#i want the writing to be completely done and the first few screenshots to be edited so that i can begin posting dec 31st

[stinkrascal]

i finished writing the vlad/brie backstory reprisal less than 2 weeks ago and i have already finished editing the first 100 pages. im telling you guys im trying so hard to finish this quickly 🤒

[yourlocalbreadenthusiast]

Kindly take a break from scrolling to read this, it's important.

Take your time to grieve and come to terms with the election results, but once you've done that, it's time to get to work. We have two months. And a lot to do in that time. We have to prepare, to be ready.

Be careful about what you post or say online. Anything potentially incriminating should be avoided. Threatening language, even if clearly a joke, can be used against you.

Know someone who's trans? Someone who's had an abortion? Someone who's LGBTQIA+? Someone who's an immigrant? Someone who attends protests? Someone who's disabled? Someone who might in any way be at risk due to laws being put into place? No you don't.

Move away from social media platforms and browsers that require you to use your real identity or input a large amount of personal information. Now's a good time to find alternate means of communicating online. Tails, Element, Tor, Mastodon, Firefox, and Lemmy are all decent options.

Find a community. Someone you can talk to, either online or in real life, that you'll have reliable contact with. We need to try and create a network, but one that's as anonymous as possible.

Start scrubbing your trail as much as possible. Get rid of old accounts that can still be traced to you but are no longer used, delete personal data off the internet. There are websites out there that will freely remove your data from the internet, but be careful about which one you use, make sure it's safe and legitimate first.

Change any usernames that you can that contain any personal information. Names, birthdays, anything.

Plan B has a four year shelf life. Stock up, but don't take more than you you'll need. We don't want a COVID repeat where everyone buys an excessive amount of things and leaves none for everybody else.

There are doctors that will sterilize you, if that's the way you want to go.

Stop using online period trackers right now. Delete all data from it if possible first, then delete the app itself. If you must, write it down, but in a subtle manner and on something you keep at home. Don't label it, just put the dates. If you're really worried, discard older records and only keep the most recent few, and label the dates as other random events, like "go to mall" or "chicken salad for dinner this night"

Get your vaccines now.

Save money.

Archive. We have to start collecting records, media, data, books, and articles now. On racism, on fascism, on homophobia, on gender, on self-reliance, on survival, on safe travels routes, on equality, on justice, on anything that may be useful and/or censored soon. We can't let them erase it.

Collect those online resources. Bookmark them, copy files into your storage, Screenshot pages. Create a decentralized library where everyone is working to be part of a whole, storing what they can individually and sharing it between one another. Again, be careful about doing this.

Second-hand bookstores are your best friend. Books are usually very cheap in them, and they often have a decent stock. See what you can find.

When buying ANYTHING I have mentioned above, or anything else that maybe put you in danger, try to use cash to reduce your spending trail.

Check your car information online, many newer models can be remotely tracked.

Turn your phone completely off if you may be at risk due to your location and current activities. Turning off your GPS also helps.

Take note of where you are. Who are your friends? Who's a safe person? Where can you go besides your own home that you know you'll be safe? Establish these connections now.

Who around you is not safe? Who and where do you need to avoid? Do you need to move? If you cannot afford moving but need to, there are fundraisers that can help you. If even that is not an option, at least try to make sure your home is secure. Have someone who can help you. Have a fallback safe place.

And finally, I want anyone with resources to put them in the replies. Flood it with useful links, information, tips, anything. We're in this together. Do not panic. Organize.

EDIT: Please be civil in the replies.

[periwinklecosma]

update: writing-prompt-s continues to double down on painting 90-ghost as an unreliable scammer

after this post i made about writing-prompt-s being a complete and total dickweed started spreading around, i honestly thought i'd be done with them for the time being, but someone in the reblogs of that post called something to my attention, and i'm completely and utterly disgusted. i don't care anymore at this point, i just don't want ANYTHING related to writing-prompt-s and their racism towards palestinians passing under the radar, hence this new post. please, if you remember reblogging the first post, reblog this one too, because i think this is an important follow-up. and if you somehow missed all of this until now and you have no idea what this is about, the post i linked explains pretty much all you need to know because i'm not gonna bother going over old info right now.

i thought writing-prompt-s quietly deleting their shitty racist post was a real coward move but i figured that they wouldn't do anything other than pretend like they never said anything and hope that this all blows over for them eventually. but apparently they can't stfu because, in the wake of everyone pointing out to them that 90-ghost aka ahmed has had tumblr for 12 years, they made this post:

i'm completely speechless that even in the face of intense backlash and overwhelming evidence to the contrary that they'd rather double down on attacking ahmed's identity than admit to being wrong. a few of the other dumbasses who accused palestinians of being scammers, while never exactly apologizing, at least backtracked on what they said and went "okay well maybe some of them are legit," but this cunt can't even do that. and what's more, they're doing it in this weird underhanded way where people who aren't in the know (and even some who are) wouldn't understand what they're trying to do here. you know, because they're a little bitch who can't even be open about the fact that they're a virulent racist, so they choose to only express it using subtle tactics.

anyway the screenshotted post is in the wayback machine already in case writing-prompt-s chooses to do the expected thing and delete it in the same way they deleted their initial post.

seriously, we need to wreck this guy.

[stop-talking]

Breakdown of the @joshsbimbo controversy.

@mike-schmidtten already made a detailed list of every reason why people are upset with you, "lamb", but I'm going to quickly go over it all anyways because you obviously didn't get the memo.

Extreme trigger warning for this entire post, I'm going to be talking about rape, SA, assault, violence, abuse, incest, stepcest, pedophilia, substance abuse, and probably a lot more.

First of all, you tagged this fic where Mike literally rapes the reader as "cnc". That is not correct.

I mean, if we look at the definition of CNC, it says "this type of scene does not encourage ACTUAL rape. All proper scenes are done after much negotiation between of-age, consenting adults."

But I don't need to explain that to you, do I? You know what CNC is. You said yourself MONTHS ago that you tagged your fic incorrectly and NEVER went back and fixed it.

Mike's next point was that you make it impossible for people to "steer away" from their triggers when you don't tag your posts properly.

And as an example he used this post of straight up incest porn between Mike and his little sister. All completely out in the open, tagged under "#mike schmidt" and "#mike schmidt x reader" for all to see.

He followed it up this this. A plea for you to, at the bare minimum, tag the major triggers in your posts and hide it under a "read more" section.

Let's take a look at how you responded to that very reasonable request.

Oh. You DM'd him the word poop and blocked him.

Instead of reblogging to respond, you actually deleted your origional post so your followers couldn't see the criticism of you as easily. I wonder why? You made your stance clear, though. "I should have put more warnings on my work, but it doesn't matter anyways because it's all fictional." But then, immediately after, you started relogging an account that makes photoshopped foot fetish content of male celebrities for some reason...?

(I censored the feet myself because its just weird) Oh, and weird AI pictures of him, too.

There were worse ones, but I didn't screenshot everything, and you deleted these posts just a few hours after reblogging.

You followed it all up with this now-deleted post about how you wish you could make your notes private. Again, I wonder why? If it really is OKAY to sexualize incest, rape, and abuse just because it's fictional, why would people be scared to support you? Why is no one willing to publicly like your posts, or speak out in your favor? Even some of your biggest supporters (@leah-hutcherson @teenagedreamsss @cuteskunkz @renaissancebewbies) who continue to like (some) of your posts, still haven't come to your defense. If writing about fictional rape, abuse, and incest really and truly wasn't harmful, why would you need to hide?

Once other people started catching wind of what was going on, you responded in some... interesting ways. Like here, in response to this ask (from a person who is a minor BTW). You switched up your story from "I should have tagged my work better" to "everyone hates me now because I forgot to put warnings on ONE story" (which was just blatantly false, as you had been posting other triggering things at the time with no warnings whatsoever.)

It was absolutely ridiculous of you to claim you put warnings on your work when I could scroll down two posts (back before you deleted this) and see a post about Mike beating his kid.

Like... please show me where exactly the warning is?

Then, when this person, (another MINOR, btw!!) posted after reading Mike's breakdown of your behavior, your responded by DMing them a slur.

I don't even know what to say to that. A minor. A slur.

But as much as you like to INSIST your work isn't for minors, you sure seem to interact with them a lot.

This person who reblogged your masterlist? They're a minor.

^^ You can't say you don't want minors to read your work without actually taking all precautions possible to prevent them from seeing it. (Tagging your content, blocking ageless accounts, NOT REBLOGGING MINORS!!!)

Yes. This person is also a minor. Which makes, what, the 4th minor you've interacted with in the past few days? At least from what I can tell.

They also hate you btw so I don't even know why you reblogged them.

FINALLY, this user commented under one of your posts in an attempt to get you to AT LEAST tag your posts correctly if you're going to write triggering shit. (Which was the same think Mike asked you to do, if you remember, but he got "poop" and reblogs of foot fetish posts as a response.)

But then it looked like you either blocked them or removed their comment, so they tried again.

You ignored this message, then apparently posted this?

So they tried again (being much nicer that I would have)

And you finally responded (and still got blocked anyways because your posts are DISTURBING and GROSS)

I doubted you'd actually fix your page, because again, you ignored the same request when Mike asked, and in the past admitted you tagged your fics wrong but just never bothered to change it.

But surprise surprise, you actually went through with it and added trigger warnings to your content.

Though, I'm still not sure "non-serious" is an appropriate tag for a post where mike beats you to death...??

Look. I appreciate that you're at least TRYING now, but it was a fucking FIGHT to get you to do the bare minimum. What I, and apparently 84% of people actually want you to do is delete your account.

(This is from @mike-schmidtten's breakdown post from a couple days ago)

I know you want to PRETEND that just because something is a work of fiction, it doesn't have negative real-world effects, but that's just not the truth.

A lot of people were hurt when you posted things without trigger warnings.

And even now, as you continue to post fetish content for rape, incest, and abuse, people are still being hurt. MINORS are still being hurt.

