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notheroicnotromantic · 1 month ago

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WIP Wednesday - Landoscar Ageswap!AU edition.

Some of y'all might remember this idea I rambled about a couple of weeks ago and ever since then, I've been working on it! It's at around 15k words rn and I've only written out 1/4 of my draft so you better PRAY for me.

ANYWAYS there's a sneak peak under the cut. 🫶

some context might be needed, so:

it's set in an imaginary 2025 season with a made up calendar, grid + wdc fight. (obviously LOL)

oscar's 24 going on 25 and has been at mcl since 2020, lando's 20 going on 21 and in his rookie year.

nico rosberg is lando's manager. (listen, I had to.)

osc friend group = 2019 rookies (minus lando ofc) + logan

lands friend group = ollie + kimi (2025 rookies)

basically the thing that intrigued me so MUCH is the thought of having a rookie lando that's so enamored and obsessed with his cool older teammate BEGGING for some attention and awkward oscar who's used to playing second fiddle to daniel absolutely in TATTERS because why is his new cutie of a teammate trying to be besties?? aren't they here to race?? why is this puppy with the big eyes following him around PLEASE leave him alone.

and then they have like dramatic back-and-fourths for the majority of the season.

also I kind of ripped of the Alpine storyline for Lando but changed it to him being a former RB driver for the sake of drama.

It takes another fifteen minutes, but eventually Oscar emerges from his room, in a wine-red t-shirt and some dark shorts. That shouldn’t be considered a look in any shape or form, but Lando can appreciate the foundation the outfit is built upon. If you catch his drift. (It’s because he’s a racing driver, get it?)

They head out together then, and Lando follows Oscar to the parking lot, where a chic and minimalistic black 720 S Spider is waiting for them, Lando’s salvia collecting in his mouth simply by looking at it. Yeah, maybe he’s a car guy, it’s literally his job.

“What a beauty,” Lando marvels at the car, taking it in from all sides before getting ready to jump in. Oscar has stopped in front of the driver side door, holding out the ignition key. “You want to take the wheel?”

“Osc, I could never,” the younger chokes out, but the Australian simply tilts his head. “I’m not going to offer again, mate.” Fuck it, I’d be stupid not take the opportunity. Before the Oscar can regret his decision, Lando’s snatched up the key and is sliding into the driver’s seat.

Maybe it takes them another five minutes to start driving, Lando letting his hands run over the interior of the car, but Oscar keeps watching him with a neutral look, that makes Lando’s inside’s feel like he’s on fire, so he hopes he doesn’t hate him for it.

Another thirty minutes later and they reach the Piastri home, which should be called the Piastri Mansion, really. It’s almost as big as Lando’s own family home back in the UK and that’s been in his family’s possession for years, but this house is too modern for it to be some sort of family heirloom. Obviously, Lando knew that Oscar’s grown-up wealthy if his parents were able to send him across the world and support his racing career in Europe, but knowing and seeing are still two very different things, at the end of the day.

Nicole Piastri welcomes them at the door and the truly delusional part of Lando’s brain feels like he’s being brought home to his boyfriend’s family for the first time. Well, teammates aren’t that far removed from work-spouses, right?

The older woman greets him with another tight hug, and Lando buries his head in her neck, clinging onto her tightly. In the next moment, there’s something trying to jump up his legs, a pair of fluffy middle-sized dogs trying to reach him, tongues out and tails waging.

Oscars beside him immediately, “No, Rosie, Baz, back off!” He commands the dogs, which shouldn’t be this hot frankly, and the two stop, but continue to stand in front of Lando, big, dark eyes looking up at him. It’s too cute, really. So, he can’t do anything but sit down on his knees and open his arms wide for the dogs to jump into them, licking up on his face.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them take so well to a stranger,” Nicole gasps, cheering a little for their interaction. Lando loses his balance and falls onto his back, Basil and Rosie following him and continuing to cuddle up to him. Yeah, he knows the government names of Oscar’s pets. He run an Oscar Fan account for two years, it’d be a bad look if he didn’t.

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try to save you,” Oscar sighs, a little disappointed maybe before continuing his walk into the house and into what Lando assumes the direction of the back porch. It sems like the two furballs are finally excited by the presence of one more of their owners, because they’re gone in a flash and following his teammate outside. Maybe they’re hoping for a round of fetch.

Lando would play with them all day.

Oscar’s mum helps him up, still left lying on the hardwood floor beneath him. “You know you’re first teammate he’s agreed to bring around?” Lando’s sure his face resembles one of the fish he loathes so much. It’s not like he assumed that Daniel and Oscar used to be best friends, but now he feels weirdly honoured. But he’s also like fairly sure Oscar only did so because of his mother in the first place.

The rest of the Piastri family is in the backyard, Oscar’s in a conversation with one of his younger sisters, Hattie, and there’s Nicole’s boyfriend on the barbecue. The dogs are chasing each other around the grass and the large swimming pool at the right side of the garden.

It’s only now that Lando notices how much he’s out of depth here, because it’s literally just Oscar’s family, including Mark Webber, here for the celebrations. Lando figured he’d be able to blend in with some of the friends or acquaintances of the family during the party, but now he’s realizing he’s part of an actual family barbecue. He feels honoured, but the anxiety’s also back.

Nicole takes him by the shoulder, dragging him to the table and chairs where the Piastri children have settled down. “Come on, Lando, I’m sure you’re hungry and exhausted after that race,” which is of course the moment his stomach decides to make itself known, grumbling. Lando feel his cheeks heat up, which might become a permanent state at this point, “Yeah, I couldn’t keep anything down before the race, so I guess I need to make up for some lost calories,” he tries to go for a light-hearted joke.

Judging from the woman’s facial expression, he didn’t quite hit the mark with that one. “What?” Nicole looks at him horrified, “Don’t worry! This has been happening to me since I started in like the British F3, so I’m totally used to it by now,” he explains - which doesn’t help his case at all, sadly.

“You’ve just awoken the demon,” Mae tells him as he sits down across from her.

Unfortunately for Lando the next person to join them at the table is Webber, who chooses the chair next to him. Maybe he should have declined the invitation after all.

Most of the dinner is more than an awkward affair to Lando, who can’t shake this stiffness from his limbs. He tries to his best to the enthusiastic about the food, and it’s great. He’s starved too, which should be the perfect combination but every time his gaze shifts to the left his heart starts to beat a little quicker.

When the sun starts to set Lando feels like the celebrations have reached a point for him to make a polite exit without offending anyone. Nicole is quick to offer their guest room to Lando, but he doesn’t think he could stand being around Oscar for any longer. Even if his heart breaks as he bids his goodbye to Baz and Rosie, who’d been his rock during dinner, brushing up against his legs and resting on his lap.

Instead, Lando orders himself an Uber for the way back to the hotel and Oscar offers to wait with him in the front of the property. “Thanks again for the invite,” Lando breaks the awkward silence between them, when he can’t stand it any longer.

“No need to thank me, mate. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with you, I can’t imagine Mark to be an enthusiastic conversation partner, but I get so little time with my siblings, I’m sure you understand,” Oscar explains as he wraps his hand around Lando’s wrist. Besides, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I’m not your biggest fan, the sentence continues in Lando’s head.

“No, I think I do need to thank you. Could you give me your mum’s number? I want to properly thank her once more, I feel like if I hadn’t been around your family, it’d been a pretty sad ending to my first race. I’ve been missing my own like a limb today, honestly.”

Oscar squeezes his wrist once more at the confession and promises to send Lando Nicole’s contact as soon as he’s back in the yard with his mobile. Then, Lando’s Uber drives around the corner. They bid each other goodbye, and then the Brit gets into the car.

Making his way back to the Hilton, Lando’s still unsure how Oscar’s feeling about him.

[AUDIO DESCRIPTION OF THE NEWLY-WEDS CHALLENGE WITH OSCAR PIASTRI AND LANDO NORRIS]

Oscar Piastri: Lando, what is Oscar’s favourite pizza topping? Lando Norris: Mate, you probably enjoy something disgusting like Tuna. Or no, Hawaii? Oscar Piastri: Actually, it’s pretty simple, I just like pepperoni. Lando Norris: I think we just found a food opinion we can agree on, Osc. Okay, uh, Oscuh, what Disney character is Lando most like? Oscar Piastri: Hm. That’s a tough one, you kind of remind me of Timon, from Lion King. Or I guess Lighting McQueen from CARS would be fitting, too. Lando Norris: Don’t tell Liam about that second one. If I’m Timon, does that mean you’re Pumba? Oscar Piastri: Sure, Lando. If you want to me to be. Okay, next one question, who is most likely to deal with a spider? Lando Norris: Oscuh, obviously. Oscar Piastri: Obviously!? Lando Norris: Those Australian genes need to be good for something, mate! Reckon you’d protect me from the big, bad spiders. Oscar Piastri: I think your screeching will be enough to hold them off, honestly. Lando Norris: Oh, wow. Well, moving on, Oscuh, what would be Lando’s dream job, except for his current profession? Oscar Piastri: Something that’s not even a job, probably. Like streamer, or maybe Instagram model. Lando Norris: Oh, the influencers are going to come for you, mate. Besides, I already stream. Wait, did you know that? Oscar Piastri: [just smiles in reply.]

