#however most of my characters just have random names that I thought fit them

[salubriousbean]

What's In A Name?

Where I, the salubrious bean, talk about why I gave an original character their name.

Episode 1: Star Nubo & the Nebula Company

Well lads, lasses, others, boths, neithers, and everyone else out there, this one's pretty simple. "Nubo" means "cloud" in Esperanto, and Jedi Knight Star Nubo commands Nebula Company. Nebula = basically a Star Cloud.

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[moonpie016]

I'm not going to bust into your house today, crawl through the window, or speed walk. Just chilling.

Don't really have much today, I was going to make something (a fully made drawing or a little silly thing.) But no. No I just doodled again.

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Extremely high swings outta the way.

But we have.... Ok they still don't have names. Odd but nothing significant comes to mind (pun not intended), can't think of anything. Maybe I'll ask for suggestions (idk when, or from who.) But whenever they (the Heart and Mind) get names, I'll show em.

Yeah the three little dudes just having a great time at the park, Seeds ("Soul") is in the back drawing, and the two are enjoying the swings. Well, Heart is. Mind not so much. Which fits.

Guess depicting Mind as anxious and with more miniscule surface looking fears is nice. Might be a silly, unimportant thing to most, but not to him. So he avoids them to not look like his other half. Afraid of taking risks. Heart shows his fear by his actions, Mind however, is internal.

Seeds is what I'd do in any situation, Mind too. But Heart? Enjoying the moment even with the growing "what if I fall and hurt myself?" is wanting to be an afterthought.

Guess making these drawings are the only way I can write them. I can't just already know what a character does, I need a visual to understand them and then know what they are. Or do. Sometimes.

Annddd sooooo ART. :]

That and songs of course.

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This became somewhat of a ramble. I just wanted to explain the picture annnnd then it became a thing to say. But that's what this place is meant for. To show my ideas and thoughts. And lots of random thoughts I have, whether on topic or constantly shifting to something unrelated.

But anyways, I hope you enjoy this doodle.

(Idk when I'll get anything I was working on done. I guess a bunch of drawings will do until that happens. Plus motivation. :] )

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[ijichi-nijika]

Warm - by Butterfly-Latte/Krispy Cat.

So this might be a bit strange, seeing a random game review from random tumblr user ijichi-nijika. I have wanted to have a list of games I play in general and to write down my thoughts, immediately upon finishing them. I apologize if this is strange, but I will put my thoughts below a drop down so you can simply skip past these if this isn't anything you wish to read.

However I will link to the game above my review with my own score, so people can read it for themselves proper without any spoilers, and an except from my review so you can get a general feel.

"As a person who has felt numb for a large portion of her life, I really connected to Warm. I really think its worth a read. Short and sweet, with tense moments. I really loved the characterization of Megumi a lot."

Score: 9/10.

When I randomly went through my downloads folder tonight looking for a few files before I went to bed, I didn't expect to stay up to read a visual novel. Let alone one that I think is genuinely good. I had gotten Warm from a bundle years ago, but never touched it since I had no idea what to play from said bundle at all. So, flash forward 4 years and now I have.

To describe Warm in one word, it would be - Healing. Warm takes place in a small town in what I assume is Japan, from context clues alone, and is centered around a 11 year old girl named Megumi. Megumi has gone through most of her life so far feeling, what I can only describe as numb. Unfeeling, lonely, depressed. This continues, until one day a transfer student named Hinata, moves in only a few blocks away from her. They, with some predictability, become friends, much to Megumi's confusion. And she outwardly expresses said confusion, on why anyone would even want to be around her. To which Hinata simply says "Because you're nice."

I won't go to further into too much detail, but the slow friendship that the two grow into warmed my heart a lot. Megumi, not easily understanding social cues, to Hinata's simple and quick solutions such as when she starts doing a hand gesture to show that she is joking. And the feelings beginning to grow into liking one another on both sides, made my heart feel extremely full. While the plot gets a tiny bit predictable, I do think for such a short visual novel, the detail and events that take place are still extremely well written, and felt real for the most part. Even the final act of the VN, while I could tell it was coming from a mile away, still felt impactful, at least to me. As a person who has been hurt before by people who simply were not in control of their emotions, I felt for what happens to Hinata in the final hour of the game.

The way that the game treats another character, Inoue, on the other hand, I don't like as much. In the first few acts I felt for the character. There was simple characterization to imply that she had some sort of social or learning disability. The game, doesn't make fun of this, and attempts to sympathize with her at least, a tiny bit. But I don't personally agree with her being the crux of why the final act happens as it does. Conflict is fine, I am all for it to make a better story, and mistakes also happen. But it didn't feel very good to hear that this character, after severely burning another character, is simply expelled from school and we never hear from her again. In fact, any plot point after the final argument of the game that involves discussing Inoue, just didn't feel good to me. I could tell, at least from my reading of the novel, that the character had a lot of jealousy, and needed help but couldn't vocalize it in a way or attempt to get the help in anyway that would possibly lower how people saw her, even if the other way was pushing every character to hate her. But once again, I am reading the feelings of children characters from my adult perspective, so perhaps I am reading too much into it.

The music, fits the game exceptionally well. The best way I could describe it is melancholic and at times, tense. There is at least one happy track in the game though, for the many scenes that warrant that. I think the score of the game really helped me get into how Megumi feels.

As a person who has felt numb for a large portion of her life, I really connected to Warm. Megumi's depression and general anxiety, to even her disconnect from how she can even perceive herself being so vastly different from reality? That's how I used to feel a lot. And sometimes I still do. I think while simple, the lens of numbness that the novel shows us from her lens is realistic, and not blown to proportion. And it made me think of how I've felt with others for most of my life, and how it could have possibly played out. Food for thought.

Warm is a really good yuri vn, with a heavy focus on relationships from the perspective of a young numb girl. And I think reading it, was probably extremely beneficial to myself. And not too many games nowadays really make me feel like that.

[aqualblue]

What are you art inspirations? Your style is so pretty and unique. Also could you tell me more about your OC's? Like what they do and their personalities?

tyyy hahahaehe!!

my main art inspiration is ennuigrl. I had almost quit drawing entirely until I spotted their acc on twitter and found my love for drawing all over again through simply viewing their art. I also Take a lot inspiration from Street Fighter, winx club, my little pony fim, dmc, guilty gear, mortal kombat, and Dragon Ball in style/character design !

Unique to my other characters, my winx club oc Lovera, and her two goons, Gaia and clover, are seperate entities in their own stories, as well as being the main part of my personal winx club x castlevania au

As for ocs, my main cast, (Tsuaki Family, Downtown trio: Brecken, Anna, Kaminari Nami) were first made in wizard101 when I used to play a lot, through drawing them they became their own ocs, and now I rotate them through fandom aus of fandoms im into. Anba's friend group/circle also consists of the extra Kotori (Cori, ditzy, clumsey, abscent minded), Karol (kind of a perv, tall, protects her friends), Caren(Sweet, some may think she's a mean girl but she's very kind), and Eris and Rhea(Reincarnations that come back easily any time they die, both untrustworthy shapeshifters) Currently my main focus and au for them, it's street fighter!! (and sometimes dmc/guilty gear)

I'll breakdown some of my main ocs below their personalities under the cut!!

Lovera: Lovera is one of my many completely inhuman ocs that appear human. Like an animal she wears bright colors and naturally has bright colors in her human/non human forms to indicate she's toxic. She's an ex fairy/fae, having had her wings permanently torn from her shoulder blades right at the root for aiding her father in destroying a large portion of the fairy realm and stealing dark magic for their own gain. She's gone on to become a dark sorceress, sort of self absorbed anti hero who doesn't meddle in the affiars of others. In the castlevania au, her personal isolation is due to her love not being reciprocated by Juste Belmont when he learns of her past. She eventually goes on to open up to Alucard however. As a fairy, she was "the fairy of the pale dragon heart", which just means the fairy of love

Anba: Anba is the one you see me draw the most, the stoic little critter with the headband/glasses. She's completely random, unpredictable, but can be quick to temper or resorting to violence when things go south. Despite her muscled body, she's very flexible, and able to fit herself inside small spaces which she enjoys. Her powers are paradoxial, meaning she can use two opposites at once (fire, ice, shadow, light, etc). Anba also has an obxnoious british twin cousin named Nokoribi who raised her when her elder three siblings and parents vanished for some time.