Yes, obviously, if you post something on the internet, you can't completely 100% control who sees it. But you don't even seem to TRY.

(Dming minors slurs, letting minors reblog your masterlist, letting ageless accounts interact with you, reblogging minors, answering asks from minors, etc)

People, minors, CHILDREN, are raped and abused by those closest to them every day. It's disgusting and horrifying to think about, but it's the world we live in.

You aren't "helping people cope" by writing these stories. You're normalizing abuse. And allowing the most vulnerable people to read it.

You're taking actual things that have happened to real people, and sexualizing it for others to get off to. It's immoral, disturbing, and disgusting.

To my followers, if any of you support this kind of content, you are NOT welcome on my page. Please unfollow or block me and go seek help.

And to you, lamb, I hope you come to your senses and either delete all of your rape & incest fetish content or delete your account entirely.

At the end of the day, you KNOW you're in the wrong. Or at least some small part of you does, or you wouldn't have been afraid to reblog Mike's post and respond defending yourself directly. And you wouldn't be afraid to reblog mine either, which you undoubtedly will.

I know you used to follow me, so maybe you'll take this all to heart. But probably not.

I won't block you. (for the next few days, at least). I'll be here if you want to try and have a civil discussion. But just know I will NEVER agree with the sexualization & glorification of violence and abuse.

[catt-nuevenor]

The Future

Time to establish what's going to happen from this point forwards.

The vast majority of you have been exceptionally patient this last year, and for that you have my deepest thanks. You've given me the time to not only write a book, but edit it, and send it off to literary agents, something I would have long given up on doing without the continued support of those who enjoy my writing.

Now that the book is off doing the rounds independently, it's time I got back to Myrk Mire.

Originally Myrk Mire was built in ChoiceScript, a scripting language created by the Choice of Games company. Choice of Games control what is done with their script, understandably, they own it. This does pose some restrictions. I can't, for example, release any paid material built using ChoiceScript unless it is directly through their publishing label. If I do publish under their label, I maintain IP or Intellectual Property Rights, however I also grant them the exclusive rights under perpetual license to publish the multiple choice game 'electronically'.

Source: Choice of Games.com

As you can see from the outline above, they do make exceptions for stories published in non-competing formats, and for sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. However, traditional publishing houses might require stricter control over IP, distribution, and exclusivity. It will only become more and more complicated as things progress, and being locked into a perpetual license agreement of any nature is not a decision to make lightly.

As some of you may be sensing from the tone of all this so far, I'm going to be moving Myrk Mire away from Choice of Games and ChoiceScript, and into a new medium/format.

After tinkering, and trialling with a few alternatives, I've decided to go with Renpy. Renpy, while largely used for visual novel style games and stories, provides a very workable framework for interactive fiction, and is an Open Source script, it isn't beholden to publishing contracts, licence cost, or exclusivity.

I'm not going to be diving into transferring Myrk Mire right away, it's a huge piece of writing, in an entirely different scripting language, and as previously stated, there are a lot of changes I want to implement with the cast. Instead, I'm creating a trial story: One Háḟest Day. My Patrons have been aware of all this for about a month or so, and have already seen some previews.

One Háḟest Day takes place in Aldmirham before the events of Myrk Mire, around the time the Main Character and the Wanderers first arrived in town. The reader will have the choice to follow one of the romanceable characters through a single day, with opportunities to explore their lives and relationships before the Main Character and Child come along. I hope it will provide a proving ground for the changes that previously caused debate, and an opportunity for people to try out the new format and interface.

My plan is to distribute One Háḟest Day through Itch.io, working with their early access framework and voluntary payments for such as soon as one of the character routes is ready to play from beginning to end, updating regularly with the other characters as they too are completed, and with additional features as required. Once the full game is complete, I will release a separate full build with a set minimum price that can be discussed with the community as we move forwards.

At the second, I'm aiming for a web hosted format and a desktop/laptop downloadable format, with phone compatibility to come later down the line once things are stable.

I will post production updates and info when I can to tumblr, though a lot of what I'm doing now is very python coding heavy, so perhaps not that interesting?

I've included some screenshots below of very early development, featuring a Character Log and Word Log that I hope will allow readers to more easily navigate the story. I'm toying with the idea of having a Mysteries Log as well that will keep track of snippets of information gleaned from each character's route, but that can be a tinkering feature for now.

Let me know your thoughts, concerns, or excitement, though do keep all messages objective and polite.

[sanarsi]

hello, my dearest Nari 🧡

with this ask I challenge you to write a ficlet (or anything bigger if you want) inspired by this screenshot:

may the writing muses be with you,

kissing you on your forehead (if you allow it not then just waving from the distance!)

ps almost sent you nudes

Father’s Love

Joel Miller x f!Reader

Summary: Life is a bitch that can surprise with reverse version of Joel’s nightmare. Warnings: angst, canon violence, child!reader Wordcount: 1,2k An: I wanted to write more so I don’t promise there won’t be a part 2. A wonderful plot twist was created in my head ugh. This is a part of this -> challenge by my lovely Aly (literally my muse) who almost!!! sent me dirty things.

Masterlist

Joel knew what he needed to survive.

As luck would have it, everything was within reach.

A working car, a gun and ammo, food supplies, and a few other things. The only thing standing in his way was a man, tall man and obviously well-trained, maybe a military? Joel had killed a lot of people and felt no inhibitions about doing it again, especially with such good loot waiting for him.

So he waited, hidden in the bushes, and silently just watched.

He wanted to wait until dark, maybe even until the man fell asleep, but the perfect opportunity presented itself earlier. The universe itself was giving him signs that he had to do it. And he had to do it now.

As quietly as he could, he reloaded his weapon, never taking his eyes off his enemy. The man sat with his back to him, completely unaware of anything, changing the bandage on his foot.

There was no better opportunity and Joel knew it. So he pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed through the forest and birds fled from nearby trees. He only watched as a limp body with a hole in its head fell to the ground. After that, there was dead silence.

He waited a moment, but definitely too short, before he decided to come out of hiding.

Maybe if he had stuck to his own principles back then he wouldn’t have done almost something he would regret for the rest of his life.

Hearing was faster than his sight at someone’s footsteps, he automatically aimed the gun in that direction. For a moment he didn’t know if he saw correctly when a child appeared in front of him. A little girl who was terrified and trembling with fear.

She looked exceptionally well-groomed. Unworn jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers that looked almost new. No scars or dirt on her face. But it was her eyes that gave away the most — she didn’t see much evil. She looked as if Joel was the first person to make her realize that such a thing really existed.

Joel let out a slow breath and relaxed his muscles as he looked at her longer and longer. He lowered the gun a bit and with every passing second he saw her more closely, clearly. He felt a growing weight in his chest, as if the consequences of his actions were looking at him with those big tearful eyes. He didn’t want to think about what appeared in his head at the thought of the child but when her gaze fell on the body lying a few feet behind him, he knew that the weight of guilt was just starting to crush him. Slowly and painfully.

“Daddy?” Her soft, breaking voice pierced the heavy silence. He shivered at the sound, so reminiscent of the one that followed him in his nightmares. Tears welled up in his eyes and he didn’t fight them when they started to roll down his cheeks.

Karma caught up with him in the worst possible way.

For the first time in several long years, he felt like he had failed again. Like his nightmare had become reality again, but this time, he was the one who caused all the evil.

He knew that with another burden he could not continue to live. He could not allow his nightmare to gain the strength to crush him.

So he let his instincts take over again.

“Hi kiddo,” he said in a slightly hoarse voice and managed a gentle smile. The girl met his gaze again. Tears refused to escape her eyes. “What’s your name?”

Joel watched as she clenched her fists tighter around the sleeves of her sweatshirt and shook her head, clearly not wanting to answer his question.

“’s all right,” he tried to assure her. As proof of his words, he slowly crouched down and tossed the gun aside. “See? I won’t hurt you.” He spread his arms in a friendly gesture and, despite the tears glistening on his cheeks, tried to look friendly.

You had to trust him. He had no other choice now.

“You seem like a smart girl.” He smiled wider. He almost managed to ignore the pain in his heart. “I’m sure your dad taught ya a lot of things, right?”

She nodded uncertainly. He tried to stop himself from moving too aggressively, not wanting to scare her. But the urge to grab her in his arms now and apologize for what he had done was overwhelming, almost unbeatable.

“Your daddy tell you how to cope when he can’t do it for ya?”

She denied again, “No.” Her soft and uncertain voice almost broke him in half.

He could hardly believe that after everything he had experienced, he found himself again in the same and yet completely different position as so many years ago. But life was a bitch.

“Can I show ya?” he asked, wanting to give her a choice, an illusory possibility, but she was just a child. A child he had hurt just as someone had hurt him.

Her chin quivered as she nodded, “’kay.” She was on the verge of tears. Her small body was shaking, whether from the cold or the emotion he didn’t know, so he barely managed to restrain himself from pulling her into a tight embrace.

“I know you’re a tough girl,” he praised her with a wide smile he was holding with all his strength. “You’re smart and I’m sure you could handle any obstacle, right?”

She listened to him carefully. She was fully focused on him and that made things much easier. She had to see only him, she couldn't look at the dead body lying behind him.

She couldn't.

“Mhm,” she murmured softly, clenching her fists tighter.

“Attagirl.” He laughed through his tears and took a deep, calming breath. “Your daddy said if he couldn’t take care of you,” he began slowly, moving closer to her. She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t back down. “I have to do it for him.”

He stopped in front of her and watched her reaction. She seemed to process his words, as if she didn’t understand their meaning. Seeing her confusion, he slowly knelt down in front of her with a warm smile and watched the confusion in her eyes for a moment.

She was so small, so innocent and pure…

“So you are my daddy now?”

And he barely stopped himself from choking on his tears.

He sobbed, covering his mouth and nodded without thinking. He couldn’t hesitate. He couldn’t let you see his hesitation. So he was sure of his new role. He was sure that he had to become a father again.

