#going to actually make the other cosplay post but this thought occurred to me

[thresholdbb]

I never wrote about winning the cosplay contest at STSF (lol wild), but here's the prize certificate:

On the one hand, I (almost didn't enter and) didn't think I was going to win, but on the other hand, they kept talking about a cash prize. And ok, cash prizes have weird legal issues or whatever, but this certificate is bound only to the Creation merch tables, where they sell t-shirts and bags with AI art on them. I asked what I could use it for and the lady said "maybe" I could put it towards a photo op, but it also says no tickets, so that's still up in the air.

That night, Eugene Cordero was hanging out with us at the afterparty (lol hey Rutherford (!!!???) you're super chill) and someone mentioned I'd won the contest/I probably said something about my $500 worthless prize. So he signed it to make it worth "less"

ANYWAY, all this to say

If I can use it towards a photo op (doubtful), and there is a group Voyager cast shot (cause hello expensive and I am, how you say, not formally employed), I think it'd be hilarious to do Threshold mutant Tom Paris

It seems highly doubtful, but it's a thought that at least keeps me quite amused

[frownyalfred]

Hello! A random and specific question has occurred to me, and I think you might have some thoughts, if you're ok with answering!

So, most of the time Judaism is passed down matrilineally. I know there are some exceptions, and some groups that believe Judaism can be passed down through either parent, but generally it's just through the mother. This is how dc accidentally made Bruce Jewish.

However, is it the birthing parent who makes a child Jewish? Or is it strictly the mother, regardless of if she gives birth to the child or not?

I know that sounds like I'm asking about trans Jewish people, but I'm actually curious how this would play out in a world where mpreg is normalized, like in an abo alternate universe. For instance, if Bruce is Jewish and gets pregnant as an omega, would his kids also be Jewish? I did look up perspectives on trans Jewish people having kids, and unsurprisingly views are divided but it seemed like people mostly consider the birthing parent being important, i.e. a trans Jewish man would have Jewish children regardless of the other parent. What are your thoughts on this, if you're open to sharing?

(This ask got longer than I meant, sorry I wrote you a whole essay lol. Also I really hope this doesn't come across as rude, and I sincerely apologize if it does. Tone is difficult on the internet!)

Oh, that's a very very interesting question. Another one I'd like to ask my rabbi if I ever work up the nerve.

I'm no scholar, so if someone else wants to correct me on this one, feel free. But here's my best guess:

The gist of matrilineal descent is that it emerged from a time when the only way you could guarantee that a child was Jewish was to witness the birth from a Jewish mother. Rape, missing fathers, etc all made it a grey area, and back then, it was the only way to be "sure" that a child was halachically Jewish.

The interesting thing is, this was a change from patrilineal descent, but people still argue about when that change happened. Depending on the denomination, matrilineal descent is very very important beyond just determining Judaism, or it's a vestigial practice that has stuck around because it's, well, tradition.

Now, origin and existence are two different things. While it might have emerged for certain reasons, modern standards have obviously changed. We can do DNA tests and other rituals. But a lot of major denominations will turn away patrilineal Jews or hold those with Jewish DNA at arm's length until their Jewishness has been determined. That's only changed recently, and even then very slowly.

So, now that that's out of the way -- how does this relate to omegaverse? I suppose carriers in a/b/o universes would be considered de facto mothers, because they give birth. From my (limited) understanding, the core of most strict matrilineal arguments are 1) we've always done it this way post reception of the Torah 2) it was the only way to ensure someone was Jewish and 3) there are inherent attributes to mothers/the feminine that Rabbis argue are metaphysical and important to consider.

But it depends on how you write omegas. Are they defined by their ability to birth? Are they dual sex or single sex? Do they have the ability to sire offspring in addition to carrying them? Do they serve a "motherly" role in addition to giving birth? All things to consider.

Me personally, I'm a big proponent of accepting all Jews as they are, as long as they're not proselytizing or cosplaying as Jewish from another religion. It's a closed practice but we're also dwindling in number, so turning away people because their father was Jewish and not their mother is bizarre to me. Especially if they were raised in the religion -- at that point it's a technicality, but many rabbis will still make you go through a conversion which is wild to me.

I would throw out there, for the sake of omegaverse -- if the carrier is Jewish, generally, in most cases, the pups are Jewish. That makes sense to me.

[lancelot-akabroke]

Help me with cosplay pls?(I will ask a lot more often after this)

(Disclaimer - May contain spoilers for some star wars movies including "Rise of skywalker" etc. Tho honestly. This movie is from 2019. If you haven't watched it yet it's a you problem.)

Hi everyone. So lately I have been troubled by an issue called Wanting to cosplay a character that there is no demand for anymore.

In my case none other than Armitage Hux. Aka General Hux. Aka "I am the spy". Aka died in the stupidest way possible in "Rise of Skywalker"(2019).

Which makes the following problems occure:

The cosplay is not sold anymore

If it is sold, it's sold for a lot of money(while I am broke)

Which brought me to the conclusion of making it myself.

Maybe not the best idea as someone who never actually cosplayed anyone. But I am well known for destroying my self esteem so here we go.

The main issue i have at the beginning of this process (if we don't count the fact that I am not ginger, really small, and don't have the correct body type for this cosplay) is his coat(picture will be added on the bottom if i will figure out how to do that lol(I did not figure out how to do that. So google yourself pls)). I mean the very long one he wears most of the time. Since I do not have any experience with sewing i thought about buying a really similar one and work on the details to make it look like his.

After searching on the internet the closest I could get was a trench coat... which is not really accurate yk.. In the end I did not find a similar one sadly which is why I am asking for help here(social anxiety go brr). If anyone knows where i can find a similar coat it would be very apreciated since I do not think that making a coat as a first sewing project is a great idea lol.

PS. If this post doesn't reach anyone I will.. be really sad lmao

PS.2 Have a cat for your help:3 (The cat owner asked me to mention that his name is Salami. Disclaimer:He does not like Salami!)

[csleko]

Boba Fett Armor (Take 2)

It occurs to me that I haven't posted any updates on my Boba Fett cosplay since I made that original post about 6 months ago. I did actually finish these pieces for the chest armor, along with several more parts of the costume (including the helmet!)

While I was satisfied with how the armor came out, it could be better. EVA foam is flimsy, it's difficult to get it to keep its shape, and if you're not careful with it it can bend and get creases where the metal it's meant to visually imitate should never have creases.

On top of those material issues, the shapes I cut are...too perfect. Seriously, the one time I manage to get super clean cuts is when I actually don't want them. Boba Fett's armor should have worn and rounded edges, not this clean sharpness! It's been around the galaxy more than a few times.

ANYWAY. I heard about this "Worbla" stuff, and thought it sounded like a really interesting material to learn to work with. So I got myself a big ol' roll of the stuff and got to work.

I started with the small center diamond piece to get an idea of how to shape the Worbla. Most tutorials I found about the basics recommend shaping it around EVA foam pieces. My first attempt came out kinda wonky, as expected, and I tried a few different things with the second one.

So yeah! The idea is you cut out a piece of EVA foam in the shape you want. (Basically step one as if you were just making the armor out of foam.) Then you want to cut that same shape out of Worbla, but leave a good inch or so around the pattern, and cut notches into the corners because you're going to wrap this weird plastic around the foam cutout. After blasting it with a heat gun of course.

Of course, you *could* just make an entire piece out of Worbla, but doing this with the foam gives it some thickness and structure. The Worbla holds its shape perfectly once it cools down from being heated, and if it doesn't come out right you can just heat it up again and fiddle with it until it works. Weird stuff, but I love it already.

I had to stop myself from going overboard with dents and dings because of how easy and fun they are to do.

One of the OTHER cool things about Worbla is you don't really need to Plasti-Dip it before painting. (Unless you want a SUPER smooth finish, I guess, but the slight roughness of the material works perfectly for beat up metal.)

Full coat of shiny silver. Let it dry completely.

Then green. Let it *mostly* dry, then rough up the edges with some sandpaper until the silver underneath shows through. A slightly tedious extra step I have to follow is to spray it with a matte finish because the only green paint I could get was super glossy, so the matte finish just makes it less obnoxiously shiny. I've since used up the can I used on the original armor pieces, and this new stuff doesn't work quite as well, so these are still a good bit shinier than I would like, but it did get that same sort of crackly texture in some parts that I kind of like, so...eh.

NOW. Since I am now a master of wiring LEDs, having completed exactly one somewhat janky project, I wanted to actually make the little panels on the left chest piece instead of just painting in the cutouts. Unfortunately, I don't know how to program a number display thingamahoozit. Fortunately, I DO know how to model and 3D print things...

Nailed it.

Aaaaand...following the same idea as the first set, except only the left piece is held on by velcro so I can get to the switch and battery for the lights. Everything else is glued to the shirt, which has foam cutouts glued inside for support. Really, given the sturdier nature of the Worbla, this may not have actually been necessary, but it seemed like a good idea, so I did it anyway. Not like it can hurt anything.

Now I just need to redo the shoulder pieces. I was planning on just reusing the originals because they came out perfectly fine, but the paint just completely cracked all over when I bent them slightly, so...yeah...

[duskvivie]

Something Important I Want To Address

So due to recent events that occurred over on Twitter, I need to talk about something and tell the story here since that person hopefully likely cannot find me over here even after I made it clear to him how upset I was about it. So to shed some light on what happened. I interacted with an RP account I had been following since the beginning of my account being made, this is in regards to what is now my alternate Twitter Account which originally started out as a PoH RP account (yes the PoH from Sword Art Online), over time it has changed and now officially became an alternate account centered around Chiyu from Accel World. This RP account was centered around Klein (SAO), and things started when I had interacted with a post of theirs, a post clearly meant as some kind of RP fun really (it was NSFW related however), the post merely said to just like and they would send a NSFW GIF of our characters doing things, course I liked it just for the sheer fun in it since my account could be used for RPing purposes. But things only just got started. After liking the post and them replying back with a NSFW GIF, they proceeded to message me and well this is when it started to get a bit weird, now originally I thought he was in character so I myself was in character. And as this kept up....come to find out, none of what he said was actually directed towards the character I was (Chiyuri), instead it was all directed towards me.

At one point he asked me if I did cosplay since I had brought it up in a post. He asked if I had any cosplay pictures to which the only one I had sent him was a photo I had taken back in 2019 at Kumoricon where I got a photo with an Asuna Cosplayer and Yuuki Cosplayer, during that Con I was cosplaying as Silica. He asked if I had more but to be honest a lot of my cosplay photos were not even the greatest at all, so I just only sent that one that I had. I had eventually brought up that I would be cosplaying as Kuroyukihime and Chiyuri for this year’s con, but that was only when it started to get progressive worse as they started to talk about how they wanted to do things with me in cosplay, at first I thought they were just joking around and I just went along with it as I don’t mind joking around when it comes to being a pervert or anything else. But I realized too late that he started to make things extremely personal once I mentioned that I had a boyfriend (still do of course), talking about how he wanted to have me sneak away from him at con and go have fun with him or do other things without my boyfriend’s knowledge which deep down did make me extremely uncomfortable as I do not like being disloyal to the very person that I love so much. I made the mistake of still rolling along with it which was where I did honestly fuck up big time.

This same RPer just so happened to follow me via another account they had centered around the character Noumi (Accel World), this was meant specifically for my character theme I had for my account however instead of wanting to initiate a RP at all, they instead wanted keep up the flirty behavior, and at that point when I had seen the messages, I was just waking up and I thought he was in character himself again so I went along with it as being in character too until I realized that no, he wasn’t in character. I just wanted to simply Roleplay because of the fact that I was not wanting to do these kinds of things with this person and keep to my loyal relationship. Finally I got him to just RP with me via the Noumi Account while he chose to keep teasing me over on his main account (the Klein account), I should have honestly said that I was actually talking to my boyfriend because he kept hoping my boyfriend was either still busy or that he wasn’t around which should have been immediate red flags. Even after RPing, this still kept going. He states that he understood how I felt and that he just wanted to joke around...but joking around means you respect another person’s relationship and boundaries too, which is something he clearly didn’t comprehend. Eventually I was just tired of it and just said that I am leaving. But not before at least an hour or two later he responded back with “Ok I’ll stop” which the damage was already done because by this point I had already gotten into a fight with my boyfriend due to a piece of evidence where I worded something wrong through the messages between me and the RPer and it was taken completely out of context. I was angry, I was done, I finally decided to let it all out on the RPer telling him I never wanted to speak to him again after he practically ruined my relationship that I had actually been happy with even if me and my boyfriend have our quarrels especially bad ones.

For those wondering what it was that my boyfriend got mad at however, in one screenshot of the messages between me and the RPer, there was a specific message I sent that was taken out of context. The message made it sound like I wanted an open relationship when that was not at all my intent, unfortunately my boyfriend proceeded to keep taking it out of context and even made accusations towards me about wanting an open relationship again. Since then after I started angry back because I was not going to have that anymore, of course he stops replying to me after I told him that if he wanted to dive into the past like that then I was going to as well. Not surprised he got mad at me and stopped replying altogether and has not bothered to respond back to me for likely almost 12 hours at this point. Whether he is busy or just wanting to ignore me, I am not going to even try and bother anymore if he chooses to not wanna answer me, I am letting him answer back to me when he feels absolutely ready to.

Anyways I think that should clear some things up, but this whole situation has actually driven me over the edge that I no longer wish to share my cosplay photos online (especially on Twitter) nor even share any photos I will take at this year’s Kumoricon because I am more concerned for my mental health and safety at the Con. Anyone can easily look up the location of the Con if they see what the name of it is and can likely attend to try and find me. I do not want any harm coming my way or even towards my boyfriend either. I also made it clear that this was another reason as to why at one point I just never wanted to roleplay with just anyone anymore and just only do RPs with people I trusted because of people who will take it personally.

Anyways hope you all have a good day.

[bring-the-storm]

Rated: T

Word Count: 1833

written for @mlcorefour appreciation week

After accidentally panicking and telling basically the whole world that she's dating a member of the hero team, Ladybug must someone to fake-date her, and fast. Of course Carapace suggests the obvious solution: she can just date his girlfriend for a few weeks. As the plan dissolves into chaos, the four learn what it means to be the heart of a team, while also getting into more shenanigans than humanly possible along the way.

---

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Those were the first words to tumble from Chat Noir’s lips, his smile too overeager, too happy to be genuine. 

“I didn't-”

“Girl, you have GOT to be kidding me,” Rena Rouge interrupted, whirling on her the second her feet touched the rooftop. “I thought we were friends!?! Who is it? Pegasus? Viperion?”

“I thought he was dating Ryuko,” Carapace jumped in.

“I’m not-” Ladybug opened her mouth to explain, only to be interrupted. She couldn��t really blame Alya (who only had fifteen Ladynoir pinterest boards and showed them off to anyone who so much as mentioned the superhero duo). 

“Oh, right,” Rena Rouge nodded. “Otherwise she totally would’ve been my next guess.” The fox heroine turned to her desperately. “Please don’t tell me it’s Tigresse. I’ve been working on my Tigerella fanfic for months.”

“Guys, can you calm down for-”

“King Monkey, maybe?” Carapace guessed as Chat plopped down on the edge of the building, failing at not looking miserable. “He doesn’t really seem like he’s her type, but you never know.”

Rena Rogue cut her off again. “I swear, if it’s Vesperia and I didn’t see it coming…” The heroine buried her face in her hands. “Ladybug you better explain. I don’t know what to do with my life anymore!”

Instantly, three sets of eyes locked on her, begging for clarification. Ladybug took a deep breath.

“Guys, I’m not dating anyone.”

“But you said-” Rena protested. 

“I know and I’m sorry!” she cried, trying not to look at Chat as her face heated. Not that it meant anything. Obviously.  “The reporters kept asking all these questions and I just wanted to get out of there and it slipped out.”

It was hard to miss the flash of relief in Chat’s eyes.

“So, let me get this straight,” Carapace said, staring at her incredulously. “Your grand plan to get out of a stressful press conference was to tell everyone in Paris on live television that you’re dating someone on our team?”

It sounded a lot worse when he said it out loud.

“I panicked,” Ladybug admitted with a wince.

Carapace breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, at least you can just admit that and everything will go back to normal.”

Rena Rouge and Chat Noir glanced at each other knowingly and almost simultaneously burst into giggles, as if he had said something hilarious.

“That doesn’t sound like a good sign,” Ladybug swung her yo-yo in an anxious circle.

“Trust me when I say it will not work out like that,” Chat Noir smirked somewhat bitterly in the light of the setting sun.

Rena waved her hand across the sky as if she could already read the headlines written on the clouds. “Shocking Reveal - Ladybug Tells All.”

“I could just tell them the truth,” she tried to protest.

“Heroes Attempt to Cover up the Truth,” Alya finished, stopping the yo-yo’s frantic circle with her flute.

Ladybug groaned, wanting to kick something, preferably Hawkmoth’s stupid face.

“And of course it's right around the anniversary,” Chat Noir reminded her.

“Uh, no it’s not,” Carapace glanced at her partner like he was crazy. 

And he kinda was. She distinctly remembered a picnic with a certain kitty on the rooftops near where she ‘fell from heaven’ as they watched a parade of small children stream by, wearing Stoneheart cosplay only a few months ago.

“Not that anniversary,” Chat Noir deflated a little. “I was talking about Oblivio.”

Her brain screeched to a halt. 

“This just keeps getting better and better,” she groaned. 

Carapace and Rena exchanged a glance. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“After a certain Ladyblogger posted a photo of me and Chat,” she locked her gaze on Rena, relishing the moment a little too much. “Some of the fans seem to have gotten it into their heads that Kitty and I are destined to get together on that day.

“Generally involving a week full of frustrated Ladynoir-shipping akumas,” Chat jumped in. “And one exhausted and pointedly not together bug and cat.”

Ladybug giggled. “Okay, you have to admit, some of them are kinda funny.”

The cat hero snorted. “I wouldn’t call Aphrodite funny.”

“What about the fanfic style one?” she nudged his knee playfully, trying to see if banter would help cheer him up. “You have to admit, throwing mugs at the akuma during the coffee shop AU was the best.”

A hint of a real smirk flickered across her partner’s lips. 

“You called me sweet when you dumped all that sugar in my hair,” she reminded him.

“It was an accident!” he protested with a grin.

“Yeah, right,” Ladybug crossed her arms. “You were supposed to throw it at him. You totally did it on purpose!”

Chat clutched his chest, pretending to wipe tears from his eyes. “I can’t believe you would have such little faith in me, m’lady!!”

Both of them somehow missed the knowing glance their best friends shot each other.

All their weapons buzzed simultaneously, doubtlessly with an update from the news. Chat Noir flicked open his baton and sighed, showing the headline to the rest of them.

“Which of Our Heroes is Ladybug’s Boyfriend?”

Her partner scrolled through the article, grumbling under his breath.

Carapace raised his eyebrows under his hood. “Bold of them to assume you don't have a girlfriend.”

“I wish I could say that it’s bold of them to assume I’m dating anyone at all,” she sighed. “But I kinda started this so I guess I can’t blame them.”

“THAT’S IT!” Rena Rouge leapt to her feet, nearly knocking her boyfriend’s shell over the edge of the roof.

“What?” Ladybug glanced at her comrades to check if they had the slightest idea of what was going on. 