Paru: Paru is the only Tsukai sibbling born completely without the capeability to show that she's being malicious, even if she wanted to. She trusts everyone, ever, think how fluttershy is when thinking the best of everyone !. Paru often has no trouble making friends, or being nice, and like her name suggests, she has a pearl in her forehead, which is the only time such a neutral gem has been placed in a Tsukai family member. Paru and Anba were very close when Paru was alive.

Kessho [Tsukai]: Kessho almost NEVER emotes, Apart from sometimes smiling at her partner or her siblings. Kessho, Ame and armondo are all 55, so Kessho is very mature, cool headed, and well thought out. She's the most like Kage visually and fighting wise, having spider flexibility and powers, and able to shapeshift very well

Amejisuto & Armondo-Hisui: These two are practically the same person, like with Morrigan and Lilith. Both having nighttime related powers, Ame' is a sweet, motherly type who comes off airheaded but is actually very smart and cunning, whilst Armondo doesn't hide that he's a sly, sassy, kind of rude liar.

Turmeric: Turmeric is the eldest out of the paru, anba and himself tripletts. He's blank faced, rarely showing emotion outside of blank, and being annoyed or weirded out. He was originally anba's genderbend, but became his own character to me. His powers are light related, and he's Kessho's opposite.

Kage: Kage is an evil, disney step mother (except she's the bio mom) type of character, who is simply wearing the skin of a human she was born into the vessel as. She has a twin sister, who often stays out of the continent of Asia to avoid Kage. She's also in past of history, been known as the witch "Morgin Le Fay", and in the era of Japan when samurai's still fought dragons and evil yokai, "The ShiKage". She has an obsession with bugs, specifically arachnids and hates avians.

Anna(Sanari Gojo): Anna is very timid, shy, sweet. She doesn't go out of her way to be noticed but either due to Brecken and Nami, her friends, or her mentor, Anba, she ends up in trouble. Anna comes off as weak willed, but actually has very strong principle and is only shy and cowardly around people she cares about impressing. When it comes to evil people, albeit, in her terms, "bullies", she has a zero tolerance, and will beat the shit out of them. Her fighting style mixes karate and Gymnastics, and she has icy powers

Kaminari Nami: Nami is just a very unhinged girl and mistunderstood for it. She's very outgoing, sweet, and attentive to those around her. She enjoys girly things, not always clothes, but she owns lots of makeup and dolls. She's one of my only hatian ocs, the others being her mother, Mirlande, and her twin sister Masayoshi. Nami in general just really has lots of love to give and so comes off as intense when she tries to give it out. She learned to fight by wrestling Aligators in Jamaica where she was raised by an adopted big brother after her parents vanished ! Nami and her twin sister have storm/raging storms at sea powers, relating to their names

Brecekn: Brecken's your classic gangster and swindler. She's got a mysterious ability to talk anyone into any kind of deal or scam she's selling ha. In the street fighter au she has a bunch of fighters/boxers under her wing in her management company and takes a HUGE cut. She's cocky, but for good reason, as despite her size, she's a boxer/bear wrestler that packs a punch harder than being hit by a car. She has illusion based powers

[k2ntwo]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

A bunch of writers that I follow have already been tagged and responded @helloliriels @khorazir @7-percent @discordantwords @totallysilvergirl to name just a few. Now I have a few new things to read that I somehow missed the first time around as well as a bunch of old favorites to go and re-read. So much good fic is out there by so many talented writers!

In the spirit of adding to folk’s ever growing MFL list I’ll just pile onto the bandwagon with my answers as well.

 1.  How many works to you have on AO3?

56 although there are several collections of snippets that technically could be counted separately. On AO3 I'm KtwoNtwo.

2.  What’s your total AO3 word count?

496,860

3.  What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily Sherlock Holmes (most all iterations from ACD to Sherlock) and James Bond.  However, I dabble in a good number of other fandoms upon occasion.

4.  What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Metamorphosis

Conversations from Q-Branch

50 Reasons (The Q-Branch Edition)

A Rare Breed

Brothers Three

5.  Do you respond to comments?

Yes, even if its just a “I’m glad you liked it.”  The only ones I don’t respond to are the generic solicitations to join some random contest or fic publishing website.  Those get blocked and reported.

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

Well, I don’t really write major angst but The Four Riders has got a bit as does the poem Gun in the Drawer though they both end on a hopeful note.

7.  What’s the Fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of my fics have happy endings but probably A Toast to the Science of Deduction resolves the happiest of the lot.

8.  Do you get hate on fics.

Nope.  Only got one anonymous troll alleging trademark infringement due to a title.  I fired back a factual rebuttal: basically "there is no book by that name by that author, there is no lawyer by that name, you didn’t provide contact information and btw trademark doesn’t work the way you allege" then added a set of quotation marks to the title.  Never heard anything more about it.

9.  Do you write smut?

I have but I’m not terribly good at it.  Most of the time the characters look at me then politely, or not so politely, shut the bedroom door in my face.

10.  Do you write crossovers?

Oh God Yes!  Technically I think I write fusions, where both fandoms end up in the same universe, as opposed to crossovers but I’m rather unclear on the difference between same so I tend to just call 'em crossovers and leave it at that. 

11.  Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I could find or prove.  I did have a couple of strange search results pop up with my use name and some fic titles attached but the websites all seem to be defunct now.

12.  Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

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

No.

14.  What’s your favorite ship?

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

15.  What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

There’s a fic based on a song by Abney Park that I’ve got an outline for but it never seems to go anywhere.

16.  What are your writing strengths?

I can merge and/or crossover all sorts of different fandoms. 

17.  What are your writing weaknesses?

Typos and punctuation.  Being slightly dyslexic I can’t spot the former and I never know if I’m using commas correctly or not.

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

I actively avoid doing so because I’d butcher it badly.

19.  First fandom you wrote for?

Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker.  I will admit that I wrote in my head, but never got around to put on paper, a number of Star Trek stories when I was significantly younger.

20.  Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

I like all of them for different reasons.  The one I’m most proud of however is The Emerald Falls my Study in Emerald inspired ACD Fic.

I'd love to have some of the artists/podcasters respond to this with whatever modifications are necessary to fit the medium involved. Hours of podcast or number of artworks as opposed to number of words for example. @podfixx @bluebellofbakerstreet if you haven't responded to this thing already and I just missed it.

[respectthepetty]

i just wanted to thank you for your color theory stuff because it's really helped me with my character design and my understanding of visual language. it's helped me deepen the way my characters interact, for example one of my characters is a purple pal (person?) but the gang he's in is red, showing that though there are parts of him that fit with the gang most of him doesn't. and i wouldn't have been able to come up with that if you hadn't opened my eyes to the possibilities.

i do have a question though have you ever encountered a blue boy/beauty and a green guy/gal before? (i've been calling it a turquoise twosome lmao) what do you think that dynamic would look like?

Anon, I'm so happy my random posts were helpful to you! The story you are designing sounds beautiful, and I'm not just writing that because you are using colors to support your narrative. I love when people create art of any kind, and purple is a luxurious color that I feel is underused even for characters who are wealthy, so I'm glad you are using it for one of your characters.

Also, you can call color-coded people whatever you want. I just like alliteration (the same sound at the beginning of words), so Purple Person is my pick, but all that really matters is that you see the colors because that means I'm doing my job as a color demon.

Now, to your ask -

As a resident of the Southwest, I LOVE that you labeled a Green Guy x Blue Boy pair as a Turquoise Twosome. I hadn't thought of a name for them, but now I'm using yours. THANKS! I'm kissing your forehead with my squash blossom necklace on as a token of my appreciation. Hope it doesn't hit you in the face. These things are heavy!

And another reward for you - Turquoise Twosomes exist . . . mainly in Korea, and a bit in Japan.

Thailand finally entered into this specific color-coded fight this year after years of the Blue x Red dynamic, but normally, all countries regularly color code the female best friend as a Green Gal because they are jolly, laid-back, and non-threatening, which is perfect for a girl in a BL.

However, Korea tends to like Turquoise Twosomes because the Blue Boy is introverted, stand-offish, and smart while the Green Guy is extroverted, charismatic, and persistent. It's the perfect cat x dog energy.

I believe that this stems from Korea's het-romances where the two leading men are each coded blue and green while the female lead is a Red Rascal who must pick between the two. Korea just cut out the middle (wo)man and let the men finally kiss in its BLs.

I greatly enjoy this pairing. Even when the pair aren't truly those colors, if they pop up in them at the same time, my heart flutters a bit.