#f1 rpf #landoscar #lando norris x oscar piastri #wip wednesday #twinklaren #my work

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datura-tea · 1 year ago

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holy shit this year marks 10 years of this blog and moz!! i can't remember the exact date i started posting here - my archive says i have one post from november 2013 but let's disregard that - but i do remember it was around late 2014/early 2015 :)

^ one of the very first moz art pieces i ever drew, for fallout week 2015!!

memories and art through the years under a read more bc it got long

2014 → baby's first rpg!! i started playing fnv on my cousin's jailbroken xbox late 2013 and finished mid 2014 and i loved every minute of it. i remember waking up at 8am and playing almost nonstop until 2am the next day haha!

i didn't play moz on my first playthrough - but i did start creating a character that would eventually become her: a shorthaired ex-boxer who punched her way through obstacles when diplomacy failed. i remember she spent a lot of time with boone. i liked him then, because he saved my ass more times than i can count. but i digress. this is draft 1 moz essentially

2015 → this is the year that i was doing my thesis so i could graduate but i was so depressed and stressed about it that i distracted myself by replaying fnv on pc, where i played through the dlcs for the first time. i fell in love with the dlcs' oversarching story; particularly ulysses, who i became obssessed with, especially since i couldn't find any content of him at the time. in the game, i played as moz; i had most of her personality and choices down, but her backstory was still up in the air.

fun fact: this was an existing sideblog that i remade to be a fallout blog so i could look for ulysses content, and when i couldn't find any, i made some myself, featuring moz as my main courier six. originally, i didn't ship them, but eventually i ended the year as a courier/ulysses otp shipper.

this was the year i started drawing digitally - my uncle let me borrow a drawing tablet and i used an old copy of photoshop i pirated hehe

2016 → i graduated this year!! and promptly fell deeper into my depression. this was the year that it got so bad that i had to be medicated. through it all, this blog and moz and ulysses and my fandom friends were with me. and for that i am truly grateful :) this was the year i figured out how to lock transparent pixels so that i could color my lineart lol

2017 → i started hammering out moz's backstory this year i think. there's a lot of sketches of her and her family in my files. i experimented with shading and backgrounds here but that experimentation was pretty short-lived

2018 → i started using references seriously!!!! i did a lot of oc on oc kissing this year, featuring mostly moz and many friend ocs haha

2019 → didn't draw much this year. actually this year was a blur and i can't remember much from it except from it being the year of my terrible no good bad copywriting jobs... anyway i did manage to continue my courier/ulysses brainrot and make this piece, which i'm still proud of

2020 → pandemic time. i spent a lot of time asleep at home and i think this was also the year i started doing commissions?? shoutout to anyone who has ever commissioned me - thank you so much, i truly appreciate it!!

2021 → i switched from my old-ass pirated photoshop to clip studio paint and never looked back. also i did a bunch of commissions for my grandmother's surgery, which failed, and i distracted myself from the sadness by drawing my ocs over and over and playing disco elysium

2022 → by this year, i've got moz down pat and have started vaguely developing other ocs instead. but she's still always at the back of my mind

2023 → i bought new brushes from true grit texture supply and immediately found new favorites that i started using for everything. i tentatively started incorporating background elements in some pieces!

2024 → while it's still too early to say where this year will lead me art-wise, i will say that i started experimenting in realistic paint studio (which i bought in 2021, the same time as clip studio paint) a few days ago and i'm liking the results so far. we'll see!

all in all, these last 10 years have been quite a ride, but i'm glad i stuck around and i'm glad you guys stuck around too!! much much love 💖💖💖

#shh peri shhh #god. look at that old art... i took the ones that i still kinda liked but the rest...#well i don't hate them. but they're old and of their time and i wish i could redo them lmao #my art #moz

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elwinsglasses · 5 months ago

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shannon's editor essay please if i beg will you give it to me

Haha so sorry about that y'all I'm pretty sure I answered an ask or smth about that essay all the way back in March, and now it's uh *checks notes* August. Whoops. I dug back through my drafts and it turns out that the essay was pretty undeveloped lol, and part of the reason that I procrastinated so long was because I was too lazy to hunt down sources for some of the stuff. Also, at this point a lot of the stuff I was going to write about is (at least in my perspective) pretty common knowledge, so I didn't feel it was super important. Anyways though I'll probably never get around to getting it well organized so I'll just bullet point the general ideas. Also just in case this is all my theories/speculations and none of them have been proven.

So basically I had a kind of far-fetched theory about why the character development of Sophie/Fitz/Keefe in the later books but especially Unlocked/Stellarlune was Like That was because of Shannon's editor

Shannon had a baby I believe 2019/2021ish? and as expected her writing schedule was severely impacted bc obviously baby

And the result of that was that (for at least Stellarlune) her editor ended up drafting the general plot, and she would fill in the outlines (this was stated in I believe an instagram live or barnes and noble interview for Stellarlune. There was a post floating around her that summarized that event but for the life of the I can't find it)

Anyways if you're unfamiliar with Shannon's editor, she's a super pro Keefe/Sokeefer, and is the reason why Keefe is on a disproportionate amount of covers. That wouldn't necessarily be a big deal except I feel she's allowed it to color her view of the story, instead of focusing on what makes the most sense narratively speaking

Like my biggest issue as stated in my last post was how the narrative treats Keefe, esp at the beginning of Stellarlune

However, as a whole, I personally found the whole plot and character development of Stellarlune to be a little forced, instead of it feeling like a natural progression

Because Sophie in Legacy, after breaking up with Fitz, was like "hmm I don't think I'm ready to date anyone"

And I was absolutely here for that. However, in Stellarlune, which is set just a few weeks later, she suddenly knows her soulmate is Keefe

And honestly now that I've had time to mull on it, I do think it's not 100% her editor's fault.

Shannon has been writing Kotlc since she was 21, and has been at it for over 10 years. I imagine a lot of how she feels about Kotlc and the characters has changed significantly. Plus she as a person has changed significantly, and is now a mom of two. As such I think she probably also wants to be done with Kotlc, which probably also explains why the Stellarlune felt that way

Either way this is kind of a negative post lol, but I don't exactly blame either of them. I have the feeling Kotlc has worn out its welcome one way or another, and like it or not, the chapter is about to close soon. I still remember fondly how much I loved this book in my early teens, even as I wish it could have ended with more of a bang than a whimper.

#fitz vacker #sophie foster #keefe sencen #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc theories #shannon messenger #kotlc #kotlc discourse #stellarlune #ask answered

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tamamatango · 8 months ago

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“Holy shit they actually froggin did it”: A Keroro Gunso anime revival preliminary info and speculation post (late as hell edition)

Okay first of all,

AWAKEN

That’s right, vanished-into-the-void bastard Kirb here, I am an alive person still, though I’m certain a lot of stuff on this blog is horrifically outdated. Don’t get too used to my presence, I’m a whole ass adult with a 9-to-5 now and don’t really have the energy to put into consistently maintaining this account, at least not to the degree that I used to (took me well over a whole ass MONTH just to write this post). However, I’ve returned for a special occasion, as basically anyone still in this fandom is already aware considering it’s been forever now:

We are so fucking back

youtube

It took thirteen years and counting, but here we are, a brand new Keroro anime project is in the works—no “the short anime of all time” Flash series here, this is the real deal, straight out of 2004–2011, and goddamn is it beautiful. I might’ve been off the mark when I called it for the 15th anniversary, but it’s now the 20th, five years later, and the madmen did what was once thought impossible by many.

So let’s break down what the hell is actually going on here, because when this got revealed last month, Keroro fans on all sides of the globe basically started collectively running around like headless chickens. I’m gonna divide this aggregation post into the following sections:

Where did this even come from

Clearing up misconceptions

Okay so like what is “““Project”””

Collection of statements from official accounts, staff and cast, etc.

The Localization Question (TM)

Miscellaneous thoughts that don’t really fit anywhere else

I was originally going to make this a living document of sorts but some small stuff has already happened since I started drafting this the day after the reveal happened, so this should be it for the time being. It’s a hefty enough post as is. I am just a master procrastinator :V

That takes care of all the goofy intro nonsense, now for the parts you actually want to read, starting underneath the cut!

Section 1: The Signs Were There

As previously stated, 2024 is the 20th anniversary of the Keroro anime, along with the 25th anniversary of the manga’s serialization but apprently even they don’t care about that since they’ve made no fanfare around it whatsoever, unlike the joint 15th & 20th anniversary back in 2019. Maybe they will as we get closer to the manga anniversary in November, but for now-obvious reasons the anime has been overshadowing the manga side by a lot.

If you’ve been monitoring the Keroro PR account on Twitter (you bet your ass I’m still calling it that) you’ll have noticed an increasing output of Stuff over the last year or two, even compared to the prior anniversary. These include but are not limited to:

In 2021, the series opened an official YouTube Channel, where they’ve been doing reruns of the anime (region locked to Japan), PR podcasts, etc. It’s also where the revival announcement premiered on April 1 at midnight JST.

