#it's less the drawing in itself tbh it's just that I intended to put more effort into this

[nevarroes]

I hope you take this in the kind spirit it’s meant - you don’t have to apologize for your art, it’s a gift you’re sharing freely - you don’t have to say it’s bad or poorly drawn or not well rendered or point out all the errors you think are there - ty for sharing your work it’s beautiful

thank you for the kind words💗

I do know I don't have to point it out or justify myself and I know that in a way I'm... spreading negativity in a sense by doing so but it's just hard to shut up sometimes when you're disappointed in yourself I suppose

[mikromikroula]

oc info dump incoming~~

Shared two oc inspiration boards on twt and some friends wanted to know a bit more but i didn't want to make a long ass thread so here we are :3

Bit of background info, this story is basically a revamp of an older one I had along with a mix and match of various ocs I had throughout the years. At this point in time, I feel this project is the most sound it's been and it starts to form itself. Not that i have written too far but it feels manageable for me, so that's good. Another thing, I haven't drawn all the characters in their most updated form but that's where these boards come in. They're not the most definitive version, more or so for the fun of it and the convenience to make changes.

Regarding the story itself, there is an overarching plot, a murder mystery the main character (Kleo) has been hired to solve, and smaller murders that she also works on and that introduce different characters each time (kinda like ace attorney in a sense, those smaller cases aren't too complicated and are quite short but bring things to the story and the development of the characters).

and lastly, some boards are smaller than others and i may have less things to say about some ocs as well, this is an inroduction basically.

ok so first up Kleo: She works at a detective agency as a detective/investigator that takes on the mysteries of the town. On top of that she is hired by Mia (more on her later) to solve that bigger murder case. She's basically Mia's assistant or agent if you will and runs various errands for her, not just investigating. She's themed after the moon and stars so that's a bit important. I'll leave the character development stuff for the story when i write it eventually or whenever I want to post about that too idk, but basically she's a bit of a loner and that's the starting point of her arc.

Characters that remind me of her are Klavier and Jolyne, her attitude/personality has similar energy to theirs. Also i'm inspired by their arcs to write something in the same vein for her. This part of the boards isn't too deep, I don't intend to mirror those characters but it's fun to see the combinations that'll come up (it's also based mostly simply on vibes tbh)

also she's the one i've redesigned most only to come back to a design i came up with last year

she does mean a lot to me, she's my lil skrunkly🤲

Next, Mia. This lady this lady... I don't want to spoil too much about her so this will be pretty short. She's Kleo's boss and veeeery mysterious. Personality wise she's pretty calm and confident and mysterious and a tiny bit mischevious. just a tiny bit. She has my favorite design and colorscheme so far, she's inspired by the sun and nature, in a "life" sort of sense. Her and Kleo's dynamic is very interesting and complex but also funny and goofy at times.

Fun fact about her she lives alone on her island, good for her. She has the Lisa lisa energy but definitely more mischievous. The other lady in the board is Amalia from a comedy drama series in the early 00's, she's pretty iconic at that and also has a very special role in the show, Mia's role is of the same importance. As I'm writing this I realized I didn't put Minda from Twilight princess on the board who is a huge inspiration :( anyway

one thing about her that I'm excited for is the artistic department. I've thought a lot of cool ways to draw her. that's it for her for now

did I mention she's mysterious

Agape: She's a costume designer in a film studio where the first case takes place and is a witness/suspect to the crime. Agape is one of Kleo's very very few friends and the closest at that. She doesn't have a very complex character arc in the beginning, mainly bcs of her role in the case, but her relationship with Kleo is a subject present from the very beginning. We will step into wlw territory with those too yes yes :3 She's the only person Kleo lets to get so close with her and Agape knows and appreciates that. They will also be working a lot together the two of them. I would like to talk about their dynamic and their relationship both platonic and romantic more but this is not the post for that so maybe another time.

Design wise, she's themed after hearts duh. There are a lot of red and pink accents as well as designer/seamstress themed details. She went to the Daphne Blake school of serving so there's that.

Leon: He's the hothead, overly confident and cocky yet popular with the civilians and media coworker of kleo. He's Kleo's rival at the agency who constantly gets all the good cases and the positive coverage from the media. He is in fact very good at his job but it has blown up his head. He and Kleo are polar opposites yet have more similarities than they'd might think. Throughout the story we do see his redeeming traits and his development into being a better person.

He's themed after the sun and his signature color is orange-yellow, warm and vivid colors in general

before i named him he was just "the jerk" in my head

some guy with no name yet: This guy ik people would love lmao. He owns a small machanic/repair shop though you will rarely see him *actually working*.Well he just doesn't do the fixing, more managing and running the whole thing is his job. He has mentor figure vibes as well being a bit childish for his age. I don't blame him though silliness has no age. He also seems to know much information about people, more than he lets on, hmm. Mia and him know each other as well.

the characters on the board are the vibe~

and finally Max: I've drawn him once but i'm not satisfied with how he looked. Max works at the repair shop I mentioned. That being said he's the only employee there :) it's just Max and the guy above, two silly guys at their pathetic bussiness (affectionate). Their dynamic is basically max doing all the repairing and the guy (i really should name him soon oh lord) doing the management ect ect. Those two are also the main comedic duo, like imagine your boss being absolutely incompetent at the main task of his job so you basically take it on by yourself, leaving him in charge of everything else which also doesn't suit him resulting to the bussiness running on your boss' pure charisma and luck. Anyway, Max is a very sweet lil guy and is always willing to help.

design things: GOGGLES!!!

certified cutie patootie🫶

That's the gang for now~ Writing this out made me want to draw them all but i've been busy and a bit art blocked these days :( i'm trying though

[inventors-fair]

Wrapping Up

Gift Card Commentary

This week was a joy to look through. I don’t even know what I can say about most of these cards because I can tell they come from the heart. There was a surprising mix of “this card will only work in a deck dedicated to it” and “this card is generically good, but in the same way that the recipient is.” I was expecting that, and I was happy about that result. I always like a good variety of entries. There was also no card that really missed the mark, all of them seemed very well targetted to their targets, with a few entries perhaps going a little overboard. Still, very happy with all of them, so let’s get to the commentary!

@antmations​ - Serra’s Locket

So the obvious answer is that this is for Serra, but that doesn’t really make sense, but then I remembered seeing this in the Discord and you saying it was for Teshar. In that case, pretty solid! It lets you loop things fairly easily, netting you some mana if you’ve got some workshop assistants or junk divers. I’m a little worried about the effect outside of Teshar, though. If you play this on trun two, you can play a six-drop on turn three in any color. At uncommon. I think there’s a problem with that. I can’t really think how to change the ability without changing the whole card, though. From a flavor standpoint I’m sure he would like a locket!

@askkrenko​ - Woodland Swarm

What a fun and narrow card. I could see Kamahl, either of the green ones, really liking this card. I appreciate the set symbol, since lands attacking is a very Zendikar thing. I’m trying to judge the power level,  and while part of my thinks that making a token every time you attack is really strong, Mardu Ascendency did it plus another thing for one mana more without the land restriction. I don’t think dropping a mana off the cost would be the answer, but maybe just putting something else on the enchantment. I really wish this provided some way to protect either the forests, the bugs, or both. A free 1/1 tapped and attacking often leads to no 1/1. Of course, the best way to do that is to give them all +3/+3, but that’s also tough to do if you’re attacking with your lands. I think this is a good concept and a good effect, I just wish there were a little more going on.

@dabudder​ - Horizon Managem

I have no idea why this is an artifact and enchantment, but I totally understand why it’s a gift to OG Omnath. The two effects are both very green, and the mana cost definitely shows that. I like how, while Omnath is the best thing to do with this card, it’s also very fun in decks focused around mono-green activated abilities. I kind of wish it specified lands, if only because giving all creatures psuedo-vigilance makes for some very stagnant boards. Even if you have a massive Omnath, one typhoid rats stops that dead. Still, something about this card makes me smile. I really like the mix of symmetrical upside and symmetrical downside. I think this card would see plays in a lot of decks for a lot of different reasons, and that alone makes it really cool and interesting.

@deafeningsandwichpeach​ - Certra, Kiora’s Visionary

Okay, this card’s something. This is intended as a gift to Kiora, though which Kiora exactly is unclear. The first ability doesn’t really have any major synergy with any Kiora, since she doesn’t have any thing that costs mana or needs untapped lands, and I don’t know a particularly good reason to bounce a Kiora except to save her. Making a giant Kraken is always fun, though. The card itself has a lot going on, and the synergy with Kiora and with itself is a little lacking. I like how the first ability generates mana and the last one lets you use it, but I don’t know if that’s enough to make this card interesting. It feels like an expensive wilderness reclamation with a pretty okay way to use the mana.

@dimestoretajic​ - Cloak of the Knight-Errant

Right in the feels. So this seems to be a literal gift to Ajani, and I can see it working really well with him, but not too annoyingly narrow. The first ability is a little awkward, since it doesn’t affect actual +X abilities, since the ability isn’t putting the token on, the activation of the ability is. But it works great with Ajani Steadfast! I think the second ability also is templated strangely, since the first part says “a creature token” but the last part talks about multiple. And the last ability has the same issue. But I see what you were going for, and I think you did alright. Almost every white planeswalker does one, two, or all of these, so I could see this getting played in a LOT of superfriends decks, especially since white is the color that seems to have the most support for planeswalker based on Call the Gatewatch and the like. I think this card is good, I think it’s fine, but the templating holds it back from the standings.

@driftingthruthecosmos​ - Returning Omen

Another fan of fling, I see! I love that middle ability, and I sincerely hope it works, but there’s some really weird stuff that happens when you refer to paying costs. For example, if you sacrificed this card to ashnod’s altar, then used that mana to cast a spell with kicker, it would probably copy the spell, but the game has no way of determining which colorless mana was used for kicker and which was used for the spell. I’d probably just take out the “additional cost” and just say when it’s sacrificed to pay for a spell. I think that works. Also, coppied spells don’t have to pay additional costs anyway, so no need to put that text on there. I will also warn that the first ability interacts poorly with unearth, since an unearthed creature cannot die, only go straight to exile when it would. I also don’t know how I feel about black drawing a card without losing life, even upon death. Only blue and green cards have had that effect so far. Sorry, don’t know why I’m being so mean about this card, I really like it! I like how it is perfectly built to be flung, even ignoring the ability referencing fling. Unearth and fling go great together. That middle ability is also really cool and just needs some tweaking.

@evscfa1​ - Radiance of the Dawnwaker

A gift for a fox. So, you get to turn any creature into a better crackdown construct. TBH my favorite part about this card is the vigilance and haste, since those are both abilities you want on creatures with activated abilities including zirda itself. I also really liked that you gave it an activated ability itself so that it can be played in a deck that uses Zirda as a companion. The activated ability has just enough generic cost to maximize Zirda’s cost reduction, the ability grants redundant abilities but acts as a proxy for firebreathing, it being an aura helps offset the power level. There’s a lot to like here! I do kind of wish there was some sort of limiter on the pump ability, just because it’s a whole lot to track in a normal game, but I guess in a lot of games it’ll either be infinite, just get chumped, or only be like one or two because your engine got killed. While I love this card for all it does, I think all it does may be too much. I’m still very impressed at all the thought that got put into this.

@demimonde-semigoddess​ - Exhumed Shambler

When I first saw this card in the inbox, I thought I remembered it from Discord, but I am very happy to see you replaced the triggered effect with a replacement effect! That means there isn’t the awkwardness of being in a hidden zone! Yay! I’m also impressed that you got a reanimation effect that is fairly costed, a rarity any week. A common with a narrow but fun ability that I could see getting value off of every so often, even in draft, especially a masters format. Part of me really wishes it was less specific, and let you use stuff like gravepurge to get multiple out at once, but I definitely think the templating and power on that would be tough to get right. As is, this is a perfectly fine card, a great companion card to gravedigger and friends, and there’s just not really anything I can complain about. Though I do suddenly wish there were a way to give this dredge...

@gollumni​ - Flames of War

This cards got layers (no, not those). First off, it is a defensive red card. That’s rare! But it does it in a nice, red way. It also works very neatly with cards that force players to attack, such as Trove of Temptation, the card you mentioned (in discord) as being the target of this gift. Another cool interaction is that Trove of Temptation normally lets that player send their weakest creature to attack, but this card makes that creature die unless it’s at least an X/3. It forces your opponent into even more difficult decisions. And if they DO send a big guy, this makes it easier to take down with smaller blockers. I wonder how strong this card is against creature light decks, and how, it being an enchantment, some decks may be unable to deal with it, and might scoop hard to it. But that’s not much different than burn scooping to leyline of sanctity, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. This would make an impact in standard, probably, and might require specific answers, but isn’t going to warp the format. All around a solid card. I wish it had a little bit more synergy specifically with Trove, but for what it is, it’s good.

@grornt​ - Burning Insurrection

This is a fun card to think on. When a creature comes into play, it immediately looks at the guy who summoned it, punches them in the face, then continues to do as they say. I really like this card as a gift to Rite of the Raging Storm, because while this has applications in a lot of decks, with Rite it is at it’s most powerful outside of infinite combos. I also like it in prison/control decks, using it to slowly have your opponent kill themselves as they try to play more creatures than you have answers. I remember seeing you in the Discord asking about the right mana cost for this card, and I have to say, I don’t know the right answer either. If this is meant for commander, I think you could safely drop it to five. In draft this would be game over at that cost, though, and in standard it would be pretty killer, too. But it’s also sort of a control card? And control cards have this awkward thing where the price doesn’t matter that much because you should have control of the game by the time it resolves. Regardless, it’s a fun ability and has a cool impact on the game, and it works great with it’s recipient.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ - Ritual of Life and Death

I have never heard of Holistic Wisdom, but I have now! So, the first part of the card doesn’t do much with holistic wisdom (I think you could have maybe safely targeted enchantments since it’s a white card), but that’s fine because the second part does, and when you have abilities that trigger in other zones, you can sort of just ignore the rest of the card (did you know golgari grave troll has text? Who knew!). Still, that first ability is a nice rare removal/reanimation effect. I don’t know if it is intended that it MUST have two legal targets, but I think that’s fine since casting it is sort of a fail state. The card is meant to be exile fodder, and has other random synergy besides Wisdom. I’m sure there are tons of ways to abuse it, though a lot of them are probably inefficient. I don’t know if this card is stronger or weaker than Squee. I think it has great combo potential with Wisdom and other cards, and only gets problematic (I think) in multiples. Personally I’m not a fan of stuff that deals with cards in exile unless they are awful (misthollow griffin is a vanilla flyer, pull from eternity is card disadvantage, etc.) but I think at least part of that is personal. I do wish this card had a more complete concept, like some way to exile itself (very expensive flashback?) or a clear thematic connection to Eldrazi or something. This card is taking a lot of risks, and while I think it pulls them off, I don’t think it did so outstandingly.

@ignorantturtlegaming​ - Chandra’s Inferno Golem

While it’s clear who this is for, it’s unclear which Chandra this is for. My guess would be this big one, since they both can’t be countered and both have inferno in the name. The more I look at it, the more I see that. This coming down the turn before means you’ll get to curve into big Chandra and immediately get double triggers. Being uncounterable also means if you’re playing one in the matchup you’ll probably play both. The lifegain at first felt odd, since chandra doesn’t care that much about lifegain usually, but Awakened Inferno specifically is very burn-centric, and lifegain is the only thing that can be done to slow down her emblems. All that being said, I had to do some digging to find that. This is a very straightforward card in that it just says “play me in decks with chandras.” This guy is amazing if you have a chandra out and boring to bad if you don’t. As much as I like this card, it just doesn’t feel that special. 

@justincase-1012​ - Two-Headed Helm of Foriys

How do you make a helmet that fits two heads? Wouldn’t you just wear two helmets? Anyway, a card for a two-headed giant! So this is meant to be put on cards with menace or, like the two-headed giant of Foriys, cards that can block multiple creatures. I have a couple of issues with this card. First, it’s super situational. You would want to make sure every card in your deck would get a benefit from this before you’d use it. Second, the ability is not red at all, even if it was meant for a red creature. Third, I think this card could have just said “prevent the damage of one of those creatures” to save on a lot of rules headaches. Lastly, it’s really weak for what it does. Most equipment that prevents damage costs about 2, like Shield of the Realm, and is far less conditional. And nobody plays those anyway. While I think it’s really cool that you made a card for such an old and oft-forgotten card, I think this card has too many issues to win this week.

@kavinika​ - Dreadmaw Nesting Grounds

I know who this is for! Collosal Dreadmaw gets a friend! You can never have too many dreadmaws, so says WotC. It also warms my heart that you said this is just as much for any big green 6 drop common that appears in every set. They really don’t get the respect they deserve. So here we have an incredibly narrow card with massive upside. As a fan of MTGGoldfish’s Commander Clash I also know that 6 CMC tribal is a theoretically real archetype. I think this is exactly the type of card that a lot of people ( AKA Timmies and Tammies) would fall in love with. I even think it’s costed pretty well. I might say I’d put it at rare, since it’s a build-around in draft so you’d want it to show up more often, and it’s also not quite splashy enough for mythic.

@koth-of-the-hammerpants - Grizzled Salvager

No submission notes, but I can see this is a gift to grizzly salvage. A nice card, and one I could see be worthy of a gift. This card has been very delicately phrased to work for both milling and grizzly salvage itself (after the keywording of mill, WotC would probably have just said “milled), but it is mixing terminology from triggered effects and replacement effects. I can understand why, because if it were a triggered effect it might trigger itself wen the remaining cards are put back, but a replacement effect is unnecessary. I’d suggest removing about the half the words until you’re left with “Whenever two or more cards are put into your graveyard from your library, put one into your hand.” I think that gets the effect you’re looking for. As for the effect itself, I think I like it. It’s incredibly powerful in the right deck, and I like how it specifically wants effects that put multiple cards into your graveyard at once, as opposed to the likes of Sidisi who prefers milling one at a time. I’m having a really hard time judging this, since it’s such powerful card advantage, but does need to be in play to do it, and needs to be built around. This is probably a busted and broken card, but for whatever reason I can’t figure out for sure. I’ll assume not, in which case this is a pretty cool card!

@mardu-lesbian​ - Trumpeteer Angel

Wow, someone else has heard of Angel’s Trumpet! My buddy plays it in his chaos deck, but it always seemed like it would have use elsewhere. I like how simple and small this card is. A lot of entries this week were either incredibly narrow or just combo good stuff. This card definitely feels like it has a place, and that place might also be the place for angel’s trumpet, but not exclusively. At a minimum, a 2/1 flying first strike for 2 is a great body, so much so that I could easily see not activating the ability. But that’s where the trumpet comes in! I love how the two abilities, blanket vigilance and what my friend refers to as “anti-vigilance,” where you tap if you don’t attack, are both used to power up this card. Flying and first trike means that this card can attack super safely (thus not triggering trumpet herself) and then activate her ability on the next turn to get the printed effect and also end up tapping it by your next turn! It’s a full bowl of synergy! My only real complaint is the lifegain. While I understand using it as a power tradeoff and the lifegain is offset by the trumpet, it feels weird to offset that. The damage is a big reason to play trumpet, it feels odd to have an ability that negates it while triggering it. I don’t think that’s a major complaint in any way, just feels a little odd to me, but the rest of the card is golden. I really like it, and that flavor text is some of the best I’ve seen.

@misterstingyjack​ - Infinite Index

A gift for Mishra, which seems obvious once you tell me. I’ll be honest: I do not like this card. I think Spy Kit was a mistake, I think it causes more problems than it solves, and I think it never should have been printed. This card is causing far, far more trouble with only slightly more problems solved. This card will make players confused, angry, and probably sad if they don’t know what they’re doing. But! This isn’t about me. This was you trying to find a way to get Mishra to be a better card. And it does do that! But even so, it does it in a very boring way. If you have this and Mishra in play, you just get to turn your next artifact into the best artifact in your deck (or creature if it’s an artifact creature). That doesn’t seem fun for players, though I guess it would make Mishra happy. A nice gift to Mishra, but not the best gift to players.

@naban-dean-of-irritation​ - Panglacial Thaw

Panglacial wurm is such a weird, weird card, but when it sees play it’s always a super fun card. I like how, at first glance, this card seems incredibly narrow, because it feels like PW is the only creature in the game you cast from your library. However, cards like vizier of the menagerie and the new changeling guy make this card really powerful. Even so, it’s still pretty narrow, and I think you could pretty safely drop a mana off the CMC. I like this card, I like how much of a build-around it is, but I wish there were just a little bit more to it to make it not so much of a dead draw most of the game.

