#i might update next week and i might update in a month

[dogtoling]

General life- and blog update , since I assume at least a few people might have been wondering where I've been and what i've been up to recently. I obviously haven't been posting or drawing much this year in general. This will probably be an important post if you care about stuff on this blog, and I already rambled on Sheezy, but that site isn't very populated yet and it's also very good at hiding journals so let's just ramble again...

The summary of this post if you hate reading: I'm heavily considering just stepping away from Splatoon. That decision obviously would affect this blog (mostly, my OCs, which is kinda most of the blog at this point). I don't think the blog itself will go anywhere, and I'll probably use it for something in the future... alternatively i'll cherry pick stuff from here into an archive for people who like the worldbuilding.

Longer post under cut:

So what have I been up to this year? The answer is quite simple: NOTHING. Like, actually absolutely nothing. Aside from Art Fight, this has probably been one of my worst art output years of all time, which is really frustrating. That's between my horrendous mental health and depression chasms this year and a complete lack of both focus and inspiration (which can also get chalked down to the depression to a degree, yeah). So the very real reason to why there hasn't been much activity on this blog this year is because I just haven't Done Anything in general.

Now because I know there will be a few people who think "that's fine! you shouldn't judge yourself based on productivity!" you're right! I also agree. However the issue for me specifically is that most (if not all) the time I spend NOT drawing or creating, I spend sitting around wishing I could start drawing or creating, because that is like the 1 thing that keeps me sane on this freaking earth. Unfortunately coming up with OC scenarios in my head doesn't really result in output I can feel fulfilled by in any form as much as I wish it did, lol.

Now; The Issue. It doesn't take a genius to see that if you spend 9 months trying to finish like a dozen OC pages that you COULD do in a week or 2 if you wanted to, then there's probably more than just the problem of executive dysfunction (even though that's at least 60% of it for sure). Obviously my other major problem is that I live by imaginary rules and structures that make sense, but aren't actually useful at ALL in reality and are more than a hindrance if anything (the mental to do-list in my head that says i can't do X until I've done Y doesn't do very much if task Y takes 10 months and I also don't want to do it, and it also has no structured ending).

How does this tie into stepping away from Splatoon, you may ask. Well, the issue is that I have foreseeably fallen out of love with the series. Which isn't exactly news lol. Currently, I'm not even sure i will get the next game, if and when the time comes. Yes, the loss of interest is also expected, given that Splatoon 3 has ended and every fandom has this kind of downtime and lukewarm in-between-titles period. But the truth is that modern Splatoon (almost 10 years old!!!!) is tangibly different from the way the series was back when I fell in love with it. That was Splatoon 1, and while the series has improved in a lot of aspects and is thriving, it's grown in a direction that I just don't really like. Splatoon 3 had the most freaking horrendous, immersion breaking story mode they could've done, then they followed it up with a DLC story that was pretty cool but also compounded a lot of my fears about the series' future and played into every single thing i do not want Splatoon stories to be - fully character focused, random fucking villain, mundane event that's unrealistically world-threatening just because a kids video game needs a scary climax even though it's immersion breaking AGAIN, the whole thing taking place in cyberspace and thus offering basically no worldbuilding even though there is SO MUCH WORLD. I COULD GO ON.

The gist of it is that nowadays, rather than playing Splatoon and being inspired and excited at what comes next, I mostly find myself dreading what dumbass plot they will do next to throw a wrench in the otherwise good stuff. And when that's like THE main approach I have to what's supposed to be my favorite series, it is HARROWING. I can't even really blame the game for this; the story is NOT its selling point, the developers probably do their best to get the bits to us that they really want to tell, and at the end of the day the game is unfortunately a product. Worldbuilding for Splatoon is fun to a point. It's less fun when in order to actually write or create something coherent, instead of filling in the blanks, the blanks are 90% of the freaking thing. At that point you're just better off making something of your own instead of being anchored onto an IP that gives more problems than answers and occasionally shoots you with like a machine gun. Working in the realm of Splatoon is frustrating because more often than not, the questions I have ARE NOT MINE TO ANSWER, and the likelihood that the specific-ass questions I need answers to will ever be actually addressed is really low.