In 2023, the series opened an official Fan Club with a paid membership. Originally it was a temporary project meant to last for only the two anniversary years (2023 for the pilot oneshot’s anniversary, and 2024 for the anime/manga), but was ultimately extended indefinitely due to “good reception” (my guess is it was always planned to be more than two years but they didn’t want to make it too easy to guess as early as last year that the anime was returning lol). They have a merch store, giveaways, and some kind of social component. I don’t know much about it otherwise because it’s a paid membership that I don’t have access to.

The series has had an overall increase in merchandise and collabs since 2022 or so. This has pretty much always been the case, but there was a bit of a lull between the Flash series ending and the ramp-up period to this (I’d start at 2021 when the YouTube channel opened). Save for the 15th/20th stuff in 2019, for which the major project was Keroro UC, a spinoff manga/plamo line that just…never released all the models and has never been brought up again. Guess it didn’t do very well :V

A number of international releases/rereleases happened as well, but I’ll get into that a little bit more in its dedicated section. For now let’s just say that the anime being finally licensed and put up on streaming in North America may indicate the new series will be English translated in some capacity. It’s also made a resurgence in Korea, its biggest market outside Japan, where it’s had new exhibitions and collab cafes, a redub (that only got through 2 seasons I think), and even a new mobile game.

And finally, a week or so before the announcement, a new Twitter account was created specifically for the anime side of the brand. I think this was really the big tip-off, as Keroro PR has been the hub for all things related to the franchise for the last nearly 15 years, even when the original anime itself was still running during Twitter’s infancy. Keroro PR has posted everything for every other anime anniversary. The fact that now all of a sudden they had to sector off the anime stuff into its own account made it clear something bigger was going on. (Accordingly, the Keroro Anime account has labeled Keroro PR the “original work” account, AKA the manga side of things.)

Essentially I think they’ve been planning this to some degree since as long ago as 2021, the first time the president of Bandai Namco Pictures (animation studio comprised of Sunrise staff that took over the Keroro IP in 2015 and are now producing the new anime) openly acknowledged the possibility. I’ll just link my own tweet with the translation of his statement here. This was right around the opening of the YouTube channel, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

tl;dr Momentum for the anime component of the franchise has been building for the past couple of years pointing toward a new anime around the 20th anniversary, so I wouldn’t say this comes off as a huge surprise, though I was expecting something smaller scale than what we might be getting (more on that in the “what is this” section).

Section 2: No It’s Not April Fools, Guys, Plus Other Clarifications

With the announcement spreading across the internet, I’ve seen a few points of confusion going around that I’d like to clear up before I go any further.

As I’ve made clear in the section title, yes the new anime was revealed on April 1, no this is not a prank. A lot of Japanese companies do post April Fools pranks, but keep in mind April also marks the start of the new fiscal year in Japan, so many legitimate announcements are made as well. Plus, the original anime’s exact anniversary was on April 3, just a couple of days after the announcement.

I’ve seen a lot of people call this a new series, season, etc., but officially, the only term used to describe this so far is “new anime project”. That could mean literally anything, from TV series to movie to ONA and so on. I am leaning closer to a certain interpretation, which is what the entire next section is for, but for the time being, calling it anything other than “new anime” is technically not concrete info.

There seems to be a little bit of confusion on what studio is working on this, but in short: it's Bandai Namco Pictures (BN Pictures or BNP for short). As previously mentioned, this is the studio that inherited the Keroro IP when it spun off from Sunrise in 2015. Sunrise, the anime's original studio, is now a brand name for the larger anime management company Bandai Namco Filmworks. Although they've held the IP for almost a decade, this is the first time they've really gotten to do anything with it besides merchandise licensing and some anti-piracy commercial from a few years ago that they’ve ironically scrubbed from the internet now. If you've seen the name Studio BIND (Mushoku Tensei, Onimai) floating around, they're assisting with the production but are not the primary animation studio. Of course this is all assuming this setup continues on to the final project and not just for the PV, but I see no reason to assume otherwise at the moment. It would be rather unusual for BNP to outsource anything if it was solely for a 30 second trailer.

I think that does it for the main points of contention I wanted to address for now, so moving on to the thing we all really want to know…

Section 3: Okay But What Is It Actually???

Well, as I said in the previous section—we don't know, lol. At least not officially. But if we put our thinking caps on, we can make a few deductions:

The anime project will be broadcast on TV. In other words, it won't be an ONA (original net animation). This is determined based on the fact that TV Tokyo, the network the original anime aired on, is on the production committee. For those who don't know, a production committee for an anime is the collection of parties/companies who contribute to the production and funding of the anime. For comparison, the Keroro Flash Series, which aired only on the TV channel Animax to accompany a dedicated timeslot for the original anime reruns, did not have TV Tokyo in its committee. So, it will likely air on TV Tokyo once again.

It's (probably) not a movie. This is going to be more evidenced by point 3 than anything, but BNP has been pretty clear about when something is a movie specifically in the past, such as when Kaiketsu Zorori had various feature films in the 2010s before getting an actual TV anime revival in 2020. Still, we can't be 100% sure until someone directly says otherwise.

It's going to be more than a one-off. I will post the statement in full in the next section, but the Keroro PR account uses specific wording (“resumption,” “new start,” etc.) that sounds very much like they’re making a longer term commitment, so this is straight from the horse’s mouth, essentially.

The series will be a continuation of the 2004-2011 series rather than a reboot. This one’s probably my flimsiest prediction as the PR statements sort of obfuscate whether it’s one or the other, but the character bios section on the new anime portal site gives away a big hint: the Garuru Platoon, Pururu included, is there. This means that we can reason that, at minimum, all or part of Season 3 has already occurred. The character bios themselves also summarize things that weren’t revealed until a little while into the show, such as how Momoka and Tamama met. That all said, the Garuru Platoon members do not have bios, so I suppose they want to keep what’s being done with them a bit of a secret; perhaps they intend to reintroduce them with some kind of dramatic arc again. Either way, if the series does retread/retell some old material, it probably won’t be the bulk of the story. This makes sense to me, as it’s not like the show has been so hard to find in the last decade that a reboot is necessary to get a modern audience on board—it reruns constantly on kids’ TV channels like the Japanese version of Cartoon Network, is available in full on multiple streaming platforms (movies included), and is now on its second rebroadcast of the whole series episode by episode on the YouTube Channel. Unless you’re a literal toddler, if you’re interested in the series, you’ve probably watched at least some of it already.

In conclusion, based on the above (admittedly sparse) evidence, I am inclined to believe the new anime project is a TV series that will air on TV Tokyo as the 2004 anime did and will be a continuation rather than a reboot; however, there is no way to determine episode length, episode count, etc. at this time. It could be a cour (for those who don't know anime, "cour" is your average 12-episode season), it could be consecutive cours, it could be split cour (in other words, goes on break for a season before returning), it could even be a year-round anime if they really wanna go all the way with it. Granted, I hesitate to believe that they would do the latter simply due to the nature of anime production these days, and as far as I know, BNP has not done a single year-round airing since its founding. Even the aforementioned Kaiketsu Zorori revival was a two cour (24-25 eps) series each year from 2020-2022. My guess is we're looking at something similar here, but Keroro is a pretty big deal, so could they make an exception? Maybe, but this setup would already lead to more episodes than the vast majority of anime these days, so it would still be plenty enough to be happy with.

Considering all this and the list of numerous hints that we were potentially getting a new anime as far back as three years ago as bulleted in Section 1, you might question what made me doubt that it could be a series in the first place. Well, besides just the series being so old and it being so long since the anime ended that it felt a little like wishful thinking, at least three members of the cast said that a new series was not something they were specifically looking to do...I think, anyway. Let me explain.

Last year, on December 9, a Keroro birthday event with Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro), Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama), and Takeshi Kusao (Dororo) was hosted in person and livestreamed on TwitCast for fans that paid for a ticket. There were two timeslots for the in person event, and only the evening show was streamed, with the afternoon one being in person only. Now that I have adult money, and being the impulse driven gremlin that I am, I paid for the virtual ticket. Most of it was just cute little segments like the three cast members doing live commentary on some of the birthday episodes, discussing the results of a “favorite lines from their characters” poll hosted on Twitter a few weeks before the event, and a brief visit from Jashin-chan of Jashin-chan Dropkick/Dropkick on My Devil, a series that Keroro recently collabed with for a series of merchandise. Unfortunately the event wasn't archived publicly and they specifically asked to not upload materials to social media, and I'd like to respect that request mostly out of consideration for the cast, so you will just have to take my word for it :P (besides those who were watching me talk about it in real time on discord).

The reason I'm going on this tangent is because, at the end of the stream, a special prerecorded video featuring the three cast members was shown exclusively for virtual attendees. In it they essentially explained that they still greatly enjoy the characters/series and would love to partake in more events and projects, but "not necessarily a new series." I promise you I listened to this clip over and over the entire time it was available and that's what I heard. Now look, the room they recorded this in was echo-y, and my Japanese is pretty decent (enough for my N2 anyways, yeah I did that while I was away from here clap clap) but listening comprehension is my weaker area, so maybe I just take a massive L here. When I started writing this post there was a sentence here guessing about whether they were just being cheeky or didn’t know yet, but an interview came out last month that gave what’s all but a conclusive answer to that. More on it in the next section but tl;dr, they likely did not know it was happening at all. Well, at least they got to be as surprised as we were :V

Anyways now that the thing has been revealed none of the last two paragraphs even matter, so I just prattled on for no reason besides to admit my own shame. Next bit.