@nine-effing-hells​ - Ion Faestus, the First Lich

You’ve got guts to put the word “calculation” in a black-border card, I’ll give you that. I don’t really mind it though, I’m sure the rules hates it but I’m fine with it. I also appreciate that this card is just blatantly trying to break things while also trying to fix them. Intended as a gift to Endless Ranks of the Dead, I kind of like how this card fills a lot of roles. I like how prventing exile is very zombie-friendly, and the fact that he is a zombie himself means he automatically turns on endless ranks of the dead. I also just quickly looked for what cards that first ability would affect, and was surprised at how little it does. I just sort of assumed it would break something. That last ability (with support from the middle ability) definitely enables a lot of scary shenanagins, though the simplest of which is just letting players almost infinitely flashback, which sounds fun, and the colors support that. In general, I think this card does an okay job at being a gift to Endless Ranks of the Dead, but I think the fact that it just exists to let players break the games is just as much fun as it is anguish.

@partlycloudy-patlyfuckoff - Affliction Accolyte

I’m very happy you resubmitted, because I like this card much more. This serves as a great gift to Pharika, giving her fuel to keep making snakes, and being a creature itself means it can fuel her itself. I like the cost and the body at uncommon, but I have one nitpick and one big issue. First, the mill effect should say “mill a card” not “mill 1.” The big issue is that this is a little a little too quadratic. I think this card would have been perfect if it just had the constellation ability itself, sort of like the TBD constellation cards, but instead it grants it to every enchantment. That means that, assuming you just have pharika out, if you activate her twice, you get to mill 5 and make your opponent lose 5 life. Each enchantment effectively makes your opponent lose life equal to the number of enchantments you control. That’s really, really strong, and gets out of hand really fast. A little too fast if you ask me. But! The effect is nice, the text is nice, I like how you made it a centaur like Pharika’s chosen instead of the more obvious snake or gorgon, and it’s really cool. Just a bit too unwieldy.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ - Behemoth Territory

AAAH Land that taps for two mana! RUN!... Sorry, just had to get that out of the way. So it’s a striclty better jungle shrine, which is a good but not amazing card, but the upside on this is it taps for a lot if you control a behemoth. I think the clearest comparison is to Eldrazi Temple or Shrine of the Forsaken Gods; lands that tap for two mana but only for big spells that really need it. Five power is definitely a huge ask, and when you compare Bonder’s Enclave to Arch of Orazca, Wizards seems to think a big creature is harder to have then 10 permanents, so maybe this being easier to get to than Shrine is... fine? And, most importantly, this lets you use your really big creature to get MORE really big creatures! This makes perfect sense as a gift to Mayael, and I’m sure she would appreciate it. It is a shame she can’t use it on her own, though.

@scavenger98​ - Dara, Muse of Spontaneity

A gift to Bell Borca, a card I sort of forgot existed. So the idea behind this card is that it’s supposed to sort of “hold on” to cards exiled temporarily by red impulse draw effects. I don’t really feel that is red, since the whole point of impulse draw is that it is temporary, but I guess it still is because you can only do it while she’s alive. I dunno, this card seems like a really harsh bend in what red should do, and it doesn’t really do anything else. And the payoff isn’t even that great. I think Bell Borca might like this card, but I’m just not a fan.

@snugz​ - Biased Redistribution

HOLY MOLY. So far as do-nothing enchantments go, this one is pretty ridiculous! You said this was a card for Kambal, and while I do get that, I think it is much, much stronger with cards like Zulaport Cutthroat. Normally, if you have the cutthroat and three other creatures and they all die at once, you gain 4 and deal 4 to each opponent. With this out, instead you deal 10 and gain 10. That’s crazy! And though triggers aren’t triggered by combat damage or lifelink, they do affect the count. So f you hit a player with a 1/1 double striker, then the situation above happened, they’d lose 18 additional life. Now, perhaps I’m blowing this out of proportion, and this is all magical Christmas land. I still think this is close to a damage doubler (or at least a Torbran effect) and therefore too cheap, but I also think it’s maybe build-aroundy enough to be fine. What makes it hard to declare a winner, though is just how messy the card is. The fact that you can up the count without triggering it, the fuzziness on how damage would interact with it (damage causes loss of life, but at that point is it still the ability causing it?), the memory and tracking issues, the fact that you can have multiple... it just makes the card very hard to use.

@stormtide-leviathan​ - Chained Firecat

When I saw this I assumed it was another fling card, but then you said it was for, of all things, Winds of Qal Sisma. Fate Reforged is possibly my favorite set, and I definitely remember that card, and always wished it put in more work than it did. At first I thought defender was just put on it to drop the cost, sort of like frost walker, and to make ferocious easier to obtain. But then I realized that, because wids is a fog, it is really only useful when blocking anyway! I also really appreciate that you put it at uncommon because of the ability of high-power defenders to stall the game. It shows a real care for the craft. While I think there are other cards that were a little cooler or a little better designed, this might be my personal favorite of the week.

@thing1of2c - Jodah’s Mirror

So, the name gave away who this is for, but the submission said this is a gift from a lore perspective, and is something Jodah used to help wash the sadness of immortality from his memories. Harsh. As for the card, at first I thought it looked really weird, and it still does, but I eventually realized how this works. Looking at the top is free, and always nice. The second ability should only really be used if your hand sucks or is empty, but that happens all the time, so that’s fine. At first I assumed it only let you cast the one card on top, but this actually gives you a temporary future sight. With that in mind, I think the card is pretty neat. It has very narrow usage, and requires a decent amount of mana to really take advantage of, but it’s a unique and possibly powerful effect. My two nitpicks are that I wish the hand came back at the next turns upkeep (since there will be a window where you’ll have your hand and the effect during the end step), and I don’t think this would be a mythic in this day and age. A couple years ago maybe, but we get this as static effects for four mana nowadays.

@whuh-oh​ - Tomb of the Primordial

So this one was just a text entry but I made a mockup, and I think I can hazard a guess at which Primordial this was made for: the sepulchral one! This is another one of those incredibly narrow cards, but I think it just nearly gets there. Milling 6 is a great way to get more fuel for reanimating, and making them lose three life (it should be “lose 3 life” btw) is a nice way to maybe eventually close out the game. The cheap and generic cost helps make this as easy to cast as possible to make up for its very narrow usage. I just think that this card isn’t quite enough of a payoff. It hink if it drew a card each time, or maybe had a tap ability, it would get just enough of a push to be worth the card slot. I think this needs to be the type of card that either wins the game in a turn or two, or makes up for all the turns of setup it took to get your primordial into play.

@wolkemesser​ - Hekara, the Encore

Funnily enough, in the lore, Hekara was at one point a literal gift to Rakdos. In this case, though, you said this card is a gift to One with Nothing, and it shows! Getting this into the graveyard is way more powerful than just playing her, though honestly just playing her is pretty good too. If I’m being honest, you could remove any line of text from this card and it would still be good, and you could remove a second and it would still be playable. Zero mana reanimation, even conditionally, is really, really good, which is why in most cases you either get a lousy bloodghast or a vanilla 3/3 prized amalgam. It’s pretty easy to get empty handed in a normal game of magic, ad even more so in a dredge-deck. I think you could have maybe focused this more into a gift for One with nothing to drop the power a bit, perhaps if the ability cost 5 but had “this costs 1 less to activate for each card you’ve discarded this turn.” Still strong, but not busted.

~

And that’s everyone! Goodnight everybody!

-Mod Mr. ShinyObject

[advernia]

fic: show me a boundary (that i should break)

— if you start believing that the skies above you are a cage, will other people start thinking the same way, too? - the mad hatter & the king of spades.

Six strokes: maintain a steady grip, increase pressure from the starting point then gradually lighten going down, and then -

Too long. Tips should appear sharper.

“… Are you planning to invent a device that allows you fly, Mad Hatter?”

Fingers still wrapped around charcoal, the young boy turns and angles his head to set his gaze once more on the vast blue above, up to the beaming sun that’s shadowed over by a pair of black wings and green eyes.

“You got rid of the cape, but those sleeves exist for a reason, King of Spades. What are your shoulders supposed to be, a makeshift hanger? It’s either you wear the jacket, or you don’t wear it at all.”

“Hmph. Would you wear a buttoned up leather jacket in this heat?”

A snort. “Unlike majority of you army lot, I have the common sense to forego wearing such clothing unless I was actively looking for a heat stroke, myself.”

Ray raises an eyebrow at Oliver’s thin smile, focusing on the edge of silver eyes that were every bit as sharp as their owner’s wit - they escape scrutiny right away just to look back at what they were so transfixed on in the first place, and Ray leads his own eyes into following where that gaze was so focused at.

He ends up staring at plump bodies wrapped around countless gray feathers.

“Is there a reason you’re drawing pigeons?”

Something akin to a long suffering sigh escapes Oliver’s lips, much more audible than the sound of charcoal scratching on parchment. 

“Ever heard of a break? Maybe you need one if you can’t even tell that I’m drawing just for the sake of it.”

“Hmmm. That’s not a bad idea.”

Loosely hanging sleeves brushing against blades of grass, Ray seats himself a spot a few paces away from where Oliver sat - now the flock of pigeons had two pairs of eyes set on them, different degrees of interest present in both stares.

But the birds simply carried on with their blissful ignorance, a few of them sparing a glance and the others busying themselves by poking their beaks onto a clump of their feathers.

Only a few chose to fly away, wings spread wide and soaring high.

“You ask a man if he knows what a break is, he takes it as an invitation to actually slack off,” there’s another sigh, then notably softer scratching on parchment. “You’re a lot more laidback than you look, King of Spades.”

“And you turn out to be an artist, who knew. I won’t tell anyone or bother you from drawing your little friends, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Bold of you to assume that I’d consider literal birdbrains as a form of company, much less as friends. Do I look socially inept to you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I suppose your humor makes you great at parties.”

“Heh - it’s as manageable as your brusque disposition, so I suppose that makes us even now, doesn’t it?”

Oliver smirks at Ray’s rather stiff grunt in response, delayed by a few seconds: primitive, yes, but put into translation it either meant resignation or embarrassment. Whatever the case, the lack of a substantial reply already marked the King of Spades’ loss, paving a way for the blessed silence that came with victory.

More pigeons have looked towards their general direction over the course of their conversation, beady black eyes open wide and seemingly unblinking. Perhaps as the birds cocked their heads and ruffled their feathers; they were talking about the two humans that sat by the grass on the hill, one a young man and the other obviously a small child, yet they spoke to each other as if they were equals.

Strange pair, the birdbrains probably coo amongst themselves.

Oliver couldn't really argue with that.

Victory is short-lived - it's a rough estimate of five short minutes and a few brushes of an eraser - when the King of Spades starts talking again.

"Hey, Mad Hatter."

Another pigeon takes off, flapping up, up, and away. Oliver takes note of the curves of its feathers, the shape of its wings in flight. Ray watches it soar until its completely out of sight, not leaving a single trace of itself in the open sky - a hand reaches out and green eyes squint themselves, but there's really nothing else to see but blue and he can't take hold of that in his palm.

Out of reach, as always.

"What do you want now?"

"... Would you create a flying device just to experience how it is to fly?"

Charcoal doesn't meet the parchment as intended - instead, Oliver shoots a glance at his unwanted company, a lone raven whose head was still engrossed with the sky. There's something lurking about the King's frame and forlorn eyes, perhaps as pensive as the question he suddenly brought about, but Oliver was never interested in poking his head into other people's business in the first place.

And he wasn't planning to start anytime soon.

"I'd create wings for me to get out and explore, not just to know how it is to fly," Oliver stares at the wings he had drawn, analyzing the detail he put onto the feathers. "What, have you grown tired of looking at the very sky you govern? Are you seeking your freedom?"

Ray doesn't answer that, but a wry smile does cross his lips.

"... In the Black Army's King's quarters, there's a globe, and it's been there for years."

"And? What about it?"

"It's said to be a globe - " Ray pauses, watching another pigeon go and to only continue once the bird had disappeared into the sky and out of his sight, " - of the Land of Reason."

Oliver feels his breath abruptly catch in his throat, sharp and biting.

The sound of flapping wings echo loudly in between them, cutting through the sudden silence - a pretty pair have decided to depart and together the birds cross the sky in perfect tandem, only to go their separate ways halfway through. One goes left, one goes right.

Their companions left behind on the ground simply stare, cooing.

The two pigeons don't come back, and they don't look back either.

1: scavenged this off my drafts... it’s random asf and honestly a shame to scrap + i've been told by friends that this gives off the painful vibe of a ray or a theoretical oliver route gone wrong (everything's resolved and the only tragedy is that alice goes back home) + hints of desperation so maybe it's not much of a hot mess like i thought?????? 2: tbh tho i’m sure wasn’t thinking of anything deep in particular and i think the fic being 70% pigeon is proof of that lol ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

[drabblesanddreams]

Black and White- Fyodor Dostoevsky

This turned out so much longer than i planned it to be sorry folks!! But this imagine i tried making it slightly diff than the imagines, i honestly wouldnt say its romantic tbh it also doesnt have as much fyodor as i planned for there to be sadly :(( but let me know what yall think!! also im on vacation again this time for a month so im so sorry yall if i cant post as much!!

word count: 2.5k

summary: The black and white of your world holds a whole new meaning when you meet him.

TW: Hints towards depression a lot, really depressing dialogue 

The day before he came into your life everything was black and white. A perfect world encased in various shades of grey, shrouded in a two-tone hue of barrenness and desolation.

The light that poured into your world started off as a warmth seemingly brought forth by an angel. But slowly, before you could even realize it at the time, the warmth grew more and more intense the longer you spent time with him. It grew and grew until that once comforting warmth turned into a scalding sensation, burning your touch along with the pretty pictures of your life. It burned the new-found colours until you saw yourself left in the end with no picture at all, surrounded by the darkness that once upon a time was all you knew.

In the end, you horrifically realized that he was no angel at all.

He liked to claim that he was a god, but you didn’t believe his words even from your first meeting up until the last. You knew better than that, in the end, he was more so like Lucifer.

Once an angel indeed, you suppose so judging from not only his carefully crafted facade of a morally virtuous persona but also his physical features.

You remembered the first day he came into the music shop that you worked at, his angelic features drew and ensnared your attention almost immediately.

That particular day it was snowing lightly, the white flakes gently building on top of one another until the city was a buried underneath one of the worlds most beautiful creations.

Beautiful, untainted white snow with unique patterns pressed onto each flake. However, when mingled with the rest of its own kind, it was as ordinary as it could ever be to the naked eye. An average speck who will never stand apart from the rest of its kind and will instead be overshadowed by those who come after it.

Much like you.

Despite the gloomy thoughts, it didn’t make the snow any less cold.

“Shit,” you scowled as a gust of cold air blew into the store, taking with it a flurry of snowflakes, “Hurry up and shut the door behind you, Ann.”

The person in question was your friend and the sole reason you had this shitty job working as a cashier at the music store. Her family had hired you purely out pity when your parents died. You were at the tender age of 12 at the time.

You liked that word. Died. It was straight to the point, no bullshit and no cushioning of the hard blow it delivered. You remembered at the funeral how the many unrecognizable people who had attended came up to you, choking out apologies for your late parents.

Or how they passed away.

Or how they were deceased.

Died. Dead. Death. It didn’t matter, you liked the foreign comfort the words gave you. It meant that the world you spent so much time analyzing was the same as you made it out so sure to be. It meant that one day you too were going to “pass away” and your existence would then blend into the hundreds of thousands of those who lived and died before you.

And then, you’d be forgotten.

You never figured out why that morbid thought was so relieving to you.

Ann rolls her eyes, shaking you out of your stupor and back into the real world. She closes the door behind her but not before ruffling her hair free of snowflakes, this action allowing another draught of frigid air to enter.

“Okay miss grumpy, chillax ‘kay?” she teases and it's your turn to roll your (e/c) eyes as she slips off her coat, tossing it behind the cash register.

“Besides,” she continues as she takes a seat next to you behind the register, “Your shift is up in literally ten minutes so you can go home and sleep.”

You look at her from the corner of your eye as you rest your cheek in the palm of your hand. She has taken to sorting the receipts silently for a moment before she asks, “How long did you sleep for last night?”

You blink a couple of times before realizing the exhaustion must be painted so easily on your face. The purple eyebags decorating your face must not be a pretty sight. You can feel the weight of your own existence pulling you downwards, like all you want is to crawl under the covers and fall asleep to a mixture of winter and Chopin. Today has hit you particularly hard, but you don’t let her know that.

Inhaling through your nose, you sit up right before casually replying, “Seven hours give or take”

She beams at the easy lie as she nods approvingly, “Making progress, good.”

All you do is shrug, its been a slow day all you want to do it go back home. There have barely been any customers and the shop is completely empty at the moment save for the both of you.

‘Anyways,” her tone changes to one full of pep, “Can I tell you about my tinder date? I’m gonna tell you about my tinder date” she doesn’t wait for your approval.

You snort, standing up as you make your way over to the hanging instruments opposite on the wall. You intend to straighten them up again for the millionth time, the slightest crook getting on your nerves.

She takes this action as a sign to go on, “So, I swiped on this guy na-“

She is cut off by the soft chime of bells filling the small store indicating a customer has entered.

Before even moving, you feel the cold air gently sweep across your exposed skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

You turn your head to the door, your hand pausing on its readjustment of the violin hanging on the wall.

A tall slim young man, maybe somewhere aged in the mid 20s has entered, his seemingly delicate pale hand pressed against the window of the door. His shoulder length black hair falls softly onto his shoulders, ensnared underneath a ushanka as white as the snow that has entered the store. The white snowflakes stand out against his long black coat.

He searches around the shop for a moment before his eyes catch onto yours. That’s when the air leaves your lungs and you feel a shiver run down your spine.

Never in your life had you ever met a man so…so…beautiful.

Beautiful was an understatement, he was simply breathtaking.

The most striking thing about his visage, however, were his eyes.

Purple eyes. Never in your life had you ever met anyone with that particular eye colour. But it was more than that, it was the sharp look in them as well.

You felt yourself tense up at your eye contact, something about this man was unsettling you quite so. You can barely breathe, your body shrinking back into itself as all you wanted to do was run and run. You wish you had an ability that enabled you to do so.

His eyes flickered downwards before they moved upwards to catch your eyes once more and it was then that you felt so exposed. Like an insect underneath a microscope, completely visible and naked.

Compared with his striking features, you no longer felt human standing next to this man.

Suddenly, someone clears their throat, effectively breaking the silent game of observation occurring between you and this stranger.

You turn your head to the source, Ann, who raises an eyebrow at your impolite and reclusive behavior. Even more reclusive than usual.

She turns her head to the customer, interest taking over her features as she too realizes just how otherworldly this man is.

She wears a charming smile, “Hello sir, can I help you with anything today?”

“Good day,” the stranger says, the words rolling off his tongue in a seductive Russian drawl and you feel yourself heat up. You turn away, busying yourself with straightening the instruments once more.

Ann’s got this; you’ll just ignore him.

“I was wondering, do you perchance sell cello’s here?” he asks smoothly. Your hands freeze on the cello you were adjusting and briefly wonder for a moment why he even asked when you know he clearly saw it behind you with that little stare off just a few moments ago.

Ann confirms that, yes, we do sell cello’s here.

And when she asks what particular one, he is looking for, she mistakenly points towards a Franz Sandner instead of an August Kohr.

You take the liberty of correcting her.

“Its actually this one,” you quietly point out her mistake and effectively drawing the stranger’s attention back towards you. Beside him, Ann glowers knowing that you have somehow ruined her plan of seducing the customer with talk of a cello.

You wish you didn’t because the fear that washes over you feels stronger than before.

“Okay well,” Ann glowers at you, “I’m pretty your shift is up, (Y/N).”

You falter at her statement before swallowing and nodding. You weren’t going to fight over something that wasn’t worth fighting over.

You’re glad at your friend’s dismissal, as it means that you can get away from that man’s burning gaze asap. You make quick work of gathering your belongings and making your way to the exit, to freedom.

All the while, your heart beats quick for an entirely different reason

Because for the first time you feel fear on behalf of your friend’s safety, as the distance between you and the pair grow larger and larger.

-

You’re were right to feel worried over the protection of your friend, because two weeks later under the same frigid weather, you are staring down her coffin.

It’s eerily similar to how her funeral likens to the one of your parents. If you shut your eyes really tightly and pretend for a moment that you are fourteen, it is exactly the same funeral.

Life goes on.

Except the biggest difference between this time is that this was no accident.

You’re good at observations, spending more of your life alone and isolated left you with the only thing to pass the time; watching people.

Putting two and two, you know now that this a murder caused by no one other than that man in the shop. You don’t know how but you know for sure that he possesses some sort of ability. After all, you don’t what sort of weapon could make that kind of wound in her head.

Currently, you’re the only one left in the graveyard. The sun is setting soon but you pay no mind to that fact and instead tilt your head upwards, watching the snow lightly fall around you and, on the coffin, -Ann’s coffin.

You hear the familiar sound of shoes treading on snow, but you don’t bother looking to see and instead focuses on the number of snowflakes covert he lid of the coffin.