And he became it the moment she pressed herself tightly against his chest, burying her face in his neck, and his arms closed her tightly.

He felt it. Again. The strength that came from holding a small being in his arms, someone who depended only on him. And this time, he knew he wouldn’t fail, can’t fail.

Tags: @syd-djarin @yorksgirl @puduvallee @luciaispunk @theoraekenslover @bbyanarchist

[m1ssunderstanding]

Understanding Lennon McCartney Rewatch Part 1.5

Coke Paul is just so pretty

What is the switching glasses supposed to mean in the penny lane video? Any thoughts?

In this interview, Paul seconds John's “go on forever” comment from a few months ago. They really did so well when they were living together, didn't they?

Okay, let's look at the difference in Paul's trips. His first ever trip with Tara Browne and he's just concerned that his sleeves are dirty and just mildly looking through a book of pictures. VS with John? The “I know.” “I know.” The “emperor of the universe” thing? Raving about it to everyone who would listen? Having to leave multiple times because it was scary how tightly they were bonding?

Their songwriting partnership is beyond insane. It's superhuman, it really is. Their abilities, their connection. And Cyn and Terry just reading. Just completely nonplussed. This was very every-day, monotonous stuff for them. Unfathomable. 

That song will always get me, though. “what do I do when my love is away?” “Obviously move my best friend in to take her place and then write a timeless classic with him about how it.”

Astrid: At first I did wonder if the really cared about people's feelings and people's friendship. Maybe this doc's whole thesis is “John and Paul's love for each other was so big they didn't have room for any kind feeling toward anyone else.”

The Pepper photoshoot is insane to me. Like more insane than the David Bailey one. Change my mind. You can't.

John tells an interviewer, "Only now am I beginning to realize many of the things I should have known years ago. I'm getting to understand my own feelings." Were follow-up questions just not invented yet??!! What things have you just learned, John? What feelings?

Never forget Linda took these. She must've been somewhat aware of how annoying this man was going to be about John from the start. And she still went after him. That's how good his . . . Nevermind.

"a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization" Well done, babies. 

I love smug Paul in general, and I especially love when he's smug about John. That “me and the badass bitch I pulled by being autistic” look. But literally. 

Gosh the Greece trip looks so beautiful. Idyllic. Paradisiacal. All of the beautiful people are just so blissful and in love. Sigh. (Every time I tried to take a screenshot of it it was too awful. Peter Jackson should clean it up.)

What are everyone's thoughts about the cause of Brian's death? I really liked what Vivek Tiwary said on AKOM. He knew he was taking a dangerous amount of drugs and he was depressed. But he wouldn't have just left so suddenly without leaving a will or setting things in order for the Beatles business. Anyway, no matter the cause, his death is the beginning of the end for the Beatles.  

All those quotes and pictures about the “intensity” between Paul and Brian are fascinating. “Obviously adored” “overcompensate” “little worries” What does it all mean? Was Brian in love with Paul in the end like he had been in love with John in the beginning? Or did he just feel bad because he knew it was unfair to Paul how in love he was with John? 

Wait, Brian was hospitalized for s*icide attempts in 66? Really? Confirmed? I knew he was in the hospital, but didn't know it was due to s*icide. 

Paul's hand at the small of John's back here, helping him onto the bus. It's so tender, so customary. They took such good care of each other.

Interviewer talking about MMT: If I can't see it in color, I'm going to send it back. ... :/

They're directing something and as Paul starts to walk away, so does John. But not because he wants to. He's looking around almost frantically. He has no choice in the matter. Only one person gets to control their legs at a time, and right now it's Paul's turn. 

Look how fucking ecstatic he is. I guarantee John isn't saying anything that monumental but look at those eyes. He's done for. Gone.

Interviewer: just get a tape recorder and you and Paul and the others just start gabbing. John: well, we've got a lot of that lying around the house, actually. Me: First of all “the house?” “the house?” Just casual. Like “our house” Like it's just common knowledge that they've been married and living together since they were fifteen. Second of all, give us the tapes already!! Who has them? Paul? 

All of these quotes from the Hunter Davies biography are just so normal. They're all so normal. It's fine. I'm fine. And here's my tin hat coming on again (and yeah I believe John loved George and Ringo immensely) but I think sometimes in these quotes, when John and Cyn are saying "the Beatles" they kind of mean "Paul . . . And George and Ringo". John himself actually says as much in the seventies, that when he says "the Beatles" he might just mean Paul, or just him and Paul. And there are countless times when Paul or John will start out saying "the others" and end up using just one name in a sentence. Idk this doc makes me such a truther I swear I'm not always this crazy.

And John's self soothing, reassuring refrain playing over all of it, “nothing's gonna change my world.” Right after Paul and Jane get engaged? Someone stab me in the heart, it would hurt less. And this is just the anticipation of the next part. Can I even handle part two?

Have some happy screenshots to bolster us.

[bomberqueen17]

aight poll results

Huh I haven't really done a poll before, I kind of thought there'd be somewhere you could like, see the results. But no. I just have to scroll back and find the post. And since I made it not rebloggable I can't reblog it either, LOL.

So anyway. It's not quite-quite closed but there's more votes in it than I thought there would be, and I'm going to discuss it behind this lil cut here.

[Image ID: a screenshot of poll results showing 14.5% for the sweet summer children era, 85.5% for the older sea-dogs, 55 votes cast, almost four hours left in the poll.]

After making this poll I went back to my Just Write Some Scenes approach and noodled around some more. My first attempt had been to come up with this whole elaborate Save The World plot, and then try to introduce the crew to each other right at the start of it, and after tripping over that and falling flat on my face, that's when I reconsidered and made the poll. Mostly I just. Need other people to remind me that I'm not alone in the wilderness here, LOL. And you know the quite-contrary "I need advice but mostly so I can identify that when someone tells me to do the thing I don't wanna, that means there's a thing I didn't want to do, which means there is a thing I DO want to do, and now I can narrow down what it is" impulse, yes?

But it's gratifying to find that I've voted with the majority here.

So my main consideration here is that while I cannot really reuse any of the scenes I wrote as fanfic, I can absolutely carry over every bit of the character dynamics. The canon events, I can't translate. The fanfic character work, yes. (What that means to you, dear readers, is that I thus can totally just publish the fanfic at some point LOL, so I'll... try to do that if I can ever manage to become sane about it.)

I don't know that I've fully explained, here-- I fully have a 125,000-word fanfic already complete for this fandom. Like, it is 125,000 words long, and goes from before Master and Commander to... I'm at about the middle of Ionian Mission. That's book nine. And it's all the gapfills and everything from Tom's POV. And I have a few more scenes I'm still writing, but what I have is quite a novel already.

If I took the characters from their Master & Commander Book 1 era and file the serial numbers off and try to instead give them this plot, then I have to cram in every bit of the getting-to-know-you shit, and also worldbuild the whole setting, and then also have them save the world. It's not that I can't do this, but I have this huge shortcut where I've already been working with these guys (and you know how fanfic works, I've subtly warped them from canon because these are side characters the canon author did not devote all that much time to. There are several times when Mowett did something in the first book and by the eleventh or twelfth, Stephen firmly remembers it as something Pullings did, and the narrative treats him as correct, and I genuinely think that O'Brian forgot, unless he was trying to make a point about Stephen's memory issues that he then didn't entirely follow through on. It happens more than once. Also there are a number of occasions when the narrative asserts that Mowett was present for books when he was not; he does not appear in book 3 for example, but is afterward treated as though he'd been there. "They've been together since their youth!" they haven't been in the same hemisphere in six years. Anyway.)

I've been working with these guys for the length of a novel already. So what I can do, and what I think I'm going to do, is that I'm going to just pretend that I've already rewritten a serial-numbers-filed-off version of the first volume, and dive in at circa the book 5 section of the fic, and insert this adventure at that point. Which gives me a certain rank for each character-- Pullings and Mowett would be lieutenants with some seniority, Babbington would be a newly-made lieutenant, Aubrey has moderate seniority, his relationship with Maturin is fairly mature and has weathered some storms and come out well, he's rescued Maturin from torture, Maturin is slightly washed-up with the intelligence people and is addicted to drugs but recovering-- and from the fanfic side (spoilers for the as-yet-unedited-and-unpublished fic!), I've established Pullings in his marriage, given him his checkered career (Indiamen and transports), he has two children, and also he and James and Mrs. Pullings have worked through a bunch of their shit and figured out that they should all have a threesome sometime. But, crucially, they have not had this threesome yet.

So it's like-- a ton of deep character work, that I can just plunk us into.

(I haven't figured out a new naming structure yet so I haven't find-replaced and I'm just writing with the old names, which is hilarious the more I diverge from canon.)

It's not that I don't want to tell that first story, of them all meeting up initially, but I think it would be easier to go back and write a prequel after having done the Big World-Saving Plot.

Anyway-- some serial-number-filing notes here:

Aubrey is going to be a woman because then if I write her exactly the same it comes across wildly differently and I am absolutely dying to see what effect it has. Translating Jack's particular confused helplessness around women makes this new Aubrey into an extremely awkward lesbian and I love it. (Still fat, crucially. Still six feet tall. She might not be blonde, though, depending what I do with racial dynamics in this 'verse. Doesn't matter, as calling a woman Goldilocks is less hilarious than a man.)

Maturin is still a dude. They still have absolutely zero sexual chemistry, but profound deep interpersonal love. (This is bookverse, guys. Sorry the gay movie version is great but that's just not where I'm going here.)

Instead of having a lower-class accent and antecedents, I'm translating Tom into being somehow visibly biracial, which can give the same impediment to his being taken seriously for promotion as in canon, but also lets me tie this into the other books I've started in the land-based part of this verse. His mother is descended from mainland mammoth-herders, and I haven't decided what visual characteristics that gives him but it's enough that he gets called racial slurs occasionally. As in canon, Aubrey doesn't particularly notice these things, and cares only that he is competent.