“You told the press that you’re dating one of us on the hero team, right?” the fox heroine asked excitedly.

“Yes?” Ladybug answered hesitantly. “You were there too.”

“Not the point,” her friend waved the comment off. “The only solution that doesn’t end in even more akuma attacks is fairly obvious.”

The other three glanced at each other to see if they had gotten it.

“COME ON GUYS,” Alya sighed. “Ladybug just has to pretend to be dating one of us for a few weeks. Think about it. They go out on a few dates, cue general excitement from Paris about the first official hero couple, tragically break up after a few weeks and everything goes back to normal.”

Ladybug shrugged. “I guess it could work.”

“Why does this sound way too similar to the basic plot for any fake dating fanfic?” Chat Noir hissed in the nearby turtle hero’s ear. 

Or hood by where his ear should be. 

“Probably because that's exactly what it is,” Carapace whispered back. 

Rena smirked.

“And I happy to know of an available cat who would be happy to take-”

Her triumphant Ladynoir wingwoman grin fell from her face as the duo shook their heads in unison.

“Bad idea,” Chat Noir admitted. “I don’t want to think about the worldwide catastrophe that could occur after out ‘breakup.’”

“It would be like last Valentine’s day, but infinitely worse,” Ladybug jumped in, wincing at the memory of yet another love akuma that nearly burned Paris to the ground in its mission to make its OTP kiss.

Not that kissing Chat was such a bad thing. He was kinda good-

She cut off that mental track before it could get anywhere.

“Well, who else are you going to fake-date?” Alya asked. “I mean, I would totally be up for the job, but…”

She gestured at her boyfriend.

Carapace’s silence spoke for itself.

“Uh, babe?” Rena nudged him with her boot.

“Yeah?” he said with a grin.

“You can’t actually be considering this.”

“Why not?” he shrugged. “It’s not like anyone in Paris will know any better.”

“Hawkmoth could target me!” Alya pointed out. “He knows where I live!”

Carapace shrugged. “I mean, he could do that anyway.”

“Still, this could…” her voice trailed off. “Uh- why you aren’t fighting me on this.”

The turtle hero shrugged. “I guess I don’t see a problem with it, dudette. As long as both you and Ladybug are cool with it, then I’m not going to stop you.”

“You’re supposed to be my voice of reason!” Rena Rouge stared at him like he had just admitted to secretly being Chloé’s BFF. “Are you secretly a sentimonster or something?”

Nino raised his hands innocently. “I’m just trying to be a supportive boyfriend and help you reach your dreams.”

“By handing me off to the first bug who wants to date me?”

Carapace fell back dramatically. “Babe, did you see Ladybug today,” he cried in an impression of his girlfriend's voice. “The way she stuck that landing and then she winked at me and I swear I died. No offense babe, but if Ladybug ever asked me out, I would break up with you in an instant.”

Rena turned bright red.

Ladybug giggled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You’re cool with this?” Rena spun on her.

“I mean, if Carapace is,” she smirked. “Sounds like it's the closest to a realistic relationship I’m going to get.”

Rena Rouge buried her head in her hands. “Hold on. I need to go scream on a rooftop.”

“Take all the time you need, babe,” Carapace called after her.

Ladybug smirked, grabbing her hand and kissing it like Chat would sometimes do for her (which totally didn’t leave her in a stuttering mess afterwards. Obviously.). “Yeah, babe. Take all the time you need.”

Rena Rouge turned red and fled.

“Whoops,” Ladybug turned back to Carapace with a sheepish grin on her face. “Too much?”

“Just because you’re fake dating my girlfriend doesn’t mean you can steal her,” Carapace nodded. “Don’t worry. She’ll be back in a few minutes and fully on board with this.”

“I should go and talk to her,” Ladybug said as she bit her lip nervously. She waved to Chat in a TOTALLY NORMAL WAY as she leapt over the rooftops.

***

The ribbons on her pigtails fluttered in the evening wind as Chat Noir watched her vault over the rooftop after her possible future fake-girlfriend.

Carapace whistled. “Dude, you’ve got it bad.”

Adrien’s face heated as he punched the turtle hero's arm. “Shut up.”

“Have you considered telling her that, you know, you still love her?”

Chat Noir laughed bitterly. “And watch her heart rip in half as she tells me yet again that we could never be more than friends? No thanks.” He glanced away. “I’d rather give up my miraculous.”

The sounds of the city that echoed off the rooftops awkwardly filled the void between them.

Finally, Chat Noir asked. “So, wait, are we actually doing this?”

Carapace nodded. “We’re superheroes. It’s our duty to protect Paris. If the only way for us to do that is for my girlfriend to pretend-date yours, then it’s a sacrifice we have to make.”

[askatriangleandastar]

You know it occurs to me that I have never shared this online before, so before I get to any more episodes.

I only started watching Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir because of friends. I never thought it was bad there were just so much else i was into in 2015. And I have exclusively watched it when I've been over there to hang out.

I want to repeat that.

I have exclusively watched it when I've been over there to hang out 

Which means, given we do other things, that both of them might not be there, that we watch other stuff etc, that we are not at the current episodes. To say we’re behind is possibly an understatement.

So what that means is, given I’ve been asked to not look anything up, that ANYTHING I have ever seen from the fandom? Any post, any comic, any cosplay? No context beyond whatever I’ve watched.

What’s actually off of future episodes vs total fanon is indistinguishable. I was here when Undertale was released, when it was first going around. I remember when Frisk’s name was first being discovered and shared, of the very first Underfell post and thinking ‘oh hey cool designs neat concept’ before it took off like a wild fire. I knew the trends and the fanon as it was happening for a good while with that group. I have never had such a place of understanding with Miraculous. My most current know-how is as follows:

Nooroo’s birthday was a few days ago.

 Kagami got akumatized and almost took Lila OUT.

Wacky Wax Museum that was asking for trouble.

Swimmer Bro cosplays Sun Wukong.

Hawkmo’ became a cranberry and I wanted to hit him with Adrien’s piano.

A part of the previous, Personal Assistant Hottopic is working on a good audition outfit for the French Blue-Man Group and is a terrible Waluigi to Chat’s Luigi.

Hawkno’ made Santa become Real outside of his designated habitat of the Holiday Special. He’s gone too far.

Chloe got to be the HoneyNut Cheerios Mascot But French one more time before the copyright police strong armed Ladybug into retiring the costume.

I am fairly certain we’re on season 3 but it’s through Netflix and the delineation is funky. There may be a season and if so, pog.

I have seen so many impressive 3d models of characters in the past and present. Such editing. I don’t know what’s real or not anymore in regards to content, what’s au that’s become so synonymous that it’s like canon or that was fleshed out from what’s in the show. Adrien is in so many costumes, anyone can have an Miraculous. Nico got to be a Ninja Turtle and there’s a snek for ONE EPISODE WITH NO CONTEXT THIS SHOW COULD BE ANYTHING, I’M JUST HERE FOR THE RIDE.

I will still not be looking into anything specifically, I’ve been given names to avoid, but I’m gonna make posts about the other shoe dropping if any of the stuff on here actually connected at all to whatever’s happening out there. Y’all keep doing your thing, you’re amazing, love your passion. 

[duitle]

Swampcon - Remastered

No waaaaaay, they turned pikachu into a real thing???

Welcome to my Swampcon post! This last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend and volunteer at the first Swampcon since 2019. So many cool cosplay, a lot of dangerously tempting merch, and amazing artwork! Not to mention the fascinating panels, performances, and contests. Honestly can’t wait for next year!

I think the biggest interaction I had with a fandom was seeing one of the vendors cosplaying at the convention. In the vendor hall, one of the ladies had a stand selling keychains and marketing herself as a custom cosplay designer. Not only did she have costume components of other characters, she was also cosplaying as Big Mom from One Piece. I had seen her walk into the hall previously and just assumed she was another attendee. She had her sword, the cloud, and the costume to go along with it. Despite what she had on her stand, the thing that stood apart was her presentation of these One Piece stickers. It didn’t fit in with the rest of her items on display, but seeing her cosplay, I’m assuming she really likes the series. Honestly, I can’t blame her, One Piece is my main pull into anime. Seeing her cosplay and be so open about what fandom she prefers was pretty cool and made me kinda wish I had cosplayed as something too. On top of that, I overheard a lot of people in the hall just talking about the series. People were popping in and out of this one conversation despite them being strangers. Seeing how a fandom is able to form such a close community without these people ever knowing each other was a amazing. Similarly, I saw people, and I was people, asking to take pictures with cosplayers that I thought were either the most well-made or of characters I really loved. Its just an overall appreciation for art that people want to reproduce and share through cosplay and discussion.

But apart from the cosplayers and actual people in the convention, the idea of Fandom was also prevalent in the actual products being sold. The most apparent of these were the art vendors. All of the artists there had impressive skills and reproduced depiction of the things they most loved. The people who loved the same series / characters bought their items. It was just like in Eizouken, when the students were buying fan made products. I for one got some stickers and a etching of a cat. Its through these physical artistic means that the elements of a series are reproduced and a fandom begins to appropriate these characters into a culture outside of the original authors canon. It helps expand a community and strengthens it at the same time. Though, when it came to the vendors, I had an interesting converstation with a figurine seller. The man talked about the figure brands and how different ones produce different figures that can range in quality. He was a real connoisseur when it came to this stuff and reminded me of the idea of cultural capital. Outside of these conventions, fandom, and their communities, that type of knowledge isn’t really useful in the sense of producing an income. Its because these fandoms exists that he can use that knowledge to make a living for himself, outside of the mainstream capital.

When it comes to the formation of youth culture, I think the most interesting experience I had was seeing someone wearing a My Little Pony outfit. I didn’t know that series was still something people thought about or liked in the present. Similarly, I saw a girl cosplaying as Amy from the Sonic series. Apart from them, most of the people there were part a series that could be identified throughout the entire con. The idea of a series losing popularity, a fandom dying, and a culture disappearing hadn’t really occurred to me. What happens then? I think modern youth culture is great in that things that were old or past their prime can become mainstream again. Repping the cosplay for these old series is a way to find others who still love it and, like Grave of the Fireflies, commemorate that fandom.

[howldean]

chess at 3am on omegle 🙏🙏

thanks jamie! I actually really like this one.

So it’s inspired by an actual thing that happened to me in like, January I think, yep here’s the post

And that inspired me to write a fic. So one really niche thing that I enjoy, is when you take the characters from a fandom, put them in the real world, but make the fandom exist as well. 

In this instance, Charles (who is a trans guy because i said so that’s why) is 17~ and starting college in New York because he’s a genius blah blah blah. Erik is 19~ and either going to BIT, KIT or the WUT (Berlin/Karlsruhe Institutes of Technology both in Germany, and the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland) because I haven’t decided where the hell I want him to live, but my boy is getting Engineering/Architectural degrees because of course he does.

Fun things about this fic:

It’s a modern AU

they meet and play chess on omegle and then use discord to keep playing again at random times of day/night

long and dramatic existential coversations DO occur often

they know they both like X-Men, but what they don’t know is that one of them writes fanfic and the other probably makes fanart because I will take that trope to the grave

they both cosplay

it’s kind of sort of a textfic but not entirely

Charles spends a summer in London with his stupid family, but it’s really just nice to only have an hour’s distance from Erik

they joke about having their favorite characters names, and Charles gets to joke about choosing his

ERIK LIVES WITH HIS MOM BECAUSE IN THIS HOUSE WE LOVE EDIE LEHNSHERR

Charles transfers to Oxford

a month or two into that, Erik realizes that it’s a 12~ hour trip to see him

or a two hour flight

OBVIOUSLY THEY’RE GOING TO GO TO CONVENTIONS TOGETHER AND BE CUTE AND GAY

I have a lot more thoughts, but I’ll spare you and leave you with this passage in the fic:

[tryhard-telepath] GO.    

                            TO.

                            SLEEP.

[master-of-magnets] Tempting, but… no.

[tryhard-telepath] It’s like 2:30AM over there Erik!

[master-of-magnets] ...it’s 3:30

[tryhard-telepath] Hot Take: That’s Not Better                             My inability to accurately calculate Berlin time has nothing                                 to do with your shitty sleeping habits

[bittybattybunny]

About the sleep thing that's alright. Last month was like that for me too. Thanks for giving a heads up about it. If it's not too personal I think up story plots when it happens to me. What do you think up when it happens?

I’ve had insomnia for years and sometimes it’s just “BITTTCCCHHHH”

like I went to bed at 11 and woke up at 1:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep till almost 4 am

I try to give heads up when I haven’t posted when I said I would.

Oh I always plot. Like last night was basically delving into a character for a ship in an RP with my friend. I had one character planned for a ship but I wasn’t liking the dynamic she was actually producing (she’s too hyper active for the other half of the ship) so I wound up coming up with an older sister of hers that better fits and gets a super cute romance where it’s jokes for everyone else cuz two otakus in love who both are going “OH NO IM LIKING A 3D” type joke

like the guy specifically runs to get help cuz he thought of kissing her and it didn’t make him disgusted it made him excited and he’s never dealt with that.

Other times I think of my ongoing fics and how I’m gonna deal with certain plots

like I had to sit and rethink TLC some to fit in stuff timeline wise. like they have so much going on in a few weeks and I have to coherently put it in the fic cuz I hate things ‘randomly’ occuring.

Or I think of cosplay; like I stayed up till 6 am the other day due to my insomnia but I solved a pattern for a dream cosplay of mine that I need to do a mock up of and then get the fabric but I’m very excited as I already have the wig or I can use my natural hair o7o

[adaru32]

October 2020 Devil May Cry News Updates

Someone mentioned in September’s news updates about how they don’t like visiting Deviantart due to what’s happened to it. So here’s the full list and links I’ll be sharing here that I’ve shared in the Deviantart journal so you don’t have to visit there.

Hey, how's it going? Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween. Here are this month's Devil May Cry related updates: 1. Asmus Toys has announced a devil Dante Qbitz figure up for preorder. 2. More promo images of Lady for the Pinnacle of Combat mobile game. 3. Rumours of a Devil May Cry 6 in the works are already surfacing. 4. Devil May Cry V getting a SSS pack, which contains a soundtrack, tshirt, and poster. b) Speaking of which, they haven't forgotten about releasing an official Vergil coat. c) Famitsu Interview regarding what may or may not happen in Special Edition. d) Other inclusions and exclusions of Special Edition regarding features, the official Vergil DLC release date, etc. 5. CapCom at one point released stamps to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the 1st Devil May Cry game. Someone got their hands on them. 6. 90 Day Fiance, featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series. 7. Interview of Kyo (aka RedgraveKyo) talking to the voice of Trish from DMC4, Danielle Burgio. 8. Some drama regarding how "casuals" and "elitists" react to different opinions of Devil May Cry 4 and V.

My Thoughts On These Updates:

1. That Qbitz figure's adorable. A friend of mine in my one Facebook group mentioned about how Asmus Toys announces all of these Qbitz figures, but no mention about a release date, which is frustrating. 2. As I mentioned in the previous roundup of updates, Yunchang Games really loves showing off more promo work than their actual work. They are nice images, but they could at least give small tidbits of updates about what's happening with this game. Last I heard, it is supposed to be fully released some time this year. Well, we still have another couple months before the year ends. The other thing I heard for why it's getting delayed again is because of the pandemic, and they're actually listening to feedback from their beta testers so they're fixing whatever they can to please the fans. 3. I'm not surprised that rumours about a Devil May Cry 6 is already in the works. Especially when this rumour is coming from DuskGolemn (aka AestheticGamer1). Sure that person has some history with CapCom, but it doesn't mean whatever comes out of this person's statuses are always 100% true. It's plausible since Devil May Cry V did so well with their sales and such, but I'm gonna be cautiously optimistic about this info given. 4. I feel like for CapCom's SSS pack, they should include a Vergil figure from Prime1Studio or Kotobukiya. Sure a soundtrack, tshirt, and poster are nice, but I feel like there should be more. b) Nice that they haven't forgotten about Vergil's official coat being available for purchase. Sucks that these official coats/jackets are so damn expensive. They're way more than a used or new car for crying out-loud. c & d) Sucks that we PS4, PC, and XboxONE players have to wait longer for the Vergil DLC, but better to be late than never. It's also too bad about Xbox Series S players, but I guess some technology does have their limits. I'm very curious as to what Special Edition has in store. I like how CapCom's not giving away too much info to make up for the mistakes they've made of releasing major spoilers in their trailers for the original game and DMC4. 5. I think I've heard about those stamps before. It's cool that CapCom does things like that. Japan gets really awesome gaming merch stuff...Even their advertisements are more entertaining than us westerners'. 6. Funny how a little tidbit of someone cosplaying as Dante pops up in a TV show. Wonder what was happening down there in San Diego with that guy? 7. I haven't checked out the interview, but it's cool how specific fans can interact with these voice actors to get some more details and such. If any of you watched it, and anything sticks out that seems interesting, don't be afraid to share your thoughts. 8. (Warning: Very long rant, brutal honesty, and swearing ahead)...It really sucks what's happening with the Devil May Cry fandom as of late...More people have been leaving the fandom because someone was trying to be "funny". I'm aware that these kinds of things also happen with other fandoms like Undertale, Bayonetta, etc. for these kinds of drama to occur. I'm just sick of people shitting on one another... Yes, there is good that happens in this fandom as well like fundraisers for good causes, fans supporting other fans, even chill folk that don't like to start drama (Like that wholesome status post I shared in the list of updates for example). My problem is how people are either living under a rock, or are being in denial with the problems that surface with this fandom. Let alone being hypocritical where they share an opinion regarding another opinion that they disagree with in a rude manner, then turn around and  share something more positively eye-opening that's not so rude so they cover their tracks with their mistakes they've made before (Not sure if I worded this properly. Hope you get what I mean. One example is how one of the "elitists" mentioned about how "casual fans" are the most toxic people he's come across. Meanwhile he's complaining and whining in a toxic manner about PC players not getting Special Edition, then he turns around and shares that wholesome post about DMC4 players vs fans to make himself look good). I just want everybody to keep the peace with one another instead of being entitled, egotistical, self-centered, spoiled-rotten, hypocritical, idiots. The other issue this fandom is facing is content thieves. They've been on the rise for quite some time now, and people aren't doing a damn thing. I've been fighting with a few Facebook groups regarding this kind of act, but all they want is clout...Which is ridiculous if you ask me...I ask that if any of you see fan artists', screen captors', meme and mod creators', and cosplayers' content being posted where they state on their images or profiles that they don't want their content shared, or need permission to ask about their content being shared, message these artists or report the images. Even say something to these content thieves. As an artist who's had my stuff stolen before, I don't condone content theft... For those of you who know me in my Original Devil May Cry Sanctuary group on Facebook, and The Red Devil's Chronicles page on there as well, I always credit the content creators for their work, but I am also cautious on who wants their stuff posted or not. And as of late, I've pretty much stopped sharing others' fan art to respect these artists' wishes of not wanting their content shared without permission. If any of you want your stuff shared on the Facebook page, don't be afraid to let me know on here or there, I will give credit. I've been debating about whether to completely delete the fan art album on there and start anew. What do you guys think? As I've said, not all things are bad in the Devil May Cry fandom. We do have the good side of it, too. I'm hoping it gets better regarding that good side of it. It really sucks having to see stuff like this happen. But we good fans can change things for the better if we do something. This may come off as nerdy or cheesy, but as Alucard from Castlevania states in Symphony of The Night, "The only way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

[ellynneversweet]

Ok, so I’ve finished Normal People and I have ... thoughts. Mostly about whether it succeeds or fails as a text, and what the relative metrics are by which success should be judged (it’s succeeded in getting me to think about it, for sure). This got long and a bit ranty, and does discuss the mental illness aspects of the book, so I’ve put it below the cut. Spoilers etc.