“What a miserable affair,” a voice sighs, the smooth Russian accent unforgettable to you, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

You turn your head to see the devil himself, you should be vengeful and raging right now. A small part of you wants to jump at him, tearing his pretty face apart with your nails and to just watch the blood draw and spill. But as quick as that thought appeared, it disappears for at the moment you just don’t care.

You have nothing left. The logical part of you know that’s it will not bring her back; the only family you had left. You have nothing anymore.

But this time your anxiety is non-existent, you don’t feel afraid. In fact, you don’t feel much of anything at the moment.

From your apathy or the cold, you’re not quite so sure which. You close your mouth before opening it once more.

“It wasn’t sad,” you simply say, relishing in the slightest sign of surprise that registers on his handsome face. You look deeply into those purple hues of his, admiring for a moment before you continue, “It was boring.”

You turn your head back to the coffin and blankly blink at the slight buildup that you have missed.

“Boring,” he repeats, “Such is the debility of human existence, such things take the liberty of latching onto my heart from time to time”

You let his words sink for a moment.

“No, it doesn’t,” you softly deny, “Not to you” “May I perhaps ask why?”

You turn your head to him, the first sign of emotion crossing your visage as you stare hard, “Because you’re not human.”

You say this statement with so much confidence and let it ring in the air. The man takes this fact in before smirking, “Then what could I possibly be?”

You don’t hesitate to answer, “A devil.” If he is offended, he doesn’t show it and instead chuckles lightly, purple eyes dancing with joy. At what, you have no clue, but you feel yourself recoil at this.

“No little bird,” he smirks drops into a soft smile, “I think you will find that I am more of a god than anything.”

Your eyebrows furrow for a moment as you study him. He breaks your eye contact to look at the coffin in front of both of you. He then answers your unasked question.

“The sinful nature of humans demands to be cleansed.” He utters into the empty space, and you raise both brows in interest at this statement. You follow his gaze to the coffin before tracing it back to his eyes.

Sinful. How could a young girl commit a sin so grave she had to answer with it for her life? Who was this man to judge her for that?

“And what of my human nature?” you quietly ask. He turns back to you, “Oh but little bird,” corners of his mouth tilt upwards and his eyes flash as if he knows something you don’t. Your heart rate raises as you wait for him to finish his sentence.

“You’re not much of a human anymore, are you?”

Your mouth falls agape slightly and your blood turns into ice easily.

“In fact,” he continues, suddenly taking a step forward, reaching forward to caress your cheek, “You’re not much of anything anymore” he whispers.

His thumb presses slightly against your bottom lip and your eyes flicker downwards before meeting his again. Your mouth dries.

“Correct?” he asks venomlike.

You’re ensnared into his trap as you nod, but you barely register the movement.

“Good.” He steps back and his smile is back as he holds his hand out.

“Seeing as you no longer have a place in this world little bird,” he says calmly, “Come with me and let me seat you among the stars.”

You don’t hesitate in taking his hand, somewhere in the back of your head a part of you is screaming, saying you are walking into the exact same trap that your friend has walked into.

But you don’t care, because you are sick of seeing the white of the snow and the black of your soul.

If that means walking into the lion’s den of the man named Fyodor Dostoevsky, then so be it.

At least it’ll mean a small part of you will have meaning again.

[comicteaparty]

February 15th-February 21st, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from February 15th, 2020 to February 21st, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

If a company wanted to publish your comic or adapt it for animation or games, how willing would you be to change the story if requested to do so?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

That's such a tough question just because it's such a goal for so many creators, and yet a potential threat to their creativity in a sense. As always, it will depend on what exactly would be changed in order for such a project to be given approval. If it has to do with censoring LGBTQ+ content, changing race for 'marketability' purposes and the like, or erasing a specific topic integral to the plot with relation to politics- then it's a no go. There are plenty enough watered down media that doesn't stretch itself with diversity those companies can have and the subtext they pepper in to stay relevant, def something i find irksome with todays media (its 2020 guys !!) But if it's maybe cutting a chapter that acts like filler, or adding a character ( so long as it is plot relevant) i could take that into consideration! I actually take some time to imagine what Ghost Junk would be in a diff form of media and usually in those scenarios, things change to fit the way its being presented! A video game will differ more than an anime adaptation for sure, so long as the original intent and impact is kept, i would definitely consider some change!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

If I ever had the opportunity to pass my work off to a whole other team for an adaptation, I think I would take great joy in leaving them completely to it - barring a few obvious issues like race changes, gender/sexuality changes, and... changing the entire story to the point where it's unrecognizable. I love seeing reinterpretations of my work, and I understand that every adaptation would need changes of some form. My words and art aren't gospel - I'm open to any change if it improves the whole product. Whatever it takes to translate the material in the best way, which keeps the original message intact, is all good by me.

Changes in the actual comic would be harder to make - and I'd be far less comfortable with them, to be honest - but I wouldn't fight them if they obviously made the story/characters stronger. I've already added in ideas and reorganized plot threads based on reader feedback - luckily the story still has some places where it can bend. So long as a publisher took my basic story seriously, and aimed to remold it rather than remake it - I'd be down for a discussion. Hopefully a reputable publisher would know how best to sell my work, and would aim to make it as good as possible while maintaining integrity - I would try to trust them

chalcara

Comic stays mine, won‘t be changed beyound perhaps some professional line edits and polish. There’s a reason I didn’t shop it around as a graphic novel. I’d actually like that eitherway, would love to get myself a professional editor when I have the money. Adaptions can go nuts, provided the main characters stay true to their comic versions and the woman-loves-woman storyline stays in.

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

For the story to be told in another medium I would be pretty game for it to change the story a bit. Already now we are changing the story from how we made as a campaign. Makeing it more streamlined and more precise. I wanted originally that our comic could be a TV show. I come from a background of a character animator so that would make sense for me. So seeing it animated would be awesome! There would be some designs that needed to change to fit animation better.

Like Andree has this texture in his skin that needed to go away. But seeing it animated would be awesooome

Deo101 [Millennium]

I think if my Characters stay in Character, then I'm fine with changing pretty much any of the plot or world things. But the Character dynamics and who they are as people is what matters most to me, and I'm not sure I would be willing to sacrifice that. With some of my stories I'd be willing to completely let go of the reins, and with others I definitely want a tighter grip, too.

sagaholmgaard

Agree with the thing about character dynamics. My stories always stem from the characters' relationships and how they evolve, so I'd like for the essence of that to stay. Otherwise I'm pretty loose about the plot itself. Because I have an education in game development, I would totally be down for my comic being adapted into a story driven game of some sort. I'd be okay with changing the story to favor the game mechanics, like putting certain magic abilities in the focus and turning certain scenes into gameplay (like when they're sneaking around or fighting). As long as my handful of core emotional moments come across, I'm pretty happy to change things.

Tuyetnhi

I agree with the character dynamics too. I don't feel comfortable if they change the character backgrounds along with it as well for er what Krispy said for "Markability". That stuff won't fly with me. Comic stuff stay the same but for adaptations, I want to make sure it has similar story beats even if there's a change on few details. Tbh I could totally see er....a visual novel game happening in my comic since that's what my original intention was going for. still at the end I really don't intend my comic to transend other mediums since i'm planning to self publish the story someday lol.

kayotics

I’d be pretty willing to change stuff, actually. I’d want to be pretty involved in whatever adaptation was being made in this hypothetical, but I know that more people can make for stronger work. On the other hand, too many cooks can make for some pretty watered down soup, which is why I’d want to have a large role in things so some of the core stuff doesn’t get changed. But as it is, I’m not married to any ideas that exist in my comic, and am pretty welcome to changes.

DanitheCarutor

If the changes were to benefit the story than I wouldn't mind, if they were going to change everything to make it appealing to the masses than no. Definitely not if they want to mess with the characters since how they are play a major role in the comic. I've got a really specific story I'm trying to tell, so I'm very stingy on changes. If anything I'd be more open to a company making a spin-off or something not totally related to the main story, as long as it's not a complete bastardization. Other than free advertising and the brand name, I don't really see how getting published would benefit me anyway? I'm already in the process of rescanning and re-editing the first four chapters of my comic for self-publishing, if I really wanted to adapt it into an animation I would just do it myself. Along with teaching myself whatever else I needed to get as little help as possible. Sure, I have no experience but it's not like I can't learn, there are classes and free tutorials all over the internet. I've always wanted to get into animating. I can't imagine my comic being adapted into game, what would it even be? An anti-dating sim? An interactive novel? An Apollo drinking simulator?

Capitania do Azar

I WANT A BEAT THEM UP JUST RUN IN ONE DIRECTION KICK EVERYONE

eli [a winged tale]

The dream is a studio ghibli adaption but that won’t be happening I would want to vet the studio/company proposing the adaption and ensure that we are a good fit. I echo what many of you have said about the integrity of the characters and heart of the story. There are a lot of secrets that will come to unravel as the comic progresses and I hope the publisher will be accepting of them. I will be happy to have a conversation on why these structural changes are there and why I think it’s important to allow them to reach a wider audience. That said, I am also eager to see how they would themselves interpret the story and I will give creative freedom to that. Again, it’s a dream and while I would love to direct my own film, I simply don’t have the resources to do it (at this time). https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODQ3MzIzMTM3NjY4MDA0?igshid=15bnlhamdu3tn&story_media_id=2149085305360952847

Capitania we should just have a super smash bros of all our comic characters

renieplayerone

I think like a lot of people here have already said, Im not changing anyones race, gender identity or sexuality. Otherwise? I'd be really curious what someone else's perspectives could bring to my work if it ever got adapted. I have ideas for comics that are written like they could be movies too, but idk. Its fun trying to write thinking of other mediums

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Im pretty much in the same camp of make changes as it makes sense, but stay true to the core. In the case of a live action thing being made of my story, I would actually be super ok with a POC actor filling the role of any of the white presenting characters. Or actors with different body shapes that what I'd originally draw. More diversity in film is always good

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

outside of censorship, I would be fine with most story changes? with that said, good luck lol. there are very few scenes I think can be cut out of the story without supremely messing up later scenes. every magic ability on-screen is important in some way, a bunch of random background characters end up coming back & getting way more focus later on, etc. add filler, sure, but there's really not much you can cut out without messing up the entire story down the line.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I'm pretty open to the idea of changing some details to fit a different medium better. The big thing that I wouldn't want changed in Whispers of the Past (https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/list?title_no=191366) is the characters' races. Since the story explores the idea of culture-shock and cultural identity, and the races/cultures are integral to world-building, it would be stupid the change the characters' appearances/races willy nilly. And besides, we don't want what happened to Eragon or Percy Jackson when they became movies. Congratulations on completely killing a franchise But yeah, as long as races and major plot details aren't changed too much, I'm really open to adjusting things. As an example, cutting out smexy times or making the language a bit friendlier to a wide audience, fine by me. But changing Kelan to a blacksmith instead of a farmer... Why???? I would need a good reason to do something like that. (I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU, ERAGON! WHY WAS RORAN JOINING THE ARMY RANDOMLY, INSTEAD OF BECOMING A MILLER? ISN'T THE ARMY WORKING FOR THE EVIL KING WHO TAXES THEM HEAVILY? EXPLAIN THIS TO ME.) I'm actually pretty scared about the whole race thing. I mean, Hollywood also ruined The ]

if the adaptation is Bad I can always just, like, disown it lmao

Deo101 [Millennium]

clearly im the one with the ideas here B) soo

LMAO yea

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

If it was being published as a comic, I don’t think I’d be willing to change too much- though that would depend a great deal in what kind of change. Cleaning up some wonky dialogue? That would probably be fine. Censorship? Absolutely not. Changing my LGBTQ+ characters’ gender / orientation to appeal to the mainstream? Really absolutely not. If being adapted to a different medium, I’d be much more willing to change things around, but would still insist my minority characters not change their identities. But I understand that as far as plot goes, different mediums call for different approaches. I’m planning on writing my comics as novels someday, and will be taking a much different approach to them. The plots will definitely be altered a great deal to better fit being written in prose.(edited)

AntiBunny

It honestly depends on what the changes were. There's a fair amount I'd change myself. A few core things I'd certainly not change though.

In AntiBunny http://AntiBunny.net/ for instance I could see some people missing the point of Penelope's character being a pacifist and wanting to make her some kind of badass, as if the only kind of strength there is comes from violence. I wouldn't remove the question of Pooky's gender, as in order to ask the question of "what is identity" I stripped Pooky of everything including even a mental construct of gender.

Some things I would change though. Likely I would cut the first two chapters and start at the 3rd when the plot actually gets moving. So demands for a faster flowing plot I could certainly meet. I'd probably cut few extra characters from the cast to streamline things a bit.

So yes for the purposes of streamlining things I'd make changes. I wouldn't make changes that would go against the entire point of the cahracters though.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Oh, a conversation in #general reminded me of something else regarding adapting Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R - If the comic is to be adapted with no changes at all, it'd be a legal nightmare. Off the top of my head, these are properties that have been directly stated in dialogue - - Yahtzee - Risk - Mario Kart - Settlers of Catan - Pokemon - Disney's Frozen I don't think you could technically get in trouble for any of those? It's not like anything copyrighted was shown on screen, it's just characters talking about things they've seen before. But a publisher would probably want to play it safe and avoid that. Also... the NFL might get mad at the publisher if the gang names in Cunoze City aren't changed? Like I don't ever say the team location, so technically full team names are never used... but again, it's probably best to play it safe.

Desnik

I'd be pretty flexible with changes, but if I have to take out demons to appeal to the Evangelical Christian states of America then obvs that's not going to work out

(And you wouldn't think that'd be a Thing to this day, but apparently it's been sort of this unspoken rule in book publishing since the Satanic Panic of the 80's in the US)

Some changes I'd be okay with: Adjusting ages of characters to appeal to target demographics, removing scenes that are difficult to draw, tweaking characters to be either more or less horrible depending on their role in the story

FeatheryJustice

I will be flexible to a point and the limit of this point is pretty align to my morals. If the editor tells me to include some weird things like "You must have a scene where this guy licks the curtains" I would also be like "What is the point of this scene."(edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

“Your protagonist must fight a giant spider in the third act.”

Deo101 [Millennium]

I mean, if you bring up giant spiders in the first act... well...

Q (Wayfinders: Off Course)

Turn it around: if your protag must fight spiders in the third act, well, time to bring in the spiders in the first..?

AntiBunny

The more I think of it, the more I realize that the most likely thing I'd be asked to change in AntiBunny is to either tone down the violence and grimdark for kids, or make it even raunchier to appeal to the "mature" (not mature at all) animation market (Seth McFarlane's audience).

My own comic keeps it rather PG-13, but there's not much market for animation in that field, at least in America. Seems like it's all either kid friendly stories where no one dies or if they do it's off screen (people get shot and stabbed in my comic) or there's the opposite with dropping F bombs every other line and filling it with sex jokes.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Hey, I mean, never say never. Off the top of my head, Futurama and the Samurai Jack revival were both western cartoons that I'd put solidly in PG-13 territory. Both shows were able to go adult when they needed to be, but they didn't take that as a blank check to go into "rated R" territory for the shock of it.

[twitchesandstitches]

Tiashar’s powers are REALLY open ended and tbh that’s kind of deliberate, since she’s intended to be a fun character for random powergaming scenarios, but I keep getting an itch to give her... more obvious limits.

it has to do with the idea that limitations in powers produce better narrative possibilities: an example is the Avatarverse and Fullmetal Alchemist; the former’s elemental powers are often very restricted, while with the later, alchemy is limited by matter/mass as well as personal expertise. These limits inspire the characters to be creative and work around them, but if they were far more powerful to have no limits, that would make things LESS creative.

So I’m thinking about ways to give Tiashar more specific limitations for the sake of making it more fun, or perhaps relegating her most powerful limitless incarnations for specific high-end situations that rarely come up. Some possible ideas to use in general:

1. Infinite Power, But Limited Ability To Apply It. She is a living goddess and cosmic entity able to devour whole universes and create them with a snap of her fingers, but she can’t just use her full power whenever she wants; she has a mechanism that limits her to only a certain level of power that is based, not on any reasonable metric, but on what she feels is proportionate to the situation. It’s an automatic thing; she hates putting effort into anything and is very lazy, so she CAN ONLY draw upon enough power to deal with whatever she has on her plate. As things get more serious, her power level rises, but this means she scales up to bigger situations; she can be a street-level heroine or a universal goddess, depending on situation she is in. But the impotrant bit: she CANNOT go over a limit on her own!

2. She Has a Theme And She’s Sticking To It: Mutation. Rather than her powers just being ‘do whatever sounds cool’, the powers that are innate to her being (The eldritch magic stuff) specifically works by introducing change to herself, and the world around her. This fits with her mutation theme and her introducing chaotic elements by being there. All her powers, whatever they are, operate based on changing things or introducing new things; she transforms things, or annihilates them utterly, but her powers work by creating changes; even it is more advantageous not to, she CANNOT help but constantly mutate herself and things around her. This can work against her, too; she might randomly transform into a form that is weak to a foe’s abilities.

The advantage of this one is that, while it is STILL very flexible, all her powers are specifically defined as changing things, either in herself or by mutating things around her, physically or metaphysically. This means that she simply cannot use her powers in ways that do not do that in some way, and she can definitely change in ways that cause her problems.

3. A Goddess Needs Belief. A simpler notion, and one tying into her emphais on forming cults (or if you want a less loaded term, adoring bands of worshipful lovers). Their belief feeds her, their love empowers her, and perhaps stabilizes her so she can connect with her true nature and channel her powers properly. Otherwise she’s a chaotic mess with such a poor grasp on her sense of self her powers are very unreliable.

4. Limitless Hunger Makes Problems. Tiashar is hungry forever, constantly needing to slake her ravenous appetites with endless indulgence. It’s hunger for affection, for actual food, for more physical pleasures; her life is constant self-satisfaction, but her power is partly derived from how satiated she is. The hungrier she is, the harder it is for her to use her powers. This means that the more she pushes herself, the hungrier she gets, and this can easily be a VERY bad thing with her lack of any impulse restraint; sure, she can defeat the hell god, but then, she’s so ravenously hungry she will be unable to stop herself from devouring the world she just saved.

5. Random Constraints. A simpler notion tied to her mutation themes. Tiashar’s powers develop different limits more or less at random that she instinctively understands and has to work with, this is usually keyed to her fighting at higher levels! She can out-punch even big time heavy hitters, but as her power is summoned into her, it defines itself with additional limits to give it expression. She can be all-powerful, but her mutation-based powers WILL create different twists she has to work with. These are usually linked to physical alterations that are very obvious.

[lowrifaberart]

ART BACKLOG (Feb 2019)

So I finally got around to finishing this and decided to leave the colouring flat, mainly for reference purposes. I find I don’t have an actual colour reference for Dante so if I leave these flat I now do.

I’ll go through the outfits I guess? Just for some context, but I don’t want to get too spoilery because I of course intend to do more with Seer’s Curse and if people know the outcome that’s more difficult to do.

OG DANTE

(Or what Dante wears initially in the story and for a good proportion of it.)

I don’t know why I put him in green honestly, I suppose it’s quite a natural colour for the most part and green often goes well with red hair imo. The red sash thing was actually a more recent addition and, like his shawl, is made of wool. Just to keep the chill away. Because Talia is a warmer climate though he typically only wears his shawl in the winter when said temperature drops. I mean primarily this is intended to be more practical than fashionable, and it’s been described as quite Celtic in nature. I guess that’s my own roots coming out in him.

He also has the usual stuff about his belt. His coin purse (which is often used to sate his gambling habit...I mean he always cheats so...) and a kind of. Travelling bag thing? He also has golden beads braided into his hair, something that was started by one of his students once and he just kept doing it. Because hey, Dante does like to look pretty. I like to think he looks more approachable here than he does later on down the line, Dante’s quite natural and although he HAS a temper, for the most part he’s quite childish at this point and wanting to live his life to the fullest. He’s a man in his prime, and he’s enjoying it lmao.

EPILOGUE DANTE

Epilogue Dante still has Bright, but he’s far more hardened. This is not a certain design or even part of the story at this point in time? But it’s definitely a consideration so I drew up the concept anyway. I haven’t decided concretely how the story will end yet, but it still helps to explore it. Anyways.

He’s wearing his house colours: black, red and silver, and I also like to think the black is quite dark and representative of how he feels about things. His hair is kept short, but that’s more down to his current profession and his want to be more conforming and strict. Also the Seer sigil has gone from his sash. By this point he’s lost a bit of faith in his fellow Seers, of course he is one and acknowledges it and the Magisterium, but personally he likes to keep his distance and actually becomes a lot more reserved as a person, also evident I feel in his current hairstyle and wear.

He still has a similar armour to before, primarily because he still wants to remain versatile in terms of movement paired with protecting himself. Also Bright and his pendant never leave him, as they are important to him and Bright is entirely reliable.

