up, but also...I am just glad this is one of those ideas that, as I said much earlier, originally got put on an "eventually" shelf in my brain and actually got to come to fruition fairly quickly after the fact. 

Kinda gives me more hope than I previously had for some of those other "eventually" projects, which is nice. 🙂

Similarly: I don't know if I'll find a way to revisit Winx Club x MCR ever again, but I'm thrilled I I found a way to do it at least once! Doubly so that I'm happy with how it turned out! 😊 With that in mind, you never know. It's possible I'll figure out another way to do it again someday. 

In the meantime, I leave you Sparklers to enjoy this one and the time lapse [whether you're brave enough for the mash-up version or opt for the "easy listening" one instead]. 😉 s usual, I'm off to those other projects I mentioned shortly ago...

_______

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings Winx Club © Rainbow S.p.A.

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and associated concepts © My Chemical Romance

[longlivefeedback]

Commenting 101

Lesson 2: Describe the Indescribable

How are we all doing after the first week of finding our catchphrases?

Ok! So here's step 2 to help you comment more:

Describe the indescribable

Expressing yourself if hard. Many of you indicated in the notes on the original poll that you felt overwhelmed after reading and eventually just walked away without saying anything in a comment in the fic. As a writer, I get it. Writing is hard. Expressing the chaos of thoughts and emotions in your head is hard. If you want a tip on how to handle this and how to communicate even a little bit to the human being who wrote that thing you just read and who caused all those feels, do this:

Accept that you can't describe everything.

Pick one thing to describe.

Use words if necessary.

If you use your catchphrase at the beginning or end of the comment, you got the start of a real nice comment ;)

1. Accept that you can't describe everything

Just sit with your emotions for a while. Let your thoughts be chaotic. Take a breath. It's ok to feel and think a lot of things. And much as the author would love to know all your thoughts and feelings, they understand that it's hard to write it all down on a blank space. (Trust me, they went through the exact same thing to get that fic you just read out into the world and posted.)

So what do? If you cannot pick apart and describe those thoughts and emotions, it's ok to tell the author so! You can write things like:

"I'm sorry, I have so many thoughts and emotions about this story I don't even know where to begin! Just know that I loved your fic!"

"There's so much I want to say but I can't word properly right now this was amazing!"

"Putting a placeholder here for when I have the energy to comment properly!"

For the last one, you can come back and edit your comment as long as no one has replied to it yet. If they have and you can't, just explain in the thread or write a new comment! :)

2. Pick one thing to describe

So much to say, so little time and energy. Remember our first lesson? Something is better than nothing. So. Pick the first thing you remember. Pick the last thing that set you off. Pick the thing that you've been hung up on since the middle of the chapter.

Talk about it. Try:

"There's so much about this fic, but I want to mention this one thing..."

"Person A doing that thing made me cry!"

"I loved the moment when A and B kissed!"

"That part where that thing happened made me laugh aloud!"

"I'm just a mess of emotions at the end of this fic I can't even"

Check out @dawnfelagund's 101 Comment Starters for more examples.

The LLF Comment Builder was also designed to help users learn to comment using instructional scaffolding, as well as to remove other barriers to leaving feedback such as dysexecutive syndrome, anxiety, mobility issues that make typing long reviews difficult (particularly on mobile), language fluency, and mobile commenting functionality in general. Check it out to see if it helps for when you just aren’t sure what to say.

The key is to pick one thing, and know that that is perfectly okay. Don't let not being able to say everything paralyze you and prevent you from saying anything.

3. Use words if necessary

A picture is worth a thousand words they say...😏 So go wild.

Use emojis, add gifs, and (my personal favourite) the keyboard smash.

"This fic was just asldkfjas;dlkfjsdofwekl 😭🙏💗💞💖❤️‍🔥💕"

Enough said, yeah? :)

Remember:

When in doubt, comment your catchphrase.

Saying something is enough, and it is better than saying nothing.

If you really can't word, just spam hearts 💕💗💕💗💕💞💖❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

See you next week!

Lessons masterpost.

[crystal-overdrive]

Towards Tyranny Post Mortem

I put it to a poll whether folk wanted to read my thoughts on TT now I've finished it and you said yes, so here it is! Under the cut, 1675 words. Perhaps some minor spoilers but I don't outright say what the ending is.

PROCESS

Towards Tyranny was my first piece of fanfiction and my first long-form piece of prose. I worked on Towards Tyranny for ten months, at a rate of a chapter or 2 -4l per week. I was surprised at my ability to continue a project for this long, as by three months I’m normally chomping at the bit when I’m working on other forms of writing. I think releasing serially and getting constant feedback was a huge motivator I wanted to give my audience something every week and I looked forwards to what hey had to say. I’m not sure I could have written the whole thing by myself without showing it to anyone.

Unlike how I normally work, Towards Tyranny was not edited. It would have taken me about double the time if I’d edited, and editing chapter-by-chapter isn’t particularly helpful to me, as I tend to do a structural and character pass before delving into line edits. I think my writing must have improved over the course of this project, as I don’t believe it is too noticeable that the first ten or so chapters have about four rounds of editing, and subsequent chapters have none. So that’s nice!

Plotting and outlining was pretty odd on this project. I am normally very much a planner, but the fic diverged from the original outline very quickly. At points I abandoned the outline and went chapter-by-chapter. I did make (several) more outlines during writing, but the main purpose of these was to prove that the work could actually be finished than a guideline for writing. Having a bit of room for the characters to speak for themselves was a good thing, and I think this has taught me that I can relax a little with my outlining and still complete long projects.

The pace I wrote this at was reasonable, but it was only possible because I didn’t have a full time job. I “stole” time from uni, and during September and October worked on it full time to get finished. One thousand words a day is my full time pace which, while comparable with professionals, seems to pale in comparison to other fic writers. With any luck I’ll have a full time job soon, and I think on top of working, a reasonable pace for outside writing projects is something like 1k a week. That means I probably won’t be writing a longfic like this again. If I do write something of this size it will probably be an original. I’ve proven to myself I can write at length, and I’d like the challenge of original work.

This doesn’t mean I’m done with fandom, it’s just more likley to be the odd one shot when I feel inspired rather than anything big.

PACING AND STRUCTURE

I think it is evident from the text that my outline was changing during writing, as the structure is odd at times. It feels like the front half is all romance, the back half all plot, and then there’s almost a resolution which is undone by my subversive ending. The way Towards Tyranny ends is pretty typical of my work, but I think part of me was channelling the frustration I felt with the project into the characters motivations by the end. Perhaps a more simple romance ending without The Cell or Astarion/Gasper would have made for a stronger ending.