I haven’t watched the show or read any of Sally Rooney’s other books (book?) or reviews yet, because I wanted to get down what I took away from the book by itself, rather than what other people thought about it. I did see the headline of like, one review that seemed to think it was all about capitalism, which struck me as a significant stretch as a primary theme, but hey. My take was that it was primarily concerned with (many and various) degrees of mental illness and unwellness experienced by various characters, the causes and effects thereof, etc etc, and it’s really because of that that I don’t know whether or not I actually liked the book.

Ultimately I think my ambivalence comes comes down to how the narration is structured, and the way Rooney doesn’t at any point step in explicitly prompt the audience in one direction or another.

So what took me a hot minute to realise was that the book’s written in a very close third person narration, alternating between Connell and Marianne’s perspectives.The thing is, however, that this close third person isn’t immediately obvious, because Rooney subverts the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice. There’s a lot of phrasing given as ‘she felt good’ ‘he felt anxious’ ‘then they had sex’ etc.  The most personal aspects of the plot are constantly elided with this flat, clinical, definitive language that sounds almost like a witness statement in a criminal case. That’s especially the case with Marianne, who disassociates a lot, and slightly less so with Connell, who’s anxious, but the flat description is pretty present throughout. There are moments when the narrative dips into describing sensation, but that seems to occur only with regards to things that are irrelevant and impersonal, like drinking a glass of (insert carbonated beverage here), or feeling the breeze from an air conditioner. The book is all about this very intimate, arguably co-dependant and unhealthy relationship between these two intermittently sexually involved characters, so the aforementioned flatness struck me as an odd choice initially.

However. There’s two things that this does. The first, and IMO more significant, is that is creates an illusion of the narrative voice as omniscient and impartial, rather than biased and unreliable as it actually is. The seeming authority of the definitive statements in the narrative is emphasised by the stock filler phrases that the each of the dual protagonists uses in direct dialogue, and which inevitably mean the opposite of what’s actually said — in the case of Marianne we get ‘okay’ (I disagree but I want this conversation to end) and ‘I don’t know’ (i believe this to be profoundly true but it makes me unhappy), and in the case of Connell we get ‘obviously’ (I’m not sure at all, what do you think?). So the upshot of this is that especially in the earlier parts of the novel the audience is led into thinking the description of a particular plot point is what objectively happened, rather than the biased viewpoint of one of two people who keep talking past each other (I’m thinking particularly of the part in which Connell moves home because he can’t make rent, and each of them was waiting for the other to propose his moving into her flat instead).

So it is really interesting on that level of language structure. I do feel that the section headings (‘two weeks later,’ ‘six months later,’ ‘five minutes later’) were a bit of a red herring — especially towards the climax of the book, when things became violent, I was frankly expecting it to take a schlocky turn towards one or both of the main characters being maimed or killed in a domestic violence and/or drunk driving accident, à la Jodi Piccoult.

It didn’t, which was a relief, but I didn’t subsequently find the ending satisfying, and I think that’s because the way that it ended — a breakup that’s not really a breakup, just a breather — felt like something that had occurred at least three or four times already in the text. It’s always tricky to write a satisfying ending when all the main characters are alive and young and (presumably) going to continue their lives. Why stop the narrative here, rather than there? I think for that sort of ending to work, a story does need to feel like it’s shifting into a different stage of the characters’ lives, one that can be inferred, however dimly, but is distinct enough from the part described in the text to form a natural break. This didn’t feel like a break from what had gone before. It felt like a groove in an emotional cycle that had already been repeated, that had been shown as being repeated, that gave every sign of being repeated again and again, forever and ever amen.

This leads into the part where I talk about what I didn’t like, fyi, and fair warning, mostly what I didn’t like was the characterisation of Marianne. Sorry if she’s your fave.

So Marianne gets the last word of the narrative, in which she thinks about how ‘they’ve [Marianne and Connell] been so good for each other’. And i would argue two things, which is that 1) unreliable narrator or not, this being the last part of the text gives weight to this being read as a true statement 2) this is, uh, pretty clearly not the case. Marianne’s still fundamentally the same, teetering on the edge of self-destruction, and Connell is still anxious (and being made more so by Marianne’s reaction to his small successes).

Now, neither character is perfect. They’re also not bad people -- but they are struggling people who use maladaptive coping strategies and don’t ever really appear to move past those.

At first glance, on a scale of quantifying unhappiness, Marianne gets the raw end of the stick. She’s a character who’s sympathetic and pitiable, because she starts out as the smart, bullied kid who turns out to have an abusive home life and who is brutally dumped by her first boyfriend. So far, so sad. Connell, by contrast, is much less upfront about the things that cause him trouble (although they’re very much there) and has the initial upper hand. Connell also comes off as much more self-aware than Marianne — the part where he’s lying on the floor in a post-shower depression slump reminds me of that piece that goes around tumblr occasionally, about lying on the floor sobbing about the state of the world, and simultaneously noticing that the last time you painted, you didn’t do a good job with the brushwork in the corner you’re looking at, and thinking about how you should re-do it once you finish crying.

But the thing I can’t get my head around with Marianne is how Rooney feels about her, and it boils down to this: what level of awareness and intentionality is Rooney operating at when writing about Marianne’s mental health arc? Does Rooney agree with Marianne’s self-assessment of herself as ‘better’ and ‘normal’ (ie still acting in more or less the same way as she did throughout the text, but no longer a subject of gossip) at the end of the book, or does she not?

As I mentioned, I haven’t seen the adaptation, but I’ve seen a gif or two, and what struck me as I was reading was that the way that Marianne is described as looking (and styled in the show) is reminiscent of the pop-culture caricature of Sylvia Plath — increasingly thin, indie-fashionista, bangs, statement lipstick, weird but precociously brilliant, magnetic, male muse and male victim, mentally ill in a way that is complex but always sexy and sexualised (of course she developed a cute, posh eating disorder that involved eating half an expensive sugary pastry and a sugarless black coffee every day. Of course she did).

Basically, what I want to know is, is Marianne someone Rooney wrote based on that image of Plath, or is Marianne someone cosplaying as that image of Plath, whom Rooney is consciously deconstructing?

See, I think writing Marianne as someone (possibly unintentionally) cosplaying Plath is interesting. The myth of the hot, damaged girl is pretty pervasive (Harley Quinn, the suicide girls, etc etc) and writing Marianne as a character who has legitimate issues that she has trouble facing, who then instead focuses her self-awareness into this trope of ‘acceptably damaged’ has potential. I feel like there’s an opportunity there to examine the line between struggling with a mental illness vs self-consciously performing that struggle in a way that’s socially acceptable, which is a topic that suits the period when the novel’s set.

Unfortunately though, I think Rooney is probably buying into that myth rather than  examining it, because the fact that no-one, in a book that starts in 2011 ever sits Marianne down and goes, ‘yes, I get that people have told you you’re mentally unwell as a tactic to bully you, and that was shitty, but you pretty clearly have a raging case of ptsd which is NOT YOUR FAULT, please accept some help’ — that is frankly hard to believe. Not Connell who seeks out therapy and takes some dubiously successful medication? Not Joanna, who is by all accounts well adjusted and who makes a point of caring in a friendship where she’s doing a lot the heavy lifting? Not Lorraine, parent of the decade? Not some random teacher or professor, looking out for an obviously promising student?  Really, no one?

Marianne is supposedly brilliant and a tireless researcher, but she apparently never becomes aware of the possibility that there might be ways to process her past experiences in a way that would allow her some measure of peace. Never wants it, even in the worst of times. Never ceases to wallow in her own unhappiness. And it’s relevant, I think, that in the period of the novel where Marianne is (kind of) happy, when she’s making a success of things at uni, the focus of the book is on how she’s making Connell jealous by dating an abusive man. The closes she comes to self-awareness is recognising her proclivity to seek out unhealthy relationships and decide to lean into that, in what is consistently the least unhealthy romantic relationship she has. That feels like a cop-out.

Like, I’m not suggesting that every story that features mental illness as a theme needs to show recovery. That’s, unfortunately, not always the case. Some people never get better. Some people can’t bring themselves to believe in the possibility of getting better. It’s not even the case that recovery is a straight line, when it happens. I know that. I’ve seen people I care about it struggle with a whole range of problems, I’ve struggled myself. But this felt like 13 Reasons Why for adults, like depression-porn, and I just...am a bit angry, I think, that I can’t tell if that was the intention, it that wasn’t the intention but was the outcome, or if that’s just my take and I’ve misread the thing entirely.

Obviously people can write whatever they want in fiction, but I do think that when you’re dealing with a topic that has impacted a lot of people, that’s been poorly handed in fiction in the past, you do have a responsibility to treat it sensitive and thoughtfully, and not glamorise something that is ultimately destructive under the guise of ‘this is interesting and cool, and a good way to treat yourself and others, actually.’ And I don’t know if that’s the case here.

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.5

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time as we wrapped up chapter 6’s investigation, Flashback Lights were clearly fake, Himiko was a very great mage and was probably acting kind of like Kaito on purpose, Shuichi was being the kind of hero Kaito always saw him as and unfortunately playing into Monokuma’s hands in the process, Keebo became mind-controlled again and immediately started making more sense than before, and he still lacked any remotely well-written justification for not having used his weapons sooner.

Before we start the trial, this one requires some more specific skill setup than most trials, because of a couple of parts later on which are exceedingly stupid and should not be allowed to be any harder than they absolutely have to. First off, Librarian’s Glare, which immediately silences loud voices in Mass Panic Debates without you having to do anything. Then, every single skill I have which makes Argument Armaments easier (thanks, Gonta! and also there’s a couple from the casino). This also includes one that increases my health, which was not remotely necessary for the rest of this not-blind playthrough where I wouldn’t be getting any answers wrong, but it definitely helps here. I didn’t quite have enough levels to fit everything new on so I had to drop a couple of the more general-purpose skills that I like to use, but it’ll be worth it. I kept the Psyche Taxi ones on, though, partly because I still want to make those go by as fast as possible, but also because I just want to keep using Kaito’s skill, too.

Anyway, Shuichi is out to prove that Kaede didn’t really kill Rantaro and therefore that Monokuma got a verdict wrong, which is the exact thing Kokichi and Kaito were aiming to make happen in the previous trial in the hope of “winning”/ending the killing game. If Kaito hadn’t managed to prove that there’s definitely an audience and Monokuma definitely isn’t allowed to get things wrong, Shuichi wouldn’t even know it’d be worthwhile to do this right now. Kaito’s efforts did not go to waste.

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu… So in the end, the first case has become the focal point yet again… What a twist! What an interesting twist!”

Narrative bookending! This wasn’t a planned part of his script, but Monokuma’s totally fine with Shuichi doing this for him because it’s good storytelling!

…Though, as we’re going to see later in this trial, maybe I’m giving Monokuma too much credit to assume he knows what “good storytelling” looks like.

Shuichi begins by talking about Rantaro. I’m sure there’s a part of him that just wants to immediately prove that Kaede didn’t kill anyone (because he definitely already knows how to prove that), but he’s restraining himself and taking this one step at a time.

Shuichi:  “The Monopad also contained a video Rantaro recorded for himself.”

No, it didn’t. It contained a note. The video in Rantaro’s lab was a completely different thing that Rantaro never saw before he died.

Every single English line in this trial referring to Rantaro’s Monopad note is going to insistently call it a video – and this is a localisation change, because the original Japanese calls it a note like it should do. I have no idea what kind of confusion happened during the localisation process to convince not just one but all of the localisers – because multiple characters make this mistake – that Rantaro’s Monopad note was supposed to be a video and the original somehow got it wrong. This is the most bizarrely consistent mistake in the whole localisation. It’s even actually a relevant plot point that it is just a note, because that means there was no proof Rantaro himself wrote it and it was most likely actually written by the mastermind as a trap. That would be a lot less possible if it really was a video! Come on, localisers. Kaito’s arm in the trial 5 video had to have been a genuine careless goof one way or another, but this mistake is somehow very calculated and deliberate, and that is ridiculous.

Keebo:  “But if Rantaro had a clue like that, why didn’t he come to us with it?”

Shuichi:  “I assume because he didn’t trust us. The killing game had just started, after all. What he said in his video message certainly didn’t help either. He told himself to only share this information with people he could trust.”

Yep. It’s almost like the message was actually specifically designed to make Rantaro afraid of sharing the information so that he’d get killed because it wasn’t a video and therefore could have easily been from the mastermind!

It’s also incredibly silly that Shuichi is calling it a video over a shot of Rantaro’s Survivor Perk Monopad and its very-not-a-video note. Did… did nobody playtest this and realise the characters were talking about something that doesn’t exist?

Maki:  “He didn’t have any recollection of filming this message, right? That means he must have had trouble believing it as well.”

He would have had a lot less trouble believing it if it really was a video, because it’d be hard to deny seeing himself there in the flesh. But this is from Maki’s original correct line about writing the message, in which case of course Rantaro would doubt whether it was really from himself.

(If it really canonically was a video, then this’d be the one time you’d see me being completely sure that Tsumugi was cosplaying and faking a video of one of these students, because its content is so definitely the mastermind trying to get him killed. Tsumugi faking a video rather than just writing him a note would in fact be a better way for her to do this, because Rantaro would be less likely to doubt the message if he could see himself saying it. So the fact that she didn’t make a video for his Monopad suggests that using her cosplay skills to fake videos isn’t a thing that’s likely to occur to Tsumugi as an option in general.)

Shuichi flashes back to a couple of things Rantaro said: one that hinted at the existence of his note, and one of him declaring his intent to end the killing game. These two different things were actually mentioned during two completely different conversations… and Shuichi wasn’t there for the second of them (because this is when we were playing as Kaede). Kaede also never relayed to Shuichi in detail what Rantaro said back then. The writers maaayyy have forgotten this.

Shuichi:  “The only people who knew about the hidden door at the time were Rantaro and I… I had Kaede with me and I thought I could trust her. So I told her about the hidden room… That was the difference between me and Rantaro, I suppose. I had Kaede…”

The difference was friends. Or, well, the difference was the lack of a mysterious note encouraging paranoia, plus an overly dependent personality causing Shuichi to latch onto and rely on Kaede despite a situation that discourages doing that kind of thing. But also friends. If Rantaro had had someone he could trust like that, maybe things could have been different. And if Shuichi hadn’t trusted Kaede like he did and had kept his knowledge to himself, things would have been different too.

Monokuma:  “And Kaede’s the one who killed him!”

…

Shuichi:  “…”

Shuichi is still sitting on the bombshell that no, she didn’t. He knows, but he’s going to clear up everything else first, probably to make it so that when he does get to that point, there’ll be no doubt about it.

(In this particular post, whenever I put an ellipsis to indicate that I’m skipping other characters’ irrelevant line(s) of dialogue, assume it’s probably the Monokubs. I am sparing you and letting you mostly forget they exist.)

Sigh. I use to like reading all the white noise and picking out fun bits to comment on, but now it’s all just the Monokubs spouting distracting nonsense. I suppose they’re doing it as an excuse to give you more white noise for endgame difficulty despite the far fewer characters left, but.

Shuichi:  “What? Ugh, keep quiet, will you? I don’t have time for your nonsense right now.”

This is Shuichi’s reaction when the cubs butt in for a Rebuttal Showdown, and, yes, Shuichi. We all feel you there.

The typography in their Rebuttal Showdown involves the words spinning around a lot and being vaguely difficult to cut just by their speed, probably representing how annoying and distracting this whole thing is.

Shuichi:  “The outline of his fingers matches how he was holding it in the picture.”

I mean, not really when you look at them like that. But also one can imagine that his fingers might have splayed out in sudden shock the moment he was hit, so yeah, close enough I guess. Danganronpa has never been super careful about getting the details of its evidence exactly right.

Here’s the final proper Psyche Taxi in the game (thank god), which could also contend for the title of the stupidest one simply based on the fact that absolutely none of the questions are asking you to figure out anything new. The final question is “Who can enter the hidden room?” – and the answer is just “the mastermind”, not the actual identity of the mastermind. Because I am definitely only just figuring out now that the hidden room belonged to the mastermind, and this definitely required me to answer four obvious questions to figure out this very secret conundrum.

(At least Kaito helped me crash my way through some of the cars without slowing down to make this go by faster. Thanks, Kaito. Yes, I am still shamelessly using every possible opportunity to mention him, of course I am.)

Tsumugi:  “Oh, that’s true… In order to get to the hidden room, you need to move the bookcase, right? But Shuichi and Kaede set up those hidden cameras, so… If the mastermind was using that door, they would’ve been caught on camera.”

Tsumugi, you know full well about the intervals, we discussed them at length in trial 1. The fact that you are making such a point of trying to argue something that’s already obviously wrong is making you look quite suspicious.

(If she was arguing about how the dust on the card reader means they couldn’t have entered through the library door, then that’s one thing, since she supposedly doesn’t know about the hidden passageway. But that’s not what she’s doing.)

Shuichi:  “The mastermind was probably terrified by the idea of us picking up Rantaro’s perk.”

Monokuma:  “No, that’s wrong!”

Shuichi:  (…What?)

Monokuma:  “I wasn’t necessarily afraid… The Survivor Perk was for Rantaro’s eyes only. Sure, he could’ve shared the info with you… But that’s not the same as getting the info directly from the Monopad. Cuz then, you can’t say it was for Rantaro’s eyes only, right? So when he died, I took it back. That’s all.”

Monokuma’s excuse here does actually make a reasonable amount of sense. One general principle of this game is that anyone can make basically any claim they like, but they aren’t necessarily going to be able to prove that what they’re saying is true, and it’s up to others to decide whether or not to believe them. Monokuma is not (supposed to be, trial 5 aside) allowed to give any information that would directly prove any student’s claim to be true or false, hence the Monokuma Files sometimes omitting details. Rantaro’s Survivor Perk would also sort of fall under that idea. Rantaro was allowed to tell people about it, but that claim of his wasn’t allowed to be conclusively proven to be true.

If you’ve ever played the game Mafia/Werewolf/whatever else you might call it, it’s a lot like how you’re not allowed to show everyone else your role card/role PM/whatever it was you got from the gamemaster to tell you what your role is. That would prove certain claims to be true or false, and that’s not in the spirit of the game. Monokuma is trying to run a similar kind of game here. He did admittedly make it much harder for himself to enforce that rule by giving Rantaro extra info that was meant to be for his eyes only in a format that someone else might be able to get their hands on. Rantaro’s video in his lab was also supposed to be like this – he mentioned in it that Monokuma might try to shoo people away from him to stop him from telling anyone else about it. That sure would have been a very awkward way for Monokuma to try and enforce that.