Section 4: SAUCE PLOX??? (Current testimonies from relevant people/entities)

Naturally, when the trailer dropped, we got a pretty decent handful of comments from whatever staff and cast are on social media. Most of these are just people going “yay we’re back hooray!” (paraphrased) but the Keroro PR account statements are actually kinda sorta hints? So I’ll start out with those. There’s two tweets that I want to highlight here:

First is from April 1 (JST), the day of the reveal. In this tweet the account wishes everyone well for the new school/fiscal year, but the important part is the last sentence, This can be translated any number of ways (thanks to yoroshiku onegaishimasu and its 50 potential meanings, every Japanese translator’s worst nightmare), but essentially it’s something along the lines of “we hope you’ll support the restart/resumption of the Keroro anime for a long time to come.”

The keywords here are obvious: 再始動 (saishidou) meaning either restart or resumption. I know you’re probably thinking those are two very different things, but the nuance here is that it’s more of a restart in production than restart of the continuity. For the latter, I think it’s more common to see リメイク, which is just the English word “remake” in katakana. Worth noting that the Flash anime used none of these words in its marketing, but it did use language such as “brand new invasion plan,” “rebirth of Keroro,” and so on…in addition to, you know, having a completely different artstyle and a title change to just “Keroro”, which this clearly does not (the artstyle is relatively faithful to the old one and the project is under the original Keroro Gunso name).

The other big word is 末永く(suenagaku), which…also doesn’t have one exact translation, but implies somewhere between years or even an indefinite period of time. I didn’t want to say a specific unit of time in my translation of the statement because well, we can’t really be sure of anything here, but either way, they’re signaling that they’re most likely in it for the long haul.

Then there’s the tweet from the PR account commemorating the actual anniversary of the original anime (April 3). This one uses 新しいスタート, “new start”—no real multiple definition shenanigans here, this is about as literal and straightforward as you can get. In terms of the reboot or not question, this could lean either way, but it definitely adds to theory that it is a series of some sort.

Okay, that’s all for the individual tweets I’m gonna totally overanalyze, otherwise I’d be stuck here for even longer than I already have been. Here’s a quick list of involved staff who tweeted about the reveal:

Unsurprisingly, Kumiko Watanabe (Keroro) posted that day, reiterating that it is real and saying “believe usssss!” (As a reminder, half the internet was convinced it was April Fools for like a whole week)

Adding to the cast comments, Etsuko Kozakura (Tamama) says, “Whoo-hoo! Can’t wait for more news! Keroro Gunso is still the greatest!!”

Jouji Nakata (Giroro) didn’t make a specific comment about the trailer, but has been retweeting the other official accounts and such and replying about it, so he has acknowledged it otherwise. As a substitute, here’s a picture of him visiting the Keroro Exhbition in Ikebukuro a day early.

Here’s an interesting one—Haruna Ikezawa (Momoka) said about the trailer, “Really?! Is this real?!?!?!” While no cast members outside of the Keroro Platoon were officially revealed to be reprising their roles, I’m assuming they’re going to try their best to reassemble as much of the cast as of season 7 as possible—besides Keiji Fujiwara (Paul/Narrator), who sadly passed away in 2020—so I kind of figured Ikezawa would know about this, but maybe not…? Well, considering that the main five were completely blindsided by this to the point where they weren’t even sure this was a real thing until they were in the middle of recording it (as I said previously, more on that later), I suppose the other cast members were just. Not told. I don’t really doubt Ikezawa would return (she even stated it could happen someday all the way back when the then-final season ended in 2011 and did come back for Flash)…but unless they were like really worried about leaks why even keep them in the dark to learn with the rest of the public, idk man :V (so much for not overanalyzing tweets huh)

On to production staff now, here’s the tweet from Satoshi Koike, animation director of the latter third of the original and also the reveal trailer, indicating that he’s most likely back for the new project. It’s just a simple “Welcome back! (de arimasu)” but the images he used were drawn back in 2019 to commemorate the start of the Reiwa era, spoofing the original lyrics of the first opening. The reveal trailer tweet itself from the Keroro Anime account does this too (“Starting today, the Reiwa era shall be known as the Keroro era!”).

New to the staff is Jouji Furuta (yes we have two Joujis now har har), who did the storyboards and direction for the trailer. He’s relatively new to the scene as a whole, with his most well known project being Shaman King Flowers. Although he never worked on the series before, he did a pretty good job emulating the original, and based on the last line of the tweet, it seems like he will be staying on for the full project as well.

And now for a kind of weird section where I talk about the few related accounts that the Keroro anime twitter is following but haven’t made any kind of verbal acknowledgement yet.

First and foremost is Mine Yoshizaki—you know, the guy who created the fucking series, whose name is on the copyright string and whose explicit permission they had to get to do another anime in the first place? Yeah so it’s been over a month since the reveal now and there has been zero acknowledgement from him. I do know his personal social media account has been inactive for quite a few years now (I feel like the anime account is only even following it for symbolic reasons), but he had multiple other opportunities to say something at this point. He did contribute some signed artwork to the anime-focused exhibition that just ended but nowhere in it does he directly mention the new adaptation, and so far he hasn’t commented on it in Shonen Ace (maybe in the next volume, assuming that’s soonish). I have my theories about his relationship to the anime, especially now that the Kemono Friends fiasco has occurred, but that’s all a story for another day or never. I’m sure he’ll contribute something later, but even so it’s just really bizarre to have nothing to say about your biggest creation’s first new adaptation in over a decade. Oh well.

Character designer Fumitoshi Oizaki, who has been around since the beginning if I remember correctly, has been retweeting things, but no official comment just yet. (He discretely left a message at the expo apparently, but didn’t post it online, so no idea if it mentions the new anime.) He isn’t credited on the trailer, but considering he’s still been pretty involved with the franchise’s promotion over the last few years, I would be very surprised if he wasn’t returning.

Last but certainly not least is Junichi Sato, the chief director for the original anime for the first two seasons, arguably its most well-known and critically praised era. He’s also a very notable director in his own right, having headed other famous series like early Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi. Sato didn’t direct the original anime for the majority of its runtime (though he did direct the first four movies), but he still directs and storyboards on projects to this day, including for other franchises’ major anniversaries (namely Doremi and Precure). Though not certain, I think it’s very possible that he returns for this in some capacity, if not as director than perhaps for storyboarding or general advising.

To close out the testimony section, I’m going to share here the translation I did of the aforementioned interview with Kumiko Watanabe in last month’s issue of Newtype (anime-centric magazine published by Kadokawa). I won’t re-summarize it here since it’s not particularly long, but the main takeaways from this in terms of hints as to what we can expect are that a) the cast was surprised by this and potentially didn’t even know back in December when they last discussed the possibility of working on Keroro again, and b) as I previously speculated, this is going to be a long term enough project that at least Watanabe feels the need to physically prepare for it lol. And thankfully, it seems they’re all excited to go back to the series. I spent a long time thinking they might not be up to it again since it’s been so long and they’re much later in their lives/careers (Nakata just turned 70 oh man) but I’m glad I was wrong! Though I don’t expect this to be another 300 episode commitment anyway; in spite of the PR comments I don’t think we’re going for that long with the nature of anime production these days lmao.

And now for a topic which I think many of you are concerned about…

Section 5: “But what if my 日本語 is not 上手???” (The Localization Question)

If you did not get the joke in the above headline without looking it up, it’s probably safe to assume that if you want to watch this Thing, you will need it in a language other than Japanese (and even if you did get the joke you will know if you are truly 日本語上手 when people stop saying 日本語上手 to you). I’m going to focus on English for this post since that’s the primary language of the audience here, though I would be very shocked if there isn’t at minimum a Korean translation—dub more likely than sub imo, since the most famous version of the show there had different names for the characters and was changed to be set in Korea, and the series is HUGE there to the point where it almost rivals the Japanese market.

So, English. Well, if it were a few years ago (say, if this came during the 15th anniversary like I was originally coping over), I would be markedly less optimistic about getting any official translation at all. At that time, the dub was explicitly dead and the only English sub had been delisted for a few years, and even that was only available in a select few countries in Continental Europe on a pretty obscure streaming service called Viewster for like a year or two before getting pulled. It’s no surprise that this particular sub eventually became more well known as the subs on the torrents compiled by ColdFusion (whoever that was, I’m still not sure myself). That was until…

…the magical year of 2021, when our heroes at Discotek licensed the ENTIRE SERIES (minus the movies) for an official English release using Viewster’s existing translations! That’s right, we got all of it. And not only that, the whole series was also added to Crunchyroll, though only the sub; Discotek had the Funimation dub but it seems it did not get ported to Crunchyroll when the merger happened this year. It does seem that Crunchy has still not made the series available outside of the US and Canada, which is a shame, but man is it still surreal to have the entire series legally available both digitally and physically after nearly two decades of scattered fansubs and hardly accessible official releases. Surely this was a huge win for Discotek, right?