So, yeah, the green and the blue ARE dating, and one of them is really excited about it, and the other one is slightly concerned.

[clemmenthyme]

This is so random, but as I just got out of English class, I really just can’t keep it in.

English classes are failures.

More specifically, English essays are failures.

To this day, in every English class I’ve taken, I’ve read Shakespeare. (So, already, we’re off to a bad start. Nobody will ever convince me he is not the most boring author in the world.) And in every single class, when the time came to write an essay, I’d be presented with a list of potential topics to write about.

Usually, there’s about six of them. Two or three would be on some short stories we read over a certain time period, and the others would all be potential topics on the one Shakespeare.

Wonderful.

There is something horribly upsetting about the fact I’m being asked to write my opinion, with proof, when my “opinion” is just me lying to fit within the topics my teacher cares to read about.

“Discuss how Othello is so sad” no. I want to discuss how Othello is a little bitch who, even in the end, didn’t hold himself accountable for his own stupidity. How all it took was two to three days to have him completely lose faith in his wife, and murder her, and how none of the characters seemed important outside of their eight second roles. And then they call it a tragedy. Yeah, it’s tragic that I had to actually spend time reading it.

Regardless of that, however, I think it’s just stupid how an English class is about learning to coherently and intelligently present your thoughts through an essay… without really ever letting me represent anything I actually had an opinion on. And teachers will say “it’s not a criticism piece”. Like, hon, I’m not criticising it. It’s just… my opinion is that the story sucked. I read it, analysed it, and found it deeply lacking.

“Write about how The Road was a masterpiece and perfectly illustrated a lawless world through its grammatical errors” no. I thought the book was boring, and I ended up with many headaches reading it due to the lack of commas. Like, how about you let me write about what I want? Maybe I want to discuss how the imagery affects the way a person feels about the book, and how not naming your characters creates a genuine inability to empathise with the characters. And how that’s a really good tool for the novel.

How am I supposed to be a good writer if the only skill I’m developing… is how to bullshit well enough to appease your fragile little brain? I’m sorry I thought Of Mice and Men was better than your fav’s novel. I genuinely don’t understand what’s so horrible about letting students write what they think about what they read. I’m supposed to express my genuine ideas, how I analysed the text… but I’m not. I’m limited to the six things you thought up for me.

So yeah. Fuck Shakespeare. And the English curriculum (at least where I’m from).

(Sorry to any Shakespeare stans out there, but it really is what it is. I just.. am incapable of liking what he writes. Props to you for sticking with it though.)

[cboffshore]

Little random game: Name a season for each of the ninja where they most had their potential wasted by the story and explain why :3

I... would not qualify this as a little game, honestly, but I'll try to keep it short (because I'm on my way to bed but if I don't get this done now I may never do it)! It might also not be the MOST wasted potential for each character, but just what comes to mind for each of the main six. Below the cut we go. TLDR: Everyone needs a little more time and thought.

For Lloyd, I'm inclined to say Crystalized - although quite frankly this could be for EVERYONE. I give this to Lloyd specifically because he's supposed to be the Main Special Boy here and the season has too much happening to let it work. Yeah, they tried to bring Harumi back, but if you botch THAT angle you're SOL... it could have been so cool. The scrapped Last Spin concepts HAUNT ME.

Kai... hmmm. Off the top of my head I can't actually think of a full season, but I think I can give him the first half of Crystalized. They did him relatively well in Seabound, but then Crystalized hit and he just... Vanished, kinda? In a character development sense? I think we all agree he could have had some KILLER stuff going on if the writers let him show his own grief a bit more (to be fair, however, I do sort of think the reserved bottle-upper of emotions thing they accidentally wrote him into suits him... though I couldn't quite explain why).

Nya. Oh, jeez. You already know I'm saying Skybound, because here's the thing: what she has happening there is FASCINATING, but again, it suffers from the Crystalized problem where too much is happening and any attempts to balance her out feel awkward. I love what she's got going on! I love her arc of learning to balance her independence versus her need to collaborate with her team! I love the development she does get, but it does get somewhat glossed over... Screw it, Jay gets this one for his answer too. I also love what he's got going on: learning to not be so weird to/about Nya and how to balance his desires with the needs of his friends and the world he's responsible for, and learning how to step up and take charge and avoid joining Nadakhan's downward spiral. Again, though: too much happening overall to really let it glow. I love how his story complements Nya's and how their arcs fit together, but they're almost too strong together and cancel out a little in terms of intensity. These stories would definitely have benefited from having more time to play out. Like, WAY more time. Shame about those deadlines and sales seasons.

Zane and Cole: I have to admit these aren't characters that I think about that much unless they're at the forefront of something (for example, without spoilers, I LOVE how they've been used in Dragons Rising so far!). That being said, I honestly can't name a season, because they're not my faves that I follow super closely. Of course I love them, but not to a laptop-bitin' analytical degree, so I'm afraid I don't have an answer for either of them.

Thanks for swinging by, anon!

[kokomelt]

I think it's very obvious I'm a Genshin enjoyer, but also I must mention I'm an avid Inazuma Eleven enjoyer too, and I will never get over the fact we have a nation literally named "Inazuma" (I know it's because it's the Electro nation, but still...let me be unu) so...how come Inazuma Genshin AU isn't a thing?? It probably is but I haven't seen much about it. Genshin has an element system and so does Inazuma Eleven, Archons can equal to keshin right? Or maybe the Go coaches? Imagine Endou or Kidou as Archons–

Ahem...wait, you must be wondering (sadly, I think you're not), who's this random person? Howdy, I'm Coco/Mimi, and you are watching me yap and gnaw at this AU's messy concept because I can't write to help myself (because English isn't my first language, sorry) and I'm in no way cohesive nor make much sense most of the time while trying to explain stuff.

Now let's get back on track under the cut...

When I say Inazuma Eleven Genshin AU I don't mean that it should follow the original plot, because who could even be Aether and Lumine??? But conceptually the Visions, nations and Archons just click to me for Inazuma Eleven, somehow (and if it doesn't you'll have to pry this AU from my wimpy, damp hands)!! Besides, most hissatsus could be translated to elemental powers so they can keep them even in Genshin (some of them at least) and it'd still work.

Before I dive into this any further, for those fans of Inazuma who are unfamiliar with Genshin, if you're wondering how much of the lore/basics you need to know to understand this, don't worry, not much really...i think?. I won't say anything that's not like very well-known regarding Genshin and/or common knowledge about it, any other thing I'll try to badly explain it without losing the flow (this is a mess, so spoiler: that's not likely to happen, i'm so sorry).

For any fan of Genshin who ended up here without knowing much about Inazuma Eleven... I'm not going to tag this under the Genshin fandom, because without context of Inazuma Eleven this will be even more of a bigger wall of nonsensical text.

For the sake of making this somewhat understandable I'll separate it into different topics, it won't make it more organized but at least it would be split into parts so no one gets (more) lost + with cute pastel dividers to try and be aesthetic about it...

Also I can't promise this is spoiler free, I doubt it so if you don't want spoilers for Genshin and/or Inazuma Eleven I think you should stop here.

꒰ The General Plot of this AU kinda ꒱

As I mentioned above, I don't think this AU can or needs to follow the original plot for Genshin, at least not the one with Aether and Lumine because again, I don't know who could fit the role so let's just say this is an AU who only grabs the concepts of Genshin (set in Teyvat, 7 elements and nations, Archons, visions, The Abyss, etc) and throws Inazuma Eleven characters into the setting.

However, some things make sense to me and I think can be equated to certain events in Inazuma Eleven but tbh, I don't even know which timeline would this follow. For example, Fatui being akin to Teikoku, and Kageyama Reiji being the Cryo Archon could fit. But also the Fatui sound a lot like they could be the equivalent of Fifth Sector, and the SEEDs are the Harbingers.

That's why I say I have no idea really what timeline this could follow, personally when this nonsense came to me while daydreaming I thought of it being set on the Inazuma Eleven Go timeline because idk, in Genshin the first element the player gets is Anemo (wind), and who other than Tenma could be both a protagonist and had an Anemo vision? But I won't jump into the vision headcanons yet.

So I think if that's the case, maybe The Fatui were indeed the whole of Teikoku. Archons are deities, ok, but one can ascend to become an Archon, so my take on Kageyama Reiji being the Cryo Archon stays but...what if he died like what supposedly happened in Galaxy? Basically...Kageyama was the Archon, but died, and who could succeed him? Well, I was thinking Kidou could, therefore that would make him the new Cryo Archon on Tenma's timeline.