If I was to do a structural edit, I would either remove or make more of the political plotline. The Hand of Baldur goes nowhere, so I’d either add that in or replace it with the Drains and Underways, because they essentially did what Tav suggested the Hand of Baldur would do in that parliament session. I’d also make more of Jannath considering where she ends up. These are fairly minor things to catch in a structural edit, but for a released work they’re not great. This is just a hazard of releasing serially and changing the outline as I went!

Another issue I have with the political plotline is that it often develops between chapters. I thought writing it was boring, and therefore reading it would be. This means we get a lot of telling not showing in regards to Tav’s poltical prowess. If I had leaned in here and done more political chapters though, the work would have been so long, and it would have veered even further from romance as a genre.

One thing I think I do do well with is foreshadowing and setting up characters and mysteries. This was less deliberate planning, and more “I need a character, guess I’ll pull a name I’ve used before”, but it worked. There is also a lot of nice dramatic irony on a second read — I particularity liked Enver telling Tav he “had to have her before she took the Gate from him” in chapter two. Like, you STUPID man, if you’d have left her alone she’d have been no threat! I

Generally, while too much happens off screen and the structure is a little odd, every plot point feel like it is set up and paid off, and we have a cohesive main plot in the Bane storyline. And the Bane storyline is kind of the big gotcha here. Towards Tyranny isn’t really a romance. The real story is about Bane and Tav’s decent into religious fascism, but that wasn’t my original intent, and it wasn’t until about chapter ten that I actually figured that out. If this was an original and I was writing to market, I’d probably be looking at turning it into a political fantasy with a romance B plot rather than the other way around.

In terms of pacing, the political plots are fine, but the romance pace is a bit weird. We got from quite tame flirting to really quite sexual advances in chapter ten which was faster than made sense on a second reading. Again, if I was to edit, I’d add another romantic scene before it that started to cross the line. I would also add another sex or romance scene before the final chapter that demonstrates that while the power dynamics have changed, Enver and Tav do still love one another, because right now I feel like their feelings could be read as ambiguous at the end. Also, I just think it’s funny that they went from flirting to married in basically two weeks. Time was all over the place in the fic, and juggling a lot of plot points made it hard to manage at times.

QUALITY OF PROSE

I don’t consider prose my main form of writing, so I’m largely happy with how the prose turned out. There’s some really lovely metaphors, similes and description near the beginning that grounds the reader in Tav’s head and world. This does fall off as I stop editing and being to write faster, but in my defence, by chapter thirty, we don’t need more description of Wyrm’s Rock! Some of the description in the later chapters feels overly simplistic—more like stage direction than the sort of description and action that also conveys emotion, theme, tone etc.

While I was writing I was concerned about the overuse of things like smiling, learning, smirking, said, because I tended to use these as fillers between dialogue and they are known as somewhat annoying, but when I read back I didn’t notice it at all as a reader, and though action and dialogue flowed quite well. Nearer the end, we start to get heads talking in the void. I had purposefully used less action and dialogue tags because I had noticed that I used them more than I found them in published work. Looking at it now, I think, no, I don’t need to tag every line, but I prefer (in my own writing at least) more tags and action than less.

I am very pleased with my dialogue. I think it is natural and consistently in character. Each character has a distinct register that I am happy with.

FANFIC VS ORIGINAL

If this was an original, it would have to have been far longer. Through I do a lot of worldbuilding as far as Bane is involved, the pre-established worlds and characters do so much. Without contextt of the Gods, the cults, the adventure, it wouldn’t make sense. An original would have needed flashbacks to the adventure, or perhaps this would have to come as a part two.

I really enjoyed getting to take an established world and pick at it and expand it. By mid-way, when the main cast were mostly OCs and the story had become about my take on the cult of Bane, it felt closer to an original, but the process was still very different.

It had different motivations from writing an original piece too. While I love interacting with readers via comments, and at times it did feel like I was writing for comments, I was ultimately writing for myself, and at points as a form of therapy. During writing I went through a religious crisis, dropped out of a PhD, got engaged and dealt with a lot of family drama. Wonder where half of the plot of the fic came from…

On that note, I back and forthed a lot about whether Tav was a self-insert. She was a lot of my character traits, personality quirks, and I sort of wrote from a what-would-I-do perspective for a while. As she turned more and more evil, more of a gap formed between us, and I think that made writing harder. I started to feel uncomfortable that I had identified with a character whose morals were so unlike my own by the end. In the last few chapters I embraced Tav as not-me, just some cool evil woman, and that was better.

Overall, I’m really happy with Towards Tyranny. It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written, I feel so proud of how I committed to getting this done, and I like the end result!

[cornbread-but-minecraft]

What I Don't Like About Minecraft's Modern Music Part 1 - The Nether Update

hey, would you look at that! i'm actually making a post i said i was going to make. that almost never happens. anyway, i have a lot of opinions on minecraft's music, especially how it's been handled in recent (-ish) updates, so i figured i'd make a post series about it.

we'll be going update-by-update, just to make things simpler and a bit more future-proof. each post will be split into four sections, those being:

The Music Itself,

How it's Used In-Game,

How it's Broken on Bedrock Edition, and

How it Affects Cornbread's Music Fixer (my resource pack).

this will be, in no way, a full collection of all my thoughts on the subject, especially since they keep changing as the game itself does. but it will be my general feelings. anyway

The Music Itself

it's good.

wow. what an original take. no-one's ever enjoyed the nether update soundtrack before.

okay, but actually, yeah. music's really good. i don't really have much to say about the music's quality other than that. it's probably the only soundtrack in the past few years that straight-up has no misses. i do have some critiques tho.

firstly, very odd choice to center the new music so heavily around piano when C418's existing nether music has so much emphasis on other instruments. it's especially noticeable with rubedo. rubedo is probably the closest this album gets to being not very good.

chrysopoeia and so below seem to just kinda start their main melodies without any kind of fade-in, which (spoilers) isn't something i really like in the newer soundtracks. buuuut, i think it actually kinda works here. both tracks start with a not insignificant period of ambience before the main melody really kicks in, so, by the time you've noticed that the track is playing, it's already been playing for at least half a minute.

it especially helps that the nether itself received a lot of ambience in this update. it ensures that the tracks are never starting up from complete silence, which is a big part of the problem with tracks like bromeliad, for example. but i'm getting ahead of myself. also, pretend i'm not overusing the word 'especially', pretty please.

pigstep is in a noticeably different genre to all the previous music discs, a trend that would continue for years to come. i do not understand music genres enough to explain just how they're different, but they are. like a lot. not sure how i feel about this.

