#hexxe.txt

[cerneala]

Estarossa is such a dramatic bitch. Like . . . He really waited until the last possible second to save the Commandments from Revenge Counter so he could make a Dramatic Entrance, spends five minutes monologuing at the Holy Knights, wakes up from his bath to throw shade at Meliodas and Zeldris, and decides to get the decrees for the hell of it.

[cerneala]

CERNEALA HAS MOVED.

You can now find me at SOLYNACEA; all of my edits and writing will be reblogged (or re-uploaded, if necessary), and pending requests will be posted there. Come follow me there for more NNT shenanigans!

[cerneala]

Thoughts on 315

If you haven’t read chapter 315 of Nanatsu no Taizai yet, you should probably skip this post because it does have spoilers!

I’m glad we’re finally seeing Elizabeth’s combat potential, and Bloody Ellie is a badass nickname, but this doesn’t quite mesh with what we’ve seen of Elizabeth so far? So I’m hoping we get more of an explanation of both that and, if she was a serious fighter who wounded/killed numerous demons, what changed her, since Meliodas implies that meeting her was what changed him.

The DK saying that Zeldris cares about him despite the facts that he ordered him to kill his lover, mocked him while using Meliodas as a vessel, and how utterly against becoming his new vessel Zeldris was proves, to me, how delusional the DK is. Or narcissistic might be a better word. But he’s really got a god complex (ha ha) going on, which, along with his surprise at Elizabeth’s strength, makes me wonder if he actually did anything during the war or if he just appeared to punish Meliodas and Elizabeth.

Merlin, once again, proves her utter unreliability. This is the second time that she’s kept someone’s Sacred Treasure from them (and the third time that she’s weakened a teammate, if you count her more than halving Meliodas’s power and leaving what she took with the Druids) and hasn’t told them she has it. Her reason of, “Oh, well you’re stronger now,” doesn’t make sense either, since Ban would have had it as a Holy Knight. I’m starting to think she just hoards things and refuses to give them up unless she absolutely has to, and even then when it’s only convenient for her.

Another Indura, this one supposedly a Commandment who sacrificed six of their hearts. I know that even the Demon Clan doesn’t like having them around, but the fact that the DK can summon them at will is kind of . . . Odd? To me? Because if he can control them, why are they known for wreaking havoc in their own realm? Also, the fact that it made spores/offspring makes me wonder if Indura are capable of reproduction in some way, or if it was an ability specific to that particular one.

Meliodas telling the DK that he’s going to die was very reminiscent of Sansa’s, “You’re going to die tomorrow. Sleep well, Lord Bolton,” line from Game of Thrones. But I wonder how he intends to kill the DK without harming Zeldris? Can he make him manifest, or is it going to be a case of waking Zeldris up (which means Gelda might arrive?), having Zeldris fight him from the inside until the Commandments are forced out of him, and then containing/destroying the Commandments?

This relates more to the last chapter, but did Escanor’s words reach Mael? I can’t see him being much help against the DK, but it’s possible that he could aid in defeating the Indura. There’s also the possibility of him “lending” Sunshine to Escanor, which . . . To be honest, I hope he doesn’t. Sunshine was killing Escanor. I don’t want it to damage him any more than it already has. Let him rest.

[cerneala]

Hi! The Trailer for Wrath of the Gods is out, and I want to ask what you think about it in terms of the animation quality compared to the last two seasons. Do you think it’ll let us down or could we be surprised and find out the animation is far better than it is shown in the trailer? (I don’t mean this in a hateful way towards the studio, I just want to know others opinions towards it.) -Thank You!

I haven’t really formed an opinion of the animation yet because, out of a one minute trailer, there were maybe 30 seconds of actual scenes from the new season. I’ve seen some people complaining about it from still frame screencaps, but, to be fair, you could pull ones that are just as bad from almost any anime series and A-1 made some, uh . . . Questionable ones themselves lol.