Weeeeeell…no. Of course they weren’t able to say it out loud, but it’s been extremely heavily implied that unfortunately the BluRay/DVD releases flopped for them, and they did say they definitely won’t be getting the movies or the Flash series. They also stopped releasing the discs on a one season a year basis and started bundling them together, with seasons 5–7 coming out all at once later this year, so they’re clearly trying to just get it off their plates. To be honest, this was pretty predictable because…it’s been on Crunchyroll since before the discs even came out. Look, physical media is super cool and all, but who in this economy is going to pay $40-60 per box for a handful of seasons at most when they can get the whole damn thing on their phone for like $8 a month. Crunchyroll isn’t necessarily a disc killer; their release of Digimon Adventure, for example, still seemingly did well despite that series being available on Crunchyroll two years prior, but in addition to Digimon being more popular in the west, it’s one $60 purchase for the whole series versus having to spend like over $200 for 358 episodes. I applaud them for rolling the dice and trying to get this behemoth of a release out there, but I’m not surprised about the lack of financial returns.

However, since Crunchyroll now has set a precedent of having the original series available on their platform, we just might get the new series available on there as well—if not as a simulsub, then at least dropped in batches later on. I’m not 100% confident in this, particularly because technically Discotek still holds the license, but my guess based on the way they’ve talked about the series is that they’re pretty open to someone else taking it off their hands when they’re done releasing the original series (and the translations weren’t originally theirs to begin with anyways, they purchased them and did some touch-ups to the existing translation with added typesetting). As far as simulsubs go, the kids’ shows that get simulsubbed tend to be from Toei, with whom Crunchyroll has a known partnership. But if it is split into cours rather than being a year-round anime, I think the chances of a simulsub go up. Whatever the case may be, it’s for sure in a better position to get an official subtitled release than it ever was before. I’m certainly praying this happens because I believe most of the people capable of fansubbing (with good translation anyway) have gradually moved away from the fandom over the last decade for various reasons—myself included, though mostly I just quit fansubbing/scanlation in general for Personal Reasons(TM). Fingers crossed, everyone.

So subs remain as a not-guaranteed-but- definitely-not-low possibility. But what about a dub? If you recall, Keroro has had a very rocky history in 3D with English dubs, with the American dub being in licensing hell for years before finally falling into Funimation’s lap and subsequently failing to take off despite remaining a beloved cult classic to Some Fans (I am not as high on it, but longtime Kirb followers probably know that by now), and the only other English dub is relegated to the network Animax in Hong Kong + Southeast Asia with no official home release, leaving all of it besides parts of seasons 3 and 4 as lost media (and the voice acting sucked ass but at least the script was accurate). But we’re not in the mid 2000s to early 2010s anymore; this is the screamin’ ’20s, baby! So much anime is getting dubbed now, sometimes at almost the same time as the Japanese release! There must be a chance, right?!

Eeeehhhhhh I wouldn’t bet on it. Even the Toei kids’ shows Crunchyroll started simulsubbing usually don’t get dubs (Digimon is an exception, and the reboot’s dub took YEARS to come out). Anime dubs, as far as I’m aware, are not cheap to produce (though it’d be great if more of what the companies are pocketing went to the actors’ wages >_>), and if the show does have the potential to become somewhat of a long runner, I think they’ll need to see more interest around the IP to fund one, and both Funimation and now Discotek’s releases have proved that the audience for it isn’t always there. I also speculate they’d be doing a lot of recasting; the casting process is not as smooth and (I believe) more expensive than it is in Japan, and a lot of the original cast are not working as often in the field anymore and/or have been involved with some pretty serious controversies—I’m sure those in the know are thinking of a specific drawn-out conflict but I’m pretty sure it’s more than just About Him at this point. So let’s just say that while some of the cast still remembers the show fondly, I think trying to get them all in the same project again would potentially open some cans of worms better off left closed. It’s not 100% impossible it gets dubbed, you never know what the industry can manage to make work these days, but I’d wager it’s like 90% not happening. Just a hunch. If anyone more knowledgable than me on anime localization (this goes for both the dub and sub stuff) would like to argue me with better explanations than I have I’d very much be glad to hear it.

Section 6: The Stuff That Doesn’t Fit Elsewhere + Final Thoughts

There’s not going to be any real organization to this section. Here’s just some bullets of miscellaneous stream of consciousness thoughts related to whatever:

The character bios page on the site linked in section 3 has some WEIRD romanization choices. I don’t expect these to reflect on any official localization because chances are they’ll go with what Viewster used, which is largely what the fandom is used to besides the Kululu/Kururu split. It is indeed Kululu here and Kululu has been the de facto official spelling for a very very long time now but I still have a personal preference for Kururu because “Kululu” loses the onomatopoeia joke and I’m a rebel. But like. “Tololo”? Since when has Tororo ever been called that in any media? And worst of all, “Pole”? POLE?? That’s literally never been a thing what glossary did they pull these from.

Also worth noting, Alisa and the Narrator had merchandise sold at the Keroro expo (will talk about that next btw) despite not being on the characters page. This isn’t a confirmation of anything but I would be very surprised if Alisa doesn’t return at some point since she was pretty prominent later in the show and Yoshizaki seems to have a particular fondness for her, and the Narrator will obviously be there with a recast, though jury’s out on if his little ’sona guy will show up too. It won’t be the same without Fujiwara :(

I do want to touch upon the “Keroro expo”, officially known as the “Keroro Gunso Super Gerogero Museum” (expo is a fine shorthand because the Japanese word can mean exhibition also), since I’ve mentioned it a couple times throughout this write-up. This was an event that was held in Ikebukuro just recently from April 27–May 12 that was basically a walkthrough experience recreating settings from the anime, having artwork and stuff sprinkled in between (all reused, no new concept art or anything sadly). The main gimmick was that the venue had an exclusive app that let you take AR pictures with models of the Keroro Platoon. It also had an AI chatbot feature where you could talk to each member of the platoon, and not too many posted pictures of this feature but apparently the chatbots were uhhhhhh weird. I have no idea how much of it is generative from other LLMs, and I’m assuming they programmed it at least partially with their own original input/databases (which is the only way to make generative AI even close to ethical), but from the few screenshots I’ve seen their speech was just a little bit awkward and some of the stuff they said was really bizarre. At one point users started to turn it into an otome game and successfully romanced the frogs, which I’m assuming is a little bit out of the bounds of what they were expecting from this experiment. If they do release that app publicly at some point—they labeled the version at the expo to be a “test version,” so maybe—I sincerely hope they at least fine tune it because Good Lord. Finally and maybe most importantly, there were new voice lines recorded for the exhibit to give it an audio-drama type simple story, but unfortunately it was probably not archived because video recording was not allowed inside the venue. The platoon all had new voice lines along with Fuyuki and Natsumi, reportedly still played by Houko Kuwashima and Chiwa Saito respectively, so most likely they will return to reprise the roles for the new anime, though I don’t think those two were much in question. That’s really like the only important part of this for the purposes of this post I’m not sure why I mentioned anything else here actually. AI chatbot Dororo wants you to know he enjoys tickles from Giroro and Tamama. Yeah this thing’s a little fucked

I didn’t want to get too deep into this in section 3 because it’s not really a production related question, but…are Shin Keroro and related new characters gonna be in this or not? For what it’s worth the site seems to count the Flash series as part of the anniversary celebration, and screenshots with Shin in them are there even if he is completely absent from the character page. Flash was a total reboot so I don’t think it will be that exact iteration of the character if he is in the new anime, but there must be some way to work his stuff into the existing anime canon even with its many differences from the manga. Honestly I think the main obstacle to him appearing is just that the guy is not very popular lol. He’s hardly in the manga anymore and Tomosu and Myou are in it even less. I’m not sure if it was just franchise fatigue following the end of the anime but the reception to Shin was very meh across the board (at least among longtime fans, kids might’ve liked him I think. Which makes sense). So I could totally see them skipping him entirely. There’s still a lot of post-anime manga-only stories without his involvement at all, some that included him but he could easily be changed to some other character, and for the stories that revolved around him, well, the Flash anime got to a decent amount of them. This could really go either way but for now I’m going to lean toward him not being included. If he’s put in I think it will not be until the “second season” (whatever the definition of that ends up being) so we can be eased back in to the existing cast first before shaking things up significantly.

I like the new artstyle, assuming it carries over from the trailer to the final project. It looks like they hit a happy medium between the early and late artstyles of the original anime. This is the most obvious with the human cast who haven’t received new official artwork by Koike and/or Oizaki in a looooong time, and they look much better than the last time we saw them in season 7 where everyone got weirdly lanky for some reason.