Of course, note how Monokuma only says he wasn’t necessarily afraid before explaining why this was all totally within the rules of the game. The rules might be part of it, but he totally was also afraid of others seeing the Survivor Perk just because it would give them information he didn’t want them to know regardless of the rules. The hint that Rantaro has been in a previous killing game, and the possibility that him checking out the hidden door might have been a trap to get him killed, definitely weren’t things that Monokuma wanted to be known.

Shuichi:  “The Monopad clearly stated that there was a mastermind in the academy. If we knew then that a mastermind was behind everything, we would have worked together.”

Also that. Shuichi knows what’s up.

(Oh, hey, remember who was always still convinced there was a mastermind even after Kaede’s trial but just decided to never fucking tell anyone that he thought that? Yeah, he sure would have helped us out a lot more if he ever actually had, huh.)

Himiko:  “If they wanted to retrieve the Monopad, they shoulda used Monokuma to do it!”

Monokuma:  “Nope, that’s impossible. The rules state I can’t participate in a murder, which includes tampering with the crime scene.”

…Not really? The rules state, “Monokuma will never directly commit a murder”. That’s all. There’s nothing specific about Monokuma being unable to participate in more indirect ways or tamper with the crime scene, so if he wanted to do that, he totally could while claiming it wasn’t technically against the rules.

This appears to be a localisation thing, because looking at the Japanese wording of that rule, a more direct translation would be something like, “Monokuma will not participate in a murder”, which matches with this line here. You’d still think that the rules should better clarify exactly what “participation” entails in order for them to explicitly ban Monokuma from tampering with the crime scene after the fact, though.

Regardless, if one of the reasons he wanted to hide the Monopad was for the abiding-by-the-rules reason of keeping it for Rantaro’s eyes only, that definitely seems like a situation in which Monokuma would be allowed to step in even when he usually couldn’t.

…Not that he’d have wanted to anyway, because Tsumugi had to be there just in case she needed to do the murder, which Monokuma definitely wasn’t allowed to do.

(Also, in case 4 of Danganronpa 1, Monokuma very much did tamper with the crime scene while arguing that it totally didn’t count as being against the rules. Different killing games with slightly different rule technicalities, sure, but I could definitely buy him weaseling his way out of this one too if he’d wanted to.)

Shuichi tries to insist that Monokuma’s strictness about the rules means they’re being watched, and Monokuma conspicuously changes the subject.

Shuichi:  (I still don’t have the whole picture… but it seems that we’re all being watched. In that case… this plan should go well.)

You already knew you were most likely being watched! Kaito sacrificed everything to prove it! It’s honestly quite disappointing to me that the narrative doesn’t connect trials 5 and 6 together as well as it really should. It seems on the surface that the only reason this trial is happening is because Keebo went rogue after Kaito’s execution completely coincidentally happened to break his antenna. This is really a lot more connected to what happened in trial 5 than just that, because it’s also about Shuichi now knowing there’s an audience thanks to that trial. But it’s not emphasised as much as it should be, not with lines like this that gloss over the reason Shuichi began to assume they’re being watched.

Monokuma:  “In the end, Kaede killed him… There’s no shaking off that truth.”

…

Shuichi:  “No, that’s not the truth. I’m certain of that. It’s a lie that you made up.”

Finally, Shuichi’s getting down to business! Looks like he’s got everything else that he wanted to out of the way now. Proving that the mastermind was in the hidden room at the time of Rantaro’s death is helpful for proving who really did kill Rantaro if it wasn’t Kaede, after all.

Shuichi:  “The most important fact we discovered during the investigation is this… The shot put ball that Rantaro was killed with, was different than the one Kaede had!”

Aww, look at how he sees the fact that Kaede shouldn’t have been executed as the most important thing he found out, despite having found several other things that are also objectively preeeetty important (Flashback Lights being fake, for one).

Shuichi:  “It was wrapped in her spare vest. Her *pink* vest.”

Despite how the writing makes Shuichi refer to it, her vest was totally purple and not pink, by the way. I’m bringing this up for a more meaningful reason than just being nitpicky about my mental categorisation of colours, because Kaede’s vest was a lighter shade but almost exactly the same purple hue as Kaito’s jacket. Have I mentioned those two were so very similar and the writers knew exactly what they were doing with them, even to the point of making them visually reminiscent of each other in their colour palettes.

I am somewhat disappointed that the order in which Monokuma blows up his cubs here doesn’t match the original order they died in, in that Monodam is killed earlier than last time. He was the most tolerable one! I didn’t talk about it at all because it was still completely extraneous and unnecessary, but he actually had something vaguely resembling an interesting character arc! They could have at least kept him around for longer than his much more annoying yellow brother this time too.

Tsumugi:  “The mastermind killed Rantaro… but why?”

Shuichi:  “I believe the reason had something to do with the time limit motive.”

That’s definitely part of it – they didn’t actually want to kill everyone when the time limit ran out, so they needed a murder to happen, which they could conveniently pin on Kaede – but that’s not all of it. It’s also just because Kaede being so determined to save everyone that she was willing to kill the mastermind and yet tragically killed an innocent instead was such a good story that they didn’t want it to go to waste by pure bad luck of the shot put ball missing. Even if there hadn’t been the issue of awkwardly being obligated to kill everyone upon the time limit if Kaede’s plan failed, they’d still have done this just for the story.

Himiko:  “S-So… Kaede was executed on false charges!?”

Shuichi:  “Yes… yes, she was. She didn’t actually kill anyone. But she was executed nonetheless.”

See, the thing is… for all meaningful intents and purposes, Kaede still was a murderer. She very much meant to kill someone, and so she deliberately took actions that she believed would lead to someone’s death, that wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t taken them. And, indeed, it wouldn’t have done – because if Kaede hadn’t tried to kill someone, Tsumugi wouldn’t have stepped in and finished the job for her and Rantaro wouldn’t have died. Kaede is still just as responsible for Rantaro’s death as Tsumugi is. I’m certain that if she were still alive and aware of this truth, she’d be furious at Tsumugi for killing Rantaro when he’d had the chance to live after all, but she’d also still be blaming herself for Rantaro’s death, and she’d be right to.

Shuichi:  “And you want to tell us that this game is fair? That there are rules? That’s all bullshit! This game makes no sense at all!”

Maki:  “If Monokuma twisted the truth for this case… then he could’ve twisted it for the other cases, making this killing game unfair.”

Himiko:  “Th-Then it’s not even a killing game anymore. It’s just… killing.”

…But the rules of this game don’t give a fuck about where the moral responsibility for a murder lies. They only care about who very literally and directly carried out the act. That’s how Kokichi got away with killing Miu, even though, during the trial in which Gonta had no memory of killing her, Kokichi was more meaningfully responsible for her death than the Gonta standing in the room was.

And the death penalty is fucked up as all hell. Nobody deserves to die for killing someone, not even Kiyo – he deserved to be locked up for the rest of his life where he couldn’t hurt anyone else, but even he did not deserve to be horribly killed. The only way in which it can be seen to be even remotely, vaguely justified that any of these people got executed is because they were in a game where they knew the rules meant that if they directly killed someone and then got found out, they’d die for it, because that’s just how the game works. (This is of course still not actually justified at all, but it’s what Monokuma will insist on.) So even though Kaede did meaningfully cause a person’s death, the fact that she did not directly kill Rantaro in accordance with the game’s rules means that her death was not fair and not justifiable on any level at all. Like Himiko says, that’s not even a game, that’s just killing.

(This is the one other time in this game that Shuichi uses strong language, which feels very appropriate given the context of this moment.)

Shuichi:  “…I won’t forgive them. I’ll never forgive them for breaking the rules and killing Kaede. So cruel… I’ll never forgive them! And I *will* avenge Kaede! I swear on her kindness and her love… and her grave that I will avenge her!”

And note how Shuichi doesn’t linger for very long on the fact that Kaede technically didn’t kill Rantaro and instead focuses his passion and anger on the fact that her death was wrong. That’s the most important part, after all.

I also like to think when he talks about “her love” that he’s not really talking about specifically romantic love, even though he seemingly did happen to have romantic feelings for her. After all, Kaede was such a warm and kind person that she loved everyone here, more than she loved herself. Platonic love is equally important, and Kaede had so much of it to give.

So, I’ve seen people complain that Shuichi acts like Kaede was perfect and innocent and without fault at this point in the trial… but that’s not really what he’s actually doing here. Admittedly, he doesn’t properly acknowledge to himself that Kaede was still guilty, since that’s something I imagine he’d want to avoid thinking about too much, so he is still being a little influenced by his own personal bias of how much she meant to him. But he is also not trying to incorrectly argue, to himself or out loud, that she was ever innocent, and I think that’s important to keep in mind. All he ever says is “she didn’t actually kill anyone”, which is true on a technical level relating to her being executed for it, and that’s the context in which he said that.

(While we’re here talking about moral responsibility for deaths, let’s also talk about Maki in case 5. She very much intended to and tried to kill Kokichi, yes. She landed a lethal blow on him, which one might think would make the fact that Kaito finished the job for her be a moot point, even more so than it was with Tsumugi finishing off Rantaro in Kaede’s case. But the thing is, in Maki’s case, Kokichi was already going to die anyway. He’d already decided on his plan to have Kaito kill him that night, and Kaito said himself that he would definitely have agreed to the plan even if Maki hadn’t been a factor. The “wouldn’t have led to his death if she hadn’t taken those actions” part doesn’t fit here, because Kaito would have killed Kokichi regardless. So while Maki still tried to kill Kokichi, and that’s something she needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for, the fact that she tried to do that ultimately ended up irrelevant to his death. Kokichi did not die because Maki tried to kill him. If Kaede’s shot put ball had missed and then somebody else had come along and killed Rantaro for unrelated reasons that they’d still have had even if Kaede’s plan didn’t exist, Kaede would have been guilty of nothing but attempted murder too.)

Tsumugi:  “It’s Kaede’s younger twin sister!”

Oh boy, here we go with this.

Tsumugi:  “It seemed sorta weird to me. Junko Enoshima had a twin, too, right?”

Keebo:  “Are you saying those same circumstances apply here, as well?”

Tsumugi:  “This killing game was influenced a lot by the past one, right? So maybe the mastermind’s identity was, too.”

This argument does not make any sense at all. She’s saying the mastermind wanted to copy everything about Junko’s killing game… so she also went and… copied having a twin??? Funnily enough, that is not how twins work. Either you were born with one, or you’ll never have one. Unless Tsumugi’s saying that twins are somehow genetically predisposed to being despair-loving evil masterminds, there is no level on which she can be arguing that this would be anything more than a coincidence and therefore can even remotely be used as evidence to point to the mastermind’s identity.

The only value that the argument of “Junko was a twin, so maybe this game’s mastermind is also a twin because it’s following the same pattern” has is as a narrative argument. The writers could give the mastermind a twin after the fact to make it follow the pattern. And characters within this story should not be able to make narrative arguments. This is very, very telling.

Shuichi:  (The mastermind who snuck into the academy and is making us play this sick game… Is Kaede’s twin sister?) “…”

Shuichi’s somewhat pressured thoughtful face during his silent textbox there reads to me less like he’s worrying about Kaede being connected to this and more that he’s just thinking “but that doesn’t make any goddamn sense”.

If you happen to attempt to agree with Tsumugi’s “theory” during the following debate…

Tsumugi:  “Right? The mastermind must be Kaede's twin sister! I'm sure of this now that you agree, Shuichi!”

Shuichi:  (...What is this? Why do I feel so uncomfortable?)

…It really does read like Shuichi knows full well how bullshit this is and is wondering why he even seemed to think it might make sense for a moment. His sense of discomfort could even be because this is making him suspect that Tsumugi is deliberately trying to mislead him, and he’s still not ready to accept that she’s the mastermind.

Shuichi:  “However, the implications… aren’t good.”

Himiko:  “Wh-What an ominous way to say it… But there’s nothing to worry about! We got this far because we’re friends!”

Himiko, you are really tempting fate here. Does it not occur to you that the not-good implications Shuichi’s talking about could be that you’re actually not all friends?

During this part where you’re meant to say the mastermind is one of the participants, if you try and say it’s Kaede’s twin, Shuichi muses:

Shuichi:  (No... there's no real proof she has a twin sister in the first place.)

…which is a very valid point and supports my theory that she really actually didn’t, if the narrative is acknowledging that as an option.

Himiko:  “Th-That’s crazy! There’s no way one of us is the mastermind! Because… we’re all friends! We swore to fight together!”

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu… Then it just means that all your friendship talk was a lie, right?”

Geez, Monokuma, just because Kokichi’s dead doesn’t mean you need to fill in for him. They really are so alike. The fact that one person’s friendship talk was a lie doesn’t mean that it all was!

But man, can you imagine the field day Kokichi would be having with this if he were still here? He never used any of his “maybe you shouldn’t trust each other” spiel to try and get people to actually find the mastermind among their friends even though he knew all along that there was one – but that definitely wouldn’t stop him from now being all self-righteously “I told you so and if you’d all listened to me you’d have found the mastermind sooner!!!”

Himiko:  “Whatever! I don’t believe you! There’s no way the mastermind’s here!”

Himiko being so adamant about this is another thing that’s become very Kaito of her! Kaito definitely wouldn’t be enjoying this either if he were still with us. But, since there’s no memory loss involved, Kaito would be able to see the truth in Tsumugi’s behaviour and accept it once she starts acting more and more suspicious. If you get betrayed, it’s your fault for misjudging them, that’s all.

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu… I wonder where this discussion will lead. Will it lead to a mastermind in this very room? Or… not? Either way, we’re gonna make sure this trial stays exciting!”

Are you about to head to a commercial break or something, Monokuma? That can’t be it, since the debate starts immediately after this, but it sure sounds like it. Also way to not be even remotely subtle about this thing having an audience, yet again.

Himiko:  “I was in the Game Room in the basement. With Kaito and Gonta and Maki… Also, Tenko and Angie were there too.”

It’s odd that Himiko adds Tenko and Angie like they’re afterthoughts, when surely she’d think of them first.

Tsumugi:  “Though I did leave briefly to use the bathroom… I couldn’t have killed Rantaro!”

I appreciate how this time around Tsumugi is at least not trying to argue that the reason she couldn’t have killed Rantaro is because she couldn’t have been in disguise and that’s the only way she could possibly ever kill someone. The less said about that stupid argument, the better.

Shuichi:  (… There’s clearly something wrong here… If someone killed Rantaro… It could only be them!)

Seems like this here is the moment Shuichi finally realises exactly which of his friends was never really his friend and was putting them all through hell. To be fair to him, Kaede’s case was a couple of weeks ago and a lot has happened since then, so he may well have forgotten that Tsumugi went to the bathroom until now. First-time-me remembered this detail, but that might partly be because I binged the whole game in a very short space of time, meaning case 1 was only like two days ago for me.

Himiko:  “… Tsumugi… is this true?”

Aww, Himiko’s making one of her sad faces that we haven’t really seen much of since after Angie and Tenko died. It seems she really did consider Tsumugi a friend, and she said she didn’t want to lose any more friends!

Monotaro:  “Please! Please let us win! We don’t wanna die!”

…I actually do feel kind of sorry for the Monokubs here in their second Rebuttal Showdown. They may have been created to have incredibly irritating flat personalities… but even so, they’re still alive, and right now they’re terrified of being killed on a whim by their tyrannical father and have absolutely no control over anything.

Shuichi:  “Monokuma and the mastermind are the bad guys here. You don’t want to die? Do you know how many of my friends were sacrificed!?”

Still, Shuichi has every right to not have the energy to care about these so-called-comic-relief idiots when they’re in league with the ones who’ve been killing so many of his friends. I love the emotion he gets across here. He is so done with losing his friends.

Shuichi:  (The evidence that points to Tsumugi being the mastermind… I didn’t notice it at the time, but now I know for sure!)

It’s pretty impressive that Shuichi can remember the exact wording of that “birth” conversation to pick up on the suspicious part, given that at the time he had no reason to suspect Tsumugi in particular.

Tsumugi:  “Ah! But Keebo wasn’t there, was he!?”

Keebo:  “R-Right… Because I was fighting the Exisals.”

Tsumugi:  “Did you hear that!? Keebo didn’t try giving Motherkuma a command! So the real mastermind is—”

Tsumugi, you are just making yourself look waaaaay more guilty with your desperation to take the suspicion off yourself.

Shuichi:  “I… don’t want to believe it either. That one of our friends, the survivors… could do this. That’s why I’m begging, Tsumugi. I’m begging you to refute me. I might be wrong, I… I was wrong before, about Kaede… That’s why I need everyone’s help! I don’t care if my detective work is wrong, I want to hear your argument!”

Shuichi still hates accusing his friends of murder and still has the least faith in his detective skills out of anyone here. This is a much more notable lack of confidence in himself than he’s shown in a long time, though, which might have to do with Kaito not being there any more. While he didn’t seem to need Kaito’s direct support that much towards the end, just knowing that Kaito was there and unflinchingly believed in him made such a huge difference. Shuichi’s trying to turn to everyone else for help now like Kaito told him to, but that’s still not quite as easy as having that one person he’s completely dependent on. (Even though it’s much healthier.)

This is also just a lot harder for Shuichi to accept because there is no good excuse for this. He told himself Gonta’s consciousness had been affected, and he never doubted that Kaito had to have some selfless reason for his actions. But if Tsumugi is the mastermind, then that just means that she was never their friend and was always the one making them suffer, plain and simple, and that’s the worst thing to have to accept.

Maki:  “…What’s the matter? You can’t argue back after hearing that?”

Maki, being Maki, seems to be the first one to really accept this truth. She’s got better at having friends, but she’s still well aware that some people can just be really shitty, despite how they might appear on the surface.

(Monosuke gets blown up around about here while trying to protest that they should all just be friends. That’d have been the perfect thing to use Monodam for instead!)

Monokuma:  “See? It’s getting exciting. Shuichi is trying to reveal the mastermind… Trying to overcome despair…”

It’s really got nothing to do with overcoming despair. The fact that one of their friends was putting them through this is cause for despair, if anything. I think the phrase you’re looking for is “defeating evil”, Monokuma?

Shuichi:  (We have the mastermind cornered, why is Monokuma so calm? He should be feeling cornered as well… Forget it. We’re on the offensive here.)

Geez, Shuichi, stop doing this! The number of times he notes that something seems suspicious, and then goes “no, it’s not important now, gotta focus on the case” when it could in fact be very relevant to the case is incredible. That Ultimate Detective tunnel vision sure is powerful.

Himiko:  “Tsumugi… I don’t wanna suspect you… I wanna believe in you. I want the mastermind to be somewhere else like in the previous killing games… So… if you’re really not the mastermind then don’t give up! I’ll cheer you on!”

Aww, Himiko. I like how she’s accepted the possibility that Tsumugi is the mastermind, but she’s still trying to support the hypothetical Tsumugi who is still their friend in case that really is the Tsumugi who exists.

Monokuma:  “Hey, Shuichi. Why don’t we look over the case again?”

Shuichi:  “What?”

Monokuma:  “C’mon, that’s like, your thing. Present the truth and end this.”

It’s kind of remarkable when you think about it that this is Shuichi’s thing, that he just took to doing these Closing Arguments without knowing that that’s what the protagonist in a Danganronpa is supposed to do. Maybe that was also influenced by the Flashback Light that created him.

Monokuma:  “Cuz there are people who don’t know what the heck is going on until they get to this part!”