Babbington is a trans dude so I have to figure out how that works in the worldbuilding but this is an extremely useful thing to have and will illuminate all kinds of awesome things for me. As a bonus, it can just be background established fact in the first book I write, and can be a plot point in the prequel if I do come up with anything cool in the worldbuilding, but if not it can just be a like low-key background thing in the prequel too. Who knows! It gives me a ton of material either way. Has potential to establish vivid character dynamics in a minimum of words, I think.

I was trying to solarpunk-ize solid-shot cast-iron cannons and seem to have independently mentally invented electromagnetic rail guns, so I have to research that somewhat but I think I have some good worldbuilding foundations based off that. !!! Exciting. I especially love the idea that the ships can collect and store potential energy that they can use either for propelling the ship without wind, or for firing guns, and so manoevering with sails still carries enormous tactical value because if you can get in position to fire your shots without having expended your generated power, you'll have much more success in battle; conversely, if you realize you're in a poor tactical position, instead of throwing your guns over the side as in the napoleonic era so you can flee faster, you simply empty your power generation banks into your propulsion to get the fuck out of there. And it makes it more solarpunk post-collapse-friendly by having tactics that can prioritize things other than massive loss of life, which doesn't hold with the dynamics of precarious population levels in the other books in this 'verse. Life was cheap in Europe in the 1800s but that doesn't work here. I love the idea of the "battles" being almost entirely manoevering, and it being plain impossible to have just yardarm-to-yardarm prolonged hammering except by rare circumstance.

So anyway that's where I'm at. So far. Stay tuned i guess? Thanks for reading this far, anyone who does. <3

[watchingblsnowandforever]

Hello again! =D

Here's Part 1

*looks at all the remaining screenshots and sighs* I really need to learn to take screenshots more selectively-

Warning: long post 😊😅

This is the sole reason Phum chose to ride the cycle, because we all know he brought his car.

I'm not complaining though. In fact-

Peem, give this man all the hugs in this world. He deserves them. <3

HANDS!!

Aunt Pui Live Reaction

She ships them hehe

She's the best wingaunt 😭🫶🏼

Oh, it's his turn with the braincell finally hehe

Oh, that little kernel of insecurity making him question this :(

And it's Phum's turn to immediately refute any doubt about his feelings.

Oh yeah, telling him all the reasons you like him is the only reason you'll "have" to stay over at his place, Phum. It's not like you wanna cuddle him or anything. Pfft of course not.

Peem's reaction is so cute (no pun intended-) oh gods 😭

This is what told me for sure that Phum knows about Peem's feelings.

The way he framed this, the absolute lack of hesitation in his voice, the way he smiled, the way he looked at Peem.

Just because he doesn't confront Peem about it doesn't mean he doesn't know his feelings are reciprocated.

No wonder Peem's reaction looks so genuine 😭 (Pond improvised this part)

What do you do when the guy you like keeps shrugging off your hand? Keep trying of course! And then lock your hands so he can't shrug them off.

Mission Side-Hug Your Crush: Accomplished 😌✅️

Me:

Wait- WAIT, you're gonna leave the cycle right there in the middle of the driveway?! WHY 🥲😭

👀

Yep, same pic.

The moment I saw this I was like where have I seen this before- OH yeah.

See, now Fang isn't hesitating to call him out on it. Now he knows for sure Phum likes Peem, and it's okay to talk to him about it. But he still doesn't prod much, and only takes what Phum tells him.

In conclusion: Fang is a good brother. 😌

Others: Byee! Have a great time!

Chain: I'll play the guitar for you.

Let's be honest, who's the enabler here? Pun might come up with the strangest most complicated plans, but who's the first to go along with it?

ASKFDGHYTRUASKJNCHDFJ

WHAT WAS THIS KISS?!!!! AND WHY WAS IT TAILOR-MADE TO MAKE ME GO CRAZY?!!!!!

WINNYSTANG. I liked you before but to be very frank, I was kinda indifferent, but now you have my full attention. Make me go even more crazy.

Ooh they have a third brother??

See, up till this point, I was willing to ignore their parents (not what they did, but them as people, because they do not deserve any attention) but this? Stopping Fang from going to check on his brother? NUH UH. That's a line you don't cross.

So now, I'm handing Peem and Tan their weapon(s) of choice and letting them have a go at it. The bodies? Oh, don't worry about that, we'll handle those. :)

What I really love about this scene is that Peem hugs first, then asks questions.

Ah I love hugs so much 🥹🫶🏼

No. They can't.

And similarly, our parents can't always be right. They might always want what's the best for us, but that doesn't mean that what they do is always the best for us.

Also- I'm completely normal about the fact that Phum and Fang went to Peem and Tan - their respective safe zones. Very normal. 🥺

AND THOSE 'I LOVE YOU'S BY TANFANG OH MY GODS I-

I could write a whole essay about just these few minutes (of that PhumPeem hug and this TanFang moment) but I don't have that much time or energy 😭

I'll just go sob in the corner because this entire ep was made to attack my heart with fluff but this scene just broke me.

Also- we finally get actual wind-ruffled hair in BL hehe

Isn't he already Golden Retriever enough? 😭

[Also, at this point my anxiety spiked because I had 7 more screenshots, but I'd already done 25, so tumblr would allow only 5 more 😶😭]

Yes.

Peem finally getting his confidence and sass back! Hehe

That peck had me blinking and then smiling so wide and rewatching those few seconds at least four times.

He says no, and yet his face is tilted and eyes closed and he's all ready to be kissed so sweetly.

You betray yourself, Peem *smh*

HANDS!!!!

The day I stop screaming about hands is my last day on Earth.

This broke my heart, but this hug and Peem's reply put it back together. <33

He-

He said it. While he was awake. 😶

Listen, that nose boop and him telling Phum he'd done a good job the first time changed my brain chemistry so much I collected all the stray strands of my nonexistant giffing skills and made a gif just to put it as my header (replacing that scene from Cherry Magic that I've probably watched a million times now, and had changed me viscerally).

AND THEN THEY GIVE ME THIS.

They're playing table tennis with my heart 🥲

Anyways. Love this scene. So much.

BONUS: I couldn't upload the screenshot of this, but that horse riding scene is so funny to me, because Phuwin is the one who can ride, and Pond's the one a little scared (a little like that roller coaster scene except reversed hehe).

Also "I feel like a prince, riding my horse led by my servant." uh huh. no reference here. just a random line in a random series where the main leads acted in a series previously where one of them was a khun chai and the other worked for him. no reference at all.

Finally!

That's it for ep 12, see y'all next week!

If you got this far, thank you so much for reading! 😊

Here, have some pancakes 🥞

All my previous We Are posts.

@inonetoomanyfandoms here's part 2 hehe

[deripmaver]

analyzing kentaro miura’s words on casca’s recovery

Below I’ve attached three separate screenshots of translations of a 2019 interview done by Young Animal ZERO magazine with Kentaro Miura on the topic of Casca’s recovery and revival. These aren’t new of course, but I want to discuss my reaction to them, and also discuss how I think they fit in with the current direction the story has taken with Studio Gaga’s chapters. 

First up, a fan translation originally from skullknight.net, reposted to twitter:

Up next, a google translated version from kojion on twitter, who’s provided a few interviews that haven’t yet reached English speaking fans:

Finally, I’m not 100% sure what this is. It seems to follow from the above screenshots, but it’s not clear if this is just kojion’s interpretation of the interview response, or if this is specifically something Kentaro Miura said. I messaged him on twitter to ask, and I’ll update this post accordingly with his response!

This interview response was, no exaggeration, like a balm on my soul to read the first time I saw it. With how prevalent rape is in Berserk, and with how long it took for Casca to be revived, I admit I couldn’t help falling into this pit of frustration where I wondered if Miura even knew the extent of how awful what he put her through was. Her mental state, of course, did indicate he was aware of that - and then her revival happened, and the corridor of dreams, and I just remember being in actual tears because of how we went into Casca’s mind to show the trauma from her eyes. I can’t think of a more effective way to show something as serious as rape, genuinely. 

And then, of course, this interview response, and again I remember thinking: Wow. This author really gets it. It was the thing that really made me confident in his ability to tell the story of Casca’s recovery. 

First up, the very first part of the response: Casca’s awakening is not the end of her journey, it’s the beginning. This is absolutely, incredibly realistic. I think Miura likes to tease the audience in a sort of mean way lol, there’s the beautiful, dramatic panels where Casca awakens, and she’s put in that gorgeous fairy dress - almost like a wedding dress, you could say - and she’s sent off to have her romantic reunion with Guts... 

And lol. We all remember how that went. Miura is such a troll lmao (affectionate)(kind of).

But of course, just because she’s in control of her mind again doesn’t at ALL mean she’s processed her trauma. Guts has had years to process what happened, but she’s been completely stuck this whole time.

We know from her dreamscape that it was Griffith’s betrayal that really, truly broke her mind (I won’t include the panels here because I don’t want to CRY), and that sort of loss of trust is in no way mended by simply returning to herself. Again, then, two things that made me so astonishingly confident in Miura’s ability to tell Casca’s story from the interview: He's writing Casca as a human, who will react in a natural, human way to her trauma, and that she needs to face up to what Griffith did. This, to me, very clearly indicates that her upcoming arc is going to be focused on facing up to the trauma Griffith caused her, and this is especially hammered in by what’s happening to her currently in canon, being stuck in Falconia with Griffith and with her memories, again, magically suppressed so she can’t begin to process anything. I genuinely can’t imagine any other way for things to go for her.

One more note before I go on to my ~predictions~ based on the current chapters is that I want to highlight this panel here: 

If you follow me on twt you’ve seen me say this before but PTSD flashbacks have the person not just remembering the traumatic event, but feeling as though they’re experiencing the traumatic event all over again. Miura is aware that Casca simply regaining her memories wouldn’t be the end of her recovery but the beginning, knows that the real key to healing is processing the traumatic event, and knows that PTSD flashbacks make you feel as though you’re experiencing the trauma all over again. It’s far more sensitive than I’d expect most authors, let alone a cishet dude mangaka lol. 