Also in his first outfit in this particular setI think it shows how he’s a lot more conforming to Talian nobility and fashion, but again that’s more down to his uniform for his now profession than anything else. I feel like he doesn’t look so approachable now, and this is because in reality he isn’t. This Dante doesn’t hug, he broods and has a lot of nightmares.

BONUS DANTES

So the first outfit is what Dante might wear were he Sternisian. Honestly he looks attractive as hell tbh. I decided to use his short hair, primarily because it does make him look more imposing and there is nothing not imposing about Sternisian Seers honestly. They’re powerful and hate the Sightless? What isn’t there to love? I feel he would wear a robe, because Sternis is quite cold, and mostly the students and all tend to wear robes and such hiding themselves.

He’s got serpents primarily because that’s also a staple for much Sternisian fashion, and black, again they like to blend with their volcanic climate, which of course is black in itself. Nobility tend to lip their often quite high fashion with silver with varying patterns as well, and because Dante is quite a powerful Seer, he would be regarded highly were he Sternisian.

On the right is Dante wearing the dreaded Chiton. He has to wear this when the war campaign attempts to gather allies in Haelos and, in order to impress them they attempt to blend in with their fashion. For Dante that means not wearing very much and being even more uncomfortable doing so. Mostly this is Marsalis’ idea, because he actually intended for him to infatuate the so named “whore of Haelos” in order to get information about the Emperor out of them - hilarious because at that point everyone thought it was a woman. Turns out to be Andrea.

Though of course Dante embarrassingly flirts with a female courtesan, with no idea how to flirt with women (and basically reciting what he’s heard men drunkenly saying in taverns.) So that’s all fun and I like to think about it a lot because the poor man spends a majority of his time there embarrassed as hell. Everyone finds this hilarious, at Dante’s expense no less.

So I’m all drawn out now, and idk what I’ll draw next.

[darpok]

Blog Post: On Fan Fiction and Other Storytelling Traditions

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, and even our family finally had DSL internet, I discovered the joys of fan fiction. In case you haven’t been living under the same rock as I have, allow me to explain. “Fan fiction” refers to stories written by enthusiasts of a particular book, TV show, or other creative work. While most “fics” – as my friends and I would call them – take place within the particular universe of the original story, others take known characters and put them in an entirely new setting. (That’s how 50 Shades of Grey was born.) There’s also fan fiction that doesn’t deliberately draw on any work but revolves around real, famous people in imagined situations. (See Graham Norton and Daniel Radcliffe discuss this type on the former’s show.)

The stories that interested me ranged from shorter “one shots” to multi-chapter epics, but most were placed in the Harry Potter universe and nearly all were tales of romance – if you could call it that.

The pairings I read about (and often ‘shipped’ – a verb that comes from the ‘ship’ in ‘relationship’ and means “hoped would bang”) – whether true to canon (i.e. the original books), such as Lily and James Potter, or wildly inventive, such as Hermione and a Tom Riddle to whom she has traveled back in time – usually engaged in the kind of love/hate banter that sends real couples to therapy. The pair would glare at and insult each other (often employing strangely American turns of phrase for a pair of ostensible Brits), their apparent mutual disgust hiding a deeper attraction. For my friends and I, it was riveting stuff.

While I was mainly a Lily/James shipper myself, you can’t talk about Harry Potter fan fiction and not mention Dramione. The fan-invented romance between Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger was a tale of forbidden passion, a defiance of Hogwarts housing norms and the mandates of Potter canon itself. Draco did need to be less of a whiny loser to be a deserving match for Hermione, but this could be arranged without too much trouble. In the fan fiction world, Draco was dark and brooding, and he didn’t bring his dad up in conversation quite as often as in the books. Hermione was clever and empathetic, and although she was rarely depicted with less than Yule Ball-level beauty, her looks were not her main characteristic.

Sometimes fan fiction Draco and Hermione fell for each other while at Hogwarts. In other fics, they met again under changed circumstances years after the fall of Voldemort. Then there were the AU fics in which a brilliant young paralegal named Hermione Granger begins work at the firm where successful lawyer Draco Malfoy practices. You get the idea.

Photoshop creations starring Tom Felton and Emma Watson (no credit belongs to me). The purple one in particular has stayed in my memory for years, and brings on a familiar feeling of excitement at all the great content to peruse in the world. It was the banner for a website that allowed fans to nominate and vote for their favorite Dramione fics.

A particularly sexy iteration of the Draco/Hermione story was called Water by kissherdraco. In it, Draco and Hermione are Head Boy and Girl at Hogwarts. Of course, this means that they must live sequestered in their own dormitory, with its own entrance, common room and adjoining bathroom that ensure they see each other in a state of partial undress when the story demands it.

Water was held by many to be the pinnacle of the genre. It had lust and angst in equal measure, executed with a liberal dose of swear words and aggression. Moreover, Water took the common flaws of the Dramione world’s characters and actually explored them, allowing character to drive plot. In the story, Draco is brooding and cruel as ever, but these traits are linked to vicious abuse at the hands of Lucius. This backstory is not seen as an excuse for Draco’s behavior and he is forced to grow and change as the story progresses (although not quite enough, tbh).

I never finished the story, perhaps because my young brain was alarmed by all the hate-sex, but I revisited it with curiosity for this piece. Here is a relatively benign excerpt from the text, although please skip if you’d rather avoid themes of physical dominance:

“You’re crying,” growled Draco, leaning in and flicking his tongue onto her cheek. He tasted salt.

She struggled then, and he brought his hands to her shoulders to hold her still. “Don’t, Granger,” he warned. “I fucking need this. I can’t fucking…” He trailed off.

He never would have noticed before. Not like he did now, at least. Her lips were wet. They were red and moist and magnificently ripened for him. So full of blood. Hot, heated, sullied blood. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

Other fics situated romance within a larger plot about the politics of the wizarding world. Prelude to Destiny by AnotherDreamer took place in the Marauder era (i.e. the time of Harry’s parents) and focused on the coming-of-age of Lily Evans and her role in the battle against evil. It begins, “Two cultures and a thousand miles from you, there is a castle on a hill…”

Another fave began life under the title Ancient and Most Noble and is now called Druella Black’s Guide to Womanhood. It is about the diverging lives of the three Black sisters — Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa — in the early years of Voldemort’s power. The sisters confront the crumbling of the their easy closeness as they make different choices in a changing world.

”It’ll be a laugh, you’ll see,” Bellatrix whispered into her ear, her breath sweet and thick from wine. They were curled in the cool grass, tangled in the layers upon layers of lace and satin that were their dress robes; it had taken them an hour to get them on right and just ten minutes to unsettle them. Andromeda’s head was spinning: from the liquor, from the heat, from far too much dancing. “It’ll all be just like this,” Bella was murmuring, her lips brushing against her ear. Stars whirled by overhead, maybe close enough to touch. Close enough to try.

“Always just like this.”

—

Andromeda swore as she stepped off the train. From inside the nicely cool travel car, summer had looked so charming, green and bright and gloriously school-free…

I was most interested in these fics, the ones that revolved around the generations before Harry’s. There was something compelling about the knowledge of forthcoming tragedy for many of the characters…Plucked away from the happy ending of the books, these fics became an exploration of why life is meaningful even in its flawed and finite scope.

I look back on my fan fiction experiences as belonging to a beautiful time when the internet was less like Janet from The Good Place* (if Janet were selling everything she knew about us to profit-hungry corporations and belligerent, militarized governments), and more like a library you went to when you felt like checking out a book. Nobody knew what I ate and where I went every minute of the day, because I didn’t put that stuff online, nor did I (to my knowledge) carry a tracking device with me when I went downstairs to play with my friends. At 5 pm, our moms would have to call each friend’s landline to reach us and remind us to stop home for our daily glass of milk or what-have-you.

*Janet is a humanoid presence in the afterlife who holds all knowledge in the universe and can create objects out of the void.

Fan fiction was a commerce-free creative space – devoid of ad revenue and the quick accumulation of likes. Since there was neither money nor social capital to be gained, everyone who participated did so out of pure interest. One did have the hope of raking in reviews from other community members, but these were about more than validation; reviews allowed people to have conversations about a shared passion and often included constructive criticism along with praise. There was little need for bitterness – if a fic was well-written, everybody won, since it meant they got to read it.

Below are some examples from the reviews section of Prelude to Destiny. It’s certainly no Twitter.

Written by rach on chapter #13. (March 28th 2009, 5am) Hey,

So I’ve read your whole story before, and now I’m reading it again, because I saw it spotlighted on the site. And this chapter is amazing. I love the end…I’ve never (well, before I read this the first time) compared Lily to Mrs Crouch. But it’s so true. They both gave their lives for their sons and…this chapter is phenomenal. Just thought I’d let you know

Rach

Written by Smith on chapter #26. (April 29th 2008, 11am)

…If I am to find any fault in the story, then I should say that Remus was rather dull. Not that it was completely out of character, but I imagine him being funnier and also good Lily’s friend. Their friendship is mentioned by Lupin in the third film and, I should think, in the book as well, though I don’t have a copy right now and thus can’t provide a quote. Pity, that. [Given my extensive knowledge of canon, I can tell you that the reviewer is mistaken on this last point.]

Thank you very much for writing this story. Reading it was an enjoyable experience that I might repeat in the future. You’re brilliant, to put it short.

Author Response: Thanks for the review!Yeah, Remus was a bit dull. Actually, I didn’t intend for Lily to be friends with any of the marauders besides James. I just wanted them out of the way. But I know what you mean. After Sirius entered the story, Remus was even duller in comparison. Plus, I wanted to make Peter seem like he fit in, and Remus just fell by the wayside, you know?I’m enjoying writing Gertrude again after taking over a story from my friend who used my characters. Anyway, thanks again!Miranda

For me, too, fandom was a more than a casual hobby. Since I was only allowed an hour of internet use a day, I would spend the time copying and pasting chapter after chapter of fan fiction onto Microsoft Word, allowing me to read all I wanted later. (As you might imagine, Water was not stored on the family computer.) I remember scouring for new fics on fanfiction.net and clicking through page after page of fan art on deviantart.com (both of which retain their early-2000s layouts, unlike Mugglenet or JK Rowling’s official site), very differently from how I scroll through Instagram today. I admired works of fandom the way one appreciates springtime’s first flower, or the décor of a friend’s bedroom – I admired the stamp of individuality they bore and that inspired me to create something myself, to express my joys and sorrows, to be a part of the world.

RIP old websites

When I did put Harry Potter-inspired art out there, somewhere around age fourteen, it was of course in the form of fan fiction, writing being my weapon of choice. I wrote two one-shot pieces, one funny and the other sad — or such were my intentions, though perhaps the results were inverted. While some friends wrote longer stories, I never felt talented or inspired enough to commit, which is a typical self-doubting move of the kind I am trying to leave behind. (I now plan to write no matter how untalented and uninspired I may be.)

One piece was about a character of my own invention, a Slytherin guy with the requisite pure-blood, Dark magic-loving family, and a perky, ponytailed Huffelpuff girl on whom he develops an obsessive crush. It was intended to be a BBC-inspired mockery of the character, taking all the gloomy sexiness of the Dramione universe and making it ridiculous. It was also a thorough exploration of really wanting to make out with somebody sitting in the same classroom as you, not that I’d know anything about that myself.

The other short story was a sincere ode to the books and an exploration of some of their core questions on death and loss. It followed Harry in an imagined scene that takes place (SPOILER ALERT lol) after Dumbledore’s death in the Half-Blood Prince. Harry is climbing the steps to the Owlery with a package in his hand, thinking over his relationship with Dumbledore. As I wrote, I found that I absolutely had to include excerpts from a fairly unexpected source, a chapter in the first and most overlooked of the Harry Potter books. The chapter is “The Mirror of Erised,” whose titular object reveals to the onlooker their deepest desire.

“Professor Dumbledore. Can I ask you something?”

“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Dumbledore smiled. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”

“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.” Harry stared. “One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”

It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful.

In my story, Harry gazes out at the Forbidden Forest for a little while, wondering who Dumbledore had been behind the mask of calm wisdom and pondering the burden of those left alive and grieving. Harry then ties the package he’s been holding to Hedwig’s arm and sends her off, chuckling a little through tears. In the last line it is revealed that – OMG – he has just sent off a pair of thick, woolen SOCKS. To DUMBLEDORE. Even though Dumbledore is DEAD. Isn’t that profound?

Two years later, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, and to my complete surprise, it delved deep into some of the questions about Dumbledore that had tumbled out of me, stream-of-consciousness-like, in the story I wrote. The text even includes part of the above excerpt from “The Mirror of Erised”. At the outset of Deathly Hallows, Harry learns that Dumbledore’s childhood was a difficult one, the true details of which remain murky and contested by his admirers and critics. Harry regrets never having asked Dumbledore about his past, but recalls that, after all, the one personal question he had asked Dumbledore was not answered honestly…

While writing my story, I had imagined Harry’s pain and longing to know Dumbledore better. Because fan fiction allowed me to externalize my interpretation of the text, the questions in my mind took on concrete form. Their answers, when the next book presented them, became all the more striking and emotionally impactful. It was as though I had written a letter to the series of books that had shaped me and received, in a way, a gentle but meaningful response.

In 2004, JK Rowling released a statement about the phenomenon of fan fiction. She was flattered by fans’ desire to write about her characters, and her only caveats were that fan fiction should remain suitable for children (unfortunately that ship had already sailed, and Water was truly the least of it), as well as a non-commercial activity so that fans’ creative pursuits would remain unexploited. Other authors have not been as accepting, and have asked for fan fiction based on their work to be removed from popular websites. After all, in our current world, a story is classified as property. A sentence, a verse, a character’s name, can belong to someone the same way as the furniture in their house and the dollar figure in their bank account.

In the long history of storytelling, however, ownership is a relatively recent idea. Bear with me while I make an analogy – in pre-industrial Britain, every town had a commons, an area of land where anyone could gather firewood, take their cattle to graze, or hunt and fish to supplement a year of poor harvest. Storytelling has historically functioned as a kind of commons of ideas, one that anyone could pull from when the time came to tell a tale. Want to warn your kid against going near a well? Tell them about the hungry demon that lives in it. Were you hired to entertain a crowd at a wedding? Maybe you dust off an old poem about a prince and princess who meet one evening in the forest but spend years apart, not knowing each others’ true identity until it turns out they were betrothed all along.

Nobody invented well-dwelling monsters or estranged lovers for the first time – they simply existed in a shared cultural space, available when needed (or when it was particularly enjoyable to use them), ready to be shaped into something new and old at the same time. Even today, no one questions the use of familiar tropes in books and movies; we know that all storytelling involves a certain amount of borrowing and repetition, and we deem this acceptable as long as the storyteller has put an adequately original spin on the themes they utilize. The legal line is drawn once you get to the particulars – character names, or sentences and dialogue. These must be brand spanking new if you want to avoid a lawsuit and getting dropped by your publishers. (Does anyone else remember How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life?)

But for thousands of years, people told and re-told stories of beloved and familiar characters, not just unnamed archetypes – characters like Odysseus and Arjuna, Gilgamesh and King Arthur. The Sanskrit Mahabharata (Maha-BHA-rata) an epicly long, genre-defying story from South Asia, especially challenges the idea of a single, canonical text (much like other ancient story traditions from the subcontinent). It was told so many times by so many people that modern-day folks are not always able to agree on what the Mahabharata even is. The story is like a vast ocean — recognizable to all, but appears different depending on where you happen to be standing.

In the 20th century, some scholars collected Mahabharata manuscripts from all over the subcontinent, extracted the most commonly occurring parts to form a text, and detailed the many variations of each verse in footnotes that turned out longer than the text itself. No one can quite agree whether to treat this resulting (multi-volume) “Critical Edition” as the essential Sanskrit Mahabharata tradition, or as some kind of strange, post-colonial Mahabharata scrapbook. All this so that whenever somebody wrote an essay about the story, there was a single text, pieced together as it was, to use as a point of reference. (My Bachelor’s thesis was one of the lesser works of this scholarly genre.)

The plot of the Mahabharata goes like this: The five Pandava brothers, namely the prone-to-gambling leader Yudhishthira, morally-conflicted archer Arjuna, lovable beefcake Bhima, and something-to-do-with-horses twins Nakula and Sachdeva, along with their badass wife Draupadi, are exiled from their kingdom and forced into a year of disguise after a rigged dice game that Yudhishthira loses, and in which Draupadi is stripped and humiliated before a hall full of men. Eventually the Pandavas regain what they lost through a bloody war that leaves both sides devastated and questioning the point of all this conflict. The End.

Does my summary reflect my biases a little bit? For somebody else, the Pandavas might be perfect heroes, Draupadi a whiny ungrateful shrew who won’t stop yelling at them. To me, she is the moral backbone of the Pandavas, unafraid to call for what she feels is right even as everyone around her takes the coward’s way out of trouble.

Interpretations of Draupadi from various traditions

But it’s not just me who has a take on the story: the Mahabharata itself reflects a range of interacting and conflicting views, which might indicate that people from various backgrounds heard it and were able, in some way, to influence it. For example, although the text generally upholds hierarchies of caste and gender, it also pulls at the listener’s heartstrings with stories of characters who must confront these oppressive norms.

There’s Amba, who is stolen from her future-husband at her wedding and rejected by him when she manages to return; she later chooses to be re-born as a man in order to kill her kidnapper in battle. There’s Ekalavya, the talented archer from a forest tribe who trains with the Pandavas in youth and asks to prove his devotion to his archery guru any way he can; the guru, who favors the upper-caste prince Arjuna, asks Ekalavya to cut off his right thumb. There’s Kunti, who finds herself pregnant after an illicit affair with a god and places her baby, Karna, in a river; Karna is adopted by a lower-caste charioteer couple and goes on to fight against Kunti’s legitimate sons in the great battle that destroys the universe. And there’s Satyavati, whose husband/baby daddy pretends not to recognize her in front of his kingly court but gets completely schooled on how not to be an asshole.

“You know very well [who I am], your majesty; why do you say that you don’t, lying like a common man? Your heart knows the truth, and knows your lie. A man who does something wrong thinks, ‘No one knows me,’ but the gods know. If you do not do what I ask, your head will burst into a hundred pieces.” She discoursed at length on the reasons why a man should honor his wife, quoting the dharma texts.

(from The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry by Wendy Doniger)

Perhaps, among the traveling bards and indulgent grandmas who told the Mahabharata over centuries, there were some who identified or empathized with the pain of oppression and through whom otherwise-marginalized voices could ring out into the millennia.

The many Mahabharatas, along with the many conversations inside the Mahabharata, illustrate how the human imagination is prolific and messy, not content with merely absorbing information but impelled to remake, to take inspiration, to create, create, create. Isn’t that what happens when we read? We see the world we are reading about in our own way. We make up something in our own head as we go along, and that’s where the entertainment lies. The book itself is but a wonderful tool.

Perhaps if I had a right-wing patron who paid me to tell stories, I would tell the Mahabharata a little differently from how I do here, focusing on how the Pandavas were self-made men or how the ethnic minorities they killed were thieving encroachers. Or if I were telling the story to children, I might leave out anything particularly frightening. In the telling of a story, the will and whims of the teller have influence, as do those of the listener (or reader) and the financial benefactor (or publishing house).

What remains inevitable, however, is that rarely is a story told the same way twice. Even in our post-printing press, post-internet world, where stories are replicated identically again and again, we continue to dissect, analyze, and change them, whether it be through everyday conversations, online forums, or the prestige lens of a critic’s review. (A perfect example is the adaptation of works from one medium into another, be it from literature to film or from film to theater.) Sometimes the authors themselves continue to tweak and interpret their work – Virginia Wolf was known to make changes to her books prior to reprinting, and we all know that JK Rowling can’t leave the Potter universe well enough alone (love you Jo!).

For me, fan fiction is a grand storytelling and textual tradition not entirely unlike the Mahabharata. Fan fiction not only illustrates the malleable, generative nature of stories, it also provides a rare space, in our capitalist global economy, for storytelling to be that malleable, generative thing it has always been. It allows for democratic engagement in the storytelling traditions of our time, free from the boxes of profit and ownership. It lets us expand the possibilities of our collective imagination. Importantly, it allows voices from the margins into the story, where our canonical texts routinely fail us.

I’m also thankful to fan fiction for being a rare space, outside overpriced college English classes, where literary discussion can thrive. When I say discussion, I don’t mean mere binary criticism – like book reviews, or the Goodreads star rating-aggregates that help determine book sales. I mean questions about how a text makes you feel, what it reflects or critiques about our world, the things that literary characters, beloved and abhorred, may teach us about our shared humanity and flawed choices. And yes, some of these conversations involve Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy as co-Heads of Hogwarts, using the same bathroom.

Are you a reader or writer of fan fiction? Have you you dabbled in fan art? Or do you engage in a non-online form of fandom, like a book club? Please share!