There were good shots and bad shots in the trailer. Good ones would be the individual Sin introductions, Drole and Gloxinia in the cave, and close-ups of the characters/the characters’ faces. Bad ones would be the long-distance shot of the Sins and the first time we see King in the cave when he’s attacking, and that all comes down to how the faces were drawn and animated for those particular scenes. The background and scenery all look fine to me.

It looks like Deen is making some minor and major adjustments to how the characters appear and what they’re doing at certain points. I know Elizabeth’s tights are missing when she’s seen as a goddess, and it looks like they’re either going to have some filler episodes to show what the Sins are doing while King and Diane are training or they’re putting the story about Gowther returning to the village near Ordan Forest  to save Pelliot near the beginning. Either way, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be using his armor for those events like he was in the manga.

There’s also Studio Deen’s back catalog to consider. They seem to be a hit or miss studio (in terms of animation quality) that sticks to the art style of the source material. I haven’t watched many of their shows, but I know that both Hell Girl and Fate/Stay Night are praised for the animation and art style.

Long story short, I’m reserving any hard opinions, good or bad, for when we either get a longer trailer or the new season begins airing. I’m hoping it will be good (or at least, better than A-1), but if it’s not, it will be something to laugh about.

[cerneala]

Unpopular opinion, but I hope Mael keeps Sunshine. Not because he’s my “favorite uwu,” but because Sunshine was inherently harmful to Escanor — remember that bit about how a Grace can cause drastic changes in a human host and even kill them? I do — and it would be nice for him to gain or awaken a magic of his own. Plus I’m pretty suspicious of Rosa and why she gave it to him in the first place.

[cerneala]

I just realized that Zeldris has Guila’s old hair from when she was first introduced.

[cerneala]

On the State of Things

It’s time to get some things out in the open regarding the final chapter of Dark Side of the Moon and what will happen next. To everyone who’s stuck with me this far, reading, reviewing, and leaving kudos, thank you so much! Your encouragement has helped me keep going when I felt like I couldn’t.

The final chapter of Dark Side in the Moon will not be out tomorrow (Thursday, August 8) because I want to put as much time and effort into polishing it as I can before I post it. To be honest, I haven’t written it yet, but it will be out within the next week. Just give me a bit of time to be as satisfied as I can be with it.

After Dark Side of the Moon is done, there are several projects to keep an eye out for! I currently have two stories in the works, written with the ever-amazing @maybeishouldwait, that I’m sure all of you will love. That’s all I’ll say about them — no spoilers or clues here — but I do hope you’ll come back for them.

I’ll also be returning to Bad Moon Rising; however, before I post a new chapter, the old chapters will be taken down and re-written, with some new content added on. So please, if you’ve subscribed to the story, keep an eye on it, because soon it will be re-worked to be brought up to my current writing standards. 

Again, thank you all so much for your continued love and support!

- Hexxe

[cerneala]

What inspired Moth? and, What part sparked your love for NNT, and in particular Estarossa?

Moth was inspired by a lot of things, but mainly my thirst for Estarossa. That’s usually how my OC’s start: I’ll get invested in a series, find a character I like, and start building around that to create someone I can pair with them. Then I wind up with a character who is incredibly different from what I originally planned but much better because they’re independent of their original intent.As for what sparked my love for NNT, probably the scene where Meliodas catches Gilthunder’s spear and hurls it back at him. I remember finding the series on Netflix and binging the whole thing in one night, then starting the manga the next morning. Seeing that little snippet of what was in store was enough to get me hooked. And Estarossa . . . he was such an interesting antagonist, y’know? Not to mention attractive. I was reading Tokyo Ghoul:re at the time, and he reminded me a lot of Renji Yomo, who I love, so I was instantly curious about him and just . . . my love of white-haired dumbasses kicked in.

[cerneala]

We’ve discussed this before, but what gave you the inspiration for Moth and how did you go about developing her character?

I feel like my answer to this changes every time that I answer it, but I’ll do my best to keep it consistent from this point on lol. Also, this turned out longer than I intended, so I stuck a cut to save space.