Tying this back to my OCs. Obviously I love my OCs more than I love myself which admittedly isn't that high of a bar but you get the point. The problem is that I spend a lot of time mulling over worldbuilding that, again, frankly isn't mine to do. Because if I want it to be Splatoon, then it should be mostly accurate to how Splatoon is! But the problem with that is that there's really not THAT MUCH worldbuilding in the series that you can work with, and most of the core game mechanics are just abstract enough that it's actually horrendous to try and come up with workarounds and ways for things to make sense that don't require just constructing a full knockoff version mirror dimension of the game and saying fuck everything that's in place here because Inkopolis Plaza literally has no roads in or out of there and I have no fucking idea how that's allowed when your only option is to jump the fence (or, nowadays, take the train which also isnt connected to a street as far as I remember). Between the face value issue and the lack of REALLY IMPORTANT worldbuilding, like - I will always come back to this - THE INK TANK'S FUNCTION 10 YEARS DOWN THE LINE - there's a goddamn ocean of plot holes and things that end up being obstacles to creativity rather than inspiration. I feel like I'm pretty solidly at the point (and have been for a while) where hanging onto Splatoon is really only contributing to creativity block and frustration with lack of freedom and the ability to actually do things.

So I guess those are my reasonings that I've put together just sitting here for the time being. The TL;DR is that I wish I could just do stuff without Splatoon's canon getting in the way, which is a really stupid problem to have if you're making Splatoon OCs. I feel this frustration extremely strongly every time I have to work with actual bigger aspects of the world; we still don't have an Inkopolis map, we don't know what the world around Inkopolis looks like, we don't know what the wilderness is like aside from Just Normal Forest and Desert and very few snippets as to what modern wildlife MIGHT be, I still don't know how the fuck the Inklings teleport to the goddamn arctic ocean to play a turf war at Shipshape Cargo co. These are all actually really important things if you're trying to establish a setting in any kind of storytelling that's outside of immediate city bounds (and even there, you need to know the layout of the city and its important areas). Also a fucking mutant bear and a baby salmon and a squid not wearing suitable gear went to space and fought on a rocket in space. These are some things that would give me peace of mind to not have to deal with in my own writing, probably.

So where do we go from here? Unsure. I haven't really made a decision on this front yet, though right now I'm leaning more towards actually going ahead with trying to do my own thing. That will result in obvious design and setting changes for my OCs whenever I get around to it. This blog probably won't go anywhere (again, unless I impulse delete it during a mood swing like i've almost done on like three separate occasions this year), but it will probably get less use, and I will probably end up making a new blog to post about whatever I end up doing once I get to a point where it feels like it makes sense. There's a chance that I will delete this blog and put all the interesting stuff on an archive blog for the people who are here just for the worldbuilding. My actual true passion for a long time now hasn't even been Splatoon anymore, it's just been cephalopods. I'm kind of done having Splatoon get in the way of the cephalopods, as thankful as I am that it introduced me to them...

If you read this to the end heres a treat for you = 🍪

[sunnie-angel]

The Ghost of You: Update

so based on the poll i did last week, it seems like people want me to upload the unfinished second chapter of the ghost of you. it's a pretty rough draft and it's not my proudest work, but i've been fighting with this update for so long that at this point i'd rather tentatively mark this fic as done than keep fighting it until i hate it. the chapter is posted below the cut as requested and at some point in the future i may revisit this fic, but this is all there is going to be for now. i'm sorry to anyone that was looking forward to a more satisfying ending, but i'd like to keep my fond memories of this fic.

If this were one of Ms. Einarsdottir’s romantic fairytales, your handsome prince would have come back to you the very same night and begged you to explain. If this were a fairytale, you would have told him all about your ghostly visions and tearfully asked him to forgive you for not sharing this with him sooner. If this was a fairytale, he’d say there was nothing to forgive, you’d fall into his arms for a kiss and the two of you would live happily ever after. This is not a fairytale.

You call in sick that first aching morning, painfully aware that you’re leaving your friends and co-workers in a tight spot but being brutally honest with yourself, you know that you’ll make mistakes and at the hospital, mistakes cost lives. The lingering weight of Matty’s life, cut too short too soon, already hangs on your conscience. You won’t add another to it, won’t create more heartache in the world. So instead you spend the day sitting on that same blasted couch staring numbly into the distance.  The mug wrapped in your hands grows cold and yet you don’t notice enough to care. Slowly as the hours stretch on the quality of the light changes as the sun travels high overhead of a city that won’t conveniently pause itself for your fractured heart. Notifications cause your phone to vibrate and buzz intermittently. You don’t check who it is until it’s dark out and you finally move from your statue-like position to turn on some lights. 