Thanks for reading.

[nardaviel]

i’m doing lots of boueibu ships for this meme

kinatsuen

Who was the one to propose: Kinshirou, for kind of a sad reason. I headcanon that he hides his relationship with En and Atsushi (or anyone else, tbh) from his father until his late twenties. At that point, his dad, who actually knew all along, gets fed up and tells him to get married and have children or be disowned. So instead of leaving them, he lets himself get disowned, unintentionally calling his father’s bluff. Because, yeah, it was intended to be a bluff, but Kinshirou didn’t cave and that forced his dad’s hand. Or at least that was how his dad saw it. I know I’ve talked about this headcanon a lot, but where I’m going with it here is that after that they’re free to get married, or realistically to at least have a ceremony even if they won’t get the legal benefits. En in particular daydreams about it, but he and Atsushi don’t want to bring up the possibility because everything surrounding the disinheritance is a sensitive topic. But one day, some time afterwards when they’re in their thirties and Kinshirou isn’t so devastated, he comes home with rings for them all, gold bands that are almost plain except for two small inset gems on each of them. Each person has gemstones in their ring that match the magical boy colors of the other two. (Specifically, the gems used are sapphire, emerald, and yellow imperial topaz.) The proposal itself is less nervous and awkward than you might expect because Kinshirou’s older now and he’s been through some things. It’s still a bit awkward, though, and he gets teary-eyed when En and Atsushi get over their shock and give an enthusiastic yes. Who stressed more over wedding planning: Kinshirou, because he’s wanted to have this ceremony for a long time, and now that it’s finally happening, he wants everything to be perfect to make up for the wait. He’s a bit neurotic about it, actually. The other two have to get him to chill out a little. It does end up being a beautiful wedding, though, largely because of his efforts. (And Atsushi’s, once they take the decisions out of Kinshirou’s hands. Atsushi ends up being pretty stressed too, at that point. En... is chill.) Who decorated the house: For the most part Kinshirou, with some input from Atsushi. I think Kinshirou paid for most of it, since this was before he was disowned. It seemed to Atsushi like if Kinshirou was paying, he should get to choose the decor, except Kinshirou wanted to get expensive, formal furniture that you couldn’t relax in, so Atsushi had to step in and guide him to something that he and En would find more livable. Meanwhile, En chose the art. Their walls ended up with more art on them than Kinshirou or Atsushi would have thought was tasteful, but to their surprise it's not actually a bad look, even if Kinshirou doesn’t consider some of it art because he’s a snob about modern art. En was also picky about the mattresses. Who does the cooking: Atsushi, unless Kinshirou and/or En want to do something nice for him and give him a break. Or unless he’s sick. But En doesn’t know how to make very many things and Kinshirou doesn’t know how to make anything unless he rigidly follows a recipe, so their food is never as good. Atsushi still appreciates it, though. If he’s out of town, Kinshirou generally makes En do the cooking in exchange for taking care of other chores. Who is more organized: Kinshirou. Atsushi is pretty organized but Kinshirou takes it almost to an obsessive level. He has a hard time even setting foot in En’s room. Who’s the cuddler: They all like cuddles, but En is the one who expresses himself the most with physical affection and also the one who’s least shy about it. Kinshirou and Atsushi have an aversion to any public displays of affection, but if it wasn’t for that, En would be holding hands under the table in public, wrapping an arm around them while they browse in secluded corners of bookshops... that kind of thing. As it is, he’s the one most likely to flop down on the couch next to someone and put an arm around their shoulders, or lie down with his head in their lap. Kinshirou actually really likes this. It makes him feel safe, and when he’s on the receiving end of it, it feels like he’s wanted. Atsushi enjoys cuddling, but not to an unusual extent like the other two. Who’s the big spoon/little spoon: Kinshirou is the little spoon. That’s the only thing that’s really consistent. En enjoys being both, although he has a preference for being the big spoon because he likes wrapping himself around his boyfriends and clinging. Atsushi can do either one and likes to make whoever he’s cuddling with happy. What’s their favorite non-sexual activity: Talking. I know I keep giving that answer but that’s what all my favorite ships like to do. Also video games, either with Kinshirou making disparaging comments from the couch or En and Atsushi teaching him how to play (and trying not to laugh when he sucks, which annoys him, so he tries harder and ends up beating them). Going to bathhouses and sometimes onsens. Watching bad movies and making fun of them together. Going out to eat. Hanging out in each other’s presence with each of them quietly doing their own thing, whether that’s reading, drawing, doing a jigsaw puzzle, sleeping... whatever. And travelling! At least before Kinshirou loses access to his family’s money, and when they can convince En that the destination is worth the effort. The trips are usually long, and they don’t happen very often. Otherwise, En won’t agree because “Didn’t we just go on a trip? Why fly all the way to Italy just to fly back a week later? Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to fly?” But if the other two can get En there and if they let him sleep in, he enjoys himself. They’re all nerds in their own way, and they all all find travel interesting and fun. All the art, architecture, high/pop culture, history, people-watching, and miscellaneous things unique to a specific place that En can ponder. Who comes home drunk at 3am: I imagined once that En and Atsushi went out with Io and Ryuu when they were all in college. En got a little drunk with Ryuu, while Io and Atsushi were supposed to be the ones taking care of them. Atsushi figured one drink wouldn’t hurt, though... and that’s how he learned that he can’t hold his liquor at all. So Kinshirou had to come get them, and get them a taxi to take them home, and make them drink water before bed, and so on. He was annoyed about it and didn’t particularly find it endearing, but he did it anyway because he loves them. ...That’s the closest thing to an answer I can give for this question. None of them are that type of person. Who kills the spiders: Kinshirou. Atsushi is willing but they creep him out a little so Kinshirou just rolls his eyes and does it. En is the guy who freaks out and runs to find one of the others. Who falls asleep first: Hmm... let me think... A headcanon: En is a painter, right? ...That’s not the headcanon, y’all already knew that one. But one day he decides to paint portraits of the other two in secret. So he paints the most loving, beautiful portraits of them both, on moderately large canvasses. Kinshirou is drinking tea in his, just as a way of teasing Kinshirou about how often he drinks tea. Atsushi and Kinshirou are both really moved by what his secret project turned out to be and how beautiful their portraits are, although they both say they’re not that attractive. (But they both agree that the portrait of the other one is 100% accurate.) En tells Kinshirou they should put the portrait of him above the mantel, but Kinshirou says, “No, we can’t do that. I’d have to look at myself drinking tea all day.” And En says, “The rest of us already have to look at you drinking tea all day.” And Kinshirou whacks his arm, and they hang the portraits in the staircase instead lol. Then they make En paint a matching self-portrait so that all three of them can be there, and so that’s how they end up with lovely portraits of them all hanging in their home. Who has the most patience? Atsushi. Kinshirou seems like he has a lot of patience but he’s just faking it lmao and at some point he’s going to snap. Their relationship summed up in a gif:

The girl in the middle is probably either Atsushi or Kinshirou but if En is having a sad time for some reason they’ll converge on him instead and try to make him smile like that.

[evieshook]

come back home

pairing: harry/evie rating: g word: ~4200 a/n: for the lovely anon who requested this. it got longer than i expected, even though you asked for something short haha. i hope you do enjoy this! (tbh, there’s quite a bit of malvie in this xD) prompt: Can you do a short fic about harry x evie and how instead of evie being good she goes back to being bad with harry and there like the badass couple on the isle while her friends try to save her but she’s to inlove with harry that she rather stay with him?!!!!!! Sorry there’s barley any harry x evie fics out there:(

//

“Evie! Listen to me,” Mal pleaded, arm reaching out to grab hold of the girl’s arm before she could walk away. “You have to come back, come home with us.”

Evie turned around, lifting her head to stare her straight in the eye. What Mal saw however wasn’t the Evie she remembered. The way she held herself, while more poised, was definitely colder, more arrogant and her eyes lacked the warmth she had had even back when she first grew up in the Isle. She looked like a carbon copy of her mother, and it was only then that she was reminded who Evie really was. Daughter of Snow White’s greatest foe, and notorious for her overwhelming vanity, Evie was truly descended from the Evil Queen.

“Like you said before Mal, this is home,” she said almost spitefully, the girl almost wincing at the familiarity of the words. “You can take the girl out of the Isle, but you can’t take the Isle out of the girl. Just leave Mal, enjoy your life with Ben while I enjoy mine.”

Mal’s bright emerald eyes narrowed. “But—”

She shook her head. “Just go Mal. Please,” she had said the word so softly that for a second she thought that Evie, her Evie, had come back. But it was quickly replaced by that aloof front she had shown earlier, unreadable expression masking her inner tumultuous emotions.

She held her gaze for a second before she finally relented, seeing that though this wasn’t the time, this definitely was not the end. “This isn’t the end Evie. I’ll come back for you again, but next time you’re coming back with me,” she declared firmly, giving her one last look before turning on her heel, straight to where the limo had been waiting.

As she watched the girl depart, Evie felt herself instantly deflate, the clenched fists at her side finally relaxing. She almost slumped forward, until she felt a hard body pressed warmly against her back. Almost immediately, she sunk straight into his chest, allowing him to wrap his comforting arms around her waist and letting his familiar scent of the crisp sea air draw her in. Evie felt him rest his chin on her shoulder as his eyes followed the direction of her gaze.

“Just a little while longer Princess, I promise,” he muttered, Evie saying nothing as she snuggled closer to him. Just a little while longer, and things could go back to the way things were. She just needed a little patience.

//

It was only after a mysterious missive that had arrived three days later that the gang was sent packing, immediately piling into the royal limousine to travel back to the Isle. While Mal wanted to go back as soon after she had left, Ben had told her to give Evie space, noting that the right opportunity would present itself. And it had, in the form of a letter detailing the exploits of a familiar blue haired princess that had been the source of the recent havoc on the island. It had mentioned an accomplice, but they didn’t pay any heed as to who it may have been, too preoccupied with the goal of getting Evie back.

And if it hadn’t been for the urgency of the situation, they would have all been more than impressed at what they had happened in the short time she had been away. Evie may have an Auradon girl, but she was born and raised on an island of evil, and the apple never did fall too far from the tree.

As they drove back over the bridge connecting Auradon with the Isle, they all couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. What exactly was holding Evie back? They knew better than anyone that Evie had always dreaded going to the Isle, and at times hated it. Despite readily acknowledging it as her birthplace, they knew her insecurities of perhaps never having truly fit in. After all, out of the four she had been the one who had taken most quickly to the Auradon way of living, especially after having been raised in a similar fashion as her royal peers, expect with more villain involved. And as much as the girl appeared to love her mother, she had always seen her true family in Mal, Carlos and Jay, gladly choosing them over her any day. Yet with them still on Auradon, and Evie going back to the Isle alone and willingly, they couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else pulling her back.

What that was, neither of them knew.

But they intended to find out. Whatever it was, they hoped that their familial bond would be enough to overcome whatever strings held her back.

When they had finally reached the Isle, it didn’t take too much searching to find out where the source of the commotion was coming from. Walking through the tunnel that led to the docks, the three remained as quiet as possible as they peered from the inside, pausing just before the exit. What they saw however, left them shellshocked.

Standing in the centre of the Lost Revenge was Evie, except she was under not threat and definitely not alone. Rather, she was nestled in the arms of one Harry Hook, both of whom seemed to be enjoying the sight around them as they observed the chaos the pirates had incited upon the citizens nearby.

Mal was almost ready to go charging in to claim back her best friend and skewer the pirate alive, until she felt Carlos’ hand grab her to hold her back, telling her to wait so the could observe some more.

Evie appeared to laugh at something Harry had said as he continued whispering sweet nothing in her ear, almost making the three gag at how affectionate he was being. They all knew he was a big flirt, and tended to get up in your personal space closer than necessary, but they had never seen him so tender. If it hadn’t been for his notoriousness as an established enemy of theirs, they would’ve almost admitted that the two looked rather cute. Almost.

They watched as Evie leaned her head back against chest, twisting her head up before pulling his head down to meet hers, capturing his lips for a kiss.

This time they all had to turn around, truly unable to stomach the sight before them. It made them shudder in disgust.

“This is why she wanted to stay back? Because of him?” Jay exclaimed incredulously, the two sharing his utter disbelief. To think, Evie and Harry? Where did that even come from?

“I wasn’t aware they even knew each other,” Mal said with derision, feelings of betrayal washing over her. She was supposed to be her best friend, and as her best friend, there were no secrets between them, none. And yet Evie had withheld what was perhaps the biggest secret of her life.

“This is all wrong,” Carlos declared. “Evie would never hook up with Harry out of her own free will. He must’ve done something.”

As much as they wanted to believe him, they knew it wasn’t possible. “Like what? Put her under a spell? Harry may be clever, but he’s still a pirate. Evie’s the witch, not Harry, and going by your logic, she would’ve done the spell casting on him.”

“Why would Evie want to charm him?” Jay asked, still repulsed.

Mal shrugged. “Wouldn’t we all like to know.”

“We still have to get her. We’re not leaving her here, especially with him.”

“Of course not. But now that we know the truth, maybe we can finally knock some sense into her.” They all nodded. Sometimes you had to listen to your head over your heart.

Carlos was still skeptical however. “But how are we even gonna pull this off? The ship is practically surrounded. Who knows how many pirates there are, and where Uma could be lurking.”

Jay and Mal shared a look. “Just follow our lead.”

//

It wasn’t easy, but after years of practice in disposing of some annoying little pirates, they had become nothing short of experts. Uma’s crew had been dealt with within minutes, and as the three made their way onto the ship, no more pirates nor Uma in sight, they set to searching for their lost friend. It turned out Evie and Harry had left just shortly after they had spotted them kiss, so neither knew of their presence back on the Isle.

It really hadn’t been that hard to guess where Evie was likely to be, but to find where exactly where that was was a challenge on its own. Being unfamiliar with the layout of the ship, and with no map in sight, it took a while before either one of them stumbled upon the doors of the ship’s first mate.

Quickly gathering around the door, they silently exchanged looks, nodding that on a count of three they would barge in and grab Evie the moment they saw her. When they counted down, Jay took to kicked the door down as the trio stormed in, ready to grab Evie yet what they found sent them almost backtracking. It appeared that Harry and Evie had taken their little activities inside, and while Harry was the only one with skin exposed, they had no doubt that had they waited any longer, it wouldn’t have been that way for long.

Harry almost fell off the hammock in shock at the rude interruption as Evie scrambled to her feet, glaring coldly at the new visitors. Her hands were at her sides, enclosed in fists as Harry took to grabbing his shirt to slip it back on.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded frostily, Jay and Carlos sharing an unimpressed look. Mal wasn’t kidding when she had said that Evie had changed, and not for the better.

“We’re here to get you. I told you that the next time I came, I wouldn’t be going back empty-handed,” Mal told her, stepping forward to match the girl’s glare with a frigid look of her own. If looks could kill, everybody around them would have fallen flat in less than half a minute.

“Looks like you’ll have to break that promise this time. You can’t get everything you want Mal,” she said derisively, spitting out the girl’s name with such repulsion it was as though they were enemies and not best friends.

Mal raised a brow, unfazed. “Oh, is that so? And who’s gonna stop me?”

Evie smirked. “Me.”

Before things could get out of hand, Carlos stepped in, knowing that if they didn’t the girls would most likely get into a physical fight. He glanced at the amused pirate beside warily before returning his gaze back to Evie.

“Okay, enough. Evie, please, whatever you’re doing here, enough’s enough. You need to come back home with us.”

She scowled at him. “I am home.”

Harry nodded beside her, slinging an arm around her shoulder that the three almost winced. “That’s right. Since when was Auradon her home?”

Jay shot him a dirty glare. “Nobody asked you Harry.”

The male only grinned, enjoying the irritation he had evoked from the three.

Mal glanced at him before looking back at Evie accusingly. “Oh, and speaking of Harry, since when Evie? What is this?” She motioned to the couple, who had shared a small look.

“Why do I have to tell you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because I’m your best friend?”

Evie scoffed. “Not anymore you’re not.”

Harry looked between the two amusedly, before gesturing to the door behind them. “Well, if we’re all done here, ye should all be taking yer leaves. Bye bye,” he said, giving them a little wave.

He felt three pairs of eyes shoot glares at him. “We’re not done here Harry, not by a mile.”

The pirate only raised a brow in annoyance. “What part of ‘bye bye’ did ye not understand? The princess wants you all gone, so ye should do as she says and leave. It’s that simple.”

Mal stepped forward. “It would’ve been simpler if she had come back with us,” she replied, reaching forward to grab her wrist before Harry slapped her hand away.

Evie glowered at her. “I told you, I’m not coming back.”

“But why?”

“Because!”

Mal huffed. “Because what Evie? Because of him? You’d abandon us, your family, who you’ve been with for your whole life, for him? He tried to kill us all last time!”

The girl was clearly miffed but remained composed, Harry tightening his arm around her. “I don’t care.”

“And why not?” The unrelenting look on Mal’s face was enough for her to finally snap.

“Because I love him!”

The room was struck by a deathly silence as they stared at her wide eyed at the admission, including Evie who couldn’t believe she had let that slip. She hadn’t even told him yet, and now she was shouting it to the whole world.

Harry, who was just as shocked as she, was the first to finally react as he pulled her closer to him, kissing her lightly on the temple. It was this action, with Evie sinking into him in relief, that finally broke the three out of their initial shock as they stared at her incredulously.

“Love? I thought you loved Doug!”

Evie shook her head as Harry’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “That was before, but my feelings have changed, I’ve changed. That’s why I’m not going back to Auradon. I’m not leaving him. Not ever.”

Mal blinked. “I—”

Evie couldn’t take it anymore as she looked away from them, not wanting them to see her watery eyes. “Go! Just go.”

Harry, who had seen her tears, tightened his hold at her as he looked at the trio, nodding to the door with a glare. “The princess wants you out so shoo and leave us alone.”

His gaze held no room for question as Carlos and Jay shared a look before nodding in agreement, Jay pulling Mal back. She eyed Evie, who seemed determined not to look back at her before sighing, eyes downcast as she let Jay drag her away.

When they finally left, Evie let out a small sob against Harry’s chest as he led her back to the hammock, both falling into it. She curled up against him as he held her tightly, rubbing circles on her shoulder in an effort to comfort her.

“Don’t worry Princess. They’ll understand,” he muttered softly, feeling his heart break for her.

She looked up at him, eyes red from the tears streaming down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his finger. “But I was so horrible to them. What if they don’t?”

He kissed her on the forehead. “If they’re anything like ye say, they will. Otherwise, I’ll just hook them until they do.”

Evie let out a small giggle as Harry sighed in relief, happy to know that at least he had made her smile. “You’d have way too much fun with that.”

“I know Princess, I know.” He looked down at her as she closed her eyes, head nestled against his neck. I really don’t deserve ye Princess.

//

Several days had passed since their last encounter until it was almost one and a half weeks later without Evie that something very unexpected happened. When the three were called to meet the Fairy Godmother and Ben at her office, they couldn’t help but be mildly suspicious yet also downtrodden, still affected by what had happened back on the Isle. Had it really been that long without seeing her? It had taken Ben having to have security guard his limo and the remote confiscated to stop them from going back again. He knew she would come back eventually, but she needed to do it on her own terms, and the three going back there would only make it worse.

When Mal, Jay and Carlos arrived at the office, there were nothing less than surprised at who they found waiting for them, frozen in their spots and unable to move.

“Evie?”

“Harry?”

“What are you doing here?” They had all said in unison, Carlos having to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. But he certainly wasn’t because they were both still there, as real as they had been when they had last seen them.

Harry still had his arm clasped tightly around Evie’s chest as she leaned into him, the both of them watching them with an unreadable expression. When they had first seen them, Evie looked as though her eyes may have watered again, Harry having to give her a gentle squeeze to assure her that everything would be alright.

Evie did not speak, instead letting the figure from the corner make himself known.

“I brought them here.” Three heads turned sharply to find Ben walking diplomatically toward them, Mal looking at him in a mix of shock, disbelief and slightly betrayal.

“Ben, what?”

Seeing that she was about to yell at him, Evie stepped in, walking in between the two with Harry close behind. “Don’t blame him Mal. This was all me.”

Her eyes narrowed at her angrily. “You’re damn right it was. What is this all about? Why aren’t you back on the Isle? And why now? After everything you did, why now? Did you think we were gonna welcome you back with open arms?”

Noticing Evie flinch, Harry stood in front of her, slightly blocking her from view. “I know yer mad at her, but listen to her. It’s all my fault, so don’t blame her.”

Mal glared at him in ire. “I knew you were a bad influence on her!”

They two were pitted in a heated glaring match, and unable to stay silent anymore, Evie pulled Harry back, stepping front of him. “Harry! Mal! Okay, enough. Let me explain.”

She eyed her in distrust, but couldn’t help the burning curiosity and the need to have her friend back from blindsiding her from hearing a decent explanation. “So explain.”