But if the Fifth Sector is like the Fatui (somewhat, it's just because they're the main "evil organization"), and Fifth Sector was something created by Goenji, why would he bring back a group that's so related to Archon!Kageyama?

Also the whole Aliea incident could be tied to the Abyss Order or something, because the Aliea Stone and the Abyss corrupt people.

So yeah, that's what I mean with "it should follow the original plot yet not exactly". But I'm not that meticulous to actually try and make this make sense.

I still support my version where this AU is set during the Go timeline, but that's because I'm biased towards Tenma (and because Endou as an Archon sounds fun to me).

꒰ Everyone has Japanese names + why I won't use the dub ones ꒱

As you may have noticed by now, I'm using exclusively the original japanese names, nor the dub ones. This part is mainly a quick explanation about why I would refer to them with those names in the rest of the post about the AU.

Even though in Genshin there are 7 Nations based on mash-ups of different cultures (Fontaine is France + England, if I recall correctly, but basically you get what I mean) and characters are named accordingly, I physically can't use (nor recall all) the dub names, so let's just assume that while everyone here will be referred with Japanese names, they may be from different nations.

But whoever decides to develop this whole idea can do whatever, I just ask you to please, throw the link to me so I can read/see it because I'd love to >3<

꒰ Genshin Elements vs Inazuma Elements ꒱

I'm not going to develop this much...I hope??

I'm just going to mention that Elements in Inazuma are a beautiful mess (Wind encapsulates Ice, and Wood element somehow is tied to Darkness and Space...and I don't even know why???), but honestly I don't see logic (not much at least) trying to give the characters the same element they have in the games.

How am I supposed to translate the fact Hikaru uses Wood element? Cryo? Dendro because it's literally Plant so Plant = Wood? But his hissatsus are clearly Darkness and/or Space themed so I don't see how that fits.

I have read countless theories regarding the criteria to give someone a certain Vision, most of them revolve around ambitions or desires strong enough that Celestia acknowledges the individual who has them. I like the theories though, and it somehow makes sense even if it's not something set in stone (yet), so I guess we can still follow it a bit. I'd explain any theory but some are lenghty to sum them up, at least I, myself, can't.

Now with Inazuma Eleven. It doesn't have a similar elemental assignation system (again, there's Wood encapsulates Music, Space, Darkness and so on, while Genshin has just plain Dendro element for Plant powers) so I can't really give them their exact element + I think some visions' descriptions fit some characters that coincidentally don't have that same element in the canon source.

Who are the Archons though? Once again, I don't know, this whole post is a big "I have this idea, is making me tweak and roll, but I have no clue on who is what or what is who." so yep.

At some point I thought Daisuke Endou could have done the same as Zhongli. He was the Geo Archon and faked his dead (like in Inazuma, you know?) but also the idea of Endou being a normal human and ascending to Archonhood sounds epic, because he was a normal guy on the Inazuma Eleven series but upon reaching Inazuma Eleven Go he's a whole icon for the rest of it, he's the basis of new Raimon and now Tenma carries the torch.

Yes, I don't know what to do to develop this, moving on to the following point to tackle...

꒰ Aliea Stone = Abyssal Power? and much more ꒱

This is going to be long because to address this I need to explain Genshin stuff to show how it makes some sort of connection (to little delulu me, at least).

First off what is 'The Abyss' aka 'The Void' and to some extent Khaenri'ah, because both are tied deeply.

The Abyss originated because Celestia destroyed Khaenri'ah, which was a former nation of Teyvat without a deity (because they didn't need one (?)). Also the Abyss wants to destroy and/or corrupt all the other nations (the main 7 Nations) in revenge.

But according to the wiki it refers to four different things too, which are interconnected. However, I'll use just two mainly when referring to it: The Abyss as one of the Three Realms and the region beneath (and beyond) Teyvat that's considered a different world entirely.

To sum it up badly, The Abyss I'm talking about was a nation but became what it is nowadays after its destruction.

Why do I relate it to the Aliea though? Because Abyss power is purple, or at least that's the main color we can see in the Abyss' Mages floating runes and most importantly: the upside down corrupted statue of The Seven.

The whole purple power that corrupts people it's very reminiscent to the Aliea Meteorite, who glows in purple and alters the mind of people who use its power (just look back at what it did to Kazemaru).

But I did mention The Abyss is considered part of 'The Three Realms'...well, this section isn't also called "and much more" for nothing, because I'll have to bring Desuta and Sein into this AU...

You may not remember them, but don't worry my sweet little jellyfish. So...remember when Inazuma Japan had a match against literal angels and devils because Haruna and Rika were abducted by them? Hope this has unlocked a few memories from that chapter.

The Three Realms in Genshin are basically The Human Realm, The Light Realm and The Void Realm.

In the past The Void and The Light existed opposite to each other until the Human Realm was created.

In any case, the point is that The Void Realm could be akin to Desuta and his team, the Makai Gundan Z. and The Light Realm would be Sein and his team. Because, you know, Dark Void vs Light dynamic.

Also we have the Abyss Order right? That should have its own equal thing but I couldn't come up with anything, at least not Inazuma Eleven related.

꒰ Genshin characters that remind me of Inazuma Eleven ones ꒱

For no particular reason, maybe vibes, maybe personality idk. This doesn't mean I'd give them the same visions, nation, and/or species but rather that I find parallelisms between them somehow.

However, my fish brain can't pinpoint all the similarities they have and it's not good at analyzing. Also, I'll be mentioning from most seasons (if needed, also Ares/Orion timeline).

Charlotte and Haruna. Yes, it's probably the camera/reporter thing they have going on.

Scaramouche/Kunikuzushi and Kariya. Trust issues, both are very cat-like and they are most likely sassy (Scaranation, please don't chase me down, I know he has a lot of depth, I just tried to be extremely concise about it)

If you prefer, I also consider Scaramouche could have parallelisms with Fudou.

Dottore/Capitano and Kageyama Reiji. It's the unapologetically evil guy vibe I guess.

Bennett and Endou. I feel like these two have an unyielding positivism, sometimes they can get overtaken by doubts about themselves but on the end, they're sweet guys that deserve happiness.

Alternatively, Bennett and Tachimukai also work.

Thoma and Taiyou. Both of them have very warm vibes, they're rays of sunshine but at the same time I think both know more than what they let on. Also it's canon that both are popular.

Sucrose and Hayami. It's the glasses indeed, but also both of them are intelligent individuals who seem kinda shy or easily flustered.

Keqing and Natsumi. It gets easily overshadowed in Go!, but we should always keep on mind that Natsumi is incredibly smart (didn't she solve a case that was left on the drawers by the police or something?). Also, they both have kind of a tsundere-like attitude.

Ningguang and Koumei. Both of them are elegant, powerful and smart women.

On a side note, we have our own iteration of Koumei in Genshin. Koumei is Kongming, aka Zhuge Liang, and Kokomi has a reference to Zhuge Liang in her constellation.

Also not a comparison in itself but dragons who can take human form exists in Teyvat. Hakuryuu being one would make sense.

Amber and Nae. Cute bunny-themed girls, spirited and extroverted. Amber is excellent at gliding, Nae was the best runner in the track team.

Dehya and Midori. Fiery, untamable and strong girls. Midori somehow fits Dehya's title "Flame-Mane".

Shenhe and Minori. Both of them seem cold at first, and have a serious deadpan expression. However, Shenhe has quite a temper and so does Minori when she's not being possessed by Potomuri.

Yaoyao and Shinsuke. Small and warm-hearted balls of sunshine, they care deeply about those around them.

Raiden Ei and Tatsuya/Hiroto Kiyama. Albeit not quite the same, their situations are similar in the fact they ended up taking the position of their respective siblings (because yes, I consider Tatsuya and Hiroto brothers), and physically look like them (I'm not taking into account how grown-up Hiroto Kira looks in Ares/Orion. Both Hiroto and Tatsuya looked a lot like each other when they were younger in the og series).

꒰ Some Vision Headcanons ꒱

I want to think if someone read through this was at least to get to this part. I won't say my Headcanons on who gets which Vision are permanent (I'm always willing to listen to suggestions or just read your own Headcanons), they are open to change if I reconsider some.

And as I said above, not all of the characters I'll mention have a Vision that matches their canon element in-game.