Does the audience even get the comic books? Team Danganronpa would have to prepare those pretty quickly if so. That’d also render all of my comments about things in the comics being Shuichi’s imagination incorrect, so I hope not. Actually, that notion makes it pretty certain that it really is only Shuichi’s imagination – if Team Danganronpa was responsible for the out-of-character evil grins for Kirumi and Gonta, they’d have also had no qualms about doing that for Kaede and Kaito too, but that’s not what we got.

If the audience really probably isn’t seeing the comics, then Shuichi just giving a verbal monologue of what happened can’t really be the best way for them to understand the case.

Please enjoy these newly-non-ambiguous shots of Kaede nervously getting ready to do a murder, and also Kaede horrified upon having done a murder.

This panel does suggest that Tsumugi specifically hit Rantaro with the shot in her hand rather than throwing it from a distance. That should really have got his blood all over her clothes… but then again, if she’d prepared a change of clothes in the hidden room, she could definitely have changed into them in approximately one second thanks to her cosplay powers. Then she could just leave the bloody clothes in the hidden room and quietly dispose of them way after the trial. (You’d think she’d have disposed of Kaede’s shot put ball at the same time as she did that, but. 

The Ambiguous Culprit Figure this time has Tsumugi’s glasses… and it really shouldn’t. The only reason it ever had visible items of clothing before was when they were relevant to the case and therefore needed to be shown. Tsumugi’s glasses do not matter.

At least all evil grins on this Ambiguous Culprit Figure are entirely deserved and accurate.

Shuichi:  “If I’m wrong… please, refute me. Please tell us you aren’t the mastermind, Tsumugi Shirogane, the Ultimate Cosplayer!”

I like this twist on the usual ending of a Closing Argument. He really wants to be wrong!

Monokuma:  “Y-Yes! What a scorching hot twist!”

The apparently plain ordinary girl with barely any notable personality traits, no character arc, and no real narrative reason to still be here if she isn’t the mastermind is the mastermind? Yeah, no, this isn’t actually that big of a deal, Monokuma, you’re overselling yourself.

Also, that one time Tsumugi made a reference to Danganronpa 2 way before the Hope’s Peak Flashback Light probably tipped the in-universe audience off ages ago, you know.

The two remaining kubs try to beg their dad not to blow them up in his excitement, but…

Monokuma:  “Basically, your story doesn’t matter! I gotta watch this exciting development!”

Geez, Monokuma, if you’re actually willing to acknowledge that their story doesn’t matter then why did it ever exist in the first place?

Himiko:  “Y-You can do it! You can do it, Tsumugi!”

Tsumugi:  “E-Even if you cheer me on… It’s not like that! I didn’t do it! It’s plain to see!”

Monokuma:  “Fight back, Tsumugi! C’mon! You can do it, you can do it!”

Pfft, Monokuma is parroting Himiko’s words to make her sound more insincere, which is again very Kokichi of him.

(Himiko’s stuttering a little. She’s starting to realise more and more that the Tsumugi she’s trying to cheer on really doesn’t exist, isn’t she.)

Tsumugi:  “In the Hope’s Peak killing game and in the Jabberwock Island killing game… Junko Enoshima didn’t participate. She controlled the game from outside. Even if it’s boring or repetitive, she’s always the mastermind, isn’t she!?”

There she goes making another narrative argument again, even if this one is a “the narrative is usually bad in this way so why can’t this be the same” argument. (Also known as the type of narrative argument that made me a lot less sure Kaito was alive in case 5.)

She’s also hinting at the existence of other Danganronpas that they’re not supposed to know about just from the Flashback Light. Twice isn’t precisely “repetitive” and enough to argue that it’ll definitely keep happening forever, is it?

Tsumugi:  “Junko Enoshima is…”

Monokuma:  “Junko Enoshima is what!? …Okay, time for a commercial break!”

…Do they seriously do these? Maybe the intermissions work for that a little bit, but otherwise, how do they get the characters doing the trial to stop talking about anything important for long enough to have one? Is that what the Monokubs’ pointless conversations have always been there for?

(Since we’re done with the retrial and are about to completely shift topics, this does however happen to be an appropriate moment for me to put a break between posts, so there’s that.)

---

[Next post]

[seven-oomen]

First, I hope you’re enjoying your game.  One of my friends posted about how she’d just gotten her copy of it, and her husband’s response was basically “so, I’ll just bring you food occasionally and see you in a few days?"  Also, I hope you’re feeling better.  And man you are KILLING ME with these previews.  Oh god, Peter, what are you planning now?  How bad is this gonna hurt and for how long?  (Don’t answer that, I’m afraid to know. XD )

I think all those Hogwarts Houses are excellent choices.  I always think it’s fun to see how people sort various characters, because I rarely have any that I feel are firmly one House (maybe it’s because I’m a proud HuffleClaw, myself, doomed to waffle between Houses every time I take a quiz or read an analysis on the subject.)  Side not - can you imagine the furor that would have occurred about a Slytherin and a Gryffindor hooking up in Fourth Year (I think?), and then pulling an innocent little Hufflepuff transfer under their spell?  Would any of them have played Quidditch?  (Peter I feel definitely played, though I can’t decide what position.  Undecided on the other two.)

Poor Peter, having to behave himself.  Although debatably as long as he kept the fangs put away it wouldn’t necessarily be a risk, though I can see him being worried anyway.  That’s why he needs to find someone to spin his fur into yarn he can then make them scarves/gloves/sweaters/etc with.  And why he’s so into the clothes sharing.  Anything to get his scent on them as thoroughly as possible.

And I am so here for PTA Dad Peter.  Helping out at school functions so he can keep an eye on the younger kids.  Building new, supportive relationships with his older kids, helping them with college applications and essays, making up lists of stuff they’ll need for dorm rooms, finding apartments if any are going to the same or nearby schools and can share, making sure they all have pictures and mementos to help combat homesickness.  And now I’m thinking about the memory quilt again.  Goddammit I don’t want to make myself cry.  Again.  "Imagine Peter hearing their heartbeats for the first time."  Oh nevermind, I see you’ll do it for me.  Ugh, my feels.  Peter shifting to his wolf form and curling protectively around them all the time, head pressed up to their abdomen so that he can listen and scent at maximum effectiveness.  Them just gently stroking through his fur until one or both fall asleep.  (Also, how quickly do the other wolves in the family pick up on the changes in scent?  How do they react?  How do the older kids react to the idea of more siblings in general?)

And you know that whichever one wasn’t the one pregnant at the time would be super protective at the time, then turn around and insist they were fine and that the others were worrying unnecessarily when they were the one pregnant.  (Also, glad your brother was okay!)  I also like that it apparently took them nearly 20 years to learn about planning for this sort of thing.  I know you’ve mentioned Peter and Chris being the ones that do the stupid thing next chapter (or something to that effect), but really I feel the biggest moment of "what the hell, guys?” is Noah getting knocked up just two months after Chris.  It’s like, you guys had a huge, in your face, live example of why protection is important, and yet…  I’m also just going to assume that they have at least a king size bed to accommodate that many people, even if many of them are tiny people, and none of them mind piling.  That’s still a lot of bodies cramming into one bed.  (That much room would also come in very handy for…other reasons, which is why I feel certain Peter would insist upon it.) 

Also, omg, I was not expecting to be attacked by those pictures like that.  Tag your porn, dude XD .  But really, can you imagine the poor, unsuspecting college friends their kids bring home for visits getting a triple barrel of that with no warning?  Like they’ve just seen the goofy, weird pics that they have on their phone/on their walls.  They were not prepared for the sheer DILF power of that household live and in person.  But then, is anyone, really?

Loving all the names.  I actually know a guy named John who has a son named Jackson, so that one was particularly amusing to me.  I also noticed that none of the kids have been named after anyone in Noah’s family, at least so far.  And don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting to have those spoiled yet, though I’m happy to know you liked some of my suggestions :D .  Now if I could just remember which all ones I went with…  Didn’t really think to put it in anywhere, but for some reason I’ve always liked Alexander as a middle name for Peter, though I remain undecided on the other two.

And yes, loving the idea of more family cosplay.  Oh god, they would never get ANYWHERE at a con because they’d be getting stopped every 3 feet for pictures.  For Star Trek, I feel like they’d do groupings from assorted series and versions.  Chris, Peter, and Noah are totally OS Spock, Kirk, and Bones (Peter with strategically torn shirt, of course).  I think Melissa would be their Uhura, and Natalie would be Yeoman Rand (she wants to see if she can fake the hairstyle), because I dare anyone to tell them they can’t pull off dresses that short.  Since he has sword training from his hunter background, Melissa makes Julio be their Sulu.  Boyd, Derek, and Jordan would be Picard, Riker, and Data (Derek would totally figure out how to do that weird way Riker sits down, too.)  After much debate, I feel Stiles would be Kirk from the recent films (NuTrek, or whatever they call it), Jackson would be Spock, and Malia would be Bones.  I think Lydia would make an excellent Uhura for them, as well.  Scott would be Scotty because he can remember to answer to it, and it gives him an excuse to do a TERRIBLE fake accent.  I’m leaning towards Isaac for their Chekov, but beyond that can’t think what to do with everybody else, I’m not familiar enough with the different tv shows.

Marvel we’ve talked about some.  DC I have a few random ideas.  I always thought it would be funny to see Peter, Derek, Jackson, and Liam do the assorted Robins.  While I feel Peter is DEFINITELY more of a Jason personality wise, I think he’d be far more comfortable in Dick’s costume that Derek would be, and if Derek was Jason the heights would line up better.  Jackson would be Tim, and Liam would be Damian (because who else would play DC’s tiny and angry than TW’s tiny and angry?)  Also, don’t overlook the fun and variety of villains DC offers.  The last group costume I did was a cross between Bill & Ted and assorted Bat-villains.  We called it Bruce & Dick’s Excellent Adventure, and even photoshopped a sign to carry to help people get it.  Among our line-up was Cleo-Catra, Ivybeth the First, The Poison Queen, Harley Antoinette, Joker Napoleon, Freud Nygma, and Bane-thoven.  (I really need to do something with the various pieces of my costume someday.)  I know there are several girls in the Bat-fam now, too, depending on who all wants to be a part of it, or if they want to skew more Justice League/Teen Titans/Young Justice.

Oh man, Disney.  So many options.  I feel like Lydia and Allison as Ariel and Prince Eric is a given.  I also like the idea of Kira and Malia as Belle and the Beast, partially because of Malia’s issues about having to hide her nature, and also because I think she could absolutely rock that suit.  Ben could join them as Chip.  (Stiles would actually make an excellent Belle, but I feel that might just get weird.)  I can see Danny helping Erica rig up a Sleeping Beauty dress with strands of LEDs that keep shifting from pink to blue to green so the dress keeps appearing to change color (it’s a massive hit.)  I don’t know why, but I really want Stiles and Jackson as Elsa and Anna for some reason.  Scott can join them as either Kristoff or Olaf, depending on the mood he’s in.  Can’t quite decide for the other pack kids.  Since the theme is nominally just fairy tales, I think the dads could just opt for a classier, fancier version of their Red Riding Hood looks.  Maybe go for a steampunk edge or something (I would have included links here, but Google was not my friend today and I couldn’t find quite what I wanted.)  Rich velvets and wools in vivid scarlet and forest-y greens, black and deep brown leather and suede, lots of polished buttons and buckles, loose cotton shirts unlaced at the throat.  Mmm, yes.  And Peter could have one of those super fancy Victorian type nightgowns with the long sleeves and high necks made out of super soft and fine materials.  Instead of getting some kind of mask to wear, he’d just do his partial/beta/whatever you want to call it shift and let them add extra fur on with makeup to blend it in.  Everyone just thinks it’s amazing effects work.  He does opt for some cute wolf paw slippers since cons tend to get snotty about people going around barefoot.  (Applying and removing the fur is also how they learn his ears are particularly…sensitive…to a delicate touch in that form.)  

Lord of the Rings.  Yes.  Like, I can’t figure out who or any real details right now but.  Just.  Yes.

I feel like some years they enter the costume contest and some they don’t, just depending on their moods.  (They totally take the Jurassic Park group to a con and people adore it.  It makes for great skits.)

Random bonus thought for the day concerns dancing.  I was thinking about the whole drag queen thing, and whether Jungle was around in the 90s, and it sort of segued into what types of dancers they are.  I feel like Peter is a very good dancer.  Not quite competition level, maybe, but very skilled, nonetheless.  Like Malia, he’s just very comfortable in himself, in all forms, which helps with spatial and bodily awareness, in addition to his natural grace and balance.  I also feel he’s the most likely to have taken, like, ballroom lessons or similar as a kid, maybe at a parent or grandparent’s insistence.  With Noah I keep thinking about the various videos I’ve seen of Dylan dancing both outside of TW and as Stiles, and I feel his dad would have a very similar style of awkward disaster from the chest up, undulations worthy of a harem girl from the waist down (those Stilinski boys tend to leave a lot of confused boners in their wake.)  In Noah’s case, settling into his frame after that last growth spurt and learning self-defense/martial arts helped smooth most of the awkward out, but it resurfaces every so often.  Chris I think would be the least likely to dance, just because I feel his background would make him very self-conscious about it, whether he wants to feel that way or not.  He’ll dance if it’s just the three of them or just family, or for a slow dance, but that’s normally it.  However, if he’s drunk enough, or if Noah or Peter have dragged him into a dark corner to makeout for a while and gotten him all distracted and relaxed, he can be pursued out onto the floor to show off some actually pretty sweet moves once he lets go.

Anyway, gonna try and wrap this up, because I just realized it’s way later than I realized, and I should try and get some sleep at some point.  Enjoy your game, I hope it’s epic!

When this little paragraph made me realize I had a gaping plot hole in this chapter and I got to go back to fix it. My god my friend, you are a lifesaver!

I also like that it apparently took them nearly 20 years to learn about planning for this sort of thing.  I know you’ve mentioned Peter and Chris being the ones that do the stupid thing next chapter (or something to that effect), but really I feel the biggest moment of "what the hell, guys?” is Noah getting knocked up just two months after Chris.  It’s like, you guys had a huge, in your face, live example of why protection is important, and yet…

Because oh yeah I wanted to make it canon that wolves can detect a heartbeat of the embryo at 4-5 weeks. Which is about a week after the heart starts beating. And oh yeah, Chris is two months along by the time Noah gets pregnant... shit. I wrote something else in that flashback.

And now I got to fix that, so cheers!

I also finished writing my chapter today! Yay! All glorious 13K of it. And I’ll be editing and posting tomorrow (or technically later today as it is past midnight.) Oh, I’m so excited, I’m so excited to see what you think!

As for the game, my god it is awesome!!! I played a few hours today but my heart raced so much I had to pause after two hours because I was getting dizzy because of my heart. But it’s a great game so far, very accessible and it just draws me in completely. It’s so good.

Definitely what I needed after my day at work.

hehehe I’m happy to see my previews and writing and getting emotions, it sounds so bad, but that makes me smile because it’s getting the desired response and that’s awesome. 

“Cue Lego Movie music”

can you imagine the furor that would have occurred about a Slytherin and a Gryffindor hooking up in Fourth Year (I think?), and then pulling an innocent little Hufflepuff transfer under their spell?  Would any of them have played Quidditch?  (Peter I feel definitely played, though I can’t decide what position.  Undecided on the other two.)

I think Peter would’ve been a chaser or beater, somehow those seem to fit him well. Noah played but he was a keeper. (which would be funny if Peter was a chaser since they would get to battle lover’s disputes on the quidditch pitch) Chris I feel wouldn’t play quidditch, he’s too busy trying to keep track of his studies and really just likes to watch the sport but not participate. I think he’d be more into care of magical creatures and defends against the dark arts than any kind of sport. Though he does join and excel at the dueling club.

And the scandal of Peter and Noah dating from fourth year on would be massive, people can barely wrap their heads around it. But they’re happy and they’re just doing their own thing. And they don’t pay attention to anyone else but what they think and what Chris thinks of them.

Peter shifting to his wolf form and curling protectively around them all the time, head pressed up to their abdomen so that he can listen and scent at maximum effectiveness.  Them just gently stroking through his fur until one or both fall asleep.  (Also, how quickly do the other wolves in the family pick up on the changes in scent?  How do they react?  How do the older kids react to the idea of more siblings in general?)

<3 <3 it’s honestly an adorable image. The twins are very active when dad’s curled up around them, knowing just where to kick so Peter’s wakes up by a foot to the face. Though he doesn’t mind and just nudges back gently, letting out a low grumbling noise or whine that he knows the babies can hear in utero. As for how quickly, it depends on whether or not they smelled it before. Jackson, Ben, or Scott wouldn’t pick up on it. They weren’t wolves around pregnancies before. Malia and Derek catch on quickly though. They start noticing the scent change at around 5-6 weeks and hear the little heartbeats of the new family members.

Malia is moderately excited, she’s a little worried about her dad and how he will handle pregnancy at his age. (Although he’s like 35 when he gets pregnant, that counts as a geriatric pregnancy, dad... I’m worried.)

Stiles just flips between the two of extreme worry where he read up on pre-eclampsia and other pregnancy complications and birth complications and omg what if that happens. But he’s also so so excited because omg he’s finally gonna be an older brother!!

(He knows he’s Ben’s older brother, and he adores the tyke, but it’s different when you have a pregnancy close instead of a five-year-old sibling from one day to another.)

Jackson is pouty and a bit grumpy. He feels like he’s losing baby status in the family more and more and he doesn’t know how to deal. (Ben was a bit difficult to get used to for him but Chris handled it well by setting time aside for his baby Jackson. It helped. But now he’s a teen and there’s going to be two more babies and he’s- he doesn’t know how to feel. When Chris breaks the news he wants to have another baby he’s even more torn but he does come around, deciding that he will always be the baby of the family, even when he’s not.

It’s a good compromise. And the three parents set some time for each of their kids so everyone gets attention.

Allison handles it the best out of the teens, she’s very excited for all of them and immediately to volunteers helping with decorating the new nursery. She paints a few awesome looking murals of Winnie the Pooh or Bambi or some other cutesy Disney animals (Or maybe even a space/star wars or a fairy tale ala Fables theme?) and just goes all out. She also convinces Malia to quilt a blanket for the new baby and helps her knit a few cute hats. She’s just extremely excited and happy.

Ben is very happy too, he’s finally not the youngest anymore and he’s happy to be an older brother. He also finds it fascinating to learn how pregnancy works and how those babies got in there in the first place. They let him tell them how it works and explain some basic details, sperm, egg, you need both to have a baby and the baby grows in pops and papa’s belly. But they leave out any details that Ben doesn’t figure out or doesn’t ask about to keep it more age-appropriate for him. 

Though Ben’s smart and he figures out a lot on his own. Noah and Peter are honestly impressed by Ben’s deductive skills. They knew Jackson and Stiles had them, but they hadn’t expected Ben to show them too. He’s a quiet observer.

They were not prepared for the sheer DILF power of that household live and in person.  But then, is anyone, really?

Honestly, I don’t think anyone is. Nobody can resist the sheer DILF power.

