#i project a *lot* onto the characters i write

[lunarcrown]

Hi! I wanted to say I love this fic so much. I've read it several times over and I love seeing all your art for it as well. Thank you and aquaquadrant for bringing us this beautiful work! Tango is one of my fav Lifers and I adore Bravo and Atlas too. The characterizations are so fun. The angst is right up my alley and the soft moments balance it out beautifully. I loved reading the Hels bits and trying to figure out who each character was connected to on the overworld and the way you decided their differing traits was so interesting. The designs are also very cool. I adore Grian's jacket and glasses, Lizzie and Joel are gorgeous, Pearl is terrifyingly beautiful with all the bug traits, and Ren being a massive wolf is so fun! Tango being a blaze hybrid imprinted on my brain so hard I forgot it wasn't actually canon to his YT character's lore. It's true in my heart now. And Dbubs and Patho? Delicious. Good soup. I can't wait to see all the incredible stuff you guys put out in the future! I'm sure it'll all be great and I'll love every bit of it All that being said, I've had a bit of a day (/silly), so here's me projecting my period cramps onto Bravo <3 Have a lovely day/night!

Thank you SO MUCH FOR ALL THE KIND WORDS!!! I loooove that you’ve read it over and over, Aqua’s writing is SO CHOICE so I’m always happy when people read it more than once~~

And yesss she’s also the mastermind for all the heavy thinking about traits and details, her world building is BONKERS!! It honestly does the same thing to me where I sometimes can’t remember what was our au and what’s like actually happened in the VODs HAHA

And thanks for all the love of the designs!! It takes me a while to design anyone because I have to have the right spark and inspiration or it’ll feel too much like a chore?? So even though it took me a while (and there’s still more designs to do!!), it means a lot that you enjoy them so much!!

THE PERIOD CRAMP BEAM IS SO GOOD I looooove ittt YES GIVE BRAVO SOME AGONY!!!!!

Here’s a doodle back of him doing his favorite thing: placing blame on Tango!!!

[plaidos]

Please god I've been fighting the fight of "not every single character has to be a canvas for you to project onto, sometimes you can write about and relate to a character who is not exactly like you" and I'm so tired.

This is bitchy and petty but I stopped writing fanfiction for a fandom I really enjoyed because I was one of like three people who wasn't a gay trans man and cared about the actual in text trans lesbians who do shit on screen and not the imagined headcanoned offscreen men who might be gay. It got very very obvious. and everyone was obsessed with this character that never had their pronouns stated in the source material which was very fun! Lots of room for post canon exploration especially when said character is taken from their beurocratic white collar job into a place with more freedom for gender expression. Except they were always gay and transmasc. Every single time they would talk about the character being so relatable to everyone in the fandom now which actually meant they were only ever be gay and transmasc. "Gender neutral character" transmasc. They always meant transmasc. Please god. Get me out of here.

what fandom is this and why doesn’t it surprise me that that’s your experiences 😭 i’m so sorry that sounds so fucking annoying and blatantly sexist

[maxdibert]

i respect your take on snape, although he’s still not really a character i love, but i feel like a huge difference between snape and regulus/james/etc. for people who write fan fics or create stuff for the mauraderers fandom in general is the fact that people have the liberty to create their futures (since they all died very young, regulus is essentially entirely a fanon character, as is pandora, and many others), while with snape like canonically we know how he turns out, how he has mistreated children as a teacher, etc., and that’s just not something everyone can forgive, and yes there are intersectional factors in his upbringing that influence his actions but his actions are still his own, and at that point in the books he is a literal adult with like a lot of power, being a teacher, integral to dumbledor, and important to the DEs, his cruelty just seems quite unnecessary and i don’t think it’s wrong for it to not be everyone’s cup of tea. also to say the whole fandom is classist is honestly a reach, remus, lily, mary, etc. are also not rich pure bloods and they are generally beloved characters.

i get the premise of the point that it would be hypocritical to dislike snape and love characters like regulus, remus, james, etc, but again one of the main draws to these characters is the fact that there is like so little to work with from cannon, but each character has enough about them in cannon to create really interesting character dynamics (and there are just so many characters to work with, like pandora, mary, lily, etc. and the gen x characters are from like three families essentially, there’s just less to work with). with these baseline characteristics and early tragic deaths it’s easy to grasp onto these characters, and write stories where their futures could be better, and they could change for the better while with snape that story is entirely written and his actions just don’t appeal to everyone. snapes arc is quite fleshed out by jkr, in a way the majority of the characters in the mauraderers fandom isn’t, which is also why people might prefer other characters and still not like snape