How it's Used In-Game

the nether update is the first* to have biome-specific music, and i (mostly) think it did it wonderfully. chrysopoeia and so below fit their biomes really really well. all the new biomes play and feel so distinct from each other it'd probably feel weirder if they didn't have biome-specific music.

and that's where my praise of this soundtrack ends.

let's start with the second-biggest thing and move our way up: the nether update added four new biomes and three new music tracks.

but fine. warped forests don't play music, so obviously they don't need their own track. so that leaves three new (music-playing) biomes and three new music tracks. that's one new track per biome, right?

no.

rubedo is exclusive to the nether wastes. the biome that was already there. the biome that is already heavily associated with C418's nether music. the biome C418's nether music was written for.

i feel like they should have had lena write a new track for the basalt deltas instead. as it stands, basalt deltas share their soundtrack with soul sand valleys. and we know the music is for soul sand valleys because java edition gave each one of these new tracks their own folder and so below's folder is named 'soulsand_valley'.

but if i'm being honest, all that up there really isn't that big of a deal. it's just a little weird. but the second thing i want to touch on actually is really bad and is kinda why rubedo's existence is such an issue for me.

each biome in the nether plays one biome track from the nether update and all four general nether tracks from volume beta... in theory. in actuality, the volume beta tracks almost never play because the game is set up so that each biome is almost twice as likely to play their one biome track than any of the four general nether tracks. i don't just mean any individual general nether track - i mean all four of them as a unit.

i can understand what they were going for. since the general nether tracks play almost anywhere in the nether, they probably just wanted to make sure that the biome tracks had more of a chance, since they only play in their respective biomes. but the exact chances they chose are simply way too much in the nether update's favor.

even the nether wastes, which give their biome track (rubedo) a weight of 6 instead of the usual 7, are still dominated by their one, single biome track. C418's dimension-defining music became a rarity all throughout the nether. and it makes what was once the best soundtrack in the game very, very repetitive and grating.

*i say the nether update was the first to have biome-specific music, but that's not actually entirely true. underwater music is also technically biome-specific, but it's much more known for being exclusive to the underwater than to any specific group of biomes. also, technically, it wasn't added to bedrock edition until the nether update, which i will be talking about soon.

like, right now.

How it's Broken on Bedrock Edition

okay, i lied. well, no. i said something misleading. (well, actually, i typed something misleading). basically, i'm not going to be talking about underwater music just yet. i will instead be talking about nether music first, and then underwater music. since this is the nether update post.

for some context, before the nether update, bedrock edition played all of its music at 10% to 30% volume, depending on the track. nether music specifically was played at 15% volume.

contrast this with java edition, which played all of its music at 100% volume. when java edition received the nether update soundtrack and fucked it up in all the ways i've already described previously in the post, it decided to play its new tracks at 50% volume, since the files themselves are so much louder than the existing C418 tracks.

how do you think bedrock edition handled this?

they could've done some math and decided to play the new tracks at 7.5% volume, since that's 50% of 15%. they could have doubled the volume of the existing nether music and had the new music play at 15% volume to keep the numbers round, and they almost did, but not quite.

see, this was around the time where parity was starting to become something important, so instead of adapting the java edition solution to work with bedrock edition, they just completely copied it, playing C418's nether tracks at 100% volume and lena's at 50%.

they did not change the volume of the rest of the music.

so this left the game in a situation where overworld and end music played at 10% to 30% volume and nether music played at 50% to 100% volume, which is a really big difference, but at least you had to change dimensions to hear it, so it's not as noticeable, right?

no. i misled you again.

during development, the soul sand valleys were internally referred to as 'soulsand valleys', with soulsand as one word. this is incorrect, so java edition ended up changing it before release. bedrock edition usually doesn't see the point in changing internal IDs (case in point, the flattening is ongoing as i type this in the year 2024), so it didn't do this. it did, however, change the name of the sound event the biome uses as music.

another thing bedrock edition doesn't like doing is fully removing features. so, when i say they changed the name of 'music.game.soulsand_valley' to write soul sand as two words, what i actually mean is they added a new sound event for that.

this new sound event is the one that got fixed up before release.

yet another thing bedrock edition doesn't like doing is having a biome's internal ID not match the name of the sound event it uses as music. i think you can see where i'm going with this. bedrock edition uses an outdated sound event for soul sand valley music.

remember when i said the bedrock team 'almost played the new nether tracks at 15% volume'? yeah, this is what i meant. 'music.game.soulsand_valley' plays so below at 15% volume.

so, to recap all of that, in version 1.16, the nether update, bedrock edition plays all of its music - menu, overworld, end, creative mode, dragon fight, end poem, etcetera - at 10% to 30% volume (really quiet), except for nether music, which it plays at 50% to 100% volume (really fucking loud), except for soul sand valley music, which it plays at 15% volume like the rest of the game! soul sand valleys are even inconsistent with basalt deltas, which are supposed to have an identical soundtrack.

did i mention that the outdated soul sand valley music sound event doesn't play any of C418's tracks like it's supposed to?

underwater music! is a lot simpler to explain.

basically, on bedrock edition, underwater music plays at 20% volume. this is technically within bedrock's previous range. it's just really loud. not loud enough to be in parity with java edition (which plays underwater music at 40% volume), but definitely loud enough to be noticeably inconsistent with other overworld music.

i simply wouldn't have chosen 20% volume, is what i'm saying.

How it Affects Cornbread's Music Fixer

it wouldn't be a me post if i didn't mention this pack at least a little bit, would it?

okay, so technically, the pack didn't exist until sometime after the wild update, but leaving both this and the caves and cliffs soundtrack until the wild update post would just be a lot, so i'm going to be talking about how this pack deals with nether and underwater music right now, as well as the history of those.

the very earliest versions of this pack were very bare bones. i didn't even notice the volume of music was inconsistent at the time, i just wanted swamp music to be less everywhere. but, version 1.0.0 did still change nether music a little bit, in that it made C418's tracks more prominent.

first things i did were i made soul sand valley music consistent with basalt deltas, and then i lowered the weights of chrysopoeia and so below from 7 to 4. this gives the game a 50-50 chance of playing either the biome's biome track or one of C418's general nether tracks, so that the new biomes still predominantly play their own unique music without being irritatingly repetitive.

i didn't want to remove rubedo completely, so i just lowered its weight to 1, so that it still plays, but with a 20% chance and not vanilla's 60%. this makes the nether wastes predominantly C418's volume beta music, as it should be.

fun fact: when i was first porting this pack to java edition, i actually forgot to tweak the weights of the nether music and had to fix it in a patch, so that's why the earliest version on modrinth is 1.0.1 and not 1.0.0.

it took me a while after that for me to change the volume to make it consistent with other music. odd, since that quickly became a major feature of the pack. but eventually, i did one of the things i suggested mojang do earlier in the post: i changed the volume of C418's nether music to 30% and lena's nether music to 15%. (well, in the bedrock style of the pack. eventually, i split the pack into bedrock and java "styles" that are separate from the edition any given release of the pack is for).

at the same time, i lowered underwater music to 10% volume. (also in bedrock style only). and that's how nether and underwater music have stayed in this pack all the way to the current version 1.4.1.