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR CASCA?

I need to admit I’m making this post because earlier I got into a conversation on tumblr with someone who claimed that people read too much into Miura’s comments on Casca’s recovery, that they don’t indicate that she’ll successfully heal, that there’s no indication from the comments that he intended to write a full deep dive into Casca’s mental state and trauma, and that for all we know this would just be a side plot a la Farnese’s growth. 

My position is that I genuinely can’t think of anything else that Casca’s upcoming storyline could be about besides her struggling with her trauma (and of course trying to escape Falconia, but in my mind those go hand in hand). I also think that I simply have different ideas about how important Casca is narratively than this person, which is the root of our difference in opinion on Casca’s recovery. 

Right now, Casca has been kidnapped by Griffith and taken to Falconia, where she is being magically drugged to suppress her memories, and her healing. Her storyline necessitates that she get away from Griffith and out from the spell currently suppressing her personality, and getting out from under this spell will mean the return of the memories she was starting to process in Elfheim. 

While it’s terrifying that Casca is away from her support system (and has been kidnapped by her RAPIST jesus christ) I actually think being away from Guts is the necessary key to her processing Griffith’s rape on her own terms. Guts is a massive trigger for her PTSD currently, and there’s the duality of her desire to see him and the likely ensuing guilt and frustration and sadness that comes with being unable to. Without his presence around her, I actually think it’ll be easier for her because there won’t be an expectation of her being with him. 

There are people who we KNOW are in Falconia and will likely be Casca’s support system, we just currently have no idea how they’ll all meet up. I know Luca and the girls will be instrumental to Casca’s story because otherwise there would be no reason to bring them back and also for Casca to mention them explicitly in Elfheim.

The other point made by this person on tumblr is that Miura’s interview doesn’t indicate that Casca will recover. Perhaps, they say, her story will end with Casca unable to cope. I think this in people’s minds leads easily into the Apostle Casca theory, which I’ll be honest and repeat that I fucking hate so much LOL. I get it in some sense, but I really do hate it as a theory. As Miura says, though, he’s writing Casca as a real person, and there are absolutely very low points in trauma recovery, so I expect her to go through a lot of strife. 

It’s difficult in some ways to look at these responses because there’s the language barrier. “she should confront what Griffith or the monsters did” and “she will now have to overcome the trauma” both, to me, seem to positively indicate that overcome is the intended outcome, but of course I’m not sure. Now, if kojion’s second tweet is a translated quote from Miura himself and not just his analysis of it, that’s kind of a smoking gun that recovery is the intended outcome of Casca’s arc, but I’m not sure one way or another. 

This is purely based on my emotional response, but I think a story where a woman is betrayed and raped by one of her closest companions, who loses her mind for years because she’s unable to cope with the trauma of the betrayal, who finally has her memories returned to her and now needs to go on the incredibly difficult and painful journey of processing this betrayal - to have her story end tragically with the result that she’s never able to recover would...

Hm. Let’s say that it would need to be handled with extreme care. It might be the thing that gets Berserk to warrant its grimdark reputation.

As a conclusion, I think this one quote has a ton of potential for analysis inherent to it, particularly for fans of Casca, who are having a bit of a renaissance on twitter right now HAHA and I’m trying to gather them on tumblr too. If you combine it with various tidbits of Miura’s chapters from before his death, as well as the continuation by Studio Gaga, it helps create in my mind a decent picture of the trajectory of Casca’s arc, though the specifics are still up in the air. 

Either way, I want to say to any Casca stans reading this that I really do think that Casca’s story is important, and will be shown as important going forward. I always hesitate to trust cishet authors for obvious reasons lol, but at least I can say that if she’s shown to NOT be important, that will entirely be on him and his sexism, and I think it will inherently make the story weaker. I don’t think that will be the case, though. 

WE’VE WAITED THIS FUCKING LONG-

[olderthannetfic]

Ok, wow, this is NOT the type of ask you seem to get usually, but this appears to be my best option...

I'm seeking out a post that is not particularly fandom-y in nature, but I was reminded of it after reading the earlier anon who was burned out from AI discourse - I totally feel the same way, and there was a really great lengthy textpost I reblogged a few months ago (read: "I read it any time from, like, April 2024 to almost a year ago......sorry") that I cannot find on my blog nor on tumblr in general - either because the post has been completely nuked from the internet OR because I'm just bad at SEO searches and remembering the keywords that were actually IN the post. I'm hoping it's a me issue or, if the post IS nuked, at the very least someone here remembers it and has an internet archive link or screenshot or something????

to get to the point, there was a post that was like (paraphrased, quote marks are not literal quotes):

"When it comes to the anti-AI crowd on tumblr, there's basically two schools of thought: people who completely hate AI and everything about it and are opposed to all forms of AI without even learning what AI really is. These people are stuck in their ways and generally can't be reasoned with.

Then there's a second group who are against AI for pretty good reasons - they really are worried that AI is gonna completely take over and steal artists' livelihoods, those who criticize it for environmental activist reasons, etc. These people generally can be reasoned with as they're truly misinformed, and in fact they would be - or already are - receptive to a less harmful AI."

The post then went on to compare AI to other forms of automation and made some really great parallels; such as bringing up the fact that stores that have both self checkout AND cashiers tend to be the best business models, because people who have their preferences can choose how they want to shop, AND we can utilize automated checkouts without completely getting rid of cashiers, which is obviously good for a lot of reasons.

It also debunked a lot of common fearmonger-y arguments against AI, i.e. explaining what "training AI" really entails, with some general copyright-critical philosophy in general. (I don't know the actual, like, political term, if one even exists, but basically they were talking about flaws with "intellectual property" as a concept - or at least how IP works today and why it works the way it does.)

There was also a really good addition to the OP's thoughts that I liked, with another user talking about: Essentially people who are gonna use AI would likely have done something else sketchy anyway, even if AI as it stands today didn't exist. For example, chatGPT isn't to blame for plagiarism. The people who use chatGPT to do their homework would, in an earlier time, likely go on Chegg / pay someone to write an essay / reuse their old work / etc. Likewise, the people who tell open AI to make artwork for them likely wouldn't make (or try to make) their own artwork anyway, nor would they even commission someone. They talked about how since fandom is so damn divided on the topic of AI, that the artists who DO feel as if their commissions are being taken away from them, or the writers who DO fear AI taking over fanfic.......well, to put it nicely, those people likely wouldn't really be losing many fans in the first place. You didn't lose a commission to AI - that person never would've commissioned you in the first place, and the people that do commission you hate AI as much as you do. You're not losing readers to AI - people who choose AI fics over yours are likely already the impatient type who can't handle waiting more than a week for an update, so they just make AI feed them 10k in one sitting! And the people who DO comment and read on your stuff, also hate AI!

I definitely did not agree with every single point made on the post (ie i dont think the self checkout metaphor was a great direct parallel logistically, but I def picked up what they were trying to put out and overall agreed with the general sentiment), overall it made a lot of really, really, really good points about the AI debate that I'd truly never considered before.

I know I've damn near rewritten the whole post myself now at this point but I also know there's a lot of stuff that I'm missing or that I just can't word and I'd love to know if anyone else has seen this post or has it on their blog in some capacity.

--

[otherworldseekers]

Waiting for Your Return

A little bit of Severia x Nero writing that occurs during 6.55 setting up things for Dawntrail.

I wrote it for the prompt "return" sent to me by @gatheredfates for a single word fic drive, but decided to make a separate post for it as it got away from me a bit and then I decided to add a few screenshots.

Severia lay on her back on her bed in the Balsesion Annex and made herself comfortable. Beside her next to the pillow was her Cockwork Novus D*. A familiar voice came from inside it. 

“Hullo, darling. Miss me?”

“Of course I miss you, silly boy.” Never mind that they had seen each other just that morning before she had teleported to Sharlayan to meet with Krile. “Did you get much work done without me there to distract you?”

“At the risk of being premature-”

“You? Never.”

Nero laughed. “You tease. Are you sure you can’t come back for the night?”

“Well, of course I could, but we’re headed out at first light for the Isle of Hamm and you know teleporting that kind of distance too often wears me out.”*

“I can think of a few ways to-”

“I want to avoid that!” she protested with a smile. “Anyway, tell me your news.”

“I think I’ve made a breakthrough,” Nero said, smugness oozing from his voice. 

“So that puts you ahead of Cid?”

“I’m fairly certain this puts me months ahead of him in research,” Nero bragged. “He’s still struggling to work out the formula for-”

Severia interrupted before he got technical. It was far too late in the day for that. “Have you decided what you’re going to make him do when you win?”

Nero grinned to himself. Her complete faith in him was always a balm to his competitive spirit. “That is the hardest part of this contest.* I need an idea that is suitably embarrassing while also not technically harmful. But I’m sure it will come to me. Now. Your news.”

And so Severia told him all about meeting Wuk Lamat and what the enthusiastic Hrothgar had come to Sharlayan for. “I’d never considered going to the New World before. I haven’t exactly said I would go yet, but I can’t deny I’m tempted.”

“Indeed. From what I’ve read the continent of Tural is quite vast and diverse. There was some talk at one point among the Legati about what kind of resources would be necessary to mount an invasion.”

“Seriously? Garlemald wanted to invade Tural?”

“The Emperor wanted the whole world under him thumb. Of course that included Tural. It was on the roadmap for the future, but it didn’t get any farther than that before you Eorzean savages started giving us too much trouble.”

Nero’s tone was facetious and Severia knew when he spoke that way his tongue was firmly in his cheek so she took no offense. Their former positions on opposite sides of a war was something they often teased each other about. “Yes, how dare they. If only they’d rolled over and taken it you might have ended up lost in the jungles of Tural one day getting hacked to pieces by Mamool Ja.”