That would make sense if one of the fan favorites weren’t Barty Crouch Jr, whose future we all know, and it’s much worse than Severus’s. It would also make sense if the only Slytherin they fangirl over were Regulus, but there’s also Evan Rosier, who was one of Voldemort’s biggest supporters. They even let Peter slide on many things, even though he was the main traitor of the Potters and a lifelong bootlicker of Voldemort. Honestly, the issue with Severus doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how he ends up as an adult. I think that’s just a cheap excuse people use to justify their classism and beauty privilege and also to avoid confronting the reality that what bothers them most about Severus as a character is that, indeed, he’s the marginalized victim who doesn’t fit in economically, socially, or physically, who gets mocked for not conforming to beauty standards and for having a non-hegemonic appearance. And that’s literally what those same haters try to impose in their distorted, wannabe version of the Marauders. But Severus doesn’t work for them as a projection because he’s not the cool, popular guy, and they need to project themselves onto characters who were cool and popular to sublimate their unresolved fantasies of school popularity.

[aspenlovesdc]

A part of me is really tempted to write another fic of autistic Tim Drake because the first one I did a lot of people seemed to like it and I need to vent my frustration with society and sensory issues somehow lol.

It’s also because I want to write about the “ugly” side of autism. That’s not the best way to phrase it I don’t think but I can’t think of another way to describe it. I want to write about how overwhelming emotions are, about how you always know how other people are feeling but you can’t help them and how stressful that is, how isolating it is when you have to lie to people because when you try and explain why you can’t do something you’re treated like you’re lazy so you make up a “justified” reason so people won’t judge you.

Tim is a character I find it really easy to project that sort of stuff onto.

This wouldn’t be a sequel to “To be normal is my dream but it is impossible for me” because I’d rather just have it as a bunch of one shots so I don’t have to care about plot.

Anyway, I’m not promising that I’m definitely going to do this, it depends, but I have a hunch I probably will lol.

[foxglovegames]

DEV LOG: 2024 Recap

Helloooo everyone!

This year genuinely flew past us. As a studio, we had our ups-and-many-downs, but we're feeling more positive going into 2025. Let's start with what we got done this year before moving onto our plans for the future! :)

⭐Released Trouble Comes Twice: Bonus Stories!

Feels like we released this ages ago, but it hasn't even been a year yet! Back in April, we released the first (and only) public DLC for Trouble Comes Twice. For us, Bonus Stories was a satisfying goodbye to these characters after spending years with them; we hope that players who decided to give the DLC a chance feel the same.

It'll always be a bit bittersweet moving on from a project you've worked on for so long and dedicated so much towards. There's always going to be what-ifs, but we're mostly just proud of what we did achieve and kind of relieved we made it to the finish line haha. If you're interested in reading more about our experience working on Trouble Comes Twice and what we learned, do check out this post mortem we wrote! We hope it offers some insight for players who might be curious and other vn devs who'd like another dev's take.

⭐A tumultuous start for our next visual novel Burn the Midnight Oil

Since the end of 2023, we've worked on and off on our next visual novel Burn the Midnight Oil. The plan was to launch a Kickstarter campaign and demo before the end of 2024 - since it's now Dec and that never happened, you can imagine things did not go as planned ahah... Unfortunately, we experienced several setbacks, one of the biggest being that our lead artist had to leave the project some months ago due to health issues.

It took us a minute to find the right person to step in and take over the character art, but we recently welcomed a new lead artist whom we're incredibly excited to be working with!

So, where does the project stand right now?

Our new character artist is chipping away at the sprites and CGs for the game, which are the main assets we're still missing to finish the demo.

Script is written, edited and coded in

BGs are completed and the UI is close to completed

We're planning to tackle the soundtrack in the coming months, but our composer BellKallengar has already finished an amazing main menu theme! We can't wait for you to hear it.

For our own sanity and the expectations of our players, we're not making any promises or guesses on when you can expect the demo, Kickstarter, or official announcement until we know for certain. The only thing we can confidently confirm is that it's coming in 2025 (unless we're struck by the worst bad luck ever).

We're going to resume regular monthly updates when the game has been announced, but until then, we're sticking o quarterly updates instead so the next one would be in March. (Unless we manage to announce the game before that! A dev can dream.)