Also I'll be choosing some based on the theories regarding what criteria do the Archons follow to hand out the Visions. I'll explain it (badly and super simple) to make it more understandable.

Credits to this post because it's what made sense to me for the Vision's criteria. At the same time, since it's rather ambiguous it makes sorting them somewhat easier.

► Anemo: Had past failures, struggles or suffered from unspecified problems, maybe a loss of some kind. Hardworkers with a sense of duty who do –or prefer to do– their own thing and follow their own pace.

► Geo: Care and worry deeply about others. Could take the lead in certain specific situations based on their talents. Rather single-minded and/or simple-headed. Very committed to what they believe or want.

► Electro: Lonely people or they just have a small circle of interactions. Some of their life matters could be too important that they affect other's lives. Prone to awkwardness or second-guessing themselves. Sometimes quirky or just unique, they may have accomplished great deeds.

► Dendro: Scholars or people oriented to knowledge. Good thinkers even in dire situations, sometimes creative. Some want to expand their field of knowledge and can get themselves in over their heads.

► Hydro: Highly specialize in certain skills or areas that others may not have or show. They're role models in what they do or strive to maintain it as such. Tend to weather their own hardships and seek excuses for it, wether they're self-sought hardships or not.

► Pyro: Ambitious people who will keep going even if others oppose them. This also applies to people who may hurt themselves in the process and fully acknowledge it, either for their own sake or because of others. Some keep people at arm's length, not always intentionally.

► Cryo: People who feel lost, specially after a life changing or impactful event on their lives. They may be stuck in the events of their past, so it influences what they live for or what they think they should do next. Some aspect of their life comes back or gets in the way of their goal.

I would also want to mention that while these may be criteria and I refer to them as such. I also believe the theory that says Archons will give out Visions based on each person's ambition/desire and of they support it. However, considering in this AU we don't have the same Archons and they may not have the same personalities as the originals, I decided to not follow that rule.

In addition, it is somewhat confirmed that it may not be that Visions follow a personality checklist to decide who should have which one. Apparently, Lisa's personality changed after receiving her Electro vision, and since it's always mentioned that stars guide the fates of Teyvat denizens (hence, constellations being a gameplay thing but also something important within Teyvat's beliefs, as shown with Mona being able to read people's lives/personalities on them), maybe Visions are also linked. Basically, we could conclude that Visions also shape someone's mind somehow, as mentioned in this post (which is rather old and doesn't feature Dendro, sadly). I recommend you also read the comments of that post to see further of my reasons for some of these headcanons.

But let's get into some Vision Headcanons, shall we? I'll try to be clean and make this in order but I don't know if I will be able to, and they're just a few because Inazuma has a lot a LOT of characters and I couldn't just think about every single one >.<

Tenma: I already said this but I'll also add it here because it's one of the Headcanons I refuse to change. Tenma gets Anemo vision just because wind is his thing, I always relate him to it regardless of wether it makes sense or not. I think he does fit the fact he's a hardworker but he goes at his own tempo, but what matters is the journey to reach any goal he has.

Taiyou: This boy gets a Pyro vision and you can't tell me that's unreasonable. He's the very definition of "will keep going even if it hurts him". Also going with the personality theory, I feel like Taiyou would take initiative of things (he's the captain of Arakumo after all) and openly expresses himself.

Kirino: I'd go for Electro vision for him, but this has a reason and that reason is Chrono Stone. Mainly the fact I thought it was very clear that Kirino has a tendency to doubt his actions or decisions, sometimes feeling like he's falling behind in regards of Shindou.

Shindou: I decided to give him Hydro, it makes sense to me and I think I can try to explain it. I wish the fact that he's a good pianist was brought up more in the anime, because it's one of the reasons I chose Hydro, since he comes off as your typical case of gifted child when it comes to music. I also think he's a role model to his teammates and strives to meet the expectations they may have about him.

Kurama: One of my fav characters, sadly we don't have much info about him but I tried my best to pick a vision for him. I ended up going for Cryo because of certain reasons. Kurama seems like a blunt person, but at the same time some episodes make me see him as someone who also doesn't expresses himself that much, like...he's not all that honest, but he's rather harsh in the process. Think of him like Diona or Eula, were they are fairly nice and caring but inevitably end up acting in a way that makes others perceive them as rude somehow, or just crabby (?).

Minaho: I'm bringing Minaho here just to at least mention Dendro (and because I like him a lot). Maybe he doesn't directly pursue knowledge but I have always perceived him as an extremely curious person that wants to uncover as much as he can, and that's somewhat tied to wanting to know. Also, owls are associated with wisdom and Minaho has an owl motif. I'm open to hearing thoughts about this though.

Akane: After considering it, I chose Anemo: for her. However, unlike Tenma, she's an Anemo: user not exactly because of accomplishing any journey or goal, but because I feel like she really does her own thing at her own pace and chooses that willingly. Most Anemo: users care more about the journey in itself, or have a recurring theme of freedom of choice. Akane overall expresses her interests very freely and doesn't seem to mind what others may think.

Goenji: Yet another one who getsPyro, because I feel like Goenji also has a bad tendency of being very stubborn and marching forward towards his own goals (mainly for other's sake) even if he gets hurt in the process. I think he'd definitely be a Diluc Case, were his personality doesn't exactly match the stereotype associated with most Pyro users (bubbly, energic and outgoing).

Endou: I would say he fits Geo, he has many of the traits mentioned on the theory. He's a very caring person overall even with rivals, I have always considered him simple-headed but with a clear goal and purpose somehow and it's commited to it. He's also a legit hardworker.

Kidou: He was hard to decide, and he's still one of the many I'll hear suggestions about. Anyways, I think he fits Cryo. AU wise he may have been a Cryo user even before meeting Kageyama Reiji and experiencing everything that entailed. I feel like Kidou works behind the scenes for strategies but that's an outloud secret somehow, he may come off like Shenhe or Rosaria at first because to me he has always seem a bit hard to approach, maybe the type of person you would define as stoic or something. Again, Kidou being a Cryo user isn't set in stone for me, I just wanted to make the break trio all have different elements.

Nosaka: I thought a bit about this but ultimately decided on Electro for him. Mainly, because Nosaka seems like unique in some sort of way, not only that but he has accomplished things to be able to stand out as "the tactical emperor" after all. Also, I feel like, despite how popular he may be, he has a small group of friends.

Fuyuka: I think Cryo is fitting for her, which is ironic considering that she lost her memories of her past, and Cryo users may be stuck in events from their past. However, Cryo users also have self-contradiction as a common theme. In Fuyuka's case I think her self-contradiction is the fact that the shocking event of her past shaped how she is now but at the same time she can't recall it. Also, she fits the stereotype of Cryo users being introverted.

And this concludes this long, messy, nonsensical but well-intended post, made with love but not much logic (and probably some grammar mistake I overlooked somewhere). If you reached this point, thank you very much for trying to pay attention and understand my chaotic rambling and Genshin fixation n.n ♡

This is just the outline of what I think this could develop into. I have messy headcanons that I couldn't really fit here nor wanted to as to not made this even longer, like races such as the Katzlein or Adepti, I may post them randomly, who knows? Keep in mind a lot of this was biased or subjective so not everything has factual points to support my ideas about it. In any case, my asks are always open if you want to throw in ideas or suggestions or just want to say anything at all.

[miquellah]

Apologies for the unsolicited Elden Ring lore question, but I've been having a lot of Thoughts; namely, why was it that Ranni chose Godwyn to kill on the Night of Black Knives? I mean, I can speculate why she didn't choose some of the others - love for her full-siblings, and respect for the threat presented by Miquella and Malenia if she killed one of them but not the other (if not love for them too, honestly) - but it's always seemed to me a very personal thing to do to him. It can't just be that she loved him least. Especially as the Omen twins exist, and by most accounts Mohg at least was pretty roundly disliked in general (if he was even let out of the sewers). (Justice for my man, by the way - deserved better than he got.)

My personal speculation is that Godwyn the Golden - the Golden Order's Golden Boy - was either transphobic, if we're going with the trans Ranni headcanon, or allegorically transphobic, if not. You've mentioned before on here that Ranni is a pretty one-for-one trans allegory; her journey is all about shedding a destiny and a body that was inflicted upon her against her will. We know very little about Godwyn as a person, save for a couple of things; he earned the loyalty of the ancient dragons through fierce battle, and he was beloved by those within the Golden Order. This, to me, suggests a character very much his mother/father's son; devoted to the primacy of the Order, and kind to those who fall within it or are willing to submit to it. Ranni, however, is not willing to submit to this fate - devoutly desires to be anybody other than the Empyrean she was born as.