Okay FINALLY I’m done here for now I think. At the time of writing we’re pretty much just in a “wait and see” phase with no other real concrete info around that I haven’t touched upon in this post. Trust me, I’ve tried digging for more, but I couldn’t find anything really interesting staff-wise and very few of the staff credited in the trailer are even on social media (sometimes staff can be a bit loose-lipped so it’s possible to get hints there). I’ve also checked every nook and cranny of the official sites of both animation studios and the companies on the production committee and turned up with nothing of note. I’m hoping we get some more info at least sometime between now and autumn.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end (or speedscrolling here, don’t worry I won’t be disappointed lol). I hope you found it informative even though I probably spent way too much time yapping about dumb shit. It took me entirely too long to write this post, but I don’t have as much time as I did as a teenager and it’s been a good few years since I’ve done a really deep dive into Keroro stuff. Needless to say, I’m beyond excited for this project and can’t wait to see how the last seven years of me huffing unhealthy amounts of copium pays off. I’ve had like a month and a half to sit on it now and it honestly still doesn’t feel real!

I will most likely return to report when we get some amount of substantial info—hopefully with way fewer words lmao. Until next time! Ge-gero~

#keroro gunso #sgt frog #sergeant keroro #anikero reiwa #I’m gonna call it that in tags because we don’t know if it’s airing in 2024 lol #infodump #translation #did y’all miss me #I hope not

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fairytales-and-folklore · 1 year ago

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you for the tag @marimbles! ♥️ No pressure tags: @litfeathers @lollytea @ashanimus @greyhavenisback @princecharmingwinks @tails89 @nutellarghh @ash-mcj @childlikegoblinqueen @daydreams-and-honeybees @avatarmerida @asarcasticwitch @sailahina @secretly-of-course @sapphic--kiwi @haystarlight @zyrafowe-sny @peachytea04 @slightecho

1. How many works do you have on AO3? just hit 100 last month!

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 479,814

3. What fandoms do you write for? I've dabbled in quite a few over the years, but the ones I've written the most fics for are doctor who (eleven/amy) teen wolf (sterek) and the owl house (huntlow)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Error 404: Brain Cell Not Found (teen wolf | sterek) You Always Want What You're Running From (sleepy hollow | ichabbie) What To Do When Your Emotionally Constipated Werewolf Boyfriend Gets Cursed By A Witch: A Guide (teen wolf | sterek) Gold Rush (the owl house | huntlow) Lovesick (the owl house | huntlow) 5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I do! Every kind comment means so much to me, so I always take the time to respond to all of them (though I'm not always great at getting to them on time.)

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmm probably The Courtesan and the Writer (doctor who | eleven/amy) I used to dabble in angst a bit more when I first started writing fic, but these days all my fics are pretty much guaranteed to have a happy ending, because real life is hard enough lol

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Pretty much all my fics have happy endings, but one of the happiest I wrote would probably be my huntlow college AU Until You Meet Someone Who Makes The Fall Feel Like Flying

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I wouldn't call it outright hate, but I have gotten a handful of rude comments over the years (complaining that I don't post often enough, telling me my headcanons are wrong, telling me how they think my story should have ended — one time someone yelled at me in all caps because I said that a character chilled red wine lol that one was wild)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do! Smut is fun. Mine is typically more focused on the emotional aspect than the physical, is usually the result of a long tension-fueled slow burn buildup, and is usually tooth-rottingly fluffy, soft, and sweet.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have! Back in the days where superwholock plagued tumblr, I wrote one of the silliest cross-overs imaginable, combining doctor who, torchwood, bbc sherlock, supernatural, the avengers, and sleepy hollow: Lords, Gods, and Madmen

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yup 🙃

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have! But most of them never saw the light of day 😂 one that did is called An Eggcellent Morning For Cooking Lessons co-written with @ash-mcj @tails89 and @nutellarghh

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I think my top three ships are reflected in who I've written the most fic for: huntlow, sterek, and the eleventh doctor/amy pond

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Luckily, everything that's posted to AO3 is finished, but at this point I'm thinking I'll probably never get around to writing the little nightmares, reylo, and captain swan WIPs I've had sitting in my drafts since 2019

16. What are your writing strengths?

I've been told I capture the characters really well, which means a lot to me. I've also been told that my writing is cozy and comforting and fills people with warm fuzzy feelings, which is always nice to hear 🥰

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I will sit there and agonize over the same paragraph trying to make it sound perfect instead of just letting the writing flow, so sometimes a fic will be in the works for a very long time until it's finally ready to be posted (by which time I'm probably sick of it and never want to look at it again 😂)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I've dabbled in this a little bit, but it's usually been plot-relevant, like a character learning to speak the language (i.e. when Hunter tried to learn Spanish in Being Human.) When I do write in another language, I always do my best to research and try to get the translations as accurate as possible, and I always include the English translation either in the fic itself or as an author's note so readers don't have to break away from my fic to google anything. (And also so that they know what my intention was, on the off-chance I translated something wrong and accidentally wrote something offensive.) 19. First fandom you wrote for?

Does anyone remember that vampire show that came out back in like 2009? Moonlight? Yeah, that one lol

20. Favourite fic you've ever written? God, that's like asking me to pick my favorite child. Okay fine, it's Until You Meet Someone Who Makes The Fall Feel Like Flying

#tag game #writer tag #writer tag game #fan fiction

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giaffa · 5 months ago

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Get to know me tag

I was tagged by @bich-the-moss, thank you! 💖 (and sorry for the late reply, I forgot this in my drafts 🙈)

Do you make your bed?

Yep, every morning.

If you could, would you go back to school?

I'm very fond of my high school memories but I wouldn't go back to waking up at 6:30 am every day. Hell world.

Can you parallel park?

Nope 🙈 I have a driver's license but I haven't driven since 2019.

A job you had that would surprise people?

I did one year of civil service to help the local associations of ex-partisans and ex-deportees digitalise their archives. I had the opportunity to interview a survivor of Auschwitz, and an old partisan who fought in the Italian Resistance during ww2.

Do you think aliens are real?

I think there's a good probability that we're not alone in an infinite universe.

Can you drive a manual car?

Theoretically? My driver's license says I can. In practice? Not driving for 5 years will make you forget everything.

What is your guilty pleasure?

You can do whatever you want forever and there's no guilty pleasures.

Tattoos?

I have a tiny treble clef tattoo on my wrist, I made it with some ink and a needle when I was 14 to match with some friends lol

I'd love to have more tattoos, but I'm always saving money for concert tickets.

Do you like puzzles?

I get easily bored with puzzles and board games, and my competitivity is almost nonexistent, so they're not all that fun to me. I enjoy them just if the shapes/colours feel interesting.

Any phobias?

I have arachnophobia but the problem isn't the spider, it's the web. With spiders in general my fight response kicks in and I usually get rid of them, but if I see a spiderweb (or something similar like processionary caterpillars) my flight response skyrockets off the charts.

Sometimes I also get anxious if I have a lot of physical mass over my head, like in caves or at the ground floor of a very tall building. It's not claustrophobia or speluncaphobia because I'm completely fine with tight or dark places, it's more similar to thalassophobia (which also gets to me sometimes).

Favorite childhood sport?

Fencing! I took a junior fencing class for 2 years when I was in middle school and it was super fun! I would've loved to keep attending but it was too expensive and the instructor was the most annoying person I've ever met.

First thing you wanted to be growing up?

A witch. I was convinced it was a legit career path, and tbh maybe I was right.

Do you talk to yourself?

Sometimes I do, but I usually prefer to sing or talk to my plants.

What movies do you adore?

Viktor und Viktoria, The Prestige, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Orlando, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Coffee or tea?

Tea <3

Favorite color?

Red + black + purple combination my beloved ❤️🖤💜

no pressure tags: @curiouscalembour @valleydoll777 @the-paisley @hurdygurdywizard @kissingmonsters @velvetlinedbox @mirillel @sleeeepy-demon

#thank for the tag this was super fun!#tag games

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mittensmorgul · 1 year ago

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2023 in Mittens Fic

It's once again time for the annual accounting of things I have written! I think this year's total fic count, at 4, is my lowest ever, but I still managed more words than my two lowest years (peak pandemic, i loathe you still).

For reference, past year end summaries can be found here:

2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | the closest thing I have to a 2015 wrap up post is the lil bit of text at the bottom of 2016′s post… even though my two most popular fics were from 2015 lololol

So I guess my main writing goal for 2024, since I know I will never surpass my 2015 totals, is to just do better than I did in 2023. Here's to more fic!

I managed a Pinefest fic, a fic I started for DCBB but didn't finish by the draft deadline and posted on my own, an annual destielversary fic, and an annual holiday fic. I think that's the bare minimum of what I try to aim for in a year, so even if I'm personally disappointed I didn't get anything else written in addition to that bare minimum, I'm glad I was at least able to hit that goal. Across this year's four posted fics, there's a total of 110,875 words.