⭐PLANS FOR 2025

There's only one concrete plan - officially announcing Burn the Midnight Oil, releasing the Kickstarter demo, and launching our crowdfunding campaign! Melli and I already finished the demo script earlier this year, so we've been working on outlining (and writing) the routes for the full game. We hope to make as much progress as possible on that before the Kickstarter launches. Hopefully, that should save us a lot of time in the long run.

We hope everyone's having a fantastic holiday season! See you all in the new year! 🥂

[discordiansamba]

probably my biggest nitpick re: atla fics is when they write zuko and azula as being so much kinder to each other than they are in canon without having like. a good reason for that to be happening, because you can always tell that there's this underlying attitude of well. they're siblings. so they have to actually secretly love and care about each other no matter what.

which is just. such an only child/had a good relationship with their siblings thing to think. i promise y'all some siblings just do not get along with each other even without the mess of a golden child/scapegoat dynamic. it's that kind of thinking of that leads people to act like cutting off your family, no matter what the reason, is cruel and wrong and that you're the awful one for doing it, even if you're doing it for the sake of your mental health.

(you see this also happening re: azula and ty lee's friendship a lot too)

and it can be interesting to explore the what-ifs! the universes where they get along better! the universes where they learn to be better together. but it's not a guarantee. and there's always this undercurrent when you do write them closer to their canon portrayal from people who are like... aren't they being a little mean to each other? i don't think they'd actually think that about each other.

i promise y'all. they absolutely would.

(also, why touching canon regularly is just a good idea in general.)

[sourscratched]

got caught in one of the back wheels of the bandwagon, extended corniverse headcanons be upon ye

my bryce and clark are based on the lovely lovely designs for them made by @gaybearwedding !! (well they at least were initially. things may have gotten away from me)

additional dumb doodling under the cut

(and one for my little team illinois + nebraska ocs ⬇️)

notes, headcanons, etc:

- the Wicked shirt and the blue button down (from the group pic in the first photoset) are both shirts i’ve owned for a long time and are still in my closet right now

- the team illinois and team nebraska captains are named dani (daniela) and miya and pretty much exactly what happened between bryce and clark also happened with them. they also spent a summer road-tripping together; prime grounds for homosexual thoughts to happen

- for anybody who’s watched the off book episode The Kids Are At Night with Mary Sohn (10/10 episode highly recommended), i imagine that most nights after clark gets done helping his sisters* with their homework he’s probably looking up online editions of Boy Boy Magazine. gotta get connected to the culture

* = my headcanon is that he has two sisters, one older one younger

- the Away Team is from the same country as Princess Emily but they’re diehard Nothing Everything Children Glass fans (is there an actual name for the group who made it?? tag with your headcanon for the band name) and there is a rivalry between the two factions

that’s all ive got for now thanks for reading all my weird little ideas!! 💖💖

[doodlejoltik]

my favourite writing device is having an un-Rei-liable narrator

[decisions-at-3am]

Do you ever think of me As I have thought of you?

I saw the scribblings of Muddled lines from your life. Day-to-day inspirations, All carefully collected.

I wanted to know how it felt. So I wrote, day and night. But I may have been mistaken, You, the subject of what I write.

It's increasingly clear that, I do not have varied interests. Everything loops back to you, You are my forever muse.

[eagerself5000]

me and mentally unwell fictional characters put in stress inducing situations who became angry at the world because of them (bonus point if they're viewed as inadequate by other people who dont understand the position theyre being put in)

[commsroom]

eiffel's problem is that he sees every injustice as an interpersonal issue. he doesn't understand how his flippancy or apparent leniency towards hilbert might look to hera; in his mind, it doesn't contradict his support for her. to eiffel, it seems obvious - he is also one of hilbert's victims, hera is his friend, of course he's completely on her side - but he fails to fully grasp how the stakes are different for her.

ep 19: "you need to stop treating this like a joke, officer eiffel." / "hey, i'm the person for whom the joke tolls." / "i get you're scared he put something inside you. but i hope you haven't forgotten emergency code alpha victor. he put that in me." and ep 51: "they're just jokes! they don't really mean anything." / "see, eiffel, you get to have that. they can be 'just jokes' for you because you're... well, you. but we don't get that."

the issue in shut up and listen is eiffel's repeated, if unintentional, microaggressions, but it's also his general use of dark humor as a coping mechanism - jokes he feels justified in making because of how the subjects of those jokes have impacted him. eiffel sincerely believes in treating people equally, but his idea of 'equal treatment' can be idealistic and naive. he has an awareness of interpersonal harm, but he's lived most of his life without ever being confronted with the reality of structural harm - being pre-judged and othered and having his life devalued on the basis of outside categorization.