She went silent, the blue haired girl breathing deeply to collect her thoughts. She felt Harry slip a hand in hers, gently squeezing it before she finally opened her mouth. “The reason I went back to the Isle was because of Harry.”

“We know that.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t. Truth is, I’ve been seeing him for a while, and before you ask, no I was not dating him the same time I was dating Doug, and no he wasn’t the reason I broke up with him. Anyway, I only went back because he wanted me to meet his dad.”

Mal raised a brow. “Captain Hook?”

“Is there anyone else?” Harry asked sarcastically, irritated by her reaction. Before Mal could say something, Jay interrupted.

“What does Captain Hook have to do with all this?”

Evie looked at him. “He’s the main reason I stayed back for so long. You see, when he found out about Harry and I,” they could hear Harry growl something along the lines of 'Gil’, “he demanded I go see him, so I did. But that meeting fell through and he was left unimpressed.”

“The old fart wanted someone more 'rough 'round the edges’ and 'more evil’, not some 'prissy princess’ as he called E here,” Harry said calmly, barely reigning in his anger. The pirate looked absolutely murderous as he spoke, making the boys almost shiver as they knew what he was like when he was angry. It was not pretty.

Mal scowled in offence. “She’s not prissy.”

“Ye think I don’t know that? But because he didn’t approve of her, he wanted me to dump 'er, which of course I refused to.”

Evie nodded. “So I decided I would stay back in order to impress him.”

Carlos raised a questioning brow. “Why need his approval?” It was true; they didn’t really care about what their parents thought anymore, knowing they were too far gone for any of them to ever really be proud of them. Seeking approval from their parents was not something they lived to do anymore.

“Because I just do. After the falling out I had with my mother, which only grew worse when she heard rumors about me and Harry, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted what everyone else at Auradon had, a supporting family who backed up whoever you loved. See, Ben’s parents love you Mal, as do Lonnie’s with you Jay. And I know that Fairy Godmother warmed up to you already too Carlos, but who do I have? It was either my mother, who refused to accept anyone that wasn’t a prince, or Harry’s father who I thought was less particular about whoever Harry was dating.”

The way she had spoken, they could finally understand why she did it. After lacking the parental support they had wanted their whole, the family their respective lovers gave to them made up for that and more. But with Evie dating another VK, it was unlikely she would ever receive the same support they had. All they wanted now was to engulf her in a hug and never let her go, but they knew Harry wouldn’t allow them to until she finished speaking, or anytime really.

“But why cut us out?”

Evie walked over to Mal, gently grabbing both of her hands as she looked her in the eye. “Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it. It was the only was to let you guys leave me there, because I knew you’d stay with me back on the Isle but this was something I needed to do on my own.”

She grew teary, but pushed them down until she could hear her finish. “So what happened?”

Harry stepped beside Evie, wrapping an arm around her with a proud smile. “She won him over of course. Impressed the fart until he started eating his words.”

Mal looked to Evie in confirmation, who nodded with the happiest smile on her face. “CJ wasn’t too happy when Captain Hook gave us his blessings.”

This time, everyone started grinning in pride, wishing to have seen the look on the girl’s face when she found out. “And Ben knew all this?”

They all looked to Ben, who looked slightly guilty. “Sort of. Evie told me she was leaving but I didn’t know specifics. She told me not to tell you anything and to keep you here until she was done, but know that I wanted to tell you so badly. I just couldn’t betray her trust. Besides, I wanted to invite Harry, Uma and Gil to Auradon Prep but Evie told me Harry wouldn’t come unless she was here.”

Mal went silent at his explanation as she glanced between the three contemplatively. Her silence obviously went for a little too long when Evie walked up to her, slightly unsure. “Please forgive me?”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Harry backed up.

Her gaze flickered between them before she shook her head, Evie deflating and Harry almost ready to pounce when Mal suddenly engulfed the girl in a tight hug, shocking them all before Evie returned the hug wholeheartedly. “Of course. Just don’t do that again. Next time, tell me everything. We’re best friends remember?”

Evie smiled. “I never forgot.”

Carlos, seeing that Harry was itching to get Mal away from Evie, decided to distract him as the girls had their moment. “So you’re an Auradon prep boy now?”

Harry bristled. “So are Uma and Gil.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “Great, just great.”

//

“I told ye it would work out,” Harry said, after things had finally winded down. It took a few hours, with him having to endure the presence of both Jay and Carlos as they skilfully kept him away from Evie and leaving the girls alone, arguing that he had 'had her for a week’. If he had it his way, he would have her company forever and without them breathing down his neck every time he tried to grab her attention.

Evie smiled up at him, squeezing his hand tightly. “I should’ve believed you the first time.”

Harry shook his head. “Ye were too scared of what would’ve happened. I don’t blame ye Princess, but I really don’t deserve someone like you.”

She frowned, turning to look at him so their eyes were levelled. “Look at me Harry. I meant what I said earlier, and I do love you. I really do.”

“But ye really shouldn’t Princess. I almost made ye lose yer best friends, for what? To live with me back on the Isle? Ye belong on Auradon.”

“Just as much as I belong on the Isle, with you there too Harry. I don’t care what anyone says okay. And don’t blame yourself for all this, it was all on me.”

He smiled warmly at her, lifting a hand to brush the hair out of her face. “I really don’t deserve ye.”

She opened her mouth, ready to retort when he shushed her with a sweet kiss, pulling away only moments later. Evie was left breathless as she stared up at him, still never getting used to the gravity of his kisses, no matter how chaste they were.

“But I love ye too Princess.”

[dirtycoolcatconfessions]

COOL CAT DVD PACKAGE FULL ANALYSIS

  As some of you may know, as a birthday present I have finally received the Cool Cat movie from a friend of mine. Seeing as I am the self-proclaimed front-runner of the ironic Cool Cat fandom, I feel it is my duty to provide you all with my full analysis of all that comes with this monstrosity, so strap in fellas, this is gonna be a long one.

  Here's an image of the full package:

  Alright, let's start off with the "Thank you for your purchase" type paper.

  Right off the bat, let me say that every paper (bar the "poster", though that one is still preeeetty bad, though I'll analyze that when we get to it) is literally just standard-fare 8.5x11 printer paper. Now, let's start from the top. It says "Cool Cat Productions" as opposed to Derek Savage Productions, what he listed in the movie from what I can remember, so that's pretty strange. To the sides you can see two horrendous pictures of the cartoon form of Cool Cat, which both look like they were drawn in different art styles, with the one on the right for some reason reminding me of some kind of old 2D Chuck E. Cheese drawing, and the other on the right appears to be crying out in pain with weirdly-detailed clothes, a curly pig-like tail, and looking like a failed attempt at perspective. After that it lists the website, (nothing new here) and the email, which uses Yahoo, which I find fairly unsurprising.

  Another thing I love which shows just how much love and care (sorry, "love" and "care") Derek puts into his products is the fact that it doesn't even specify what you ordered, (in addition, the fact that it lists "bookS", since Derek doesn't even have the Cool Cat books for sale, and the Cool Cat Stops Bullying book comes with every purchase of the DVD, and soundtrack, of which they don't sell at all, though I believe Derek stated something about wanting to sell it in the future) which really lets you know that Cool Cat Loves You in particular and cares who You are as a person. (The capitalization is really weird throughout the paper, especially when listing the various products you could have bought, really lending to the "Copy-paste" feel of the whole thing, and the Cool Cat Loves You part somehow evokes a ™ without one even being there.) Further down it asks you to print out free "Cool Cat Loves You" posters (instead of just saying Cool Cat posters, for whatever reason) which is strange for a vast number of reasons. First of all, the poster section of the website is NO LONGER ON THE WEBSITE, and second of all, using the Wayback Machine to go back to an instance when there was shows that the 11x17 "poster" is identical to the poster received in the movie package, which makes you wonder why you would want a second one. 

  (One fun thing to note about this image is the fact that promises that Cool Cat greeting and birthday cards are "Coming Soon!" which I feel really shows you just how much commitment Derek has towards his projects.)

  Back to the original paper, we reach the bottom third of the page, we have Derek begging you to tell everyone you know about Cool Cat so that they know it's time to cut off all ties with you, followed by a call to follow the official twitter @CoolCatLovesYou, officially confirming that that twitter is indeed the real one, fucking weird and not-so as it may seem. Then there are a number of images of potential merchandise you can buy, mainly consisting of the horrendously drawn books that Derek isn't even selling because he's "still looking for a publisher." (Yeah, he couldn't get anyone to publish his books, what a fucking surprise, right? In addition, upon incredibly close inspection of these low-res images, I found that they don't even list the "Illustrated by" that's shown on the Cool Cat Stops Bullying book that came with the movie, since Derek wasn't actually the one who drew this shit. And it's not because it was only on the Cool Cat Stops Bullying book, since among the books on here IS that exact book, sans the "Illustrated by" like all others on the page. I just found that interesting.) Finally, reaching the very bottom of the FIRST ARTICLE OF LIKE 6 (told you it was gonna be a long one) we have a reminder to visit Cool Cat online for Game"s" (There's only one game on the Cool Cat page, "Cool Cat's Fun MatchGame") "Cartoons" (Neither of the two cartoons are accessible from the current page anymore) and More! (Which if by more you mean continuous self-advertising, shitty web design, and child-unfriendly content that can be easily clicked to from the page.) 

  Alright so, the next article, well, honestly I'm not sure what to call this one. It's got two sides, so let's start with the side I'll probably spend less time on.

  Alright, so I guess this side is some kind of info paper? Still not sure what to refer to it as. If you notice at the top it lists the quote that's on the cover, "Cool Cat is Cooler than Barney the Dinosaur!" and I would like to bring to attention the fact that the quote is attributed to Ben Daka, the producer of Cool Cat Loves You, which helps in making the quote seem as incredibly unbiased as possible. (Also yeah, the fact that someone actually produced this steaming pile of dogshit surprises me likely just as much as it might you.) It proceeds to list the summary of the movie, saying what kinds of movies it is, etc. etc. etc. It also lists that it "Includes FOUR Original Cool Cat Songs" however as someone who has watched the movie before online when it was on Youtube for a brief day or two before getting taken down, I can say that there are only two that actually play in the movie proper, "Cool Cat Boogie" and "Cool Cat Loves To Rock", while one is only in the movie as an instrumental while the actual lyrics are only in the DVD menu from what I can remember ("Cool Cat is My Best Friend") and the other only plays during the credits, and is just the song from the now-defunct Cool Cat "cartoon" ("Cool Cat is Cool") however the one in the credits does have an instrumental track behind it, but I'm too lazy to find somewhere you can find that version at the moment.

  Moving on, we have the "STARRING" portion of the page, in which it lists Vivica A. Fox and Erik Estrada despite their 2-3 minute appearances. In addition, if read from right to left, then it technically lists Vivica first, and even if you do read it from center outwards, the way it was likely intended, it still has Derek listed where you would most likely begin reading instead of Cool Cat, which I feel really shows off his vanity.

After that, we have the imperative ">Get Your COOL CAT Today<" which makes it sound like some kind of cat adoption poster or something. After that there's the blatant lie of "We Appreciate Your Business" followed by a statement saying that discounts for schools, libraries, and stores are available, which honestly makes me wonder if there are any places that even carry the movie that aren't online. Also it's kinda weird that they'd have that on one of the papers that comes with the movie. Does Derek expect people to be so blown away by their movie that they just have to bring this flyer to stores and shit so that others can feel the joy of the movie? I don't fucking know this entire analysis is just me talking to myself and probably pointing out shit you could have noticed yourself, but hey if that's not what the blog itself is I don't know what is. Anywho, another fun thing to note is the fact that according to the flyer, the runtime of the movie is 75 minutes, which actually makes it debatable as to whether or not it could actually be considered a film. Final thing to note of this side is that I was indeed correct in my previous assumption that the movie was supposedly made by "a Derek Savage Productions" as opposed to the "Cool Cat Productions" stated on the earlier paper, which is weird.

Anywho, next side of the paper, let's go.

  Now this side, this side infuriates me to no end. It's pretty much one glorified advertisement for the movie you already purchased. To save on time, I think I'll probably speed through this one tbh since the last time I wrote this thing it took me like 4 hours and it mainly consisted of pointing out every little thing on the page, so I'll just give the main things. First of all, why the fuck would you advertise your own movie in the flyer that comes with the fucking movie??? In addition, why does it advertise the books? As I previously established, the books aren't for sale, since Derek's still looking for a publisher. After that, it states that there are Cool Cat eBooks, which I'm pretty sure there aren't any, and they wouldn't even need a publisher I don't think. Also, just to point out, Derek actually managed to misspell merchandise as "MERCHINDISE" at the very top.

  The movie also claims to be a "DOVE AWARD" winner. After some research (I.E. one single google search) I found that the "Dove Award" is actually an award given to exceptional Christian music, so unless the soulful ballad of "COOL CAT IS COOOOOOL" won one of those, I find it highly doubtful that its correct. Next to it, you can see a logo with the words "FAMILY APPROVED" and "ALL AGES". This is the "award" Derek was actually talking about, which is really just an organization that makes sure that movies are family friendly, which sure is a real fucking accomplishment. Below that the flyer claims that it's **STARRING** Vivica A. Fox & Erik Estrada, who really nailed their 2 minute "starring" roles. After that there's some quotes, including one by the late Adam West, may he rest in peace, saying "Cool Cat is Cool!" despite the fact that on the Cool Cat site the quote from West actually says "Cool Cat is Fun!" which shows just how trustworthy this quote was, plus the fact that Derek most likely got the majority of celebrity quotes by walking up to them and asking them to say it. After that there's a quote of "I Love Cool Cat!" from Bo Derek, an actress starring in such great films as Tarzan the Ape Man,  Bolero, and my personal favorite, Ghosts Can't Do It. (All of those films had incredibly negative reception btw, apparently all three of which won her three seperate Golden Raspberry Awards). Finally, below the advertisement for some hideous hats and shirts, there's the godawful pun of "Get Your Cool Cat Purr-chindise" which manages to misspell the latter half of merchandise again, though on the current website, it says "Purr-chandise" so Derek had to have fixed it sometime, but seeing as this flyer is advertising the hats which only just came out a month or two ago, this flyer was made recently, so I don't fucking know.

Moving on, we've got the Cool Cat Loves You Poster.

  The first thing to note is that the poster feels like it was made on 11x17 printer paper, and all-in-all feels really low quality. In addition, it's fairly creased and banged up since Derek apparently doesn't know that you're supposed to roll up posters when shipping them. The main thing I want to note that stands out to me is the fucking background. When I first got it, I thought Derek, like, spilled coffee on it or something, but when I went to look at those posters online using the Wayback Machine, I found that it was completely intentional. I have no worldly idea why anyone would think that this would make a good background, since it gives off either an accidental coffee spill vibe or a 1984-esque dilapidated post-apocalyptic "Big Brother is Watching" sign from it.

That's about all I have to say for the poster, so let's move on to the keychain.

First of all, I'm debating whether or not to put this keychain anywhere since I would probably run a high risk of getting the shit kicked out of me. Anywho, there's not much to say here, it feels like a generic truck stop souvenir keychain, except the fact that Cool Cat is weirdly not centered is bothering me.

Here's the back side to the keychain.

  Again, not much to say, other than the fact that I never want to see the question "Got Cool Cat?" ever again.

  Now we have the book that came with the movie, Cool Cat Stops Bullying. Here's the front cover:

  As you can see the art is fucking hilarious and it looks like Cool Cat is being held at gunpoint. And again, I'd like to point out that it wasn't even Derek who drew this, it was some guy named Robert Rainbow. Imagine paying someone to draw your book and getting this in return. Also, fun thing to note, Daddy Derek is actually a cat in this one (Yes, that is actually supposed to be Derek, since Cool Cat refers to him as Daddy Derek in the book) which poses the question of why the ever-loving FUCK isn't Derek a cat in the movie? (I'll tell you why, it's because Derek still thinks he's hot and wants to show off his "body" in the movie, plus the fact that he was likely way too cheap to have more than one costume made, though it could have easily been avoided by not having the parents, namely Derek, show up often, or in such complex scenes, etc etc. You get the drift, it's just lazy and self-aggrandizing).

Following that, there's the back of the cover.

  Again, not much to analyze in detail, except for the fact that Derek would apparently charge $3.49 for this shitty thing, despite the fact that you can read it in around 2 minutes or under.

  After that there's the side of the cover, which actually has some sad little tidbits of its own.

  If you look closely enough, you can see that the book is fucking stapled together, which I find hilariously depressing. In addition, the publisher is sourced as "Blue Thunder Books" which from my extensive google searching towards the topic, doesn't seem to be a real publisher.

  I would love to post every page of the book itself, but I feel like that might be grounds for some kind of copyright takedown from Derek, though I'll continue looking for some legal way for you guys to see each page, since each one has an illustration, and they're fucking hysterical. Here's a single image for you guys as a little teaser:

  Anywho, onto what you all have been waiting for, the main attraction, the only thing that was purchased and all this other junk just came with for free: The movie. You all have probably seen the box a hundred times, so there's not much for me to analyze there, but here's the front:

  One thing I'd like to point out that I haven't seen anyone else discuss is the fact that Derek and Maria, though most notably Maria, are incredibly low quality and poorly cropped in, to the point where you can't really even make out Maria's face since it's so blurry.

Here's the back:

And here's the side:

  What's interesting to note here is the fact that on the top of the side there's two little icon image things, one of Cool Cat, and one of Vivica Fox, both of which are pretty low quality.

Anywho, enough stalling. Time to open this motherfucker up.

  I'll be honest, when I first opened this thing up, the first thing I noticed was the smell, oddly enough. It's really hard for me to describe, though I will say it's a weirdly bitter, sour smell, maybe something like glue mixed with something else. I have no idea. Anywho, as it was previously pointed out by YMS, the image on the disc is literally a fucking sticker. Unlike YMS's, however, is the fact that it doesn't come off just by breathing on it, so I'm guessing it was just glued to the disc. In all honesty, I haven't even put the disc in my computer to play it yet, since I'm afraid I'll either somehow get a virus from it or that it'll melt inside my computer. I'll just put it in.

Okay, so after putting the disc in the DVD the Disc Drive I got this.

Alright, so there are two folders, the audio one is empty. Great. Then there's the video one.

No idea what this means. Guess I'll have to play it on a DVD player for now.

  Anywho, I guess that there wraps up my analysis! It was mainly me just blabbing on and on about things you probably don’t care about, and doesn't really have a conclusive "end'' or anything, but hey if anything else pops up I'll be sure to notify you guys. Thanks for reading this far if you did, and hopefully Tumblr won't crash before I can post it this time.