A few of your work friends from the hospital have sent you get well soon messages. There’s a few missed calls from Steph, but you dismiss the notifications with a flick of your finger across the screen. You’re in no mood for re-hashing the hurt that hangs like a shroud over the apartment, wouldn’t even know where to begin to find the words. 

There’s some leftover soup in the fridge and you heat it up on the stove. It’s as you’re dumping rice noodles into the pot that the smell of it really hits you. You’d made the soup noodles the night before, something quick and easy that even in his distracted state you’d known that Jason would devour. Your face is now oddly wet. It’s over stirring a pot that the first tears start to fall, anger and frustration mingling with numbness and a bone deep sadness. This was not the way things were meant to be. There was supposed to be laughter and joy in the apartment, shared sorrows halved, and a ring on your finger in a few months, a promise of forever. The rooms are cold and empty now, echoing with their silence. 

Jason doesn’t come home that night, or the next. It takes a full week of dragging yourself out of your lonely bed, staring unfeelingly into the bathroom mirror at your dark circles as you pull back your hair to get ready for work, of dodging questions about your silences and dark moods and fending off well-meaning invitations from coworkers for coffee, that you realize that Jason may not be coming back. That despite all your years together, shared moments and shared secrets, this one last truth might be what breaks you apart. That thought hurts, in ways you hadn’t considered before. 

It takes another week to wrap your head around that possibility. Another week of missed calls and texts from Steph and Dick, a DM from Tim, but nothing from Jason himself. His clothes are still in the closet and his collection of recipe cards from Alfred still sit on the kitchen counter. The bottle of cedar scented body wash taunts you in the shower the same way your single set of keys by the front door does. His presence haunts every room of your apartment more effectively than any ghost you’ve ever encountered. 

It is Ms. Einarsdottir with her fairytale romances that begins to pull you together again. She listens as you stumble through your story, a copy of Jane Eyre in your lap as a cover for the tears that occasionally escape you. In a quiet corner of the Gotham library, you begin to sort through just how deeply his reaction has hurt you to the only person that really knows the whole story. 

“Oh dearie, you really have been through it, haven’t you?” She clucks. “He seemed like such a nice boy too. He made you happy once, very happy I think.” She strokes your hair as best she can for a person without a physical body. “But he’s hurt you quite badly now. There may come a day when he apologizes, and Lord only knows he’ll need to spend ages making it up to you, but dear you can’t live waiting for him to make that decision.” 

“I know that. And I know that he’s hurt me. But I also know that he’s hurting too. I can’t get the image of his face, how devastated he looked, out of my head.” Your voice shakes, thick with choked back emotion. “I’ve got all this love for him still and it’s sitting like a lump of coal in my chest.”

“Dearie,” Ms. Einarsdottir says, leveling you with her gaze, “your love for that boy might never change. But right now, you need to have more love for yourself. Right now he’s hurtin’ over a what-if that the two of us know isn’t true. He’s hurt you–” she raises her voice before you can interrupt, “and that’s a fact. If he can’t figure out how to handle his hurt, if he isn’t capable of loving you for every last thing that you can do, then he was never the one for you. No matter how much you still care about  him.” Her words land heavy in the relative silence of the library, bitter in the way that the most effective medicines are. You swallow heavily, and continue to stare at the book in your lap unseeingly. 

“Now it sounds like there’s a little boy out there that needs your help. From the both of you. Let doing the right thing get your mind off of other things. And if that boy can’t get himself to accept your help out of fear, then you’ll know where you stand and I will know whether or not I need to start putting the fear of God into that boy.”

You smile weakly at her attempt at sternness, the deeply etched smile lines of her face so incongruous with her words. Thanking her, you make your way out of the library mulling over her words. She’s not wrong, that Matty needs help, help only you can give him. The only sticking point would be if you can make yourself reach out to Jason, if he’d even listen to you. 