Since the theme is nominally just fairy tales, I think the dads could just opt for a classier, fancier version of their Red Riding Hood looks.  Maybe go for a steampunk edge or something (I would have included links here, but Google was not my friend today and I couldn’t find quite what I wanted.)  Rich velvets and wools in vivid scarlet and forest-y greens, black and deep brown leather and suede, lots of polished buttons and buckles, loose cotton shirts unlaced at the throat.  Mmm, yes.  And Peter could have one of those super fancy Victorian type nightgowns with the long sleeves and high necks made out of super soft and fine materials.  Instead of getting some kind of mask to wear, he’d just do his partial/beta/whatever you want to call it shift and let them add extra fur on with makeup to blend it in.  Everyone just thinks it’s amazing effects work.  He does opt for some cute wolf paw slippers since cons tend to get snotty about people going around barefoot.  (Applying and removing the fur is also how they learn his ears are particularly…sensitive…to a delicate touch in that form.)  

I- this whole thing? yes. Headcanon accepted because it is that good. I can literally just see them going in steampunk hunter, red riding hood and the wolf. thank you for putting that image in my mind XD

I feel like Peter is a very good dancer.  Not quite competition level, maybe, but very skilled, nonetheless.  Like Malia, he’s just very comfortable in himself, in all forms, which helps with spatial and bodily awareness, in addition to his natural grace and balance.  I also feel he’s the most likely to have taken, like, ballroom lessons or similar as a kid, maybe at a parent or grandparent’s insistence.  With Noah I keep thinking about the various videos I’ve seen of Dylan dancing both outside of TW and as Stiles, and I feel his dad would have a very similar style of awkward disaster from the chest up, undulations worthy of a harem girl from the waist down (those Stilinski boys tend to leave a lot of confused boners in their wake.)  In Noah’s case, settling into his frame after that last growth spurt and learning self-defense/martial arts helped smooth most of the awkward out, but it resurfaces every so often.  Chris I think would be the least likely to dance, just because I feel his background would make him very self-conscious about it, whether he wants to feel that way or not.  He’ll dance if it’s just the three of them or just family, or for a slow dance, but that’s normally it.  However, if he’s drunk enough, or if Noah or Peter have dragged him into a dark corner to makeout for a while and gotten him all distracted and relaxed, he can be pursued out onto the floor to show off some actually pretty sweet moves once he lets go.

Malia definitely inherited Peter’s dancing skills, I like to think Jackson did as well. Those three are the best dancers in the family. They just move with natural ease. 

Allison is a decent dancer, her gymnastics training really helps but she’s not as fluent as her brother, sister, or dad.

I feel like Noah and Stiles have awkward flailing down to a T but every once in awhile there’s a hip movement worthy of a fucking professional dancer and it’s very confusing. But yeah, totally agree with that assessment of them.

Chris isn’t much of a dancer and neither is Ben. Both of them are very self-conscious. Chris gets better when he’s drunk because he let’s go of insecurity but even then it’s not great. He just doesn’t dance, it’s not his thing. Although he was a very good grinding and hip rotation move. He’s also pretty good at jump style once he lets himself go and just turns his mind off. but the rhythmic jumping just feels natural to him. He also likes to slow dance since he can just bury his face in Noah’s shoulder or nuzzle Peter’s cheek and just forget about everything else.

Also, I like to think they all love to sing. Chris’s voice is best suited for country I feel like. Noah’s more for singer-songwriter. And Peter just loves singing pop songs and he knows how to hit some high notes. 

And now I am going to bed because It’s almost three am XD And I need some sleeps. Thankfully I have the day off this sunday.

[comicteaparty]

March 7th-March 13th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from March 7th, 2020 to March 13th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

What is your overall marketing/promotion strategy for your webcomic?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I don't know if this counts as a strategy, but these are some of the things I do to promote my comic or my work in general. 1. Most important from what I've noticed (which I have been failing at due to stress and self-doubt lately) is to post updates to your comic frequently and consistently. It seems somewhat silly that simply putting your work out there is the best way to grow an audience, but it really is. Newly posted chapters frequently get shown on more pages and thus detected by the algorithms and potential readers. It also helps to establish trust with current and returning readers. 2. Participating in art/comic events, forums, and other comicking communities (such as this one). In a way, this isn't really marketing directly, but it is good to build connections with other creators! 3. Conventions! I actually have gotten a several new readers/followers from attending cons. It's also nice just to talk to people, get your name out there locally, and to make a little bit of money while at it. 4. Social media promotion. Tbh, this hasn't been super helpful to me, but more eyes is always a win in my book. I try to post almost every day, even if it isn't art or comic related. Having some kind of social media presence at all, even if it's small, shows people that you are working hard to connect to others. Also finding the right hashtags definitely helps with visibility.

kayotics

Overall, my strategy for marketing is to be authentic and just keep plugging my stuff. People will come if they like it. I work as a marketer for my day job, so I know what I COULD do, but I really don’t do that much since a whole marketing plan would take a lot more time than I have available to me. Some of the stuff I do otherwise: - regular updates. This ones pretty important for retaining viewers I already have. Any good marketing strategy is thinking about retaining people, not just getting new ones - self promo: this usually is on top webcomics or on social media. I get a LOT of traffic from top webcomics, and I get a good handful of people from social media. - conventions, like mentioned before, can be a great way to get people’s eyes on your stuff. I have a postcard that I hand out to people if they come by or they purchase something. - the thing I don’t do enough is post more art outside of the comic, or even just little previews. If I were dedicated to marketing, I’d be sharing sketches or illustrations on social media to grow my audience.

DanitheCarutor

Ah you know, I don't really have much of a strategy. At some point I promoted as much as I could on Twitter, adding my comic to those share/promo thread, getting in on relevant hashtag events, participating on WebComic Chat (whenever I remembered to). I've done a little promotion on forums, but there is really only so much you can do since only so many people hang out there and if your work is super niche like mine, they will pretty much avoid your promos at all cost. Lmao Other than those I don't really do much, at some point I attempted to use Instagram but the site/app is very stingy about offsite links. I also started a Facebook page, although if you don't have the money to boost your promos and don't usually have a lot going on with your comic outside of weekly updates, it won't get a whole lot of attention. I've also tried to be more active, but I'm not a good conversationalist, and I tend to be kind of a thread/conversation/mood killer so I try to avoid talking outside of Q&A prompts like this.

eli [a winged tale]

Same Dani, I used Instagram for a while too and I just don’t think the platform is a good fit for my vertical scroll comic (see exhibit 1) Twitter is a mixed bag as well and I think unless you have a solid following already, it’s hard to gain traction. What really helped was being on Webtoon’s staff pick for a couple days. I’m not sure how Tapas picked up but it’s reassuring that there’s a couple of followers gained every week when I posted regularly. So it really does sound like the first step is to have a steady update schedule (working on the buffer! Got a month’s work down today). It’s just challenging because while I could upload one page a week but on the vertical scroll sites it seems like a longer episode (6-7 pages) is valued more as a solid update. Love hearing everyone’s thoughts and hope to learn from y’all! (edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Consistency and con attendance were big ones for me, but something I learned worked well (and was really fun to do) was creating really fun, really dumb, non-canon bits of art every now and then. Following meme prompts or funny ideas from other people. If your comic can afford some humor being thrown its way, making people laugh is a great way to get some attention. No one needs to know the details of your story - they just need to relate to the characters/humor somehow. I had more than one person come across my dumb, meme-y ancillary art and go “Welp, I want to read your comic now.”

eli [a winged tale]

Memes to the rescue! What has been your favourite to do? And which one has surprised you in its relatability/popularity?

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Two shots of vodka.

Also that terrible sweater meme. Everyone is required to do the terrible sweater meme. People eat it up.

eli [a winged tale]

Too good

Ahh I can’t wait till I can actually write silly adult characters

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Now that you mention it, the nice thing about the terrible sweater meme is it works with a WIDE variety of comics.

eli [a winged tale]

I would love to do a meme with y’all

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

"Came for the story, staying for the sick memes"

Spring-heeled Jack

I try to post updates every friday when my new pages go up on Patreon. And then I make my big post when my tapas and website update at the end of the month. Between all that, I have little flyers that I carry with me and if I'm ever in a shop that has a little self promotion section, I plan on tacking up a flyer. I do conventions, and this will be my first convention season while actively making a comic, so flyers will be handed out then as well.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

My comic isnt very comedy-heavy, and even for the funny scenes, my sense of humor isn't compatible with most people's. So a lot of the memes out there just don't work. But terrible sweater meme doesn't have to be hilarious. It can be just cute, or even weird.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

For me, uh lmao. I sometimes make some funny strip panels and it was received well even though it's not polished for my liking lmao

Spring-heeled Jack

Keii, I feel you. I'm not good with comedy and my comic isn't meant to be funny, either, so I don't know how well a comedy meme will help me.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

overall, I try to be honest with just self promo and asking when I have a chance "Hey pls check out my comic lol"

eli [a winged tale]

Or maybe just something relatable? Seen a couple caption this on tumblr

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I think instead of memes, what I'm gonna do is my characters cosplaying more well known characters from works that have some tonal similarities with my own. This isn't just for advertising purposes; it's something I've been wanting to do for a long time for myself. But I'm realizing it can serve some of the same purposes that memes do.

Spring-heeled Jack

That's extremely cute!

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Keyword being "SOME" Tonal similarities... Some of them aren't very similar but have a couple of parallels, etc.

Spring-heeled Jack

Oh for sure. Even if you could find that 'perfect match', it might not be a great cosplay for them, and give too much away

Are "draw the squad" prompts still a thing? I love those

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The One White Dude and the Tiger Dude in my comic will definitely cosplay Calvin and Hobbes at some point.

Spring-heeled Jack

LOL

omg please, Keii

eli [a winged tale]

YES

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Yeah, not every comic will have super memeable humor - but whatever you can do to break down that wall between you and a potential reader and go “Hey! Look at this. Is this relatable? Do you get the reference? Etc” Is a very good bet

Also yes squad memes are PERFECT

You can boil down your comic’s relationships so simply.

Spring-heeled Jack

I have four couples in my comic so those "ship dynamic" posts might be fun

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

What are squad memes?

eli [a winged tale]

I also need to be educated about squad I mean all the memes

Spring-heeled Jack

OH MAN!! They are fun as heck. You can find templates and it's a very simple character design in the template, but the poses are super silly. And then you just draw your characters in place of those simple figures(edited)

If you google "Draw the squad" you will find a bunch

renieplayerone

Oh! Ill have to try that! These squad bases look fun!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I still have one of those I need to finish Back when I first started sharing my work, I was surprised and delighted at how quickly people shoved it through a meme filter.

Maybe that’s another thing! If marketing opportunities present themselves as a surprise, try running with them and see where they take you Within reason, of course. Never feel forced to follow anything that people respond to in a particular way. Just take it into account and see how you feel about it.

renieplayerone

(Im here to lurk on this week's question, i have no strategy and need ideas haha)

eli [a winged tale]

Omg draw the squad looks

too many to choose

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I love draw the squad poses so much TuT I wish I had more time to draw within more of them. I think I always get a little dishearten about making memes because I feel like I need to make my jokes full illustrations but I never have time for much extra content beyond ballpoint pen sketches :T

Mei

Honestly I don't have a marketing or promotion strategy for my webcomic. I make updates every week, and I post it on my twitter and kinda plug it there. I'm actually god awful at trying to make people read my comic because I'm a little bit nervous about it, to be honest. So I just sort of leave it there and see if people find it, half the time. That being said, I tried to promote it pretty hard at conventions last year. But that didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I'm hoping to make flyers with QR codes so that people can scan it, and it'll take them to the landing page/tapas for the comic. That might be a bit easier than getting them to just search the title, plus having a flyer is a nice bit of promotion if I get the opportunity?! Making memes and drawing characters in different clothes or in squad things sounds like super fun tho and I might look into that in the future

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's nice to hear everyone talk about this topic. TBH I had completely stopped promoting my comic because I got too scared of backlash, being a disappointment, etc. (Initially I'd attracted a number of people who weren't actually my target audience, and that led to some less than ideal results.) But some time last year, it occurred to me that 1) I'm making this comic for my reader self (or my "hypothetical taste twin" as I like to call it)... which means 2) I only have to appeal to people like me. So I started asking myself, "What would I have to say/do to get me to read this comic?" and that made it significantly less intimidating. I haven't actually started doing self promo (though I did start plugging my updates on Twitter at least). But most future self promo I do will be based on that ^ question.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

(oh god, I was just checking out the latest update for one of the Korean webcomics I read, and the new episode is about a hikikomori... who says "I want to change, but I can't step outside because... maybe there isn't a single person out there who will understand me." THAT WAS ME but with comic promo. Well, I'm getting better and I also hope this character will, too, though knowing this comic his chances aren't so great lol...)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I hope that wasn't too awkward to share! Tl;dr I really think the "what would I have to say/do to get ME to check out my comic" is a good approach for anyone else feeling intimidated about doing self promos.

In the same vein, but on the opposite side of the coin: I'm curious to know, what were some things that got YOU to read someone else's comic?

Some of my own answers to that aren't very relevant to what we can do for our own comics: e.g. I'm Korean and when Naver has a new comic in their pro comic lineup, I may check it out. I'm also a member of SpiderForest and I check out the applicants' comics during the app season. Stuff like that aren't really good promo options that we can take. But things that may be relevant: - 'Evocative scenery shot that doesn't show the face/ doesn't focus on the face.' MY WEAKNESS. That kinda pictures feel subtle and kind of lonely to me, even if it's a group shot. And I like stories with those vibes. -Promo includes an evocative quote. Could be from the comic itself, or from something else like a classical literature or whatever. The creator of Ark (https://www.arkcomic.com/) does this sometimes and even though I'm already following Ark, those promos get my attention.

eli [a winged tale]

Definitely the art promo now that I think of it! Merch, posters, banners etc. If the art intrigues me, I definitely take a look at the site/blurb/first chapter

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I wonder if we can semi-workshop promo art at some point? Not really intensive like "change xyz" because that's not always feasible with art, but just impression feedback like, "this pictures gives me these vibes, and makes me expect this kinda story"

I would be curious to see everyone's even if we don't workshop

eli [a winged tale]

YES

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Yesssss

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Yes please. I don‘t promo besides update notices simply because I have no clue to start.

Mei

Sometimes I get really attracted by the style of the story? I immediately started reading Wolfsbane because the art was cool and different from a lot of whta I'd seen on Webtoon up until that point. And then the story was perfect for me. What keii said about writing for yourself is right. Patrick Ness once said you should write the stories your younger self would have loved to pick up on a shelf

and I think that's a pretty evocative thing. At the end of the day, you should be enjoying what you're writing (hopefully). And if you enjoy it and you're having fun making it, that can rub off on the people reading it, or you find the people who like that similar vein of story?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

(It's also 100% legit to write stories for your current self )

Mei

(oh yes 100% that's what i'm doing HEHE)

Tolkein wrote LOTR because he was like

in love with worldbuilding

was there a market for such a strange type of novel at the time? No. Definitely not. Did he write it anyway? YEAH HE DID

Deo101 [Millennium]

I really wanna do an art workshop yes.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Aight, anyone who wants an impression feedback from me, post your promo art in #art_help

Warning, my impressions may be totally off lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

Also I don't do much marketing. Mostly I try to get in with communities and learn about making comics, I just want to improve my craft. All I really do is make my updated every week, and share whatever art Ive made on my Twitter or whatever

Okay! I think I only have my cover on my phone, but on my computer I also have my banners and icon. So I'll share all those in a bit when I'm at my computer

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

(off topic but I'm sick, and when I'm sick or very tired I constantly misread words. I read "my banners" as "my bananas" and I was very confused for a couple seconds.)

Deo101 [Millennium]

My bananers

Feather J. Fern

I am terrible at marketing my own work, but I am very good at marketing other people's work. I use the "you would like it for this reason" to grab people. Unfortunately I can't do it for my comic because I am bad at seeing the good in my own work oof. I am getting better at it though.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

That's a really good way to do it!

And I can relate. My own hangup is a little different, but it can be extremely difficult to be brave for sure, whether in front of other people, or just in front of your own brain that constantly judges you.

Feather J. Fern

Yeah I was talking about a friend's comic and then the person I was talking to was like "Don't you write comics" and I was like "ahfoofjw yeah but don't look at them"

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I was thinking a lot about the whole "it's like [well known work] meets [another well known work]" approach that was discussed earlier. And I think that could be relevant here. Like, think of something that has either influenced your comic significantly, or just happens to have some core similarities. How would you market that thing? Could you market your own thing using a similar approach -- since there are similarities?

I'd thought of a really good example to compare HoK to. Then I got sad because the said example is extremely obscure outside of Korea. But now I'm like, hey, people don't have to KNOW that work. I can do this differently. I can talk about HoK the way I could talk about it.

('it' as in the other work that's obscure outside of Korea)

Feather J. Fern

I do think that's a good fast shortcut but I don't like using it becuase the shortcut sometimes makes people angry when they don't get what they like out of those two things

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

That's why I said to NOT actually bring up the comparison work

Don't name it

Just list the traits that are shared in common

Feather J. Fern

Oh sorry

I miss read

(And my name changed colours all the sudden?)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's a confusing topic, so no worries

It means you leveled up

Feather J. Fern

OWO!

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Say you want to compare your work to... I dunno, DBZ, because it's got super strong aliens duking it out barehanded, blasting ki-like energy attacks, etc. Don't name DBZ. Talk about your work the way you'd talk about your favorite aspects of DBZ. "My comic has super strong aliens duking it out hand-to-hand! YEEEAH!"

OH MY GOD I NEED TO DO THIS NOW.

Feather J. Fern

Yeah! That's what I would do. (But it also helps for me that my comic has no hard reference points) but for my new comic, people are gonna compare it to Zach Bell, and Angelic Layer i think

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I'm gonna write up some drafts that I will revise and tweet at a later time

Feather J. Fern

So I jsut got to you know, not promo it as such XD

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I want to do this too for a quick pitch

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Do it (shop talk or story help maybe?)

I'm writing a vomit draft for mine

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yee

Feather J. Fern

I think I will do it for Story help

(Also so I can help flesh out my new project lol lol)

eli [a winged tale]

Kei I might be suuuuper off since I read only the beginning but I sort of thought inuyasha but Korea and handsome boys

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Sometimes you don't even realize your story can be marketed as "blah meets blah" until much later down the line - I've only started realizing the number of existing properties I've absorbed unintentionally into my comic. It's not how I'd market it on a serious front, but to a friend for story help, heck yes.

But a lot of people on Twitter seem to do that strategy for PitMAD and it works great for them, so... shrug

I guess it still belongs in a "pitch arsenal," as it were

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, the one "blah" I just thought of is something I hadn't realized for all these years. But it makes so much sense now that I look at it.

eli [a winged tale]

See that’s where I got confused but I think this is what I’m gonna aim to do: - pitch to readers: inspiration but this awesome unique thing in the comic - pitch to other comic makers: the Logline - pitch to agents: comparison works if requested and longer pitch depending on their format - pitch to family: just read it plzthanksbye

renieplayerone

or alternative pitch to family: Please dear god never read this

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

That's me

Oof... Writing the 'promote your comic by talking about the traits it shares with Another Person's Work,' I made myself cry, and that is definitely a sign I'm on the right track.

eli [a winged tale]

Right track is good!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It took me years to even think of an 'other more popular work' comparison for Children of Shadow. XD But at the same time, it's really different from the works I compare it to, so it's hard to say 'Read this if you like X or X because it has a few similarities in theme and tone, but is still very much its own thing'.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah which is why I'm not even gonna namedrop my X.