Also, again slightly cheating, but since I've mentioned it for the past two years, I'm still making the @spngeorg podcast! In case the millions of words of meta I've written over the years aren't enough, and you want to hear me yell out loud about the show, you can start from the beginning on Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts! Or if that sounds daunting, since I just uploaded Episode 138, 7.12 Time After Time, which makes the backlog a lot to catch up on honestly, you're also welcome to just jump in now. Everyone please come yell with me! I swear, if you do start from the beginning, that I get dramatically better at this whole thing as we go on... at least, I think I have. If nothing else, episodes are far more manageably shorter now that I've developed a system. Only took 2 1/2 years, but here we are... :'D

With that business out of the way, let's break down those numbers! Presented in the order they posted:

Dear Western Red Cedar #2409 (63,433 words rated M) Written for @deancaspinefest with gorgeous art by @alexiescherryslurpy, and inspired by this tumblr post that had been plaguing my imagination for several years. It's a two person love triangle with Forest Ranger and secret bestselling author Dean and small town librarian Cas. Heck I want to go reread it just thinking about it now... this is a happy place fic for me.

one working part (40,051 words, rated E) I started this for DCBB, but failed to make the draft deadline, then finished it before posting began anyway... another canon finale fix-it fic, but this one is heavily It's A Wonderful Life flavored and based on a conversation I had with @greywrenn last year. This story picks up at the beginning of 15.19, and then slowly veers more and more from canon, running alongside canon and making rude hand gestures at canon along the way, because they all deserved to have nicer things than canon gave them.

all the time in the world (1,289 words, rated T) This is my annual Destielversary story, short and sweet. It's set immediately after the events of One Working Part, but you don't have to have read that to enjoy this one. Just know Cas is back with Dean, and they've got the rest of their lives stretched out in front of them.

Christmas, Present (6,102 words, rated T) My annual holiday fluff fic, this time set in an AU, since most of my past holiday fic has been canon universe. A Dean/Cas college AU, with Matchmaker Charlie who just wants her friends to be happy already!

And that's my year in fic (unless I manage to post something else in the next 33 hours or so, and lol no that ain't happening...)! As per usual, I've already written more than half of this year's word total for the 2024 Pinefest, which will post in March... or april... heck when is my posting date even... it's coming soon anyway! But it's all written! :'D

Once again, I've still got so many more stories I want to write. Even the To Be Written list has grown again. My idea list long ago surpassed SABLE status, and yet now there's even more on it...

It's five pages, and two thousand words longer than it was last year. this just gets worse every year :'D

But that means I'll never run out of things to write, and that's always something to celebrate!

Thanks again to everyone who’s read, kudos’ed, commented, reblogged, liked, rec’ed, and enjoyed anything I’ve written in the last year. I love you all. <3 See you in 2024!

#spn fanfic #destiel #things i have written #2023 fic roundup #shameless self promotion

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irrigos · 23 days ago

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2, 14, 16 for Morgan and Elliot

2. How long was the process before the character reached its final version? (or a version that would be clearly recognizable as the character?)

Depending on how you look at it, they either emerged fully formed from my mind like the goddess Athena, or they only truly coalesced in late 2019, almost a decade since they were conceived.

A lot of the beats were already there - I don't think Morgan's personality changed much since I first started playing, nor has Eliot's. But Henry changed a lot (he used to be a real shithead, and Morgan's story was going to be about letting go of their idealized image of him. A lot of their tension with Eliot was because he didn't seem sad Henry died, but he wasn't that sad because that dude was an asshole!!) so Morgan and Eliot's stories had to change to accommodate that. Also, I think Morgan's Catholicism was merely implied, and they weren't a Communist at ALL. So, I think they were still recognizably MORGAN, but they were missing a lot of the texture that Morgan got after I got my co-writer into Fallen London and had someone I could talk about them with lol

14. Do you have any quotes tied to the character, either from the story itself or from another source that fit them?

This quote from Moby-Dick has been saved in my drafts since 2022 because it was so #Morgan

As for Eliot... well, I don't have any particular quotes saved for him in my drafts for over 2 years, but I have three separate playlists for him on Spotify lol. I think my favorite song from them (right now, anyway) is Congratulations, You Survived Your Suicide

16. Is there any memes or running jokes associated with the character, both in- and out of universe?

eliot's rapidly receding hairline lol. every time shannon draws him, they move it back a centimeter.

I can't think of any running jokes for Morgan, because tbh all the funniest things about them - the Catholicism, the Communism, the BDSM..... - are also very serious expressions of their character. its IMPORTANT. ALL OF IT.

actually wait no the joke is that morgan and eliot wanna fuck each other sooooo bad and they just never will. it makes ME laugh, anyway

ask meme

#fallen london #oc: morgan fletcher #oc: eliot saint-croix #ask meme

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seanwinchester · 1 month ago

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well, i took a deep dive into my drafts and found this tag game the lovely spike @liamgallaghermpreg <3 tagged me in that i never did lol (it's only about 3 months too late...) so i guess we're doing it now!

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tag game!

Do you make your bed? i usually pull up my comforter yeah, which is essentially it as far as "making the bed" goes. I don't have any extra covers usually, and my plushies stay pretty much in place the whole night.

What's your favorite number? i guess i like 9, and usually odd numbers

What is your job? i'm currently unemployed (it sucks)

If you could go back to school, would you? for sure. i just finished uni and i already miss being a student. i actually considered going into another degree but it would only be for intellectual curiosity, and i also kinda wanna start working full time now.

Can you parallel park? i don't have a driver's licence

A job you had that would surprise people? i've only had like 3 jobs so far and i'm afraid they're not too surprising

Do you think aliens are real? i think there could be life somewhere else in the universe, yes. statistically it would make sense we're not the only ones. i don't think we ever have to worry about interacting with them though

Can you drive a manual car? i don't have a driver's licence

What's your guilty pleasure? 1. i don't feel guilty about pleasure 2. i'm too much of a chatty person to keep things to myself

Tattoos? yeah i have like 7 or 8. for now

Favorite color? crimson red my beloved!

Favorite type of music? i guess what i listen to the most is pop, rock, and indie. old and new stuff alike. but i suck at naming music catgeories so i listen to a lot of stuff in between and outside of those genres. i also love some rap, french variety, country or electro songs so really i'm pretty open

Do you like puzzles? i do! i don't do them often but once in a while i'll remember puzzles exist and have a blast

Any phobias? not really

Favorite childhood sport? climbing was my thing growing up! did it for 5 years from ages 6-11, and then a couple times after that years later but it wasn't the same. the interest is still there i think but the passion (and mostly the muscles) is gone so i don't really seek it out (sports haven't been my thing for years unfortunately). had fun going climbing with @jellybracelet though when she offered <3

Do you talk to yourself? every day

What movies do you adore? oh man, Little Women (2019) made me cry my eyes out when i saw it in theaters so that memory is still vivid in my head (haven't rewatched it since tho). otherwise i love cinema too much to have a favorite movie so I'll name a few classics i can rewatch anytime: Notting Hill, Coraline, Amélie Poulain, Astérix Mission Cléopatre (<- all my frenchies know this one)

Coffee or tea? i like both but i mostly drink coffee

First thing you wanted to be when you grew up? i don't think i was ever set on a thing. at least not that i can remember. i wanted to be a teacher for a brief moment at some point

---

at this point i feel awkward tagging people for an old game, i'm just doing this for fun, so anyone who wants to do it feel free! <3

#thank you again spike (and sorry lol)#tag game #about me

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shads-shipposts · 7 months ago

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"Anachronism" Prologue Rough Draft +LORE✨

Remember how I mentioned that the chapters prior to this would only leave you more confused as to wtf was going on? Well, the prologue is now finished and is being posted.

The background of Anachronism is this: back in 2015 I attempted to rewrite a 2014 RP that included the Tintin sailors (which is my first fanfic ever). True Colors was the name. It was never finished, instead transitioning halfway through into an original fic where the sailors got new names/designs/backstories as they were changed into ocs. The Karaboudjan would become the Caroline, but Scarlett was already a self-insert so her initial character remains (though she's changed quite a bit). Both the original fics and the 2015 are scrubbed from the internet, though I do believe one of you followers actually read that 2014 one when it was on Deviant Art. I am so sorry you had to witness that 😬.

Jump to late 2017-early 2018, the first hints of Anachronism were forming. It wouldn't be until 2019-2020 New Years that I started it in earnest. The story follows myself (yes, I get "isekai'd") as I end up in the same timeline as that 2015 fic. Originally it was the 2014 fic but I really don't want to deal with certain elements of that mess. Anyway, that Anachronism kinda started collecting dust as my Bad Batch hyperfixation hit and Adventures!AU was born. That series takes place after Anachronism, but Anachronism was never posted.

Well, 4+ years, three and a half books, and 500k+ words later I am finally starting to post snippets to curse the world lol. Schedule-wise, Anachronism won't premiere in full until 2029 most likely, as Adventures!AU is still my main project. But I miss the Karaboudjan crew, and my hyperfixation is strong for them rn so I'm posting and working on chapters.

All that to say buckle up, this fic gets wild. Magic elements are minimal in this fic, but they still be there.

Enjoy! :D Feedback is most welcome, I'm still figuring out the characterizations for the fellas as it's been a while since I really wrote heavily with them (Bad Batch has claimed most of my time).

CW: Mild horror elements

1872 words

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“Scared, Allan?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself here after he closed his eyes. It’d been months since the incident that gave rise to the event playing over and over again in his dreams, but time hadn’t dulled any of his emotions concerning the event.