It takes a few more days for you to come to a decision, and even then it is less of a conscious thought than a half-cocked choice that comes about because of how desperate you are for caffeine. Buying a cup of coffee, you drop your change, coins rolling every which way. One of them comes to a stop on the cobbled stone right as Matty dies again. His fingers still look so fragile scrabbling in the dirt, you think. Matty’s still there, trapped in the courtyard with the only good coffee stand in all of Gotham General Hospital. You can’t ignore the fact that he’s there anymore than you could the first time. He dies three times while you wait in line for your coffee, your already weary heart buckling under the strain of his terror. It makes you angry at yourself for how long you’ve left him there like this, too distracted by something as inconsequential as a broken heart when he’s been facing the stuff of nightmares without respite. 

The rest of the day passes by in a daze, but by the end of it you’ve resolved to return to the courtyard, to Matty. The sun’s going down by the time you clock out, the courtyard much emptier now that the coffee stand has closed for the day. It’s just you, the pigeons, and Matty. Hands tucked into your coat pockets for warmth, you call out to him.

“Matty! Matty, I’m here. Can you hear me?” Your voice isn’t that loud, the same firm but gentle voice you use with the traumatized children that cycle through your ward, but it causes him to flinch. 

“D’you know the way home, miss?” He asks again. You have to strain to hear him over the noise of the ambulance bay and the rush hour traffic. 

“Tell me where you are Matty and I’ll tell you how to get home, alright?” Your voice is coaxing, but you know that you’re short on time. If the loop continues to play out the way it always has, there’s precious little time before whatever is chasing Matty catches up to him. 

“I’m walking home from practicing the piano…” his voice trails off into nothingness as his eyes go wide with fright. You can do nothing but watch him, a fist in your chest, as he dies in the dirt. With a flicker the loop starts up again, Matty reappearing a few steps away from you. Taking a deep breath in, you start again. You stay for another hour with Matty, until the air is so cold that it slices up your lungs with a hundred paper cuts on every inhale and all the streetlights have turned on. You’ve asked every variation of where are you that you can in those brief few moments before fear consumed him. It’s selfish, but for that whole hour not once did you think of your own empty apartment until you’ve flipped the lights on in it.

And so it goes for the rest of the week. Every day after your shift, you’ll spend an hour or so with Matty. Not every day do you try and find out more from him. Sometimes you simply try to comfort him. He reminds you of someone and it takes a while for you to figure out exactly who. It’s Jason - or more accurately the ghost of Jason Todd, dead and gone too soon. Something about the lightness of their limbs, their shared love of the arts, the way their deaths have left them trapped, it has you even more determined to set Matty to rest. 

[deoidesign]

My comic is so pretty...

The hiatus is letting me take a little extra time on these episodes, and I'm definitely putting it to good use!!!

[emotsper]

(7/?) uh oh!

[2hoothoots]

i was having a chuckle to myself last night about Gristol, and how his plans are basically:

Restore Ford Cruller's memory

Find Maligula

???

Profit

but then... of course they are, right? this is Gristol we're talking about. Fatherland Follies drives home again and again that he's still operating on a child's logic, a warped and reductive version of the world that he never bothered to grow out of. both of his memory vaults center on the images of his childhood, this idealized version of the past that he clings to no matter what. and that's still how he remembers Maligula, too - as this saviour figure, who rushes in to help him when he's in trouble.

[ID: Two slides from Gristol's memory vault, Glory to Grulovia! Left: Gristol clings to Maligula's back as she summons waves to sweep away his assailants. Right: Gristol and Maligula waving from a balcony as the people cheer. Gzar Theodore brandishes a dagger in the background.]

like so much else, Maligula represents a return to this idyllic childhood - to the peace and simplicity of his youth, when he was free from worries and responsibilities. in his mind, he doesn't need to make any further plans - once Maligula's back, everything will go back to normal. Maligula will make everything better.