Nero scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It would largely have been an aerial assault. I certainly wouldn’t have been trudging along in the dirt.”

“No, I imagine you would have been mowing down the natives in the Ultima Weapon or such like.”

“Possibly, possibly,” Nero conceded. “So what’s this excursion to the Isle about?”

“We’re all going on a hunt.”

“Again, we?”

“Er, me, Wuk Lamat, Erenville, G’raha and Krile. Wuk Lamat wants to see if I live up to Erenville’s stories.”

“She doubts you?”

“I don’t exactly cut the most imposing figure, you must admit.”

“I must admit nothing. You’re all the more intimidating for your adorable size.”

“Well, you have the benefit of having watched me fight a Primal the very first time you saw me. Also you’re biased.”

“I am only biased in how much your incredible talents made me love you.”

Severia closed her eyes and pulled her blanket up to her chin, smiling in contentment. “I love you too.”

“So when will you return?”

“Tomorrow.” It had been some time since they had been apart from each other for more than a day and she had gotten used to the luxury of it. With a pang she considered how long they might be separated if she went to Tural. The sense of loss that rose up inside her nearly took her breath away. “I’ll be home as soon as I can get away.”

“I look forward to it, with all my heart. Goodnight, darling.”

“Goodnight, Nero.”

The following evening Severia walked through the front door of the cottage she shared with Nero in a thoughtful mood. She had all but made up her mind to go to Tural. The prospect filled her with both elation and a dread that she could not reconcile. She wanted to go. She wanted to see new lands, meet new peoples, learn new histories and make new discoveries. But she didn’t want to leave home. Home. A word that had once held no appeal to her had lately become so precious. 

Her ruminations were interrupted when Nero came tumbling down the stairs holding a large duffle bag in each hand. 

“Oh, welcome home, darling.” Without putting down either bag, he gave her a quick kiss and then went to the kitchen and started searching through drawers and cabinets. Every so often he found an item he wanted and carefully tucked it away in one of the duffle bags, which was now bulging with odd corners and bumps. 

Severia watched at a loss. “What are you doing?”

“Hmmmm? Packing.”

“How did you know?”

“How did I know that you were going to come home and tell me you’ve decided to go? Because I know you, love. It’s far too good an opportunity of doing all the things you like most to miss.”

“All right, fair. But you don’t have to pack for me.” Was he that eager to see her go? Was he looking forward to time uninterrupted for his work?

“I’m not,” said Nero, as he weighed two identical spatulas in his hands before picking one and packing it away. “This is all for me.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

Nero gave her the strained look he had when she was being a little slow. “To Tural.”

Severia sucked in a breath of surprise. “You mean…”

“I’m coming with you,” Nero said as if it were painfully obvious. He pointed at her with the rejected spatula. “You don’t honestly expect me to sit around at home once again twiddling my thumbs and waiting for your return while you’re out there having the adventure of a lifetime?”

“I didn’t… I just… I mean, that’s how-”

“That’s how it’s always been,” Nero finished for her and his brow furrowed in irritation for a moment before he released a sigh and relaxed it once more. He set the spatula back down on the counter and went to her, taking her hands in his. “But it doesn’t have to continue that way. Severia, I want to be at your side, you know that.”

“But your work… This contest with Cid…”

“Do you really think those things matter more to me?” He tipped her chin up so he could look in her eyes. Tears were gathering there. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. “Besides, the audacity of you going off on your own to explore an entire continent that may indeed be rife with monumental discoveries none but I are qualified to obtain! No true man of science could allow that.”

Severia laughed and flung her arms around his waist. “I’m so glad. Oh Nero, I wanted to go so much but I didn’t want to be away from you. You’ll really come with me?”

“Naturally. I look forward to sitting on the sidelines sipping refreshing tropical drinks while you slay all the beasties.”

“Absolutely not. You’d better pack your hammer because I won’t save you when you inevitably do something reckless and unleash some kind of great evil on the land. I’ll save everyone else, but not you.”

Nero gave her his best sad puppy dog look. “You don’t mean that.”

“No, I don’t mean it. But adventuring isn't all fun and games, you know. You are going to pull your weight.”

“Whatever you say, my love. Now, when do we leave?” 

“Oh, not for weeks.”

“Hmmm. I’d better unpack the cast iron pans.” He released her and began rummaging again through the duffel bag. 

Severia watched in astonishment as he pulled out an absurd number of cooking implements. “You’re bringing cast iron pans? Are you insane?”

“What? They’re excellent for cooking over an open fire.”

“This is too much stuff, Nero. I prefer to travel light.”

“Can’t you just put it all in your pocket dimension?”*

“Do you think I’m some kind of beast of burden?”

“Don’t be foolish. You know perfectly well anything that goes into that bag of yours is no burden at all.”

“Ugh. Fine! You win. As usual.”

Nero grinned and, still on his knees, pulled her into him for a kiss. “You love me.”

Severia sighed in surrender. “I adore you.”

Notes:

Nero turned the Clockwork Novus D into a long range communication device for he and Severia to use that is more secure and reliable than a linkpearl.

Teleporting large distances too often causes fatigue. A headcanon of mine developed for the sake of narrative pacing.

Nero and Cid have regular contests to see who can solve a specific problem first or make the better device fitted to a client's need. At this point they are tied for victories 11 to 11.

Severia's travel gear includes a pack with a relatively stable pocket dimension inside. A headcanon of mine to account for inventory space and a reference to this post.

[sunniedesi]

Future Diary x Detective Akechi Crossover TL

Before anything, I want to thank @syrpai for providing screenshots and information about this crossover after my first post regarding the subject (seriously, you're the goat). I was correct about this story not being in the original manga, though I made the glaring mistake of assuming Shonen Ace didn't digitalize their releases. Turns out they do! And this crossover was featured on their March 2018 issue:

So in conclusion: the crossover between Future Diary, Detective Akechi and Esuno's other works was made after ending volume 2 of Detective Akechi, to commemorate its release, and it was featured directly on Shonen Ace's next issue. With this in mind, I'll leave you with the TL.

Though first, I have to share some important context to understand the story: "Detective Akechi is Berserk" follows the story of Mayumi, a high-school girl who is being possessed by the spirit of acclaimed detective Akechi Kogorou to solve mysterious crimes involving "phantoms," who are criminals from a gang that Akechi is pursuing. The end of volume 2 (the volume that precedes the Future Diary crossover) introduces a new character named Grimoire, a kid and member of the phantoms who lost her dad to a murderer, and later lost her mother to an illness while walking with her in a mall. Grimoire lost consciousness during this tragic event, so her mother got taken away from the scene before she could say her last goodbye. Grimoire used to roam the mall, searching for the place where her mother passed away, until Mayumi helped her find the spot, thinking that Grimoire was nothing more than a lost child. From this point on, her and Mayumi became acquainted, though Akechi doesn't seem too fond of Grimoire... (Mini-spoiler: we also learn at the end of volume 2 that Detective Akechi was likely the one who killed her dad, meaning Akechi is probably more of a villain than a hero). Btw Grimoire is a girl but people refer to her as a boy because she looks more boyish.

The eeeeend!

A few things to note before ending this post:

The quality of page 2 is a little wonky because I accidentally did the cleaning for that image on a version that was a lower resolution, and since I had to redraw a great portion of it in order to clean it... I didn't wanna redo it (sorry!).

The ending here is certainly a bit... confusing. Considering Esuno's three magical girls are, well, magical, it makes sense that they'd dodge bullets with ease. So I guess that explains that part of the ending. Everything else is left a bit more open-ended, which isn't too surprising considering this is probably more of a gag story than something to take as canon. Still, my favorite chapter of Detective Akechi lol.

I know that the majority of people reading this have not read Detective Akechi, so sorry if me dissing this series comes out of left field. I'm not planning on reviewing it, because to be quite frank, I don't think I totally understand the plot lol. So, instead, I'll leave you with my personal thoughts: It's just... incredibly bizarre, and the fan service didn't help. I originally stopped reading after volume 2 because of a particularly distasteful scene where Akechi possessed Mayumi to assault another girl (because he's a huge creep btw), and essentially assaulted both of them in the process, which is just... I think my brain genuinely tapped out after reading that, like how the hell do you come up with that? I decided to read over the series again to write this post, and it just gets weirder and weirder. Including, but not limited to, Mayumi having an Eiji and Sena moment with her brother (iykyk). Out of complete nowhere too. As I mentioned in my previous post, I generally don't have an issue with nsfw topics in stories, in fact, some of my favorite stories do cover nsfw and unhinged plots. As long as it's done with a purpose and isn't mind-numbingly dumb, I don't necessarily mind. Detective Akechi though is just weird, horny, and weirdly horny in ways that detract from the story. This is a personal opinion of mine, but I think it's quite funny that Esuno's favorite topic to write about, which is supernatural detectives, isn't exactly his forte. Something about the Future Diary formula, which probably wasn't intentional, managed to combine his bizarre plot points with the broken psychology of his characters in a way that just worked, though he unfortunately hasn't been able to recreate it since :/

[yanderewonderlandgame]

Working on a R19 horror/smut Otome visual novel inspired by korean light novels I've read. Currently the story is pretty long, but it's going well enough on track I'll talk about it!

This is NOT vanilla smut. This smut contains a lot of different fetishes to explore based on the character you end up with.

Fetishes:

Depicts acts of: rape/no-con/con, toys, submission, conditioning, bondage, domination, hypnosis, egg, tentacle, vore, medical devices, drugs, manipulation, body modification. Are just to name a few(small amount here it's only between 2 characters >>). I'll be post updates on here and I will let you know when the first update will be available.

As only a few. I'll be adding more. I don't know how many more fetishes there will be but most characters with have one major sexual trait along with others along side it.

-------

I plan to release it sooner than I may anticipate it given the speed. Currently doing 1-2 chapters a day. The storyboards are done.

Read time:

Read time may vary for many chapters

One character Cyrus has 2 chapters completed at close to 10000 words so far

Octavius another deranged individual has 17000 words for the first 2 chapters.