I think that Godwyn disapproved of who Ranni was, who she wanted to be; I think that he consistently advised her to submit to the dictates of fate and of the Fingers. And I think that, above all, is why she turned the blade upon him over any of their other siblings.

No problem for the impromptu drop-in! And a Ranni one now no less, woah!

I think it’s always been a pretty prominent question, albeit one i haven’t yet dug in much for myself. He was the very first to die, so even past all of the other candidates we DO know, there was surely even more. That said…

My personal ideas, and one that i’ve honestly tossed around most, is that maybe ranni didn’t actually have full command of the black knives. It’s definitely her fault, but while it’s possible she hired them directly, she also just could’ve tipped them off anonymously and presented herself as a potential victim— with godwyn as the random collateral. Of course, there’s still a lot of holes and speculation any which way there, BUT…

On the other end, like you say, ranni could’ve just disliked him from the start. There’s a possibility he wasn’t as kind in full as we take him for— that sort of duality is notoriously a very big theme across many characters. I’ve also seen it posited that godwyn could’ve been ranni’s own assigned consort, an arranged marriage of sorts, an idea which she despised.

BUT!!! having just come out of my sniffing around the themes of Berserk, another idea comes to mind: the idea that sacrifice only means its most when you DO love something, and then give it up. Still speculation on my own end, and we don’t know the full mechanics, but “equivalent exchange” as a idea not only present in berserk itself (often a huge inspiration for many souls ideas, as we know), but alchemy and related magical theories as well (something that elden ring’s lore is largely built off of)

So. It could be that she hated him, or that he was the most convenient, or even that godwyn was someone she loved dearly, and was ultimately the most fitting sacrifice she was willing to make. We may never know! But ultimately, ranni’s will itself was enough to pull through in any which way.

[splinter-cat]

Hello! I just wanted to say that i've been reading beasts in blue on AO3 and i'm very interested in the story and characters!

Beau and rowan's relationship has such interesting complexities and i can't wait to discover more :)

I also wanted to ask out of curiosity if you have any rules to name the characters? For example do you look up for the meaning or do you just pick what sounds right?

And do the characters have voice/face claims (even drawn and not irl people)?

I hope you have a nice day

Thank you so much! <3 I'm really enjoying writing their relationship so I'm glad y'all are enjoying reading it.

For naming, I actually don't go by meaning most of the time, moreso the sound. Like do I like the flow of this name and does the sound fit the character, etc. Beau is a very different sound than say, Zack, for example.

Other than that, the way I find names to look at is on Behind the Name, there's a name popularity page where you can sort by year. I look at names popular around the time the character would have been born and choose one I like off that list that's somewhere around the top 200. That helps me find one that doesn't sound too out of place for their age.

For surnames I go to the Behind the Name surname site and pick off their top 1000 list. Often, I'll use a random number generator and go until I find one I like.

Once I've got a name put together, I google google google to make sure there's not like, a celebrity or other well-known person with that name haha.

Though one exception to my naming schemes is Rowan! I don't remember how I picked his first name, it might have just come to me, but his last name is inspired by a detective I really enjoy, Jack Mooney on Death in Paradise. :D (Also, I must admit there was a little bit of punny-ness going on with Mooney working with a werewolf, haha.)

As to faceclaims, you might notice a pattern in them, haha. I watch a lot of crime shows, which is actually what initially inspired the story! When I first thought of it, it was more of a buddy comedy "haha what if a werewolf got assigned to the K9 unit" kinda joke, but then I thought about the implications of a world like that. And it ended up being a great premise for whump, which is something I wanted to get into. Along the way, it went from being something to write random oneshots in and gained an actual story. I ended up deciding to make it a bit of a takedown of copaganda shows, because as much as I love watching them, there's definitely a lot of issues with them. So this is my cathartic take on them. :)

Putting the faceclaims under a cut because I know some folks prefer to keep to their own faceclaims:

So not every character has a faceclaim because I just haven't encountered one that works for me yet, but some characters were initially inspired by certain actors.

Rowan Mooney: Naveen Andrews as Ashok Ramsey on Law and Order: SVU

So Rowan's appearance actually took a bit to decide on because I didn't have a fully formed image of him in my mind when I started the story. However, I was at the time doing a binge watch of SVU and saw the episode "Shadow" that Naveen Andrews guest-starred in. My brain immediately went "that guy, he's the vibe I've been looking for!" haha. So he's the inspiration for Rowan's look.

Bonus gif since I couldn't find one of his SVU role:

Mitchell Cooper: Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder on Justified

Honestly, Boyd Crowder was the inspiration for Cooper right from the start. I'm often playing his lines back in my head, going "Does this sound right in his voice/accent/mannerisms?" As many horrible things as Boyd does on Justified, he was a super entertaining villain, and that's how I feel about Cooper, too, haha. He's just fun to write!

Douglas Owens: Corey Reynolds as David Gabriel on The Closer

It's actually been a while since I watched The Closer, but Gabriel was pretty much my first thought when I was deciding to make Owens. Now, Owens would be a bit younger, maybe, but generally his look is what I'm thinking of. :)

Fabian Rivero: Jonathan Del Arco as Fernando Morales on The Closer/Major Crimes

Morales is one of my favorite medical examiner characters, so of course he's who I thought of first when I needed to make an ME. :D

Frank Warren: Dann Florek as Donald Cragen on Law and Order: SVU

Ok, this one isn't fully set in stone or anything, since I mostly described/wrote Warren without thinking of him. But when I'm picturing a scene, he's largely who I've got for imagining the voice of Warren.

Sadly, other characters don't really have faceclaims! For example, for Beau, I have such a specific image in my mind that I haven't found anyone who really works yet. Same goes for Sidney. Shannon has vitiligo, so while I do have someone I think of to get her voice right (someone I knew IRL so not an actor I could share), I haven't found anyone who matches her appearance properly.

If I do encounter faceclaims for the others, I'll make another post tagged faceclaims so folks can see!

[ultimatepokemontournament]

I’m sorry to bother you with a question like this, but may I ask how you went about putting this bracket together? I’m trying to figure out my own addition to this showdown bandwagon and am also working with a large roster of characters. Jumping in blind would be a disaster, so I thought it best to seek guidance from someone who’s got a solid approach going.

I can definitely summarize what I did! Though without knowing what you're working with, I'm not sure how much this will map onto anything else!

1) Organizing Matches by the Numbers

So I split up the 1000+ Pokemon into more manageable groups by doing them by Generation, which technically means that I'm just running 9 100+ competitor brackets.

Then, for each generation, I targeted ~high 20s, low 30s for my number of matches with 3-5 Pokemon in each match. I wouldn't exceed 5 in a match, and lower is ideal, when you're trying to figure out how this works for your numbers.

Now, I targeted that number of matches because I wanted to use the next round to force-fit it into better tournament numbers— A nice proper 1v1 tournament has power of 2 competitors, so 2, 4, 8, 16, etc... It simplifies the math and makes it easier, and that's something that I chose for my tournament to avoid Pokemon "skipping" rounds, but you don't have to follow that.

So I will be targeting 8 Pokemon going to round 3 out of round 2, so if we take the number of round 1 winners from Gen 1 for example, there are 31 of them. 31/8=3.875 which means 7 4-Pokemoj matches and 1 3-Pokemon match. Perfect. Run those matches, get your 8 winners, pit your 8 winners against each other in the typical 1v1 tournament style (4 matches), get your 4 winners, etc.

2) Organizing Competitors into Matches

This part is super messy and the actual proper way to do seeding is probably via pre-tournament polling and also by having 1v1 matches, so what I did was the nearest reasonable approximation, given time and effort requirements.

The process: Put all your competitors in a spreadsheet column. Go through the list and bold all the fan favorites, all of the ones you expect to win, etc. Shuffle the column. If the top n(*) competitors look okay for a matchup (ideally, only one bolded name), mark it as (probably) acceptable (I changed the cell colors), and move to the next match. If not, shuffle again. (You'll probably have to do this a lot. However, if just a few of of them are messing up the match, you can move them to the bottom of the match stack and just shuffle them into the remaining competitors.) By the time you get to the bottom, you will very likely have to move things around or break up previously acceptable matches to get the last ones fitting.

(*) n is the target number of competitors in a match.