...is what i thought, but then i remembered this line:

[Screenshot source. ID: Gristol, in Truman's body, bows on his hands and knees in front of the newly-awaked Maligula. The caption reads: "Yes, High Priestess! I am here to correct the mistakes made by my father!"]

and that's kind of interesting, right?

to be clear: this happens directly after Maligula sees Helmut-in-Gristol's-body, and recognises him. her line before this is:

"Little Gzesaravich! Have you come to pay for your father's sins?"

my first thought was that Gristol hadn't expected to still be in Truman's body by the time he managed to find Maligula, and this was him trying to placate her and buy some time until he could explain the situation. but watching the cutscene back, that's clearly not what's happening here. Gristol is answering as himself, and his response of throwing himself to his knees before her is, as far as i can tell, genuine.

so what is going on here?

in Fatherland Follies, there's this line in the ride narration that stuck out to me:

"Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree - it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure."

other lines mention Gzar Theodore's "mistake", and it's wording Gristol himself echoes in the screencap above. evidently, he believes that his father abandoned Maligula, leaving her to her fate at the hands of the Psychonauts, and it was that mistake that lead to them being driven out of the country - that mistake which he seeks to correct. maybe he even feels like he has a debt to repay to her for his family turning their backs on her all those years ago.

the 'High Priestess' thing, though - that's kinda weird, and threw me for a loop the first time i played the game. it took me until my second playthrough to connect the dots, and remember how the room in the Lady Luctopus - Gristol's room - was full of Delugionist scribblings and symbols.

[Screenshot source. ID: left, the walls of the hidden backroom in Gristol's hotel suite, covered in scrawlings of eyeballs and Maligula's name. Right, the pinboard from the hidden backroom. On its surface are photographs and newspaper clippings connected by pieces of string.]

i mean, look at this stuff! he had a whole conspiracy board and everything!

we learn very little about the Delugionists and their beliefs as a whole during the game, but i think drawing the connection here suggests two important things. one: that Gristol was in deep with this stuff. i don't know how he linked up with them - maybe via old family connections, or just good old-fashioned digging (we know he's skilled at worming his way into peoples' good graces, after all) - but it seems likely that he's begun to internalise their ideas, maybe even warping his own memories of events. and two: the Delugionists themselves are, if you'll pardon the pun, pretty far off the deep end.

like... i understand why PN2 didn't go heavy on the "mass-murderer cult worship" aspect of things, in the end, but man this is such a tantalising glimpse into the wider mythos around Maligula. Gristol is proud and haughty and thinks himself above everyone else; the fact that his first reaction seeing Maligula is to throw himself to the ground at her feet says so much about the way he's come to see her. he's not just trying to bring back Maligula, his childhood bodyguard. he's trying to bring back Maligula, the High Priestess of the deluge, the semi-mythical figure whose supporters believe even death couldn't stop. he doesn't even flinch at the way she confronts him, and maybe it's because he's bought in so completely to this deified figurehead, this idea of Maligula; more a living force of nature than a person. and it all comes back to the same place: an abdication of responsibility, not just to the person who protected him when he was little but to this avatar of floods and destruction. Maligula will make everything better.

i'd write more about my thoughts on the Delugionists but that'd be taking a hard turn into speculation, and this is already kind of long and rambling so i'd better end it here. but what an unexpected and evocative line, right? it's some of the only stuff we have to go off of regarding the Delugionists as a whole, but i think it does such a good job of hinting at the wider story - at teasing another layer to the mythos surrounding Maligula, one whose ripples we see throughout the game but which never quite breaches the surface.

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

Chapter 21.5

im still on hiatus but this was for funsies...a break away from byakuya's pov for a moment hehe

SEE HERE FOR GENERAL WARNINGS AND FIC SUMMARY

Some pre-chapter notes:

this is just like wizard of oz if the wizard was junko enoshima. pay no attention to the girl behind the monitors....

featuring a special surprise guest!! :) (:

@digitaldollsworld (^^)//

Content warning tags: passing mention of surgery and blood

< previous - from start - next >

“I am done.”

The voice behind her is dull and gravelly with lethargy, belonging to someone both young and aged. Junko Enoshima hadn’t heard the door open, but she’s hardly startled - she’d been expecting him, after all - and with a flourish, she leans back from the grid of monitors before her and shoves off the desk to spin her chair, knees tucked up to her chest. One, two, three clockwise spins later - a new record, nice - and she slows to a stop, angled perfectly to face the man before her.

And she smiles, as she notes the blue latex gloves still on his hands, the blood splattered up his arms to the rolled-up sleeves of his white dress shirt. “Aw, thanks Zuzu! You’re a treat,” She winks and blows an exaggerated kiss, to no reaction. Not even a half-raised hand to try and catch it. “Was it hard?”