---

oof that was a long post. took me multiple days to write it and it's probably going to end up being one of the shorter ones in this series. or maybe not since i have to explain a bunch of context in this one that i won't have to later. idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[spacemagicandlaserswords]

The Clone Wars 1x5 ‘Rookies’ Reaction Take 2

STILL SCREAMING

(I wrote this as I rewatched the episode, pausing as I went so that's why it's probably disjointed and all over the shop). Edit: Adding gifs to this because I can and I feel like it suits the more live-blogging style that these types of reaction posts end up being.

Lmao @ the GAR radio hologram

Omg Echo. It’s baby Echo! Look at him and his reg manuals!

Hello Sergeant Reed Richards and your lovely silver temples. Is this Sergeant O'Niner? More silver fox clones plz.

Are his eyebrows grey as well?

Deep Thoughts with Kenobi

Lol look at Obi Wan, so happy to see his space husband. Or its just the dated animation. But we’re all delusional here so let’s go with the first option.

Ah so this is where the ‘Good man, that Cody’ line comes from.

Rip not getting to know more about the lovely clone with the facial hair. Was this Droidbait?

Oof, foreshadowing for Hevy rip

Rip Sentry

Oh hey Fives has his little 5 Aurebesh tattoo already!

Droids! Well that was subtle lmao

I know this is very early on in TCW but there are some funky accents going on with the clones.

Rip Sergeant Silver Fox

Ventress is hilarious. She’s so completely beyond OTT. Ridiculous. I love it.

The entire comm exchange between Cody and the commando droid pretending to be a clone. CACKLING

Droid: Roger roger Rex: *narrows eyes*

Lol @ Cody palming off his problems to Rex. Have fun being in charge of this one!

“The reg manual says that the next–” Omg Echo. 

Rip Cutup. What a gruesome way to go.

“What the hell was that?” A “bad” word? In my animated children’s television show?!

“Ah, that was an eel.” Yes thank you Echo

“Now, that’s why we have the regulation not to go outside.” omg I love him

Lol @ the fanfare when Cody and Rex turn up. The heroes have arrived.

I know I’ve said this before but Rex looks all special with is kama and captain’s pauldron and different helmet and whatever else and then Cody just gets some golden painted bits of his armour and 2 aerials? What is he, a designer retro TV?

Omg the droid pretending to be a clone. You can just tell the animators had a field day with that one.

Thank you for visiting and have a safe trip back? Question mark?

Gif from this post by @dindjarism

“A droid attack flare?” OMG REX DID NOT HESITATE. Even Cody was shocked.

At this point, “Roger, roger” is basically enough to send Rex’s spidey senses into overdrive.

“Woah, Rex! What the heck are you doing?” An even less of a “bad” word? In my animated children’s television show?! 

Also lawl @ Rex’s drawled “Relax” after shooting the droid disguised as a clone at point blank range.

Does Cody not have his gold paint yet?! His armour looked distinctly grey, though they are on a moon so the lighting might be why it looks grey.

“Off the platform!” Rex you just yeeted yourself. And Cody. You actually want to be yeeted don’t you Rex?

Cody is the kind of friend who would jump off a cliff if his friend said to.

What happened on Tibrin? I must know. Is this The Clone Wars version of what happened in Budapest? Will we never know?

It’s a tiny little exchange but you can really tell from the change in voice how familiar Rex and Cody are with each other already.

Also that shot of Rex after he lands from their lines under the platform is absolutely a hero shot and hero pose. There’s quite a few of these throughout the episode and you can really tell that this is absolutely the introduction episode of Rex. So many moments throughout this episode exist just to show what an absolute BAMF he is. Seeing as the character was originally supposed to be Alpha-17 it makes sense. You can really Rex’s jaig eyes really prominently throughout this episode too. Makes sense, seeing as they’re on the front of his helmet, but it almost feels even more emphasised that you’d expect.

Sun bonnets!

Rex just turning around and one shotting the Rishi eel like it’s nothing omg sir stop

Gif from this post by @dindjarism

Echo gets his Rishi eel blood hand print from Rex! Seminal moment unlocked!

Lmao at Anakin and Obi Wan snarking about their clones.

Rex calls Echo kid! I AM WAILING!

Rex old boy? Since when was Cody bri’ish?

Rex, your ideas are as bad as Anakin’s.

The whole scene with trying to get in the blast doors and Rex kneeling there holding up the decapitated head of the commando droid? CACKLING

Cody is so done with your nonsense Rex

That was the most badass delivery of “Roger. Roger.” I have ever seen and we’re only 5 episodes in.

Aw Echo is already worried about Fives.

Rex is basically the personification of ‘so anyway, I started blasting’ at this point.

Rex, Sir, you did not have to go so hard in taking apart that droid with your bare hands

<insert line about hell in a kids tv show here>

Is this the first hero shot we get of Rex, Cody and Echo together? Sure looks like it! Look at Rex looking all noble in the background.

More foreshadowing for Hevy rip

Closest thing we clones have to a home. SOBBING

The little nod between Rex and Cody.

Random gronk droid.

"Didn’t say please." There are so many good cheesy one liners in this episode it's like an 80s action movie. I love it.

"We could use a jedi about now." I think Cody is missing his space husband.

That admiral definitely feels like a stereotype of a posh british officer from WWII or similar

Oh damn this is Hevy's last stand. What a way to go out.

Hevy nooooo what are you doing

“I don’t like your tone rookie” Rex was that a growl?!

Hevy just yeeting the machine gun at the droids.

Noooo Hevy

"I don’t." Wow those were some last words. Rip Hevy

Gif from this post by @theclonewarsdaily

Naw Echo and Fives getting medals. And joining the 501st! Also their completely in sync salute and about turn was the definition of crisp. I know it’s probably just the same animation copied and pasted but we can ignore that and focus on how it’s totally cause they’re the twins in their batch.

OMG THAT EPISODE. MY HEART. CLONES. THE CLONES HAVE MY HEART. EVERYTHING FOR THE CLONES. 