(read time may be 5 or more hours per character upon completion)

Est word count is hard to say. Each of the 8 chapters contains 5000+ words Octavius has an 11000 word chapter.

-----

Characters

Several 'love' interests and not for the faint of heart.

Love interests (there are several others to be added):

Warren (the white rabbit)

Nox (the Cheshire)

Cyrus (the catapillar)

Octavius(the mad Hatter)

No names yet highly possible future characters:

Jabberwocky

March hare

Dormouse

Twins

If there is a character you would be interested be sure to let me know.

The next blog post will be a synopsis of the game. So far I'm proud of the characters and their yandere characteristics. I'll provide some profiles in the future too (I have trouble drawing people. And they might take the longest to complete.) if you want to play test I'll provide information soon when it's ready for it! (It's real dirty for us pervy woman who have NO real R19 visual novels we can enjoy. I plan to make one we really would love to have. <3

------

I'll post development blog updates as I work on the game.

Current status:

Playable but very short(30 minutes) (well sort of until all dialogue is added to the game and editing will take time. I've gotten carried away writing lol.

------

Development:

Cyrus 1/8 acts complete

Octavius 6/8 complete

3/? Prolouge branches so far completes. One branch may lead to a certain group of characters.

Looking forward to sharing screenshots later! But it's a diamond in the rough

[archandshri]

9th feb '24 - [arch] characters, interactions and emotion - making a mini webcomic

Gahhhh Shri this has been an absolutely crazy couple of weeks!!!! Hope you are doing well :)) First of all, WOW! You have a lot of goals, and I’m sure you’ll get them done! I’ve worked a lot on my graphic design during the process of making Winter Wellbeing. If you wanna see a blog post dedicated just to that, I can do so! It would be cool to compare notes on the approaches we take for graphic layouts. If you wanna share your knowledge of camera skills when you build that up that would be awesome 😭😭

It’s been a tough few weeks, art wise. I have been reflecting on my process, motivations to create, the ego and all the baggage that’s lumped into the creative process for me. It turns out there’s a lot. I took some space from my illustration practise (literally for a weekend!) and began to realise how dysfunctional it is. I’ve been writing a lot about that so there may be a larger piece of writing coming about that at some point (no promises!!)

But for now, let's talk about little successes!

I’ve been playing with some characters for a while but I’d hit a bit of a block with the plot. I realised the expectation of having a finished project of high quality soon is unrealistic, and an unhealthy expectation to put on myself. I rarely give myself time to play with concepts for a long time and let the characters, plot and interactions evolve naturally. Maybe this in part came from sticking to the short university module turnaround. I noticed that that short turnaround was causing a lot of block, so I have decided to bench it as a comic for now and focus on using it as a playground - falling in love with the characters, creating stories and drawing them for fun. Maybe years down the line I’ll make them into a comic - we shall see! 

I *tried* to do hourly comics day this year and it didn’t quite work for me. I think I made 3 comics? And then got distracted with a bigger project that ended up taking a week or so to complete. Let’s have a look at it, shall we?

[you can find the full version here]

First of all, it’s based on an unfinished fanfiction I started a couple of months ago, which was mostly bad, but there was one nice scene that I liked and wanted to expand on. I started by having a look at the script I wrote and thumbnailing on the iPad. I’m away from home at the mo and usually would prefer to do most of my artwork traditionally, but because I don’t have access to a scanner, the whole process was digital this time. A lot of the pages got scrapped because the dialogue wasn’t necessary, and I’m not drawing pages that aren’t necessary.

some more development screenshots

I thought a lot about posing during the process, acting the scenes out in my mind and sometimes physically, really understanding the emotions of the characters, why they’re saying what they’re saying, their tone and how to convey that though their body language and expression (i find grian really annoying normally [affectionate] but I want this grian to step on me).

Pearl was hard with this because she’s quite erratic and unpredictable in this series, so I wanted her to switch from raw explodey anger to playful jabs at Grian. I’m hoping this comes across as somewhat insane, rather than tonally off and inconsistent. I did super enjoy drawing her and her explosive nature though, especially in comparison to Grian’s coldness.

I played with levels and monotone colour too - I’m not working with multiple colours much at the moment so I’m able to focus on things like values composition, characters and backgrounds. My skills limit the kind of stories I can tell currently, so I’m working to improve those foundations. Maybe when I’m back in the riso studio I can play with colours a little more.

Colours - despite the simple pallete it gets a bit nerdy here.I stuck to specific flat percentages for most of it - Pearl’s hair and Grians jumper are 60%, Grian’s hair and Pearl’s cloak are 20%. Then I added a 14% layer for shadows, using a ahrd blend eraser tool for highlights, making the images quite dark. I fill a layer with texture from Forystr’s riso brush for procreate, and turn it into a 40% opacity colour dodge layer. This gives it some much needed texture and makes the lighting feel low and nighttimecore. It also pushes the values to look really nice - I tend to be too scared to push them by myself.

I tried a few different colour layers to get a *vibe* but settled on a low percentage riso blue in a colour layer. All layers besides the riso blue are in a riso black, colour picked from a riso colour pallete. I learnt these tools - using percentages to get good values - from working with risograph. I really recommend having a look at these techniques and doing some monotone work. It's really improved by character designs, page layouts and compositions.

That's all from me today, though I have had MANY other thoughts over the past two weeks about creating, but perhaps we'll dive into them another time. If you (or anyone else) has any questions, hit me up with a reblog or an ask and I will get right to it. Lovely to hear from you! Hope your art is going great too :)) Arch :)

[desultory-novice]

No rush on answering this, I know you got stuff going on

Can I ask about you MariPav process? I want to make a comic too and MariPav is a huge inspiration for me. So, I was wondering if you could share any tips.

The main things on my mind are

How did you come up with the story and how much of it do you have planned before hand

What is the drawing process? Do you do a rough sketch first, do you do a chapter's outlines and then color or do you finish a page then do the next, etc.

About how long does it take you per page?

How did you decide the level of detail you draw in for this comic?

Do you have any monochromatic shading/coloring tips? I'm not very good with working outside of color

How do you keep consistent character design?

You're also really good at speech bubble spacing and comedic timing that doesn't pull you out of the story. How do you do it?

Sorry,, I ended up asking a lot of questions...

; _ ; Ahh, thank you so much for asking questions about my process?! It makes me feel good to know people are interested and I'm happy to go into (lots) of detail about it!

1) [THE STORY]

So, the initial concept of Marionettes' Pavane came from two separate comics I'd wanted to do. One was about how Magolor and Marx reunite after the end of Return to Dream Land. (I had only been in the fandom for a little bit but had already fallen hard for this ship, and while there were lots of stories about how they met, pre-RtDL, it seemed pretty obvious to me that Marx wasn't around for RtDL so I wanted to know how they might have gotten together after.)

Another idea that stuck in my head was for a story about how Marx went from being an innocent Noddy to the Marx we know and love. Neither of these ideas were going to be gijinka to start with, btw - I've mentioned this [one really long Kirby x Marx comic] I read on Pixiv that was a huge storytelling inspiration to me for MariPav.

That, plus a few other good gijinka fan comics, was probably what pushed me to make it a gijinka story, in addition to a few lines that popped into my head that worked better if they were humanoid.

(Initially, I was still going to do the Marx backstory comic separately, but I realized it was just easier to work it into MariPav because it was clearly influencing MariPav Marx's characterization. Then I wrote up a Magolor backstory chapter to match.)

As for the writing, I wrote out the WHOLE script, beginning to end, before I began drawing it! I knew myself and I didn't want get lost as to where my own story was going or pivot directions so hard in the middle that the beginning no longer made sense. Writing it was pretty exciting, so it wasn't too hard to get the whole thing done, though it definitely took a few months of chipping away at it.

(In fact I was so addicted to writing it that after I "finished," I couldn't stop toying with it and added on several epilogue chapters! ^^)

You can additionally get a glimpse at what some of my thought processes/inspiration for coming up with the story were by re-reading my old Marxolor "rant" [here]

As for the process, once I'd jotted down enough lines/conversations to establish the theme ("Was it worth it?" etc etc) I would draft out summaries for what I wanted to have happen in the chapters (interspersed with whatever thoughts about the story came to mind that I might want to include somewhere later, not all of these made it in, such as Magolor trolling Marx with the ladder) and, when inspired, add in bits of conversation till I had enough material for a full chapter.

[Screenshot of a chapter breakdown from one of my earliest drafts]

Inspiration came from a lot of places. I would re-review cutscenes from RtDL or other games, look at inspiring fanart, or indulge in completely unrelated media till something would click as "Oh! Marx and Magolor really ought to have this happen to them!"

[Screenshot of a paragraph of (unused) ideas from one of my earliest drafts]

[An early draft of Chapter 5. I used red and blue text for Marx and Magolor's dialogue early on. The scene is in an early, unfinished state. Notice how figuring out I could work in the Gem Apples was something that came along toward the end, even though now, it seems like the whole POINT of the chapter. XD]

I wrote MariPav before learning about the Snowflake Method for writing stories, but as you can sort of see here, my method did come close to following the "one sentence summary > one paragraph summary > three paragraph summary > write it" style.

When I was gearing up to finally draw it, a month or so after reaching the "end" of the story (though I actually wrote the "end" really early on and it's remained 95% unchanged through multiple additions. Sometimes, you write the ending first ^^) I went back in, cleaned the script up, filled in any lingering <n happens here> lines and added in stage directions, which is the script I currently work from!

--

2) [DRAWING IT]

As for my drawing process, that's changed a bit from the beginning, but here is my current drawing process! First, I'll draw a really loose "thumbnail" sketch in big blocky pencil. This is normally just "Marx go here! Mago go here! Mago mad!!" type stuff. Then I'll copy paste in my dialogue and move it and the sketches around till I have something that looks decent. I'll chop up each "page" and copy into my main comic making app and arrange them on the actual pages.