Izuru Kamakura doesn’t respond at first. He’s wiping off the blood - still shiny and slightly wet - off of his pale arms with a stained handkerchief, his hair swaying like a dark curtain around him. “...Not particularly.” He replies in his usual monotone, as if the whole ordeal had been terribly boring to him. ‘Not particularly’ he said, as if the whole process hadn’t taken several weeks, with multiple surgeries - including one where he had left the operating table with his scrubs still on to find a better donor, because the one she had on hand just happened to not be a very good match. “If that is all, I will leave now.”

“Noo, come on! You just got here,” She complains, childishly, needling, despite knowing full well that he’d been here far longer than he originally intended already. Well, it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be, and all the action was here anyways.  “Don’t you wanna see how your precious juniors are doing?”

He doesn’t reply, but she knows he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered turning up in the first place, whether she requested his help or not; they’re just like each other, in that way. Reaching behind her, she grabs a remote, and points it at one of the monitors, and immediately its previous image of the empty second-floor hallway fizzes out, replaced with a replay of the day’s highlights, edited and cut by hers truly.

It opens with a theme song. A lovely little leitmotif that she composed, one for each of her dear classmates, this one full of violin and koto. A quick intro montage of photos they had taken throughout their high school careers, and then-

“No need.” He deadpans, interrupting the opening credits she’d bullied Ryota Mitarai into making. “I know what happened already.”

“Geez, but I made this special for you!” She whines, though there’s no real bite to it. She expected this outcome, so it wasn’t like she made her edits particularly interesting either. “Wish you’d play along a little. Come on.”

Instead of replying, he snaps off his gloves and flicks them and the towel into a nearby trash can without looking. He spins her chair to grab his jacket, pinned between her back and the seat, and tugs it so sharply it actually lifts her up a bit.

“Hey, that’s no way to treat a lady,” She sulks, tucking her skirt back down. “I was keeping it warm for you.”

Her only response is an impassioned glance, as he shakes the garment out with a sharp snap.

She watches him prepare to leave, rolling down his sleeves and smoothing out his shirt, pulling the jacket on with a practiced, mechanical grace. “Is it really that much better, being out there?” She grumbles. Outside was a wasteland, shattered remains, rot and destruction. The few people still alive were either on the edge of death, or insane with despair - either way, they’d fallen into a dull, predictable pattern. Starving, stealing, killing, dying, wailing. So much wailing. How strange it was that even these things became uninteresting after so long.

“They all behaved exactly how I expected.” He says, in an approximation for an explanation. He adjusts his cufflinks, thumb swiping over the polished brass. They’d been shaped like Hope’s Peak’s logo, but countless passing touches had nearly buffed out the enamel inlay - they were little more than tiny mirrors now, if she leaned forward and squinted she could almost see herself in them, check for stuff stuck in her teeth-

“Why did you not confront them after they discovered the AI?”

The question interrupts her train of thought, and she blinks, then grins, utterly delighted. “Why? Did I surprise you?”

He levels her with a look, a dark stare from those bloody, bloodshot eyes. “There are several reasons to possibly explain why you behaved this way.” He continues. “The most simple reason, you were distracted-”

“Nope. Glued to the cameras the whole time.”

“The most predictable reason, you wanted them to think they had a chance.”

“Hmm...mayy-be?” She pulls her legs up to sit criss-crossed in her chair, and rocks side to side, hands resting on her ankles as she thinks. “I mean, there are ten of them left. Would be a shame if they gave up already, right?”

“...And, based on your current interests. You thought it would make for a more interesting development. Especially in regards to Togami.”

She smiles, teeth splitting her face. “Congratulations, a hun-dred points to dear Mister Kamakura,”  She sings in an exaggerated falsetto, and claps her hands in mock applause. “I was thinking about it, but then he and Kyoko went and had that absolutely lovely little heart-to-heart in the hallway…how could I possibly interrupt my dearest friends?”

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes narrow slightly, the corners of his lips pulling into a thin line. A look that screams - or maybe just mutters, in his case - ‘what the hell are you talking about.’ “He smashed her hand in a door. She belittled him for his blindness.”