The original idea for Moth came about when I was reading the books Black Dog, The Leopard, and The Lady by K.V. Johansen; in them, there’s a character who goes by Moth, a being created when a witch made a pact with a demon to bind their souls together. She winds up in the service of the gods, hunting down the other seven of her companions with a cursed sword in order to earn her freedom from the gods and the safety of her lover, a werebear named Mikki.

At the same time, I was getting into Nanatsu no Taizai, and noticed that, for a story based on the legends of King Arthur, there were very few witches. Magic, yes, but it seemed like the only consistent thing between the source material and the manga was the presence of Arthur and Merlin. Which, to me, was a bit disappointing, because one of my favorite aspects was Morgan/Morganna. Moth’s very early iterations had her as the NNT equivalent of Morganna, but I discarded that idea pretty quickly because of how inconsistent Morganna is in the legends (she’s either his sister, his half-sister, or the unrelated Queen of the Fae, depending on which book you read).

Shortly before I started writing Bad Moon Rising, the Four Archangels were introduced. Now, I’d watched Supernatural, and read up on the hierarchy of angels and demons, so I was surprised when there was absolutely no mention of Lucifer and decided to rectify that. Ergo, Moth became a witch who was the reincarnation of the Archangel who fell from grace by consorting with a demon. All that was left was to find a place for her within the story and figure out the nuances: her magic, her Sacred Treasure, where she came from, etc.

Her magic is based on the manga Tokyo Ghoul/Tokyo Ghoul:re at it’s base. There are certain ghouls within the manga who’s power manifests with a lightning-esque appearance, which I like. Then you have the element system for the Archangels, and cold/ice wasn’t mentioned. So Moth’s magic is a mixture of lightning and frost, which is why things start freezing over when she uses it. On top of that, I drew inspiration from the traditions of Wicca, the rituals and incantations and glyphs to fill the gaps of her magic. 

Personality and backstory-wise, I pulled from American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns: a girl who loses her family due to the violence of another and copes with the trauma in a very unhealthy way, leaving her unstable and untrusting of others with a biting, sometimes morbid sense of humor. (As a side note, I have an AU planned based on that game, if I could only figure out how to write it …)

Moth also comes from an early character of mine, a detective named Alice that I used in my The Evil Within story Wires. I would not recommend it, but I did recycle some of her personality and appearance from there.

Tl;dr - Moth is a hodgepodge mixture of things that I liked from my favorite media, reformatted to fit the world and story of Nanatsu no Taizai, though she’s since taken on a life of her own and become something with only the ghosts of those things lingering one.

[cerneala]

Do you have a playlist to your story 'Dark Side of the Moon' that you could share?

To be honest, I actually have three playlists that I bounce between in terms of anything Moth centric: one for her character that I created a long-ass time ago and isn’t really reflective anymore, one for her relationship with Estarossa that is also not incredibly accurate anymore, and one that I created (and still add songs to) that I’d call more of a mood playlist that stretches across her three iterations: Moth from Bad Moon Rising, a witch who was a god; Moth from Dark Side of the Moon, the queen to be with ties to a dark entity; and Moth from an unnamed story where she’s a demon. 

Here they are:

Blood In The Water (Bad Moon Rising)

Sanguine (Estarossa x Moth)

Seven Traitorous Swords (Moth Mood Playlist)

[cerneala]

🔑

🔑 - The key to your heart.

Having an icon of Estarossa using his face just after he’d gotten blind-sided by Escanor’s punch.

[cerneala]

Spoilers for the NNT movie! Please skip this if you haven’t seen the movie; I don’t go into too much detail, since these are just my thoughts, but there are some spoilers so it’s best to avoid this if you’re still waiting to watch Prisoners of the Sky.

So I really liked it overall. The Celestials were interesting, though I’m curious about how exactly they’re descended from the Goddess Clan; are they supposed to be the NNT version of nephilim? If so, that also makes me wonder if there’s an NNT equivalent of cambion, who I guess would be descended from the Demon Clan?