I think I’m going to have to go back and watch some episodes again because when I first watched this I a) didn’t remember most of it and b) hadn’t started to fall in love with the clones. I should imagine coming back and watching important and memorable episodes again after the finale will have another different meaning to it all as well. Though, given what happens in the finale, I might need to wait a bit. Maybe I’ll come back to it after watching Rebels and a few other things I want to catch up on. I did realise though that I did actually watch this episode when I started watching The Clone Wars, I just didn’t remember most of it. The only bits that I remembered were when the 4 clones (Echo, Fives, Heavy and Cutup, I think) escaped through the tunnels to outside the base, right before Cutup got eaten by that eel. 

[zeawesomebirdie]

hi !!!! did NOT consider you might like to have the ask again to answer it. if you do:

seeing you post about your old west au is motivating me to at least draft my stuff out for my fic, too!!! so, firstly: good god thank you. secondly, what kind of drafting process do you normally go through? you don't have to answer this but everyone i know is pretty particular about how they write so i'm always curious!!!

Gosh okay I'm still so embarrassed about accidentally posting this before it was ready!! Lesson learned: only work on long posts on desktop (very affectionate). I'm going to copy paste what I had originally said, but there will be added stuff because it wasn't anywhere near ready to go (if you thought it was long before, honey you ain't seen nothing yet!)

Also I still am so proud of you for working on your fic, we are writing buddies now hand in lovable hand I love you thank you for enabling my rambling <33

Buckle in, here we go!

SO! My drafting process is always a moving target. I do what works best for the work in question, and things change depending on my energy and fatigue levels plus my motivation and interest levels

So that said, right now my process usually looks like:

ramble at someone in DMs, copy and paste rambles into a google doc for safekeeping and marinating

zero draft, aka word vomit until a plot forms, block out actions and the occasional dialog, determine chapter and story arcs

first draft, aka Where The Real Writing Happens

optional second draft, but only if the fic is under 10k

line edits

post :)

find a bunch of typos that I somehow missed during line editing, fix those before anyone notices

I will be showing examples because this is a bit hard to explain and Extremely Intense to a lot of people, and yeah that's because it is! I approach writing fanfic the same way I approach writing original fiction, and I find it works best for me as a plotter

If you are metaphorically inclined and familiar with oil painting: I write the way an oil painter paints. First I block in the big shapes, the gestures, and the colours. Then I come back in subsequent drafts and increase the detail until I'm done!

Further information and actual examples of my drafts will be below the cut, because this is gonna be super long and I love talking shop ^.^

And general content warning for non-graphic violence and graphic smut (and shitty early drafts); the examples are from Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson fics

So before we get into the zero draft, I want to point out two things: first, I do full rewrites. This is why writing takes me one million years. I retype each and every word in each and every draft. Second, I'm actually trying something new with the Old West!AU, for reasons I will explain in a moment!

I started doing full rewrites in 2019 after a college writing course, in which we read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott; she encourages the reader to embrace the shitty first draft. I ended up really benefiting from a zero draft too, something I first learned about in 2020 from someone on authortube who I no longer remember the name of. The zero draft is essentially a pre-draft, in which one gets the gist of the story out of their system before the prose clogs up the spigot

For me, zero drafts are something that need to be finished as fast as possible in order to get done at all, so due to the sheer length of the Old West!AU, I'm trying out writing little bullet points instead of my full zero drafting. Right now this fic is at 27 chapters, and this is part 1 of 3 total. I will be going back and filling in the actual blocking once I have all the scenes roughly accounted for

Context for the Old West!AU: Bruce is the Bat, a vigilante gunman who only kills when he needs to but still has the fastest draw on this side of the Mississippi. Now that he's taken care of the man who killed his parents, he's returned home to his Uncle Alfred and gone straight, meaning that he's hung up his guns and gone back to homesteading the family land. He adopts Dick and then a year later Jason as well, when small burglaries start happening in town, so he takes the Bat out of retirement and goes to investigate.

My bullet points started out like this:

Open on comparison between Bruce's first gun and the Bat's guns. Introduce Joe Chill, general drunkard. The Bat calls out Chill, shootout, Chill is killed. Chill drew first. Moment of reflection between Bruce's first gunfight at 15 to this one, at 21. Bruce goes home.

And that's the whole entire first chapter!

However, now they look more like:

The Sheriff runs up and shoots at him. The Bat has him disarmed with his own gun barrel to his throat in an instant. It doesn't take the Bat much time to get info out of him either. The burglar is only going after small change, not enough to be noticeable. That rules out the gambler, easily. The Sheriff can't do shit about it, because no one is willing to start an investigation for such small change. The Bat shoves the Sheriff to his knees and is gone before he notices. Alfred is waiting for him when he gets home, and asks. Bruce tries to deny it, but the clothes are in his hands and he can't. So he sighs and says he may have made a promise, but… there might be more to this than there seems, okay? He just… has a bad feeling about it. Alfred can't accept this, what about his sons? Bruce can't take this, and tells him he doesn't have to. Their yelling wakes up Dick and Jason, who stand in the doorway to their bedroom and look on with the door mostly closed.

Eventually both Alfred and Bruce yell each other out, and they sit down for coffee as dawn breaks. Bruce breaks the silence first, saying Alfred is right. Alfred tells him he understands. Bruce decides to let the Bat go for real now.

This is about half of the chapter, and closer to the blocking I normally do in zero drafts

So far this pre-zero draft seems to be working, given I've already finished part 1, but I also can't wait to come back and do the blocking in because that's when the fic really starts to take shape!

Usually though, I just start with a zero draft. I'm going to show you two different fics for the zero draft examples, because they were done differently, and like I said at the beginning, I try to adjust my process based on what is called for by what I'm writing

This first is from the fic I'm writing for @ful-crum. It's a 5+1, in which it is five times Dick fucks Bruce to distract him from discussing his emotions plus one time they actually discuss their emotions and then fuck about it.

Tim and Jason turn up an hour later, and they're incredibly concerned. Dick waves them off. Tim takes him at his word and heads to bed (he has a meeting with Wayne Tech at 8am tomorrow, ugh), but Jason sits down next to the bed and asks Dick what he thinks Bruce is going to say. Dick tells him he's not sure, I mean, it's B, y'know? Jason just nods, and they lapse into silence. Then Steph and Cass come in, and Bruce is most noticeably not present. Cass signs something about bed, and Steph tells Dick that she's worried about Bruce, to which Jason snorts and says they all are, but she insists that Dick talk to him. Dick doesn't even need to take more than a moment to decide that won't be happening. But Steph goes to bed, and it's nearly 04:00 when Jason heads up too, saying he'd love to help Dick lecture Bruce about staying out late but he's got stuff to do tomorrow. Dick asks if he wants to know what stuff, and Jason gives him a smirk and says ask him no questions and he'll tell him no lies. Dick can live with that.