“Yeah, and? Don’t you know what foreplay is?” He doesn’t scoff, but the just-audible exhale he lets out is pretty close. “Oh, shush. Like you would know anything,” She sniffs. “But anyways, I definitely wasn’t expecting them to reach this stage already. I thought it’d take a few more years at least!” She lets loose a laugh, a sharp, bright sound that gets swallowed up by the dense, packed-foam soundproofing around them. “Letting them get away with Alter Ego was totally worth the show!”

He doesn’t look like he agrees, but then again, those old Hope’s Peak scientists hadn’t included ‘Ultimate Clear Emotion Conveying’ among his repertoire of talents, so maybe he was jumping for joy on the inside right now. “Togami’s blindness was an unexpected development,” He agrees. “But that is all. He hasn’t demonstrated any behavior that couldn’t be predicted.”

“You were pretty intrigued by him before though, weren’t you?” She’d had her suspicions from the start, when Byakuya’s first day after waking up was spent squinting and fidgeting with his glasses, but he couldn’t be called an Ultimate for nothing. If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she might’ve even been halfway fooled. 

And the best developments were the ones that hadn’t been planned beforehand. Watching him walk away from the A/V room without even playing his motive disc was such a fun twist that had her raising her brows, even as Mukuro had gotten all pissy, after all the work that she had put into capturing that old butler alive. Even better than that was his breakdowns, when Junko watched him fall into a sinking spiral in his room, muttering to himself and pacing before finally passing out. The difference between his usual hoity-toity self and his total helplessness made for an absolutely delectable kind of gap moe.

“I have no interest in him. Rather, the source of his blindness is what intrigues me.” Izuru corrects her bluntly. “It is unclear what might have caused it. He never displayed symptoms of it prior to the game’s beginning.”

And if she had to be really honest, she wasn’t sure either. “Who knows?” She shrugs. “Spontaneous genetic condition? Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow morning and be totally bald?”

“The Togami family is obsessed with genetics. Sudden cataract development, or anything of that nature, would have weeded out long ago.” He rebuts. His eyes, a deep, ugly, unnatural red that could make Celeste jealous, fix on her for a moment, and then travel up to look at the monitors, pupils shrinking like a cat’s as they dart from screen to shining screen. “Could it have something to do with the memory wipe?”

“No way!” She snaps back to him immediately, almost affronted. “My process is totally perfect. Do you know how many people I tested it on?” Sure, she’d had plenty of lab rats get seizures, comas, go crazy or just straight-up die, but none of them went blind. “If you don’t believe me, you wanna try it yourself?”

Now that was an idea. Maybe if she could induce an artificial amnesia in Izuru, and completely make him forget how he became this way - gosh, but that could be interesting. An Ultimate Hope who didn’t know what his purpose was? Or, better yet, a Hajime Hinata who didn’t know what he really was?

She could almost drool over the idea of it. Seeing the man, the boy in front of her, twisted, despairing, and utterly ruined - how thrilling would that be?

“Do it to yourself.” Izuru replies sullenly, shattering her daydream in an instant, and she pouts. Spoilsport.

They fall into a comfortable sort of quiet for a moment, as Junko turns back to the screens. Without her sister around, she had to take the role of surveillance onto herself, and that was a 24/7 ordeal. But at least it was something to do, she supposed.

Byakuya was making his way to his room from the cafeteria, apparently completely oblivious to how Toko was stalking him from a few meters behind. Hina and Sakura were working off their post-trial grief through vigorous physical activity - swimming, because of course it would be - Celeste was being comforted by Hifumi, and Hiro was chasing after Mondo, who apparently had given up on trying to eat anything and was now meandering aimlessly through the halls, the dead look on his face evident even through some of the grainier footage. Makoto was wandering, probably trying to repair his broken heart by distracting himself with some good old-fashioned adventuring, or maybe Kyoko.

Waaaait a minute. She frowns suddenly, leaning in closer to scan each of the monitors in quick succession, starting from the camera feeds of the third floor, and working down. Wait a damn minute. There was a suspicious lack of pale, skulking figures in her peripherals - just where was her darling detective?

She feels a little thrill of a delicious dread run up her spine. She went through all this trouble to give Kyoko a full wipe - to clean out every last memory that might give the detective a clue to her own identity - and yet here she was, managing to crawl under Junko’s skin like a centipede, a stubborn parasite. There were only so many unsupervised places that Miss Headmaster’s Daughter could be hiding, and Junko couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face; she could always count on Kyoko to make things interesting.