I'm just straight up gonna talk about 'My comic has [this trait]' (and X shares that trait, but no one needs to know for the purpose of that pitch)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

To answer the weekly question... I really don't have a marketing strategy. Marketing is my achilles heel, so I generally just throw pages up and hope someone sees them. I don't really understand social media nor do I have the energy to sink tonnes of time into it, which seems to be one of the biggest requirements for being picked up by algorithms. So my marketing strategy is just.., keep making comics and talking to other creators and hope for the best

eli [a winged tale]

I think that’s still solid Capn

Ultimately you need a product to promote

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's something that helps me, because while I can talk about my favorite works done by others, I feel stuck when trying to do the same with my own. So it's basically telling my brain, 'hey, you already know how to do it with other stories. Do the same thing with your own.'

eli [a winged tale]

So true Kei

renieplayerone

thats my strategy too. best case you market it great, worst case you've made a new friend so win win :3

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

My incredibly low numbers after 14 years of making webcomics beg to differ but... maybe someday I can hire someone to help me market.

eli [a winged tale]

I’m using the comic platforms rather than my own site so... sort of relying on their algorithms. I imagine it can be harder if you just post on your own website?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Sometimes the platforms don't help much if their audience isn't into the type of comics you make

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I post on both my own website and on platforms, but the algorithms for WT and Tapas don’t seem to like me, haha.(edited)

renieplayerone

yeah same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

One of my top favorite webcomics got a front page feature on Tapas once, but it wasn't the kind of a story that gets a lot of traction there, so it still didn't get very popular. And that was in no way a measure of its quality. It is an excellent comic, just not a good fit for that particular place.

renieplayerone

I get far more views on my site, but I get way more engagement on Tapas and WT

I actually treat those two mirrors AS marketing for the main site(edited)

eli [a winged tale]

Exactly renie! Good perspective!

I never know what different platforms tailor to...

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, what Keiiii said. I make dark fantasy comics and both WT and Tapas favour romance, especially comics geared towards a female audience and drawn anime style. My comics aren’t particularly feminine and romance isn’t much of a focus, so they’re just not what that demographic is into.

eli [a winged tale]

I’ve been trying to remember how I came across my favourite comics and usually it’s through the art (interesting characters, unique dynamic style that I enjoy) and the first chapter holding promise (able to see what the character wants/will have to change into)

Romance has always been the best seller in the story world I think

Oh and most recently hiveworks and other web publishers have great recommendations too per genre

And comic conventions are always fun to meet creators. Sometimes If I feel I jive with someone I’m an instant fan

renieplayerone

I absolutely need to get better at having confidence enough to make friends at conventions x_x

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I have noticed my audience grow a bit since joining Spiderforest. They’ve helped me get a bit better at promotion, though marketing just isn’t my talent, lol.

renieplayerone

im always terrified haha

eli [a winged tale]

It’s a big step for sure renie! It took me like... three years going to VanCAF as an attendee before actually exhibiting and making friends(edited)

Mei

I know i'm late but i personally detest the 'this book is X meets Y!!', even though I get why people do it. I just wish they'd describe it to me like what if I'd never read either of those books......

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I would really love to get out to cons, they sound like a great opportunity for connecting with other creators. One of these years I’ll be able to get to one!(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah im usually kinda like "okay, well are you doing anything new or are you just doing those things :/"

renieplayerone

I exhibit with the Boston Comics Roundtable and I still havent gotten the courage XD

Mei

yeah, cons are really fun even to attend or to make friends! I find it really tough though, I'm so intimidated;;

yeah Deo... same... it's like

sure, I could pitch a story as two things. Like I don't know "The Walking Dead meets Shaun of the Dead" which is semi redundant anyway

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I only use it to give people a framework for the kinds of tones and themes they can expect from my work when I have to keep my explanation short and sweet.

renieplayerone

they should have badges that say "Hi i want to make friends but you are all so awesome its intimidating be kind"

Mei

or you know... use those words to just describe the story? It may be a personal preference, some agents LOVE comparisons

Yes renie, yes!

i'd love a badge like that like

pls talk to me i'm scare

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Sometimes a few words can’t fully describe a story as well as saying: ‘It’s a little bit like X meets X but if you add [insert unique thing your story does]’

Mei

I personally find that it depends a bit too much on people having read those books or stories before. BUT if you're pitching to an agent, they've usually read those books

so then they get a sense or vibe of like, what the genre is

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It’s all down to preference, really. Your own and the person you’re pitching to. If you don’t want to use comparisons to describe your own work, that’s valid, but try not to dismiss people who do.

Mei

so I get it, I just don't like it personally xD I think a lot of the times it takes away from your own voice and story

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

That too is part of the reason why I'm not namedropping the works

Just having my self-promo self learn from my 'promo other people's stuff' self

Mei

yeah for sure, it adds that level of excitement to your own work that you'd give to others?

eli [a winged tale]

I think a cool exercise might be to check out someone’s work here and see how you would promote it

It’s always good to see from someone else’s perspective

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

yessssss, all of my friends have been much better at promoting than I am

mostly because they have no shame regarding it but they also just... know what sounds cool

Mei

Oh i'm very good at promoting my friends' work

I sold his DnD book to a kpop stan who doesn't like DnD and doesn't play, and it was a crowning achievement

eli [a winged tale]

Like for yours I’d probably say... Manta Ray princess finds herself very much dead but is given a second chance to revive her friends and save her kingdom... just need to find someone very much living and very much not afraid of the seaghosts they have become

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

SOLID

though now I imagine Phaedra as a Manta Ray in a dress which is... not entirely untrue

eli [a winged tale]

LOL omg I haven’t even thought of that! Just thought manta Princess is a hook

Mei

Me, pointing at Cheth "I mean look at him, LOOK AT HIM and tell me you don't want to read this"

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I guess for my work I market it from four potential angles: 1) The princess is cool and has a sword, 2) The villain is the best character, 3) The environments ain't bad, and 4) THERE'S A DOG

again, you gotta know who you're talking to and what they already like

eli [a winged tale]

In a world where a fallen god became trapped in the sea, a dead princess is given a second chance to fight for her life with a mysterious sea-bitten boy and undo the sea ghost curse that plagues the world.

Dammit I repeated world

Mei

hey... the environments are GREAT

eli [a winged tale]

Yeah Lady your environment shots are

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

ok I do try BUT BACK TO MARKETING

The number of times I see someone marketing their comic with very epic-sounding descriptors or broad generalizations... then that one day where they're finally like "oh, I have a character who turns into a hamster at nighttime" and people are like 'I'M SOLD'

And then they go ".... THAT'S WHAT YOU ALL WANTED???"

often it's those little weird details that get people interested

Deo101 [Millennium]

I wanna read about the were hamster please

Mei

sometimes I think the simplest and maybe slightly silly lines are what grabs people?

when things sound TOO epic i feel a bit intimidated

eli [a winged tale]

takes notes

Mei

but if someone were to sell me a big adventure epic as "it's hamsters and they fight the forces of evil" i'd read it

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

god yes

"Four small creatures band together to defeat a great darkness overwhelming their homeland."

No.

"Hamsters fight evil."

YES

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I.... I have no idea how to snappily describe my comics. XD

eli [a winged tale]

Same... I got to kids with wings for hair then my brain short circuits

Mei

i'd say it's the way you'd tell the story to a close friend

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

The best I came up with was 'Teenagers with supernatural powers team up with woodland critters to defeat monsters' but it sounds more adventure-y and doesn't really get at the fact that it's a dark story with horror elements and everyone's mentally ill.

Mei

like they come up to you and go "what's your comic about" "oh you know, my stupid comic's about mutant hamsters that take over the world" or something

(don't call your comics stupid none of your comics are stupid they are great)

Deo101 [Millennium]

"plant man and his goth boyfriend babysitting a ton of bozos" would probably be mine then

Mei

BEAUTIFUL

i'm sold

Deo101 [Millennium]

ghsakgjhgkhkgahgk my target audience...

Mei

i do think tho like this form of comedic one-lining may not work for something dark?

Unless you go "Spooky horror about cats that become humans at night!"

would need experimentation

eli [a winged tale]

It’s a balance I think.

Kids stranded on an island with weapons explore the darkness in human nature - Lord of the Flies

Mei

ooh yeah that's a good one!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

A space explorer stranded on a foreign planet must join forces with the indigenous population and save his ship before his life support runs out.

Alternately

Small man goes to war with small carrot people

Pikmin

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) I wonder if one could describe CoS the way how people might describe Evangelion, but with magical powers instead of mechs.

Teens, monsters, mental illnesses

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Probably. Though I've never seen Evangelion, but those three words work very well.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The relationship dynamics are way different, but yeah, those three things...

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Also add trauma and cute lil animals and you have Children of Shadow. XD

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Evangelion also has trauma (though I don't know if you'd like it; this isn't a rec, just a promo discussion!) and it was refreshing to see at the time

A teen trying to fight huge monsters, even if he was doing it inside an equally huge mech, could lead to traumatizing experiences, and it was the first time I saw that seriously explored

Hmm, so I guess "teens, talking animals, monsters, mental illnesses feat. trauma" ?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don't know if it's similar at all, but that description reminds me strongly of Eureka 7. Wow, was that series intense,

🌈ERROR404 🌈

I really liked how the end happened - it was a nice solution to the lack of budget issue and told the story of his psyche reall well

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Though Eureka 7 was intense in a good way. I found the ending kind of unsatisfying, but admittedly I find the endings of 90% of animes unsatisfying (probably a cultural clash). But I enjoy them for the journey more than the ending.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I haven't watched Eureka 7, but the storyboard artist (one of the storyboard artists maybe?) for that anime is one of my favorite artists.

DanitheCarutor

Ah, a little late, but regarding the snappy promos I'm in the same boat as Cap'n with not knowing how to make one. At least one that would be ridiculous and totally not fitting the darker themes. I agree with all the people who have a generally hard time coming up with a pitch for their work, while having an easier time promoting other people's comics. Honestly my comic can be super boring to people who don't like pretentious, non-fantastical, angsty, character study types of stories. So it's really hard to think of a way to make it sound interesting without spoiling anything. Man! That thing when people come up to you, asking what your comic is about! Me: "Oh! Ah, it's uh, kinda sad and it has uh mental illness" -trails off with uncomfortable laughter- Them: Oh cool. -has a look of complete disinterest- Someone was actually extremely enthusiastic about the vague description of my comic, which somehow made me a mix of uncomfortable and excited.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I saw the conversation about blurbs and I just thought of one for a comic I'm working on! "An ecologist and a bird have a conversation about ethics"

I haven't started the comic yet so please send your critiques(edited)

and first impressions

(of the blurb)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

"Angsty character study with a heavy dose of mental illness" <--- Could this descriptor work? @DanitheCarutor

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

kei said exactly what I was just typing

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Great minds

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

oh, i just realized i've read dani's comic

I think your description is fine?

The artsy, angsty comics I follow all have kind of short, tongue in cheek descriptions

it's hard to capture the tone of an emotional comic in one sentence so they either joke about it or make it intentionally misleading

for example Drop Out's description is something like "two friends go on a road trip" and Fritz Fargo's description is "a human dumpster fire in the 90s"

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The dumpster fire one is insta-effective

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Dani, maybe make your description shorter if anything?

Something like, "An emotionally stunted alcoholic attempts to make amends"

and then follow it up with kei's line about it being an angsty character study

RebelVampire

Im not gonna stop the convo cause it is on topic. However, i do want to remind ppl these #creator_babble chats are permanently archived. So thats something to keep in mind if youre gonna workshop.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I asked before in this discord about making my own blurb better. The main critique I got was that I included too many things that I thought were interesting and unique that a new reader probably wouldn't care about. Like how the mc's powers work. But though it's unique and important to the story, it's not going to be a main reason someone reads the comic. I revised the blurb to remove extraneous info and make the tone of the comic more apparent, and I think now I didn't lose anything and made it more concise.

I think maybe agtahr could also be summarized a bit more succinctly

DanitheCarutor

Yup, you did once upon a time but said you stopped reading it a while ago. (which is totally fine, the reason is understandable.) The mix of yours and Keii's descriptions do sound a lot better than mine. Lol Thank you Fish and @keii’ii (Heart of Keol)! I've noticed people really like the word 'angst' when you describe heavy stuff. At least when I was a teenager everyone found it appealing. I'll tinker with it a bit and use Drop_Out and Fritz Fargo as a reference. Anyways, I'm going to stop talking now, don't want to bog down the main topic.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

That's a good point; 'the best things about this story' and 'things that should go in its blurb' have an overlap, but they aren't always the same.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Yeah, I did but I'll probably pick it up again eventually. I remember enjoying it. If you do want to keep talking, we can move to shop talk?

mirandalorian

babbling I have the first three episodes of my webtoon ready to post tomorrow and I’m really excited and feel kinda proud that I made it this far...even though it’s not very far. It’s far for me without posting immediately end babbling

Feather J. Fern

I forgot to ask, but if people are tabling at cons, do you guys have promo stuff at your con tables for your comics?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Mostly a business card, but yes

carcarchu

i never did but my table partner one year had free postcards she gave out with purchase / to passerbys with her comic info and an illustration on it

kayotics

I always keep free postcards to advertise my comic on the table right next to my business cards.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Yep, the free postcards did wonders for me last year. They disappeared quickly!

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Buisness cards and postcards~

Feather J. Fern

Seems like Business and Postcards are the way to go.

Mei

business cards!!

i might be making flyers/postcards for my comic next time though! :D

sagaholmgaard

I haven't done much to promote my comic but I've gotten some good ideas reading through this, thanks! I currently plug my updates in twitter and instagram with a cool/fun panel from the new page. I do also share WIPS and try to engage through my instagram stories (Asking things like, 'what type of benders would the Reclaim squad be in an avatar au' and making doodles for the answers), but that only reaches those who follow my IG. its good fun tho. I've done memes with the characters a few times but I didn't get much attention, LOL. But it's fun so maybe worth trying again

Spring-heeled Jack

Today I went into a locally owned comic shop and went to the guy that owns it and said "I'm a local artist and I'm writing a comic. Could I give you some small flyers to let people take?" And he said yes, and then asked if I have any physical copies. I don't yet but told him I'll bring some by when I have them. He then let me know he carries other local artists! Something cool to think about if you have a local comic shop.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

ooo that's good to know

I droped off my zines at my local comic shop but maybe I'll drop flyers of my webcomic too lmaooo

Spring-heeled Jack

I also just ordered a business card carrier so I can tote some around with ease. I carry my flyers in my sketchbook. You should totally ask, it never hurts! Carry a few extra just in case you find yourself in a new area and find another cafe or comic shop.

I ran mine off on my at home printer on some nice quality but regular weight paper. I might need to get some more professionally done.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I keep a handful of business cards in my wallet -- that way, any time someone says "hey, that looks cool, what are you drawing?" they get a card with the title and URL. Slowly but steadily burns through the supply.

DanitheCarutor

Seeing if my local book shops will carry copies of my comic when I print them eventually is something I'm kind of excited about! My town is hardcore into supporting local artists and writers, so that'll be something neat to try out. Although I'm a little nervous that the rating might be a little too mature for what the vendors want on their shelves.

I know of using postcards to advertise, but never heard of fliers. Maybe I'll give that a try.(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I use double sided business cards, so on one side, it showcases some of my art, and the other side has contact info, a link to my comic website, and a QR code. It's been pretty helpful so far at conventions.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

You guys have all these sophisticated answers to this and my answer is just "scream on every social media platform I can reach and every person I meet about my comic."

Though I may not scream at people irl,,,

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Let's see... I have a twitter where I repost my comic pages, and a couple mirrors that help reach different audiences. I've also carried around business cards that have my comic's URL on it. One fun strategy I've used is doing review-exchange things, in an I-critique-your-comic-if-you-critique-mine way (with the assumption that most people who read all the way through Super Galaxy Knights end up liking it). Though, that isn't really viable anymore now that the comic is 600+ pages, cuz nobody would ever agree to that trade lol. And... that's pretty much it? Though, I should note that my goal with Super Galaxy Knights isn't to make the most popular comic I can so that I can make a living off ads or patreon or print sales or whatever. If I ever do manage to make money off the comic, it'll be in "spinoff tech" (basically, video games or other media based off it). (it's the reason why a bunch of early Starstuff Stories fleshed out the abilities of the characters they focused on) I would like people to read the story because I think people would like the story, but it's not like my future depends on its popularity.

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

We (me and Q) are gonna (hopefully) tabeling at cons this year! I thought about doing free non permenant tattoos with our comic things. Also we have beautiful zines of the first chapter to sell. but a free postcard is also good

Desnik

promotional strategies...ah...the biggest thing I did for my first webcomic, RAWR! Dinosaur Friends, was simply update on a general platform (tumblr), using a consistent schedule and the same tags every time. That allowed some of the bigger biology/humor/critter blogs on tumblr to find me and I got a lot of people reading from their generous reblogs. I found some more niche crossover from sci-comm blog comments and dinosaur toy collector forums, because sometimes I'd have a comic that would coincide with paleontology news. It was mainly about finding my niche and bringing my stuff to that niche. To those struggling with finding readers, I would recommend distilling the contents of your comic and then reaching out to people who buy/read things like your comic. I've definitely made friends from general 'webcomic' forums and discords, but in terms of building a readership it's all about finding the niche and catering to it in a human way

In general I highly recommend shopping around for stuff like hobby blogs/forums/groups/discords that have some relation to the content of your webcomic. Those people DO want new content related to their hobby, but they don't really deal well with salesy pitches. Just be human and also a nerd for that hobby, too (nerdy enough to make webcomics about it)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, it's like fan comic for an existing IP with an existing fandom, except it's a fan comic of a 'thing' rather than an IP (e.g. you make a pirate comic? Great! Nobody owns pirates, but there are lots of pirate fans out there!).

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

The very first customer I had at the first con I tabled at, came over and said "I like ghosts! I like the ocean! I'll take it!" And wrote me later saying it was exactly what they were looking for.

And honestly it's all because I make sure every cover has something spooky and something watery, and the genres are in the title I make it very easy for people to understand what it might be like.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

omg the genres are in the title

that's genius

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Definitely not planned But it helps so much!