[chellyfishing]

telling a violent story vs using violence as a story

i really want to write this essay but as usual i don’t have the spoons for doing it justice so it’s pretty much just extemporaneous word dumping. anyway.

every story has a different tone about where they draw the line with violence and death. you can probably think of a lot of examples of both ends of the scale. there’s a misconception that being higher up on the violence/death end of the scale is more adult and more realistic, which ps is bullshit thanks bye. if anything it’s a sign of immaturity but that’s sort of beside the point atm.

the point i wanna make is this: it’s not a secret that i have strong feelings about killing off major or otherwise sympathetic characters. i have an opinion about this that differs from the majority in that i don’t like a character dying in order to motivate another character. it’s tacky. it’s cheap. it’s boring. it’s overdone. and a character can motivate another character while like. still being alive? weird right? live characters always present more options than dead ones. (obviously discussions of character death but also #rape mention ahead.)

to me character death should be a result rather than strictly a catalyst. think about ASoIaF, which is much more violent and upsetting than my typical tastes lean but credit where it’s due, GRRM knows how to do character death. when you know they’re coming, it becomes incredibly obvious. choices, circumstances, motivations all come together to create this unavoidable moment. nothing exists in a vacuum. in ASoIaF, death is a result and a catalyst, but not purely for character motivation; rather, it changes the game itself, leading to a domino effect. ned’s death at the end of AGoT is unavoidable, and it turns things on their heads (heheh) for everybody. the red wedding is built up to for a long time, and obviously that goes on to have huge repercussions. so, counterintuitively, one of the most violent stories in the zeitgeist right now is, for the most part (not a perfect record) is telling a violent story without necessarily using violence as a substitute for a story.

contrast with GoT, which throws in rape and gore like glitter to accent their teenage/twenty-something boy hypermasculine wank power fantasy. GoT is at the other end and it’s super gross and disturbing.

one of the best-known and most prolific offenders of “death because death” is joss whedon. it seems to be the only way he knows how to create shocking “plot twists” and heavy emotional drama. and the worst of the worst sins was tara macclay on buffy. the thing about joss is that he thinks he’s being incredibly clever surprising his audience with this stuff. he’s said as much himself. there is no effort to build up to it. it’s just, well, nobody’s died for a little while so idk find something to impale someone on. tara’s death was everything death in fiction should not be. first of all she was a lesbian, and one in a happy relationship to boot. need say no more. second of all she was literally caught in the crossfire. the bullet that killed her was meant for someone else and it just happened to strike her down instead with no effort or chance to save her. third, it had to happen so willow could be evil for a bit. and fourth, most obnoxiously, that episode was the first and only time amber benson appeared in the opening credits. this was done deliberately. i wish i could find the quote but alas. to the best of my recollection joss said they wanted to do something like this with another character, possibly jenny calendar, but were unable. it was fully planned well ahead of time to “trick” the audience, which is kind of... sad? that you feel the need to resort to a meta trick like that to maximize shock value? (oh, and don’t even fucking start me on dr. horrible’s and penny. ffs, joss. that didn’t even fit the fucking tone. fuck.)

there are more examples (i am looking directly at you, the 100) but i think those two pretty much put the cap on that point.

death in a story can be important and moving without making the audience feel cheated. HIMYM is largely a light-hearted romantic comedy, but it’s also one about transitioning to adulthood and what that means. and unfortunately, adulthood often means unexpectedly losing loved ones. the death of marshall’s father was surprising, but less than to motivate marshall in some way, it’s more to clarify that adulthood means loss as much as it means gain. it means change more than anything. also story-wise it was a good choice of character, as marvin had deep important connections to a character we loved without leaving a gaping void full of what might have been.

wynonna earp is another story that knows where to draw the line. most of the “victims” are cartoon villains who are inhuman and already dead. the framing of the story leaves us no reason to have sympathy for these literal monsters. when a more sympathetic or humanized character has to go, it’s because there’s no other choice, and each time rather than being a motivator for wynonna, we can see instead the psychological toll it takes on her. she is someone who is surrounded by death, the one with this burden to make the hard decisions and pull the trigger. she killed her father on accident when she was just 11. she’s forced to kill beloved shorty, who is pretty much family and one of the few people who didn’t think she was trash, in order to save him and potentially a lot more. levi and fish were mercy kills that forced her to confront the fact that these monsters truly were once human. and in the finale she gets a double whammy: willa’s betrayal leaves her once again turning her gun on a family member and fatally pulling the trigger. we’re even relieved to see her shoot bobo, not just because she has to if she ever wants to break the curse but because again there’s another dimension to it, maybe even a tinge of mercy. bobo is not exactly sympathetic, but he is someone with dimension, someone we know. willa pretty much had to go story-wise, if nothing else she was a threat to wynonna’s position as the heir and the show is called wynonna earp. but her death also tied into the themes of the show: how to make and live with hard choices, how to stand up and be the one to do the unthinkable because you’re the only one and you have to, whether you want to or not, how to be the one who bears the hate of the very people you’re sacrificing everything to save.

and of course, i can’t not address harry potter, which i think is hit or miss. surprisingly i think cedric’s death was well-done and important, because it was shocking without being done for shock value, and because it was a result: a result of cedric being honorable and good and at the wrong end of the wand of a man who feels nothing about killing anything not useful to him. and ironically, it should have been a catalyst, but it wasn’t, but that’s its own story: the warning everyone failed to listen to, at their own peril. some deaths were organic in that jkr herself went against her plans once she realized what made more sense for the story. iirc, she’s on record as saying arthur weasley was originally meant to die when he’s attacked in ootp, but she spared him at the last minute. he didn’t need to die, it wouldn’t have added to the story, and killing arthur weasley is like joss whedon-level bullshit. on the other hand, she initially intended to let snape live (again iirc) but here she backed herself in a corner. snape was another result. it became obvious that according to the story there simply wasn’t a feasible way to save him, even if in context his death was for nothing. and of course la pièce de résistance, dumbledore, who is GRRM levels of inevitable and necessary.

i feel different ways about other deaths. they mostly happened for the sake of happening, to remind us it’s a war and people die in wars and she wanted faces and names we knew. that’s fair, as it goes. and i don’t begrudge the fact that she didn’t stop to dwell over some of them, because again, war, chaos, you don’t have time to grieve as it happens. but like. fred? i feel a little cheated. lupin and tonks? especially transparent and... unfulfilling. it was like bringing them together was done only to produce teddy, and then they became more useful dead first so harry would be more important to teddy and also because lupin needed to be there with harry in the woods alongside the rest of the marauders. i think of all the deaths these ones are the ones that bother me the most. just... really... meaningless.

also, the movie feeling the need to go a step further and giving us a nice close-up of lavendar brown’s very dead face because... aesthetic? it’s more ambiguous in the book, and even pottermore can’t seem to decide which way to go. it’s so irrelevant that people can’t agree it even happened.

death isn’t the only kind of violence in fiction or necessarily even the worst, but it is the one that’s always on hand like a tissue to grab as you need and the one that is abused by unimaginative writers who just... can’t think of how else to move the story forward. i do think there is a place for stories that involve rape, because it’s real and just like any other group survivors need to see themselves acknowledged as being real and more than their trauma. i don’t really feel too comfortable speaking for survivors here tbh but i do know that all of us need stories to keep us from feeling isolated and unworthy. but i cringe at the idea that it’s just something that happens to women and therefore let’s add it here, here, here, and here. using it as a turning point for the survivor like assault is enlightening and transformative is gross. using it as a turning point for someone else, usually a man, is A WHOLE LOT GROSSER.

also i just realized i didn’t get into tarantino, but i’m too tired for the kind of analysis his work requires. anyway one of the things i liked about kill bill, for example, is that the violence is so over-the-top that in places it’s comical. the whole film is just so extra. afaik that’s what tarantino was going for.

quick shout-out to snk: my favorite comedy. when this first came out it was hailed as The Best Thing Of The Year, it was SO GOOD, so quality. anyway so i finally got around to watching it. i watched it twice in relative succession in fact. and i laughed a lot. you can ask @second-stringer, she was like “oh my god, i’m in a room with a sociopath.” snk is so extra, but i... don’t think that’s what it was going for. i think it was going for shock! and drama! and plot twists! and look at all that blood and gore and dead people! this is obviously Very Mature! i feel so cool and grown-up watching it! and (sorry, not to get passive aggressive at my mutuals who were into it at any point, this is honestly about conversations i had with or read between people not on tumblr/in other contexts) the general trend was the raves were coming from the younger and frequently male audience. like it was the usual kind of thing where you couldn’t be like, are you... serious? didn’t you find it kind of... ridiculous? because you would be mobbed by rabid fanboys eager to mansplain that i don’t know i stopped listening. anyway, the steep decline in worship for the series over time leaves me feeling smug and satisfied. i actually might still watch it out of morbid curiosity and in the hopes that it’s as funny or, prayer circle, even funnier.

in conclusion, bobby has an email from me that includes a lot of yelling, “DON’T KILL THE LESBIAN. DON’T FUCKING DO IT.” this is my contribution to the cause.

[shinygoku]

Boy oh boy, I sure love Keith

...but why? Sometimes it’s really hard to round up feelings to put into orderly words, but it can be interesting to step back and look at results.

Why Keith in particular when no one is ever gonna displace Son Goku of #1 in my heart, or be a better written character than Zuko? I guess it’s partly as Keith is a new addition to my life, of sorts, and also other things I’m about to try and cover.

Oh, this is gonna have spoilers for the series so far, be warned.

And it’s rather on the long side, so under a Cut~! 😺✂

Part 1: The Superficial

What better place to start at than the beginning? And anyway, I may as well get this out of the way first: Keith caught my eye as he’s pretty and reminded me of the aforementioned Zuko. He’s a bishounen in his late teens with dark hair and associations with Fire and the colour red. I mean, this may’ve been partially on purpose, as even accounting for Keith being The Red Guy in the 80s version, he didn’t have the Fire Lion until VLD. There’s also the way both characters have swords, albeit different types, and Keith gets the option of using 2 swords in S2, like how Zuko’s blades are a twin set.

Anyway, the thing to take away from that paragrath is that being reminded of Zuko automatically made me feel more interested in Keith.

Part 2: The Secondhand Content

Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch Voltron, and I wasn’t all that interested when I had other shows to consume and games to play. For quite a while, the only indication I’d get of it were the odd posts from people I follow, which weren’t generally that helpful for someone who, like me, didn’t have context for the show, and lots of it was shipping. Eventually memes trickled through, as well, but they also weren’t that informative (what a shock!)

This wasn’t really enough to actually keep me interested, it just reminded me that Voltron was a thing people liked and it had that Zukolike dude in it.

Part 3: The Spark of Interest

Season 2 came and went, apparently, and I still didn’t really care. Except a couple of people I follow and trust had noticed. One of ‘em, Storm, didn’t write a whole lot about it, but it made me aware it was Current and New. I asked him but he confirmed that from what he’d seen, the Red Guy was pretty bland and only Looked like Zuko. I felt disappointed, like I’d bet on a poor horse or something, lol.

This didn’t motivate me to tune in, but @scrawlers started making a number of posts about Keith, and seeing as our common interest in Yugioh characters meant I had a good time reading the stuff written about Jounouchi from their posts, I got a lot more curious and more secondhand interest than ever before.

Part 4: Season One and Sitting Tight

So now I has much more reason to tune in. I had been spoiled, but only for broad things or things that were meaningless to me, having so little knowledge of the show.

To be really, brutally honest, I wasn’t really blown away by Season One. I felt a lot of the jokes fell flat and that large areas had been skipped over. Areas like characterization. The first episode had been fun, but I wanted them to stay on Earth a bit longer. I still want more Earth stuff, really, but I expect future eps to have flashbacks.

But the worst of all (to me) was that the only Episodes where Keith was interesting for more than a moment was the Pilot and then the 2 at the end. In the big middle chunk of the season I was finding it hard to list his characteristics that couldn’t just be grouped under a Vanilla Protagonist heading.

Part 5: Speeding up and Season 2

So yeah, First Episode aside, I couldn’t feel much for Keith until the last pair of episodes of the season. Things were finally getting more interesting, he went off on his own, in spite of the others warning against it and eventually gets in a fight which is a lot of fun to watch, as he puts up a good effort before having to skedaddle. In the next episode, he’s the only one to suggest not risking The One Superweapon in order to try and get Allura back, which I’m not saying is the right or wrong call, but it’s interesting as he’s trying to think of the Bigger Picture. Heck, the conflict in that scene is interesting too, as he doesn’t argue after the others chew him out, he just says his bit and clams up afters. Then later in the episode he’s pragmatic enough to try and attack Zarkon himself, finds out that won’t work, but keeps going anyway, essentially stalling for time even as he’s getting thrashed.

Like, suddenly I’m able to find seedlings of his characteristics growing! He’s a Determinator! He’s fighting for the Greater Good! He goes to pretty big and risky lengths to achieve his goals! Some of this is still Standard Shounen Hero type stuff, but starting to draw away from the mould and he feels less plain.

This is a nice setup for Season 2, and the first episode of that is one I really love.

Part 6: Shiro and Keith

I haven’t mentioned his relationship with everyone’s favourite Space Dad yet, though in this case it’s more Space Big Bro

Ok so, I’m gonna say right here that I looove the Broganes. Like, dang! What a marvellous brotp it is! I’m largely avoiding Shipping in this series at this point, but point me in the direction of some Quality Broganes Content and I’ll be delighted! I really, really want the series to go into some more depth and flashbacks for these two, and I’m very much for them to be Bros (adopted or otherwise) and all their interactions so far have been bright points that I like to bask in.

Anyway, onto S2E1. The part of the plot that was focused on them was sooo good, and while I liked the other threads in that ep, I still kinda feel that the segments should've been divided to 2 plots per episode, instead of 3 in one and then 1 plot for the entire next episode.

I think Across the Universe is super great for showing insight into the Broganes, like Shiro’s vulnerabilities and bleak humour, and Keith’s resourcefulness and urge to go help, but naturally the main points of that were boiled down to Keith being Shiro’s successor, what with Keith being able to pilot the Black Lion for a bit and more things that are left comparatively subtle.

The show has very heavily implied (as in, I’d be very shocked if they swerved away from this) that Shiro and Keith go back a fair bit. Keith tends to go off on his own, but will always listen to Shiro. He’s often hovering nearby in group shots and is quick to defend him, as in Season 1′s finale. This really wouldn’t work if he only Kind Of Knew Shiro from them having been in the same building, and a lot of jokes are made about Shiro having a Keith bias but they really do gel together and they clearly know each other well.

The point with that is that Shiro knows Keith’s got more to him than the show had really gone and shown at this point. Fortunately, the show steps it up and we get more precious details on Mullet Boy as it goes, and it backs up Shiro’s assessment. Episode 8 brings up the successor point, makes it a very clear point, and it’s only dropped because Keith doesn’t like to think about Bad Things happening to Shiro (same tbh). Still, one can’t dismiss S2E1′s conversation as being something brought on by Shiro’s bad state, as he reasserts the same things here! He points out Keith has gotta reel in his temper and work a few things out, but would otherwise do really good~

This section’s getting a bit long and rambly, I’ll progress

Part 7: Self Doubt

Yeah, if you want me to analyse Keith’s relationships with everyone, nnnot today! Sorry, I don’t consider myself to be a good enough meta writer to tackle that, especially seeing as this is already pretty long lmao

Ahem, back to the show. Once the gang’s reassembled, the plot starts to really propel itself into hyperdrive, so in quite a short space of time we’re given:

Keith recognises the mark on Ulaz’s blade, and later goes to check on his on knife in private. That episode has Keith also get cross at Allura with Shiro for the princess being so discriminative lol

Running away from Zarkon, who is somehow tracking ‘em and won’t leave them alone

Keith has a nightmare about being Galra and thinks ‘aw shit, what if that’s how Zarkon keeps teleporting behind us?’ Allura has similar thoughts, but without the Galra part so they run away together. Turns out that wasn’t either of ‘em, but they have some interesting awkward car conversation about The Galra and how Allura still thinks they’re the Orks of this verse (Chaotic Evil), though Keith does a good job at not getting too upset about this

SPACE MALL!! Also the Knife Keith has is super duper rare and valuable (Duh Nah!!)

Keith finds out at the end of the next episode that (Spoiler warning) He’s Part Saiyan Galra!!

This would be a nice place for the show to have had a bit of a breather, but instead it goes even more into Maximum Overdrive, but I’ll get to the other eps in a bit.

So the first half of S2 really likes to drop heavy hints about Galra!Keith. I’d like to say if I saw it coming or not, but I’d already been spoilered, wup waaah. I didn’t have the whole context, so it was still enjoyable! But I dunno how well they wrote it as I wasn’t fresh and unimpressioned as would probably have been intended. But they did hint at it in Season One, with the hand panel that Only Galra Tech could activate and Keith getting purple burns from the Sith Lightning. This S2 stuff really drives it home for that sweet, sweet reveal, but it was apparently a fond fan theory pre S2, so Good Job, writers.

And, y’know, the Galra thing wasn’t the only thing that had been teased at in S1, but elements of his personality, too! They’re much easier to locate with S2′s revolutions and heavy focus on him though, so I can’t really congratulate the Writers for that. It seems odd that he was so ignored and then so focused, though I get it’s hard to give even coverage to multiple characters and have an action-filled plot, but it’s quite the reversal. I really love the focus he gets in S2, though this does seem to come at the cost of some of the rest, which oughta be corrected in the next season/s. I’m gonna try and recap personality traits towards the end of this post, mind you.

So yes, back to the remainder of S2 (and the series at the time of writing, nooo)

The ep right after the Amazing S2E8 is also really good, already getting the wheels in motion of the fallout of Galra!Keith being established. Not only that, but Keith also slides pretty smoothly into a leader role here and continues to refuse to tar Galra with the same brush, opting to save the mysterious stranger and shrugging it off when they leave while stealing some loot. Keith seems to generally be really patient and easygoing considering what’s been going on, and Hunk goes from being vocally wary to warming right up and learning. It’s gooood.

Allura continues to be generally distrusting of all the Galra, and now that officially includes Keith, that means she freezes him out somewhat. Again, Keith’s response to this is interesting; he doesn’t get angry, instead he’s just quietly sad. It’s like he’s trying not to let it get in the way of all the other shit happening, but it’s obviously cutting pretty deep.

It may be partly this why Keith volunteers himself for a suicide mission, though there’s good technical reasons why he does as well, and we already know Keith isn’t all that idealistic and is willing to make sacrifices for the Greater Good. Eventually Allura comes to her senses and we get a heavy handed, but still quite sweet scene where she apologises.

Keith goes and does some cool stuff with Thace, the respect between ‘em is really cool but nnooooo, Thaaace--! And then, hoo boy, it’s time for the Finale

Part 8: Secret Blade Club and The Season Finale

You may have noticed I skated over most of The Blade of Marmora. Let’s fix that, shall we~?

Aw gosh, man, this episode...! It’s not as cute and funny as SPACE MALL, but I’d be crazy not to find S2E8 The Best. And the suit Keith’s in barely even factors into this choice lmao

But yeah, this episode goes above and beyond and certainly hammers things in. Things like: Keith will never give up. Keith longs to learn about himself and find out who he is. Keith cares so damn much about Shiro. Keith will still put the Greater Good above himself and may even, finally, fold his hand even when before he had utterly refused to quit.

And now... the last of the series (so far!) Blackout. Hoo boy

So the episode is pretty much a long fight scene, and it’s fun to watch, but damn does that end shot feel cheap-- but I’m not here to talk about that

So! Keith in this ep was really good for a nice, simple reason: He automatically took charge when Shiro was out of action. And everyone else listens! And it works, even if Shiro got magic’d to Another Dimension, or whatever.

Scrawlers made a post or 2 about it, but in the post-battle scene, Keith is the focus character, we see his running towards the Black Lion and he’s in the centre when The Gang is all in the cockpit. Symbolism~!

Also a post that’s around shows the first and last lines of the cast, and Keith’s are: “Shiro?!” and “SHIRO!?!”. owch D’:

Part 9: So, what’s Keith’s characteristics, again?

Man, this is long and a bit all over the dang place, ain’t it? Let’s recap Keith’s characteristics:

He’s one hell of a Determinator

Hot blooded and sometimes has a quick temper

But conversely, he’s capable of staying calm even when stressed

Socially awkward, very attached to his friends but doesn’t get some of the nuance associated

If you hurt one of his amigos, he’ll go right for your throat

He’s not as wide-eyed as most of the group, has suggested making sacrifices, taking hostages and often seems to disregard his own safety

He’s always working for the Greater Good

Likes the quiet, which might help explain how he could live on his own for a year in the middle of nowhere without going bananas

Has abandonment issues

Longs to know more about himself

Part 10: ShinyGoku, you didn’t really explain why you Love Keith, you just listed a lot of things haphazardly

It’s hard to really explain using words! Feelings don’t have a direct translation, haha.

In summation, I love the character he was eventually revealed to have!! I’ve said there’s crumbs to be found in S1, though I stand by that outside Ep 1 and the last 2 of S1, you really have to go through with a fine-toothed comb and a magnifying glass. Yeah, you see him get the most angry when Pidge wants out. Yes, you see the much-touted Bonding Moment bit™, but like, it’s really thanks to S2 that I can love him as much as I do

His character is interesting, and the part-Galra thing sure gives a lot of the issues and conflict more ground and ironically makes him lighten up a bit, but even without doing a Dragonball Z an playing the Alien card I do already like the traits listed, haha

Speaking of DB, I feel most Shounen Protagonists are influenced by Goku, as long as they came later. The original Golion was earlier than DB, of course, but Keith has a bit of a blend of playing some of the Goku traits straight and subverting others. I’m not saying this is intentional, but I find it Neat.

Keith Kogane is my Space Son, a Golden Boy from the Battlefield, and I dearly love him. He’s got cool depth and lots more potential! I can’t get enough of his interaction with Shiro! I’m hoping for more Bonding with the other characters (like Pidge! The Super Arm Brotp!!) and am very interested in where he’s gonna go next.

And he is indeed very pretty, lol

[coruscantholonet]

Survey Results Part 3 : The Negatives

Been dreading this section! The question was “ Would like to hear what you feel could use improvement? Please be constructive! “

My comments will be in bold.  Identifying comments may have those portions redacted.

Combat System Related

“The combat system is tremendously complicated to configure and use. You have to make templates to guide the new players or they will not attract you. In my case I have decided not to use it, it requires too much time and there are faster options that favor roleplay “

The template suggestion is a good idea.  This is one of the easier to learn systems we’ve used over the years though, if anyone has any trouble configuring it feel free to poke any online staff board or ask in the Discord, we’re here to help! 

“ LRS needs to be balanced, going all points offense is just too much of an advantage “

We’re constantly testing and considering options,will look into this further!

“ Everything. Meter being #1 on at the moment. “

Sorry you feel that way! We do have meter as a “needs improvement”, and high priority in that category.