but the thing about that is that it has happened to him, too. eiffel is an addict, and a convict, and marked as from a lower socioeconomic class than minkowski or lovelace, and those things are the reasons goddard futuristics was able to buy him as prison labor and - without his consent - consider him expendable for medical experimentation. none of that is a coincidence, but he doesn't see the systems at work, only his own actions and regrets. which he then equivocates to the worst actions of people who don't share his sense of morality or guilt.

eiffel's ability to recognize and bring out the humanity in the people around him is one of his best qualities, but... on the basis of his identity, he's been able to live a life where he conceptualizes himself as the default person, and that's been reinforced by the pop culture he loves so much. that's a massive blind spot. he assumes everyone navigates the world in a similar way, and so, on some level, he sees everyone around him as an extension of or a reflection of himself. if evil is always personal, then it can always be reasoned with.

[xenonsdoodles]

POV you are a high achieving high school girl with nothing weird going on brainwise and you're writing a story for class that has no particular personal significance. you write about these guys. what will your future self say when he remembers it

[artemis-in-space]

I literally don't care what you ship in One Piece as long as you get the dynamic right

[icewindandboringhorror]

Apparently I can meet my goal of roughly 400,000 words in 6 months if I just somehow write at least 2,200 words a day ghbjh... Almost 2,500 today... huzzah...

[spicedfink]

Someone posted their opinion on tophabe and I'm not going to @ them since people are apparently being weird but it did make me want to voice my tophabe take because tbh it made me feel insecure and like I needed to explain myself because they were right and so real for what they said.

My thing with (s2) episode 8 is first off I can only process parts of it at a time because that episode made me uncomfortable Second is there is one major factors I take in when thinking about tophabe and a few minor factors: The biggest thing is Joan the canon end game love interest as far as we have been shown tried to point blank kill everybody which is objectively worse. As for minor factors I'll use bullet points: - Cleo also manipulates Abe not to that degree but for longer - All the cast are kind of bad people but the show only framed Topher's actions as bad which I found weird when I really thought about it then they said Harriet was a theater kid and I stopped caring about what the writing was meant to convey - Him giving good advice first in s2e8 reminds me of how I used to give a friend of mine bad advice as a joke when they kept ignoring my real advice and for some reason they took my joke advice seriously. - Topher wasn't in the classroom with Abe so he didn't know the teacher had been hitting on him so it feels like he's just making shit up on the spot - I don't see how Topher would have seen this working. Like it shows him being right there when it starts but like how? I know it's just because the plot said so but the actual "go sleep with this gross person" seems more like a "oh Abe would never actually do that" line of thought - like it reads more as "if I can get Abe insecure he won't ask Joan out" then "Abe will defiantly go for this" (still shitty but less) - It's a cartoon and their actions are exaggerated - s2e8 was such a horribly done episode all around that I can't do anything other than cherry pick it - poor mental health is hardly an excuse but man do I believe his therapist isn't doing him any favors (which is why I have his change therapist in my fanfics) - The fact they're still shitty high schoolers meaning they all have the most room for growth and I'm projecting my own journey of because and actual good person and figuring out my sexuality onto him (obviously wasn't his level of shitty but I said dumb shit and did weird emotionally charged things thanks to how I was raised and poor mental health) - Episode 1 of season 2 Topher got the t-rex arms so I attached myself to his character right then and there ("he's autistic just like me") - I like happy things. The show gave a character who they made clear was suppose to be disliked and bullied for being horrible and didn't show him do anything actually that bad until episode 8 out of 10. And before that ranges from normal weird teenager things he'd logically grow out of, trying too hard to be socially accepted and being mentally ill??? Like no. No I'm personally not going to think this character is a horrible person incapable of growth... And this is why my serious non one sided tophabe headcanons are all for when they are older because I really think Topher would, you know grow up and regret his past actions. Also since I see Topher as queer: internalized homophobia and the such are a bitch (speaking from experience)

I don't actually have a good reason for why Abe would like Topher back past I just think it'd be fun. If Abe gets with Joan and is friends with Cleo I think he should still be friends with Topher though

[askyofexplodingstars]

One moonlit night, you're in the middle of preparing a little bedtime snack, when you get a surprise visit from a certain friend of yours…

(Sebastian x reader)