I think if authors have a rule on certain symbols/motifs they MUST make sure come across on covers/posters/etc, that can be a good marketing strategy. With some wiggle room, of course.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I... I feel like I can barely even describe what my comic is, which makes it so hard to market. 'Do you like comics with cute animals and eldritch horrors and angsty teens that have superpowers and hidden religious symbolism everywhere?!? Then my comic is for you!' What even is that demographic, because I sure don't know.(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) If you take away the cute animals part, that actually sounds like stuff a lot of teens are into/ a lot of people were into when they were teens. And most people love cute animals, so adding that to the mix, in theory, shouldn't reduce the accessibility too much. Buuuuut CoS has its unique flavor that's decidedly different from all the "angsty teens, eldritch horrors, religious symbolism" stuff I consumed when I was younger. I don't know how to describe that flavor, nor how to utilize it for marketing. But yeah, maybe some food for thought?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I've used short phrases that are sort of representative to describe my comic. Examples include "consensual mind control" "a guy whose ideal life is not being entirely alive" "friendship" and "anticlimactic conversations"

I have no idea how effective any of those are

someone tell me pls

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

As someone who just started reading your comic last night I think consensual mind control is a really cool descriptor. I haven't heard that too much before.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

!

that makes me happy

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) Heh, I'm not sure what that unique flavour is, either, but it might have something to do with me avoiding the typical 'chosen one' structure that most teen fantasy literature has. The characters are all (except Fawna) a part of the hidden world already rather than discovering it, and everyone's pretty much running around like chickens with their heads cut off rather than having any power over their situation (which is kind of a huge part of the theme of the comic). It's definitely different than the typical urban fantasy, so it's been really hard to find which audience that appeals to. From what I've gathered based on the people who comment on my website, it's mostly academics in college or beyond, for whatever reason. XD

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Honestly I think for almost all comics their first pages were what convinced me to keep reading. Even with Phantomarine I was ambivalent about the description but then I saw the first page, and though, yeah, I'm into this.

Maybe my own comic can be the same way

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Exactly the same with me and your comic - I was also all about that first page It's a powerful thing! I think for anyone about to delve into a comic - which is, by nature, a very visual thing - it's going to be that visual that ultimately pushes them over the edge.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

maybe my description should just be ascii art of my main character O-O | -(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

^ It's why I tinkered with the first page of HoK soooo many times even after it went live. But it wasn't enough; it still gave off the wrong impression as to what kind of a story one should expect. Finally, more than a year after I started posting it, I redid like 1/4 to 1/3 of chapter one from scratch. Even though it will never be perfect, I can live with it now. chapter 2 on the other hand... It's an imperfect intro to the right story, rather than an intro (good or not) to the wrong story.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

To be honest, my intro probably doesn't hit the right notes to explain what my comic is about, which may be part of my problem. It starts out seeming more like an anthropomorphic fantasy than a dark urban fantasy / horror story. That's just something I think I'm going to have to live with, because I'm tired of reworking old pages (I already do it far too much). I think my best solution is drawing a new cover that showcases the tone and subject matter better than the one I'm using now.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

oh god, you reminded me of the 3 cover pages I spent hours on only to later scrap. Then my current cover page I did in one hour after it came to me at 4am(edited)

and it was perfect

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

XD

and my page redoings were after the reboot.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Cap, I don't know how representative it is of the story but I looked up the Ashes cover page and it's very impressive

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, I already redrew my intro once.... and this is the third iteration of this comic. And I'm currently redrawing the first two chapters of my other comic. I'm so sick to death of starting over. -_-

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Oh, thank you!! I like to go all-out on covers, heh.

Kabocha

Promotion... ... is that a thing you can eat? ... A few things I've tried is business cards -- tweeting about it -- posting about it on dA... I try to stay away from services like Tapas and Webtoon because I'm not formatted for those sorts of things, and I fear I'll probably just frustrate myself. It's a delicate balance right now between remaining happy with my work and getting it seen, but overall, I guess I'm not too stressed about it since it's not a source of income for me... I just... like making comics. I've also done conventions -- Conventions are fun, don't get me wrong, but nowadays they're a really low return on interest for many shows for original stuff (except slice of life and "oh no I did a bad" types of zines -- people seem to really enjoy things like that since it's often pretty easy to relate to). They feel like they used to be easier for selling original work, but the market's gotten rougher because there's so much competition and only so many dollars. if I ever print, I'm probably going to have to lean on some marketing-savvy friends for help... Hopefully things haven't changed too much by then. I think the tool that's worked best for me in the past few years has been doing guest comics here and there, as well as using topwebcomics, oddly enough. TWC was pretty good for referrals when I started doing comics way back in 2006~2007...

sagaholmgaard

Since the topic is about promotion... Do yall know if there are any twitter hashtag events for webcomic creators? My friends in the indie game industry have certain hashtags that people can post in during specific times every week - do we have anything similar?

Kabocha

#Webcomicchat!

https://webcomicchat.com/for-creators You may also find this page helpful

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

#webcomicchat is great because you get to talk shop while talking about your own work! It's not just "look at my comic"

sagaholmgaard

Ahh!! Thank you!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I know some people do #WebcomicWednesday - not sure how official it is, but it gets some attention!

sagaholmgaard

I'll check that one out as well!

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

There's also #comicartistsunite too

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

webcomicchat always looked like fun, but I definitively am on the wrong side of the globe for the times it's going on

mirandalorian

Promotion is difficult. I always feel like I'm being too pushy, even for something that's free. I also feel like I built up a following that had nothing to do with comics or art and so when I switched directions to head that way, i don't get the response I would like. Reading all the thoughts here has been really helpful tho. Just got to put them into practice

Feather J. Fern

I think my current attempt for promotion is at least being more willing to promote. I have to force my fear of "I shouldn't tell people because it's not as good as (blank)" and just shove my comic into a spotlight

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

If anyone is worried about bothering people, putting variety into your promotions will make things more palatable for people for sure. I have one person on my timeline spamming the same exact post over and over again, almost daily, and it doesn't seem to be doing them any favors There's no need for a promotion every day. The people I see that do a more-obvious promotion tweet, like, weekly, or every two weeks, seem to get good results from that Sometimes less is more

mirandalorian

I need to get to that point Feathery. And ya, daily is a bit extreme imo. But I have to figure out the good balance

Feather J. Fern

Even weekly I don't do it because I feel like I am spamming and I feel awkward

Oh! Speaking of promotions, one way I found I got my comic promoted was by doing guest comics for other people! I got lots of viewers after each guest comic I did

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, for social media promo, e.g. on Twitter, you want to make your actual tweets have value -- not just things being linked off the tweets. (This is where gag-a-day kinda comics have an advantage, because each strip has entertainment value and you can just post the whole strip in a tweet.) Obviously this doesn't apply to every promo tweet; so like, weekly promo tweet that's solely about the links, as mentioned by others, is fine. But yeah, aside from those, you wanna make your promo tweets fun to read.

Feather J. Fern

Also cameos! Cameos are a great promo

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not gonna lie, I am lowkey paranoid about doing cameos. Someone I know had to remove their cameo of someone else's character, because that other person objected to their character being in the print version of the comic.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Uff

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

oh rip

Feather J. Fern

Oh man, that's rough.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I'll never even print HoK but I can still imagine someone being all "NOPE, I CHANGED MY MIND" at a later time

Feather J. Fern

I am planning to do some cameos for other people, not that Go Figure will ever be in print but I can see that problem. I think what I would say is that if you want a cameo you have to be 100% certain

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Might be a good idea to have a very simple agreement thing you can have them sign

Feather J. Fern

Yeah I was going to have a written consent form

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

"I agree to let you do a cameo of my character, and to not be a jerk about it at a later time. Signed"

Feather J. Fern

Signed and dated by both parties XD

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

There's also the broad hashtags like #webcomics and even things more geared to genres like #drama and #fantasy and so on. Doing art memes helps sometimes, too.

mirandalorian

What do you think the best hashtags to use are? Is webcomics too saturdated?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I'm not sure about the best hashtags, but my biggest thing about hashtags on Twitter : don't use a bunch of hashtags in a single tweet!

For broad hashtags like #webcomics or #fantasy, I gotta wonder if anyone's actually checking those out...

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Yeah, I usually tag my update posts with #webcomic and my comic's name, but honestly I have no idea if #webcomic has ever helped out my post ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mirandalorian

Ya, I typically keep it to two or less, but i always wonder if webcomic is actually useful lol

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

takes note to use something more specific than #webcomic in my next update tweet

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I think it may potentially be useful as a label for someone who's just found you on that platform, and is not sure what you're promoting. But beyond that...

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

I usually use #historicalfiction and #webcomic. Not sure which one helps more, but well, there it is.

mirandalorian

Ya, I should use the genre tag too.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Do people even search genre tags for that matter lol (a bit pessimistic, but still a genuine question)

like, I'll be the first to admit, I don't hashtag search to look for new comics to read. I don't think I ever hashtag search ANYTHING, unless it's like..... a very active trend that I am interested in (e.g. an upcoming video game that I'm looking forward to)

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Well, the tags are popular enough to be suggested by twitter so I'd think some use them, probably likeminded folk.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same keii. I mostly use hashtags to look for fan art, exclusively on Instagram.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

There's also a trend of "art sharing" tweets. I have found a couple of artists and webcomics through that kind of event, but again, the turnover isn't anything to write home about.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I wonder if readers make use of the search more than us creators do?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I doubt it, Lee

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

:/

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I never use it as a reader, at any rate, though I don't know if others are like that.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Though, actually that's not true, I have used hashtags to look at more things being posted within art events. So inktober, mermay, hourly comic day, etc.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But art event hashtags are useful, because -- like I mentioned before -- those tweets provide entertainment value without anyone having to click on offsite links. e.g. the #StartToFinish tag that's hot right now.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I have followed new artists from those tags though and then checked out their off-site stuff. It's definitely a more round about way than someone specifically looking for comics to read via hashtag

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

From my limited observation, when people are looking for comics to read, they tend to ask for recs rather than do hashtag search?

"Anyone know of some good magical girl webcomics?" etc

which is a bit of a bummer for us creators, because that is completely outside of our control. Nothing we can do about it.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

here's the popularity for the #webcomics tag

So SOME people use it.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight) I'm gonna guess it's mostly creators using them to promote, rather than readers using them to search.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Also it seems to be peak in popularity in the USA

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) the graph implies interaction, really.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

What counts as interaction?

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

tweeting it and searching it

what I'm saying is we can't know.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t so much in Twitter, but I personally DO search hashtags on Insta to find new art.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's true, we can't know. I just personally can't imagine anyone searching for #webcomics to find stuff to read

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Insta is definitely hashtag game city.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, IG is a different beast

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Comics don’t generally gel so well with Insta’s format, though, so I’m usually seeking art and not comics.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

just to be safe, occasionally use it

To be honest, I'm probably more likely to find and become a fan of webcomics here on this server than any social media

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, I wouldn't say "don't use #webcomics" -- use it if you have no other, more specific tags to put. But on Twitter, you don't want too many hashtags, so if you got more specific ones... use those instead!

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

I feel somewhat self conscious in getting an instagram. But I'll get one most likely.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It might be a good idea to switch up your tags regularly? Choose two or three from a relevant list each update and see if any of those tweets get a noticeable boost in engagement.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Yeah that sounds a good strategy

speaking of, any other creators into historical webcomics?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I don't seek them out, but there's some that I read.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

yours is touching upon the historical keii with the joseon-style elements.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's definitely not historical but yeah, got the aesthetics going for it!

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Yeah!

I must admit, I'm a bit starved for like-minded creators. I mean people that create historical webcomics. I know and follow a few but that's not nearly enough.

(if I'm babbling too much for creator babble please tell me!)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Babbling is fine! But this might be better for #general or possibly shop talk as it's not related to this week's topic?

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

oh sorry, there's a specific topic here too?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, all the channels under CTP Activities have a... topic thingie that changes weekly

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

okay got it. I'll take it there. Sorry :/

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Don't be sorry, be glad to chat about this stuff in another channel

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

With insta please be mindful that if you‘ll always post with the same hashtags, their algorythmn likely will assume you‘re a bot.

mirandalorian

Oh really?

I definitely did not know that.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Yup, it‘s a big annoyance. At least it was that way half a year ago, how is the algorythm now? Nobody knows.

I kinda hate insta, but it‘s the platform with the most interactions for me, although I don‘t know if it goes beyound liking my panel cutout.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Instagram does it‘s darnest to lock the user into theor own ecosystem.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Yeah, hard same. I definitely get the most likes there, but I get very few referrals from insta.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Funnily, the only social media where I KNOW I got at least one reader from is pillowfort and their teeny-tiny webcomic comunity!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I keep wanting to hop over there, but also starting a new social media sounds exhausting TuT one day.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I need to start using PF

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

It‘s pretty chill, reminds me of the hey-day of livejournal, with great filtering - more intended to create many small communities than one giant pot like twitter.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t think any platform’s algorithms like me. I get very low engagement no matter where I post. I’m just not good at figuring out what these platforms pick up.(edited)

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I still have three invites left for this week.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Does cross promotion work for you guys at all?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

A little bit? But I think my comics are a hard sell, so I generally don’t get a lot of referrals when I cross-promote with other creators.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

It‘s how I found this community; but otherwise, nope.

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

Now I need to check out your comics Lee. I'm intrigued!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Haha, if you want to! If they’re not your cup of tea that’s a-okay.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I still have three invites left for this week.

@chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa] if you don't have plans for those invites, I would definitely take one and follow you first

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

About the hashtag thing on Twitter..... I have found the hashtags #webtoon #webtooncanvas and #celebrateCANVASday to be particularly useful for those of us publishing on Webtoon Canvas. I have gained a few new readers from this, and the official Webtoon Canvas page often retweets when these hashtags are used.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

That's good to know. I'm planning to start mirroring on Webtoon so I'll have to be sure to remember to use those tags.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I need to fix my series on WT first. But I'll give those hashtags a try once that's been done

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I tried using webtoon hashtags a few times, but their page never retweeted me. It seems either random, or there’s some hidden requirement for getting a rt.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

i use the tag sometimes but I found it more responsive if you have a vertical scrolling format comic

then they're more likely to respond to you

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh, yeah.... I use a traditional page format.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

same rip

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I do combine all my pages into long episodes at the ends of chapters, so it’s kinda scrolling, but they’re just traditional pages stacked on top of each other, lol. WT definitely doesn’t like that, but I don’t have the time to reformat hundreds of pages.

Feather J. Fern

Also promo thought, I randomly joined people's streams before and then got hooked on their comics after seeing them draw on twitch or something like that

Pistashi

I struggle a bit with promo stuff, because I get too self-conscious about self-promoting and I'm the type of person that ends up doing too much of it or none of it

at the moment I'm working on making a press kit and sharing it with some blogs and networks about comics

but still, what I usually do is join groups and try to talk with people that works with art and comics

this is kind of more inclined to networking and meeting new people to talk about what we like than promoting my work to potential readers

nothing wrong with that, but looking with a more critical eye I still have a lot to learn about building an audience and reaching people who could become future readers

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I wonder HOW much a large social media following is worth. Insta‘s shown me that it isn‘t necessarily translating into readers.

carcarchu

in my experience followings on different platforms are non-transferable. same goes with having a large following on your comic itself, doesn't necessarily mean having a lot of followers on your art accounts. that's why they say "don't build your sandcastle in someone else's sandbox"

Pistashi

that makes a lot of sense

kayotics

If you’re building your following around your own content (original art, comic updates, etc) then the likelihood that the following is transferable is higher, but it’s still not 100%. You’re competing with everything else on their timeline too.

RebelVampire

i think a thing to consider with webcomics especially when it comes to social media is that a good portion of people who follow comic creators on social media are other comic creators, not people who are just readers. and the good majority of comic creators do not have a lot of time to read other webcomics. While there are certainly exceptions, I see those very few and far in between. So the conversion rates for social media right now are super low until the dynamic of the communities on the platforms changes.

kayotics

I’d agree with that, but also having a social media presence has definitely opened up some doors to being seen by other creators, many of whom are professionals. It’s good for networking, might not be the best for gaining and retaining readers.

RebelVampire

Oh yeah for sure. My point was about conversion factor

its factor in networking is a whole other matter entirely

and is indespensible

kayotics

One thing that I didn’t mention for myself is that networking has helped a LOT with getting new readers. Word of mouth, is always the best way to advertise, and other webcomic people giving you a plug can see some really strong results

[shellsan]

So this weekend I attended my first ever convention, Supanova in Brisbane (QLD, Australia) and these are thoughts as a first-time attendee, as well as my overall experience.

First, I’m going to start with the positives. This was a really fun weekend, and everyone that I met was wonderful. As far as conventions go, it’s a smaller convention than the bigger ones overseas but it’s one of the bigger (and more popular) ones in Queensland. As a first time attendee I really had no idea what to expect, and I was very gratified to see that the con was probably equal parts fan-arts and their works (key rings/charms, prints, bookmarks and comics/books being most common, but not the only things available), and then proper merchandise stores.

One thing in particular that I loved about the fan-art section that I cannot scream about loud enough is the use of business cards. That’s right. Business cards to me, were something collectable and they usually said something about the artist. They were like a free mini-art work and they were what I used to figure out when stalls I wanted to return to later to buy from, so they were very important, and I collected many over the weekend.

Another thing I adored was the free iced coffee that we got. I’m not sure how common this is, but the event was sponsored by dare iced coffee, which I’d never actually had until this weekend. It was a publicity stunt, of course, however, it was also the pick-me-up that I desperately needed to make it through the endless walking of this weekend. And guess what? It worked. I really hope that they continue to do this sort of thing because, as mentioned, I’ve never had one before, but now that I know that I like it I’m more than willing to spend my money on it.

The food. Again, I’m unaware of how common this is, but in the case of supanova brisbane, the food really wasn’t that expensive. In fact, it was on par with anywhere else I would go to eat out ($12 AUD, without drink was around the average), short of super cheap fast food (though they had a dominos there as well as an option). That’s a major winning point for me personally, because it means I’m more likely to actually buy food there next year instead of just bringing snacks and surviving until I get home.

The panels! I’m going to do a separate post of my panel experiences, but I will say that they were well coordinated and the few I did go to were well worth it.

Unfortunately, there were some negatives this weekend that I want to discuss as a first time attendee that I think need to be addressed.

The most important one I want to talk about is the wristbands used to show that you’ve bought a pass and everything. My friend and I got a weekend pass and went all 3 days (Friday to Sunday). When we received them, we both noted that it says void if removed - obviously. What it doesn’t say, however, is that your entire weekend pass is void if you remove your wristband. What this means is that you cannot remove that wrist band for the entire weekend, lest you want to buy a new pass. There are exceptions for skin-tight cosplay and what-not, the lady later explained, but none of this was explained to us and it doesn’t say that on the wristband. So we assumed that every day you went, you would receive a new wristband. This is not the case and I cannot stress how much I wish this was explained better. I nearly had a panic attack when I thought I was going to have to purchase a new pass to be able to attend the rest of the weekend, that really did a number on my mood for the morning, and my overall experience. What annoyed me the most is how much, however, was how big of a deal this was viewed as. These wrist bands are used every year for this convention, and they obviously have plenty of excess stock, but apparently removing them was a big enough thing that the supervisor had to take care of it. Of course, she was lovely and explained it all, and was really forgiving and gave us new wristbands, very sympathetic that this was both of our first times, but it was still very frustrating. It’s also really annoying. The wrist bands are pretty water proof, but they get caught on things and there were a few times when I thought it was going to rip off while I was at home. I would much prefer it if there was a new wristband issued everyday so that didn’t occur.

That was the only major set back to me personally. There were a couple of other annoying things that were more to do with figuring out how to navigate (which is a personal issue, there were maps and super nice volunteers everywhere and they were amazing) or with the people manning the stalls; in particular toy stalls. There was this one guy that kept on throwing a ball on a string in front of people, and if I wasn’t paying attention and it caught me off guard then it was a little too close to a jump scare for my taste. 

Over all, it was a very enjoyable long weekend, and I’m excited for the next convention I can go to, and I hope the experience is just as good.

(Panels, My Haul, Cosplay)