As you can see, this is just general staging directions and vibes

This second example was supposed to be for BruDick Week 2024, but I accidentally got carried away and ended up deciding to write a longfic for it instead. The prompt was "brudick meet their AU!selves," so I did 66!brudick meets the Gotham Rogues Polycule, an AU in which Bruce, Dick, and Clark are in a very elaborate polycule with half of Gotham's villains.

Batman and Robin were on a normal mission in the middle of the day, on the trail of Catwoman, who's been stealing from the Gotham Museum of Art again. One moment they were walking into the museum, the next they were in a weird swirl of energy. Robin clings to Batman and asks what's going on, and Batman tells him steady Robin, we just have to stay calm and see what happens. The energy clears as someone calls out “incoming! Clear the floor!” and they find themselves in what is clearly the Cave, except it's even more high tech than anything they've ever seen. There's three people in suits like theirs standing in front of a massive screen, and Robin identifies the Riddler immediately, even if he doesn't recognise the other two. Before Batman can stop him, he charges the Riddler, who jumps behind the man in black and blue with a laugh. Batman does call out for him to stop, but he ignores him. The man in black and blue meets his every move, almost like he's fighting himself, and he calls out to the man in red and blue “a little help here, Supes?”

The biggest difference here is how drastically these fics changed from their zero draft to the first draft rendition, and that is entirely because of how fleshed out they ended up being (or not being, lol)

When I zero drafted the 5+1, it was with the intention of that specific part simply being a chapter, whereas my original zero draft of the 66! meeting the polycule! fic was actually intended to be a two shot at most. I unfortunately lost control of the plot during the first draft of that one, and it spiraled into a longfic, which will become more clear in a bit!

Basically though, the goal of the zero draft is to know who's where and why at all times! With longfics, there is often a restructuring that happens after the zero draft is written, where I move scenes and sometimes whole chapters to their best locations. This is where I make the most use out of a beta! Pacing is a big struggle for me and it is easier to fix at this stage, before I have all the prose and have become attached to what I've written

Next up is the first draft, and this is a whole new document. This is where I write The Actual Words. This is more or less the final version of the fic, for longfics, give or take a few paragraphs and a shit ton of line edits. Having said that though, I write in fits and bursts, because y'know disabled and stuff. So I write a paragraph or two at a time, and I am constantly adding and subtracting words and lines and sometimes whole paragraphs while I am actively working on a chapter

I'm going to show the first draft versions of both of the above fics, and due to the length these will be extremely excerpted but they should serve as examples regardless. Generally speaking, my zero drafts are about 1/3 of the length of my finished fics, however the 5+1 is currently proving to be an exception so that number may not be super accurate

First, the 5+1:

“You did take care of them, right?” Dick asked, groaning when Jason’s mouth thinned as he looked away. “Is Steph at least still with him?” “Last I heard, they were—” Jason started, cutting himself off when the Cave’s alarm signaled the arrival of newcomers. A moment later, two muddy bikes roared into the garage, leaving dark tracks behind them as they parked haphazardly together on the far side of the garage. With the return of Black Bat and Spoiler, the only empty place on the garage floor now belonged to Batman himself. Dick tried to catch Jason’s eyes as they waited in the med bay for Cass and Steph to strip off their suits and join them, but Jason turned away from him, though he didn’t rise from the bed. Something must have gone down after he’d fallen unconscious, Dick was sure of it. Why else would Bruce have sent everyone else home early on a patrol night? He could already see it in his mind’s eye, Batman doing God-knew-what out in Gotham alone, Bruce coming home with a busted lip that Dick would have to personally clean up before they went to bed, how that lip would scab over and feel under his tongue when he kissed Bruce the next morning after waking up in their bed—Bruce’s bed—on accident. How that scab would stretch when the ghost of a smile caught Bruce by surprise after one of Dick’s terrible puns. “You okay?” Steph called across the Cave as she and Cass walked toward the med bay. “Never been better,” Dick replied, trying not to be put out at Jason’s eye roll. He put up a hand for Cass to inspect when she came up to his bedside, and after she had nodded her satisfaction of his health he smiled. “I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

And the 66! meets polycule! fic:

“You!” Robin shouted, not waiting for Batman to back him up as he charged toward the Riddler. Riddler didn't move—in fact, none of the three moved—then Robin was on him, punching his face hard enough to hear a distinct crack. That startled all three into action, Riddler swearing up a storm before throwing himself behind the blue masked man, who blocked Robin's next hits without hesitation. “Robin!” Batman called from somewhere behind him, but Robin ignored him, focusing his energy on striking past the masked man's defenses to get at Riddler. “I know you're behind this, you– you scum!” Robin snarled in Riddler's direction, placing a perfectly timed jab toward the masked man's left cheek and then feinting to the right. But the man met him easily, as though they were merely sparring. “I'm not who you think I am!” Riddler exclaimed, his hands cupping his face but doing little to staunch the blood streaming from his nose. “Let's slow down for a minute, okay?” the masked man said, his voice maddeningly level as if Robin wasn't trying every trick he knew to get past him. “We can explain.” “Yeah kid, there's a good explanation here, we promise,” Riddler added. Robin growled and spun around the  masked man's reach only to find him once again directly blocking him from Riddler. How in the dickens did he know exactly where Robin was going to strike before Robin himself knew? And why on earth was he protecting the Riddler? “Supes, we could use a hand here,” the masked man said, still obnoxiously calm, once again blocking Robin's fist and this time circling his hand around Robin's wrist to twist his arm behind his back. In a blink, Robin was lifted into the air by his collar, the blue and red suited man holding him at arm's length. Robin continued to struggle for a moment, but finally Batman came into view, frowning up at him. Seeing Batman's disapproval took every bit of wind from Robin's sails, and he deflated instantly. If Batman didn't think he needed to fight, then he probably didn't need to.

So as you can see, I just kinda fill in the details with each draft!

Which is where we come to the optional second draft. I try, I really do try, to do a full second draft of everything I write. I always am glad to have done one, once it's done. The problem is, I really do have very limited energy, and anything longer than a chapter or two just doesn't get finished if I try to give it a full second draft. I've instead been doing really vigorous line edits, which I don't have an examples of because those are done in the same document as the first draft!

Now, you're probably wondering why on earth I gave a smut content warning at the beginning of this post. WELL.

I am calling myself out as a newbie when it comes to the art of smut writing. My 5+1 fic, the one where literally every single part has extremely explicit smut, has the following in the zero draft:

Yes, that is not one, not two, but three "cue smuts." Clearly I was new at this (affectionate)

Shout out to past!me for this in the last part though, because at least it actually has some semblance of blocking even if it is still extremely lacking:

The kissing escalates (as it often does) to smut over the desk (though Dick does try to move the documents out of the way, even if Bruce is growling at him to leave it alone; he doesn't want to be the reason Tim has another caffeine-induced breakdown).