Note I chose this method specifically because I wanted my own biases to impact the match sorting as little as possible. It's worked out most of the time, sometimes there were fan favorites I completely didn't anticipate. Again, not a perfect system, but it prevents stuff like having Bulbasaur and Eevee in the same round 1 match.

(And sometimes you can't avoid having more than one fan favorite in the same match. In those cases, you want to try your best to pair most-fan-favorites with considerably less fan favorites, but this is also where smaller match sizes do come in handy. 1 5-competitor match allows for 1 fan favorite in 5 competitors, while 2 3-competitor matches allow for 2 fan favorites in 6 competitors... But again it's messy and you can't anticipate everything and sometimes there are a lot of fan favorites.)

(One more thing, Google Sheets does let you randomize a selected range if you right click on it, which can save you time running back and forth between random.org.)

3) Rematches

Personally I think if you want good data in a 3+ competitor winner-take-all kind of situation, you have to run rematches. Say 40% of people like competitor A, 30% of people like competitor B, and the remaining 30% are spread out among competitors C, D, and E. competitor A would win without rematches, but it could very much be the case that of the latter 30% of voters, if their picks were eliminated, only 5% would vote for competitor A, and the remaining 25% would vote for competitor B. That would leave us with 45/55 in B's favor.

Anyway, you can do whatever suits you because running rematches is a little tricky and it requires keeping track of all these extra scattered little polls, but the rules I have for rematches are as follows:

If the winner wins by 50% or more, no rematch.

If the winner is in the lead by 20%, no rematch.

If there are two leading competitor, single rematch.

If there's one leading competitor and two close runner ups, double rematch.

If it looks like it could be a double rematch, but the 2nd place competitor is closer to the first place competitor, it should be a single rematch (and vice versa).

If it looks like it could be a double rematch, the 3rd + 4th + etc place competitors results must be greater than or equal to the 1st place competitor for a double rematch to be held.

4) Scheduling

This one is rather unique to my situation, so I can't really offer too much advice here. Really depending on your voter-base and your access to them, you need to determine if you want to do this long term (slowly releasing the polls) or short term (release them more or less all at once) and if you want to do 1 week polls (requires some extra coordination, especially so that you don't have 1 week gaps between poll drops as you wait for previous round's data to come in) or 1 day polls (easier, but requires your voter base to be more readily available to you).

My very long term approach is based mostly on the fact that the Pokemon community here is very very large and scattered and, starting off, I effectively had 0 way to spread news about the tournament to anyone other than via Blaze. I think if you search scheduling on this blog, you can find the posts that were made when I decided to change the poll schedule, and I did so fairly publicly, so it should be pretty easy to see the structure of this tournament from that.

5) Tournament Summaries/Brackets

Wasn't sure what to call this one but it's basically a, oh no this thing is huge and constantly shifting but people want to kind of get an idea of where we've been and what's coming next, but because it's not a typical 1v1 tournament and also there are hundreds of these guys, I have no idea how to do that.

Which doesn't fit so well in a title lol.

Anyway there are probably a lot better ways of doing this than I did, but I basically just set up a free Neocities site to help keep track of anything. It took me a very long evening to do it, especially since my web dev is super rusty, but it's working out great because it also helps me keep track of everything, because the way I had it set up in my spreadsheet was not super intuitive or easy to see. I doubt anyone wants it, but I am totally willing to share the code behind the site if you all don't know how to get it from just inspecting the page and all. It's pretty clunky though so I'm not advertising it lol.

If I was really smart I'd have all the data in a JSON file and have a JS script just make all the cards that I have in there for me instead of using a separate C++ script (yes, sorry, I use C++ for things like this but that's because I know it better than like Python which would actually probably be the better choice) to generate the cards in HTML which I then paste into the HTML file, but also that would take a lot of time to figure out how to do, and time is not on my side. So.

Anyway. That's most of what I've got organization-wise. I typed this all up on my phone away from my computer so hopefully it's not too messy. I'm not sure if I've provided the info you're looking for or if I've included too much of the information you're not looking for, but I've rarely been accused of not being thorough at least 😭

If you have more questions, feel free to drop me an ask off anon and I'll send you a DM from my main! Otherwise, best of luck!!

[mcalhenwrites]

Spoilers for Seasons ahead. I know it's not available to read anymore, but I am going to ramble about what changed in the story.

1: Originally, I wrote five names down for the children, but I was thinking of narrowing it down to three. By the time I had everyone's names available, I had already figured out a bit about each child. I already knew they were immortal, so I thought, "Well, I could keep all five of them, and two are grown up now." 2. Shannon was almost the youngest, but then I imagined him growing up on his own. I wonder if subconsciously, this is where I pulled Bee's dislike of Shannon from, since this meant competition for the youngest slot. :') 3. I didn't know they would be Seasons until I sat down and started pouring the first chapter out. I just knew I didn't want them to be vampires. I'd given that plenty of consideration, and as much as I can dig some vampire stories, it wasn't fitting for Seasons. 4. Vivian was the first character made for this story, although he didn't have a name for a long while. The story started to unravel months later, when I did name him. 5. Early on, like before I even had five chapters written, I had planned for Vivian to redeem himself a little faster. (His character had other plans in mind.) This included him doing things to help Sophie, who wouldn't forgive him for everything, but he would go out into his garden, make a child, and hand her over to Sophie with no strings attached. I quickly realized his character was far too controlling and possessive to ever do that, however, and for a long time, I wasn't sure who would birth Odessa for Sophie. 6. I almost made it someone random, because originally, I wasn't sure I wanted the character who gave Sophie a child to be Cole. That's the best fit, though, without inserting more characters into an already hefty story. 7. Seriously, Seasons wasn't supposed to get to 350k. (And now I'm adding chapters to smooth over some transitions and show other POVs, and it's going to be worrisome how long it is.) 8. The plans for a sixth Liddell child were actually pretty late in the story. I think I was nearly halfway through writing it when I said, "What if Vivian had another child, years and years later, and showed he could do better?" I wrote several more chapters before I finally started taking the idea seriously. It started off as a "what if" but eventually, I started rewriting the ending chapter and liked where it went. 9. Until he walked in the door at Phineas's orchard with an infant, I had no idea what gender the child would be. Surprise, it's a girl! 10. I had vague plans throughout the entire story as I wrote it, but a lot of them changed or altered in some way. Mostly, however, I wrote this as if the story were telling itself to me. That's usually how I do most stories. They surprise me during the writing. The characters seem to take over my brain and do their own thing. (This is how Hazel quit his job at the beginning of Rascal instead of getting fired over the plot events, and I had to figure out how to finagle the plot back into the fucking story...) 11. Also, Vivian was going to hit one of his adult children (likely Shannon) and cause a fiasco. I eventually omitted it. Someone would have murdered him at that point. Sophie, probably. Then my story would've been in shambles and stopped there. 12. Shannon's whole breakdown in the basement was planned somewhat in advance, but getting him into the house was hard and took a while to figure out. The original version of the chapter where he takes Howie home did not include their encounter with that stray dog that resembles Bailey. I added that for further pressure on his trauma. I'm a monster. :) Anyway, I thought that was fun to talk about. It's fascinating to think about what changed. :D

[munkustance]

Tantomile and Coricopat?👀

Headcanons, Backstory, Family, Pairings, Personality, Plotbunnies? And anything else you wanna add, I wanna hear it all!!🥰

Favorite and least favorite foods?

If they had a human home, what would it be like?

What song(s) that aren’t canon do you think fits their character?

What kind of cat do you think they would be if they weren’t an Anthropomorphic cat? (Example: I think Tugger would be a Russet Marble Tabby Maine Coone Cat and Cassandra would be a Dark Mink or Solid Burmese Cat)

Sorry this took so long, just school. I think answering all of these will take a long time lets just be honest. But I'll try to work with these whenever I can. ALSO, there might be spelling and grammar mistakes because english is not my first language.

My thoughts and feelings for the twins were like nonexistent when I first got into cats, but after seeing the international tour in november they just shot right up into my top ten. Espessially Tantomile as she was the green eyes that went by me when the show started and was like 4 meters from me during the naming of cats and Mister Mistoffelees (and I swear we had a special moment during the naming of cats cuz we 100% made eye contact and right after that she reached her paw out, TO ME, but sadly there were two people in our way...)

Eh, so with that being said, here are my headcanons for everyones favorite mystical twins!

Headcanons:

Tantomile and Coricopat share the same spirit so if one of them becomes the Jellicle choice, they are both chosen.