I would say, based on everyone’s appearances, that this takes place after Season 2 but before the Sins head to fight Melascula. Everyone is wearing their Revival of the Ten Commandments clothing and they’re all aware that Meliodas is a demon, and the Ten Commandments are mentioned frequently by Bellion.

Speaking of Bellion and the Six Black Knights, they didn’t really feel fleshed out, which is something I’ve noticed tends to happen with anime movie villains. They didn’t have a lot of screen time and were pretty one-dimensional, but they were fun to watch and I liked how they were said to be so lawless even the Demon King wanted nothing to do with them. We also got some payoff regarding Baruja, Galand’s friend who turned into an Indura.

The only real complaint I have is — and it’s typical if you know me — the Winged Sword. In the manga, it’s Mael’s weapon. He’s the only person we see wield it, and he uses it from a fairly young age up until presumably his “death,” as shown by it still being in his possession when he kills Glariza. In the movie, and I guess this was done to avoid spoiling anime-only fans, he’s never mentioned by anyone, even when Meliodas recognizes the sword. Instead, it’s a gift from the Great Oshiro, a.k.a. the Mother of Chaos.

The end of the movie confirms that Hawk Mama is the Mother of Chaos, so that question is answered.

There are a lot of funny scenes throughout the movie; one that had me almost in tears was Meliodas talking to Solaad about wanting a sky fish, and Solaad says, “Here’s one now,” as one floats by, stunned from the battle.

All-in-all, it was a good film that fits neatly into the timeline, though the Mael thing, predictably, bothers me a bit.

[cerneala]

Hello, everyone! I thought I’d post a bit of an announcement, and I’ll keep it short and sweet.

Dark Side of the Moon is going on a brief hiatus while I consider what to do for the story. There are a few options, and I need to figure out what’s best for it and myself before I continue on.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the story so far!

[cerneala]

To the anon who messaged me yesterday:

I’m not going to post your messages, but I would like it if you came off anon to talk to me about them. Because I would like to know who you were originally sending that to and why — and this is only my assumption because you were anonymous — you were trying to cause trouble.

[cerneala]

What do you think of Elizabeth?

I like Elizabeth. I know there’s been a lot of backlash regarding her lately, particularly after the Mael debacle, but honestly she’s not a bad character, and what she’s doing (or not doing) reflects both her upbringing as the third princess of Liones and her overall personality. Elizabeth is strong, but her strength is as a healer. Look at the panel where she and Ludoshel cross swords; hers is very unstable, while his is sleek and well contained. She isn’t a fighting type character, and that’s completely fine.

And we’ve seen that she can hold her own. There are numerous instances where she is directly responsible for a conflict going well due to her strong will and determination. This is a girl who took a serious beating to disarm an opponent, threatened to take her life to stop Hendrickson, single-handedly healed every single Holy Knight when hope seemed lost, held her own with Elaine in the fighting tournament, kept the Boar’s Hat running and safe from the demon forces, Ark-slapped the hell out of Meliodas, and kept an entire fighting battalion alive.

Sorry if that was a little off topic, but I don’t like the idea that fighting prowess = a good character. Elizabeth is one of my favorite characters in the series. I love how selfless she is and how she’s always looking after others, but how that doesn’t stop her from knowing what she wants and working to achieve that. And, once she starts growing within the story, she feels very solid. She hurts, she cries, she grieves, but she keeps fighting.

[cerneala]

When you were writing the MC/reader fics, did you create the emotions for them or did you write like you /were/ the reader?

Back in the golden days of writing reader stories, I actually worked with an original character in mind and just removed any instances where name, hair color, and eye color were mentioned to make it ambiguous. For example, there’s an Overhaul one-shot that I wrote back when I ran a BNHA writing blog where the “reader” was actually an OC of mine named Misaki, whose Quirk was umbrakinesis. But I think you could also say that I used some of my emotions in writing, as well; all of my OCs have snippets of my personality in them, which I think is common for writers and artists.