I didn't figure this out until I was actually writing this fic, but it turns out I not only need to block in regular action scenes, I also need to block in the smut, because otherwise I will be sitting there having no fucking clue what to write (very affectionate)

So I now present what a zero draft of smut looks like! This is from a 5+1 in which there are five times Bruce and Dick fuck because of Poison Ivy's sex pollen and it "doesn't mean anything," plus one time they fuck because they actually want to:

Dick asks if they can take off their suits, it's too hot he's too hot, and Bruce says okay, that's a good idea, and internally he's panicking because oh no. Oh no. But the moment the words are out he sees the relief in Dick's face, and realises Dick needs to be told what to do right now, so he tells him clearly to strip, it'll help. Once Dick is fully naked in the other seat, he turns to Bruce and asks if he needs help with his armor. His hand is tentatively, almost shyly stroking his cock, and Bruce is really struggling to not watch. He tells him no, he doesn't, and takes off the chest plate and arm armor, but leaves what's left of his leg armor on. He decides he can safely put his hand under his boxers, but Dick makes a little noise, and when he looks over he can clearly see Dick watching him stroke himself. Oh fuck. He's cumming before he even realises it, his boxers getting wet and sticky and his cock still so maddeningly hard and he strokes himself through it, unable to stop himself from moaning even as he tries to keep himself in a clinical mindset. Dick asks to see him, and Bruce, despite knowing what a bad, horrible idea this is, pulls down his boxers to reveal his cock. Dick shifts his hand on his own cock to mimic what Bruce is doing, and Bruce has the horrible realisation that he doesn't even really know how to jerk himself off. Dear God, hopefully Alfred stays the fuck out of the Cave tonight.

So it's really just more of the same general blocking directions and vibes!

Another thing of note for zero drafts, I try to use as few words as possible to get what I need across. These are only ever intended to be seen by myself and a beta, assuming anyone else besides me even sees them at all, so I use slang and shorthand and leave notes for myself in the text itself

This can be a bit weird for when I show it to betas (or anyone else, for that matter!) because there are some fics where the tone or the vocabulary in the zero is incredibly modern despite the fic being in a historical or pre-modern setting!

And I have yet to actually write the first draft of that one, so I'm going to give you the first draft of the "Cue more smut (but this time against the batmobile 😌)" scene so that you can see the difference between the blocking and an Actual Scene:

Bruce had turned his back to him, bracing himself against the batmobile, and Dick took hold of Bruce's hip to hold him steady when he slid a finger into his hole. A soft moan was all he got in verbal response, but Bruce pushed against Dick's finger despite Dick's best efforts to do this slowly. Chuckling under his breath, Dick slid in a second finger, relishing in the clench of Bruce's muscle as he began working him open. “Easy, B,” he said softly, leaning over him enough to move his hand from Bruce's hip to his cock. Bruce growled and arched into his touch, taking in Dick's fingers completely. “Someone's in a rush tonight, huh?” He didn't get a verbal response, not that he ever did. Bruce rarely spoke while full, relying instead on nonverbal communication to indicate his needs. It hadn't taken long for Dick to become acquainted with his movements back when they started this; after all, fucking was no different from fighting, not for them, not when they had flown side by side across Gotham for more than half of Dick's life. And Dick knew Bruce would always try to get him to rush just a little, knew he'd give in like he always did, wanting to have his cock inside Bruce as soon as physically possible just as much as Bruce did. He wasted no more time, sliding his fingers out and releasing Bruce's cock just long enough to slick up his own. The small whine from Bruce at the loss of contact ought to be ignored, ought not be acknowledged, and Dick knew that, but he couldn't resist leaning over to kiss the small of Bruce's back. Bruce huffed at him, glaring over his shoulder. Dick met his eyes with a grin. Then Dick gripped Bruce's hip again, holding him steady while Bruce leaned back to meet him, and slipped into his tight heat. There was a soft moan from Bruce the moment he bottomed out; Dick leaned forward again to kiss up his spine, keeping his cock buried deep even while Bruce began to rock back into him.

I do think the fic for @ful-crum would be easier if I had proper blocking for the smut, but also I do love a good challenge and you live and you learn, so I'm not super invested in going back and blocking in the smut at this point in time!

And honestly, once the line edits are done that's pretty much it!

I keep a little "posting info" doc for each and every fic I write, to which I add tags as I come to them in writing, so that I don't have to think about what needs to be tagged at the end after I've already forgotten what I've written. That has saved my butt so many times ngl, especially for longfics!

But really what keeps me from posting more often, despite how much I write, is that I fully finish fics before I post them, even if I'm posting them on a weekly or whatever basis. This is mostly because I can't guarantee when I'll need to randomly take several months off of writing, and I don't want to leave anything unfinished, but also because I don't want to actually end up leaving something unfinished for a few years until I cycle back into the fandom

And that's it!! Thanks for tuning in to this little master class :) If I can clarify anything please let me know; I tried to explain everything that I thought needed it but I can never tell what others will need more clarification on!!

And also, thanks again for asking this!! I don't know many people who do full drafts, or even many people who don't completely pants everything they write, and so I'm always excited to discuss my process!! I also am a firm believer in "take what helps and leave the rest," so if you find something in my process that sounds like something you'd like to do, give it a whirl!! I think it's super important to share the different kinds of processes there can be for writing, because everyone really writes so differently, you know?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my shitty early drafts (very affectionate)!!

[esta-elavaris]

Nobody Knows

Okay, starting things off with something I wrote back in 2015 for my first creative writing class at uni. It's a short horror story, the assignment was literally just "write a short story with roughly 1.5k words" bc they were great with giving us serious freedom to write what we wanted to write, and this was what I came up with. I think it was the first 'serious' original short story I wrote, I was 18/19 at the time (so, disclaimer on that score if you're going to compare it to the stuff I'm posting now at almost-27 lolol), so the quality will probably reflect that, but it has sentimental value and a bit of other meaning to me, so I'm posting it as is. Definitely a "look at what I dredged up from the archives" kinda thing rather than a "wow isn't this great?" kinda thing.

I remember I went into that first semester, looked at the people in the class around me and just thought "oh god, I am so fucking out of my league here" -- but then, three months later, my course leader (who ended up being my personal tutor in the years that followed, and my favourite teacher across my whole degree) really enjoyed it and his very kind feedback resulted in the moment where I stopped and thought "man, maybe I actually have something going with my writing". It also ended up in my uni's Eng Lit magazine, which I still have a copy of for archival purposes ✨

Plus, if I reread it too closely to edit it to the quality I like to think I can produce now, I will end up convincing myself not to post it 💀 so here! Have some baby!writer stuff.