Although the spirit is the same, the cats are not. Coricopat is much more um... dumb. It's not the right word but the only one I can think of. Like he's just.. he's there, having fun. While Tantomile is definitely the older and more mature of the two. Their reactions during the Mistoffelees number is the best explanation I can give. Just look at them.

When it comes to their powers they are both very strong with their psychic energy but again Tantomile is just keeping a little secret about her more cryptic side. The only other cat to know about her other side is of course her other half. They are like ying and yang kinda, but not really. Again, this thing with putting my thought into words. Either way, more on that later.

Random but Coricopat loves butterflies.

Backstory:

Now my usual backstory for these two is that they lived with a real witch and that they found the junkyard and the Jellicles thanks to their powers. Quite simple.

But, today I read through the Cats wiki just for fun and stumbled across the hc that Tantomile and Coricopat are Macavitys children. And I just died right then and there.

Is it in my main headcanons for Cats? No... But it sure as hell has it's own little world in my brain now. Just, stop and think about it for a minute and perhaps join me on the floor while I scream about the potential angst.

Family:

This goes without saying but, they're twins.

While they don't really have a real parents, unless you wanna go the Macavity route, Munkustrap has an extreme soft spot for them. So Munkustrap is their unofficial dad even though they are just a few years younger then him.

Pairings:

*Slams my hands on the table* CORICOPAT AND FRICKING MUNGOJERRIE ARE THE MOST ADORABLE DORKS YOU WILL EVER SEE!!!

Also love the rarepair of Tantomile and Demeter. Them just laying in Demeters pipe cuddling *chef kiss*

Personality:

Coricopat is a dork, an adorable dork, and I love him. He gets easily distracted, especially when Mungojerrie is within his psychic range.

Tantomile has a calm presence, even when some cats gets weirded out by the twins. Something she hides extremely well however is her cryptic side. Let's just say it's very much the opposite of the Tantomile we all know and love.

Plotbunnies:

Oh I loooove this one!

So Macavity is obsessed with magical cats right.. so he kidnaps Coricopat, ya know as you do. The thing is, Tantomile is of course not okay with that.. so um, she ya know. Goes all cryptic and ballistic on Macavitys ass and saves her brother.

Yea, that one has been stuck in my brain for the longest of time and I love it so much.

Food:

Oh uh yeah, they don't eat. Might be a weird hc but it's mine.

Human home:

They primarily live in the junkyard but they do have their little witch hut together with their old little witch lady. It's quite small but it's perfect for the three of them. There is a bunch of pillows and blankest all over the place just for the twins. And there is a lot of purple.

Song(s) that fit their character:

Ah yes, the inspiration for my cryptic Tantomile

IT JUST WORKS SO FRICKING WELL AND I CANT LISTEN TO THIS SONG ANYMORE WITHOUT MY GIRL TANTOMILE BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF MACAVITY IN THE BACK OF MY BRAIN

...sorry, don't know what came out of me just then.

Also sorry Coricopat, don't really have a song for you.

What kind of cat would they be irl:

Maybe a mix between Korat, Balinese and Russian Blue.

Anyways... that´s it

[wolfbeware1]

im having fun and bored so im just gonna answer these all in one shot of my doctor who OC that i made when i was in middle school.

- "Ryan" thought it was cool

- infinity sadly :/ immortal my guess older than the human race

- many, however the first one was a human woman named Veronica

- raw alien game meat. he WILL get sick; he does not care

- fuck around with the time-space continuum. he's lost the concept of what a job was millions of years ago. but part of the reason why hes immortal is because he was supposed to be apart of the first journey into deep space for his kind. and well something went terribly wrong

- i think he reads books in his spare time. he prefers nonfictional because he usually likes to fact check their details (but sometimes he's in the wrong timeline and messes something up)

- "best" is a difficult term. he's not necessarily good at anything he's more like a chaotic force within the universe that messes shit up for everyone but all known species are too simple to understand exactly he "messes up" so when he says that he made a mistake, its often things that do not make sense; think cosmic mistakes too beyond understanding. i think hes good at that lmao

- he LOVES choosing a sentient person out of some random race and just taking them on adventures (hence the dr who aspect of the character). he's become so endeared to it because otherwise his immortal life would be literal hell. i think he hates the idea of being alone again

- his most fond memories are those of his now dead wife and kids. poor guy :/

- worst memory is discovering that he was the last known survivor of his people.

- absolutely not; he's currently like a wolf furry. i think he was originally a werewolf oc in high school or something

- Dr Who; specifically the 9th and 10th Doctors

- i think sci-fi is the only one that fits the bill

- he's transgender and pan

- 0; always thought of him as an only child

- He didnt like them too much . not in like a they abused him way but more like he didnt like their personalities

- he's silly :3 my silly lil guy

- NEVER lol i think i wrote about him last in like high school

- no i think he can die. made him too op

- does fear of loneliness count?

- himself tbh. he hates meeting or running into other versions of himself. if he could kill them all, he would.

- hmmm 10 years?

- i think i was 12 or 13; maybe even younger, like 9 or 10

Ask Game for someone’s OC(s)

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

💼 - What do they do for a living?

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

🎯 -What do they do best?

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have?

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

🍥 - What age were you when you created the OC?

[sunlit-gully]

Hi there, its Athena. Welcome to my new Thursday Ask-A-Thon where its basically a Thursday version of my Sunday Ask-A-Thon where I ask ya'll about your wips: Has there been any major changes in a character in terms of how you created them, to how they turned out as the wip went on?

hi again Athena.

Well, definitely! My two most fleshed out WIPs has gone through at least 4 pivotal changes, each. I'll go with Anthologia Sovietica.

Medea Kurauli was originally a guy called Malkhaz Artsividze. However, because I changed her backstory from a regular Tbilisi urbanite guy to a Khevsur highlander, I had to change her name as well as her surname ending to fit the background (-uri/uli suffixes in Georgian surnames are a great bet that the bearers come from the Northeast highlands). Also, her missing-in-action period was originally much more vague - at the beginning I just thought she'd get ping-ponged between various captors before somehow finally meeting her crush postwar. Oh well, the Vrba-Wetzler Report and the Red Orchestra gave me some nasty, but necessary ideas to sketch out an alternative. One more thing, I originally intended her to have only one birth kid with Mykola aside from Lev, but the more I thought about it the sooner I realised that those two pining idiots would definitely not keep their hands off each other. So, four birth kids it is.

Mykola Sokolenko was originally a girl called Maria Kogut. However, the name didn't hit me the right way - I had always envisioned the character's personality as fierce and elegant at the same time and Maria just wasn't what I had in mind. Also, I changed his backstory from just a nondescript Ukrainian peasant girl into a half-Jewish Cossack boy (I somewhat blame the influence on Tommy Shelby). The assault on his mother by a Cossack was there since the beginning, but I never connected it to a pogrom till I read about Fastiv. And after some obsessive repetitions of the Seventeen Moments of Spring soundtrack on piano I decided that giving Mykola a job in KGB would be very very fitting, actually.

Lev was originally just some random Jewish kid wandering in a nondescript Polish forest in a constant state of fatigue and hunger during the War, but then I got some fridge brilliance and thought 'oy, he can be the catalyst to Mykola and Medea's union!' So I gave him a much more active role; he evaded the Germans and the concentration camps, followed the nearest Soviet division he could find around till they gave up and let him be their scout, and eventually got trusted with establishing connections with local sympathisers because he could speak Polish and German fluently (this boy is fluent in 4 languages by the time he reached the age of 15 he is a chad alright). Note the last part: that's how Mykola found Medea.

Rusudan was originally supposed to be a nurse, following her mother's medical career. However, after some thinking I realised that her flippant, adventurous spirit would definitely feel stifled by the rather rigid hierarchy and heavy workload of the major Soviet hospitals, so instead I let her become a wildlife biologist. That way Rusudan got to be the cool science lady she deserved to be. Shame that her death turned out to be very early and tragic...

Lasha and Mykyta were actually last-minute additions. I was kinda on a whim and wanted to see how far the Sokolenko kids could travel and settle. The answer is very; Lasha ended up a cool lone ranger sort of ethnologist in the Caucasus, while Mykyta ended up following his dad's spying career but worked in a different department (Mykola was in the 3rd Department, his son in the 7th). I also gave them a sweet tooth and unnatural hunger for roasted meat of any kind, like their mother, as well as a love for horseriding, like their father.