“I must say, your fear scent is… unique. Fishy and tart.”

Confusion, horror, shock, disbelief.

“Don’t worry your little head there. I respect you and, strange as it may seem, I do find the need to fear you.”

Yes, fear there too.

“Funny ain’t it?”

And who wouldn’t be scared?

“An Alphian fearin’ a human.”

When they were faced with an alien of unknown magical abilities?

“Don’t see that every day.”

The scene wobbled and fizzled at the edges, like staring at a reflection on the surface of a stormy sea. The secrets surrounding the scene trapped deep in its depths, unreachable even if one tried their hardest to grasp the answers.

Allan Thompson walked through the scene, removed from his own actions as if he were just on autopilot. He couldn’t change the scene, no more than someone watching a reel on a screen.

He sat at the table, across from the half-human, half animal woman that watched him like a hawk. Dark stripes cut through her skin like thick shadows across a moonlit patch in the woods, a black and white tail flicked behind her, and piercing eyes the color of glaciers scanned him inside and out. She was a head shorter than him, yet power radiated off her like heat from an open flame.

His voice reached his ears, muted and distant.

His own and yet… not, in a way.

“Kid… I’m sorry about Turtle.”

The alien looked up at him, the furry ears on the sides of her head flattened against ginger hair.

“Thanks, man.”

Those cat-like eyes shifted to the side, as if searching for any other threats.

He knew it was a dream. Knew what was about to happen.

It did not ease the churning of his stomach.

“Actually,” she continued, mouth moving but voice coming from the very walls surrounding them. “I kinda wanted to ask you about something related to that.”

Allan knew what was coming. Knew what she was going to ask.

Knew how badly it would go, how swiftly the scene would turn dangerous.

But he was helpless to do anything but follow the script. Follow the events as they unfolded.

Eyes on her hands, waiting to see those thorn sharp claws, Allan again heard his voice from far away.

“Aye?”

He wished he could change course. Wished he could prevent what came next. Perhaps, if he could, then things would be different.

But no.

“Let me go after that short slaver with the dark brown hair. I want his head for orderin’ me to kill Turtle.”

There it was. The request that shattered everything. The request that would leave Allan with gaps in his memory that no amount of pondering or searching could ever fix.

He felt the shock course through his body, felt his spine stiffen and his heart skip a beat.

“I’m sorry…” he heard himself say. “But I can’t allow that.”

Ears shot up, a tail bristled, sharp teeth bared, and anger blazed in those icy eyes.

“What?”

If only he could alter his words. Explain more, explain better.

Save himself.

If only.

“I can’t allow you to kill him.”

He had dreams. He had nightmares.

This hell was something else entirely.

Pupils narrowed to slits across from him, jagged scars streaking down the table as wicked claws dug into the old wood.

“Is that your final answer?”

There was red now, deep in those eyes.

He could only watch, silently scream in his head as he fought with all his might to change the memory.

“Aye, I refuse to let you go after him.”

Futile. The scene would play out as it had many nights before this one.

The woman stood, ears low and tail lashing.

“Whose side are you on, Allan? Huh? The slavers?” A snarl curled her lip, the temperature around them plummeting as ice snaked out from her hands across the table. “How disappointin’.”

The edges of the scene corrupted, bleeding red and black.

He wanted to scream. Wanted to run. Wanted to hide.

Hide from the devastation bearing down on him like a hurricane at sea.

But there was no refuge. No escape.

“There will be another time to kill him.”

He had to witness the event that would alter his fate.

Words came faster now, a distorted echo to them that sent chills down his spine.

“But I heard the other slavers talkin’! He’s goin’ on patrol tonight! I can’t pass up this opportunity to claim revenge for what he did.”

“Look, kid. I said no, and that’s final.”

“Nobody’s gonna stand in my way. Not even you. Stand down now, Allan. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He got up.

Walked over.

“I told you no, kid! That’s an order!”

“Give it up, Allan. I’m doin’ this my way. I’m killin’ him tonight and you can’t stop me. Don’t even try to.”

He got close.

Too close.

It was over fast. She winded him with a headbutt, driving him back into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from him. He didn’t even have a chance to rise to his feet, weight pinning him to the floor. A rag clamped over his mouth and nose, drowning the world in a sickly-sweet haze.

Darkness followed swiftly after, a growl echoing in his ears.

“You brought this on yourself. Sweet dreams.”

And those were the last words he ever heard from Scarlett Hyde.

Allan sat up in his bed with a gasp, cold sweat pouring down his face as he fought for breath.

Was that her now, hiding in the dark corner?

He flicked on the light, fingers struggling to grasp the knob.

Nothing, just his trenchcoat.

It was too hot. Too stifling.

Air.

He needed air!

Staggering to the porthole, he yanked it open and welcomed the sharp chill that rushed in. Allan leaned against the wall, eyes closed as he fought to catch his breath and sooth his racing heart.

After that fight, any and all memory of the Alphian ceased. He couldn’t even recall what happened once he woke up. Because they sure as hell didn’t go from being overrun by slavers to being back at their home port without any sign there was even a hostile force occupying the ship.

Only one man had memories of Scarlett that went past Allan’s; Tom.

His friend and trusty right-hand man. The closest person to Scarlett on the ship prior to her mysterious disappearance.

Allan hoped he could have shed some light on Scarlett. Maybe Scarlett somehow drove off all the slavers after knocking Allan out, accessing some type of beast mode or something. She was an alien, and could shapeshift, so it wasn’t entirely implausible.

But no.

Tom’s last memory of her was Scarlett heading off the ship into the woods. Tom had gone after her, only to find himself face to face with the same slaver Scarlett was after. The slaver attacked him, but Scarlett showed up in some animal form and attacked the slaver. She won the fight but was stabbed in the process. Tom tried dragging her back to the ship after she shifted back to that half-human form, but then his memory too went dark.

That was it. The trail ended. Went cold. With no hope of recovering the fractal memories.

Maybe Scarlett was around longer, and had some alien way of wiping their memories. Why, then, did he have any memory of her at all? If she truly aimed to wipe all memory of her existence, he should have forgotten her in totality.

Instead he was left with only partial memories and no explanation that could even remotely make sense of the event.

Every port they stopped at, every contact he knew, he asked. When Scarlett Hyde rang no bells, he tried the false name she gave at first; Ice Shadow. Still nothing.

He tried her description, her species, her family, everything.

Nothing.

As if neither she nor her species even existed in the first place.

A knock sounded on his door, and Allan turned away from the window to stare at the clock by his bed.

05:00 am.

His port watch wasn’t due for another few hours, so it couldn’t have been someone calling him for that.

“Al?”

Tom. What was he doing up this early?

Passing through his dayroom, Allan opened the door and found Tom looking almost as disheveled as himself. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Tom rubbed his arm. “It… happened again.”

Allan’s eyes widened. “Scarlett.”

Tom nodded.

Allan stood to the side to let him in. “You too, huh?”

Tom straightened, looking slightly more alert as he sat on the couch in Allan’s dayroom. “Same dream?”

“What other dream would it be?” Allan growled.

Tom wasn’t put off by his tone, but then again he never was. “What are the odds, huh?” he said in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, a weak smile accompanying the joke.

Allan wasn’t amused. “Real funny.” He leaned on the table, pushing his hair back. “This is the fifth time in two weeks,” he growled. “I do not need this. We got that proud peacock prancin’ ‘round like he owns the damn ship, orderin’ us to and fro like damn dogs. I don’t need this headache on top of it.”

“At least the captain ain’t givin’ us any issues.”

“Don’t think that old man would notice if I scuttled the damn ship,” Allan grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Probably not.” Tom tilted his head. “Don’t think the dreams mean anythin’, do ya?”

“Concurrent dreams about an alien that we both know had the power to alter dreams?” Allan said. “It’s fishy.”

“Think she’s comin’ back?”

Allan shrugged tiredly. “Hell, Tom, I don’t know.” He glared in the direction of the door. “At least Sakharine’s finally tracked down the second ship. Then we can be back at sea, and I’ll have other things to keep my mind on.”

“Yeah, can’t wait to have that guy off.” Tom shuddered. “Gives me the creeps.”

“Feelin’s mutual.” Allan stretched. “Guess I may as well get coffee, not like I’m gettin’ any more shuteye today. Want some?”

Tom nodded, stretching too. “Won’t say no.” He shuddered. “Anythin’ to keep awake after that nightmare.”

Allan understood his hesitation with going back to sleep. Tom’s dream was far worse than his, with the man being hunted down in dark woods by a slaver bent on murder. Scarlett’s animal form wasn’t exactly comforting either, Tom describing it as a large tiger-looking beast with saber teeth that was a third again the size of a normal tiger.

“Alright, I’ll be there in a minute. Maybe the cooks have somethin’ already.”

Tom nodded. “I’ll wait outside.”

As Tom left, and Allan headed back to his room, the first mate mumbled under his breath.

“I really hope it was just coincidence.” He punched the door open. “Because I cannot deal with anything else.”

#karaboudjan #tintin 2011 #allan thompson #tom karaboudjan #anachronism fic #my writing

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