By the time I reached nineteen, I was scared of Nobody. That was what I called him - Nobody. My own private little joke.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Nobody.”

“Who are you staring at?”

“Nobody.”

Not a lie, but not a response that would get me thrown into the nearest mental hospital. I considered that a win/win. It also described him accurately – for he didn’t seem to have a body. All I ever saw of him was shadow. Sometimes it would be clearer, forming a silhouette, and other times he’d just be an ever-shifting mass of darkness. I’d been too young to be frightened by his appearance when I first found him in my grandmother’s attic. I’d thought my cousin’s tales of hauntings in the house had always just been made up to scare me, but regardless, Nobody didn’t scare me – not at first.

By the time he did, I’d known him for a decade, and had only resented him for two of those years. The resentment began at my seventeenth birthday party. Before then, having a negative thought about Nobody was utter blasphemy in my book. I would never allow a bad word to be said about my guardian, protector, teacher and presumed imaginary friend. Not one. My mother would suggest that I was too old for this behaviour, and that it was time for Nobody to go away, only for me to go ballistic. I learned to keep him to myself after that, but my good opinion only strengthened, if anything. What could be bad about somebody, living or not, who was so willing to protect me? Who toppled over the chairs my bullies sat in? Who snuck me the answers I needed in tests? It was absurd, but I kept my mouth shut, and as far as everybody else was concerned, my imaginary friend vanished. It meant little to me – it wasn’t like any of them could see him in the first place.

Then things changed. What was meant to be the best night of my life turned out to be the worst. No parents, no neighbours, no rules. Just lots of booze, music and fun. Or so I thought. The first hint that something was awry was when all of the alcohol became mysteriously unavailable to us. Packs of beer would end up in locked cabinets, with the keys nowhere to be found. Bottles of vodka would fling themselves towards the sink and smash there, any potential source of amusement quite literally down the drain.

Then came the issue of the music. My best friend spent the entire evening wrestling with the CD player, wondering why it would refuse to play certain songs (the ones I knew Nobody hated), or why the volume refused to go any higher than, a pretty pathetic, “six”. The final straw was when every guy at the party suddenly became dramatically ill. Every single one. Headaches, vomiting fits, fevers, or even just a sense of pure unease. They needed little motivation to leave such a pathetic party in the first place. Within an hour, the only guests left were my two best friends. My seventeenth birthday bash had been demoted to a sleepover worthy of a ten year old.

After that, Nobody became less of a trusted ally and more of a domineering parent. Where I used to look at my hungover friends with a smug smirk, happy that Nobody had prevented me from drinking enough to end up in that state, I now looked at them with envy. They were normal. They drank too much and endured the consequences. When they were too lazy to study for tests, they failed. Life was difficult and it was unfair and they complained about it relentlessly. But that was what made it fun. They had to think about their next move, take responsibility for themselves. If they forgot their keys, they’d be locked out – they didn’t have any ghost to open the door for them. Without the dark you find yourself unable to appreciate the light, and so life became unbearably boring. I knew that whatever was approaching me in life, it would be fine. Nobody would handle it, whether I wanted him to or not. I hated it, and I hated him for it. My life was no longer mine to control, but instead belonged to somebody who was dead. How twisted was that? Each day was monotonous, and I found myself learning little - if that - from the limited life experience I had. I made no attempt to have an eighteenth birthday party.

Spurred on by thoughts of my failed seventeenth birthday party, and non-existent eighteenth, I made my decision. On the night of my nineteenth I took a lighter to the living room curtains, setting the place on fire. In the grand scheme of things it seemed like a perfectly safe and reasonable thing to do in the name of distraction. By time the blaze was out and smoke stopped billowing out of the window, I was already down the street, peering out at my home from behind a wheelie bin to make sure that I wouldn’t be returning to the charred skeleton of the house at the end of the night.  What I did return to, however, was a foreboding mass of shadow that I was too scared to tear my eyes away from. His presence had gone from endearing to terrifying in seconds flat.

My bedroom was trashed. Books were scattered on the floor, my clothes were strewn around any and every surface available. Even the door had a long, jagged splinter running up through the middle. Nobody made no move, no attempt at communication. Instead he stood stock-still in the corner, shadows bristling.

I didn’t sleep at all that night, instead sitting up in bed, staring at the void that was once my dearest companion with a sense of dread filling my chest. Hours later, when my drunkenness gave way to a fierce headache, all of the painkillers in the house had mysteriously vanished. I’d hoped it would end there, the same way arguments with my parents went. I’d lie, they’d be angry, eventually we’d all forget about it and move on. Nobody wasn’t the type to move on.

That’s where the decision to get rid of him came from. I couldn’t handle it. The constant hounding of my steps, the uncomfortable atmosphere, the lack of sleep. Sure, without him my life would be mundane and ordinary, but what was I with him? An adult with no decisive powers and an enforced bedtime.

When the day came, I kept up the façade marvellously. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and as far as he knew I was simply visiting a new friend at her apartment. Nobody didn’t show any sign of realising something was up until it was too late.

“That’s it?” I asked the ‘mystic’ dubiously as she finished burning incense and tracing odd symbols on my arms with the ash.

“That’s it,” she waved a hand “You may leave. He cannot follow.”

Nobody’s head shot up in clear alarm. His silhouette jerked towards me, but didn’t move. Couldn’t move. His head snapped between the old woman and I, almost like he was watching a tennis match, before it settled on me again and he unsuccessfully tried to move. The shadows around him spiked outwards.

“Oh, hush! You have no power here!” the old woman snapped impatiently.

I paid her as promised, but kept my gaze on Nobody. It was a weird feeling. Like seeing a caged tiger at a zoo. So much power, but no ability to use it. He’d gone from running my life, to being unable to take even a single step in my direction, all thanks to a bit of ash and some fancy words. For half a second, I faltered. I wanted to apologise to him. Pleasant memories surfaced – my toys putting on shows for me as a child, dancing on invisible strings, or even not having to pay to use the tube, as the ticket gates opened on their own upon my approach. But then the shadows spiked angrily again, and the regret was replaced by the more familiar fear.

When I walked out of that apartment, for the first time in ten years I was truly alone. I was truly free. Free to make my own decisions and live outside of Nobody’s grasp. It was then that life decided to catch up on all the years’ worth of lessons it had been unable to teach me until then. My freedom lasted four minutes. If I’d had Nobody with me, he’d have noticed the car that I failed to until it was too late, so used to not even having to look before I crossed the road. The last thing I saw was his dark silhouette, standing motionless in the window overlooking the street.