“Hey, Zuzu. You wanna make a bet?” She hums to Izuru. No Kyoko, but Makoto’s pointed cowlick was coming into view on one of the stairway cameras leading into the second floor, soon accompanied by the rest of him. 

“On what?”

“Oh, anything. Which one of them will die next. If one of them will snap and start trying to kill the rest of them���” She rewinds through the camera recordings of the last hour, speeding through the frames until they’re all mere blurs of color and light. Her eyes dart, and spy the pale, round shape of Kyoko’s head, as she walks into the dark entryway of the second-floor boy’s bathroom, not even half-an-hour ago. “If they manage to figure out the details of Togami’s blindness.”

Another bet. Another meaningless wager on top of the hundreds, thousands, millions of other ones that she’s made and won, but this one might actually surprise her for once. She hopes it will.

“How pointless.” He sighs. But despite that, he hasn’t turned to leave yet. And actually, the fact that he responded at all meant that he was, even just a little bit, curious. “What would we wager? We have nothing of value, and nothing we value enough.” “Hmm, true…and it’s not like we care about either of our lives either.” She fast-forwards the cameras, and watches as Makoto looks left and right, nervous eyes casting up and down the hallway, before he enters the second floor boy’s bathroom. She needs to get moving now, if she was going to make sure her darling detective didn’t go and ruin the game too early, and she shoves aside some empty snack wrappers, the pieces of an unfinished puzzle, a book so dog-eared and worn it was on the brink of disintegrating, and Monokuma’s controller to grab the authentic luchador mask that was hanging off the edge of the table. “We got all the time we need to figure that out, after all. So in the meantime, how about you stick around and see how it goes?"

< previous - from start - next >

[toxooz]

brains been kicking my fucking ass all day so have an emergency Ollie doodle 🕷

[front-facing-pokemon]

[caterpillarinacave]

So I haven’t written anything in a month

[what-even-is-sleep]

Can’t wait for my drivers license to arrive so I can be driving legally again for the first time in 1.5 years!

[sharkneto]

How long do you think it should take between chapter uploads on Ao3?

As long as the author needs

[suddencolds]

the way I just binge read all of your yvescent fics and all I can think of is WHY DIDN'T I DO IT SOONER?!!!! like...omg. hear me out, I am usually more into fandom content, OCs don't really draw my attention that much BUT that thought's definitely change thanks to yours. Idk, everything about them felt so well-built and their personalities are just captivating they just make you wanna get to know them more (yes, now I am attached and do not regret it one bit). Anyways, what I am trying to say with all that is that thank you for creating them, I think they're awesome and that I admire your blog :))) I came for all the g/enshin fics (which I think are one of the best out there) and found gold by discovering your Yves and Vincent.

ps: didn't get the chance to vote on the poll, but the option that won.... let me just say that I am living for it

Anon!!! Thank you for reading and leaving such nice thoughts!!! 😭😭❤️ It means a lot to me that you were able to enjoy my original content even though you followed me for Genshin - I definitely feel like it can be harder to overcome the initial hurdle of not knowing the characters when it comes to original content.

Thank you for giving them a chance regardless!! And I am so happy to hear that you like them!! 💖 It's actually been a year since I started the series as of... last Monday, haha. (I also apologize for any waiting you'll have to do in the future 😭) Hearing that others look forward to reading more brings me so much joy!!

(Also, to your P.S. - that option was a winner from since right after I posted the poll and hasn't changed since 👀 I feel like the people who voted for it are split between like... allergy enthusiasts and the Vincent suffering enthusiasts haha (or maybe both at once?) Rest assured, I've taken note of it... ✍️)

[silverstarfics]

New chapter time ✌️

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32625208/chapters/117484159

[regscupid]

i have to write an email to my manager and i think i’d rather be put down

[crystal-the-axolotl]

This has been sitting unfinished in my computer files for like a month now, but i finally finished it today, yay (it's not so bad, i'm actually liking how Canute's coat and eyes turned out)

[astramachina]

honestly that's why i try to usually have a fic fully finished before it goes on AO3 but idk what possessed me with that one.