[An example of some thumbnails from the latest comic, right before I copied it into the main comic doc for cleaning. They're usually not even THIS detailed XD]

After that, I do a second rough, where they actually start to resemble themselves and I figure out things like where their limbs should go or add detail to their expressions (as well as note any kind of effects I will want to include in the finished panel.)

[A secondary rough from Chapter 5. I eventually made a (more simplistic than it looks) 3D model for Magolor's egg to help keep it relatively on model.]

Then comes adding in the panel borders and moving the secondary roughs around so they fit nicely. After that, I ink, though if my secondary roughs are unsatisfactory, I will bring in 3D models or references and draw them again before going back to inks.

I do it all in batches, by the way! Thumbnails for all ten~ish pages, roughs for all ten~ish pages, inks for all ten~ish pages. Because I'm still growing as an artist, if I finish one page before starting on the next, it's liable to look COMPLETELY different than the previous page! XD (Which I've had happen! Then I have to go back and redo the previous page so it looks more consistent, bleugh~...)

Sometime, early on in the inking, I will add in the balloons for the dialogue and arrange the text in them. I do this because :cough: sometimes I can use dialogue balloons to cover up anatomy I'm not that great at XD Then I add in the flat/base colors.

[Same page as before showing how I used balloons to cover un-inked areas. And also how I had to redraw Marx in the first panel to fix his proportions. Although I think his face was much cuter in the first draft XD ]

Then comes a really frenzied period where I do shading and panel FX and sound FX at the same time and it gets really messy and I'm still trying to find a way to clean up that process some ^^;

--

3) [TIME]

It's hard to be sure on a per page level since I jump back and forth between pages, but I spent a LOT of time fixing/adjusting things and trying to make sure things look as good as they possibly can. So a page will be "almost done" for a long time before I'm ready to say to myself, "Yeah, this is shareable!" Coming up with thumbnails that fit my idea for the script can be incredibly time intensive too!

[Here are the "complete" thumbnails for Chapter 5 Part 2]

As you can see, I actually began secondary roughs on this chapter BEFORE I had figured out what two of the last pages would even look like! I tried and just... couldn't come up with a good idea till the very end. Figuring out layouts has been really tricky and sometimes I'll flip open a variety of manga to see what they might do!

(And then I remember that manga layouts and whatnot are often highly differentiated by genre and MariPav is all over the place XD )

--

4) [DETAIL]

Here is the VERY FIRST drawing I ever drew of gijinka Marx and Magolor, when I was testing out what my mental image of them would look like. Everything was quite rough at this time. I hadn't figured out exactly what hairstyle I wanted Magolor to have and Marx's wings are more like attachments than arms. XD

But basically, because I drew them looking more like semi-realistically proportioned adults (figured it'd be easier to get suitable references that way) I decided to stick with that look through the story. That ended up demanding a certain level of bg/prop detail to look right and...it's one of the more frustrating parts. ^^;

It would have been a lot easier to start if I'd drawn them in a more cartoonish-anime style, like how Apologies started out, but I knew I had a few very serious and intense scenes that I thought might look laughable if Marx and Magolor were more marshmallowy looking ^^

Also, since Marionettes' Pavane is, when it comes down to it, a love story between two horrifically emotionally-stunted adults, past the point where innocent childhood mistakes are easily forgivable but without the inner peace, maturity, and knowledge to know how to NOT make these same mistakes over and over, I wanted their body types to reflect the fact that they are both fully grown. (Despite the immaturity they frequently CONSTANTLY display to each other.)

There are many stories about confused kids/young adults making mistakes and getting better. Not as many about adults, despite plenty of us being just as confused.

And I can just switch to a chibi-style if I need them to be small!

(Even Apologies has started to shift in and out of MariPav's pseudo anime-realism style, and I'll notice myself drawing tall, tanky anime boy Noir, even though his initial concept is short, underfed, underdeveloped, squishy-cartoon boy. You can see the reverse happen when I draw MariPav in a rush and Marsh and Magolor start to look more boyish and squishy. So, in short, don't do what I do and try to draw two different comics with two different artstyles at the same time XD)

--

5) [MONOCHROME TIPS]

I say go ahead and use color, and then throw a desaturation filter on that baby, if you can! Now, to ease this process, you might want to make test palette FIRST, draw your characters with their normal colors and then de-saturate that and save it for referencing later!

[I started out making a very nice palette for the two of them, only to accidentally delete it. I still needed one, so I made a second - and while I accidentally deleted THAT one too ^^; I swear, the "lineart" portion of it looked JUST like this. Just scribbles I would daub paint colors on. The key is that your palette reference doesn't have to look good, you just need to be able to sample from it!]

Now, you might notice not everything looks right when desaturated. That's a matter of values, etc! What you can do is take the monochromatic grays you've got and further adjust them from there so they look more like the gray versions of your original colors. 

[NEW OUTFIT SPOILERS!!]

I had to do this with their new outfits too in fact!

I drew them up, worked rea~lly hard on getting their palettes the way I liked, then I desaturated them and Marx looked like a a big dark blob!! You want to be very sparing with including dark colors and blacks in your palette when doing monochromatic manga, because your panel borders, text, sfx, panel effects and your shading are going to be vying for access to those precious dark tones. And if EVERYTHING stands out... then NOTHING does!

So I manually adjusted the grays on both so that they would look better good and communicate the same light-to-dark information.

--

6) [CONSISTENCY]

Because I keep all of MariPav in one big document (split up by arcs) if I forget how something looks, I just page back to the last time I drew it ^^; That said, as hinted at above, I'm...not all that great at consistency myself. Either with artstyle OR tiny details.

"Do Magolor's gloves have trim on the ends or not?" "Do Marx's bangs curl inward or out?" "What the heck do his shoe laces look like again?" "How many grooves are in the back of Magolor's egg?" "Did you forget his work apron again?" "Hasn't Marx's collar grown in size since last time--"

COUGH COUGH COUGH

I hope to get better at consistency down the line, but the truth of the matter is I do most things in life completely frazzled and I just have to do what I can do in the time I have! Outside of having references for yourself (and I have two very slightly modified 3D models I use labeled for "Marx" and "Magolor" to help keep their shapes consistent-ish) drawing your characters a little bit every day will help!

Especially the every day (that you can) part. Let it go too long and you MAY misremember something you'd done, only to canonize it next time you draw them ^^; :remembers how I accidentally gave Hell Branch Magolor his other eye back and lost track of Hell Branch Blade's scarf:

And then sometimes I decide I maybe want to change something up because I just wasn't thinking of all sorts of better possibilities before and "la la la" it is this way now, just go with it~

--

7) [COMEDY & SPEECH]

I've been something of the family goofball since I was a kid, so I'm pretty used to comedy, especially hyper-dramatization comedy.

[This is a pretty good sample of the exaggerated way I talk in real life haha XD]

Some tips I've heard for "timing" is that the end of the page should be a moment that makes the reader want to turn to the next one to see what happens. Or be the conclusion of a story beat or joke. Either use it to build anticipation or let the reader rest.

Speaking of letting the reader rest, I read somewhere that the reason manga doesn't include backgrounds as much as western comics and web-comics is not that Japan hates backgrounds or anything...

It's the theory that the more information on a page, the more mental energy a reader spends taking it in! You don't want them to exhaust themselves looking at detailed backdrops unless the presence of the BG is also communicating something!

That's why so many manga will have those panels that have 3-4 speech bubbles laid over some generic screen tone. The artist isn't lazy, they're telling you "just relax and focus on the words!"

That's also how you preserve flow, by limiting the amount of visual information there is on any given page. It actually took me a while to learn that, and I sometimes regret that the original MariPav script is super wordy for a comic script.

(Because I wrote it first - before I'd done a deep dive study on the art of comic-crafting. That and I was more used to writing fanfic and original stories than comic scripts - which often need to be tightly trimmed. They also have a bunch of different storytelling devices you don't always expect. Like, most manga has WAY more internal dialogue and thoughts than MariPav has, which is written more like a stage play, being told entirely through back and forth dialogue.)

As a result, now, when I paste my dialogue in over my thumbnails, I'll often chop whole lines out or trim them down so they won't just eat up my page space. They say "kill your darlings" for a reason.

Lastly, I actually have a friend who works in comics, and I've pinged them a couple of times for advice on how to get my speech bubbles looking good. They've given me lots of advice, and not just on lettering! (They were the one who recommended using a kind of creeping, broken shadow instead of a plain flat shadow over Dedede's face + the tv static lines over DMS seen here too.)

[I credit their advice with the reason that first comic got so much positive attention. Tbh, it's those little touches that really make it!]

Some other advice they gave me was to make sure your text has plenty of room inside your balloons. You're trying to fit a square peg in a circular hole, after all! But again, sometimes I just place my bubbles in areas where they'll be most convenient for the art! XD

-

Anyway, I hope I did well answering your questions and providing insight. Of course, the biggest thing is that everything takes a combination of hours of practice and also... just some life experience.

I have been reading manga since I was 12, which nowadays makes it sound like I started LATE in life till you remember I'm 40 years old (and back then we had to walk two miles in the... we had to import untranslated single volumes from sketchy web sites with zero preview pics, based entirely on how interesting the title sounded) and in spite of my long history with the medium, I still found that I couldn't replicate the look of it it based on memory alone.

That's because there's a difference in taking in something for enjoyment and taking in some for study. What I've been having to do lately is STUDY manga - very intensely. I'm constantly having to look up "how to express frustration in manga" "manga sfx" "effective manga panelling" "crying, manga-style" to get things close!

(Of course, my years of reading and enjoying it helped in its own way too. After all, the stories I'm writing now are based on years of lived experience, in and out of fictional worlds and that stuff is KEY.)

But yes, get started on that comic of yours! Honestly, the best thing I did with MariPav was start drawing it. I knew I would have a long way to go to get it looking like it does in my head and it's still got a long way to go before it's there, but every page I make is getting me there.