“ Less complicated systems not everyone is waaaaayy into the Dungeons and Dragons Aspect. i myself am from a era in SWRP where everything was Combat Meter. People will debate that combat meter is not rp and they are right from a certain point of view. However before we attacked someone or another group we extensively rped out the scenario these days its all DICE MATH DICE MATH i am horrible at math i come to SL to relax and just play out my character with the occasional battle here and there. Now i am aware thats all the current generation of SWRP but the freedom is very limited i'd prefer old school honor FFC above meter and dice but i realize there is a huge trust issue in the community which i gotta admit is somewhat logical considering the amounts of people that god-modded in the past especially the Sith and Jedi who all were SUPAH powerfull. Hell i'm a sith too but i hide it and play like Palpatine nobody knows i'm sith unless they are sufficiently alligned with the force to sense the intense dark energy hidden. 

 Eh long story short. Focus more on ROLEPLAY and less on DICE or any other system.

 In the end we all come to SL to escape the hectics of life adding complicated systems like CLOCKS [Large Events only as far as i heard ] does make me want to just walk away. Turfs work pretty neat but requires more consistent rules like Take 1 turf a week to prevent Big groups such as my [REDACTED] to Streamwall it all I can go on for hours but wont bother you guys ;) I love the casual rp on the sim that's what drew me in “

“ feel like things like clocks and turf are bloat “

We’re looking at things like Clocks & Turf for revision or termination.  Those behind it are no longer with us, and we do feel it’s current version is too heavy.  The add ons such as that are not mandatory for players to know, they’re more for group leads and often something they can opt out of as well under certain circumstances.

“ Make LRS more like d20 “

I wish this one elaborated a bit more.

“ Only thing I can really think of, is maybe more instructive ways to teach the LRS system, notecards can be helpful. Explain such things like weapons, armor, items, in general to be obtained, where to get them etc. Host events to maybe entice people to get them. And maybe, have more items with different stats, mind you I realize some share different stats, but from what I can see in the starter items, very few have different stats. Not saying, starter items should be powerful, just saying the things I've noticed. I could be mistaken with the items itself, and may need more experience in it. Anyway, thank you for your time :) “

Some good suggestions here.

“ Leveling/Rank system is kinda meh'. While I do like a system that has leveling/rank to it keeps people honest and cuts down on meta/god emoting and shit. I feel like the gaps between some of the higher ranks and lower ranks seem like kinda insane. Which might be intended if so then I suppose it's fine but I feel like Emi basically can't interact with certain people in a hostile manner once she learns their abilities cause you she would have be insane to try it again lol. “

The gaps are actually much less significant than they have been in the prior systems we’ve used such as SWT & Chimera but will look further into that.  I’ve personally lost to a 1 on a 5, so it’s not invincible mode by any means.

Build/Setting Related

“i feel it might be nice to see more places for people to sit and hang out around coronet, maybe replace some of the derelict vehicles or make it so you can sit on them like benches. id like to see more items handed out as mission rewards even if rarely. “

“ I'd like for there to be more places to sit in Vreni and Corenet. benches or just something as simple like being able to sit on clutter such as crates, vehicles, or even ledges. “

Been working on this, adding in more benches, small parks, etc.  As well as getting more staff the ability to generate items that can be given as rewards. If anyone is running a storyline that they want to request items for ask in the Discord or ask me directly, if I’m busy I can at least point you to someone who can help

“ more fun, less stress ... but I have no clue how to make that happen other than just focusing on RP and letting everything else go entirely “

I agree! I assume this one is more about staff than the playerbase as we’ve been pretty happy with the low number of OOC player vs player incidents.

“ Rentals availability notifier “

“ It's hard to find personal rentals. I wish there was a map or something that showed where there were rentals available. “

“ more rental homes i feels like there's not enough rental homes especially on the lower section there's like 4 i beleave maybe bump this up a little if possible as i would belave it would make it better for more people to have homes there. “

Since the survey have added enough rentals to catch up on the waiting list.  While the waiting list is now empty they are all full last I checked so will add more.  The waiting list is why the boxes often auto-lock and do not notify.  When we do have freed up rentals and no list I let people know in Discord announcements. If you want to get on said list let Zenless know, specify which of the rental types/location.  Generally go down the list when one becomes free but if I don’t hear back from someone in 48 hours move on to the next person.

“ The island build kinda tbh “

Would have liked elaboration as to why, I personally enjoy the contrasts in setting.

“ Add a area we can rez items we buy “

We do have a build box, but yeah need to be in the landgroup to rez, this is to protect the sim from griefers.

“ I feel like the furries need to be toned down, a lot of them seem to be pushing the limit on what is okay for a character. Otherwise I don't have a whole lot that comes to mind. “

If you have concerns about an avatar, contact a GM or an Admin.  No one else should be confronting people about avatar appearance.  Mentors will help those wondering if their avatars conform as well.

“ More open areas, like forests, deserts and snowy mountains, depicting the different Corellian environments and bringing more RP scenario options. “

Worked on it with the addition of the RP scenes, currently there are 4, we may switch them up now and then, any player can use these for their adventures. As of writing this we have a snowy one, a shadowy planet, a jungle and a minimalist desert.  It often depends how many prims we have free how details these are.  Things are also added to them specifically for a story, etc.

Story Related

“ Perhaps get more people involved IN the Holonet so we have a wider scope of story coverage from other factions/sources. “

“ StoryLine for the sim. News Reports. “

Would love to! Contact Zenless anytime you have something you would like printed on the news, we’ll take anything from briefs to full length articles. It’s generally me (Zen) who ends up writing most, but would love to have more contributors.

“ Easier access to groups. More storys that involve the "lesser" people that arnt part of a huge faction. Less hiding the roleplayers in faction bases. “

“ More events and gatherings for other time zones. It sucks that all of them are always at 9PM at night US EST. Some of us have jobs... “

“ Perhaps slightly more conflict between the groups. “

“ Most improvements are at the group level. All group leads should be working to give their players some daily content. Whether it be a small quest, large mission, or just something to progress their IC storylines. Right now it seems group leads are more there for policing than GM (game master) “

“ I feel that the Storytellers should put out more events, as well as come to defining the terms of the Clock System in a Simple way. There is too much confusion even among Admins about it. The Sim Build should also be improved to reflect 4D Coruscant. While an Island is nice it is only ever used for beach parties or the Jedi. Whilst every other RP is taking place in Coronet City or the Event Boxes. I am sorry if this was not very constructive but typing it out is a lot harder than explaining on voice. Come hangout with myself or talk to [REDACTED]. “

“ leadership in groups focusing on small scale rp to advance players char's ICly “

“ Could use more roleplay opportunities such as organized events. “

Lot of similar themes in these 6 so I’ll touch on them at once. Our group leads have been great and have been the primary ones responsible for the high levels of activity.  On the other hand since the start we had a story team that did not put much time and effort in other than those who were also group leads.  There was a main story arch yet few if any segments were ever run, and when these people left they asked for their stories not to be used so we had to go back to the drawing board. We’re working very hard to get more people involved in stories/running stories, do let me know if you are interested as we’re always looking for more aid.  Typically we bring on people as mentors first, find out what they do well and help with stories if desired.

“ Not having jedi trying to confiscate lightsabers as if they are the cops... “

You could go to CorSec ICly.  This one really seems like an IC issue as it is technically a violation of Corellian policy/law.

Staff/Management/Leadership Related

“ I feel there is a bias that favors the Jedi with staff “

“ the admins other than Eva do not seem like they care about the players “

“ Some of staff can at times be out of touch with the playerbase and comes off as elitist “

“ One owner has to go as per the jedi discussion on the jedi discord. The rest of the sim is fine. “

“ Admins “

“ Easiest suggestion. Unity. This admin team, just like the old 4D, is being trapped in drama. Things need to be unified and aligned to help the admin team mesh, instead of argue. “

“ some of the staff come off as condescending and rude mostly jedi who are also staff “

“ Consensual basis of decisions by the staff. Seems like things are constantly at odds. “

“ tessa and perry should not be admins “

“ Really wish the admins could be more approachable and stuff :l Except for Ootarian, he cool :D “

“ stop taking on owners who are terrible admins but just have money. wil,perry,lone,keely and so on “

“ I feel the LRS could be slightly more balanced rank-wise. I'd also like to see more LRS items but not too many. Less staff drama would be nice as to not fracture the community and kill RP. More sim-wide events such as Pazaak tournaments, races and even combat-oriented ones would be welcome “ 

“ Not a big fan of LRS but it’s better than most dice systems. Would like to see consensual agreements on staff rather than seemingly duking it out “

As some may have noticed there has been an overhaul of staff, much of this will seek to address any of the comments here. Everyone knows I say what I think to a fault.  So I’ll be transparent in my POV (take as you will) though I’m sure some are going to be unhappy I even touched on this.   The SWL Community was in bad shape after what happened on 4D for those who were here for that, I made a bad judgement call in some of the people I partnered with as our views were incompatible. I was very depressed after 4D (our prior region), and didn’t input as much as I should have when it came to staffing the sim, so they filled the staff with those who I’d consider their “friends”. Staff often became a battlefield of ideology between myself and what I saw as a circle of friends.  In no way am I ever a perfect angel, and there are patches that I could have navigated better so I am responsible for the conflicts within staff as much as the departed are.  Sometimes people just don’t work well together.  What’s done is done though and moving forward I feel we’ve been making a lot of progress in having a more cohesive team.  Still some rough patches as any sim with a decent sized playerbase is going to have it’s share of arguments, but I can say for certainty that everyone involved in leadership now genuinely cares about the community and that we’ll do our best to listen to the players and strive for consistent improvement. 

“ Telling myself that "You seem to be breaking the system, the sith might need their own story system" isnt encouraging. We are here to help the story move along but because we are the only ones really using the Clock system. Our use of it in my opinion should be rewarded not, not discouraged so that way other groups are encouraged to use it also. And this isn't me complaining, this is how what is being said is being perceived. “

The staff member who said this is among those who departed (who have been mentioned often here). We’ll strive for a fair environment for everyone/all groups where goal posts aren’t moved on a whim.

“ More freedom and less bureaucracy “

You and me both :D

“ My friend who had been rping here for a few days before me and participated in two events got told she couldn't rank up because she "only earned 1 exp" meanwhile I got enough to level up and that isn't cool because we both pretty much did everything together so it feels like there might've been some bias there. “

I know it’s repetitive but the person who did this is among those who departed.  Fixed this personally as being consistent is of extreme importance to us.

“ Maybe a little more staff so no one feels overburdened. Would love to see currency added to LRS (kind of like Chimera), most inventory items/upgrades/mods/etc. Otherwise, I love this place. Great people and great fun! “

We are currently interested in taking on another mentor or two as there is a lot of work to be done, but we’re being careful in that we want a staff that can get a long to avoid a lot of the feedback that was brought up here on staff environment being internally hostile.  

MISC

“ Clear advertisement of those willing to mesh-build or animate on commission for players would be nice! Even if we don't take them up on it, knowing it is available helps. “

I like this suggestion, will think of ways to try to advertise for them.

“ - More sim events for common people 

- More story events at current scale before we try and move large scale. We really haven't even tested the waters here and yet we're trying to move larger? It's like an amusement park with one slide saying we need to buy more land rather than build more attractions in the available space to entertain people. Lets try and utilize the current setting to its fullest before we decide it needs to go larger - The main social hub moved to a neutral ownership.

 - More balanced meter 

- Less outrageous things being brought onto sim. The more outrageous things get, the harder it is to bring content because that content gets dismissed by one person with the snap of a finger rather than being a tension and toil to overcome It also puts newer players at a huge social disadvantage. “

This one touched on a lot of things so put it in misc.  Pretty much touched on everything but “outrageous” in other sections.  What people consider outrageous is very subjective but we do try to avoid anything too crazy.

“ A lot of people are a bit bossy and obligating others what to do with their character, especially how they look. That makes people, certainly those who put a lot of effort in them, really pissed. Maybe a send out that we all should respect each other in how we look and how we roleplay. Not everyone is a rich ass who can buy what they want or so experienced in roleplay as the other. So the basic thing is respect. “

True.  If any issues with an avatar or anything else, a GM or Admin should be contacted.  Players hostilely confronting other players is often something that will be considered a minor offense which can lead to disciplinary scenarios.  If you need any help do let one of us know, it makes me very sad when I hear about someone being given a hard time over something like that.

In conclusion, thank you to everyone who filled out the survey.  This was the hardest section to give feedback on as it does touch on a lot of “drama” elements.  I’m not the smartest admin, def not the most PR or PC, I speak from the heart.  It means a lot to me that after six years and all the obstacles that people are still here. I’ll do my best to try to improve everyone's experience.  Please keep in mind we are a VERY diverse role-play community and it’s literally impossible to fully please everyone, sometimes the good of the many will outweigh the good of the few but the tyranny of the majority is also something you always try to keep at bay.   

SWRP as a whole has now lasted about fifteen years as you can trace it’s origins back to 2003 while the first groups and sims really got going in 2004 with groups like the Mandalorians under Dazzo Street,  Jedi under Marcus Moreau and others,the first Galactic Empire.  Then in 2005 sims exploded with Korriban, Sirius, New Holstice, Tatooine, the founding of GAR & DLOTS.   We may have had to do a lot of adapting and changing with the times to still be an active community, but fifteen years is an amazing accomplishment for any roleplay community.   We’ll have our ups and downs but I think we’ve proven ourselves to be as resilient as they come.  :)

[lexicalberries]

fic: "You want this. Your rose is calling me, Kat," he growled, nudging his tip against her anal hole.

me: what. the actual. fuck.

fic: He could feel how her anal walls adjusted to his great size.

me: oh of course he has a giant dick

fic: resisting the urge to stick his cock in one of her orifices.

me: like her nostril? her eye socket?

fic: like a hungry baby she greedily closed her mouth around his tip and played with him.

me: not sure semen provides the nutrition babies need

fic: Something exploded behind his eyelids.

me: his brain, probably, from embarrassment at how terrible this is

fic: He resisted the urge to suck her tits, though they beckoned like two flashing beacons.

me: can't unsee janeway's breasts with blinking lights

fic: Just stroking her pussy had been enough to allow her muscles to relax so that he could push his engorged flesh deep into her anal passage.

me: ...

fic: A searing kiss - his tongue probed her mouth, causing him to swoon from the pleasure of it.

me: ROFL

me: THIS GOES FROM HORRIFYING TO HILARIOUS IN SECONDS

fic: "Oh, spirits! You're tight, Kat!"

fic: "Let's just say I hate dildos," was all she murmured as she gazed at him with her heated, smouldering cat-like eyes.

me: I CAN'T

fic: He held her for several heady seconds to allow her to adjust to his size.

me: just in case you'd forgotten he has a big dick

fic: He lifted her out and rammed her down on him again. So he continued the forceful ramming,

me: everyone loves a good ramming amirite

fic: he settled her on him, filling her glorious softness. No climaxing this time, just a lazy thrusting as they enjoyed their shower.

me: seems uncomfortable?

fic: the good feeling of being inside Kathryn with his mouth on hers overrode any discomfort they felt.

me: oh okay then

fic: He rode her hard and soft, slow thrusts and sudden pounding until he lost control and simply heaved in arrhythmic pushing against her.

me: um

fic: His hand stole to her centre, her soft, kind core that wanted so much of him during the night.

me: are we still talking about her vagina?

fic: Their bodies joining in slow lovemaking was everything he wanted, everything that Kathryn desired.

me: cool he's psychic now

fic: how he filled every orifice as if he belonged there

me: ...up her nose, in her ear

fic: He filled her heart and her mind and, with a sob escaping her suddenly, her soul.

me: apparently souls are filled with air. gotta equalise.

fic: Her battered soul. The one that cried out to him without her ever giving heed to those cries herself.

me: i get it, battered from the ramming

fic: He was big and almost hurt her the way he filled her to the hilt.

me: DON'T FORGET HIS ENORMOUS PENIS GUYS

fic: And Chakotay's image, his roaming hands on her body, his mouth in places she thought could never be touched by him, his manhood…Those images haunted her.

me: same bb

fic: So they were intending to marry…

me: THEY'VE HAD ONE DATE FFS

fic: A dagger with ragged points drove straight into her heart.

me: *drives dagger into brain*

fic: a waft of cool air just the right thing to soothe her raging emotions.

me: an ac vent is all you need to regain emotional equilibrium?

fic: She hadn't been to this part of the ship in a while - if four days could be called a while -

me: no. it can't.

fic: Still, the plants, the rows and rows of glass tanks, completed her sense of closeness - a closeness with the plants

me: wait, what?

fic: Kathryn walked to the tank containing her tomato plants. With a great sigh, she put her hand in and carefully fingered a ripe tomato.

me: that's probably not supposed to be sexual but tbh it's hard to tell in this fic

me: there's a bunch of slightly weird/creepy stuff about noah?? if they start going at it in hydroponics i'm out

fic: It was a stroke of inspiration that she’d appointed Noah to take charge of the hydroponics bay. He had taken to the task with a love and enthusiasm that pleased her a great deal and bore out his own entreaties that he was no murderer and killer of alien life forms. The gentle giant she called the tallest member of Voyager's crew now would do anything for her.

me: so there's that. and then this:

fic: Noah of the gentle eyes. Noah who could never in creation hurt a fly, much less a hapless alien form. She looked up at him. He stared down at her from his great height of almost two metres.

me: so i'm getting the impression he's tall?

fic: "Commander Chakotay is standing outside. I promised I'd break him in two if he hurt my captain. I'd like to know from you if I should let him in to see you or whether I should break him in two. Just say the word."

me: it got better

fic: Noah really could break Chakotay in two. The tall former Equinox officer could tear Chakotay's limbs from his body or draw and quarter her first officer in the holodeck.

me: BECAUSE HE'S TALL

fic: She didn't want to face a bleeding, broken, dead Chakotay. When all was said and done, she still needed her first officer.

me: OLOLOL

me: NO NO WAIT IT'S DECLARATION TIME I JUST WANT TO CP ALL OF IT IN ITS MAGNIFICENCE

fic: Not only did he keep her hands imprisoned in his, he also gazed deeply into her eyes, like she had caught him once or twice before, on New Earth, and once, when they had had dinner together in her quarters. His eyes were warm,

me: the next bit is in italics yasss

fic: loving… and during the night, when she had imagined she saw love in his eyes…

me: while he was ramming her, obvs

fic: "C-Chakotay…?" she stammered, unsure of what to make of his look of love.

fic: "Kathryn," he began hoarsely,

me: wait for iiiiiit

fic: "no one knows about the night we shared. I made sure of that. It was the most beautiful thing that happened to me. I'm sorry about what I did at the start." She nodded mutely, a tear forming and rolling down her cheek as she remembered with embarrassment the anal sex.

me: AS SHE REMEMBERED WITH EMBARRASSMENT THE ANAL SEX

fic: "It wasn't my intention, but you…you brought out the untamed in me. You did things to me that…"

me: pretty sure it was you doing all the DOING

fic: hope flared like a giant flame in her heart.

me: let us pause and contemplate just how many things are burning in this fic

fic: "Chakotay, w-what are you saying?" she asked, too afraid to hear his answer.

me: THEN WHY DID YOU ASK THE QUESTION

fic: "As I said, no one knows about our night of passion. But Kathryn, I was desperate - "

fic: "No, Chakotay. I was the one who was desperate, who threw myself at your mercy, begging for a f - " His fingers against her lips stopped the crudity from her.

me: damn it chakotay!

fic: "You tricked me…?!" she whispered incredulously, but too overjoyed to be mad at him.

me: OH HELL NO

fic: "Seven of Nine went along with my plan, Kathryn. She really is a kind friend. I knew that of all the women on board Voyager you would most likely resent seeing me with, it would be her. And she loves you, Kathryn. More than you think."

me: plus she thought it'd be hilarious

fic: "She didn't want to go along at first, but B'Elanna and Tom convinced her she was doing it for the ship. For me. For you."

me: to recap: the entire crew of voyager was in on a plan to convince janeway that chakotay was dating seven in order to induce her jealousy. said jealousy would prove to be so strong that she'd act on her heretofore unacknowledged feelings for chakotay despite believing that any such actions on her part would mean hurting not one but two people she cares for. and of them all seven was the only one who thought maybe it wasn't a great idea? everyone else was super okay with lying and hurting the captain.

me: YEAH THAT'S A GREAT WAY TO SHOW YOU LOVE HER.

me: the characterisation is terrible, the sex is terrible, the writing itself is terrible. but the absolute worst thing about this fic is that the author (and several others so far) seem to think breaking someone's trust is a perfectly fine and even romantic thing to do. and given what chakotay's gone through in terms of betrayal in romantic relationships he'd be the very last person to do such a thing.

me: manipulation is not love. tricking someone is not romantic. if you can do that 'for their own good' then you can also do it to hurt them. the ends do not justify the means! chakotay would never do that! janeway would never do that!

me: *curls into protective ball around them*